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THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

BOOK THE FIRST

Chapter I

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF POMPEII.

'HO, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?' said a young man
of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds
which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb.

'Alas, no! dear Clodius; he has not invited me,' replied Diomed, a man of
portly frame and of middle age. 'By Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they say
his suppers are the best in Pompeii'.

'Pretty well--though there is never enough of wine for me. It is not the
old Greek blood that flows in his veins, for he pretends that wine makes him
dull the next morning.'

'There may be another reason for that thrift,' said Diomed, raising his
brows. 'With all his conceit and extravagance he is not so rich, I fancy,
as he affects to be, and perhaps loves to save his amphorae better than his
wit.'

'An additional reason for supping with him while the sesterces last. Next
year, Diomed, we must find another Glaucus.'

'He is fond of the dice, too, I hear.'

'He is fond of every pleasure; and while he likes the pleasure of giving
suppers, we are all fond of him.'

'Ha, ha, Clodius, that is well said! Have you ever seen my wine-cellars,
by-the-by?'

'I think not, my good Diomed.'

'Well, you must sup with me some evening; I have tolerable muraenae in my
reservoir, and I ask Pansa the aedile to meet you.'

'O, no state with me!--Persicos odi apparatus, I am easily contented. Well,
the day wanes; I am for the baths--and you...'

'To the quaestor--business of state--afterwards to the temple of Isis.
Vale!'

'An ostentatious, bustling, ill-bred fellow,' muttered Clodius to himself,
as he sauntered slowly away. 'He thinks with his feasts and his
wine-cellars to make us forget that he is the son of a freedman--and so we
will, when we do him the honour of winning his money; these rich plebeians
are a harvest for us spendthrift nobles.'

Thus soliloquising, Clodius arrived in the Via Domitiana, which was crowded
with passengers and chariots, and exhibited all that gay and animated
exuberance of life and motion which we find at this day in the streets of
Naples.

The bells of the cars as they rapidly glided by each other jingled merrily
on the ear, and Clodius with smiles or nods claimed familiar acquaintance
with whatever equipage was most elegant or fantastic: in fact, no idler was
better known in Pompeii.

'What, Clodius! and how have you slept on your good fortune?' cried, in a
pleasant and musical voice, a young man, in a chariot of the most fastidious
and graceful fashion. Upon its surface of bronze were elaborately wrought,
in the still exquisite workmanship of Greece, reliefs of the Olympian games;
the two horses that drew the car were of the rarest breed of Parthia; their
slender limbs seemed to disdain the ground and court the air, and yet at the
slightest touch of the charioteer, who stood behind the young owner of the
equipage, they paused motionless, as if suddenly transformed into
stone--lifeless, but lifelike, as one of the breathing wonders of
Praxiteles. The owner himself was of that slender and beautiful symmetry
from which the sculptors of Athens drew their models; his Grecian origin
betrayed itself in his light but clustering locks, and the perfect harmony
of his features. He wore no toga, which in the time of the emperors had
indeed ceased to be the general distinction of the Romans, and was
especially ridiculed by the pretenders to fashion; but his tunic glowed in
the richest hues of the Tyrian dye, and the fibulae, or buckles, by which it
was fastened, sparkled with emeralds: around his neck was a chain of gold,
which in the middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of a
serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet ring of
elaborate and most exquisite workmanship; the sleeves of the tunic were
loose, and fringed at the hand with gold: and across the waist a girdle
wrought in arabesque designs, and of the same material as the fringe, served
in lieu of pockets for the receptacle of the handkerchief and the purse, the
stilus and the tablets.

'My dear Glaucus!' said Clodius, 'I rejoice to see that your losses have so
little affected your mien. Why, you seem as if you had been inspired by
Apollo, and your face shines with happiness like a glory; any one might take
you for the winner, and me for the loser.'

'And what is there in the loss or gain of those dull pieces of metal that
should change our spirit, my Clodius? By Venus, while yet young, we can
cover our full locks with chaplets--while yet the cithara sounds on unsated
ears--while yet the smile of Lydia or of Chloe flashes over our veins in
which the blood runs so swiftly, so long shall we find delight in the sunny
air, and make bald time itself but the treasurer of our joys. You sup with
me to-night, you know.'

'Who ever forgets the invitation of Glaucus!'

'But which way go you now?'

'Why, I thought of visiting the baths: but it wants yet an hour to the usual
time.'

'Well, I will dismiss my chariot, and go with you. So, so, my Phylias,'
stroking the horse nearest to him, which by a low neigh and with backward
ears playfully acknowledged the courtesy: 'a holiday for you to-day. Is he
not handsome, Clodius?'

