Inside covers:
BULWER LYTTON, by the general verdict of his contemporaries, was in the first rank of Victorian novelists, and THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII was considered to be his greatest work.
He had breadth and vigour of imagination, vivacity and originality of conception, and a fine sense of dramatic climax. He could construct a good story, and tell it well.
His defect, on which the critics of his own day were not silent, and which is more antipathetic to the literary standards of the succeeding century, was that his vocabulary was luxuriant as his imagination, and much less artistically controlled.
This defect, which was natural to the quality of his genius, was encouraged by the insistence of the libraries of his time that a novel must be of full three-volume length. Authors gave that which the trade required, and readers became expect in glancing rapidly over redundant matter, without resentment, and without prejudice to their appreciation of the quality of that which lay before and behind it.
It has been the aim of this redaction to adapt a great novel to the inclination of a later century, without detriment to its integrity. In this process, it has been considerably shortened, but to describe it as abridged would be to use a misleading term. No incident has been omitted: no angle of presentation has been obscured. Conversations are sometimes terser: diffuse reflections are sometimes curtailed, but only where mutilation of content was not involved.
Bulwer Lytton's strength was in the quality of his imagination: his weakness became most evident in the lyrics he wrote with such fatal facility. These have been retained, for they are pertinent to the narrative, and where excessive length has been reduced, they have not been mutilated by omission of stanzas, but reconstructed in such a way that the original thought and imagery remain entire.
It is hoped that this treatment will have adapted a great work of imagination to the fashion of a succeeding century, without obscuring - perhaps even more fully exposing - the genius which gave it birth.
It has been the redactors aim that even one already familiar with the original should miss nothing, nor be aware of difference, either in manner or style.
BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
BOOK THREE
BOOK FOUR
BOOK FIVE
BOOK ONE
Two gentleman of Pompeii
Hallo, Diomed! Shall I see you at Glaucus' supper tonight?"
Diomed, a man of middle age and portly frame, paused at this greeting from one of shorter stature and fewer years, who wore his tunic in the loose effeminate folds which indicated the coxcomb as well as the gentleman of his time.
"Alas, no, dear Clodius! I am not invited. A scurvy trick from one whose table is said to be the best in Pompeii."
"Which is more than the truth. The meats may be good, but the wine is never enough for me."
"Well, there may be reason for that. Wine is dear, if it be of the quality which must be served by one of his wealth - or that which it is said to be. He may be poorer than you suppose."
"Then we must use our time while the sesterces last. With another year there will be another Glaucus to find."
"And besides, he is fond of the dice."
"He is fond of all pleasures. And while he is fond of giving suppers, we should be fond of him."
"So you should. . . But some evening you must sup with me, if you will. My reservoir has lampreys you might approve. And I would ask Pansa to meet you.
"I should be pleased. You need have no state for me! But the day wanes. I must hurry on to the baths. And you?"
"To the quæstor. I have business of state. And then to the Temple of Isis. Vale!"
Diomed bustled on, and Clodius strolled slowly in the opposite direction. "An illbred, ostentatious fellow," he thought. "Does he suppose we forget he is the son of a freedman, because we eat at his house? Were not wealthy plebians sent from heaven for spendthrift nobles to win their money, and share their feasts?"
He strolled on to the Via Domitiana, now crowded with chariots and pedestrians, and exhibiting the gay and animated exuberance of life and motion which could still be seen in Naples in later days.
The bells of the cars, gliding rapidly past each other, jingled merrily in his ears, as he smiled and nodded to the occupants of those which were most elegant or fantastic, for in Pompeii no idler was better known.
"Hello, Clodius! How have you slept on your good fortune?" a young man in a chariot of most fastidious and graceful fashion cried in a pleasant musical voice.
His horses, driven by a charioteer at his side, were of the rarest Parthian breed, with slender limbs that seemed to disdain the ground, and yet became instantly motionless at a touch of their driver's hand. They stood as statue-still as though they were one of the breathing wonders of Praxiteles.
Their chariot's surface of bronze was wrought in the still exquisite workmanship of Greece, with reliefs of the Olympian games.
Its owner wore no toga, for, at this period, the old patrician garment was ridiculed by the leaders of fashion, but his tunic glowed with the richest colour of Tyrian dye. Its buckles sparkled with emeralds. The chain of gold which fell from his neck was clasped by a serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendant a large signet ring of elaborate and most exquisite workmanship The loose sleeves of the tunic were fringed with gold, and its waist was confined in a girdle wrought in arabesque designs, which served in lieu of pockets for the reception of stilus and tablets, handkerchief and purse.
The young man himself was of that slender and beautiful symmetry from which the sculptors of Athens chose their models. His Grecian origin betrayed itself in his light but clustering locks, and the perfect harmony of his features.
"My dear Glaucus," Clodius replied, "I rejoice to see that your losses have affected you so lightly. Your face shines with happiness like a glory, as though inspired by Apollo. Anyone who observed us might think that you had been the winner, and I had lost."
"And shall we change our spirits because dull metal has left our hands? By Venus, no! While there are chaplets to crown our hair, and while the cithara sounds in unsated ears - while the blood in our veins is as lightsome as Lydia's smile, time itself is but the treasurer of our joys. . . You will remember that you are supping with me tonight?"
"Who will forget when Glaucus invites?"
"But where are you going now?"
"I should be for the baths, but I must wait for the opening hour."
"Well, I will go with you. The chariot can return." He stroked the nearer horse, which responded with a neigh of pleasure, and lifted ears. "So, my Phylias, it shall be a holiday for you today. . . Clodius, is he not beautiful?"
"Worthy of Phoebus. . . Or of Claucus," the noble parasite replied.
Of a blind flower girl; and of the woman whom
Glaucus loved
The two young men sauntered through the streets, talking idly of the matters that came to mind.
They were in the quarter which was bright with the gayest shops, having open interiors radiant with the gaudy yet harmonious colours of frescoes which varied continually in fancy and in design. They showed shelves of marble, bearing vases of wine and oil. They had purple awnings, covering seats which invited the weary to rest, and the indolent to lounge. Country girls were stationed at short intervals offering baskets of blushing fruit and alluring flowers. Fountains cast up sparkling showers that moistened the dry heat of the summer air. The gay troups that gathered round the more attractive shops were robed in bright colours, among which the Tyrian purple was most frequently seen. The saves that passed at a quicker pace bore on their heads buckets of bronze, which had been cast in most graceful shapes. The whole scene was one of glowing and vivacious excitement, to which the Athenian spirit of Glaucus responded joyously.
"Talk no more of Rome," he said to Clodius. "Pleasure is too stately and ponderous in those mighty walls. Even in the Golden House of Nero - in the palace of Titus - there is a dullness of magnificence at which the eye aches and the spirit droops. But here we have brilliance of luxury without the lassitude of its pomp."
"That is why you make your summer retreat here?"
"Yes. I prefer it even to Baire. I grant its charm; but the pedants who resort there, and weigh out their pleasures by the drachm!"
"Yet you consort with the learned here, and your house is littered with Homer and Æschylus - with epic and drama."
"So I do. But these Romans mimic my Athenian ancestors in such a ponderous way. Even at the chase, there will be a slave carrying a Plato, so that they may not lose their time should the boar be lost; there will be some droning freedman reading Cicero's De Officiis even while the dancing girls sway before them with all the allurements of Persian art."
"Pleasure and study are matters which should not mix. . . Oh, my Clodius! it was only the other day that I paid a visit to Pliny. He was sitting writing in his summer house, while an unfortunate slave played on the tibia. And there was his nephew nodding his conceited little head in time to the music while he was reading Thucydides' account of the plague! The puppy saw nothing incongruous in mixing a lovesong with those loathsome details."
"Well, there isn't much difference."
"So I told him; but he was too much of a coxcomb to take the jest. He answered gravely that it was only the insensate ear that the music pleased, while the book elevated the heart! 'Ah!' wheezed the fat uncle, 'my boy is quite an Athenian, mixing the utile with the dulce. O Minerva! How I laughed in my sleeve."
Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his countrymen, he affected to sympathize, partly because he was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among the dissolute young Romans to affect contempt for the very birth which, in reality, made them so arrogant: it was the mode to imitate the Greeks, and yet to laugh at their own clumsy imitation. . .
Beneath the porticos of a light and peaceful temple where three streets met, a young girl stood, with a basket of flowers on her right arm, and a small three-stringed instrument of music in her left hand. The progress of the two friends would have been impeded by the crowd that had collected round her, even had their own inclination not been of the same kind.
"It is the blind Thessalian," Glaucus said. "She has a voice which it is always a pleasure to hear."
As he spoke, she began to sing, in a strain that was sweet and clear, and suited to the simplicity of the words she sang:
"A bunch of violets, sweet Nydia," said Glaucus, dropping a number of small coins into the basket, as he chose his flowers.
The blind girl started at the sound of the Athenian's voice. She blushed vividly, as she answered in a low voice: "So you are returned," and then, as though speaking to herself, and unconscious of those around who were also selecting flowers and dropping sesterces into the basket: "Glaucus has returned."
"Yes," he said. "I have been here no more than a few days. I shall want you for my garden again. I should have been sending for you. No one else shall arrange my flowers."
She smiled joyfully at the words, but did not answer, while he withdrew from the crowd.
"She is a client of yours, this child?"
"Yes. I like her voice. And she is from Thessaly."
"The witches' country."
"Oh, I find every woman a witch! And in Pompeii every beardless face - "
"And here is one of the fairest coming. - Old Diomed's daughter. The wealthy Julia!"
As Clodius spoke, a young lady, with a veil over her face, and followed by two female slaves, approached them, on her way to the baths.
"Fair Julia," Clodius said, "we salute thee," but, as she half-raised her veil, exposing a bold Roman profile, cheeks over whose natural olive art had laid a fairer and softer rose, and the brightness of full dark eyes, it was upon Glaucus that they were turned.
"So you are back!" she said. "And has Glaucus forgotten his friends of a year ago?"
"Julia," he replied, in a tone as light as her own, "Zeus does not allow even Lethe to flow continuously, and Aphrodite knows no Lethe at all."
"Fair words you have never lacked."
"Who would, when the object is so fair?"
Julia turned to Clodius. "We shall hope to see you both before long at my father's villa."
"The day on which we visit you will be marked with a white stone."
The girl dropped her veil, and went on without further words, but her last glance had been for the Athenian; one of affected timidity, which had suggested both tenderness and reproach.
Glaucus said: "She is surely a handsome girl."
"You would have said that a year ago in a warmer tone."
"Yes. I was dazzled by what I took for a gem. I know better now."
"Nay, all women are alike at heart. Choose a fair face and a handsome dower, and what more can you hope to have?"
It was still somewhat too soon for the baths to open, and the two friends turned toward the nearby beach, and the sight of the open sea - a sea which, at that time of year, on that delicious coast, seemed to have renounced its prerogative of terror, as its quiet surface reflected the loveliness of the deep-blue sky.
Pompeii at this period was a miniature of the civilisation to which it belonged. Its shining bay was crowded with merchant vessels, gilded pleasure galleys, and the fishing-boats of the town.
In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its arena, its energy and corruption, its refinement and vice, it was a model of the great world-empire of its time, destined to be destroyed in a way which would avert destruction, and become a revelation to later ages.
The two friends seated themselves on a little rock that rose from the level sand. They were silent for a time, subdued to reverie by the sunlit scene.
