He looked up instantly, his quick, penetrating glance dwelling for a moment on the young chieftain, and then resting steadily and inquiringly on his companion's feeble and mutilated form.
Accustomed to the military brevity and promptitude exacted by his commander in all communications addressed to him by his inferiors, Hermanric, without waiting to be interrogated or attempting to preface or excuse his narrative, shortly related the conversation that had taken place between the stranger and himself on the plain near the Pincian Gate; and then waited respectfully to receive the commendation or incur the rebuke of the king, as the chance of the moment might happen to decide.
After again fixing his eyes in severe scrutiny on the person of the Roman, Alaric spoke to the young warrior in the Gothic language thus:-- 'Leave the man with me--return to your post, and there await whatever commands it may be necessary that I should despatch to you to-night.' Hermanric immediately departed.

Then, addressing the stranger for the first time, and speaking in the Latin language, the Gothic leader briefly and significantly intimated to his unknown visitant that they were now alone.
The man's parched lips moved, opened, quivered; his wild, hollow eyes brightened till they absolutely gleamed, but he seemed incapable of uttering a word; his features became horribly convulsed, the foam gathered about his lips, he staggered forward and would have fallen to the ground, had not the king instantly caught him in his strong grasp, and placed him on the wooden chest that he had hitherto occupied himself.
'Can a starving Roman have escaped from the beleaguered city ?' muttered Alaric, as he took the skull cup, and poured some of the wine it contained down the stranger's throat.
The liquor was immediately successful in restoring composure to the man's features and consciousness to his mind.

He raised himself from the seat, dashed off the cold perspiration that overspread his forehead, and stood upright before the king--the solitary, powerless old man before the vigorous lord of thousands, in the midst of his warriors--without a tremor in his steady eye or a prayer for protection on his haughty lip.
'I, a Roman,' he began, 'come from Rome, against which the invader wars with the weapon of famine, to deliver the city, her people, her palaces, and her treasures into the hands of Alaric the Goth.' The king started, looked on the speaker for a moment, and then turned from him in impatience and contempt.
'I lie not,' pursued the enthusiast, with a calm dignity that affected even the hardy sensibilities of the Gothic hero.

'Eye me again! Could I come starved, shrivelled, withered thus from any place but Rome?
Since I quitted the city an hour has hardly passed, and by the way that I left it the forces of the Goths may enter it to-night.' 'The proof of the harvest is in the quantity of the grain, not in the tongue of the husbandman.

Show me your open gates, and I will believe that you have spoken truth,' retorted the king, with a rough laugh.
'I betray the city,' resumed the man sternly, 'but on one condition; grant it me, and--' 'I will grant you your life,' interrupted Alaric haughtily.
'My life!' cried the Roman, and his shrunken form seemed to expand, and his tremulous voice to grow firm and steady in the very bitterness of his contempt, as he spoke.