the old road; the path of Alaric and Dietrich and the rest; the pass
from Carniola, through which the rail runs now from Laybach to
Trieste. It must have been white, in those days, with the bones of
nigh 200 years. And they found bisons, aurochsen, in the mountains,
Paul says, and is not surprised thereat, because there are plenty of
them in Hungary near by. An old man told him he had seen a skin in
which fifteen men might lie side by side. None, you must know, are
left now, save a very few in the Lithuanian forests. Paul goes out
of his way to note this fact, and so shall I.

Alboin left a strong guard in Friuli, and Paul's ancestor among them,
under Gisulf his nephew, and Marphrais or master of the horse, who
now became duke of Friuli and warden of the marches, bound to prevent
the Avars following them into their new abode. Then the human deluge
spread itself slowly over the Lombard plains. None fought with them,
and none gainsaid; for all the land was waste. The plague of three
years before, and the famine which followed it had, says Paul,
reduced the world into primaeval silence. The villages had no
inhabitants but dogs; the sheep were pasturing without a shepherd;
the wild birds swarmed unhurt about the fields. The corn was
springing self-sown under the April sun, the vines sprouting
unpruned, the lucerne fields unmown, when the great Lombard people
flowed into that waste land, and gave to it their own undying name.

The scanty population, worn out with misery, fled to rocks and
islands in the lakes, and to the seaport towns; but they seem to have
found the Lombards merciful masters, and bowed their necks meekly to
the inevitable yoke. The towns alone seem to have offered
resistance. Pavia Alboin besieged three years, and could not take.
He swore some wild oath of utter destruction to all within, and would