Clodius shaded his eyes from the burning sun, while his mind wandered into calculations of the gains of the previous week, from which he was roused at last by the voice of Glaucus: "Tell me, Clodius, have you ever been in love?"
"Yes. Many times."
"It is said that those who have loved often have loved never. They have worshipped counterfeit gods."
"Well, there are worse things than they."
"I don't say you are wrong. I adore the shadow of Eros. But I adore himself more."
"Will you tell me you are really in love? Do you neglect your meals? Do you avoid the theatre? Do you write elegies? Certainly, if you are, you dissemble well!"
"Oh, I have not gone that far! Rather I say with Tibellus:
"But I am not in love. Though I might be if its object were in my reach."
"Then I can guess who that object is. It is Diomed's daughter. But she adores you, and makes no effort to hide it. And I say again that she is handsome and rich. She will bind her husband's doorposts with golden fillets."
"But I am not for sale. She is handsome. I grant you that. I do not say, at one time - had she not been a freedman's daughter - but no - her manners are not those which a maid should have - and her mind has no culture but that of which pleasure will make pursuit."
"You are ungenerous. Who then is the virgin that you approve?"
"If I knew that!. . . But I will tell you the tale. I was in Naples some months ago, and I entered the temple of Minerva to offer prayers - both for myself and for the city on which Pallas no longer smiles. It was silent and empty. I imagined myself to be quite alone; but I was startled in the midst of the darkness by a deep sigh."
"I looked round, and a girl was behind me. She had raised her veil, as her prayer required. Our eyes met. Never have I seen a more lovely face. It was sad, but with an expression that increased its beauty. I saw tears in her eyes, and I guessed that she was an Athenian also, and that grief for our fallen city was in her heart as it was in mine, as we had prayed together."
"I asked her gently: 'Are you not also of Athens?'
"She half drew her veil as I spoke, but answered softly: 'I was born in Naples; but it was my parents' home.'
"I felt as though I had known her long as we stood together in that temple of the goddess of our fallen city. I followed her as she went out, and was about to ask her where she dwelt, when a youth, who, from his appearance, may have been her brother, met her on the temple steps. She turned to me to say farewell, and, as she did so, we were separated by the crowd."
"She would not leave my mind, and I should have sought her on the next day, but that I had letters recalling me to Athens in haste, for a suit had been brought by my relatives which attacked my inheritance. When that litigation was happily ended, I returned to Naples, and had enquiries made through the whole city, but they were vain, and I came to Pompeii to distract my mind by its pleasures from vain regret."
Clodius did not reply, for there came a sound of steps which approached with the dignified slowness natural to him who made them, and they looked round upon a man, the Egyptian Arbaces, whom they both knew.
He was scarcely in his fortieth year, tall and thin, but of a nervous sinewy frame.
He had the dark skin of his race, and his features, which were otherwise somewhat of a Grecian cast, were distinguished by an aquiline nose, and hard, visible bones which denied the graceful contours that were often retained, even through years of manhood, by the ancient Greeks. His eyes were large and black, and a deep, thoughtful, half melancholy calm was in their commanding gaze.
Furtively, both the young men made with their fingers the sign which protects from the evil eye.
"It must indeed be a beautiful scene," the Egyptian said, "which draws the gay Clodius, or Glaucus the all-admired, from the crowded thoroughfares of the city."
"Are the attractions of Nature so much the less?" Glaucus asked.
"To the dissipated, yes."
"An austere reply, but scarcely a wise one. Pleasure delights in contrasts."
"So say the young philosophers of the Garden, mistaking lassitude for meditation. They think, because they are sated with others, that they know the delights of loneliness. When Cynthia revealed herself to Endymion, it was after a day passed, not among the feverish haunts of man, but in the stillness of mountain ways "
"It is a beautiful simile," Glaucus answered, "but most unjust. You forget that youth is of a tireless vitality. As for myself, I have never experienced satiety for a single moment. '
The Egyptian received this reply in silence, though with a smile of such blighting coldness that even the unimaginative Clodius felt an inward chill.
But after a pause, Arbaces added, in a softer and more melancholy voice than he had used before: "Yet, Glaucus, you may do well to enjoy the hour that is yours. We are both wanderers from our native lands and our fathers' ashes. What is there left for you but pleasures, or for me but regret?"
"He is a strange man," Glaucus said, as he passed on. "But cold though he may seem, there are other orgies than those of Osiris in his gloomy mansion, or scandal lies, as it often will."
An evening revel
Heaven had given to Glaucus every blessing but one: it had given him beauty, health, fortune, genius, illustrious descent, a heart of fire, a mind of poetry; but it had denied him the heritage of freedom. He was born in Athens, the subject of Rome. Succeeding early to an ample inheritance, He had indulged that inclination for travel so natural to the young, and had drunk deep of the intoxicating draught of pleasure amidst the gorgeous luxuries of the imperial court.
He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a man of imagination, youth, fortune, and talents readily becomes when you deprive him of the incentive of ambition. His retreat in Pompeii - alas! the colours are faded now, the walls stripped of their paintings! - its main beauty, its elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet when first given once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder, did its minute and glowing decorations create - its paintings - its mosaics! Passionately enamoured of poetry and the drama, which recalled the wit and heroism of his race, that fairy mansion was adorned with representations of Æschylus and Homer. And antiquaries, who resolve taste to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor, and still (though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom, as they first named in mistake, the disburied house of the Athenian Glaucus "The House of the Dramatic Poet".
The patrician residence of the period was usually entered by a small passage, to a hall sometimes with (but more frequently without) the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall were doors communicating with several bedchambers, the best of these being usually appropriated to country visitors. At the extremity of the hall, on either side to the right and left, if the house were large, there were two small recesses, generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the tesselated pavement of the hall was invariably a square shallow reservoir for rainwater, which was admitted by an aperture in the roof above, which could be covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar sanctity in ancient eyes, were sometimes (but at Pompeii more rarely than at Rome) placed images of the household gods - the hospitable hearth, often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated to the Lares, was at Pompeii almost invariably formed by a movable brazier; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal so firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its position.
In this atrium, clients and visitors of inferior rank were usually received. In the wealthier houses, a slave peculiarly devoted to the service of the hall was invariably retained, whose rank among his fellow-slaves was high and important. The reservoir in the centre must have been rather a dangerous ornament, but the centre of the hall was like the grass-plot of a college, and interdicted to the passers to and fro, who found ample space in the margin. Opposite the entrance, at the other end of the hall, was an apartment in which the pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, and the walls covered with elaborate paintings. Here were kept the records of the family, or those of any public office that had been filled by the owner; on one side was often a dining-room, or triclinium; on the other, a cabinet, containing whatever curiosities were deemed most rare and costly; and invariably there was a small passage for the slaves to cross to the further parts of the house without passing the apartments thus mentioned.
These rooms all opened on to a square or oblong colonnade. If the house were small, its boundary ceased with this colonnade; in which case its centre, however diminutive, was ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a garden, and adorned with vases of flowers, placed upon pedestals: while, under the colonnade, to the right and left, were doors, admitting to bedrooms, to a second triclinium, or eating-room (for the Romans generally appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one for summer, and one for winter - or perhaps, one for ordinary, the other for festive, occasions): and if the owner had literary proclivities, a cabinet, dignified by the name of library - for a very small room was sufficient to contain the few rolls of papyrus which would be deemed a notable collection of books.
At the end of the colonnade was generally the kitchen. Supposing the house were large, it did not end with the colonnade, and the centre thereof was not in that case a garden, but might be adorned with a fountain or basin for fish; and at its end was generally another eating room, on either side of which were bedrooms, and, perhaps, a picture-saloon. These apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade, though usually longer than the first. This was the proper vivarium, or garden, being commonly adorned with a fountain, or statues, and a profusion of gay flowers: at its extreme end was the gardener's house; on either side, beneath the colonnade, were sometimes, if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.
At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being built only above a small part of the house, and containing rooms for the slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of Rome, which generally contained the principal eating-room on the second floor. The rooms themselves were ordinarily of small size, but the suite seen at once from the entrance must have had a very imposing effect: the hall richly paved and painted, the graceful colonnade, and (if the house extended farther) the opposite banquet-room and the garden, which closed the view with some gushing fount or marble statue.
Where the garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating a far perspective - a metricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted, with a complacent pride in its ingenuity.
The house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest and one of the most adorned and finished, of all the private mansions of Pompeii. It was entered by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which the image of a dog in mosaic, with the well-known Cave canem - Beware the dog. On either side was a chamber of some size; for the interior part of the house not being large enough to contain the two great divisions of private and public apartments, these two rooms were set apart for the reception of visitors who neither by rank nor familiarity were entitled to admission to the penetralia of the mansion.
Beyond the vestibule, was an atrium, that, when first discovered, was rich in paintings, which can now be seen in the Neapolitan Museum, depicting the partings of Achilles and Briseis. Who does not acknowledge the force, the vigour, and beauty, employed in delineating the forms and faces of Achilles and the immortal slave!
On one side of the atrium, a small staircase admitted to the apartment for the slaves on the second floor; there also were two or three small bedrooms, the walls of which portrayed the rape of Europa, the battle of the Amazons, and other subjects of traditional art.
Beyond was a reception room, across which, at either end, hung rich draperies of Tyrian purple. On the walls were depicted a poet reading his verses to his friends; and in the pavement was inserted a small and most exquisite mosaic, typical of the instructions given by the director of the stage to his comedians.
Beyond this saloon was the colonnade; and here the mansion ended. From each of the seven columns that adorned this court hung festoons of garlands; the centre, supplying the place of a garden, bloomed with the rarest flowers placed in vases of white marble, that were supported on pedestals. At the left hand of this small garden was a diminutive fane, resembling one of those small chapels placed at the side of roads in Catholic countries, and dedicated to the Penates; before it stood a bronze tripod: to the left of the colonnade were two small cubicula, or bedrooms; to the right was the triclinium, in which the guests were now assembled.
This charming apartment opened upon the fragrant garden. Round the table of citron wood, highly polished and delicately wrought with silver arabesques, were placed three couches, which were still more common at Pompeii than the semicircular seat that had grown lately into fashion at Rome; and on these couches of bronze, studded with richer metals, were laid thick quiltings covered with elaborate embroidery, and yielding luxuriously. It was here, on the evening of the day with which we are dealing, that Glaucus received his friends.
"Well, I must own," said the ædile Pansa, "that your house, though scarcely larger than a case for one's fibulæ, is a gem of its kind. How beautifully painted is that parting of Achilles and Briseis! - what a style! - what heads!"
"Praise from Pansa is indeed valuable on such subjects," said Clodius gravely. "Why, the paintings on his walls! - Ah! there is, indeed, the hand of a Zeuxis!"
"You flatter me, my Clodius; indeed you do," replied the ædile, who was celebrated through Pompeii for having the worst paintings in the world; for he was patriotic, and patronized none but Pompeians. "You flatter me; but there is something pretty - Ædepol, yes - in the colours, to say nothing of the design; - and then for the kitchen, my friends - ah! that was all my fancy."
"What is the design?" said Glaucus. "I have not seen your kitchen, though I have often witnessed the excellence of its cheer."
"A cook, my Athenian - a cook sacrificing the trophies of his skill on the alter of Vesta, with a beautiful muræna (taken from the life) on a spit at a distance; - there is some invention there!"
