Chapter V · (continued 6)
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"Ha! I had forgot," said the princess, taking back the goblet with a placid smile, "I must drink first, and then, before the moon be eleven times renewed, I too shall be a bride. Menenius the brave! Honoria the fair! Happy lovers, I drink to your good rest! May your sleep be sound! May your repose be unbroken!"
And with a calm and graceful dignity, she drank a third part of the mead. Honoria drank also, according to the custom; Menenius drained the cup, and the maidens withdrawing, left the lovers to their couch. Honoria hid her eyes upon the bosom of Menenius, and the warrior, pressing her to his bosom, spoke gentle words of kind assurance. But in a moment her hand grew deathly cold. "Menenius, I am faint," she cried: "What is it that I feel? My heart seems is it were suddenly frozen, and my blood changed into snow.--O Menenius! O my beloved! we are poisoned; I am dying! That cup of mead--that frantic girl--she has doomed us and herself to death."
As she spoke, through his own frame the same chill and icy feelings spread. A weight was upon his heart, his warm and fiery blood grew cold, the strong sinews lost their power, the courageous soul was quelled, and he gazed in speechless, unnerved horror on Honoria, while, shade by shade, the living rose left her cheek, and the "pale standard" of life's great enemy marked his fresh conquest on her brow. Her eyes, which, in the hour of joy and expectation, had been bent to the earth, now fixed on his with a long, deep, earnest, imploring gaze of last affection. Her arms, no longer timid, circled his form, and the last beatings of her heart throbbed against his bosom. "Thou art dying!" she said, as she saw the potent hemlock spread death over his countenance, "thou too art dying! Menenius will not leave Honoria even in this last long journey.--We go--we go together!"
And faintly she raised her hand, and pointed to the sky, where, through the casement, the bright autumn moon poured her melancholy splendour over the Hungarian hills. A film came over her eyes--a dark unspeakable gray shadow and oh, it was horrible to see the bright angel part from its clay tabernacle!
In the athletic frame of the lover, the poison did not its cruel office so rapidly. He saw her fade away before his eyes--he saw her pass like a flower that had lived its summer day, in perfume and beauty, and faded with the falling of the night. He could not--he would not so lose her. He would call for aid--some precious antidote should give her back to life. He unclasped the faint arms that still clung upon his neck. He rose upon his feet, with limbs reduced to infant weakness. His brain reeled. His heart seemed crushed beneath a mountain: but still he staggered forth. He heard voices before. "Help! help!" he cried, "Help, ere Honoria die!" With the last effort of existence, he rushed forward, tore open the curtain before him, reeled forward to the throne on which Attila held his midnight council--stretched forth his arms--but power--voice--sense--being--passed away, and Menenius fell dead at the monarch's feet.
"Who has done this?" exclaimed the king, in a voice of thunder. "Who has done this? By the god of battles, if it be my own children, they shall die! Is this the fate of Menenius? Is this the death that the hero of Azimantium should have known? No! no! no! red on the battle-field--gilded with the blood of enemies--the last of a slain, but not a conquered host--so should the chief have died. Menenius! Kinsman in glory! Attila weeps for the fate of his enemy!"
"Lord of the world! Lord of the world!" exclaimed a voice that hurried from the chambers beyond, "thy daughter is dead in the arms of her maidens; and dying, she sent thee word, that sooner than forbear to slay her enemies, she had drunk of the cup which she had mingled for them."
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Attila smote his breast. "She was my daughter," he exclaimed, "she was, indeed, my daughter! But let her die, for she has brought a stain upon the hospitality of her father; and the world will say that Attila, though bold, was faithless."
There was woe in Azimantium, while with slow and solemn pomp, the ashes of Honoria and Menenius were borne into the city.
In the face of the assembled people, the deputies of Attila, by oath and imprecation, purified their lord from the fate of the lovers. The tale was simple, and soon told, and the children of Azimantium believed.
Days, and years, and centuries, rolled by, and a race of weak and effeminate monarchs; living alone by the feebleness and barbarism of their enemies, took care that Azimantium should not long remain as a monument of reproach to their degenerate baseness. Nation followed nation; dynasty succeeded dynasty; a change came over the earth and its inhabitants, and Azimantium was no more. Still, however, the rock on which it stood bears its bold front towards the stormy sky, with the same aspect of courageous daring wherewith its children encountered the tempest of the Huns.
A few ruins, too--rifted walls, and dark fragments of fallen fanes--the pavement of some sweet domestic hearth, long cold--a graceful capital, or a broken statue, still tell that a city has been there; and through the country round about, the wild and scattered peasantry, still in the song, and the tale, and the vague tradition, preserve in various shapes, The Story of Azimantium!