Chapter XIV
The entertainment which Verus was giving on the eve of his birthday seemed to be far from drawing to an end, even at the beginning of the third hour of the morning. Besides the illustrious and learned Romans who had accompanied the Emperor to Alexandria, the most famous and distinguished Alexandrians had also been invited by the praetor. The splendid banquet had long been ended, but jar after jar of mixed wine was still being filled and emptied. Verus himself had been unanimously chosen as the king and leader of the feast. Crowned with a rich garland, he reclined on a couch strewn with rose-leaves, an invention of his own, and formed of four cushions piled one on another. A curtain of transparent gauze screened him from flies and gnats, and a tightly-woven mat of lilies and other flowers covered his feet and exhaled sweet odors for him and for the pretty singer who sat by his side.
Pretty boys dressed as little cupids watched every sign of the 'sham Eros.'
How indolently he lay on the deep, soft cushions! And yet his eyes were every where, and though he had not failed to give due consideration to the preparations for his feast, he devoted all the powers of his mind to the present management of it. As at the entertainments which Hadrian was accustomed to give in Rome, first of all short selections from new essays or poems were recited by their authors, then a gay comedy was performed; then Glycera, the most famous singer in the city, had sung a dithyramb to her harp, in a voice as sweet as a bell, and Alexander, a skilled performer on the trigonon, had executed a piece. Finally a troop of female dancers had rushed into the room and swayed and balanced themselves to the music of the double-flute and tambourine.
Each fresh amusement had been more loudly applauded than the last. With every jar of wine a new torrent of merriment went up through the opening in the roof, by which the scent of the flowers and of the perfume burnt on beautiful little altars found an exit into the open air. The wine offered in libations to the gods already lay in broad pools upon the hard pavement of the hall, the music and singing were drowned in shouts the feast had become an orgy.
Verus was inciting the more quiet or slothful of his guests to a freer enjoyment and encouraging the noisiest in their extravagant recklessness to still more unbridled license. At the same time he bowed to each one who drank to his health, entertained the singer who sat by his side, flung a sparkling jest into one and another silent group, and proved to the learned men who reclined on their couches near to his that whenever it was possible he took an interest in their discussions. Alexandria, the focus of all the learning of the East and the West, had seen other festivals than this riotous banquet. Indeed, even here a vein of grave and wise discourse flavored the meal of the circle that belonged to the Museum; but the senseless revelry of Rome had found its way into the houses of the rich, and even the noblest achievements of the human mind had been made, unawares, subservient to mere enjoyment. A man was a philosopher only that he might be prompt to discuss and always ready to take his share in the talk; and at a banquet a well-told anecdote was more heartily welcome than some profound idea that gave rise to a reflection or provoked a subtle discussion.
What a noise, what a clatter was storming in the hall by the second hour after midnight! How the lungs of the feasters were choked with overpowering perfumes! What repulsive exhibitions met the eye! How shamelessly was all decency trodden under foot! The poisonous breath of unchecked license had blasted the noble moderation of the vapor of wine which floated round this chaos of riotous topers slowly rose the pale image of Satiety watching for victims on the morrow.
The circle of couches on which lay Florus, Favorinus and their Alexandrian friends stood like an island in the midst of the surging sea of the orgy. Even here the cup had been bravely passed round, and Florus was beginning to speak somewhat indistinctly, but conversation had hitherto had the upper hand.
Two days before, the Emperor had visited the Museum and had carried on learned discussions with the most prominent of the sages and professors there, in the presence of their assembled disciples. At last a formal disputation had arisen, and the dialectic keenness and precision with which Hadrian, in the purest Attic Greek, had succeeded in driving his opponents into a corner had excited the greatest admiration. The Sovereign had quitted the famous institution with a promise to reopen the contest at an early date. The philosophers, Pancrates and Dionysius and Apollonius, who took no wine at all, were giving a detailed account of the different phases of this remarkable disputation and praising the admirable memory and the ready tongue of the great monarch.
"And you did not even see him at his best," exclaimed Favorinus, the Gaul, the sophist and rhetorician. "He has received an unfavorable oracle and the stars seem to confirm the prophecy. This puts him out of tune. Between ourselves let me tell you I know a few who are his superiors in dialectic, but in his happiest moments he is irresistible-irresistible. Since we made up our quarrel he is like a brother to me. I will defend him against all comers, for, as I say, Hadrian is my brother."
The Gaul had poured out this speech in a defiant tone and with flashing eyes. He grew pale in his cups, touchy, boastful and very talkative.
"No doubt you are right," replied Apollonius, "but it seemed to us that he was bitter in discussion. His eyes are gloomy rather than gay."
"He is my brother," repeated Favorinus, "and as for his eyes, I have seen them flash--by Hercules! like the radiant sun, or merry twinkling stars! And his mouth! I know him well! He is my brother, and I will wager that while he condescended--it is too comical--condescended to dispute with you--with you, there was a sly smile at each corner of his mouth--so--look now--like this he smiled."
"I repeat, he seemed to us gloomy rather than gay," retorted Apollonius, with annoyance; and Pancrates added:
"If he does really know how to jest he certainly did not prove it to us."
"Not out of ill-will," laughed the Gaul, "you do not know him, but I--I am his friend and may follow wherever--he goes. Now only wait and I will tell you a few stories about him. If I chose I could describe his whole soul to you as if it lay there on the surface of the wine in my cup. Once in Rome he went to inspect the newly-decorated baths of Agrippa, and in the undressing-room he saw an old man, a veteran who had fought with him somewhere or other. My memory is greatly admired, but his is in no respect inferior. Scaurus was the old man's name--yes--yes, Scaurus. He did not observe Caesar at first, for after his bath his wounds were burning and he was rubbing his back against the rough stone of a pillar. Hadrian however called to him: 'Why are you scratching yourself, my friend?' and Scaurus, not at once recognizing Caesar's voice, answered without turning round: 'Because I have no slave to do it for me.' You should have heard Caesar laugh! Liberal as he is sometimes--I say sometimes--he gave Scaurus a handsome sum of money and two sturdy slaves. The story soon got abroad, and when Caesar, who--as you believe--cannot jest, a short time after again visited the bath, two old soldiers at once placed themselves in his way, scrubbed their backs against the wall like Scaurus, and called out to him 'Great Caesar, we have no slaves.'--'Then scratch each other,' cried he, and left the soldiers to rub themselves."
"Capital!" laughed Dionysius. "Now one more true story," interrupted the loquacious Gaul. "Once upon a time a man with white hair begged of him. The wretch was a low fellow, a parasite who wandered round from one man's table to another, feeding himself out of other folks' wallets and dishes. Caesar knew his man and warned him off. Then the creature had his hair dyed that he might not be recognized, and tried his luck a second time with the Emperor. But Hadrian has good eyes; he pointed to the door, saying, with the gravest face: 'I have just lately refused to give your father anything.' And a hundred such jokes pass from mouth to mouth in Rome, and if you like I can give you a dozen of the best."
"Tell us, go on, out with your stories. They are all old friends!" stammered Florus. "But while Favorinus chatters we can drink."
The Gaul cast a contemptuous glance at the Roman, and answered promptly:
"My stories are too good for a drunken man."
Florus paused to think of an answer, but before he could find one, the praetor's body-slave rushed into the hall crying out: "The palace at Lochias is on fire."
Verus kicked the mat of lilies off his feet on to the floor, tore down the net that screened him in, and shouted to the breathless runner.
"My chariot-quick, my chariot! To our next merry meeting another evening my friends, with many thanks for the honor you have done me. I must be off to Lochias."
Verus flew out of the hall, without throwing on his cloak and hot as he was, into the cold night, and at the same time most of his guests had started up to hurry into the open air, to see the fire and to hear the latest news; but only very few went to the scene of the conflagration to help the citizens to extinguish it, and many heavily intoxicated drinkers remained lying on the couches.
As Favorinus and the Alexandrians raised themselves on their pillows Florus cried:
"No god shall make me stir from this place, not if the whole house is burnt down and Alexandria and Rome, and for aught I care every nest and nook on the face of the earth. It may all burn together. The Roman Empire can never be greater or more splendid than under Caesar! It may burn down like a heap of straw, it is all the same to me--I shall lie here and drink."
The turmoil and confusion on the scene of the interrupted feast seemed inextricable, while Verus hurried off to Sabina to inform her of what had occurred. But Balbilla had been the first to discover the fire and quite at the beginning, for after sitting industriously at her studies, and before going to bed, she had looked out toward the sea. She had instantly run out, cried "Fire!" and was now seeking for a chamberlain to awake Sabina.
The whole of Lochias flared and shone in a purple and golden glow. It formed the nucleus of a wide spreading radiance of tender red of which the extent and intensity alternately grew and diminished. Verus met the poetess at the door that led from the garden into the Empress' apartments. He omitted on this occasion to offer his customary greeting, but hastily asked her:
"Has Sabina been told?"
"I think not yet."
"Then have her called. Greet her from me--I must go to Lochias"
"We will follow you."
"No, stay here; you will be in the way there."
"I do not take much room and I shall go. What a magnificent spectacle."
"Eternal gods! the flames are breaking out too below the palace, by the King's harbor. Where can the chariots be?"
"Take me with you."
"No you must wake the Empress."
"And Lucilla?"
"You women must stay where you are."
"For my part I certainly will not. Caesar will be in no danger?"
"Hardly--the old stones cannot burn."
"Only look! how splendid! the sky is one crimson tent. I entreat you, Verus, let me go with you."
"No, no, pretty one. Men are wanted down there."
"How unkind you are."
"At last! here are the chariots! You women stay here; do you understand me?"
"I will not take any orders; I shall go to Lochias."
"To see Antinous in the flames! such a sight is not to be seen every day, to be sure!" cried Verus, ironically, as he sprang into his chariot, and took the reins into his own hand.
Balbilla stamped with rage.
She went to Sabina's rooms fully resolved to go to the scene of the fire. The Empress would not let herself be seen by any one, not even by Balbilla, till she was completely dressed. A waiting-woman told Balbilla that Sabina would get up certainly, but that for the sake of her health she could not venture out in the night-air.
The poetess then sought Lucilla and begged her to accompany her to Lochias; she was perfectly willing and ready, but when she heard that her husband had wished that the women should remain at the Caesareum she declared that she owed him obedience and tried to keep back her friend. But the perverse curly-haired girl was fully determined, precisely because Verus had forbidden her--and forbidden her with mocking words, to carry out her purpose. After a short altercation with Lucilla she left her, sought her companion Claudia, told her what she intended doing, dismissed that lady's remonstrance with a very positive command, gave orders herself to the house-steward to have horses put to a chariot and reached the imperilled palace an hour and a half after Verus.
An endless, many-headed crowd of people besieged the narrow end of Lochias on the landward side and the harbor wharves below, where some stores and shipyards were in flames. Boats innumerable were crowded round the little peninsula. An attempt was being made, with much shouting, and by the combined exertions of an immense number of men, to get the larger ships afloat which lay at anchor close to the quay of the King's harbor and to place them in security. Every thing far and wide was lighted up as brightly as by day, but with a ruddier and more restless light. The north-east breeze fanned the fire, aggravating the labors of the men who were endeavoring to extinguish it and snatching flakes of flame off every burning mass. Each blazing storehouse was a gigantic torch throwing a broad glare into the darkness of the night. The white marble of the tallest beacon tower in the world, on the island of Pharos, reflected a rosy hue, but its far gleaming light shone pale and colorless. The dark hulls of the larger ships and the flotilla of boats in the background were afloat in a fiery sea, and the still water under the shore mirrored the illumination in which the whole of Lochias was wrapped.
Balbilla could not tire of admiring this varying scene, in which the most gorgeous hues vied with each other and the intensest light contrasted with the deepest shadows. And she had ample time to dwell on the marvellous picture before her eyes, for her chariot could only proceed slowly, and at a point where the street led up from the King's harbor to the palace, lictors stood in her way and declared positively that any farther advance was out of the question. The horses, much scared by the glare of the fire and the crowd that pressed round them, could hardly be controlled, first rearing and then kicking at the front board of the chariot. The charioteer declared he could no longer be answerable. The people who had hurried to the rescue now began to abuse the women, who ought to have staid at home at the loom rather than come stopping the way for useful citizens.
"There is time enough to go out driving by daylight!" cried one man; and another: "If a spark falls in those curls another conflagration will break out."
The position of the ladies was becoming every instant more unendurable and Balbilla desired the charioteer to turn round; but in the swarming mass of men that filled the street this was easier said than done. One of the horses broke the strap which fastened the yoke that rested on his withers to the pole, started aside and forced back the crowd which now began to scold and scream loudly. Balbilla wanted to spring out of the chariot, but Claudia clung tightly to her and conjured her not to leave her in the lurch in the midst of the danger. The spoilt patrician's daughter was not timid, but on this occasion she would have given much not to have followed Verus. At first she thought, "A delightful adventure! still, it will not be perfect till it is over." But presently her bold experiment lost every trace of charm, and repentance that she had ever undertaken it filled her mind. She was far nearer weeping than laughing already, when a man's deep voice said behind her, in tones of commanding decision:
"Make way there for the pumps; push aside whatever stops the way."
These terrible words reduced Claudia to sinking on to her knees, but Balbilla's quelled courage found fresh wings as she heard them, for she had recognized the voice of Pontius. Now he was close behind the chariot, high on a horse. He then was the man on horseback whom she had seen dashing from the sea-shore up to the higher storehouses that were burning, down to the lake, and hither and thither.
She turned full upon him and called him by his name. He recognized her, tried to pull up his horse as it was dashing forward, and smilingly shook his head at her, as much as to say: "She is a giddy creature and deserves a good scolding; but who could be angry with her?" And then he gave his orders to his subordinates just as if she had been a mere chattel, a bale of goods or something of the kind, and not an heiress of distinction.
"Take out the horses," he cried to the municipal guards; "we can use them for carrying water."--"Help the ladies out of the chariot."--"Take them between you Nonnus and Lucanus."--"Now, stow the chariot in there among the bushes."--"Make way there in front, make way for our pumps." And each of these orders was obeyed as promptly as if it was the word of command given by a general to his well-drilled soldiers.
After the pumps had been fairly started Pontius rode close up to Balbilla and said:
"Caesar is safe and sound. You no doubt wished to see the progress of the fire from a spot near it, and in fact the colors down there are magnificent. I have not time to escort you back to the Caesareum; but follow me. You will be safe in the harbor-guard's stone house, and from the roof you can command a view of Lochias and the whole peninsula. You will have a rare feast for the eye, noble Balbilla; but I beg you not to forget at the same time how many days of honest labor, what rich possessions, how many treasures earned by bitter hardship are being destroyed at this moment. What may delight you will cost bitter tears to many others, and so let us both hope that this splendid spectacle may now have reached its climax, and soon may come to an end."
"I hope so--I hope it with all my heart!" cried the girl.
"I was sure you would. As soon as possible I will come to look after you. You Nonnus and Lucanus, conduct these noble ladies to the harbor-guard's house.
"Tell him they are intimate friends of the Empress. Only keep the pumps going! Till we meet again Balbilla!" and with these words the architect gave his horse the bridle and made his way through the crowd.
A quarter of an hour later Balbilla was standing on the roof of the little stone guard-house. Claudia was utterly exhausted and incapable of speech. She sat in the dark little parlor below on a rough-hewn wooden bench. But the young Roman now gazed at the fire with different eyes than before. Pontius had made her feel a foe to the flames which only a short time before had filled her with delight as they soared up to the sky, wild and fierce. They still flared up violently, as though they had to climb above the roof; but soon they seemed to be quelled and exhausted, to find it more and more difficult to rise above the black smoke which welled up from the burning mass. Balbilla had looked out for the architect and had soon discovered him, for the man on horseback towered above the crowd. He halted now by one and now by another burning storehouse. Once she lost sight of him for a whole hour, for he had gone to Lochias. Then again he reappeared, and wherever he stayed for a while, the raging element abated its fury.
Without her having perceived it, the wind had changed and the air had become still and much warmer. This circumstance favored the efforts of the citizens trying to extinguish the fire, but Balbilla ascribed it to the foresight of her clever friend when the flames subsided in souse places and in others were altogether extinguished. Once she saw that he had a building completely torn down which divided a burning granary from some other storehouses that had been spared, and she understood the object of this order; it cut off the progress of the flames. Another time she saw him high on the top of a rise in the ground. Close before him in a sheet of flame was a magazine in which were kept tow and casks of resin and pitch. He turned his face full towards it and gave his orders, now on this side, now on that. His figure and that of his horse, which reared uneasily beneath him, were flooded in a crimson glow--a splendid picture! She trembled for him, she gazed in admiration at this calm, resolute, energetic man, and when a blazing beam fell close in front of him and after his frightened horse had danced round and round with him, he forced it to submit to his guidance, the praetor's insinuation recurred to her mind, that she clung to her determination to go to Lochias because she hoped to enjoy the spectacle of Antinous in the flames. Here, before her, was a nobler display, and yet her lively imagination which often, sometimes indeed against her will, gave shape to her formless thoughts--called up the image of the beautiful youth surrounded by the glowing glory which still painted the horizon.
Hour after hour slipped by; the efforts of the thousands who endeavored to extinguish the blaze were crowned by increasing success; one burning mass after another was quenched, if not extinguished, and instead of flames smoke, mingled with sparks, rose from Lochias blacker and blacker-and still Pontius came not to look after her. She could not see any stars for the sky was overcast with clouds, but the beginning of a new day could not be far distant. She was shivering with cold, and her friend's long absence began to annoy her. When, presently, it began to rain in large drops, she went down the ladder that led from the roof and sat down by the fire in the little room where her companion had gone fast asleep.
She had been sitting quite half an hour and gazing dreamily into the warming glow, when she heard the sound of hoofs and Pontius appeared. His face was begrimed, and his voice hoarse with shouting commands for hours. As soon as she saw him Balbilla forgot her vexation, greeted him warmly, and told him how she had watched his every movement; but the eager girl, so readily fired to enthusiasm, could only with the greatest difficulty bring out a few words to express the admiration that his mode of proceeding had so deeply excited in her mind.
She heard him say that his mouth was quite parched and his throat was longing for a draught of some drink, and she--who usually had every pin she needed handed to her by a slave, and on whom fate had bestowed no living creature whom she could find a pleasure in serving--she, with her own hand dipped a cup of water out of the large clay jar that stood in a corner of the room and offered it to him with a request that he would drink it. He eagerly swallowed the refreshing fluid, and when the little cup was empty Balbilla took it from his hand, refilled it, and gave it him again.