At that instant the slaves appeared, bearing a tray covered with the first preparative initia of the feast. Amidst delicious figs, fresh herbs strewed with snow, anchovies, and eggs, were ranged small cups of diluted wine sparingly mixed with honey. At these were placed on the table, young slaves bore round to each of the five guests the silver basin of perfumed water, and napkins edged with a purple fringe. But the ædile ostentatiously drew forth his own napkin, which was not, indeed, of so fine a linen, but in which the fringe was twice as broad, and wiped his hands with the parade of a man who felt he was calling for admiration.
A splendid nappa that of yours," said Clodius. "Why, the fringe is as broad as a girdle!"
"A trifle, my Clodius! A trifle! They tell me this stripe is the latest fashion at Rome; but Glaucus attends to these things more than I."
"Be propitious, O Bacchus!" said Glaucus, inclining reverentially to a beautiful image of the god placed in the centre of the table, at the corners of which stood the Lares and the salt-holders. The guests followed the prayer, and then, sprinkling the wine on the table, they performed the wonted libation.
This over, the convivialists reclined themselves on the couches, and the business of the hour commenced.
"May this cup be my last!" said the young Sallust, as the table, cleared of its first stimulants, was now loaded with the substantial part of the entertainment, and the ministering slave poured forth to him a brimming cyathus - "May this cup be my last, but it is the best wine I have drunk at Pompeii."
"Bring hither the amphora," said Glaucus, "and read its date and its character."
The slave hastened to inform the party that the scroll fastened to the cork betokened its birth from Chios, and its age a ripe fifty years.
"How deliciously the snow has cooled it!" said Pansa.
"It is just enough."
"It is like the experience of a man who has cooled his pleasures sufficiently to give them a double zest," exclaimed Sallust.
"It is like a woman's 'No'," added Glaucus: "it denies to increase desire."
"When is our next wild-beast fight?" said Clodius to Pansa.
"It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August," answered Pansa: "on the day after the Vulcanalia - we must have a lovely young lion for the occasion."
"Whom shall we get for him to eat?" asked Clodius. "Alas! there is a great scarcity of criminals. You must positively find some innocent or other to condemn to the lion, Pansa!"
"Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late," replied the ædile gravely. "It was a most infamous law which forbade us to send our own slaves to the beasts. Not to do what we like with our own! It is an infringement on the rights of property."
"It was different in republican days," sighed Sallust.
"And this pretended mercy to the slaves is a disappointment to the whole people. How they love to see a good tough battle between a man and a lion! And it may all be lost (if the gods don't send us a good criminal soon) through this cursed law!"
"What can be worse policy," said Clodius, sententiously, "than to interfere with the amusements of the people?"
"Well, thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present," said Sallust.
He was a tyrant indeed; he shut up our amphitheatre for ten years."
"I wonder it did not create a rebellion," said Sallust.
"It very nearly did," returned Pansa, with his mouth full of wild boar.
Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a flourish of flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish.
"Ah! what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my Glaucus?" cried young Sallust, with sparkling eyes.
Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life except eating - perhaps he had exhausted all the others: yet he had some talent and a disposition of some amiability.
"I know its face, by Pollux!" cried Pansa. "It is an Ambracian kid."
"I had hoped," said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, "to have procured you some oysters from Britain; but the winds that were so cruel to Cæsar have forbid us those delicacies."
"Are they in truth so delicious?" asked Lepidus, loosening to a yet more luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic.
"Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the flavour; they want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But at some, no supper is complete without them."
"The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all," said Sallust. "They produce an oyster!"
"I wish they could produce us a gladiator," said the ædile, whose provident mind was musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.
"By Pallas!" cried Glaucus, as his favourite slave crowned his streaming locks with a new chaplet, "I love these wild spectacles well enough when beasts fight beasts; but when a man, one with bones and blood like ours, is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too horrid. The yells of the populace seem to me more dire than the voices of the Furies chasing Orestes. I rejoice that there is so little chance of that bloody exhibition for our next show!"
The ædile shrugged his shoulders. The young Sallust, who was thought the best-natured man in Pompeii, stared in surprise. The graceful Lepidus, who rarely spoke for fear of disturbing his features, ejaculated "Hercle!" The parasite Clodius muttered "Ædepol!" and the sixth banqueter, who was the umbra of Clodius, and whose duty it was to echo his richer friend, when he could not praise him - the parasite of a parasite - muttered also "Ædepol!"
"Well, you are used to these spectacles; we Greeks are more merciful."
"The kid is excellent," said Sallust. The slave, whose duty it was to carve, and who valued himself on his science, had just performed that office on the kid to the sound of music, his knife keeping time, beginning with a low tenor and accomplishing the arduous feat amidst a magnificent diapason.
"Your cook is, of course, from Sicily?" Pansa asked.
"Yes, of Syracuse."
"I will play you for him," said Clodius. "We will have a game between the courses."
"Better that sort of game, certainly, than a beast fight; but I cannot stake my Sicilian - you have nothing so precious to stake me in return."
"My Phillida - my beautiful dancing-girl!"
"I never buy woman," said the Greek, carelessly rearranging his chaplet.
The musicians, stationed in the portico without, who had commenced their office with the kid, now directed the melody into a softer and gayer strain; they chanted that song of Horace beginning "Persicos odi," impossible to translate, which they imagined applicable, to a feast that, effeminate as it may seem, was simple enough for the gorgeous revelry of the time.
"Ah, good old Horace!" said Sallust, compassionately; "He sang well of feasts and girls, but not like our modern poets."
"The immortal Fulvius, for instance," said Clodius.
"Ah, Fulvius, the immortal!" said the umbra.
"And Spuræna; and Caius Mutius, who wrote three epics in a year - could Horace do that, or Virgil either?" said Lepidus. "Those old poets all fell into the mistake of copying sculpture instead of painting. Simplicity and repose - that was their notion; but we moderns have fire, and passion, and energy - we never sleep, we imitate the colours of painting. its life, and its action. Immortal Fulvius!"
"By the way," said Sallust, "have you seen the new ode by Spuræna, in honour of our Egyptian Isis? It is magnificent - the true religious fervour."
"Isis seems a favourite divinity at Pompeii," said Glaucus.
"Yes!" said Pansa, "she is exceedingly in repute just at this moment; her statue has been uttering the most remarkable oracles. I am not superstitious, but I must confess that she has more than once assisted me materially in my magistracy with her advice. Her priests are so pious, too! None of your gay proud ministers of Jupiter and Fortune: they walk barefoot, eat no meat, and pass the greater part of the night in solitary devotion!"
"An example to our other priesthoods, indeed! - Jupiter's temple wants reforming sadly," said Lepidus, who was a great reformer for all but himself.
"They say that Arbaces the Egyptian has imparted some most solemn mysteries to the priests of Isis," observed Sallust.
"He boasts his descent from the race of Rameses, and declares that in his family the secrets of remotest antiquity are preserved."
"He certainly possesses the gift of the evil eye," said Clodius. "If ever I come upon that Medusa front without the previous charm, I am sure to lose a favourite horse, or throw the canes nine times running."
"The last would be indeed a miracle!" said Sallust gravely.
"How mean you, Sallust?" returned the gamester, with a flushed brow.
"I mean, what you would leave me if I played often with you; and that is - nothing."
Clodius answered only by a smile of disdain.
"If Arbaces were not so rich," said Pansa, with a stately air, "I should stretch my authority a little, and inquire into the truth of the report which calls him an astrologer and a sorcerer. Agrippa, when ædile of Rome, banished all such terrible citizens. But it is the duty of an ædile to protect the rich!"
"What think you of this new sect, which I am told has even a few proselytes in Pompeii, these followers of the Hebrew God - Christus?"
"Oh, mere speculative visionaries," said Clodius: "they have not a single gentleman amongst them; their proselytes are poor, insignificant, ignorant people!"
"Who ought, however, to be crucified for their blasphemy," said Pansa, with vehemence: "They deny Venus and Jove! Nazarene is but another name for atheist. Let me catch them, that's all!"
The second course was gone - the feasters fell back on their couches - there was a pause while they listened to the soft voices of the South, and the music of the Arcadian reed. Glaucus was the most rapt and least inclined to break the silence, but Clodius began already to think that they had wasted time.
"Bene vobis! my Glaucus," said he, quaffing a draught to each letter of the Greek's name, with the ease of the practised drinker. "Will you not be avenged on your ill-fortune of yesterday?"
"As you will," said Glaucus.
"The dice in summer, and I an ædile!" said Pansa, magisterially; "it is against all law."
"Not in your presence, grave Pansa," returned Clodius, rattling the dice in a long box; "your presence restrains all license: it is not the thing, but the excess of the thing, that hurts."
"What wisdom!" muttered the umbra.
"Well, I will look another way," said the ædile.
"Not yet, good Pansa: let us wait till we have supped," said Glaucus.
Clodius reluctantly yielded, concealing his vexation with a yawn.
"He gapes to devour the gold," whispered Lepidus to Sallust, in a quotation from the Aulularia of Plautus.
"Ah! how well I know these polypi, who hold all they touch," answered Sallust, in the same tone, and out of the same play.
The third course, consisting of a variety of fruits, pistachio nuts, sweetmeats, tarts, and confectionary tortured into a thousand fantastic and airy shapes, was now placed upon the table; and the attendants also set there the wine (which had hitherto been handed round to the guests) in large jugs of glass, each bearing upon it the schedule of its age and quality.
"Taste this Lesbian, my Pansa," said Sallust; "it is excellent."
"It is not very old," said Glaucus, "but it has been made precocious, like ourselves, by being put to the fire - the wine to the flames of Vulcan - we to those of his wife - to whose honour I pour this cup."
"It is delicate," said Pansa, "but there is perhaps the least particle too much of rosin in its flavour."
"What a beautiful cup!" cried Clodius, taking up one of transparent crystal, the handles of which were wrought with gems, and twisted in the shape of serpents, the favourite fashion at Pompeii.
"This ring," said Glaucus, taking a costly jewel from the first joint of his finger, and hanging it on the handle, "gives it a richer show, and renders it less unworthy of thy acceptance, my Clodius, on whom may the gods bestow health and fortune, long and oft to crown it to the brim!"
"You are too generous, Glaucus," said the gamester, handing the cup to his slave; "but your love gives it a double value."
"This cup to the Graces!" said Pansa, and he thrice emptied his calix. The guests followed his example.
"We have appointed no director to the feast," cried Sallust.
"Let us throw for him, then," said Clodius, rattling the dice-box.
"Nay," cried Glaucus, "no cold and trite director for us: no dictator of the banquet; no rex convivii. Have not the Romans sworn never to obey a king? Shall we be less free than your ancestors? Ho! musicians, let us have the song I composed the other night: it has a verse on this subject, 'The Bacchic hymn of the Hours.' "
The musicians struck their instruments to a wild Ionic air, while the youngest voices in the band chanted the song that Glaucus had composed to delight his guests.
They applauded loudly. When the poet is your host, his verses are sure to charm.
"Thoroughly Greek," said Lepidus; "the wildness, force, and energy of that tongue it is impossible to imitate in Roman poetry."
"It is, indeed, a great contrast," said Clodius, ironically at heart, though not in appearance, "to the old-fashioned and tame simplicity of that ode of Horace which we heard before. The air is beautifully Ionic; the words put me in mind of a toast - Companions, I give you the beautiful Ione."
"Ione! - the name is Greek," said Glaucus, in a soft voice. "I drink the health with delight. But who is Ione?"
"Ah! you have but just come to Pompeii, or you would deserve ostracism for your ignorance," said Lepidus; "not to know Ione, is not to know the chief charm of our city."
