The Scarlet Banner Part 43

All were silent; a deathlike stillness pervaded the wide s.p.a.ce; the people held their breath until the hapless King stood before Belisarius.

Deeply moved, the Roman General, too, found no words, but kindly extended his right hand to the man before him. Gelimer now raised his large eyes, saw Belisarius in all the glitter of gold and armor, glanced quickly around the three sides of the square, beheld the magnificence and pomp of warlike splendor, the victors' banners fluttering high in the air, on the ground the standards and sparkling royal treasure of the Vandals. Suddenly--we all started as this corpse burst into such wild emotion--he flung both hands, with their long gold chain, above his head, clasping them so that the metal clashed; the cross slipped from his grasp; he uttered a shrill, terrible laugh.

"Vanity! _All_ is vanity!" he shrieked, and threw himself p.r.o.ne upon the sand just at the feet of Belisarius.

"Is this illness?" whispered the General to me.

"Oh, no," I answered in the same tone. "It is despair--or piety. He thinks that life is not worth living; everything human, everything earthly, even his people and his kingdom are sinful, vain, empty. Is this the last word of Christianity?"

"No, it is madness!" cried Belisarius the hero. "Up, my brave warriors!

Let the tubas blare again, the Roman tubas which echo through the world! To the harbor! To the s.h.i.+ps! And to the triumph--to Constantinople!"