Claudia, who woke up when the architect came in, looked on at her foster-child's unheard-of proceedings with astonishment, shaking her head. When Pontius had drained the third cupful that Balbilla fetched for him he exclaimed, drawing a deep breath:
"That was a drink--I never tasted a better in the whole course of my life."
"Muddy water out of a nasty earthen pitcher!" answered the girl.
"And it tasted better than wine from Byblos out of a golden goblet."
"You had honestly earned the refreshment, and thirst gives flavor to the humblest liquor."
"You forget the hand that gave it me," replied the architect warmly.
Balbilla colored and looked at the floor in confusion, but presently raised her face and said, as gayly and carelessly as ever:
"So that you have been deliciously refreshed; and now that is done you will go home and the poor thirsty soul will once more become the great architect. But before that happens, pray inform us what god it was that brought you hither from Pelusium in the very nick of time when the fire broke out, and how matters look now in the palace at Lochias?"
"My time is short," replied Pontius, and he then rapidly told her that, after he had finished his work at Pelusium, he had returned to Alexandria with the imperial post. As he got out of the chariot at the post-house he observed the reflection of fire over the sea and was immediately after told by a slave that it was the palace that was burning. There were horses in plenty at the post-house; he had chosen a strong one and had got to the spot before the crowd had collected. How the fire had originated, so far remained undiscovered. "Caesar," he said, "was in the act of observing the heavens when a flame broke out in a store-shed close to the tower. Antinous was the first to detect it, cried 'Fire,' and warned his master. I found Hadrian in the greatest agitation; he charged me to superintend the work of rescuing all that could be saved. At Lochias. Verus helped me greatly and indeed with so much boldness and judgment that I owe very much to him. Caesar himself kept his favorite within the palace, for the poor fellow burned both his hands."
"Oh!" cried Balbilla with eager regret. "How did that happen?"
"When Hadrian and Antinous first came down from the tower they brought with them as many of the instruments and manuscripts as they could carry. When they were at the bottom Caesar observed that a tablet with important calculations had been left lying up above and expressed his regret. Meanwhile the fire had already caught the slightly-built turret and it seemed impossible to get into it again. But the dreamy Bithynian can wake out of his slumbers it would seem, and while Caesar was anxiously watching the burning bundles of flax which the wind kept blowing across to the harbor the rash boy rushed into the burning building, flung the tablet down from the top of the tower and then hurried down the stairs. His bold action would indeed have cost the poor fellow his life if the slave Mastor; who meanwhile had hurried to the spot, had not dragged him down the stone stair of the old tower on which the new one stood and carried him into the open air. He was half suffocated at the top of them and had dropped down senseless."
"But he is alive, the splendid boy, the image of the gods! and he is out of danger?" cried Balbilla, with much anxiety.
"He is quite well; only his hands, as I said, are somewhat burnt, and his hair is singed, but that will grow again."
"His soft, lovely curls!" cried Balbilla. "Let us go home, Claudia. The gardener shall cut a magnificent bunch of roses, and we will send it to Antinous to please him."
"Flowers to a man who does not care about them?" asked Pontius, gravely.
"With what else can women reward men's virtues or do honor to their beauty?" asked Balbilla.
"Our own conscience is the reward of our honest actions, or the laurel wreath from the hand of some famous man."
"And beauty?"
"That of women claims and wins admiration, love too perhaps and flowers-that of men may rejoice the eye, but to do it Honor is a task granted to no mortal woman."
"To whom, then, if I may ask the question?"
"To Art, which makes it immortal."
"But the roses may bring some comfort and pleasure to the suffering youth."
"Then send them-but to the sick boy, and not to the handsome man," retorted Pontius.
Balbilla was silent, and she and her companion followed the architect to the harbor. There he parted from them, putting them into a boat which took them back to the Caesareum through one of the arch-gates under the Heptastadium.
As they were rowed along the younger Roman lady said to the elder:
"Pontius has quite spoilt my fun about the roses. The sick boy is the handsome Antinous all the same, and if anybody could think--well, I shall do just as I please; still it will be best not to cut the nosegay."
Chapter XV
The town was out of danger; the fire was extinct. Pontius had taken no rest till noonday. Three horses had he tired out and replaced by fresh ones, but his sinewy frame and healthy courage had till now defied every strain. As soon as he could consider his task at an end he went off to his own house, and he needed rest; but in the hall of his residence he already found a number of persons waiting, and who were likely to stand between him and the enjoyment of it.
A man who lives in the midst of important undertakings cannot, with impunity, leave his work to take care of itself for several days. All the claims upon him become pent up, and when he returns home they deluge him like water when the sluice-gates are suddenly opened behind which it has been dammed up.
At least twenty persons, who had heard of the architect's return, were waiting for him in his outer hall, and crowded upon him as soon as he appeared. Among them he saw several who had come on important business, but he felt that he had reached the farthest limit of his strength, and he was determined to secure a little rest at any cost. The grave man's natural consideration, usually so conspicuous, could not hold out against the demands made on his endurance, and he angrily and peevishly pointed to his begrimed face as he made his way through the people waiting for him.
"To-morrow, to-morrow," he cried; "nay, if necessary, to-day, after sunset. But now I need rest. Rest! Rest! Why, you yourselves can see the state I am in."
All--even the master-masons and purveyors who had come on urgent affairs, drew back; only one elderly man, his sister Paulina's house-steward, caught hold of his chiton, stained as it was with smoke and scorched in many places, and said quickly and in a low tone:
"My mistress greets you; she has things to speak of to you which will bear no delay; I am not to leave you till you have promised to go to see her to-day. Our chariot waits for you at the garden-door."
"Send it home," said Pontius, not even civilly; "Paulina must wait a few hours."
"But my orders are to take you with me at once."
"But in this state--so--I cannot go with you," cried the architect with vehemence. "Have you no sort of consideration? And yet--who can tell--well, tell her I will be with her in two hours."
When Pontius had fairly escaped the throng he took a bath; then he had some food brought to him, but even while he ate and drank, he was not unoccupied, for he read the letters which awaited him, and examined some drawings which his assistants had prepared during his absence.
"Give yourself an hour's respite," said the old housekeeper, who had been his nurse and who loved him as her own son.
"I must go to my sister," he answered with a shrug. "We know her of old," said the old woman. "For nothing, and less than nothing, she has sent for you be fore now; and you absolutely need rest. There--are your cushions right--so? And let me ask you, has the humblest stone-carrier so hard a life as you have? Even at meals you never have an hour of peace and comfort. Your poor head is never quiet; the nights are turned into day; something to do, always something to do. If one only knew who it is all for?"
"Aye--who for, indeed?" sighed Pontius, pushing his arm under his head, between it and the pillow. "But, you see, little mother, work must follow rest as surely as day follows night or summer follows winter. The man who has something he loves in the House--a wife and merry children, it may be, for aught I care--who sweeten his hours of rest and make them the best of all the day, he, I say is wise when he tries to prolong them; but his case is not mine--"
"But why is it not yours, my son Pontius?"
"Let me finish my speech. I, as you know full well, do not care for gossip in the bath nor for reclining long over a banquet. In the pauses of my work I am alone, with myself and with you, my very worthy Leukippe. So the hours of rest are not for me the fairest scenes, but empty waits between the acts of the drama of life; and no reasonable man can find fault with me for trying to abridge them by useful occupation."
"And what is the upshot of this sensible talk? Simply this: you must get married."
Pontius sighed, but Leukippe added eagerly:
"You have not far to look! The most respectable fathers and mothers are running after you and would bring their prettiest daughters into your door."
"A daughter whom I do not know, and who might perhaps spoil the pauses between the acts, which at present I can at any rate turn to some account."
"They say," the old woman went on, "that marriage is a cast of the dice. One throws a high number, another a low one; one wins a wife who is a match for the busy bee, another gets a tiresome gnat. No doubt there is some truth in it; but I have grown grey with my eyes open and I have often seen it happen, that how the marriage turned out depended on the husband. A man like you makes a bee out of a gnat--a bee that brings honey to the hive. Of course a man must choose carefully."
"How, pray?"
"First see the parents and then the child. A girl who has grown up surrounded by good habits, in the house of a sensible father and a virtuous mother--"
"And where in this city am I to find such a miracle? Nay, nay, Leukippe, for the present all shall be left to my old woman. We both do our duty, we are satisfied with each other and--"
"And time is flying," said the housekeeper, interrupting her master in his speech. "You are nearly thirty-five years of age, and the girls--"
"Let them be! let them be! They will find other men! Now send Cyrus with my shoes and cloak, and have my litter got ready, for Paulina has been kept waiting long enough."
The way from the architect's house to his sister's was long, and on his way he found ample time for reflection on various matters besides Leukippe's advice to marry. Still, it was a woman's face and form that possessed him heart and soul; at first, however, he did not feel inclined to feast his fancy on Balbilla's image, lovely as it appeared to him; on the contrary, with self-inflicted severity he sought everything in her which could be thought to be opposed to the highest standard of feminine perfections. Nor did he find it difficult to detect many defects and deficiencies in the Roman damsel; still he was forced to admit that they were quite inseparable from her character, and that she would no longer be what she was, if she were wholly free from them. Each of her little weaknesses presently began to appear as an additional charm to the stern man who had himself been brought up in the doctrine of the Stoics.
He had learnt by experience that sorrow must cast its shadow over the existence of every human being; but still, the man to whom it should be vouchsafed to walk through life hand-in-hand with this radiant child of fortune could, as it seemed to him, have nothing to look forward to but pure sunshine. During his journey to Pelusium and his stay there he had often thought of her, and each time that her image had appeared to his inward eye he had felt as though daylight had shone in his soul. To have met her he regarded as the greatest joy of his life, but he dared not aspire to claim her as his own.
He did not undervalue himself and knew that he might well be proud of the position he had won by his own industry and talents; and still she was the grandchild of the man who had had the right to sell his grandfather for mere coin, and was so high-born, rich and distinguished that he would have thought it hardly more audacious to ask the Emperor what he would take for the purple than to woo her. But to shelter her, to warn her, to allow his soul to be refreshed by the sight of her and by her talk--this he felt was permissible, this happiness no one could deprive him of. And this she would grant him--she esteemed him and would give him the right to protect her, this he felt, with thankfulness and joy. He would, then and there, have gone through the exertions of the last few hours all over again if he could have been certain that he should once more be refreshed with the draught of water from her hand. Only to think of her and of her sweetness seemed greater happiness than the possession of any other woman.
As he got out of his litter at the door of his sister's town-house he shook his head, smiling at himself; for he confessed to himself that the whole of the long distance he had hardly thought of anything but Balbilla.
Paulina's house had but few windows opening upon the street and these belonged to the strangers' rooms, and yet his arrival had been observed. A window at the side of the house, all grown round with creepers, framed in a sweet girlish head which looked down from it inquisitively on the bustle in the street. Pontius did not notice it, but Arsinoe--for it was her pretty face that looked out--at once recognized the architect whom she had seen at Lochias and of whom Pollux had spoken as his friend and patron.
She had now, for a week, been living with the rich widow; she wanted for nothing, and yet her soul longed with all its might to be out in the city, and to inquire for Pollux and his parents, of whom she had heard nothing since the day of her father's death. Her lover was no doubt seeking her with anxiety and sorrow; but how was he to find her?
Three days after her arrival she had discovered the little window from which she had a view of the street. There was plenty to be seen, for it led to the Hippodrome and was never empty of foot-passengers and chariots that were proceeding thither or to Necropolis. No doubt it was a pleasure to her to watch the fine horses and garlanded youths and men who passed by Paulina's house; but it was not merely to amuse herself that she went to the bowery little opening; no, she hoped, on the contrary, that she might once see her Pollux, his father, his mother, his bother Teuker or some one else they knew pass by her new home. Then she might perhaps succeed in calling them, in asking what had become of her friends, and in begging them to let her lover know where to seek her.
Her adoptive mother had twice found her at the window and had forbidden her, not unkindly but very positively, to look out into the street. Arsinoe had followed her unresistingly into the interior of the house, but as soon as she knew that Paulina was out or engaged, she slipped back to the window again and looked out for him, who must at every hour of the day be thinking of her. And she was not happy amid her new and wealthy surroundings. At first she had found it very pleasant to stretch her limbs on Paulina's soft cushions, not to stir a finger to help herself, to eat the best of food and to have neither to attend to the children nor to labor in the horrible papyrus-factory; but by the third day she pined for liberty--and still more for the children, for Selene and Pollux. Once she went out driving with Paulina in a covered carriage for the first time in her life. As the horses started she had enjoyed the rapid movement and had leaned out at one side to see the houses and men flying past her; but Paulina had regarded this as not correct--as she did so many other things that she herself thought right and permissible--had desired her to draw in her head, and had told her that a well-conducted girl must sit with her eyes in her lap when out driving.
Paulina was kind, never was irritable, had her dressed and waited upon like her own daughter, kissed her in the morning and when she bid her good-night; and yet Arsinoe had never once thought of Paulina's demand that she should love her. The proud woman, who was so cool in all the friendly relations of life, and who, as she felt was always watching her, was to her only a stranger who had her in her power. The fairest sentiments of her soul she must always keep locked up from her.
Once, when Paulina, with tears in her eyes had spoken to her of her lost daughter, Arsinoe had been softened and following the impulse of her heart, had confided to her that she loved Pollux the sculptor and hoped to be his wife.
"You love a maker of images!" Paulina had exclaimed, with as much horror as if she had seen a toad; then she had paced uneasily up and down and had added with her usual calm decision:
"No, no, my child! you will forget all this as soon as possible; I know of a nobler Bridegroom for you; when once you have learned to know Him you will never long for any other. Have you seen one single image in this house?"
"No," replied Arsinoe, "but so far as regards Pollux--"
"Listen to me" said the widow, "have I not told you of our loving Father in Heaven? Have I not told you that the gods of the heathen are unreal beings which the vain imaginings of fools have endowed with all the weaknesses and crimes of humanity? Can you not understand how silly it is to pray to stones? What power can reside in these frail figures of brass or marble?
"Idols we call them. He who carves them, serves them and offers sacrifice to them; aye and a great sacrifice, for he devotes his best powers, to their service. Do you understand me?"
"No--Art is certainly a lofty thing, and Pollux is a good man, full of the divinity as he works."
"Wait a while, only wait--you will soon learn to understand," Paulina had answered, drawing Arsinoe towards her, and had added, at first speaking gently but then more sternly: "Now go to bed and pray to your gracious Father in Heaven that he may enlighten your heart. You must forget the carved image-maker, and I forbid you ever to speak in my presence again of such a man."
Arsinoe had grown up a heathen, she clung with affection to the gods of her fathers and hoped for happier days after the first bitterness of the loss of her father and the separation from her brothers and sisters was past. She was little disposed to sacrifice her young love and all her earthly happiness for spiritual advantages of which she scarcely comprehended the value. Her father had always spoken of the Christians with hatred and contempt. She now saw that they could be kind and helpful, and the doctrine that there was a loving God in Heaven who cared for all men as his children appealed to her soul; but that we ought to forgive our enemies, to remember our sins, and to repent of them, and to regard all the pleasure and amusement which the gay city of Alexandria could offer as base and worthless--this was absurd and foolish.
And what great sins had she committed? Could a loving God require of her that she should mar all her best days because as a child she had pilfered a cake or broken a pitcher; or, as she grew older had sometimes been obstinate or disobedient? Surely not. And then was an artist, a kind faithful soul like her tall Pollux, to be odious in the eyes of God the Father of all, because he was able to make such wonderful things as that head of her mother, for instance? If this really was so she would rather, a thousand times rather, lift her hands in prayer to the smiling Aphrodite, roguish Eros, beautiful Apollo, and all the nine Muses who protected her Pollux, than to Him.
An obscure aversion rose up in her soul against the stern woman who could not understand her, and of whose teaching and admonitions she scarcely took in half; and she rejected many a word of the widow's which might otherwise easily have found room in her heart, only because it was spoken by the cold-mannered woman who at every hour seemed to try to lay some fresh restraint upon her.
Paulina had never yet taken her with her to of the Christian assemblies in her suburban villa; wished first to prepare her and to open her soul to salvation. In this task no teacher of the congregation should assist her. She, and she alone, should win to the Redeemer the soul of this fair creature that had walked so resolutely in the ways of the heathen; this was required of her as the condition of the covenant that she felt she had made with Him, it was with the price of this labor that she hoped to purchase her own child's eternal happiness. Day after day she had Arsinoe into her own room, that was decked with flowers and with Christian symbols, and devoted several hours to her instruction. But her disciple proved less impressionable and less attentive every day; while Paulina was speaking Arsinoe was thinking of Pollux, of the children, of the festival prepared for the Emperor or of the beautiful dress she was to have worn as Roxana. She wondered what young girl would fill her place, and how she could ever hope to see her lover again. And it was the same during Paulina's prayers as during her instruction, prayers that often lasted more than hour, and which she had to attend, on her knees on Wednesday and Friday, and with hands uplifted on all the other days of the week.
When her adoptive mother had discovered how often she looked out into the street she thought she had found out the reason of her pupil's distracted attention and only waited the return of her brother, the architect, in order to have the window blocked up.
As Pontius entered the lofty hall of his sister's house, Arsinoe came to meet him. Her cheeks were flushed, she had hurried to fly down as fast as possible from her window to the ground floor, in order to speak to the architect before he went into the inner rooms or had talked with his sister, and she looked lovelier than ever. Pontius gazed at her with delight. He knew that he had seen this sweet face before, but he could not at once remember where; for a face we have met with only incidentally is not easily recognized when we find it again where we do not expect it.
Arsinoe did not give him time to speak to her, for she went straight up to him, greeted him, and asked timidly:
"You do not remember who I am?"
"Yes, yes," said the architect, "and yet--for the moment--"
"I am the daughter of Keraunus, the palace-steward at Lochias, but you know of course"
"To be sure, to be sure! Arsinoe is your name; I was asking to-day after your father and heard to my great regret--"
"He is dead."
"Poor child! How everything has changed in the old palace since I went away. The gate-house is swept away, there is a new steward and there-but, tell me how came you here?"
"My father left us nothing and Christians took its in. There were eight of us."
"And my sister shelters you all?"
"No, no; one has been taken into one house and others into others. We shall never be together again." And as she spoke the tears ran down Arsinoe's cheeks; but she promptly recovered herself, and before Pontius could express his sympathy she went on:
"I want to ask of you a favor; let me speak before any one disturbs us."
"Speak, my child."