"She is of the most rare beauty," said Pansa; "and what a voice!"
"She can feed only on nightingales' tongues," said Clodius.
"Nightingales' tongues! - beautiful thought!" sighed the umbra.
"Enlighten me, I beseech you," said Glaucus.
"Know then - " began Lepidus.
"Let me speak," cried Clodius; "you drawl out your words as if you spoke tortoises."
"And you speak stones," muttered the coxcomb to himself as he fell back disdainfully on his couch.
"Know then, my Glaucus," said Clodius, "that Ione is a stranger who has but lately come to Pompeii. She sings like Sappho, and her songs are her own composing; and as for the tibia, and the cithera, and the lyre, I know not in which she most outdoes the Muses. Her beauty is most dazzling. Her house is perfect; such taste - such gems - such bronzes! She is rich, and generous as she is rich."
"Her lovers, of course," said Glaucus, "take care that she does not starve; and money lightly won is always lavishly spent."
"Her lovers - ah, there is the enigma! Ione has but one vice - she is chaste. She has all Pompeii at her feet, and she has no lovers: she will not even marry."
"No lovers!" echoed Glaucus.
"No; she has the soul of Vesta, with the girdle of Venus."
"What refined expressions!" said the umbra.
"A miracle!" cried Glaucus. "Can we not see her?"
"I will take you there this evening," said Clodius; "meantime - " added he, once more rattling the dice.
"I am yours!" said the complaisant Glaucus. "Pansa, turn your face!"
Lepidus and Sallust played at odd-and-even, and the umbra looked on, while Glaucus and Clodius became gradually absorbed in the chances of the dice.
"By Pollux!" cried Glaucus, "this is the second time I have thrown the caniculæ" (the lowest throw).
"Now Venus befriend me!" said Clodius, rattling the box for several moments. "O Alma Venus - it is Venus herself!" as he threw the highest cast, named from that goddess.
"Venus is ungrateful to me," said Glaucus, gayly; "I have always sacrificed on her altar."
"He who plays with Clodius," whispered Lepidus, "will soon, like Plautus's Curculio, put his pallium for the stakes."
"Poor Glaucus! - he is as blind as Fortune herself," replied Sallust, in the same tone.
"I will play no more," said Glaucus; "I have lost thirty sestertia."
"I am sorry - " began Clodius.
"Amiable man!" groaned the umbra.
"Not at all!" exclaimed Glaucus: "The pleasure I take in your gain compensates the pain of my loss."
The conversation now grew general and animated; the wine circulated more freely; and Ione once more became the subject of eulogy to the guests of Glaucus.
"Instead of outwatching the stars, let us visit one at whose beauty the stars grow pale," said Lepidus.
Clodius, who saw no chance of renewing the dice, seconded the proposal; and Glaucus, though he civilly pressed his guests to continue the banquet, could not but let them see that his curiosity had been excited by the praises of Ione: they therefore resolved to adjourn (all, at least, but Pansa and the umbra) to the house of the fair Greek. They drank, therefore, to the health of Glaucus and of Titus - they performed their last libation - they resumed their slippers - they descended the stairs - passed the illuminated atrium - and, walking unbitten over the fierce dog painted on the threshold, found themselves beneath the light of the moon just risen, in the lively and still crowded streets of Pompeii.
They passed the jewellers' quarter, sparkling with lights, caught and reflected by the gems displayed in the shops, and arrived at last at the door of Ione. The vestibule blazed with rows of lamps; curtains of embroidered purple hung on either aperture of the tablinum, whose walls and mosaic pavement glowed with the richest colours of the artist; and under the portico which surrounded the odorous voridarium they found Ione, already surrounded by adoring and applauding guests.
"Did you say she was Athenian" whispered Glaucus, ere he passed into the peristyle.
"No, she is from Neapolis."
"Neapolis!" echoed Glaucus; and at that moment the group, dividing on either side, gave to his view that bright, that nymph-like beauty, which he had found impossible to forget.
A priest of Isis
When Arbaces parted from Glaucus and his companion, and approached to the more crowded part of the bay, he paused and gazed upon that animated scene with folded arms, and a bitter smile upon his dark features.
"Gulls, dupes, fools, that ye are!" muttered he to himself; "in business or pleasure, trade or religion, cheated equally by the passions that you should rule! How could I loathe you, if I did not hate! Greek or Roman, it is from us, from the lore of Egypt, that you have stolen the fires that give you souls. Knowledge - poetry - laws - arts - even your barbarous science of war - filched from us as a slave may filch the fragments of an ended feast!
"And now the mushroom herd have entered their masters' land! The pyramids look down no more on the race of Rameses. The eagle exults over the serpent of the Nile. Our masters are you now? You are not mine! My wisdom controls you still, though with fetters that none can see. So long as craft masters force - so long as religion has but one cave from which oracles can delude mankind - the wise will possess the earth.
"Even from your vices Arbaces distils his pleasures - pleasures secret and inexhaustible, of which your enervated minds cannot conceive or dream. Fools of ambition and avarice! Your thirsts for vulgar office and all the mummeries of servile power provoke my laughter and my scorn. For my power extends as widely as the credulity of mankind. Thebes may fall and Egypt be a derided name, but the subjects of Arbaces are subjects still."
He went to the town, his tall figure always conspicuous in the crowd, and entered the small but graceful temple of Isis, whose worship was still popular and esteemed, in competition with Grecian gods.
The temple had only recently been built, to replace that which had been destroyed by earthquake sixteen years before, and its oracles, which, if not of divine origin, were of profound human wisdom, had become the popular fashion of the day. Clothed in mysterious language, they were not of a definite meaning, adroitly adapted to the circumstances of those who sought them, and contrasting notably with the generalities of the rival temples.
Arbaces passed through a varied crowd, in which the commercial element predominated, gathered before the numerous altars which rose in the open court. For in the walls of the cellar, elevated on seven steps of Parian marble, and ornamented by the sacred pomegranate of Isis, were niches containing statues of many deities which were admitted to grace the court of the Egyptian goddess. The many-titled Bacchus, the Cyprian Aphrodite, the dog-headed Anubis, the ox-god Apis, mingled with Egyptian idols of uncouth form and forgotten names; while on an oblong pedestal which occupied the interior building, the statue of Isis herself stood beside that of the silent and mystic Orus.
But the worship of the Egyptian goddess was no longer performed with the forms and ceremonies which were rightly hers. The mongrel nations of the Southern Europe of this modern time, with a mixture of arrogance and ignorance, confounded the religious ceremonies of all climes and ages. The temple of Isis in Pompeii was served by Greek and Roman priests who were ignorant of the language and customs of her ancient votaries.
Now a beast had been slaughtered upon her altar, and the crowd watched in anxious expectancy as two sacrificial priests, with naked shoulders and loose white garments girded around them, drew back from the sacrifice they had prepared, and the superior flamen bent to inspect the victim's entrails, and to read the auguries which they revealed.
Arbaces paused at the side of the merchant Diomed to make a whispered enquiry as to the purpose of the sacrifice.
"We are merchants," he replied "who ask the fate of our vessels, which sail for Alexandria tomorrow."
"You do well. Isis is the goddess of agriculture, but she is the patron of commerce also."
He turned his head to the east, as though absorbed in silent prayer.
Meanwhile, at the foot of the steps, a priest began to play a solemn air on a long wind-instrument. Another priest, halfway up, held a white wand in one hand, and the votive wreath in the other. At the summit, two others stood, one holding a palm branch, and the other a slender sheaf of corn, while a stately ibis - the bird sacred to the Egyptian worship - looked mutely down from the wall upon the site, or stalked beside the altar at the foot of the steps.
The watchful crowd sank into a deathlike silence as another priest, naked save for a cincture round his waist, rushed forward and, dancing with wild gestures, implored the goddess to answer the merchant's prayer.
As he ceased, exhausted, there was a low murmur from the body of the statue: the head moved: the lips parted: in a hollow voice came these mystic words:
"There are waves like chargers their manes that throw;
There are graves that wait on the rocks below;
The high winds rise, and the dark clouds lour,
But blest are your barques in the fearful hour."
"That is good,' Diomed commented. "There are often storms at this season, but our vessels will go safely through them."
"Lauded be the goddess!" his companions echoed. "Her predictions are never equivocal."
The chief priest, raising his hand for silence, which the worship of Isis enjoined beyond the capacity of the lively Pompeians, poured a libation upon the altar, and concluded the ceremony with a short prayer.
The crowd dispersed, but Arbaces remained by the railing, and, as the temple cleared, one of the priests approached and saluted him with an appearance of friendly familiarity.
The man had a countenance of repulsive ugliness, but his animal frame was well-fitted to execute whatever impulse might be born in an evil mind. The broad chest, the nervous hands, and the lean gaunt arms, bared to above the elbow, indicated a form capable alike of great active exertion or passive endurance. But the shaven skull was almost apelike in its low and narrow confirmations, the eyes, dark and small; rolled in a muddy and yellow orbit: the skin was puckered into many deep and intricate wrinkles: the nose, short and coarse, was distended at the nostrils like a satyr's: and the thick but pallid lips, the livid and motley hues of the parchment skin, completed a countenance which would cause terror to many, and distrust and repugnance to all who saw it.
"Calenus," Arbaces said, "you have improved the voice of the statue by following my suggestion, and the verses were excellent. It is always best to predict good fortune, unless it be absolutely impossible."
"I thought I had done well; for there are always storms at this time of year. And if they should go to the bottom, where can a mariner rest better than there?"
"Right, my Calenus. If only Apæcides would take a lesson from you! It was of him that I wished to speak. Can you admit me to one of your less sacred apartments?"
The priest led the way to one of a number of small chambers which surrounded the open gate. He seated his guest at a small table on which eggs and fruit, cold meats, and vases of excellent wine were spread. The entrance was closed by no more than a curtain drawn across it. Those who spoke there should speak low, or avoid secret matters. They spoke low.
"Thou knowest," Arbaces said, "that it has ever been my maxim to attach myself to the young. From their flexible unformed minds I carve out my best tools. Of the men I make disciples or servants; of the women - "
"Mistresses," Calenus concluded, a livid grin distorting his ungainly features.
"Yes. I do not disguise that woman is the great appetite of my soul. As you feed the victim that you will slaughter, I rear the votaries of my pleasure, which is in the soft unconscious progress from innocence to desire. It is thus that I defy satiety, from the young hearts of my victims sustaining the freshness of my own sensation. . . But to the subject on which I came. You know that, by the death of their parents before they left Athens, I became the legal guardian of Ione and Apæcides. I have not neglected my trust.
"To Apæcides, I taught the solemn faith of Isis. Docile and mild, he responded readily. I unfolded to him those divine allegories which expound her religion. I excited in one who is peculiarly alive to religious fervours the enthusiasm that imagination begets on faith. Finally, I placed him among you.
"So you did. But we find that, in teaching faith, you let wisdom go. He is horror-stricken now that he is no longer duped. Our secret and speaking statues dismay and revolt him.
"I have heard that he is frequenting the company of those of the new faith, who are hostile to all our gods."
"That is what I feared," Arbaces answered, "from some reproachful words which I had from him yesterday. I must continue m lessons. He must understand that there are two stages of sanctity. The first is Faith: the second Knowledge. The first is for the vulgar: the second for the sage."
"I have never experienced the first, nor I think have you," Calenus said.
