It was a beautiful evening in June, The sun threw its golden beams from the west, from Vindelicia, on the Mercurius Hill, and the modest villa which crowned it.

Here and there on the great street a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a yoke of Noric oxen, was returning home at the close of the market-day through the west gate of Juvavum, the Porta Vindelica. The colonists and peasants had been selling vegetables, fowls, and pigeons in the Forum of Hercules; but the bustle of the street reached the hill only as a murmur. Here it was still and quiet; one only heard outside the low stone wall which surrounded the garden the lively rippling of a little spring, which at its source was prettily enclosed in marble, and after it had fed the fountain in the middle, and had wandered through the garden in artificially winding rivulets, escaped through a gap in the wall and hurried down the hill in a stone channel. Close by was the gate entrance, surmounted by a statue of Mercury, but open, without door or lattice. In the direction of the town, towards the south-east, there lay at the foot of the hill carefully tended vegetable and fruit gardens, meadows with the most succulent verdure, and corn-fields with luxuriant grain, which products the Romans had brought into the land of the barbarians.

Behind the villa, towards the north, fine beech-woods towered and rustled, ascending the mountain slopes; and out of their depths sounded from afar the metallic note of the golden oriole.

It was so beautiful, so peaceful; but from the west--and no less from the south-east!--threatening storm-clouds were rising.

From the entrance a straight path, strewn with white sand, led through the wide-spreading garden, between tall ilices and yews, which according to the long ruling fashion had been cut into all kinds of geometrical figures--a taste, or rather want of taste, which the Rococo did not invent, but only newly borrowed from the gardens of the Imperators.

Statues were placed at regular intervals in the space between the garden gate and the entrance to the dwelling-house: nymphs, a Flora, a satyr, a Mercury--bad work in plaster; the stout Crispus made them by the dozen in his workshop on the Vulcan market-place in Juvavum; and he sold them cheap: for the times were not good for men, and were bad for gods and demi-gods; but these were all gifts, for Crispus was the father's brother of the young householder.

From the entrance of the garden, echoing from the stone wall of the enclosure, there sounded several strokes of a hammer, only lightly, for they were given carefully by an artist-hand; they seemed to be the last improving, finishing efforts of a master.

Now the hammerer sprang up; he had been kneeling just within the entrance, near to which, standing upright against each other, were some dozen yet unworked marble slabs, which pointed out the dwelling of a stone-mason. He stuck the little hammer into the leather belt which fastened the skin apron over his blue tunic, shook from a little oil-flask a few drops on a woollen cloth, rubbed therewith the marble till it was smooth as a mirror, turned his head aside, as a bird will that wishes to look closely at anything, and then, nodding well pleased, read from the slab at the entrance:

"Yes, yes! here dwells happiness; my happiness, our happiness: so long as my Felicitas dwells here--happy and making happy. May misfortune never step over this threshold: banished by the adage, may every bad spirit Halt! Now is the house beautifully finished by this inscription. But where is she, then? She must see it and praise me. Felicitas," cried he, turning towards the house, "come then!"

He wiped the sweat from his brow, and stood upright--a supple, youthful form, slender, not above the middle height, not unlike the Mercury of the garden, whose proportions Crispus had formed according to old tradition; dark-brown hair, in short curls, covered almost like a cap his round head; under large eyebrows, two dark eyes laughed pleasantly on the world; the naked feet and arms showed a fine shape, but little strength; only in the right arm powerful muscles raised themselves; the brown skin apron was sprinkled white with marble dust, he shook it off, and cried again louder, "Felicitas!"