"You know Pollux--the sculptor Pollux?"
"Certainly."
And you were always kindly disposed toward him?"
"He is a good man and an excellent artist."
"Aye that he is, and besides all that--may I tell you something and will you stand by me?"
"Gladly, so far as lies in my power."
Arsinoe looked down at the ground in charming and blushing confusion and said in a low tone:
"We love each other--I am to be his wife."
"Accept my best wishes."
"Ah, if only we had got as far as that! But since my father's death we have not seen each other. I do not know where he and his parents are, and how are they ever to find me here?"
"Write to him."
"I cannot write well, and even if I could my messenger--"
"Has my sister had any search made for him?"
"No--oh, no. I may not even let his name pass my lips. She wants to give me to some one else; she says that making statues is hateful to the God of the Christians."
"Does she? And you want me to seek your lover?"
"Yes, yes, my dear lord! and if you find him tell him I shall be alone to-morrow early, and again towards evening, every day indeed, for then your sister goes to serve her God in her country house."
"So you want to make me a lover's go-between. You could not find a more inexperienced one."
"Ah! noble Pontius, if you have a heart--"
"Let me speak to the end, child! I will seek your lover, and if I find him he shall know where you are, but I cannot and will not invite him to an assignation here behind my sister's back. He shall come openly to Paulina and prefer his suit. If she refuses her consent I will try to take the matter in hand with Paulina. Are you satisfied with this?"
"I must need be. And tell me, you will let me know when you have found out where he and his parents have gone?"
"That I promise you. And now tell the one thing. Are you happy in this house?"
Arsinoe looked down in some embarrassment, then she hastily shook her head in vehement negation and hurried away. Pontius looked after her with compassion and sympathy.
"Poor, pretty little creature!" he murmured to himself, and went on to his sister's room.
The house-steward had announced his visit, and Paulina met him on the threshold. In his sister's sitting-room the architect found Eumenes, the bishop, a dignified old man with clear, kind eyes.
"Your name is in everybody's mouth to-day," said Paulina, after the usual greetings. They say you did wonders last night."
"I got home very tired," said Pontius, "but as you so pressingly desired to speak to me, I shortened my hours of rest."
"How sorry I am!" exclaimed the widow.
The bishop perceived that the brother and sister had business to discuss together, and asked whether he were not interrupting it.
"On the contrary," cried Paulina. "The subject under discussion is my newly-adopted daughter who, unhappily, has her head full of silly and useless things. She tells me she has seen you at Lochias, Pontius."
"Yes, I know the pretty child."
"Yes, she is lovely to look upon," said the widow. "But her heart and mind have been left wholly untrained, and in her the doctrine falls upon stony ground, for she avails herself of every unoccupied moment to stare at the horsemen and chariots that pass on the way to the Hippodrome. By this inquisitive gaping she fills her head with a thousand useless and distracting fancies; I am not always at home, and so it will be best to have the pernicious window walled up."
"And did you send for me only to have that done?" cried Pontius, much annoyed. "Your house-slaves, I should think, might have been equal to that without my assistance."
"Perhaps, but then the wall would have to be freshly whitewashed--I know how obliging you always are." Thank you very much. To-morrow I will send you two regular workmen."
"Nay, to-day, at once if possible."
"Are you in such pressing haste to spoil the poor child's amusement? And besides I cannot but think that it is not to stare at the horsemen and chariots that she looks out, but to see her worthy lover."
"So much the worse. I was telling you, Eumenes, that a sculptor wants to marry her."
"She is a heathen," replied the bishop.
"But on the road to salvation," answered Paulina. "But we will speak of that presently. There is still something else to discuss, Pontius. The hall of my country villa must be enlarged."
"Then send me the plans."
"They are in the book-room of my late husband." The architect left his sister to go into the library, which he knew well.
As soon as the bishop was left alone with Paulina, he shook his head and said:
"If I judge rightly, my dear sister, you are going the wrong way to work in leading this child intrusted to your care. Not all are called, and rebellious hearts must be led along the path of salvation with a gentle hand, not dragged and driven. Why do you cut off this girl, who still stands with both feet in the world, from all that can give her pleasure? Allow the young creature to enjoy every permitted pleasure which can add to the joys of life in youth. Do not hurt Arsinoe needlessly, do not let her feel the hand that guides her. First teach her to love you from her heart, and when she knows nothing dearer than you, a request from you will be worth more than bolts or walled-up windows."
"At first I wished nothing more than that she should love me," interrupted Paulina.
"But have you proved her? Do you see in her the spark which may be fanned to a flame? Have you detected in her the germ which may possibly grow to a strong desire for salvation and to devotion to the Redeemer?"
"That germ exists in every heart-these are your own words."
"But in many of the heathen it is deeply buried in sand and stories; and do you feel yourself equal to clearing them away without injury to the seed or to the soil in which it lies?"
"I do, and I will win Arsinoe to Jesus Christ," said Paulina firmly.
Pontius interrupted the conversation; he remained with his sister some time longer discussing with her and with Eumenes the new building to be done at her country house; then he and the bishop left at the same time and Pontius proceeded to the scene of the fire by the harbor and in the old palace.
Chapter XVI
Pontius did not find the Emperor at Lochias, for Hadrian had moved at mid-day to the Caesareum. The strong smell of burning in every room in the palace had sickened him and he had begun to regard the restored building as a doomed scene of disaster. The architect was waited for with much anxiety, for the rooms originally furnished for the Emperor in the Caesareum had been despoiled and disarranged to decorate the rooms at Lochias, and Pontius was wanted to superintend their immediate rehabilitation. A chariot was waiting for him and there was no lack of slaves, so he began this fresh task at once and devoted himself to it till late at night. It was in vain this time that his anteroom was filled with people waiting for his return.
Hadrian had retired to some rooms which formed part of his wife's apartments. He was in a grave mood, and when the prefect Titianus was announced he kept him waiting till, with his own hand, he had laid a fresh dressing on his favorite's burns.
"Go now, my lord," begged the Bithynian, when the Emperor had finished his task with all the skill of a surgeon: "Titianus has been walking up and down in there for the last quarter of an hour."
"And so he may," said the monarch. "And if the whole world is shrieking for me it must wait till these faithful hands have had their due. Yes, my boy! we will wander on through life together, inseparable comrades. Others indeed do the same, and each one who goes through life side by side with a companion sharing all he enjoys or suffers, comes to think at last that he knows him as he knows himself; still the inmost core of his friend's nature remains concealed from him. Then, some day Fate lets a storm come raging down upon their; the last veil is torn, under the wanderer's eyes, from the very heart of his companion, and at last he really sees him as he is, like a kernel stripped of its shell, a bare and naked body. Last night such a blast swept over us and let me see the heart of my Antinous, as plainly as this hand I hold before my eyes. Yes, yes, yes! for the man who will risk his young and happy existence for a thing his friend holds precious would sacrifice ten lives if he had them, for his friend's person. Never, my friend, shall that night be forgotten. It gives you the right to do much that might pain me, and has graven your name on my heart, the foremost among those to whom I am indebted for any benefit.--They are but few."
Hadrian held out his hand to Antinous as he spoke. The boy, who had kept his eyes fixed on the ground in much confusion, raised it to his lips and pressed it against them in violent agitation. Then he raised his large eyes to the Emperor's and said:
"You must not speak to me so kindly, for I do not deserve such goodness. What is my life after all? I would let it go, as a child leaves go of a beetle it has caught, to spare you one single anxious day."
"I know it," answered Hadrian firmly, and he went to the prefect in the adjoining room.
Titianus had come in obedience to Hadrian's orders; the matter to be settled was what indemnification was to be paid to the city and to the individual owners of the storehouses that had been destroyed, for Hadrian had caused a decree to be proclaimed that no one should suffer any loss through a misfortune sent by the gods and which had originated in his residence. The prefect had already instituted the necessary inquiries and the private secretaries, Phlegon, Heliodorus and Celer, were now charged with the duty of addressing documents to the injured parties in which they were invited, in the name of Caesar, to declare the truth as to the amount of the loss they had suffered. Titianus also brought the information that the Greeks and Jews had determined to express their thankfulness for Caesar's preservation by great thank-offerings.
"And the Christians," asked Hadrian.
"They abominate the sacrifice of animals, but they will unite in a common act of thanksgiving."
"Their gratitude will not cost them much," said Hadrian.
"Their bishop, Eumenes, brought me a sum of money for which a hundred oxen might be bought, to distribute among the poor. He said the God of the Christians is a spirit and requires none but spiritual sacrifices; that the best offering a man can bring him is a prayer prompted by the spirit and proceeding from a loving heart."
"That sounds very well for us," said Hadrian. "But it will not do for the people. Philosophical doctrines do not tend to piety; the populace need visible gods and tangible sacrifices. Are the Christians here good citizens and devoted to the welfare of the state?"
"We need no courts of justice for them."
"Then take their money and distribute it among the needy; but I must forbid their meeting for a general thanksgiving; they may raise their hands to their great spirit in my behalf, in private. Their doctrine must not be brought into publicity; it is not devoid of a delusive charm and it is indispensable to the safety of the state that the mob should remain faithful to the old gods and sacrifices."
"As you command, Caesar."
"You know the account given of the Christians by Pliny and Trajan?"
"And Trajan's answer."
"Well then let us leave them to follow their own devices in private after their own fashion; only they must not commit any breach of the laws of the state nor force themselves into publicity. As soon as they show any disposition to refuse to the old gods the respect that is due to them, or to raise a finger against them, severity must be exercised and every excess must be punished by death."
During this conversation Verus had entered the room; he was following the Emperor everywhere to-day for he hoped to hear him say a word as to his observation of the heavens, and yet he did not dare to ask him what he had discovered from them.
When he saw that Hadrian was occupied he made a chamberlain conduct him to Antinous. The favorite turned pale as he saw the praetor, still he retained enough presence of mind to wish him all happiness on his birthday. It did not escape Verus that his presence had startled the lad; he therefore plied him at first with indifferent questions, introduced pleasing anecdotes into his conversation and then, when he had gained his purpose, he added carelessly:
"I must thank you in the name of the state and of every friend of Caesar's. You carried out your undertaking well to the end, though by somewhat overpowering means."
"I entreat you say no more," interrupted Antinous eagerly, and looking anxiously at the door of the next room.
"Oh! I would have sacrificed all Alexandria to preserve Caesar's mind from gloom and care. Besides we have both paid dearly for our good intentions and for those wretched sheds."
"Pray talk of something else."
"You sit there with your hands bound up and your hair singed, and I feel very unwell."
"Hadrian said you had helped valiantly in the rescue."
"I was sorry for the poor rats whose gathered store of provisions the flames were so rapidly devouring, and all hot as I was from my supper, I flung myself in among the men who were extinguishing the fire. My first reward was a bath of cold, icy-cold sea-water, which was poured over my head out of a full skin. All doctrines of ethics are in disgrace with me, and I have long considered all the dramatic poets, in whose pieces virtue is rewarded and crime punished, as a pack of fools; for my pleasantest hours are all due to my worst deeds; and sheer annoyance and misery, to my best. No hyena can laugh more hoarsely that I now speak; some portion of me inside here, seems to have been turned into a hedgehog whose spines prick and hurt me, and all this because I allowed myself to be led away into doing things which the moralists laud as virtuous."
"You cough, and you do not look well. He down awhile."
"On my birthday? No, my young friend. And now let me just ask you before I go: Can you tell me what Hadrian read in the stars?"
"No."
"Not even if I put my Perseus at your orders for every thing you may require of him? The man knows Alexandria and is as dumb as a fish."
"Not even then, for what I do not know I cannot tell. We are both of us ill, and I tell you once more you will be wise to take care of yourself." Verus left the room, and Antinous watched him go with much relief.
The praetor's visit had filled him with disquietude, and had added to the dislike he felt for him. He knew that he had been used to base ends by Verus, for Hadrian had told him so much as that he had gone up to the observatory not to question the stars for himself but to cast the praetor's horoscope, and that he had informed Verus of his intention.
There was no excuse, no forgiveness possible for the deed he had done; to please that dissolute coxcomb, that mocking hypocrite, he had become a traitor to his master and an incendiary, and must endure to be overwhelmed with praises and thanks by the greatest and most keen-sighted of men. He hated, he abhorred himself, and asked himself why the fire which had blazed around him had been satisfied only to inflict slight injuries on his hands and hair. When Hadrian returned to him he asked his permission to go to bed. The Emperor gladly granted it, ordered Mastor to watch by his side, and then agreed to his wife's request that he would visit her.
Sabina had not been to the scene of the fire, but she had sent a messenger every hour to inquire as to the progress of the conflagration and the well-being of her husband. When he had first arrived at the Caesareum she had met and welcomed him and then had retired to her own apartments.
It wanted only two hours of midnight when Hadrian entered her room; he found her reclining on a couch without the jewels she usually wore in the daytime but dressed as for a banquet.
"You wished to speak with me?" said the Emperor. "Yes, and this day--so full of remarkable events as it has been--has also a remarkable close since I have not wished in vain."
"You so rarely give me the opportunity of gratifying a wish."
"And do you complain of that?"
"I might--for instead of wishing you are wont to demand."
"Let us cease this strife of idle words."
"Willingly. With what object did you send for me?"
"Verus is to-day keeping his birthday."
"And you would like to know what the stars promise him?"
"Rather how the signs in the heavens have disposed you towards him."
"I had but little time to consider what I saw. But at any rate the stars promise him a brilliant future."
A gleam of joy shone in Sabina's eyes, but she forced herself to keep calm and asked, indifferently:
"You admit that, and yet you can come to no decision?"
"Then you want to hear the decisive word spoken at once, to-day?"
"You know that without my answering you."
"Well, then, his star outshines mine and compels me to be on my guard against him."
"How mean! You are afraid of the praetor?"
"No, but of his fortune which is bound up with you?"
"When he is our son his greatness will be ours."
"By no means, since if I make him what you wish him to be, he will certainly try to make our greatness his. Destiny--"
"You said it favored him; but unfortunately I must dispute the statement."
"You? Do you try too, to read the stars?"
"No, I leave that to men. Have you heard of Ammonius, the astrologer?"
"Yes. A very learned man who observes from the tower of the Serapeum, and who, like many of his fellows in this city has made use of his art to accumulate a large fortune."
"No less a man than the astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus referred me to him."
"The best of recommendation."
"Well, then, I commissioned Ammonius to cast the horoscope for Verus during the past night and he brought it to me with an explanatory key. Here it is."
The Emperor hastily seized the tablet which Sabina held out to him, and as he attentively examined the forecasts, arranged in order according to the hours, he said:
"Quite right. That of course did not escape me! Well done, exactly the same as my own observations--but here--stay--here comes the third hour, at the beginning of which I was interrupted. Eternal gods! what have we here?"
The Emperor held the wax tablet prepared by Aminonius at arm's length from his eyes and never parted his lips again till he had come to the end of the last hour of the night. Then he dropped the hand that held the horoscope, saying with a shudder:
"A hideous destiny. Horace was right in saying the highest towers fall with the greatest crash."
"The tower of which you speak," said Sabina, "is that darling of fortune of whom you are afraid. Vouchsafe then to Verus a brief space of happiness before the horrible end you foresee for him."
While she spoke Hadrian sat with his eyes thoughtfully fixed on the ground, and then, standing in front of his wife, he replied:
"If no sinister catastrophe falls upon this man, the stars and the fate of men have no more to do with one another than the sea with the heart of the desert, than the throb of men's pulses with the pebbles in the brook. If Ammonius has erred ten times over still more than ten signs remain on this tablet, hostile and fatal to the praetor. I grieve for Verus--but the state suffers with the sovereign's misfortunes.--This man can never be my successor."
"No?" asked Sabina rising from her couch. "No? Not when you have seen that your own star outlives his? Not though a glance at this tablet shows you that when he is nothing but ashes the world will still continue long to obey your nod?"
"Compose yourself and give me time.--Yes, I still say not even so."
"Not even so," repeated Sabina sullenly. Then, collecting herself, she asked in a tone of vehement entreaty:
"Not even so--not even if I lift my hands to you in supplication and cry in your face that you and Fate have grudged me the blessing, the happiness, the crown and aim of a woman's life, and I must and I will attain it; I must and I will once, if only for a short time, hear myself called by some dear lips by the name which gives the veriest beggar-woman with her infant in her arms preeminence above the Empress who has never stood by a child's cradle. I must and I will, before I die, be a mother, be called mother and be able to say, 'my child, my son--our son.'" And as she spoke she sobbed aloud and covered her face with her hands.
The Emperor drew back a step from his wife. A miracle had been wrought before his eyes. Sabina--in whose eyes no tear had ever been seen--Sabina was weeping, Sabina had a heart like other women. Greatly astonished and deeply moved he saw her turn from him, utterly shaken by the agitation of her feelings, and sink on her knees by the side of the couch she had quitted to hide her face in the cushions. He stood motionless by her side, but presently going nearer to her:
"Stand up, Sabina," he said. "Your desire is a just one. You shall have the son for whom your soul longs."
The Empress rose and a grateful look in her eyes, swimming in tears, met his glance. Sabina could smile too, she could look sweet! It had taken a lifetime, it had needed such a moment as this to reveal it to Hadrian.
He silently drew a seat towards her and sat down by her side; for some time he sat with her hand clasped in his, in silence. Then he let it go and said kindly:
"And will Verus fulfil all you expect of a son?" She nodded assent.
"What makes you so confident of that?" asked the Emperor. "He is a Roman and not lacking in brilliant and estimable gifts. A man who shows such mettle alike in the field and in the council-chamber and yet can play the part of Eros with such success will also know how to wear the purple without disgracing it. But he has his mother's light blood, and his heart flutters hither and thither."
"Let him be as he is. We understand each other and he is the only man on whose disposition I can build, on whose fidelity I can count as securely as if he were my favorite son."
"And on what facts is this confidence based?"
"You will understand me, for you are not blind to the signs which Fate vouchsafes to us. Have you time to listen to a short story?"
"The night is yet young."
"Then I will tell you. Forgive me if I begin with things that seem dead and gone; but they are not, for they live and work in me to this hour. I know that you yourself did not choose me for your wife. Plotina chose me for you--she loved you, whether your regard for her was for the beautiful woman or for the wife of Caesar to whom everything belonged that you had to look for--how should I know?"
"It was Plotina, the woman, that I honored and loved--"
"In choosing me she chose you a wife who was tall and so fitted to wear the purple, but who was never beautiful. She knew me well and she knew that I was less apt than any other woman to win hearts; in my parents' house no child ever enjoyed so slender a share of the gifts of love, and none can know better than you that my husband did not spoil me with tenderness."
