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Attila
by
“But he has promised his soldiers to give them Rome some day.”
“Why did he spare Rome?”
“No one knows. No one knows anything about this man, and he himself seems to be ignorant about himself. He comes from the East, he says; that is all. People say the Huns are the offspring of witches and demons in the wilderness. If anyone asks Attila what he wants, and who he is, he answers, ‘The Scourge of God.’ He founds no kingdom, builds no city, but rules over all kingdoms and destroys all cities.”
“To return to his bride: she is called Ildico; is she then a Christian?”
“What does Attila care? He has no religion.”
“He must have one if he calls himself ‘the Scourge of God,’ and declares that he has found the War-God’s sword.”
“But he is indifferent as regards forms of religion. His chief minister, Onegesius, is a Greek and a Christian.”
“What an extraordinary man he is to settle down here in a salt-plain instead of taking up his abode in Byzantium or in Rome.”
“That is because it resembles his far Eastern plains–the same soil, the same plants and birds; he feels at home here.”
They became silent, as the sun rose and the heat increased. The low-growing tamarisk, wormwood, and soda-bushes afforded no shade. Wild fowl and larks were the only creatures that inhabited the waste. The herds of cattle, goats, and swine had disappeared, for Attila’s army of half a million had eaten them up, and his horses had not left a single edible blade of grass.
At noon the caravan came suddenly to a halt, for on the eastern horizon there was visible a town with towers and pinnacles, on the other side of a blue lake. “Are we there?” asked Edeko. “Impossible; it is still twenty miles, or three days’ journey.”
But the city was in sight, and the caravan quickened its pace. After half an hour the town appeared no nearer, but seemed, on the contrary, to grow more distant, to dwindle in size, and to sink out of sight. After another half hour, it had disappeared, and the blue lake also.
“They can practise enchantment,” said the Roman, “but that goes beyond everything.”
“It is the Fata Morgana, or the mirage,” explained the guide.
As the evening came on, the caravan halted in order to rest for the night.
* * * * *
On the stretch of land between Bodrog and Theiss, Attila had his standing camp, for it could not be called a town. The palace was of wood, painted in glaring colours, and resembled an enormous tent, whose style was probably borrowed from China, the land of silk. The women’s house, which was set up near it, had a somewhat different form, which might have been brought by the Goths from the North, or even from Byzantium, for the house was ornamented with round wooden arches. The fittings seemed to have been stolen from all nations and lands; there were quantities of gold and silver, silk and satin curtains, Roman furniture and Grecian vessels, weapons from Gaul, and Gothic textile fabrics. It resembled a robber’s abode, and such in fact it was.
Behind the palace enclosure began the camp, with its smoke-grimed tents. A vast number of horse-dealers and horse-thieves swarmed in the streets, and there were as many horses as men there. Without the camp there grazed herds of swine, sheep, goats, and cattle–living provision for this enormous horde of men, who could only devour and destroy, but could not produce anything.
Now, on the morning of Attila’s wedding day, there were moving about in this camp thousands of little men with crooked legs and broad shoulders, clothed in rat-skins and with rags tied round their calves. They looked out of their tents with curiosity, when strangers who had been invited to the marriage feast came riding up from the plain.
In the first street of tents, Attila’s son and successor, Ellak, met the principal guests; he bade them welcome through an interpreter, and led them into the guest-house.