Then appeared on the threshold of the house a white figure, who, drawing back the dark-yellow curtain, which was fastened to rings running on a bronze rod, was framed like a picture in the two pilasters of the entrance--a quite young girl--or was it a young wife? Yes, she must be already a wife, this child of hardly seventeen years, for she is without doubt the mother of the infant which, with her left arm, she nestles to her bosom: only the mother holds a child with such expression in the movements and countenance. Two fingers of the right hand, the inner surface turned outwards, the young mother laid on her lips: "Be quiet!" said she, "our child sleeps." And now the hardly full-ripe form glided down the four stone steps which led from the house into the garden, with the left arm carefully raising the child higher and pressing it closer, with the right gently lifting the hem of her plaited robe as high as her well-formed ankles. It was a spectacle of perfect grace: young and childlike, like Raphael's Madonna, but not humble and at the same time mystically glorious, as the mother of the Christ-child; there was nothing incomprehensible, nothing miraculous, only a noble simplicity and yet royal loftiness in her unconscious dignity and innocence. There floated, as it were, a sweet-sounding music round the figure of this Hebe, every movement being in perfect harmony; wife and yet maiden; entirely human, perfectly at rest and contented in the love of her young husband and of the child at her breast. Lovely, touching, and dignified at the same time, in all the perfect beauty of her figure, her face and her complexion so modest, that in her presence, as before a beautiful statue, every wish was silent.

She wore no ornament; her light-brown hair, shining with a golden lustre when the sun kissed it, flowed back in natural waves from the open, well-formed temples, leaving the rather low forehead free, and was fastened at her neck in a loose knot. A milk-white robe of the finest wool, fastened on the left shoulder with a beautifully shaped, but simple silver brooch, hung in folds down to her ankles, showing the pretty red leather sandals; leaving bare the neck and arms, which were still childlike, but rather too long. The robe was fastened at the waist with a wide bronze girdle.

Thus she moved silently down the steps, and approached her husband. The long narrow face had that wonderful, almost bluish-white, complexion only possessed by the daughters of Ionia, and which no noon-tide sun of the south can embrown; the eye-brows, in a half-circle, regular as if drawn with compasses, might have given to the countenance a lifeless, statuesque appearance, but under the long, slightly curved, black eye-lashes, the dark-brown gazelle-like eyes, now directed towards her beloved, shone with a life full of feeling.

He flew towards her with an elastic step, lifted carefully, tenderly, the sleeping child from her arm, and taking the flat straw lid from his tool-basket, he placed the child on it, under the shade of a rose-bush. The evening breeze threw the scented leaves of a full-blown rose on the little one: he smiled in his sleep.

Then the master, winding his arm round the waist of his young wife, led her to the just completed entrance-slab, and said:

"Now is the proverb ready, which I have kept hidden from thee till I could finish it; now read, and know, and feel"--and he kissed her tenderly on the mouth: "Thou--thou thyself art the happiness; Thou dwellest here."

The young wife held her hand before her eyes to protect them from the sun, which now shone in almost horizontal beams through the open gateway; she read and blushed, the colour rose perceptibly in her delicate white cheeks, her bosom heaved, her heart beat quickly: "O Fulvius! thou art good. How thou dost love me! How happy we are!" And she laid her two hands and arms on his right shoulder, on the other her beautiful head.

He heartily pressed her to himself. "Yes, overflowing, without shadow is our happiness--without measure or end."

Quickly, with a slight trembling, as if shivering, she raised herself, and looked him anxiously in the face: "O, do not provoke the holy ones. It is whispered," said she, herself whispering, "they are envious." And she held her hand before his mouth.

But he pressed a loud kiss upon the small fingers, and cried: "I am not jealous, I, a man--why should the holy ones be envious? I do not believe that. I do not believe it of the holy ones--nor of the heathen gods, if indeed they still have life and power."

"Speak not of them! They certainly live!--but they are bad spirits, and he who names them, he calls them near; thus warns the Presbyter of the Basilica."

"I fear them not. They have protected our ancestors for many generations."

"Yes, but we have turned away from them! They defend us no longer. Only the saints are our defenders against the barbarians. Alas! if they came here, trampled down the flowers in the garden, and carried away our child."

And she knelt down and kissed the little sleeper.

But the young father laughed. "The Germans, dost thou mean? they steal no children! They have more than they can feed. But it is true----they may perhaps one day sound out their war-cry before the gates of Juvavum."

"Yes, that they may, very soon!" broke in an anxious voice, and the fat Crispus, breathing heavily after his hot walk, entered the garden.

"Ave, Phidias in plaster," cried Fulvius to him.

"Welcome, uncle," said Felicitas, giving him her hand.