"I could repent of it at this moment."
"It would be too late now. But I will not be bitter--no, indeed I will not. And yet if you are to understand me I must own that so long as I was young I longed bitterly for the love which no one offered me."
"And you yourself have never loved?"
"No--but it pained me that I could not. In Plotina's apartments I often saw the children of her relations, and many a time I tried to attract them to me, but while they would play confidently with other women they seemed to shun me. Soon I even grew cross to them--only our Verus, the little son of Celonius Commodus, would give me frank answers when I spoke to him, and would bring me his broken toys that I might mend their injuries. And so I got to love the child."
"He was a wonderfully sweet, attractive boy."
"He was indeed. One day we women were all sitting together in Caesar's garden. Verus came running out with a particularly fine apple that Trajan himself had given him. The rosy-cheeked fruit was admired by every one. Then Plotina, in fun took the apple out of the boy's hand and asked him if he would not give his apple to her. He looked at her with wide-open puzzled eyes, shook his curly head, ran up to me and gave me--yes, me, and no one else--the fruit, throwing his arms round my neck and saying, 'Sabina you shall have it.'"
"The judgment of Paris."
"Nay, do not jest now. This action of an unselfish child gave me courage to endure the troubles of life. I knew now that there was one creature that loved me, and that one repaid all that I felt for him, all that I was never weary of doing for him with affectionate liking. He is the only being, of whom I know, that will weep when I die. Give him the right to call me his mother and make him our son."
"He is our son," said Hadrian, with dignified gravity, and held out his hand to Sabina. She tried to lift it to her lips but he drew it away and went on:
"Inform him that we accept him as our son. His wife is the daughter of Nigrinus--who had to go, as I desired to stay and stand firm. You do not love Lucilla, but we must both admire her for I do not know another woman in Rome whose virtue a man might vouch for. Besides, I owe her a father, and am glad to have such a daughter; thus we shall be blessed with children. Whether I shall appoint Verus my successor and proclaim to the world who shall be its future ruler I cannot now decide; for that I need a calmer hour. Till to-morrow, Sabina. This day began with a misfortune; may the deed with which we have combined to end it prosper and bring us happiness."
Chapter XVII
There are often fine warm days in February, but those who fancy the spring has come find themselves deceived. The bitter, hard Sabina could at times let soft and tender emotions get the mastery over her, but as soon as the longing of her languishing soul for maternal happiness was gratified, she closed her heart again and extinguished the fire that had warmed it. Every one who approached her, even her husband, felt himself chilled and repelled again by her manner.
Verus was ill. The first symptoms of a liver complaint which his physicians had warned him might ensue, if he, an European, persisted in his dissipated life at Alexandria as if it were Rome, now began to occasion him many uneasy hours, and this, the first physical pain that fate had ever inflicted on him, he bore with the utmost impatience. Even the great news which Sabina brought him, realizing his boldest aspirations, had no power to reconcile him to the new sensation of being ill. He learnt, at the same time, that Hadrian's alarm at the transcendent brightness of his star had nearly cost him his adoption, and as he firmly believed that he had brought on his sufferings by his efforts to extinguish the fire that Antinous had kindled, he bitterly rued his treacherous interference with the Emperor's calculations. Men are always ready to cast any burden, and especially that of a fault they have committed, on to the shoulders of another; and so the suffering praetor cursed Antinous and the learning of Simeon Ben Jochai, because, if it had not been for them the mischievous folly which had spoilt his pleasure in life would never have been committed.
Hadrian had requested the Alexandrians to postpone the theatrical displays and processions that they had prepared for him, as his observations as to the course of destiny during the coming year were not yet complete. Every evening he ascended the lofty observatory of the Serapeum and gazed from thence at the stars. His labors ended on the tenth of January; on the eleventh the festivities began. They lasted through many days, and by the desire of the praetor the pretty daughter of Apollodorus the Jew was chosen to represent Roxana. Everything that the Alexandrians had prepared to do honor to their sovereign was magnificent and costly. So many ships had never before been engaged in any Naumachia as were destroyed here in the sham sea-fight, no greater number of wild beasts had ever been seen together on any occasion even in the Roman Circus; and how bloody were the fights of the gladiators, in which black and white combatants afforded a varied excitement for both heart and senses. In the processions, the different elements which were supplied by the great central metropolis of Egyptian, Greek and Oriental culture afforded such a variety of food for the eye that, in spite of their interminable length, the effect was less fatiguing than the Romans had feared. The performances of the tragedies and comedies were equally rich in startling effects; conflagrations and floods were introduced and gave the Alexandrian actors the opportunity of displaying their talents with such brilliant success that Hadrian and his companions were forced to acknowledge that even in Rome and Athens they had never witnessed any representations equally perfect.
A piece by the Jewish author Ezekiel who, under the Ptolemies, wrote dramas in the Greek language of which the subject was taken from the history of his own people, particularly claimed the Emperor's attention.
Titianus during all this festive season was unluckily suffering from an attack of old-standing breathlessness, and he also had his hands full; at the same time he did his best in helping Pontius in seeking out the sculptor Pollux. Both men did their utmost, but though they soon were able to find Euphorion and dame Doris, every trace of their son had vanished. Papias, the former employer of the man who had disappeared, was no longer in the city, having been sent by Hadrian to Italy to execute centaurs and other figures to decorate his villa at Tibur. His wife who remained at home, declared that she knew nothing of Pollux but that he had abruptly quitted her husband's service. The unfortunate man's fellow-workmen could give no news of him whatever, for not one of them had been present when he was seized; Papias had had foresight enough to have the man he dreaded placed in security without the presence of any witnesses. Neither the prefect nor the architect thought of seeking the worthy fellow in prison, and even if they had done so they would hardly have found him, for Pollux was not kept in durance in Alexandria itself. The prisons of the city had overflowed after the night of the holiday and he had been transferred to Canopus and there detained and brought up for trial.
Pollux had unhesitatingly owned to having taken the silver quiver and to having been very angry at his master's accusation. Thus he produced from the first an unfavorable impression on the judge, who esteemed Papias as a wealthy man, universally respected. The accused had hardly been allowed to speak at all and judgment was immediately pronounced against him, on the strength of his master's accusation and his own admissions. It would have been sheer waste of time to listen to the romances with which this audacious rascal--who forgot all the respect he owed to his teacher and benefactor--wanted to cram the judges. Two years of reflection, the protectors of the law deemed, might suffice to teach this dangerous fellow to respect the property of others and to keep him from outbreaks against those to whom he owed gratitude and reverence.
Pollux, safe in the prison at Canopus, cursed his destiny and indulged in vain hopes of the assistance of his friends. These were at last weary of the vain search and only asked about him occasionally. He at first was so insubordinate under restraint that he was put under close ward from which he was not released until, instead of raging with fury he dreamed away his days in sullen brooding. The gaoler knew men well, and he thought he could safely predict that at the end of his two years' imprisonment this young thief would quit his cell a harmless imbecile.
Titianus, Pontius, Balbilla and even Antinous had all attempted to speak of him to the Emperor, but each was sharply repulsed and taught that Hadrian was little inclined to pardon a wound to his artist's vanity. But the sovereign also proved that he had a good memory for benefits he had received, for once, when a dish was set before him consisting of cabbage and small sausages he smiled, and taking out his purse filled with gold pieces, he ordered a chamberlain to take it in his name to Doris, the wife of the evicted gate-keeper. The old couple now resided in a little house of their own in the neighborhood of their widowed daughter Diotima. Hunger and external misery came not nigh them, still they had experienced a great change. Poor Doris' eyes were now red and bloodshot, for they were accustomed to many tears, which were seldom far off and overflowed whenever a word, an object, a thought reminded her of Pollux, her darling, her pride and her hope; and there were few half-hours in the day when she did not think of him.
Soon after the steward's death she had sought out Selene, but dame Hannah could not and would not conduct her to see the sick girl, for she learnt from Mary that she was the mother of her patient's faithless lover; and on a second visit Selene was so shy, so timid and so strange in her demeanor, that the old woman was forced to conclude that her visit was an unpleasant intrusion.
And from Arsinoe, whose residence she discovered from the deaconess, she met with even a worse reception. She had herself announced as the mother of Pollux the sculptor and was abruptly refused admission, with the information that Arsinoe was not to be spoken with by her and that her visits were, once for all, prohibited. After the architect Pontius had been to seek her out and had encouraged her to make another attempt to see and speak to Arsinoe, who clung faithfully to Pollux, Paulina herself had received her and sent her away with such repellent words that she went home to her husband deeply insulted and distressed to tears. Nor had she resisted Euphorion's decision when he prohibited her ever again crossing the Christian's threshold.
The Emperor's donation had been most welcome and timely to the poor old couple, for Euphorion had completely lost the softness of his voice as well as his memory through the agitations and troubles of the last few months; he had been dismissed from the chorus of the theatre and could only find employment and very small pay of a few drachmae, in the mysteries of certain petty sectarians or in singing at weddings or in hymns of lamentation. At the same time the old folks had to maintain their daughter whom Pollux could no longer provide for, and the birds, the Graces and the cat all must eat. That it would be possible to get rid of them was an idea which never occurred to either Euphorion or Doris.
By day the old folks had ceased to laugh; but at night they still had many cheerful hours, for then Hope would beguile them with bright pictures of the future, and tell them all sorts of possible and impossible romances which filled their souls with fresh courage. How often they would see Pollux returning from the distant city whither he had probably fled-from Rome, or even from Athens--crowned with laurels and rich in treasure. The Emperor, who still so kindly remembered them, could not always be angry with him; perhaps he might some day send a messenger to seek Pollux and to make up to him by large commissions for all he had made him suffer. That her darling was alive she was sure; in that she could not be mistaken, often as Euphorion tried to persuade her that he must be dead. The singer could tell many tales of luckless men who had been murdered and never seen or heard of again; but she was not to be convinced, she persisted in hope, and lived wholly in the purpose of sending her younger son, Teuker, on his travels to seek his lost brother as soon as his apprenticeship was over, which would be in a few months.
Antinous, whose burnt hands had soon got well under the Emperor's care, and who had never felt a liking and friendship for any other young man but Pollux, lamented the artist's disappearance and wished much to seek out dame Doris; but he found it harder than ever to leave his master, and was so eager always to be at hand that Hadrian often laughingly reproached him with making his slaves' duties too light.
When at last he really was master of an hour to himself he postponed his intention of seeing his friend's parents; for with him there was always a wide world between the purpose and the deed which he never could overleap, if not urged by some strong impulse; and his most pressing instincts prompted him, when the Emperor was disputing in the Museum or receiving instructions from the chiefs of the different religious communities as to the doctrines they severally professed, to visit the suburban villa where, when February had already begun, Selene was still living. He had often succeeded in stealing into Paulina's garden, but he could not at first realize his hope of being observed by Selene of obtaining speech with her. Whenever he went near Hannah's little house, Mary, the deformed girl, would come in his way, tell him how her friend was, and beg or desire him to go away. She was always with the sick girl, for now her mother was nursed by her sister, and dame Hannah had obtained permission for her to work at home in gumming the papyrus-strips together.
The widow herself was obliged to be at her post in the factory, for her duties as overseer made her presence indispensable in the work-room.
Thus it came to pass that it was always by Mary and never by Hannah that Antinous was received and dismissed. A certain understanding had arisen between the beautiful youth and the deformed girl. When Antinous appeared and she called out to him: "What, again already!" he would grasp her hand and implore her only once to grant his wish; but she was always firm, only she never sent him away sternly but with smiles and friendly admonitions. When he brought rare and lovely flowers in his pallium and entreated her to give them to Selene in the name of her friend at Lochias, she would take them and promise to place them in her room; but she always said it would do neither him nor her any good at all that Selene should know from whom they came. After such repulses he well knew how to flatter and coax her with appealing words, but he had never dared to defy her or to gain his end by force. When the flowers were placed in the room Mary looked at them much oftener than Selene did, and when Antinous had been long absent the deformed girl longed to see him again, and would pace restlessly up and down between the garden gate and her friend's little house. She, like him, dreamed of an angel, and the angel of whom she dreamed was exactly like himself. In all her prayers she included the name of the handsome heathen and a soft tenderness in which a gentle pity was often infused, a grief for his unredeemed soul, was inseparable from all her thoughts of him.
Hannah was informed by her of each of the young man's visits, and as often as Mary mentioned Antinous the deaconess seemed anxious and desired her to threaten to call the gate-keeper to him. The widow knew full well who her patient's indefatigable admirer was, for she had once heard him speaking to Mastor, and she had asked the slave, who availed himself of every spare moment to attend the services of the Christians, who the lad was. All Alexandria, nay all the Empire, knew the name of the most beautiful youth of his time, the spoilt favorite of Caesar. Even Hannah had heard of him and knew that poets sang his praises and heathen women were eager to obtain a glance from his eyes. She knew how devoid of all morality were the lives of the nobles at Rome, and Antinous appeared to her as a splendid falcon that wheels above a dove to swoop down upon it at a favorable moment and to tear it in its beak and talons. Hannah also knew that Selene was acquainted with Antinous, that it was he who had formerly rescued her from the big dog and afterward saved her from the water; but that Selene, who was now recovering, did not know who her preserver had been on this second occasion was clear from all that she said.
Towards the end of February Antinous had come on three days in succession, and Hannah now took the step of begging the bishop, Eumenes, to give the gate keeper strict injunctions to look out for the young man and to forbid his entering the garden, even with force if it should prove necessary.
But "love laughs at locksmiths" and finds its way through locked doors, and Antinous succeeded all the same in finding his way into Paulina's garden. On one of these occasions he was so happy to surprise Selene, as, supported on a stick and accompanied by a fair-haired boy and dame Hannah herself, she hobbled up and down.
Antinous had learnt to regard everything crippled or defective with aversion, as a monstrous failure of nature's plastic harmony, but to pity it tenderly; but now he felt quite differently. Mary with her humpback had at first horrified him; now he was always glad to see her though she always crossed his wishes; and poor lame Selene, who had been mocked at by the street boys as she limped along, seemed to him more adorable than ever. How lovely were her face and form, how peculiar her way of walking--she did not limp--no, she swayed along the garden. Thus, as he said to himself afterwards, the Nereids are borne along on the undulating waves. Love is easily satisfied, nor is this strange, for it raises all that comes within its embrace to a loftier level of existence. In the light of love weakness is a virtue and want an additional charm.
But the Bithynian's visits were not the widow's only cares; though she bore the others, it is true, not anxiously but with pleasure. Her household had increased by two living souls, and her income was very small. That her patient might not want, she had to work with her own hands while she superintended the girls in the factory, and to carry home with her in the evening papyrus-leaves, not only for Mary, but for herself too, and to glue them together during the long hours of the night. As soon as Selene's condition improved, she too helped willingly and diligently, but for many weeks the convalescent had to give up every kind of employment.
Mary often looked at Hannah in silent trouble, for she looked very pale. After she had, on one occasion fallen in a fainting fit, the deformed girl had gathered courage and had represented to her that though she ought indeed to put out at interest the talent intrusted to her by the Lord, she ought not to spend it recklessly. She was giving herself no rest, working day and night; visiting the poor and sick in her hours of recreation just as she used, and if she did not give herself more rest would soon need nursing instead of nursing others.
"At any rate," urged Mary, "give yourself a little indispensable sleep at night."
"We must live," replied Hannah, "and I dare not borrow, for I may never be able to repay."
"Then beg Paulina to remit your house-rent; she will do so gladly."
"No," said Hannah, decidedly. "The rent of this little house goes to benefit my poor people, and you know how badly they want it. What we give we lend to the Lord, and he taxes no man above his ability."
Selene was now well, but the physician had said that no human skill could ever cure her of her lameness. She had become Hannah's daughter, and blind Helios the son of the house.
Arsinoe was only allowed to see her sister rarely and always accompanied by her protectress, and she and Selene never were able to have any unchecked and open conversation. The steward's eldest daughter was now contented and cheerful, while the younger was not only saddened by the disappearance of her lover, but also, from being unhappy in her new home, she had become fractious and easily moved to shed tears. All was well with the younger orphans; they were often taken to see Selene, and spoke with affection of their new parents.
As she got well her help diminished the strain on her two friends, and in the beginning of March a call came to the widow which, if she followed it, must give their simple existence a new aspect.
In Upper Egypt certain Christian fraternities had been established, and one of these had addressed a prayer to the great mother-community at Alexandria, that it would send to them a presbyter, a deacon and a deaconess capable of organizing and guiding the believers and catechumens in the province of Hermopolis where they were already numbered by thousands. The life of the community and the care of the poor, and sick in the outlying districts required organization by experienced hands, and Hannah had been asked whether she could make up her mind to leave the metropolis and carry on the work of benevolence at Besa in an extended sphere.
She would there have a pleasant house, a palm-garden, and gifts from the congregation which would secure not merely her own maintenance, but that of her adopted children.
Hannah was bound to Alexandria by many ties; in the first place she clung to the poor and sick, many of whom had grown very dear to her, and how many girls who had gone astray had she rescued from evil in the factory alone! She begged for a short time for reflection, and this was granted to her. By the fifteenth of March she was to decide, but by the fifth she had already made up her mind, for while Hannah was in the papyrus-factory Antinous had succeeded in getting into Paulina's garden shortly before sunset and in stealing close up to Hannah's house. Mary again observed him as he approached and signed to him to go, in her usual pleasant way; but the Bithynian was more excited than usual; he seized her hand and clasped her with urgent warmth as he implored her to be merciful. She endeavored at once to free herself, but he would not let her go, but cried in coaxing tones:
"I must see her and speak to her to-day, dear, good Mary, only this once!" And before she could prevent it he had kissed her forehead and had flown into the house to Selene. The little hunchback did not know what had happened to her; confused and almost paralyzed by conflicting feelings she stood shame-faced, gazing at the ground. She felt that something quite extraordinary had happened to her, but this wonderful something radiated a dazzling splendor, and since this had risen for her, for poor Mary, a feeling of pride quite new to her mingled with the shame and indignation that filled her soul. She needed a few minutes to collect herself and to recover a sense of her duty, and those few minutes were made good use of by Antinous.
He flew with long steps into the room in which, on that never-to-be-forgotten night, he had laid Selene on the couch, and even at the threshold he called her by her name. She started and laid aside the book out of which she was reading to her blind brother. He called a second time, beseechingly. Selene recognized him and asked calmly:
"Do you want me, or dame Hannah?"
