Antonina

Wilkie Collins

Description

Master storyteller Wilkie Collins is known for his tightly plotted novels, which often have plots drawn from historical events. This engrossing romance, set against the backdrop of ancient Rome as it was poised on the brink of collapse, is Collins' first novel and a fitting introduction to his body of work.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775458838
• Langue: English

Extrait

ANTONINA
OR, THE FALL OF ROME
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WILKIE COLLINS
 
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Antonina Or, the Fall of Rome First published in 1850 ISBN 978-1-77545-883-8 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Preface Chapter 1 - Goisvintha Chapter 2 - The Court Chapter 3 - Rome Chapter 4 - The Church Chapter 5 - Antonina Chapter 6 - An Apprenticeship to the Temple Chapter 7 - The Bed-Chamber Chapter 8 - The Goths Chapter 9 - The Two Interviews Chapter 10 - The Rift in the Wall Chapter 11 - Goisvintha's Return Chapter 12 - The Passage of the Wall Chapter 13 - The House in the Suburbs Chapter 14 - The Famine Chapter 15 - The City and the Gods Chapter 16 - Love Meetings Chapter 17 - The Huns Chapter 18 - The Farm-House Chapter 19 - The Guardian Restored Chapter 20 - The Breach Repassed Chapter 21 - Father and Child Chapter 22 - The Banquet of Famine Chapter 23 - The Last Efforts of the Besieged Chapter 24 - The Grave and the Camp Chapter 25 - The Temple and the Church Chapter 26 - Retribution Chapter 27 - The Vigil of Hope The Conclusion - 'Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor'
Preface
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In preparing to compose a fiction founded on history, the writer ofthese pages thought it no necessary requisite of such a work that theprincipal characters appearing in it should be drawn from thehistorical personages of the period. On the contrary, he felt thatsome very weighty objections attached to this plan of composition. Heknew well that it obliged a writer to add largely from invention towhat was actually known—to fill in with the colouring of romanticfancy the bare outline of historic fact—and thus to place thenovelist's fiction in what he could not but consider most unfavourablecontrast to the historian's truth. He was further by no meansconvinced that any story in which historical characters supplied themain agents, could be preserved in its fit unity of design andrestrained within its due limits of development, without somefalsification or confusion of historical dates—a species of poeticallicence of which he felt no disposition to avail himself, as it was hismain anxiety to make his plot invariably arise and proceed out of thegreat events of the era exactly in the order in which they occurred.
Influenced, therefore, by these considerations, he thought that byforming all his principal characters from imagination, he should beable to mould them as he pleased to the main necessities of the story;to display them, without any impropriety, as influenced in whatevermanner appeared most strikingly interesting by its minor incidents; andfurther, to make them, on all occasions, without trammel or hindrance,the practical exponents of the spirit of the age, of all the varioushistorical illustrations of the period, which the Author's researchesamong conflicting but equally important authorities had enabled him togarner up, while, at the same time, the appearance of verisimilitudenecessary to an historical romance might, he imagined, be successfullypreserved by the occasional introduction of the living characters ofthe era, in those portions of the plot comprising events with whichthey had been remarkably connected.
On this plan the recent work has been produced.
To the fictitious characters alone is committed the task ofrepresenting the spirit of the age. The Roman emperor, Honorius, andthe Gothic king, Alaric, mix but little personally in the business ofthe story—only appearing in such events, and acting under suchcircumstances, as the records of history strictly authorise; but exacttruth in respect to time, place, and circumstance is observed in everyhistorical event introduced in the plot, from the period of the marchof the Gothic invaders over the Alps to the close of the firstbarbarian blockade of Rome.
Chapter 1 - Goisvintha
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The mountains forming the range of Alps which border on thenorth-eastern confines of Italy, were, in the autumn of the year 408,already furrowed in numerous directions by the tracks of the invadingforces of those northern nations generally comprised under theappellation of Goths.
In some places these tracks were denoted on either side by fallentrees, and occasionally assumed, when half obliterated by the ravagesof storms, the appearance of desolate and irregular marshes. In otherplaces they were less palpable. Here, the temporary path was entirelyhidden by the incursions of a swollen torrent; there, it was faintlyperceptible in occasional patches of soft ground, or partly traceableby fragments of abandoned armour, skeletons of horses and men, andremnants of the rude bridges which had once served for passage across ariver or transit over a precipice.