"You mistake," Arbaces answered gravely. "I believe to this day Nature has a sanctity I cannot resist if I would. I believe - and from that belief has been revealed - but we wander. It is of Ione I would speak. I have told thee that, till I saw her, I knew not the love of which my nature is capable. She shall be more than mistress to me. She shall be bride and queen."
"I have heard that she is a second Helen."
"Yes. She has a beauty that Greece has not excelled. But she has more than that. She has a spirit worthy to match with mine. She has a genius beyond the nature of women. Keen - dazzling - bold. She can comprehend the most subtle argument. And she has freedom of mind. She can stand alone. She is all I have imagined - all I have sought in women. She must be mine. For her, I have a double passion. I wish to enjoy beauty of spirit as well as form."
"But, as yet, she is not yours?"
"Not entirely. She loves me, but as a friend - with her mind only. She fancies in me the paltry virtues which I have the profounder virtue to scorn. She is proud and ambitious She gathers crowds to her feasts. Her voice enchants, and her poetry subdues them. She would be considered the successor of Erinna."
"Or, perhaps of Sappho?"
"But Sappho without love!"
"I have encouraged her in this bold attempt - in this indulgence of vanity, this pursuit of pleasure. I have sought to enervate her mind. To surround her with lovers - hollow, vain, frivolous, whom she must despise, so that she may become aware of the want of love.
"Then, in those soft intervals when lassitude succeeds excitement, I can interest her mind - attract her passion - possess her heart. It is not youth, nor gaiety, nor beauty, which will be sufficient to win her. Her imagination must be conquered, and the life of Arbaces has been a continuous triumph, over the imagination of others."
"And you have feared no rivals? The gallants of Italy are skilled in the art to please."
"No. Her Greek soul despises the barbarian Roman."
"But thou art not a Greek."
"Egypt is the mother of Athens. I have taught her this, and in my blood she venerates the older dynasties of the earth. . . But I will admit that I am not entirely at ease. She has been silent and melancholy. It may be the beginning of love - or its want. In either case, my operations should not delay. That is why I have come to you."
Progress of love
The beautiful room in which Glaucus had received his guests on the previous evening was now bright with morning sunlight, which entered through a row of casements along the upper side of the wall, and through the door, which stood open, revealing the small garden, adapted for indolence rather than exercise, and fragrant with many blooms.
It shone on tessellated pavement and glowing walls, of which every panel held a painting of exquisite art. Eyes that wandered from the representation of Leda and Tyndarus (still in the museum of Naples) would be drawn to that of Eros leaning on Aphrodite's knee or to Ariadne sleeping unconscious of the perfidy of her lover.
But there was a joy in the heart of Glaucus which was more than the sunlight gave. "I have seen her!" he said aloud. "I have found her again! I have heard her sing - the songs of glory and Greece. I have spoken to her. - Like the Cyprian sculptor, I have breathed life into what was no more than my own dream."
A shadow darkened the floor of the sunlit entrance, and a young girl entered. She was dressed simply, in a long white tunic. She carried a basket of flowers, and a bronze watervase. Her features were not exactly beautiful, and were set into an expression of melancholy unusual to one so young. But they were soft and gentle, and their look of tranquil endurance had banished the smiles, but not the sweetness from her lips. There was nothing visibly wrong with her eyes. Their expression was clear and serene, but the caution and timidity with which she moved was an indication of their defect. She had been blind from her birth.
"They tell me Glaucus is here. May I come in?"
"Ah, Nydia, so you have come? I felt sure you would."
"Glaucus knew how kind he has always been to me who am poor and blind."
"Who could be otherwise?" It was the tone of a compassionate brother.
She sighed. "You have not been long back?"
"It is the sixth day."
"And you are well?. . . But who could be otherwise who can see the sun?"
"You are well also?. . . But how you have grown! By next year you will be considering what answer to give your lovers."
She blushed at the remark, but she frowned also. "I have brought you flowers," she said. "They are poor, but fresh."
"I will wear no other garland but those you make."
"Are the flowers in the garden thriving?"
"They are wonderful - as though the Lares themselves had tended them while I was away."
"I am pleased at that, for I came to water them as often as I could."
"How can I thank you? I had no thought that I had left so watchful a memory."
"I have not been for the last nine days. I have been away."
Her voice was embarrassed, and the hand with which she raised the watering vase trembled, as she turned to attend to them again.
"Poor girl!" he thought, as his eyes followed her. "It is a hard doom to see neither earth, nor stars, nor your fellowmen.
His mind went back to Ione, and was interrupted again by the entrance of Clodius. It was significant that, while he had confided to him, on the previous day, the secret of his first meeting with her, he was now averse from even mentioning her name.
He had seen her, bright, unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most profligate gallants of Pompeii, reversing, it seemed, their very nature, and the fable of Circe - converting animals into men. And she had become more than a beautiful girl, once seen, and passionately remembered. She was now the mistress - the divinity of his soul.
He felt only resentment when Clodius praised her, and answered so coldly that the Roman imagined that his fancy had been disappointed at this second interview. He was the more content to think it, because he hoped that Glaucus would wed the daughter of the wealthy Diomed, and so augment the store of gold which was now flowing so readily into his own coffers. Finding that conversation flagged, he soon left, and a few minutes later Glaucus went out, with a purpose of seeking Ione at her home.
He passed Nydia on the threshold, who knew his step easily. She said: "You go out early?"
"It is the invitation of Campania's skies."
"Oh, that I could see them," she murmured, so low that he passed on without hearing. When he had gone, she took the staff with which she had become dexterous to guide her steps, and went back to her home.
She soon turned from the more gaudy streets, and entered a quarter of the town but little loved by the decorous and the sober. But from the low and rude evidences of vice around her she was saved by her misfortune. And at that hour the streets were quiet and silent, nor was her youthful ear shocked by the sounds which too often broke along the obscene and obscure haunts she patiently and sadly traversed.
She knocked at the back-door of a tavern; it opened, and a rude voice bade her give an account of the sesterces. Ere she could reply, another voice, less vulgarly accented, said:
"Never mind that, Burbo. Her voice will be wanted again soon at our rich friend's revels; and he pays, as thou knowest, pretty high for his nightingales' tongues."
"Oh, I hope not - I trust not," cried Nydia, trembling; "I will beg from sunrise to sunset, but do not send me there."
"And why not?" asked the same voice.
"Because - because I am not - because it is hateful, because - "
"Because it is unfit for a slave in the house of Burbo?" returned the voice ironically, with a coarse laugh.
The Thessalian put down the flowers, and wept silently.
Meanwhile, Glaucus sought the house of the beautiful Neapolitan. He found Ione sitting amidst her attendants, who were at work around her. Her harp stood at her side, for Ione herself was unusually idle, perhaps unusually thoughtful, that day. He thought her even more beautiful by the morning light, and in her simple robe, than amidst the blazing lamps, and decorated with the costly jewels of the previous evening; and not the less so from the blush that greeted his approach.
Accustomed to flatter, flattery died upon his lips when he addressed her. They spoke of Greece; this was a theme on which Ione loved rather to listen than to converse; it was a theme on which the Greek could have been eloquent for ever. He described to her the silver olive groves that yet clad the banks of Ilyssus, and the temples, already despoiled of half their glories - but how beautiful in decay! He looked back on the melancholy city of Harmodius the free, and Pericles the magnificent, from the height of that distant memory, which mellowed into one hazy light all the ruder and darker shades.
And Ione listened to him, absorbed and mute; dearer were those accents, and those descriptions, than all the prodigal adulation of her numberless adorers. Was it a sin to love her countryman? She loved Athens in him - the gods of her race, the land of her dreams, spoke to her in his voice.
From that time they saw each other daily. At the cool of the evening they made excursions on the placid sea. At night they met again in Ione's portico and hall. Their love was sudden, but it was strong; it filled all the sources of their life. Heart - brain - sense - imagination, all were its ministers and priests.
One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, they were returning, with a small party of chosen friends, from an excursion round the bay. As the rest of the party conversed with each other, Glaucus lay at the feet of Ione silently, until she broke the pause between them.
"My poor brother," said she, sighing, "how once he would have enjoyed this hour!"
"Your brother!" said Glaucus; "I have not seen him. Was it he for whose companionship you left me at our first meeting?"
"Yes."
"And is he here?"
"Yes."
"At Pompeii! but not constantly with you?"
"He has other duties," Ione answered sadly; "he is a priest of Isis."
"So young, too; and that priesthood, in its laws at least, so severe!" said the warm-hearted Greek, in surprise and pity. "What could have been his inducement?"
"He was always enthusiastic and fervent in religious devotion; and the eloquence of an Egyptian - our friend and guardian - kindled in him the pious desire to consecrate his life to the most mystic of our deities. Perhaps, in the intensity of his zeal, he found in the severity of that priesthood its peculiar attraction."
"And he does not repent his choice? He is happy?"
Ione sighed deeply, and lowered her veil over her eyes.
"I wish," said she, after a pause, "that he had not been so hasty. Perhaps, like all who expect too much, he is revolted too easily!"
"Then he is not happy in his new condition? And this Egyptian, was he a priest himself? Was he interested in recruits to the sacred band?"
"No. His main interest was in our happiness. He thought he promoted that of my brother. We were left orphans, and Arbaces sought to supply the place of our parent. You must know him. He loves genius."
"I know him already: at least, we speak when we meet. But for your praise I would not seek to know more than I do now."
"Yet he is kind, and wise, and gentle," answered Ione.
"He is happy to have thy praise!"
"His calm, his coldness,' she said, evasively pursuing the subject, "are perhaps but the exhaustion of past sufferings; as yonder mountain" (and she pointed to Vesuvius), "which we see dark and tranquil in the distance, once nursed the fires forever quenched."
They both gazed on the mountain as Ione said these words; the rest of the sky was bathed in rosy and tender hues, but over that grey summit, rising amidst the woods and vineyards that then clomb halfway up the ascent, there hung a black and ominous cloud, the single frown of the landscape. A sudden and unaccountable gloom came over each as they gazed; and in that sympathy which love had already taught them, and which bade them, in the slightest shadows of emotion, the faintest presentiment of evil, turn for refuge to each other, their gaze at the same moment left the mountain, and, full of unimaginable tenderness, met. What need had they of words to say they loved?
The fowler re-sets his snares
During the early days of the meetings of the Grecian lovers, Arbaces had been little at the house of Ione, being preoccupied by her brother's attitude, both pride and selfishness being aroused and alarmed at the sudden change which had come over the spirit of the youth. He feared lest he himself should lose a docile pupil, and Isis an enthusiastic servant. Apæcides had ceased to seek or consult him. He was rarely to be found; he fled when he perceived him at a distance. Arbaces was one of those haughty and powerful spirits accustomed to master others; he chafed at the notion that one once his own should elude his grasp.
It was in this mood that he passed through a thick grove in the city, which lay between his house and that of Ione, in his way to the latter; and there, leaning against a tree, and gazing on the ground, he came un-awares on the young priest of Isis.
"Apæcides!" said he, laying his hand affectionately on the young man's shoulder.
The priest started; and his first instinct seemed to be that of flight. "My son, what has chanced that you desire to shun me?"
Apæcides remained silent and sullen, looking down on the earth, as his lips quivered, and his breast heaved with emotion.
"Speak to me, my friend," continued the Egyptian. "Speak. Something burdens thy spirit. What hast thou to reveal?"
"To thee - nothing."
"And why is it to me thou art thus unconfidential?"
"Because thou hast been my enemy."