"You, you!" he cried passionately. "Oh Selene, I pulled you out of the water, and since that night I have never ceased to think of you and I must die for love of you. Have your thoughts never, never met mine on the way to you? Are you still and always as cold, as passive as you were then when you belonged half to life and half to death? For months have I prowled round this house as the shade of a dead man haunts the spot where he had left all that was dear to him on earth, and I have never been able to tell you what I feel for you?" As he spoke the lad fell on the ground before her and tried to clasp her knees; but she said reproachfully:
"What does all this mean? Stand up and compose yourself."
"Oh! let me, let me--" he besought her. "Do not be so cold and so hard; have pity on me and do not reject me!"
"Stand up," repeated the girl. "I will certainly not reproach you--I owe you thanks on the contrary."
"Not thanks, but love--a little love is all I ask."
"I try to love all men," replied the girl, "and so I love you because you have shown me very much kindness."
"Selene, Selene!" he exclaimed in joyful triumph. He threw himself again at her feet and passionately seized her right hand; but hardly had he taken it in his own when Mary, scarlet with agitation, rushed into the room. In a husky voice, full of hatred and fury, she commanded him to leave the house at once, and when he attempted again to besiege her ear with entreaties she cried out:
"If you do not obey I will call the men in to help us, who are out there attending to the flowers. I ask you, will you obey or will you not?"
"Why are you so cruel, Mary?" asked the blind boy. "This man is good and kind and tells Selene he loves her."
Antinous pointed to the child with an imploring gesture but Mary was already by the window and was raising her hand to her mouth to make her call heard.
"Don't, don't," cried Antinous. "I am going at once."
And he went slowly and silently towards the door, still gazing at Selene with passionate ardor; then he quitted the room groaning with shame and disappointment, though still with a look of radiant pride as though he had achieved some great deed. In the garden he was met by Hannah, who immediately hastened with accelerated steps to her own house where she found Mary sobbing violently and dissolved in tears.
The widow was soon informed of all that had occurred in her absence, and an hour later she had announced to the bishop that she would accept the call to Besa and was ready to start for Upper Egypt.
"With your foster-children?" asked Eumenes.
"Yes. It was indeed Selene's most earnest wish to be baptized by you, but as a year of probation is required--"
"I will perform the rite to-morrow morning."
"To-morrow, Father?"
"Yes, Sister, in all confidence. She buried the old man in the waves of the sea, and before we were her teachers she had gone through the school and discipline of life. While she was yet a heathen she had taken up her cross and proved herself as faithful as though she were a child of the Lord. All that was lacking to her--Faith, Love and Hope--she has found under your roof. I thank thee for this soul thou hast found Sister, in the name of the Lord."
"Not I, not I," said the widow. "Her heart was frozen, but it is not I but the innocent faith of the blind child that has melted it."
"She owes her salvation to him and to you," replied the bishop, "and they both shall be baptized together. We will give the lovely boy the name of the fairest of the disciples, and call him John. Selene for the future, if she herself likes it, shall be known as Martha."
THE EMPEROR
By Georg Ebers
Volume 10.
Chapter XVIII
Selene and Helios were baptized, and two days after dame Hannah with her adopted children and Mary, escorted by the presbyter Hilarion and a deacon, embarked in the harbor of Mareotis on board a Nile-boat which was to convey them to their new home, the town of Besa in Upper Egypt. The deformed girl had hesitated as to her answer to the widow's question whether she would accompany her. Her old mother dwelt in Alexandria, and then--but it was this "then" which helped her abruptly to cut short all reflection and to pronounce a decided "yes," for it referred to Antinous.
For a few minutes it had seemed unendurable to think that she should never see him again, for she could not help often thinking of the beautiful youth, and her whole heart ought to belong solely to the One who had with His blood purchased peace for her on earth and bliss in the world to come.
The day after being baptized, Selene had gone to Paulina's town-house, and there, with many tears had taken leave of Arsinoe. All the affection which bound the sisters together found expression at this moment of parting. Selene had heard from Paulina that Pollux was dead, and she no longer grudged her rival sister that she grieved for him more passionately than herself, though at first her peace of mind had more than once been disturbed by memories of her old playfellow.
She felt it hard to leave Alexandria, where most of her brothers and sisters were left behind, and yet she rejoiced to think of a distant home, for she was no longer the same creature that she had been a few months since, and she longed for a remote scene of a new and sanctified life.
Eumenes and Hannah were in the right. It was not the widow but the little blind boy who had won her to Christianity. The child's influence had proceeded in a strange course. In the first instance the promises of the slave Master that Helios should some day meet his father again in a shining realm among beautiful angels had a powerful effect on the blind child's tender heart and vivid imagination. In Hannah's house his hopes had received fresh nurture, and Mary and the widow told him much about their kind and loving God and His Son who loved children and had invited them to come to Him. When Selene began to recover and he was permitted to talk to her he poured out to her all his delight at what he had heard from the women. At first, to be sure, his sister took no pleasure in these fanciful fables and tried to shake his belief and lead back his heart to the old gods. But while she tried to guide the child, by degrees she felt compelled to follow in his path; at first with wavering steps, but dame Hannah helped her by her example and with many words of good counsel. She only taught her doctrine when the girl asked her questions and begged for information. All that here surrounded Selene breathed of love and peace, and the child felt this, spoke of it, forced her to acknowledge it, and, in his own person, was the first object on which to exercise a wish hitherto unknown to her, to be herself loving and lovable. The boy's firm faith, which was not to be shaken by any reasoning or by any of the myths which she knew, touched her deeply and led to her asking Hannah what was the real bearing of one and another of his statements. It had always seemed a comfort to her that the miseries of our earthly life would come to an end with death; but Helios left her without a reply when he said in a sad voice:
"Do you feel no longing, then, to see our father and mother again?"
To see her mother again! This thought gave her an interest in the next world, and dame Hannah fanned the spark of hope in her soul into flame.
Selene had seen and suffered much misery, and was accustomed to call the gods cruel. Helios told her that God and the Saviour were good and kind, and loved human beings as their children.
"Is it not good and kind," asked he, "of our Heavenly Father to lead us to dame Hannah?"
"Yes, but we have all been torn apart," said Selene. "Never mind," said the child confidently, "we shall all meet in Heaven."
As she got well Selene asked after each of the children and Hannah described all the families into which they had been received. The widow did not look as if she spoke falsely, and the little ones, when they came to see her, confirmed her report, and yet Selene could hardly believe in the accuracy of the pictures drawn of their lives in the houses of the Christians.
The mother of a Christian family--says a great Christian teacher--should be the pride of her children, the wife the pride of her husband, husband and children the pride of the wife, and God the pride and glory of every member of the household. Love and faith in fact the bond, contentment and virtuous living the law of the family; and it was in just such a pure and beneficent atmosphere, as Selene herself and Helios felt the blessing of in Hannah's house, that each and all of her brothers and sisters were growing up. Her upright sense gave an honest answer when she asked herself what would have become of them all if her father had remained alive and had been dispossessed of his office? They must all have perished in misery and degradation.
And now?--Perhaps in truth the Divine Being had dealt in kindness with the children.
Love, love, and again love, was breathed from all she saw and heard, and yet--was it not love that had caused her greatest sorrows. Wherefore had it been her lot to endure so much through the same sentiment which beautified life to others? Had any one ever had more to suffer than she? Aye indeed! A vivacious, eager youth had duped her and had promised happiness to her sister instead of to her; it had been hard to bear--and yet, the Saviour of whom Hellos had told her, had been far more severely tried. Mankind, for whom He--the Son of God--had come down upon earth, to save from misery and guilt, had rewarded His loving kindness by hanging Him on the cross. In Him she could see a companion in suffering and she asked the widow to tell her all about Him. Selene had made many sacrifices to her family--she could never forget her walk to the papyrus-factory--but He had let them mock Him and had shed His blood for His own. And who was she?--and who was He? The Son of God. His image became dear to her; she was never weary of hearing about His life and fate, His words and deeds; and without her observing it the day came when her soul was free to receive the teaching of Christ with fervent longing. With faith she acquired that consciousness of guilt which had previously been unknown to her. She had been busy and industrious out of pride and fear, but never from love; she had selfishly tried to fling from her the sacred gift of life without ever thinking what would become of those whom it was her duty to care for. She had cursed her lovely sister who needed her protection and care, and even Pollux, her childhood's playfellow; and a thousand times had she imprecated the ruler of human destinies. All this she now keenly felt with all the earnestness natural to her, but she was soothed by the tidings that there was One who had redeemed the world, and taken on Himself the sins of every repentant sinner.
After Selene had once expressed to the widow her desire to be a Christian, Hannah brought the bishop to see her. He himself undertook to instruct the girl and he found in her a disciple anxious and craving for knowledge. Just like those dried-up and dull-colored plants which, when they are plunged in water, open out and revive, so did her heart, untimely withered and dry; and she longed to be perfectly recovered that she, like Hannah, might tend the sick and exercise that love which Christ demands of His followers. That which most particularly appealed to her in her new faith was that it did not promise joys to the rich who could make great sacrifices, but to the miserable sinner who with a contrite heart yearned for forgiveness, to the poor and abject, towards whom she felt as though they belonged to the same family as herself. And her valiant spirit could not be satisfied with intentions but longed to act upon them. In Besa she could set to work with Hannah, and this prospect lightened her grief in quitting Alexandria.
A favoring wind bore the voyagers southward safe to their destination.
Two days after their departure Antinous once more stole into Paulina's garden. He went up to the widow's little house looking in vain for the deformed girl; the road was open; her absence could but be pleasing to him, and yet it disquieted him. His heart beat wildly, for to-day--perhaps he might find Selene alone. He opened the door without knocking, but he dared not cross the threshold, for in the anteroom stood a strange man, placing boards against the wall. The carpenter, a Christian to whom Paulina had given this little house for his family to live in, asked Antinous what he wanted.
"Is dame Hannah at home?" stammered the Bithynian.
"She no longer lives here."
"And her adopted daughter, Selene?"
"She is gone with her into Upper Egypt. Have you any message for her?"
"No," said the lad, quite confounded.
"When did they go?"
"The day before yesterday."
"And they are not coming back."
"For the next few years, certainly not. Later may be, if it is the Lord's pleasure."
Antinous left the garden by the public gate, unmolested. He was very pale, and he felt like a wanderer in the desert who finds the spring choked where he had hoped to find a refreshing draught.
Next day, at the first moment he could dispose of, Antinous again knocked at the carpenter's door to inquire in what town of Upper Egypt the travellers proposed to settle and the artisan told him frankly, "In Besa."
Antinous had always been a dreamer, but Hadrian had never seen him so listless, so vaguely brooding as in these days. When he tried to rouse him and spur him to greater energy his favorite would look at him beseechingly, and though he made every effort to be of use to him and to show him a cheerful countenance it was always with but brief success. Even on the hunting excursions into the Libyan desert which the Emperor frequently made, Antinous remained apathetic and indifferent to the pleasures of the sport to which he had formerly devoted himself with enjoyment and skill.
The Emperor had remained in Alexandria longer than in any other place, and was weary of festivities and banquets, of the wordy war with the philosophers of the Museum, of conversing with the ecstatic mystics, the soothsayers; astrologers and empirics with whom the place swarmed. And the short audiences which he accorded to the heads of the different religious communities, and the inspection of the factories and workshops of this centre of industry, began to annoy him. One day he announced his intention of visiting the southern provinces of the Nile valley.
The high-priests of the native Egyptian faith had craved this favor of him, and he was prompted, not only by his love of information and passion for travelling, but also by considerations of state-craft, to gratify this desire of a hierarchy which was extremely influential in those rich and important provinces. The prospect of seeing with his own eyes those marvels of Pharaonic times which attracted so many travellers, was also an incitement, and his good spirits rose as soon as he observed what a reviving effect his determination to visit southern Egypt had upon Antinous.
His favorite had for the last few weeks expressed not the smallest pleasure at any single thing. The homage paid him no less by the Alexandrian than by the Roman ladies of rank sickened him. At banquets he sat a silent guest whose neighborhood could not add to anybody's pleasure, and even the most brilliant and exciting exhibitions in the Circus and the best contests and races in the Hippodrome had hardly sufficed to attract his gaze. Formerly he had been an eager and attentive spectator of the plays of Menander and of his imitators, Alexis, Apollodorus and Posidippus; but now when they were performed he stared into vacancy and thought of Selene. The prospect of going to the place where she was living excited him powerfully and revived his drooping courage for life. He could hope once more, and to the man who sees light shining in the future the present is no longer dark.
Hadrian rejoiced in this change in the lad and hastened the preparations for their departure; still, some months passed before he could begin his journey.
In the first place he had to provide for newly colonizing Libya, which had been depopulated by a revolt of the Jews. Then he had to come to a determination as to certain new post-roads which were to connect the different parts of the empire more nearly, and finally he had to await the formal assent of the Roman Senate to some new resolutions concerning the hereditary reversion of conferred free-citizenship. This assent was, no doubt a matter of course, but the Emperor never issued an edict without it, and he was very desirous that his decree should come into operation as soon as possible.
In the course of his visits to the Museum the sovereign had informed himself as to the position of the several members of that institution, and he was occupied in making certain regulations which should relieve them of the more sordid cares of life; the condition of the aged teachers and educators of the young had also attracted his observation, and he had endeavored to improve it.
When Sabina represented to him what a large outlay these new measures would entail, he replied:
"We do not allow the veterans to perish who placed their lives, and limbs at the service of the state. Why then should those who serve it with their intellect be burdened with petty cares? Which should we rank the higher, power and poverty or mental wealth? The harder I--as the sovereign--find it to answer the question the more positively do I feel it to be my duty to mete out the same measure to all veterans alike, whether officials, warriors or instructors."
The Alexandrians themselves detained him too by a succession of new acts of homage. They raised him to the rank of a divinity, dedicated a temple to him, and instituted a series of new festivals in his honor; partly no doubt to win his partiality for their city and to express their pride and satisfaction in his long stay there, but also because the pleasure-loving community was glad to seize this opportunity as a favorable one for gratifying their own inclinations and revelling in mere unusual enjoyment. Thus the Imperial visit swallowed up millions, and Hadrian, who enquired into every detail and contrived to obtain information as to the sums expended by the city, blamed the recklessness of his lavish entertainers. He wrote afterwards to his brother-in-law, Servianus, his fullest recognition of both the wealth and the industry of Alexandrians, saying, with terms of praise, that among them not one was idle. One made glass, another papyrus, another linen; and each of these restless mortals, said he, is busied in some handiwork. Even the lame, the blind and the maimed here sought and found employment. Nevertheless he calls the Alexandrians a contumacious and good-for-nothing community, with sharp and evil tongues that had spared neither Verus nor Antinous. Jews, Christians, and the votaries of Serapis, he adds in the same letter, serve but one God instead of the divinities of Olympus, and when he asserts of the Christians that they even worshipped Serapis he means to say that they were persuaded of the doctrine of the survival of the soul after death. The dispute as to which temple should be assigned as the residence of the newly-found Apis gave Hadrian much to do. From time immemorial this sacred bull had been kept in the temple of Ptah at Memphis, but this venerable city of the Pyramids had been outstripped by Alexandria, and the temple of Serapis outvied that at Memphis in the province of Sokari, tenfold in size and in magnificence. The Egyptians of Alexandria, who dwelt in the quarter called Rhakotis, close to the Serapeum, desired to have the incarnation of the god in the form of a bull, in their midst; but the Memphites would not abandon their old prescriptive rights, and the Emperor had found it far from easy to guide the contest, which proved a very exciting one to all parties, to a satisfactory issue. Memphis had its Apis, and the Serapeum was indemnified by certain endowments which had formerly been granted to the temple at Memphis.
At last, in June, the Emperor could set out. He wished to traverse the province on foot and on horseback, and Sabina was to follow by boat as soon as the inundation should begin.
The Empress would gladly have returned to Rome or to Tibur, for Verus had been obliged to quit Egypt by the orders of the physician as soon as the summer heat had set in. He departed with his wife, as the son of the Imperial couple, but no word on Hadrian's part had justified him in hoping confidently to be nominated as his successor to the sovereignty.
The handsome rake's unlimited dissipations were severely checked by his sufferings, but not altogether prevented, and on his return to Rome he continued to indulge in all the pleasures of life. Hadrian's hesitation and reluctance often disquieted him, for that imperial Sphinx had, only too frequently, given the most unexpected solutions to his mystifications. But the fatal end with which he had been threatened caused him small anxiety; nay, Ben Jochai's prediction rather prompted him to enjoy to the utmost every hour of health and ease that Fate might still allow him.
Chapter XIX
Balbilla and her companion, Publius Balbinus and other illustrious Romans, Favorinus the sophist, and a numerous suite of chamberlains and servants, were to accompany the Empress by water, while Hadrian set forth on his land journey with a small escort to which he added a splendid array of huntsmen. Before he reached Memphis, in crossing the Libyan desert, through which his road lay, he had killed a few lions and many other beasts of prey, and here he had once more found Antinous the best of sporting companions. Cool headed in danger, indefatigable on foot, content and serviceable in all circumstances, the young fellow seemed to Hadrian to be a comrade created by the gods themselves for his special delectation. When Hadrian was in the humor to brood and be silent the whole day long, he never disturbed him by a word; but in these moods the Emperor found his favorite's society indispensable, for the mere consciousness of his presence soothed him.
Antinous too, was happy on these occasions, for he felt that he was of some use to his venerated master and could thus alleviate the burden which had never ceased to weigh on his own soul ever since the crime he had committed. Besides, he preferred dreaming to talking, and the exercise in the open air preserved him from listless lassitude.
In Memphis Hadrian was detained a whole month, for there he was expected to visit the Egyptian temples with Sabina, who had arrived before him, and to submit to many ceremonials invested with the regalia of the Pharaohs. Sabina often felt as if she must faint when, crowned with the ponderous vulture-headed fillet of the Queens of Egypt, weighed down with long robes and golden ornaments, she was conducted with her husband, in procession, through all the rooms, over the roof and finally into the holiest place of some vast sanctuary. What senseless ceremonials they had to go through in the course of these long circuits, and how many sacrifices had they to attend! When she returned from these visitations she was utterly exhausted, and indeed, it was no small exertion to undergo so many fumigations with incense and so many aspersions, to listen to so many litanies and hymns, to parade through such endless halls and while being elevated to the rank of celestial beings, to be crowned with so many crowns in turn and decorated with all kinds of fillets and symbolic adornments.