The broad-brimmed felt hat which he had drawn over his brow to protect his red, fat, shining, good-humoured face, and his stump nose, from the sun, Crispus threw on his neck, so that it hung by the leather strap on his broad back. "May Hygeia never leave thee, my daughter; the Graces never forsake thee, their fourth sister. Yes, the Germans! A horseman came last night with secret information for the Tribune. But two hours after we knew it all, we, early guests at the Baths of Amphitrite. The rider is a Wascon; no Wascon keeps his mouth closed if you pour wine therein. A battle has been fought at the ford of the Isar: our troops have fled, the watch-tower of Vada is burnt. The barbarians have crossed the river."

"Bah!" laughed Fulvius, "that is yet far away. Go, darling, prepare a cooling drink for our uncle--thou knowest what he likes: not too much water! And if they come, they will not eat us. They are fierce giants in battle--children after the victory. Have I not lived months among them as their prisoner? I fear nothing from them."

"Nothing for thyself--but for this sweet wife?"

Felicitas did not hear this question; she had taken up the child and gone with it into the house.

Fulvius shook his curly locks. "No! They would do nothing to her, that is not their custom. Certainly, did I fall, she would not be long left a widow. But there are people not in the bearskins of the barbarians, who would willingly tear her from the arms of her husband."

And he seized angrily the hammer in his belt.

"She must not suspect anything of it, the pure heart!" continued he.

"Certainly not. But thou must be on the watch. I met the Tribune lately in the office of the old money-lender."

"The usurer! the blood-sucker!"

"I was able, fortunately, to pay him my little debt. The slave announced me. I waited behind the curtain: I then heard a deep voice mention thy name--and Felicitas. I entered. The Tribune stood with the money-dealer. They were quickly silent when they perceived me. And just now, on the way here, whom should I overtake on the highway? Leo the Tribune, and Zeno the money-dealer! The latter pointed with his staff to thy house, the flat roof of which, with its little statues, projected above the trees. I guessed their conversation, and the object of their journey. Unseen I sprang from the road into the ditch, and hastened by the shorter way, the steep meadow path, to warn thee. Take care--they will soon be here."

"Let him only come, the miser! I have earned and carefully put away the sum that I owe him for marble supplied from Aquileia, and for the town taxes. My other creditors I have asked to wait, or rather promised them higher interest, and have put all the money together for this destroyer. But what does the Tribune want with me? I owe him nothing, except a knife-thrust for the look with which he devoured my precious one."

"Be careful! His knife is more powerful: it is the sword; and behind him stand the wild Mauritanian cavalry, and the Isaurian hirelings, whom we must pay with precious gold to protect us from the barbarians."

"But who defends us from the defenders? The Emperor in distant Ravenna? He rejoices if the Germans do not cross the Alps; he troubles himself no more about this land, which has been so long Roman."

"Except in extortionate taxes, to squeeze out our last blood-drops."

"Bah! The State taxes! It is many years since they were collected. No Imperial functionary ventures now over the mountains. I stand indeed here on Imperial soil. But what is the name of the man who is now Emperor, and to whom this bit of land belongs, of which he has never heard? Every two years another Emperor is made known to us--but only through the coinage."

"And that becomes ever worse."

"It cannot get worse; that is a comfort."

"A friend tells me that the taxes get more and more intolerable in Mediolanum, where there are still bailiffs and soldiers to levy them by force."

"And it may be the same with us," laughed the young man. "Who knows how much I am already in debt for these two acres of land?"

"And the roads of the Legions are overgrown with grass and brushwood."

"And the troops receive no wages."

"But they pay themselves by plundering the burghers, whom they should defend."

"And the walls of Juvavum are falling, the moats are dry, the sluices destroyed; the rich people go away, there only remain poor wretches like ourselves, who cannot leave."

"I wonder that the money-lender has not long ago moved with his great gold-bag over the Alps."

"I would not go, uncle, if I could; and why, indeed, could I not? My art, my trade will be honoured everywhere, so long as the Romans dwell in stone, not wooden houses, like the Germans. But I am firmly fixed to this soil. Many, many generations have my fathers dwelt here; they say since the founding of the colony by the Emperor Hadrian. They have cleared the forests, drained the marshes, made roads, raised fords, laid out house and garden, grafted the rich fruits on the wild apple and pear-trees; the climate itself has become milder. I know Italy, I have bought marble in Venetia, but I would rather live here on the old inheritance of my fathers."