"Let us confer," said Arbaces, in a low voice; and drawing the reluctant arm of the priest in his own, he led him to one of the seats which were scattered within the grove. They sat down - and in their gloomy forms there was something congenial to the shade and solitude of the place.
Apæcides was in the spring of his years, yet he seemed to have exhausted even more of life than the Egyptian; his delicate and regular features were wan and colourless; his eyes were hollow, and shone with a brilliant and feverish glare; his frame bowed prematurely, and in his hands, which were small to effeminacy, the blue and swollen veins indicated the lassitude and weakness of the relaxed fibres. You saw in his face a strong resemblance to Ione, but the expression was altogether different. In her, enthusiasm was visible, but it seemed always suppressed and restrained. In Apæcides the whole aspect betokened the fervour and passion of his temperament, and the intellectual portion of his nature seemed, by the wild fire of the eyes, the great breadth of the temples when compared with the height of the brow, the trembling restlessness of the lips, to be swayed and tyrannized over by the imaginative and ideal. Fancy, with the sister, had stopped short at the golden goal of poetry; with the brother, less happy and restrained, it had wandered into visions more intangible and unembodied; and the faculties which gave genius to the one threatened madness to the other.
"You say I have been your enemy," said Arbaces. "I know the cause of that unjust accusation: I have placed you amidst the priests of Isis - you are revolted at their trickeries and imposture - you think that I too have deceived - the purity of your mind is offended - you imagine that I am one of the deceitful - "
"You knew the jugglings of that impious craft," answered Apæcides; "why did you disguise them from me? - When you excited my desire to devote myself to the office whose garb I bear, you spoke to me of a holy life - you have given me for companions an ignorant and sensual herd, who have no knowledge but that of the grossest frauds; - you spoke to me of men sacrificing the earthlier pleasures to the sublime cultivation of virtue - you place me amongst men reeking with all the filthiness of vice; - you spoke to me of the friends, the enlighteners of our common kind - I see but cheats and deluders! Oh! it was basely done! Young as I was, the sunny pleasures of earth before me, I resigned all with happiness and exultation, in the thought that I resigned them for the abstruse mysteries of diviner wisdom, for the companionship of gods - for the revelations of Heaven - and now - now - "
Convulsive sobs checked the priest's voice; he covered his face with his hands, and large tears forced themselves through the wasted fingers.
"What I promised to thee, that will I give, my friend, my pupil: these have been but trials to thy virtue - it comes forth the brighter for thy novitate - think no more of those dull cheats - assort no more with those menials of the goddess - you are worthy to enter into the penetralia. I henceforth will be your priest, your guide, and you who now curse my friendship shall live to bless it."
The young man lifted up his head and gazed with a vacant and wondering stare upon the Egyptian.
"Listen to me," continued Arbaces, in an earnest and solemn voice, casting first his searching eyes round to see that they were still alone. "From Egypt came all the knowledge of the world; from Egypt came those early and mysterious tribes which (long before the hordes of Romulus swept over the plains of Italy, and in the eternal cycle of events drove back civilisation into barbarism and darkness) possessed all the arts of wisdom and the graces of intellectual life. From Egypt came the rites and grandeur of that solemn Cære, whose inhabitants taught their iron vanquishers of Rome all that they yet know which is elevated in religion and sublime in worship. And how deemest thou, young man, that that dread Egypt, the mother of countless nations, achieved her greatness, and soared to her cloud-capt eminence of wisdom? - it was the result of a profound and holy policy. Your modern nations owe their greatness to Egypt - Egypt her greatness to her priests. Rapt in themselves, courting a sway over the nobler part of man, his soul and his belief, those ancient ministers of God were inspired with the grandest thought that ever exalted mortals. From the revolutions of the stars, from the seasons of the earth, from the round and unvarying circle of human destinies, they devised an august allegory; they made it gross and palpable to the vulgar by the signs of gods and goddesses, and that which in reality was government they named Religion. Isis is a fable - start not! - for that for which Isis is a type is a reality, an immortal being; Isis is nothing! Nature, which she represents, is the mother of all things - dark, ancient, inscrutable, save to the gifted few. 'None among mortals hath ever lifted up my veil', so saith the Isis that you adore; but to the wise that veil hath been removed, and we have stood face to face with the solemn loveliness of Nature. The priests then were the benefactors, the civilizers of mankind; true, they were also cheats, imposters if you will. But think you, young man, that if they had not deceived their kind they could have served them? The innocent and servile vulgar must be blinded to attain to their proper good; they would not believe a maxim - they revere an oracle. The Emperor of Rome sways the vast and various tribes of earth, and harmonizes its conflicting and disunited elements; thence comes peace, order, law, the blessings of life. Think you it is the man, the emperor, that thus sways? - no, it is the pomp, the awe, the majesty that surround him - these are his imposters, his delusions; our oracles and our divinations, our rites and our ceremonies, are the means of our sovereignty and the engines of our power. They are the same means to the same end, the welfare and harmony of mankind. You listen to me rapt and intent - the light begins to dawn upon you."
Apæcides remained silent, but the changes rapidly passing over his speaking countenance betrayed the effect produced upon him by the words of the Egyptian - words made tenfold more eloquent by the voice, the aspect, and the manner of the man.
"While, then," resumed Arbaces, "our fathers of the Nile thus achieved the first elements by which chaos is destroyed, namely, the obedience and reverence of the multitude for the few, they drew from their majestic and starred meditation that wisdom which was no delusion; they invented the codes and regularities of law - the arts and glories of existence. They asked belief; they returned the gift by civilisation. Were not their very cheats a virtue! Trust me, whosoever in yon far heavens of a diviner and more beneficient nature looks down upon our world, smiles approvingly on the wisdom which has worked such ends."
"But you wish me to apply these generalities to yourself; I hasten to obey the wish. The altars of the goddess of our ancient faith must be served, and served too by others than the stolid and soulless things that are but as pegs and hooks whereon to hang the fillet and the robe. Remember two sayings of Sextus the Pythagorean, sayings borrowed from the lore of Egypt. The first is 'Speak not of God to the multitude;' the second is: 'The man worthy of God is a god among men." As Genius gave to the ministers of Egypt worship, that empire in later ages so fearfully decayed, thus by Genius only can its dominion be restored. I saw in you, Apæcides, a pupil worthy of my lessons - a minister worthy of the great ends which may yet be wrought: your energy, your talents, your purity of faith, your earnestness of enthusiasm, all fitted you for that calling which demands so imperiously high and ardent qualities: I fanned, therefore, your sacred desires; I stimulated you to the step you have taken. But you blame me that I did not reveal to you the little souls and the juggling tricks of your companions. Had I done so, Apæcides, I had defeated my own objects: your noble nature would have at once revolted, and Isis would have lost her priest."
"I placed you, therefore, without preparation, in the temple; I left you suddenly to discover and to be sickened by all those mummeries which dazzle the herd. I desired that you should perceive how those engines are moved by which the fountain that refreshes the world casts its waters in the air. It was the trial ordained of old to all our priests. They who accustom themselves to the impostures of the vulgar, are left to practise them - for those, like you, whose higher natures demand higher pursuits religion opens more godlike secrets. I am pleased to find in you the character I had expected. You have taken the vows; you cannot recede. Advance - I will be your guide."
"And what wilt thou teach me, O singular and fearful man? New cheats - new - "
"No - I have thrown thee into the abyss of disbelief; I will lead thee now to the eminence of faith. Thou hast seen the false types: thou shalt learn now the realities they represent. There is no shadow, Apæcides, without its substance. Come to me this night. Your hand."
Impressed, excited, bewildered by the language of the Egyptian, Apæcides gave him his hand, and master and pupil parted.
It was true that for Apæcides there was no retreat. He had taken the vows of celibacy: he had devoted himself to a life that at present seemed to possess all the austerities of fanaticism, without any of the consolations of belief. It was natural that he should yet cling to a yearning desire to reconcile himself to an irrevocable career. The powerful and profound mind of the Egyptian still claimed an empire over his young imagination; excited him with vague conjecture, and kept him alternately vibrating between hope and fear.
Meanwhile Arbaces pursued his slow and stately way to the house of Ione. As he entered the tablinum, he heard a voice from the porticoes of the peristyle beyond, which, musical as it was, sounded displeasingly on his ear - it was the voice of the young and beautiful Glaucus, and for the first time an involuntary thrill of jealousy shot through the breast of the Egyptian.
On entering the peristyle, he found Glaucus seated by the side of Ione. The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver spray, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the sultry noon. The handmaids, almost invariably attendant on Ione, sat at a little distance; by the feet of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had been playing one of the Lesbian airs. The scene - the group before Arbaces, was stamped by that peculiar and refined ideality which we still, not erroneously, imagine to be the distinction of the ancients - the marble columns, the vases of flowers, the statue, white and tranquil, closing every vista; and above all, the two living forms, from which, a sculptor might have caught either inspiration or despair.
Arbaces, pausing for a moment, gazed on the pair with a brow from which all the usual stern serenity had fled; he recovered himself by an effort, and slowly approached them, but with a step so soft and echoless, that even the attendants heard him not; much less Ione and her lover.
"And yet," said Glaucus, "it is only before we love that we imagine that our poets have truly described the passion; the instant the sun rises, all the stars that had shone in his absence vanish into air. The poets exist only in the night of the heart; they are nothing to us when we feel the full glory of the god."
"A gentle and most glowing image, noble Glaucus."
Both started, and recognised behind the seat of Ione the cold and sarcastic face of the Egyptian.
"You are a sudden guest," said Glaucus, rising, with a forced smile.
"So ought all to be who know they are welcome," returned Arbaces, seating himself, and motioning to Glaucus to do the same.
"I am glad," said Ione, "to see you at length together; for you are suited to each other, and you are formed to be friends."
"Give me back some fifteen years of life," replied the Egyptian, "before you can place me on an equality with Glaucus. Happy should I be to receive his friendship; but what can I give him in return? Can I make to him the same confidences that he would repose in me - of banquets and garlands - of Parthian steeds, and the chances of the dice? These pleasures suit his age, his nature, his career; they are not for mine."
So saying, the artful Egyptian looked down and sighed; but he cast a glance towards Ione, to see how she received these insinuations of the pursuits of her visitor. Her countenance did not satisfy him. Glaucus, slightly colouring, hastened gaily to reply. Nor was he, perhaps, without the wish in his turn to disconcert and abash the Egyptian.
"You are right, wise Arbaces," said he; "we can esteem each other, but we cannot be friends. My banquets lack the secret salt, which, according to rumour, gives such zest to your own. And, by Hercules! when I have reached your age, if I, like you, may think it wise to pursue the pleasures of manhood, I shall be doubtless as sarcastic on the gallantries of youth."
The Egyptian raised his eyes to Glaucus with a sudden and piercing glance.
"I do not understand you," said he, coldly; "but it is the custom to consider that wit lies in obscurity." He turned from Glaucus as he spoke, with a scarcely perceptible sneer of contempt, and after a moment's pause addressed himself to Ione. "I have not, beautiful Ione," said he, "been fortunate enough to find you within doors the last two or three times that I have visited your vestibule."
"The smoothness of the sea has tempted me much from home," she replied, with a little embarrassment.
The embarrassment did not escape Arbaces; but, without seeming to heed it, he replied with a smile: "You know the old poet says that 'Women should keep within doors, and there converse.' "
"The poet was a cynic," said Glaucus, "and hated women."