Her husband set her a good example, however; through all the ceremonials he displayed the whole grave majesty of his nature, and among the Egyptians behaved as one of themselves. He even took pleasure in the mystical lore of the priests, with whom he often held long conversations.
As at Memphis, so in all the principal temples of the great cities to the southward, the Imperial pair accepted the homage of the hierarchy and the honors due to divinity. Wherever Hadrian granted money for the extension of a temple, he was required to perform the ceremony of laying a stone with his own hand. But he always found time to hunt in the desert, to manage the affairs of state, and to visit the most interesting monuments of past times, and at Memphis especially, the city of the dead, with the Pyramids, the great Sphinx, the Serapeum and the tombs of the Apis.
Before quitting the city he and his companions consulted the oracle of the sacred bull. The fairest future was promised to Balbilla; the bull to whom she had to offer a cake, with her face averted, had approved of her gift and had touched her hand with his moist muzzle. Hadrian was left in ignorance as to the sentence of the priests of Apis, for it was given to him in a sealed roll with an explanation of the signs it contained; but he was solemnly adjured not to open them before at least half a year had elapsed.
It was only in the cities that Hadrian met his wife, for he pursued his journey by land and she hers by water. The boats almost invariably reached their destination sooner than the land-travellers, and when they at last arrived, there was always a grand festival to welcome them, in which however Sabina but rarely took part. Balbilla proved herself all the more eager to make their arrival pleasant by some kindly surprise. She sincerely reverenced Hadrian, and his favorite's beauty had an irresistible charm for her artist's soul. It was a delight to her only to look at him; his absence troubled her, and when he returned she was always the first to greet him. And yet the bright girl troubled herself about him neither more nor less than the other ladies in Sabina's train; only Balbilla asked nothing of him but the pleasure of looking at him and rejoicing in his beauty.
If he had dared to mistake her admiration for love and to have offered her his, the poetess would have indignantly brought him to his bearings; and yet she gave unqualified expression to her admiration of the Bithynian's splendid person, and indeed with rather remarkable demonstrativeness.
When the travellers made their appearance again after a prolonged absence Antinous would find in the room in the ship where he was to live flowers, and choice fruits sent by her, and verses in which she had sung his praises. He put it all aside with the rest and only esteemed the donor the less; but the poetess knew nothing of these sentiments in her beautiful idol, and indeed troubled herself very little about his feelings. She had hitherto found no difficulty in keeping within the limits of what was becoming. But lately there had been moments in which she had owned to herself that she might be carried away into overstepping these limits. But what did she care for the opinion of those around her, or about the inner life of the Bithyman, whose external perfection of form was all that pleased her. She did not shrink from the possibility of arousing hopes in him which she never could nor intended to fulfil, for the idea did not once enter her mind; still she felt dissatisfied with herself, for there was one person who might disapprove of her proceedings, one who had indeed in plain words reprehended her fancy for doing honor to the handsome boy with offerings of flowers, and the opinion of that one person weighed with her more than that of all the rest of the men and women she knew, put together.
This one was Pontius the architect; and yet, strangely enough, it was precisely her remembrance of him that urged her on from one folly to another. She had often seen the architect in Alexandria, and when they parted she had allowed him to promise to follow her and the Empress, and to escort them at any rate for a part of their voyage up the Nile. But he came not, nor had he sent any report of himself, though he was alive and well, and every express that overtook them brought documents for Caesar in his handwriting.
So he, on whose faithful devotion she had built as on a rock, was no less self-seeking and fickle than other men. She thought of him every day and every hour; and as soon as a vessel from the north cast anchor within sight, she watched the voyagers as they disembarked to detect him among them. She longed for Pontius as a traveller who has lost his way sighs for a sight of the guide who has deserted him; and yet she was angry with him, for he had betrayed by a thousand tokens that he esteemed and cared for her, that she had a certain power over his strong will--and now he had broken his word and did not come.
And she? She had not been unmoved by his devotion, and had been gentler to this grandson of her father's freed slave than to the best-born man of her own rank. And in spite of it all Pontius could spoil all the pleasure of her journey and stay in Alexandria instead of following in her wake. He could easily have intrusted his building to other architects--the great metropolis was swarming with them! Well, if he did not trouble himself about her she certainly need care even less about him. Perhaps at last, at the end of their travels he might yet come, and then he should see how much she cared for his admonitions.
But she sighed impatiently for the hour when she might read him all the verses she had addressed to Antinous, and ask him how he liked them. It gave her a childish pleasure to add to the number of these little poems, to finish them elaborately, and display in them all her knowledge and ability. She gave the preference to artificial and massive metres; some of the verses were in Latin, others in the Attic, and others again in the Aeolian dialects of Greek, for she had now learnt to use this, and all to punish Pontius--to vex Pontius--and at the same time to appear in his eyes as brilliant as she could. She belauded Antinous, but she wrote for Pontius, and for every flower she gave the lad she had sent a thought to the architect, though with a curl on her lips of scornful defiance.
But a young girl cannot be always praising the beauty of a youth in new and varied forms with complete impunity, and thus there were hours when Balbilla was inclined to believe that she really loved Antinous. Then she would call herself his Sappho, and he seemed destined to be her Phaon. During his long absences with the Emperor she would long to see him--nay, even with tears; but, as soon as he was by her side again, and she could look at his inanimate beauty and into his weary eyes, when she heard the torpid "Yes" or "No" with which he replied to her questions, the spell was entirely broken and she honestly confessed to herself that she would as soon see him before her hewn in marble as clothed in flesh and blood.
In such moments as these her memory of the architect was particularly fresh, and once, when their ship was sailing through a mass of lotos leaves, above which one splendid full-blown flower raised its head, her apt imagination, which rapidly seized on everything noteworthy and gave it poetic form, entwined the incident in a set of verses, in which she designated Antinous as the lotos-flower which fulfils its destiny simply by being beautiful, and comparing Pontius to the ship which, well constructed and well guided, invited the traveller to new voyages in distant lands.
The Nile voyage came to an end at Thebes of the hundred gates, and here nothing that could attract the Roman travellers remained unvisited. The tombs of the Pharaohs extending into the very heart of the rocky hills, and the grand temples that stood to the west of the city of the dead, shorn though they were of their ancient glory, filled the Emperor with admiration. The Imperial travellers and their companions listened to the famous colossus of Memnon, of which the upper portion had been overthrown by an earthquake, and three times in the dawn they heard it sound.
Balbilla described the incident in several long poems which Sabina caused to be engraved on the stone of the colossus. The poetess imagined herself as hearing the voice of Memnon singing to his mother Eos while her tears, the fresh morning dew, fell upon the image of her son, fallen before the walls of Troy. These verses she composed in the Aeolian dialect, named herself as their writer and informed the readers--among whom she included Pontius--that she was descended from a house no less noble than that of King Antiochus.
The gigantic structures on each bank of the Nile fully equalled Hadrian's expectations, though they had suffered so much injury from earthquakes and sieges, and the impoverished priesthood of Thebes were no longer in a position to provide for their preservation even, much less for their restoration. Balbilla accompanied Caesar on a visit to the sanctuary of Ammon, on the eastern shore of the Nile. In the great hall, the most vast and lofty pillared hall in the world, her impressionable soul felt a peculiar exaltation, and as the Emperor observed how, with a heightened color she now gazed upward, and then again, leaning against a towering column, looked at the scene around her, he asked her what she felt, standing in this really worthy abode of the gods.
"One thing--above all things one thing!" cried the girl. "That architecture is the sublimest of the arts! This temple is to me like some grand epode, and the poet who composed it conceived it not in feeble words but formed it out of almost immovable masses. Thousands of parts are here combined to form a whole, and each is welded with the rest into beautiful harmony and helps to give expression to the stupendous idea which existed in the brain of the builder of this hall. What other art is gifted with the power of creating a work so imperishable and so far transcending all ordinary standards?"
"A poetess crowning the architect with laurels!" exclaimed the Emperor. "But is not the poet's realm the infinite, and can the architect ever get beyond the finite and the limited?"
"Then is the nature of the divinity a measurable unit?" asked Balbilla. "No, it is not; and yet this hall gives one the impression that the very divinity might find space in it to dwell in."
"Because it owes it existence to a master-mind, which while it conceived it stood on the boundary line of eternity. But do you think this temple will outlast the poems of Homer?"
"No; but the memory of it will no more fade away that of the wrath of Achilles or the wanderings of the experienced Odysseus."
"It is a pity that our friend Pontius cannot hear you," said Hadrian. "He has completed the plans for a work which is destined to outlive me and him and all of us.
"I mean my own tomb. Besides that I intend him to erect gates, courts and halls in the Egyptian style at Tibur, which may remind us of our travels in this wonderful country. I expect him to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" exclaimed Balbilla, and her face fired with a scarlet flush to her very brow.
Chapter XX
Shortly after starting from Thebes--on the second day of November--Hadrian came to a great decision. Verus should be acknowledged not merely as his son but also as his successor.
Sabina's urgency would not alone have sufficed to put a term to his hesitancy, especially as it had lately been farther increased by a wish that was all his own. His wife's heart had pined for a child, but he too had longed for a son, and he had found one in Antinous. His favorite was a boy he had picked up by chance, the son of humble though free parents, but it lay in the Emperor's power to make him great, to confer on him the highest posts of honor in the Empire, and at last to recognize him publicly as his heir. Antinous, if any one, had deserved this at his hands, and on no other man could he so ungrudgingly bestow everything that he possessed.
These ideas and hopes had now filled his mind for many months, but the nature and the mood of the young Bithyman had been more and more adverse to them.
Hadrian had striven more earnestly than his predecessors to raise the fallen dignity of the Senate, and still he could count securely on its consent to any measure. The leading official authorities of the Republic had been recognized and allowed the full exercise of their powers. To be sure, be they whom they might, they all had to obey the Emperor, still they were always there; and even with a weak ruler at its head the Empire might continue to subsist within the limits established by Hadrian, and restricted with wise moderation. Nevertheless, only a few months previously he would not have ventured to think of the adoption of his favorite. Now he hoped to find himself somewhat nearer to the fulfilment of his wishes. It is true Antinous was still a dreamer; but in their wanderings and hunting excursions through Egypt he had proved himself gallant and prompt, intelligent, and, after their departure from Thebes, even bold and lively at times. Antinous, under this aspect, he himself might take in hand, and even name him as his successor in due time, when he had risen from one post of honor to another. For the present this plan must remain unrevealed.
When he publicly adopted Verus any idea of a possible new selection of a son was excluded, and he might unhesitatingly venture to appoint Sabina's darling his successor, for the most famous of the Roman physicians had written to Hadrian, by his desire, saying that the praetor's undermined strength could not be restored, and that, at the best, he could only have a limited number of years to live. Well, then, Verus might die slowly and contentedly in the midst of the most splendid anticipations, and when he should have closed his eyes it would be time enough to set the dreamer--by that time matured to vigorous manhood--in the vacant place.
On the return journey from Thebes to Alexandria Hadrian met his wife at Abydos, and revealed to her his intention of proclaiming the son of her choice as his successor. Sabina thanked him with an exclamation of "At last!" which expressed partly her satisfaction, but partly too her annoyance at her husband's long delay. Hadrian gave her his permission to return to Rome from Alexandria, and on the very same day messages were despatched with letters both to the Senate and to the prefects of Egypt.
The despatch intended for Titianus charged him to proclaim publicly the adoption of the praetor, to arrange at the same time for a grand festival, and on that occasion to grant to the people, in Caesar's name, all the boons and favors which by the traditional law of Egypt the Sovereign was expected to bestow at the birth of an heir to the throne. The whole suite of the Imperial pair celebrated Hadrian's decision by splendid banquets, but the Emperor did not himself take part in them, but crossed to the other bank of the Nile and went to Antaeopolis in the desert, meaning to penetrate from thence into the gorges of the Arabian desert and to chase wild beasts. No one was to accompany him but Antinous, Mastor, and a few huntsmen and some dogs.
He meant to rejoin the ships at Besa. He had postponed his visit to this place till the return journey, because he had travelled up by the western shore of the Nile, and the passage across the river would have taken up too much time.
The travellers' tents were pitched one sultry evening in November, between the Nile and the limestone range, in which was arrayed a long row of tombs of the period of the Pharaohs. Hadrian had gone to visit these, for the remarkable pictures on the walls delighted him, but Antinous remained behind, for he had already looked at similar works oftener than he cared for, in Upper Egypt. He found these pictures monotonous and unlovely, and he had not the patience to investigate their meaning as his master did. He had been a hundred times into the ancient rock-tombs, only not to leave Hadrian and not for his own amusement; but to-day--he could hardly bear himself for impatience and excitement, for he knew that a ride, a walk, of a few hours, would carry him to Besa and to Selene. The Emperor would remain absent three or four hours at any rate, and if he made up his mind to it he could have sought out the girl for whom his heart was longing before his return, and still be back again before his master.
But before acting he must reflect. There was the Emperor climbing the hill-side where he could see him, and messengers were expected and he had been charged to receive them. It they should bring bad news, his master must on no account be alone. Ten times did he go up to his good hunter to leap upon his back; once he even took down the horse's head-gear to put on his bridle, but in the very act of slipping the complicated bit between the teeth of his steed his resolution gave way. During all this delay and hesitation the minutes slipped away, and at last it was so late that Hadrian might return and it was folly to think of carrying his plan into execution. The expected express arrived with several letters, but the Emperor did not come back. It grew dark, and heavy rain-drops fell from the overcast sky, and still Antinous was alone. His anxious longing was mingled with regret for the lost opportunity of seeing Selene and alarm at the Emperor's prolonged absence.
In spite of the rain, which began to fill more violently, he went out into the open air, of which the sweltering oppressiveness had helped to fetter his feeble volition, and called to the dogs, with whose help he proposed seeking the Emperor; but just then he heard the bark of Argus, and soon after Hadrian and Mastor stepped out of the darkness into the brightness which shone out from the tent, where lights were burning.
The Emperor gave his favorite but a brief greeting and silently submitted while Antinous dried his hair and brought him some refreshments, and Mastor bathed his feet and dressed him in fresh garments. As he reclined with the Bithyman, before the supper which was standing ready, he said:
"A strange evening! how hot and oppressive the atmosphere is. We must be on the lookout, something serious is brewing."
"What happened to you, my Lord?"
"Many things. At the door of the very first tomb that I was about to enter I found an old black woman who stretched out her hands against us to keep us out and shrieked out words that sounded horrible."
"Did you understand her?"
"No--who can learn Egyptian."
"Then you do not know what she said?"
"I was to find out--she cried out 'Dead!' and again 'Dead!' and in the tomb which she was watching there were I know not how many persons attacked by the plague."
"You saw them?"
"Yes, I had only heard of this disease till then. It is frightful, and quite answers to the descriptions I had read of it."
"But Caesar!" cried Antinous reproachfully and in alarm.
"When we turned our backs on the tombs," continued Hadrian, paying no heed to the lad's exclamation, "we were met by an elderly man dressed in white and a strange-looking maiden. She was lame but of remarkable beauty."
"And she was going to the sick?"
"Yes, she had brought medicine and food to them."
"But she did not go in among them?" asked Antinous eagerly.
"She did, in spite of my warnings. In her companion I recognized an old acquaintance."
'An old one?"
"At any rate older than myself. We had met in Athens when we still were young. At that time he was one of the school of Plato and the most zealous, nay, perhaps the most gifted of us all."
"How came such a man among the plague-stricken people of Besa? Is he become a physician?"
"No. But at Athens he sought fervently and eagerly for the truth, and now he asserts that he has found it."
"Here, among the Egyptians?"
"In Alexandria among the Christians."
"And the lame girl who accompanied the philosopher--does she too believe in the crucified God?"
"Yes. She is a sick-nurse or something of the kind. Indeed there is something grand in the ecstatic craze of these people."
"Is it true that they worship an ass and a dove?"
"Nonsense!"
"I did not want to believe it; and at any rate they are kind, and succor all who suffer, even strangers who do not belong to their sect."
"How do you know?"
"One hears a great deal about them in Alexandria."
"Alas! alas!--I never persecute an imaginary foe, as such I reckon the creeds and ideas of other men; still, I cannot but ask myself whether it can add to the prosperity of the state when citizens cease to struggle against the pressure and necessity of life and console themselves for them instead, by the hope of visionary happiness in another world which perhaps only exists in the fancy of those who believe in it."
"I should wish that life might end with death," said Antinous thoughtfully; "and yet--"
"Well?"
"If I were sure that in that other world I should find those I long to see again, then I might long for a future life."
"And would you really like, throughout all eternity, to push and struggle in the crowd of old acquaintances which death does not diminish but rather multiplies?"
"Nay, not that--but I should like to be permitted to live for ever with a few chosen friends."
"And should I be one of them?"
"Yes--indeed," cried Antinous warmly and pressing his lips to Hadrian's hand.
"I was sure of it--but even with the promise of never being obliged to part with you my darling, I would never sacrifice the only privilege which man enjoys above the immortals."
"What privilege can you mean?"
"The right of withdrawing from the ranks of the living as soon as annihilation seems more endurable than existence and I choose to call death to release me."
"The gods, it is true, cannot die."
"And the Christians only to link a new life on to death."
"But a fairer and a happier than this on earth." They say it is a life of bliss. But the mother of this everlasting life is the ineradicable love of existence in even the most wretched of our race, and hope is its father. They believe in a complete freedom from suffering in that other world because He whom they call their Redeemer, the crucified Christ, has saved them from all sufferings by His death."
"And can a man take upon him the sufferings of others, think you, like a garment or a burden?"
"They say so, and my friend from Athens is quite convinced. In books of magic there are many formulas by which misfortunes may be transferred not merely from men to beasts, but from one human being to another. Very remarkable experiments have even been carried out with slaves, and to this day I have to struggle in several, provinces to suppress human sacrifices by which the gods are to be reconciled or propitiated. Only think of the innocent Iphigenia who was dragged to the altar; did not the gulf in the Forum close when Curtius had leaped into it? When Fate shoots a fatal arrow at you and I receive it in my breast, perhaps she is content with the chance victim and does not enquire as to whom she has hit."
"The gods would be exorbitant indeed if they were not content with your blood for mine!"
"Life is life, and that of the young is of better worth than that of the old. Many joys will yet bloom for you."
"And you are indispensable to the whole world."
"After me another will come. Are you ambitious, boy?"
"No, my Lord."
"What then can be the meaning of this: that every one wishes me joy of my son Verus excepting you. Do you not like my choice?"
Antinous colored and looked at the ground, and Hadrian went on:
"Say honestly what you feel."