"But if the barbarians come, wilt thou then also?"----

"Stay! I have my own thoughts about that. For us unimportant people it is better under the barbarians than"----

"Say not, than under the Emperor. Thou art a Roman!"

The stout Crispus said this very gravely, but the other laughed; the good uncle but little resembled a Roman hero. His neighbours declared that he modelled his statues of Bacchus from his own figure.

"Half-blood! My mother was a Noric Celt. Induciomara! That does not sound much of the Quirinal."

"And we do not stand under the Emperor, but under his hangman servants, Exchequer officials, and under the murderous fist of the Moorish and Isaurian troops. If I must serve barbarians, I prefer the Germans."

"But they are heathen."

"In part. A hundred and fifty years ago so were we all. My grandfather sacrificed secretly to Jupiter. And there are also Christians among them."

"Arians! heretics! worse than heathen, says the Holy Church."

"A few decades past our emperors were also heretics. And the Germans ask no one what he believes; but how heavily did our fathers suffer, if their faith did not exactly agree with that of the ruling emperor!"

"You take too lenient a view of the coming of the barbarians. They have set fire to many towns."

"Yes; but stone does not burn. The Romans quickly fit new timbers in the undestroyed walls. Then no German settles in a town. They pasture their herds on the land; it is the peasant in his farm who suffers from them. They take from him a third of his fields and pasturage. But the land profits thereby. It is now sadly dispeopled; nowhere is there a free peasant on a free soil. For the masters, whom they never see, who carouse in Naples or Byzantium, slaves cultivate the ground, or rather they do not cultivate it, they only work enough to keep them from starving. If they gained more the slave-master would take it from them. But it is different with plough and sickle, when hundreds of Germans press into the country, each with innumerable white-headed children. For so many children as these people have, I could not have imagined over the whole earth!--And in a few years the grown-up son builds his own wooden house in the cleared forest or the drained swamp. They swarm over the furrows like ants, and they soon throw away their old wooden plough-shares and copy the iron shares of the colonists, and in a few years the land bears so much more than formerly, that it richly feeds both conquerors and conquered."

"Yes, yes," nodded Crispus, "we have seen all that in the frontier lands, where they have settled. If the sons become too numerous they cast lots, and the third part, that draws the lot to migrate, wanders on wherever hawk or wolf directs; but never back, never towards the north!" sighed Crispus, "so they press ever nearer to us."----

"But they leave us our laws, our language, our God, our Basilica, and demand much, much less in tribute than the slave-master of the landlord or the tax-gatherer of the Emperor."

"It is well that Severus does not hear you, the old armaturarum magister in Juvavum; he would"----

"Yes, he thinks we have yet the old times, and there are still living the old Romans as in the days of that tamer of the Germans, the Emperor Probus, of whose race he counts himself. But by the saints he is mistaken. Why should I be over zealous for the Emperor? He, this Emperor, certainly shows no zeal for me; in strong Ravenna he sits and invents new taxes, and new punishments for those who pay no taxes, because they have nothing."

"The old Severus has long been drilling volunteers to lead against the barbarians, in case they should roam this way. I have been there a few days, painfully carrying spear and shield in this heat. I have never seen thee, so much younger and stronger, on our 'Campus Martius,' as they call it."

Fulvius laughed. "I have no need, uncle; I have learnt to use arms long enough while a prisoner with the Germans, and if the town and one's own hearth must be defended I shall not be wanting--for honour's sake! not that I think we shall do much; for, believe me, if they seriously intend to come, that is, if they must because they need our acres, then Severus will not keep them back with his old-fashioned generalship and his new-fashioned 'Legions of the Capitol of Juvavum,' under the golden eagle which he has presented to them. Nor the Tribune either with his cavalry from Africa and his mercenaries from Isauria. But look! Philemon, the slave, is beckoning; I see the drinking-cup shining on the seat in the little porch--the table is ready. Now drink of our rough RÄter-wine; Augustus long ago knew how to value it, and it has been already a year in the cellar since the pack-mule brought it here from the Tyrol. Let us look at Felicitas and the child at her breast, and forget emperors and barbarians."