"He spake according to the custom of his country, and that country is your boasted Greece."
"To different periods different customs. Had our fore-fathers known Ione, they had made a different law."
"Did you learn these pretty gallantries at Rome?" said Arbaces, with ill-suppressed emotion.
"One certainly would not go for gallantries to Egypt," retorted Glaucus, playing carelessly with his chain.
"Come, come," said Ione, hastening to interrupt a conversation which she saw, to her great distress, was so little likely to cement the intimacy she had desired to effect between her friends, "Arbaces must not be so hard upon his poor pupil. An orphan, and without a mother's care, I may be to blame for the independent and almost masculine liberty of life I have chosen: yet is it not greater than the Roman women are accustomed to - it is not greater than the Grecian ought to be. Is it only among men that freedom and virtue are to be deemed united? Why should the slavery that destroys you be considered the only method to preserve us?"
Arbaces was silent, for it was not his part to condemn the sentiment she expressed, and, after a short and embarrassed conversation, Glaucus took his leave.
When he was gone, Arbaces, drawing his seat nearer to the fair Neapolitan, said in those bland and subdued tones in which he knew so well how to veil the mingled art and fierceness of his character:
"Think not, my sweet pupil, if so I may call you, that I wish to shackle the liberty you adorn while you assume: but which, if not greater, as you righty observe, than that possessed by the Roman women, must at least be accompanied by great circumspection, when arrogated by one unmarried. Continue to draw the crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise themselves to your feet - continue to charm them with the conversation of an Apasia, the music of an Erinna - but reflect, at least, on those censorious tongues which can so easily blight the tender reputation of a maiden; and while you provoke admiration, give, I beseech you, no victory to envy."
"What mean you, Arbaces?" said Ione, in an alarmed and trembling voice. "I know you are my friend, that you desire only my honour and my welfare. What is it you would say?"
"Your friend - ah, how sincerely! May I speak then as a friend, without reserve and without offence?"
"I beseech you do so."
"This young profligate, this Glaucus, how didst thou know him? Has thou seen him often?" And, as Arbaces spoke, he fixed his gaze steadfastly upon her, as if he sought to penetrate into her soul.
Recoiling before that gaze, with a strange fear which she could not explain, the Neapolitan answered with confusion and hesitation: "He was brought to my house as a countryman of my father's, and I may say of mine. I have known him only recently; but why these questions?"
"Forgive me," said Arbaces, "I thought you might have known him longer. Base insinuator that he is!"
"Why that term?"
"It matters not: let me not rouse your indignation against one who does not deserve so grave an honour."
"I implore you to speak plainly."
"So I will. You know his pursuits, his companions, his habits: the revel and the dice make his occupations - and, amongst the associates of vice, how can he dream of virtue?"
"Still you speak riddles."
"Well, then, know, my Ione, that it was but yesterday that he boasted openly - yes, in the public baths, of your love to him. He said it amused him to take advantage of it. I will do him justice, he praised your beauty. Who could deny it? But he laughed scornfully when Clodius asked him if he loved you enough for marriage, and when he purposed to adorn his door-posts with flowers?"
"Impossible! How heard you this base slander?"
"Nay, would you have me relate to you all the comments of the insolent coxcombs with which the story has circled through the town? Be assured that I myself disbelieved at first, and that I have been painfully convinced by several ear-witnesses of the truth of what I have reluctantly told thee."
Ione sank back, and her face was whiter than the pillar against which she leaned for support.
"I own it vexed - it irritated me, to hear your name thus lightly pitched from lip to lip, like some mere dancing-girl's fame. I hastened this morning to seek and warn you. I found Glaucus here. I was stung from my self-possession. I could not conceal my feelings; nay, I was uncourteous in thy presence. Canst thou forgive thy friend?"
Ione placed her hand in his, but replied not.
"Think no more of this," said he; "but let it be a warning voice, to tell thee how much prudence thy lot requires. It cannot hurt thee, for a moment; for a gay thing like he is could never be honoured by even a serious thought from Ione. These insults only wound when they come from one we love."
So cunningly had the Egyptian appealed to Ione's ruling foible - so dexterously had be applied the poisoned dart to her pride, that he fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was but an incipient fancy; and, hastening to change the subject, he now led her to talk of her brother. Their conversation did not last long. He left her, resolved not again to trust so much to absence, but to visit - to watch her - every day.
But no sooner had his shadow glided from her presence than woman's pride - her sex's dissimulation - deserted his intended victim, and she burst into passionate tears.
The baths of Pompeii
When Glaucus left Ione, he felt as if he trod upon air. In the interview with which he had just been blessed, he had for the first time gathered from her distinctly that his love was not unwelcome to, and would not be unrewarded by her. This hope filled him with a rapture for which heaven and earth seemed too narrow to afford a vent. Unconscious of the enemy he had left behind, he passed through the gay streets, repeating to himself, in the wantonness of joy, the music of the soft air to which she had listened with such intentness; and now he entered the Street of Fortune, with its raised footpath - its houses painted without, and the doors admitting the view of the glowing frescoes within. Each end of the street was adorned with a triumphal arch: and as Glaucus now came before the Temple of Fortune, the jutting portico of that beautiful fane (which is supposed to have been built by one of the family of Cicero, perhaps by the orator himself) imparted a dignified and venerable feature to a scene otherwise more brilliant than lofty in its character.
That temple was one of the most graceful specimens of Roman architecture. It was raised on a somewhat lofty podium; and between two flights of steps ascending to a platform stood the altar of the goddess. From this platform another flight of broad stairs led to the portico, from the height of whose fluted columns hung festoons of the richest flowers. On either side the extremities of the temple were placed statues of Grecian workmanship; and at a little distance rose the triumphant arch crowned with an equestrian statue of Caligula, which was flanked by trophies of bronze. In the space before the temple a lively throng were assembled - some seated on benches and discussing the politics of the empire, some conversing on the approaching spectacle of the amphitheatre. One knot of young men were lauding a new beauty, another discussing the merits of the last play; a third group, more stricken in age, were speculating on the chance of the trade with Alexandria, and amidst these were many merchants in Eastern costume, whose loose and peculiar robes, painted and gemmed slippers, and composed and serious countenances, formed a striking contrast to the tuniced forms and animated gestures of the Italians.
Sauntering through the crowd, Glaucus soon found himself amidst a group of his merry, dissipated friends.
"Ah!" said Sallust, "it is a lustrum since I saw you."
"And how have you spent the lustrum? What new dishes have you discovered?"
"I have been scientific, and have made some experiments in the feeding of lampreys; I confess I despair of bringing them to the perfection which our Roman ancestors attained."
"Miserable man! and why?"
"Because, it is no longer lawful to give them a slave to eat. I am very often tempted to make away with a very fat butler whom I possess, and pop him slyly into a reservoir. He would give the fish a most oleaginous flavour! But slaves are not slaves now-a-days, and have no sympathy with their masters' interest - or Davus would destroy himself to oblige me!"
"What news from Rome?" asked Lepidus as he languidly joined the group.
"The emperor has been giving a splendid supper to the senators," answered Sallust.
"He is a good creature," said Lepidus; "he never sends a man away without granting his request."
"Perhaps he would let me kill a slave for my reservoir?" returned Sallust, eagerly.
"Not unlikely," said Glaucus; "for he who grants a favour to one Roman, must always do it at the expense of another."
"Ah, Glaucus! how are you? Gay as ever!" said Clodius, joining the group.
"Are you come to sacrifice to Fortune?" asked Sallust.
"I sacrifice to her every night," returned the gamester. "I do not doubt it. No man has made more victims!"
"By Hercules, a biting speech!" cried Glaucus, laughing.
"The dog's letter is never out of your mouth, Sallust," said Clodius, angrily; "you are always snarling."
"I may well have the dog's letter in my mouth, since, whenever I play with you, I have the dog's throw in my hand," returned Sallust.
"Hist!" said Glaucus, taking a rose from the flower-girl, who stood beside.
"The rose is a token of silence," replied Sallust; "but I love only to see it at the supper-table."
"Talking of that, Diomed gives a grand feast next week," said Sallust: "are you invited, Glaucus?"
"Yes, I received an invitation this morning."
"And I, too," said Sallust, drawing a square piece of papyrus form his girdle: "I see that he asks us an hour earlier than usual: an earnest of something sumptuous."
"Oh! he is as rich as Croesus," said Clodius; "and his bill of fare is as long as an epic."
"Well, let us to the baths," said Glaucus: "this is the time when all the world is there; and Fulvius, whom you admire so much, is going to read us his last ode."
The young men assented readily to the proposal, and they strolled to the baths.
Although the public baths were instituted rather for the poorer citizens than the wealthy (who had baths in their own houses), yet, to the crowds of all ranks who resorted to them, it was a favourite place for conversation, and for that indolent lounging so dear to a gay and thoughtless people.
Our party entered by the principal porch in the Street of Fortune. At the wing of the portico sat the keeper of the baths, with his two boxes before him, one for the money he received, the other for the tickets he dispensed. Round the walls of the portico were seats crowded with persons of all ranks; while others, as the regimen of the physicians prescribed, were walking briskly, stopping every now and then to gaze on the innumerable notices of shows, games, sales, exhibitions, which were painted or inscribed upon the walls. The general subject of conversation was, however, the spectacle announced in the amphitheatre; and each newcomer was fastened upon by a group eager to know if Pompeii had been so fortunate as to produce some monstrous criminal, some happy case of sacrilege or of murder, which would allow the ædiles to provide a man for the jaws of the lion: all other more common exhibitions seemed dull and tame, when compared with the possibility of this fortunate occurrence.
"For my part," said a jolly-looking goldsmith, "I think the Emperor, if he be as good as they say, might have sent us a Jew."
"Why not take one of the new sect of Nazarenes?" said a philosopher. "I am not cruel: but an atheist, one who denies Jupiter himself, deserves no mercy."
"I care not how many gods a man likes to believe in," said the goldsmith; "but to deny all is something monstrous."
"Yet I fancy," said Glaucus, "that these people are not absolutely atheists. I am told that they believe in a God - nay, in a future state."
"Quite a mistake, my dear Glaucus," said the philosopher. "I have conferred with them - they laughed in my face when I talked of Pluto and Hades."
"O ye gods!" exclaimed the goldsmith, in horror; "are there any of these wretches in Pompeii?"
"I know there are a few: but they meet so privately that it is impossible to discover who they are."
As Glaucus turned away, a sculptor, who was a great enthusiast in his art, looked after him admiringly.
"Ah!" said he, "if we could get him on the arena - there would be a model for you! What limbs! what a head! he ought to have been a gladiator! A subject - a subject - worthy of our art! Why don't they give him to the lion?"
Meanwhile Fulvius, the Roman poet whom his contemporaries declared immortal, came eagerly up to Glaucus: "Oh, my Athenian, you have come to hear my ode! That is indeed an honour; you, a Greek - to whom the very language of common life is poetry. How I thank you! It is but a trifle; but if I secure your approbation, perhaps I may get an introduction to Titus. Oh, Glaucus! a poet without a label; the wine may be good, but nobody will laud it! And what says Pythagoras? - 'Frankincense to the gods, but praise to man.' A patron then, is the poet's priest; he procures the incense, and obtains him his believers."
"But all Pompeii is your patron, and every portico an altar in your praise."
"Ah, the poor Pompeians are very civil - they love to honour merit. But they are only the inhabitants of a petty town - spero meliora! Shall we within?"