"The praetor is ill."
"He can have but a few years to live, and when he is dead--"
"He may recover--"
"When he is dead, I must look out for another son. What do you think now? Who is the being that every man, from a slave to a consul, would soonest hear call him 'Father?"'
"Some one he tenderly loved."
"True--and particularly when that one clung to him with unchangeable fidelity. I am a man like any other, and you, my good fellow, are always nearest to my heart, and I shall bless the day when I may authorize you, before all the world, to call me 'Father.' Do not interrupt me. If you resolutely concentrate your will and show as keen a sense for ruling men as you do for the chase, if you try to sharpen your wits and take in what I teach you, it may some day happen that Antinous instead of Verus--"
"Nay, not that, only not that!" cried the lad, turning very pale and raising his hands beseechingly.
"The greatness with which Destiny surprises us seems terrible so long as it is new to us," said Hadrian. "But the seaman is soon accustomed to the storms, and we come to wear the purple as you do your chiton."
"Oh, Caesar, I entreat you," said Antinous, anxiously, "put aside these ideas; I am not fit for great things."
"The smallest saplings grow to be palms."
"But I am only a wretched little herb that thrives awhile in your shadow. Proud Rome--"
"Rome is my handmaid. She has been forced before now to be ruled by men of inferior stamp, and I should show her how the handsomest of her sons can wear the purple. The world may look for such a choice from a sovereign whom it has long known to be an artist, that is a high-priest of the Beautiful. And if not, I will teach it to form its taste on mine."
"You are pleased to mock me, Caesar," cried the Bithynian. "You certainly cannot be in earnest, and if it is true that you love me--"
"What now, boy?"
"You will let me live unknown for you, care for you; you will ask nothing of me but reverence and love and fidelity."
"I have long had them, and I now would fain repay my Antinous for all these treasures."
"Only let me stay with you, and if necessary let me die for you."
"I believe, boy, you would be ready to make the sacrifice we were speaking of for me!"
"At any moment without winking an eyelash."
"I thank you for those words. It has turned out a pleasant evening, and what a bad one I looked forward to--"
"Because the woman by the tomb startled you?"
"'Dead,' is a grim word. It is true that 'death'--being dead--can frighten no wise man; but the step out of light into darkness is fearful. I cannot get the figure of the old hag and her shrill cry out of my mind. Then the Christian came up, and his discourse was strange and disturbing to my soul. Before it grew dark he and the limping girl went homewards; I stood looking after them and my eyes were dazzled by the sun which was sinking over the Libyan range. The horizon was clear, but behind the day-star there were clouds. In the west, the Egyptians say, lies the realm of death. I could not help thinking of this; and the oracle, the misfortunes that the stars threatened me with in the course of this year, the cry of the old woman--all these crowded into my mind together. But then, as I observed how the sun struggled with the clouds and approached nearer and nearer to the hill-tops on the farther side of the river, I said to myself: If it sets in full radiance you may look confidently to the future; if it is swallowed up by clouds before it sinks to rest, then destiny will fulfil itself; then you must shorten sail and wait for the storm."
"And what happened?"
"The fiery globe burnt in glowing crimson, surrounded by a million rays. Each seemed separate from the rest and shone with glory of its own; it was as though the sinking disc had been the centre of bow-shots innumerable and golden arrow-shafts radiated to the sky in every direction. The scene was magnificent and my heart beat high with happy excitement, when suddenly and swiftly a dark cloud fell, as though exasperated by the wounds it had received from those fiery darts; a second followed, and a third, and sinister Daimons flung a dark and fleecy curtain over the glorious head of Helios, as the executioner throws a coarse black cloth over the head of the condemned, when he sets his knee against him to strangle him."
At this narrative Antinous covered his face with both hands, and murmured in terror:
"Frightful, frightful! What can be hanging over us? Only listen, how it thunders, and the rain thrashes the tent."
"The clouds are pouring out torrents; see the water is coming in already. The slaves must dig gutters for it to run off. Drive the pegs tighter you fellows out there or the whirlwind will tear down the slight structure."
"And how sultry the air is!"
"The hot wind seems to warm even the flood of rain. Here it is still dry; mix me a cup of wine, Antinous. Have any letters come?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"Give them to me, Mastor."
The slave, who was busily engaged in damming up with earth and stones, the trickling stream of rain-water that was soaking into the tent, sprang up, hastily dried his hands, took a sack out of the chest in which the Emperor's despatches were kept and gave it to his master. Hadrian opened the leather bag, took out a roll, hastily broke it open, and then, after rapidly glancing at the contents, exclaimed:
"What is this? I have opened the record of the oracle of Apis. How did it come among to-day's letters?"
Antinous went up to Hadrian, looked at the sack, and said:
"Mastor has made a mistake. These are the documents from Memphis. I will bring you the right despatch-bag."
"Stay!" said Hadrian, eagerly seizing his favorite's hand. "Is this a mere trick of chance or a decree of Fate? Why should this particular sack have come into my hands to-day of all others? Why, out of twenty documents it contains, should I have taken out this very one? Look here.--I will explain these signs to you. Here stand three pairs of arms bearing shields and spears, close by the name of the Egyptian month that corresponds to our November. These are the three signs of misfortune. The lutes up there are of happier omen. The masts here indicate the usual state of affairs. Three of these hieroglyphics always occur together. Three lutes indicate much good fortune, two lutes and one mast good fortune and moderate prosperity, one pair of arms and two lutes misfortune, followed by happiness, and so forth. Here, in November, begin the arms with weapons, and here they stand in threes and threes, and portend nothing but unqualified misfortune, never mitigated by a single lute. Do you see, boy? Have you understood the meaning of these signs?"
"Perfectly well; but do you interpret them rightly? The fighting arms may perhaps lead to victory."
"No. The Egyptians use them to indicate conflict, and to them conflict and unrest are identical with what we call evil and disaster."
"That is strange!"
"Nay, it is well conceived; for they say that everything was originally created good by the gods, but that the different portions of the great All changed their nature by restless and inharmonious mingling. This explanation was given me by the priest of Apis, and here--here by the month of November are the three fighting arias--a hideous token. If one of the flashes which light up this tent so incessantly, like a living stream of light were to strike you, or me, and all of us--I should not wonder. Terrible--terrible things hang over us! It requires some courage under such omens as these, to keep an untroubled gaze and not to quail."
"Only use your own arms against the fighting arms of the Egyptian gods; they are powerful," said Antinous; but Hadrian let his head sink on his breast, and said, in a tone of discouragement:
"The gods themselves must succumb to Destiny."
The thunder continued to roar. More than once the storm snapped the tent-ropes, and the slaves were obliged to hold on to the Emperor's fragile shelter with their hands; the chambers of the clouds poured mighty torrents out upon the desert range which for years had not known a drop of rain, and every rift and runlet was filled with a stream or a torrent.
Neither Hadrian nor Antinous closed their eyes that fearful night. The Emperor had as yet opened only one of the rolls that were in the day's letter-bag; it contained the information that Titianus the prefect was cruelly troubled by his old difficulty of breathing, with a petition from that worthy official to be allowed to retire from the service of the state and to withdraw to his own estate. It was no small matter for Hadrian to dispense for the future with this faithful coadjutor, to lose the man on whom he had had his eye to tranquillize Judaea--where a fresh revolt had raised its head, and to reduce it again to subjection without bloodshed. To crush and depopulate the rebellious province was within the power of other men, but to conquer and govern it with kindness belonged only to the wise and gentle Titianus. The Emperor had no heart to open a second letter that night. He lay in silence on his couch till morning began to grow gray, thinking over every evil hour of his life--the murders of Nigrinus, of Tatianus and of the senators, by which he had secured the sovereignty--and again he vowed to the gods immense sacrifices if only they would protect him from impending disaster.
When he rose next morning Antinous was startled at his aspect, for Hadrian's face and lips were perfectly bloodless. After he had read the remainder of his letters he started, not on foot but on horseback, with Antinous and Mastor for Besa, there to await the rest of the escort.
Chapter XXI
The unchained elements had raged that night with equal fury over the Nile city of Besa. The citizens of this ancient town had done all they could to give the Imperial traveller a worthy reception. The chief streets had been decked with ropes of flowers strung from mast to mast and from house to house, and by the harbor, close to the river shore, statues of Hadrian and his wife had been erected. But the storm tore down the masts and the garlands, and the lashed waters of the Nile had beaten with irresistible fury on the bank; had carried away piece after piece of the fertile shore, flung its waves, like liquid wedges into the rifts of the parched land; and excavated the high bank by the landing-quay.
After midnight the storm was still raging with unheard-of fury; it swept the palm thatch from many of the houses, and beat the stream with such violence that it was like a surging sea. The full unbroken force of the flood beat again and again on the promontory on which stood the statues of the Imperial couple. Shortly before the first dawn of light the little tongue of land, which was protected by no river wall, could no longer resist the furious attack of the waters; huge clods of soil slipped and fell with a loud noise into the river and were followed by a large mass of the cliff, with a roar as of thunder the plateau behind sank, and the statue of the Emperor which stood upon it began to totter and lean slowly to its fall. When day broke it was lying with the pedestal still above ground, but the head was buried in the earth.
At break of day the citizens left their houses to inquire of the fishermen and boatmen what had occurred in the harbor during the night. As soon as the storm had abated, hundreds, nay thousands, of men, women and children thronged the landing-place round the fallen statue--they saw the land-slip and knew that the current had torn the land from the bank and caused the mischief. Was it that Hapi, the Nile-god, was angry with the Emperor? At any rate the disaster that had befallen the image of the sovereign boded evil, that was clear.
The Toparch, the chief municipal authority, at once set to work to reinstate the statue which was itself uninjured, for Hadrian might arrive in a few hours. Numerous men, both free and slaves, crowded to undertake the work, and before long the statue of Hadrian, executed in the Egyptian style, once more stood upright and gazing with a fixed countenance towards the harbor. Sabina's was also put back by the side of her husband's and the Toparch went home satisfied. With him most of the starers and laborers left the quay, but their place was taken by other curious folks who had missed the statue from its place, where the land had fallen, and now expressed their opinions as to the mode and manner of its fall.
"The wind can never have overturned this heavy mass of limestone," said a ropemaker: "And see how far it stands from the broken ground."
"They say it fell on the top of land-slip," answered a baker.
"That is how it was," said a sailor.
"Nonsense!" cried the ropemaker. "If the statue had stood on the ground now carried away, it must have fallen at once into the water and have sunk to the bottom--any child can see that other powers have been at work here."
"Very likely," said a temple-servant who devoted himself to the interpretation of signs: "The gods may have overset the proud image to give a warning token to Hadrian."
"The immortals do not mix in the affairs of men in our day," said the sailor; "but in such a fearful night as this peaceful citizens remain within doors and so leave a fair field for Caesar's foes."
"We are all faithful subjects," said the baker indignantly.
"You are a pack of rebellious rabble," retorted a Roman soldier, who like the whole cohort quartered in the province of Hermopolis, had formerly served in Judaea under the cruel Tinnius Rufus. "Among you worshippers of beasts squabbles never cease, and as to the Christians, who have made their nests out there on the other side of the valley, say the worst you can of them and still you would be flattering them."
"Brave Fuscus is quite right!" cried a beggar. The wretches have brought the plague into our houses; wherever the disease shows itself there are Christian men and women to be seen. They came to my brother's house; they sat all night by his sick children and of course both died."
"If only my old governor Tinnius Rufus were here," growled the soldier, "they would none of them be any better off than their own crucified god."
"Well, I certainly have nothing in common with them," replied the baker. "But what is true must continue true. They are quiet, kind folks and punctual in payment, who do no harm and show kindness to many poor creatures."
"Kindness?" cried the beggar, who had received alms himself from the deacon of the church at Besa, but had also been exhorted to work. "All the five priests of Sekket of the grotto of Artemis have been led away by them and have basely abandoned the sanctuary of the goddess. And is it good and kind that they should have poisoned my brother's children with their potions?"
"Why should they not have killed the children?" asked the soldier. "I heard of the same things in Syria; and as to this statue, I will never wear my sword again--"
"Hark! listen to the bold Fuscus," cried the crowd. "He has seen much."
"I will never wear my sword again if they did not knock over the statue in the dark."
"No, no," cried the sailor positively. "It fell with the land that was washed away; I saw it lying there myself."
"And are you a Christian, too?" asked the soldier, "or do you suppose that I was in jest when I swore by my sword? I have served in Bithynia, in Syria, and in Judaea. I know these villains, good people. There were hundreds of Christians to be seen there who would throw away life like a worn-out shoe because they did not choose to sacrifice to the statues of Caesar and the gods."
"There, you hear!" cried the beggar. "And did you see a single man of them among the citizens who set to work to restore the statue to its place?"
"There were none of them there," said the sailor, who was beginning to share the soldier's views.
"The Christians threw down the Emperor's statue," the beggar shouted to the crowd. "It is proved, and they shall suffer for it. Every man who is a friend of the divine Hadrian come with me now and have them out of their houses."
"No uproar!" interrupted the soldier to the furious man. "There is the tribune, he will hear you."
The Roman officer, who now came past with a troop of soldiers to receive the Emperor outside the city, was greeted by the crowd with loud shouting. He commanded silence and made the soldier tell him what had so violently excited the people.
"Very possibly," said the tribune, a sinewy and stern-looking man, who, like Fuscus, had served under Tinnius Rufus, and had risen from a sutler to be an officer, "Very possibly--but where are your proofs?"
"Most of the citizens helped in reerecting the statue, but the Christians held aloof from the work," cried the beggar. "There was not one to be seen. Ask the sailor, my lord; he was by and he can bear witness to it."
"That certainly is more than suspicious. This matter must be strictly inquired into. Pay heed, you people."
"Here comes a Christian girl!" cried the sailor.
"Lame Martha; I know her well," interrupted the beggar. "She goes into all the plague-stricken houses and poisons the people. She stayed three days and three nights at my brother's turning the children's pillows till they were carried out. Wherever she goes death follows."
Selene, now known as Martha, paid no heed to the crowd, but with her blind brother Helios, now called John, went calmly on her way which led from the raised bank down to the landing-quay. There she wished to hire a boat to take her across the stream, for in a village on the island over against the town dwelt some sick Christians to whom she was carrying medicines and whom she was intending to watch. For months past her whole life had been devoted to the suffering. She had carried help even into heathen homes, and shrunk from neither fever nor plague. Her cheeks had gained no color, but her eyes shone with a gentler and purer light which glorified the severe beauty of her features. As the girl approached the captain he fixed his eyes on her, and called out:
"Hey! pale-face--are you a Christian?"
"Yes, my lord," replied Selene, and she went on quietly and indifferently with her brother.
The Roman looked after her, and as she passed by Hadrian's statue, and, as she did so, dropped her head rather lower than before, he roughly ordered her to stop and to tell him why she had averted her face from the statue of Caesar.
"Hadrian is our ruler as well as yours," answered the young girl. "I am in haste for there are sick people on the island."
"You will bring them no good!" cried the beggar. "Who knows what is hidden there in the basket?"
"Silence!" interrupted the tribune. "They say, girl that your fellow-believers overthrew the statue of Caesar in the night."
"How should that be? We honor Caesar no less than you do."
"I will believe you, and you shall prove it. There stands the statue of the divine Caesar. Come with me and worship it." Selene looked with horror in the face of the stern man, and could not find a word of reply.
"Well!" asked the captain, "will you come? Yes or no?"
Selene struggled for self-possession, and when the soldier held out his hand to her she said with a trembling voice:
"We honor the Emperor but we pray to no statue--only to our Father in Heaven."
"There you have it!" laughed the beggar.
"Once more I ask you," cried the tribune. "Will you worship this statue, or do you refuse to do so?"
A fearful struggle possessed Selene's soul. If she resisted the Roman her life was in danger, and the fury of the populace would be aroused against her fellow-believers--if, on the other hand, she obeyed him, she would be blaspheming God, breaking her faith to the Saviour who loved her, sinning against the truth and her own conscience. A fearful dread fell upon her, and deprived her of the power to lift her soul in prayer. She could not, she dared not, do what was required of her, and yet the overweening love of life which exists in every mortal led her feet to the base of the idol and there stayed her steps.
"Lift up your hands and worship the divine Caesar," cried the tribune, who with the rest of the lookers-on had watched her movements with keen excitement.
Trembling, she set her basket on the ground and tried to withdraw her hand from her brother's; but the blind boy held it fast. He fully understood what was required of his sister, he knew full well, from the history of many martyrs that had been told him, what fate awaited her and him if they resisted the Roman's demand; but he felt no fear and whispered to her:
"We will not obey his desires Martha; we will not pray to idols, we will cling faithfully to the Redeemer. Turn me away from the image, and I will say 'Our Father.'"
With a loud voice and his lustreless eyes upraised to Heaven, the boy said the Lord's prayer. Selene had first set his face towards the river, and then she herself turned her back on the statue; then, lifting her hands, she followed the child's example.
Helios clung to her closely, her loudly uttered prayer was one with his, and neither of them saw or heard anything more of what befell them.
The blind boy had a vision of a distant but glorious light, the maiden of a blissful life made beautiful by love, as she was flung to the ground in front of the statue of Hadrian, and the excited mob rushed upon her and her faithful little brother. The military tribune tried in vain to hold back the populace, and by the time the soldiers had succeeded in driving the excited mob away from their victims, both the young hearts, in the midst of the triumph of their faith, in the midst of their hopes of an eternal and blissful life, had ceased to beat for ever.
The occurrence disturbed the captain and made him very uneasy. This girl, this beautiful boy, who lay before him pale corpses, had been worthy of a better fate, and he might be made to answer for them; for the law forbade that any Christian should be punished for his faith without a judge's sentence. He therefore commanded that the dead should be carried at once to the house to which they belonged, and threatened every one, who should that day set foot in the Christian quarter, with the severest punishment.
The beggar went off, shrieking and shouting, to his brother's house to tell the mistress that lame Martha, who had nursed her daughter to death, was slain; but he gained an evil reward, for the poor woman bewailed Selene as if she had been her own child, and cursed him and her murderers.
Before sundown Hadrian arrived at Besa, where he found magnificent tents pitched to receive him and his escort. The disaster that had befallen his statue was kept a secret from him, but he felt anxious and ill. He wished to be perfectly alone, and desired Antinous to go to see the city before it should be dark. The Bithynian joyfully embraced this permission as a gift of the gods; he hurried through the decorated high streets, and made a boy guide him from thence into the Christian quarter. Here the streets were like a city of the dead; not a door was open, not a man to be seen.