Among the rocks of the topmost of the range of mountains immediatelyoverhanging the plains of Italy, and presenting the last barrier to theexertions of a traveller or the march of an invader, there lay, at thebeginning of the fifth century, a little lake. Bounded on three sidesby precipices, its narrow banks barren of verdure or habitations, andits dark and stagnant waters brightened but rarely by the presence ofthe lively sunlight, this solitary spot—at all timesmournful—presented, on the autumn of the day when our story commences,an aspect of desolation at once dismal to the eye and oppressive to theheart.
It was near noon; but no sun appeared in the heaven. The dull clouds,monotonous in colour and form, hid all beauty in the firmament, andshed heavy darkness on the earth. Dense, stagnant vapours clung to themountain summits; from the drooping trees dead leaves and rottenbranches sunk, at intervals, on the oozy soil, or whirled over thegloomy precipice; and a small steady rain fell, slow andunintermitting, upon the deserts around. Standing upon the path whicharmies had once trodden, and which armies were still destined to tread,and looking towards the solitary lake, you heard, at first, no soundbut the regular dripping of the rain-drops from rock to rock; you sawno prospect but the motionless waters at your feet, and the dusky cragswhich shadowed them from above. When, however, impressed by themysterious loneliness of the place, the eye grew more penetrating andthe ear more attentive, a cavern became apparent in the precipicesround the lake; and, in the intervals of the heavy rain-drops, werefaintly perceptible the sounds of a human voice.
The mouth of the cavern was partly concealed by a large stone, on whichwere piled some masses of rotten brushwood, as if for the purpose ofprotecting any inhabitant it might contain from the coldness of theatmosphere without. Placed at the eastward boundary of the lake, thisstrange place of refuge commanded a view not only of the rugged pathimmediately below it, but of a large plot of level ground at a shortdistance to the west, which overhung a second and lower range of rocks.From this spot might be seen far beneath, on days when the atmospherewas clear, the olive grounds that clothed the mountain's base, andbeyond, stretching away to the distant horizon, the plains of fatedItaly, whose destiny of defeat and shame was now hastening to its darkand fearful accomplishment.
The cavern, within, was low and irregular in form. From its ruggedwalls the damp oozed forth upon its floor of decayed moss. Lizards andnoisome animals had tenanted its comfortless recesses undisturbed,until the period we have just described, when their miserable rightswere infringed on for the first time by human intruders.
A woman crouched near the entrance of the place. More within, on thedriest part of the ground, lay a child asleep. Between them werescattered some withered branches and decayed leaves, which werearranged as if to form a fire. In many parts this scanty collection offuel was slightly blackened; but, wetted as it was by the rain, allefforts to light it permanently had evidently been fruitless.
The woman's head was bent forwards, and her face, hid in her hands,rested on her knees. At intervals she muttered to herself in a hoarse,moaning voice. A portion of her scanty clothing had been removed tocover the child. What remained on her was composed, partly of skins ofanimals, partly of coarse cotton cloth. In many places this miserabledress was marked with blood, and her long, flaxen hair bore upon itsdishevelled locks the same ominous and repulsive stain.
The child seemed scarcely four years of age, and showed on his pale,thin face all the peculiarities of his Gothic origin. His featuresseemed to have been once beautiful, both in expression and form; but adeep wound, extending the whole length of his cheek, had now deformedhim for ever. He shivered and trembled in his sleep, and every now andthen mechanically stretched forth his little arms towards the dead coldbranches that were scattered before him.
Suddenly a large stone became detached from the rock in a distant partof the cavern, and fell noisily to the ground. At this sound he wokewith a scream—raised himself—endeavoured to advance towards thewoman, and staggered backward against the side of the cave. A secondwound in the leg had wreaked that destruction on his vigour which thefirst had effected on his beauty. He was a cripple.
At the instant of his awakening the woman had started up. She nowraised him from the ground, and taking some herbs from her bosom,applied them to his wounded cheek. By this action her dress becamediscomposed: it was stiff at the top with coagulated blood, which hadevidently flowed from a cut in her neck.
All her attempts to