"Certainly; we lose time till we hear your poem."
At this instant there was a rush of some twenty persons from the baths into the portico; and a slave stationed at the door of a small corridor now admitted the poet, Glaucus, Clodius, and a troop of the bard's other friends, into the passage.
They entered a somewhat spacious chamber, which served for the purpose of the apodyterium where the bathers prepared themselves for their luxurious ablutions. The vaulted ceiling was raised from a cornice, glowingly coloured with motley and grotesque paintings; the ceiling itself was panelled in white compartments bordered with rich crimson; the unsullied-and shining floor was paved with white mosaics, and along the walls were ranged benches for the accommodation of the loiterers. This chamber did not possess the numerous and spacious windows which Vitruvius attributes to his more magnificent frigidarium. The Pompeians, as all the Southern Italians, were fond of banishing the light of their sultry skies, and combined in their voluptuous associations the idea of luxury with darkness. Two windows of glass alone admitted the soft and shaded ray; and the compartment in which one of these casements was placed was adorned with a large relief of the destruction of the Titans.
In this apartment Fulvius seated himself with a magisterial air, and his audience, gathering round him, encouraged him to commence his recital.
The poet drew forth from his vest a roll of papyrus, and, after hemming three times, as much to command silence as to clear his voice, he began his ode.
By the plaudits he received, it was doubtless worthy of his fame; and Glaucus was the only listener who did not find it excel the best of Horace.
The poem concluded, those who took only the cold bath began to undress; they suspended their garments on hooks fastened in the wall, and receiving, according to their condition, either from their own slaves, or those of the thermæ, loose robes in exchange, withdrew into that graceful and circular building which yet exists, to shame the unlaving posterity of the south.
The more luxurious departed by another door to the tepidarium, a place which was heated to a voluptuous warmth, partly by a movable fire-place, principally by a suspended pavement, beneath which was conducted the caloric of the laconicum.
Here this portion of the intended bathers, after unrobing themselves, remained for some time enjoying the artificial warmth of the luxurious air. And this room, as befitted its important rank in the long process of ablution, was more richly and elaborately decorated than the rest; the arched roof was beautifully carved and painted; the windows above, of ground glass, admitted but wandering and uncertain rays; below the massive cornices were rows of figures in massive and bold relief; the walls glowed with crimson, the pavement was skilfully tesselated in white mosaics. Here the habituated bathers, men who bathed seven times a day, would remain in a state of enervate and speechless lassitude, either before or (mostly) after the water-bath; and many of these victims of the pursuit of health turned their listless eyes on the newcomers, recognizing their friends with a nod, but dreading the fatigue of conversation.
From this place the party again diverged, according to their several fancies, some to the auditorium, which answered the purpose of our vapour-baths, and thence to the warm bath itself; those more accustomed to exercise, and capable of dispensing with so cheap a purchase of fatigue, resorted at once to the calidarium, or water bath.
"Blessed be he who invented baths!" said Glaucus, stretching himself along one of those bronze seats (then covered with soft cushions) which the visitor to Pompeii sees at this day in the same tepidarium. "Whether he were Hercules or Bacchus, he deserved deification."
"But tell me," said a corpulent citizen, who was groaning and wheezing under the operation of being rubbed down, "tell me, O Glaucus! - evil chance to thy hands, O slave! why so rough? - tell me - ugh - ugh! - are the baths at Rome really so magnificent?"
Glaucus turned, and recognized Diomed, though not without some difficulty, so red and so inflamed were the good man's cheeks by the sudatory and the scraping he had so lately undergone. "I fancy they must be a great deal finer than these. Eh?" Suppressing a smile, Glaucus replied:
"Imagine all Pompeii converted into baths, and you will then form a notion of the size of the imperial thermæ of Rome. But a notion of the size only. Imagine every entertainment for mind and body - enumerate all the gymnastic games our fathers invented - repeat all the books Italy and Greece have produced - suppose places for all these games, admirers for all these works - add to this, baths of the vastest size, the most complicated construction - intersperse the whole with gardens, with theatres, with porticoes, with schools - suppose, in one word, a city of the gods, composed but of palaces and public edifices, and you may form some faint idea of the glories of the great baths of Rome."
"By Hercules!" said Diomed, opening his eyes, "why it would take a man's whole life to bathe!"
"At Rome, it often does so," replied Glaucus, gravely. "There are many who live only at the baths. They repair there the first hour at which the doors are opened, and remain till they are closed. They seem as if they knew nothing of the rest of Rome; as if they despised all other existence."
"By Pollux! you amaze me."
"Even those who bathe only thrice a day contrive to consume all their lives in this occupation. They take their exercise in the tennis-court or the porticoes, to prepare them for the first bath; they lounge into the theatre, to refresh themselves after it. They take their prandium under the trees, and think over their second bath. By the time it is prepared, the prandium is digested. From the second bath they stroll into one of the peristyles, to hear some new poet recite; or into the library, to sleep over an old one. Then comes the supper, which they still consider but a part of the bath; and then a third time they bathe again, as the best place to converse with their friends."
"Per Hercle! but we have their imitators at Pompeii."
"Yes, and without their excuse. The magnificent voluptuaries of the Roman baths are happy; they see nothing but gorgeousness and splendour; they visit not the squalid parts of the city; they know not that there is poverty in the world. All Nature smiles for them, and her only frown is the last one which sends them to bathe in Cocytus. Believe me, they are your only true philosophers."
Arbaces cogs his dice
The evening darkened over the restless city, as Apæcides took his way to the house of the Egyptian. Avoiding the more lighted and populous streets as he went on his way apparently sunk in thought, a man of sober and staid demeanour touched him on the shoulder.
"Apæcides!" said he, and he made a rapid sign with his hands: it was the sign of the cross.
"Well, Nazarene," replied the priest, and his face grew paler: "what wouldst thou?"
"Nay," returned the stranger, "I would not interrupt thy meditations; but, the last time we met, I seemed not to be so unwelcome."
"You are not unwelcome, Olinthus; but I am sad and weary; nor am I able this evening to discuss with you those themes which are most acceptable to you."
"O backward of heart!" said Olinthus, with bitter fervour; "and art thou sad and weary, and wilt thou turn from the very springs that refresh and heal?"
"O Earth!" cried the young priest, striking his breast passionately, "from what regions shall my eyes open to the true Olympus, where thy gods really dwell? Am I to believe, with this man, that none whom for so many centuries my fathers worshipped has a being or a name? Am I to break down, as something blasphemous and profane, the very altars which have deemed most sacred! Am I to think with Arbaces - what?"
He paused, and strode rapidly away in the impatience of a man who strives to get rid of himself. But the Nazarene was one of those hardy, vigorous, and enthusiastic men, by whom God in all times has worked the revolutions of earth; and those, above all, in the establishment and reformation of His own religion - men who were formed to convert, because formed to endure.
He did not suffer Apæcides thus easily to escape him. He overtook, and addressed him thus:
"I do not wonder, Apæcides, that I distress you; that I shake all the elements of your mind; that you are lost in doubt; that you drift here and there in the vast ocean of uncertain and benighted thought. I wonder not at this, but bear with me a little; watch and pray - the darkness shall vanish, the storm sleep, and God himself as he came on the seas of Samaria, shall walk over the lulled billows, to the delivery of your soul. Ours is a religion jealous in its demands, but how prodigal in its gifts! It troubles you for an hour, it repays you by immortality."
"Such promises," said Apæcides sullenly, "are the tricks by which man is ever gulled. Oh, glorious were the promises which led me to the shrine of Isis!"
"But," answered the Nazarene, "ask thy reason, can that religion be sound which outrages all morality? You are told to worship your gods. What are those gods, even according to yourselves? What their actions, what their attributes? Are they not all represented to you as the blackest of criminals? Yet you are asked to serve them as the holiest of divinities. Jupiter himself is a parricide and an adulterer. What are the meaner deities but imitators of his vices? Turn now to the God, the one, the true God, to whose shrine I would lead you. If He seem too sublime to you, too shadowy, for those human associations, those touching connections between Creator and creature, to which the weak heart clings - contemplate Him in his Son, who put on mortality like ourselves. His mortality is not indeed declared, like that of your fabled gods, by the vices of our nature, but the practice of all its virtues. You are sad, you are weary. Listen, then, to the words of God - 'Come to me,' saith He, 'all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!' "
"I cannot now," said Apæcides; "another time."
"Now - now!" exclaimed Olinthus earnestly, and clasping him by the arm.
But Apæcides, yet unprepared for the renunciation of that faith - that life, for which he had sacrificed so much, and still haunted by the promises of the Egyptian, extricated himself forcibly from the grasp; and feeling an effort necessary to conquer the irresolution which the eloquence of the Christian had begun to effect in his heated and feverish mind, he gathered up his robes, and fled away with a speed that defied pursuit.
Breathless and exhausted, he arrived at last in a remote and sequestered part of the city, and the lone house of the Egyptian stood before him. As he paused to recover himself, the moon emerged from a silver cloud, and shone full upon the walls of that mysterious habitation.
No other house was near - the dark vines clustered far and wide in front of the building, and behind rose a copse of lofty forest trees, sleeping in the melancholy moonlight; beyond stretched the dim outline of the distant hills, and amongst them the quiet crest of Vesuvius, not then so lofty as the traveller beholds it now.
Apæcides passed through the arching vines, and arrived at the broad and spacious portico. Before it, on either side of the steps, reposed the image of the Egyptian sphinx, and the moonlight gave an additional and yet more solemn calm to those large, harmonious, and passionless features, in which the sculptors of that type of wisdom united so much of loveliness with awe; half way up the extremities of the steps darkened the green and massive foliage of the aloe, and the shadow of the eastern palm cast its long unwavering boughs partially over the marble surface of the Stairs.
Something there was in the stillness of the place, and the strange aspect of the sculptured sphinxes, which thrilled the blood of the priest with a nameless and ghostly fear, and he longed even for an echo to his noiseless steps as he ascended to the threshold.
He knocked at the door, over which was wrought an inscription in characters unfamiliar to his eyes; it opened without a sound, and a tall Ethiopian slave without question or salutation motioned to him to proceed.
The wide hall was lighted by lofty candelabra of elaborate bronze, and round the walls were wrought vast hieroglyphics, in dark and solemn colours, which contrasted strangely with the bright hues and graceful shapes with which the inhabitants of Italy decorated their abodes. At the extremity of the hall, a slave, whose countenance, though not African, was darker by many shades than the usual colour of the south, advanced to meet him.
"I seek Arbaces," said the priest; but his voice trembled even in his own ear. The slave bowed his head in silence, and leading Apæcides to a wing without the hall, conducted him up a narrow staircase, and then traversing several rooms in which the stern and thoughtful beauty of the sphinx still made the chief and most impressive object, Apæcides found himself in a dim and half-lighted chamber, in the presence of the Egyptian.
Arbaces was seated before a small table, on which lay unfolded several scrolls of papyrus, impressed with the same character as that on the threshold of the mansion. A small tripod stood at a little distance, containing incense from which the smoke slowly rose. Near this was a vast globe, depicting the signs of heaven; and upon another table lay several instruments of curious and quaint shape, whose uses were unknown to Apæcides. The farther extremity of the room was concealed by a curtain, and the oblong window in the roof admitted the rays of the moon, mingling sadly with the single lamp which burned in the apartment.
"Seat yourself, Apæcides," said the Egyptian, without rising.
The young man obeyed.
"You ask me," Arbaces continued, after a shor