Antinous paid the lad, sent him away, and with a beating heart went from one house to another. Each looked neat and clean, and was surrounded by trees and shrubs, but though the smoke curled up from several of the roofs every house seemed to have been deserted. At last he heard the sound of voices. Guided by these he went through a lane to an open place where hundreds of people, men, women and children, were assembled in front of a small building which stood in the midst of a palm grove.
He asked where dame Hannah lived, and an old man silently pointed to the little house on which the attention of the Christians seemed to be concentrated. The lad's heart throbbed wildly and yet he felt anxious and embarrassed, and he asked himself whether he had not better turn back and return next morning when he might hope to find Selene alone.
But no! Perhaps he might even now be allowed to see her.
He modestly made his way through the throng, which had set up a song in which he could not determine whether it was intended to express feelings of sadness or of triumph. Now he was standing at the gate of the garden and saw Mary the deformed girl. She was kneeling by a covered bier and weeping bitterly. Was dame Hannah dead? No, she was alive, for at this moment she came out of her house, leaning on an old man, pale, calm and tearless. Both came forward, the old man uttered a short prayer and then stooping down, lifted the sheet which covered the dead.
Antinous pushed a step forward but instantly drew two steps back--then covering his eyes with his hand he stood as if rooted to the spot.
There was no vehement lamentation. The old man began a discourse. All around were sounds of suppressed weeping, singing and praying but Antinous saw and heard nothing. He had dropped his hand and never took his eyes off the white face of the dead till Hannah once more covered it with the sheet. Even then he did not stir.
It was not till six young girls lifted Selene's modest bier and four matrons took up that of little Helios on their shoulders and the whole assembly moved away after them, that he too turned and followed the mourning procession. He looked on from a distance while the larger and the smaller coffins were carried into a rocktomb, while the entrance was carefully closed, and the procession dispersed some here and some there.
At last he found himself alone and in front of the door of the vault. The sun went down, and darkness spread rapidly over hill and vale. When no one was to be seen who could observe him, he threw up his arms, clasped the pillar at the entrance of the tomb, pressed his lips against the rough wooden door and struck his forehead against it while his whole body trembled with the tearless anguish of his spirit.
For some minutes he stood so and did not hear a light step which came up behind him. It was Mary, who had come once more to pray by the grave of her beloved friend. She at once recognized the youth and softly called him by his name.
"Mary," he answered, clasping her hand eagerly. "How did she die?"
"Slain," she said, sadly. "She would not worship Caesar's image."
Antinous shuddered at the words, and asked, "And why would she not?"
"Because she was faithful to our belief, and so hoped for the mercy of the Saviour. Now she is a blessed angel."
"Are you sure of that?"
"As sure as I live in hope of meeting the martyr who rests here, again in Heaven!"
"Mary."
"Leave go of my hand!"
"Will you do me a service, Mary?"
"Willingly, Antinous--but pray do not touch me."
"Take this money and buy the loveliest wreath that is to be had here. Hang it on this tomb, and say as you do so--call out--, From Antinous to Selene.'"
The deformed girl took the money he gave her and said:
"She often prayed for you."
"To her God?"
"To our Redeemer, that he might give you also joy. She died for Christ Jesus; now she is with him, and he will grant her prayers."
Antinous was silent for a while, then he said:
"Once more give me your hand, Mary, and now farewell. Will you sometimes think of me, and pray for me too, to your Redeemer?"
"Yes, yes, and you will not quite forget me, the poor cripple?"
"Certainly not, you good, kind girl! Perhaps we may some day meet again." With these words Antinous hurried down the hill and through the town to the Nile.
The moon had risen and was mirrored in the rough water. Just so had its image played upon the waves when Antinous had rescued Selene from the sea. The lad knew that Hadrian would be expecting him, still he did not seek his tent. A violent emotion had overpowered him; he restlessly paced up and down the river-bank rapidly reviewing in his memory the more prominent incidents of his past life. He seemed to hear again every word of the dialogue that had taken place yesterday between Hadrian and himself. Before his inward eye he saw once more his humble home in Bithynia, his mother, his brothers and sisters whom he should never see again. Once more he lived through the dreadful hour when he had deceived his beloved master and had been an incendiary. An overmastering dread fell upon him as he thought of Hadrian's wish to put him in the place of the man whom the prudent sovereign had chosen as his successor--a choice that was perhaps the direct outcome of his own crime. He, Antinous, who to-day could not think of the morrow, who always kept out of the way of the discourse of grave men because he found it so hard to follow their meaning, he who knew nothing but how to obey, he who was never happy but alone with his master and his dreaming, far from the bustle of the world--he, to be burdened with the purple, with anxiety, with a mountain-load of responsibility!
No, no; the idea was unheard-of--impossible! And yet Hadrian never gave up a wish he had once expressed in words. The future loomed before his soul like some overpowering foe. Suffering, unrest, and misfortune stared him in the face, turn which way he would.
What was the hideous fatality that threatened his sovereign? It was approaching, it must come if no one--aye, if no one should be found to stand between him and the impending blow, and to receive in his own breast--in his own heart, bared to receive the wound--the spear hurled by the vengeful god. And he--he, and he alone was the one who might do this.
The thought flashed into his mind like a sudden blaze of light; and if he should find the courage to devote himself to death for his dear master all his sins against him would be expiated; then--then--oh, how lovely a thought!--then might he not find entrance into the gates of that realm of bliss which Selene's prayers had opened to him? There he would see his mother again and his father, and by and bye his brothers and sisters--but now, at once in a few minutes Her whom he loved and who had trodden the ways of death before him.
An exquisite sense of hope such as he had never felt before flooded his soul. There lay the Nile--here was a boat. He gave it a strong push into the stream and with a powerful leap, as when hunting he had often sprung from rock to rock, he jumped into the boat. He had just seized an oar when Mastor, who had been desired by the Emperor to seek him, recognized him in the moonlight and desired him to return with him to the tents.
But Antinous did not obey. As he pushed out into the stream he called out:
"Greet my Lord from me--greet him lovingly, a thousand times, and tell him Antinous loved him more than his life. Fate demands a victim. The world cannot dispense with Hadrian, but Antinous is a mere nonentity, whom none will miss but Caesar, and for him Antinous flings himself into the jaws of death."
"Stay-stop! hapless boy, come back!" shouted the slave, and leaping into a boat he followed that of the Bithynian, which, impelled by strong and steady strokes, flew away into the current.
Mastor rowed with all his might, but he could not gain upon the boat he was pursuing. Thus in a wild race both reached the middle of the stream. There, the slave saw Antinous fling away his oar, and an instant later he heard Antinous call loudly on the name of Selene, and then, in helpless inactivity, he saw the lad glide into the waters, and the Nile swallowed in its flood the noblest and fairest of victims.
Chapter XXII
A night and a day had slipped away since the death of the Bithynian. Ships and boats from every part of the province had collected before Besa to seek for the body of the drowned youth, the shores swarmed with men, and cressets and torches had dimmed the moonlight on river and shore all through the night; but they had not yet succeeded in finding the body of the beautiful youth.
Hadrian had heard in what way Antinous had perished. He had required Mastor to repeat to him more than once the last words of his faithful companion and neither to add nor to omit a single syllable. Hadrian's accurate memory cherished them all and now he had sat till dawn and from dawn till the sun had reached the meridian, repeating them again and again to him self. He sat gloomily brooding and would neither eat nor drink. The misfortune which had threatened him had fallen--and what a grief was this! If indeed Fate would accept the anguish he now felt in the place of all other suffering it might have had in store for him he might look forward to years free from care, but he felt as though he would rather have spent the remainder of his existence in sorrow and misery with his Antinous by his side than enjoy, without him, all that men call happiness, peace and prosperity.
Sabina and her escort had arrived-a host of men; but he had strictly ordered that no one, not even his wife, was to be admitted to his presence. The comfort of tears was denied him, but his grief gripped him at the heart, clouded his brain and made hint so irritably sensitive that an unfamiliar voice, though even at a distance, disturbed him and made him angry.
The party who had arrived by water were not allowed to occupy the tents which had been pitched for them not far from his, because he desired to be alone, quite alone, with his anguish of spirit. Mastor, whom he had hitherto regarded rather a useful chattel than as a human creature, now grew nearer to him--had he not been the one witness of his darling's strange disappearance. Towards the close of this, the most miserable night he had ever known, the slave asked him whether he should not fetch the physician from the ships, he looked so pale; but Hadrian forbade it.
"If I could only cry like a woman," he said, "or like other fathers whose sons are snatched away by death, that would be the best remedy. You poor souls will have a bad time now, for the sun of my life has lost its light and the trees by the way-side have lost their verdure."
When he was alone once more he sat staring into vacancy and muttered to himself:
"All mankind should mourn with me for if I had been asked yesterday how perfect a beauty might be bestowed on one of their race I could have pointed proudly to you, my faithful boy and have said, 'Beauty like that of the gods.' Now the crown is cut off from the trunk of the palm and the maimed thing can only be ashamed of its deformity; and if all humanity were but one man it would look like one who has had his right eye torn out. I will not look on the monsters, lean and fat, that they may not spoil my taste for the true type! Oh faithful, lovable, beautiful boy! What a blind, mad fool have you been! And yet I cannot blame your madness. You have pierced my soul with the deepest thrust of all and yet I cannot even be angry with you. Superhuman! godlike was your faithful devotion. Aye, indeed, it was!" As he thus spoke he rose from his seat and went on resolutely and decidedly:
"Here I stretch out this my right hand-hear me, ye Immortals! Every city in the Empire shall raise an altar to Antinous, and the friend of whom you have robbed me I will make your equal and companion. Receive him tenderly, oh, ye undying rulers of the world! Which among you can boast of beauty greater than his? and which of you ever displayed so much goodness and faithfulness as your new associate?"
This vow seemed to have given Hadrian some comfort. For above half an hour he paced his tent with a firmer tread, then he desired that Heliodorus his secretary might be called.
The Greek wrote what his sovereign dictated. This was nothing less than that henceforth the world should worship a new divinity in the person of Antinous.
At noonday a messenger in breathless haste came to say that the body of the Bithynian had been found. Thousands flocked to see the corpse, and among them Balbilla, who had behaved like a distracted creature when she heard to what an end her idol had come. She had rushed up and down the river-bank, among the citizens and fishermen, dressed in black mourning robes and with her hair flying about her. The Egyptians had compared her to the mourning Isis seeking the body of her beloved husband, Osiris. She was beside herself with grief, and her companion implored her in vain to calm herself and remember her rank and her dignity as a woman. But Balbilla pushed her vehemently aside, and when the news was brought that Nile had yielded up his prey she rushed on foot to see the body, with the rest of the crowd.
Her name was in every mouth, everyone knew that she was the Empress' friend, and so she was willingly and promptly obeyed when she commanded the bearers who carried the bier on which the recovered body lay to set it down and to lift up the sheet which shrouded it. Pale and trembling, she went up to it and gazed down at the drowned man; but only for a moment could she endure the sight. She turned away with a shudder, and desired the bearers to go on. When the funeral procession had disappeared and she could no longer hear the shrill wailing of the Egyptian women, and no longer see them streaking their breast, head, and hair with damp earth and flinging up their arms wildly in the air, she turned to her companion and said calmly: "Now, Claudia, let us go home."
In the evening at supper she appeared dressed in black, like Sabina and all the rest of the suite, but she was calm and ready with an answer to every observation.
Pontius had travelled with them from Thebes to Besa, and she had spared him nothing that could punish him for his long absence, and had mercilessly compelled him to listen to all her verses on Antinous.
He meanwhile had been perfectly cool about it, and had criticised her poems exactly as if they had referred not to a man of flesh and blood but to some statue or god. This epigram he would praise, the next he would disparage, a third condemn. Her confession that she had been in the habit of complimenting Antinous with flowers and fruit he heard with a shrug of the shoulders, saying pleasantly: "Give him as many presents as you will; I know that you expect no gifts from your divinity in return for your sacrifices."
His words had surprised and delighted her. Pontius always understood her, and did not deserve that she should wound him. So she let him gaze into her soul, and told him how much she loved Antinous so long as he was absent. Then she laughed and confessed that she was perfectly indifferent to him as soon as they were together.
When, after the Bithynian's death, she lost all self-control he simply let her alone, and begged Claudia to do the same.
The same day that the body was found it was burnt on a pile of precious wood. Hadrian had refused to see it when he learnt that the death by drowning had terribly distorted the lad's features.
A few hours after the ashes of the Bithynian had been collected and brought in a golden vase to Hadrian, the Nile fleet was once more under sail, this time with the Emperor on board one of the boats, to proceed without farther halt to Alexandria.
Hadrian remained alone with only his slave and his secretary on the boat that conveyed him; but he several times sent to Pontius to desire him to come from the ship on which he was and visit him on his. He liked to hear the architect's deep voice, and discussed with him the plans which Pontius had sketched for his mausoleum in Rome and the monument to his lost favorite which he proposed to have erected from designs of his own in the large city which he intended should stand on the site of the little town of Besa, and which he had already named Antinoe. But these discussions only took up a limited number of hours, and then the architect was at liberty to return to Sabina's boat, on which Balbilla also lived.
A few days after they had quitted Besa he was sitting alone with the poetess on the deck of the Nile boat which, borne by the current and propelled by a hundred oars, was rapidly and steadily nearing its destination. Ever since the death of the hapless favorite Pontius had avoided mentioning him to her. She had now become as observant and as talkative as before, and in her eyes there even shone at times a ray of the old sunny gayety of her nature. The architect thought he comprehended the characteristic change in her sentiments, and would not allude to the cause of the violent but transient fever under which she had suffered. "What did you discuss with Caesar to-day?" asked Balbilla of her friend. Pontius looked down at the ground and considered whether he could venture to utter the name of Antinous before the poetess. Balbilla observed his hesitation and said:
"Speak on; I can hear anything. That folly is past and over."
"Caesar is at work at the plans for a new town to be built and called Antinoe, and a sketch for a monument to his ill-fated favorite," said Pontius. "He will not accept any help, but I have to teach him to discriminate what is possible from what is impossible."
"Ah! he is always gazing at the stars and you look steadily at the road on which you are walking."
"An architect can make no use of anything that is unsteady or that has no firm foundation."
"That is a hard saying, Pontius. It is true that during the last few weeks I have behaved like a fool."
"I only wish that every tottering structure could recover its balance as quickly and as certainly as you! Antinous was a demigod for beauty, and a good faithful fellow besides."
"Do not speak of him any more," exclaimed Balbilla shuddering. "He looked dreadful. Can you forgive me for my conduct?"
"I never was angry with you."
"But I lost your esteem."
"No, Balbilla. Beauty, which is dear to us all, and which the Muse has kissed, attracted your easily moved poet's soul and it fluttered off at random. Let it fly! My friend's true womanly nature was never carried away by it. She stands on a rock, that I am sure of."
"How good and kind in you to say so--too good, too kind! for I am a feeble creature, turned by every breeze that blows, a vain little fool who does not know one hour what she may do the next, a spoilt child that likes best to do the thing it ought to leave undone, a weak girl who finds a pleasure in doing battle with men. For all in all--"
"For all in all a darling of the gods who to-day can climb the rocks with a firm step and to-morrow lies dreaming in the sunshine among flowers--for all in all a nature that has no equal and which lacks nothing, nothing whatever that constitutes a true woman excepting--"
"I know what I lack," cried Balbilla. "A strong man on whom I can depend, whose warnings I can respect. You, you are that man; you and none other, for as soon as I feel you by my side I find it difficult to do what I know to be wrong. Here I am, Pontius! Will you have me with all my moods, with all my faults and weaknesses?"
"Balbilla!" cried the architect, beside himself with heartfelt agitation and surprise, and he pressed her hand long and fervently to-his lips.
"You will? You will take me? You will never leave me, you will warn, support me and protect me?"
"Till my last day, till death, as my child, as the apple of my eye, as--dare I say it and believe it?--as my love, my second self, my wife."
"Oh! Pontius, Pontius," she exclaimed, grasping his broad, right hand in both her own. "This hour restores to the orphaned Balbilla, father and mother and gives her besides the husband that she loves."
"Mine, mine!" cried the architect. "Immortal gods! During half a lifetime I have never found time, in the midst of labor and fatigue, to indulge in the joys of love and now you give me with interest and compound interest the treasure you have so long withheld."
"How can you, a reasonable man, so over-estimate the value of your possession? But you shall find some good in it. Life can no longer be conceived of as worth having without the possessor."
"And to me it has so long seemed empty and cold without you, you strange, unique, incomparable creature."
"But why did you not come sooner, and so give me no time to behave like a fool?"
"Because, because," said Pontius, gravely, "such a flight towards the sun seemed to me too bold; because I remember that my father's father--"
"He was the noblest man that the ancestor of my house attracted to its greatness."
"He was--consider it duly at this moment--he was your grandfather's slave."
"I know it, but I also know, that there is not a man on earth who is worthier of freedom than you are, or whom I could ask as humbly as I ask you: Take me, poor, foolish Balbilla, to be your wife, guide me and make of me whatever you can, for your own honor and mine."
The brief Nile voyage brought days and hours of the highest happiness to Balbilla and her lover. Before the fleet sailed into the Mareotic harbor of Alexandria, Pontius revealed his happy secret to the Emperor. Hadrian smiled for the first time since the death of his favorite, and desired the architect to bring Balbilla to him.
"I was wrong in my interpretation of the Pythian oracle," said he, as he laid the poetess's hand in that of Pontius. "Would you like to know how it runs Pontius--do not prompt me, my child. Anything that I have read through once or twice I never forget. Pythia said:
'That which thou boldest most precious and dear shall be torn from thy keeping, And from the heights of Olympus, down shalt thou fall in the dust; Still the contemplative eye discerns under mutable sand-drifts Stable foundations of stone, marble and natural rock.'
"You have chosen well girl. The oracle guaranteed you a safe road to tread through life. As to the dust of which it speaks, it exists no doubt in a certain sense, but this hand wields the broom that will sweep it away. Solemnize your marriage in Alexandria as soon as you will, but then come to Rome, that is the only condition I impose. A thing I always have at heart is the introduction of new and worthy members into the class of Knights, for it is in that way alone that its fallen dignity can be restored. This ring, my Pontius, gives you the rank of eques, and such a man as you are, the husband of Balbilla and the friend of Caesar may no doubt by-and-bye find a seat in the Senate. What this generation can produce in stone and marble, my mausoleum shall bear witness to. Have you altered the plan of the bridge?"