'Worthy of Phoebus,' returned the noble parasite--'or of Glaucus.'

Chapter II

THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL, AND THE BEAUTY OF FASHION. THE ATHENIAN'S
CONFESSION. THE READER'S INTRODUCTION TO ARBACES OF EGYPT.

TALKING lightly on a thousand matters, the two young men sauntered through
the streets; they were now in that quarter which was filled with the gayest
shops, their open interiors all and each radiant with the gaudy yet
harmonious colors of frescoes, inconceivably varied in fancy and design.
The sparkling fountains, that at every vista threw upwards their grateful
spray in the summer air; the crowd of passengers, or rather loiterers,
mostly clad in robes of the Tyrian dye; the gay groups collected round each
more attractive shop; the slaves passing to and fro with buckets of bronze,
cast in the most graceful shapes, and borne upon their heads; the country
girls stationed at frequent intervals with baskets of blushing fruit, and
flowers more alluring to the ancient Italians than to their descendants
(with whom, indeed, "latet anguis in herba," a disease seems lurking in
every violet and rose); the numerous haunts which fulfilled with that idle
people the office of cafes and clubs at this day; the shops, where on
shelves of marble were ranged the vases of wine and oil, and before whose
thresholds, seats, protected from the sun by a purple awning, invited the
weary to rest and the indolent to lounge--made a scene of such glowing and
vivacious excitement, as might well give the Athenian spirit of Glaucus an
excuse for its susceptibility to joy.

'Talk to me no more of Rome,' said he to Clodius. 'Pleasure is too stately
and ponderous in those mighty walls: even in the precincts of the
court--even in the Golden House of Nero, and the incipient glories of the
palace of Titus, there is a certain dulness of magnificence--the eye
aches--the spirit is wearied; besides, my Clodius, we are discontented when
we compare the enormous luxury and wealth of others with the mediocrity of
our own state. But here we surrender ourselves easily to pleasure, and we
have the brilliancy of luxury without the lassitude of its pomp.'

'It was from that feeling that you chose your summer retreat at Pompeii?'

'It was. I prefer it to Baiae: I grant the charms of the latter, but I love
not the pedants who resort there, and who seem to weigh out their pleasures
by the drachm.'

'Yet you are fond of the learned, too; and as for poetry, why, your house is
literally eloquent with AEschylus and Homer, the epic and the drama.'

'Yes, but those Romans who mimic my Athenian ancestors do everything so
heavily. Even in the chase they make their slaves carry Plato with them;
and whenever the boar is lost, out they take their books and their papyrus,
in order not to lose their time too. When the dancing-girls swim before them
in all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone of a freedman, with a
face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero "De Officiis". Unskilful
pharmacists! pleasure and study are not elements to be thus mixed together,
they must be enjoyed separately: the Romans lose both by this pragmatical
affectation of refinement, and prove that they have no souls for either.
Oh, my Clodius, how little your countrymen know of the true versatility of a
Pericles, of the true witcheries of an Aspasia! It was but the other day
that I paid a visit to Pliny: he was sitting in his summer-house writing,
while an unfortunate slave played on the tibia. His nephew (oh! whip me
such philosophical coxcombs!) was reading Thucydides' description of the
plague, and nodding his conceited little head in time to the music, while
his lips were repeating all the loathsome details of that terrible
delineation. The puppy saw nothing incongruous in learning at the same time
a ditty of love and a description of the plague.'

'Why, they are much the same thing,' said Clodius.

'So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry--but my youth stared me
rebukingly in the face, without taking the jest, and answered, that it was
only the insensate ear that the music pleased, whereas the book (the
description of the plague, mind you!) elevated the heart. "Ah!" quoth the
fat uncle, wheezing, "my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the utile
with the dulce." O Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve! While I was there,
they came to tell the boy-sophist that his favorite freedman was just dead
of a fever. "Inexorable death!" cried he; "get me my Horace. How
beautifully the sweet poet consoles us for these misfortunes!" Oh, can
these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with the senses. How rarely a
Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of genius--he wants its bones
and flesh.'

Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his
countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, partly because he was
by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among the
dissolute young Romans to affect a little 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.

Thus conversing, their steps were arrested by a crowd gathered round an open
space where three streets met; and, just where the porticoes of a light and
graceful temple threw their shade, there stood a young girl, with a
flower-basket on her right arm, and a small three-stringed instrument of
music in the left hand, to whose low and soft tones she was modulating a
wild and half-barbaric air. At every pause in the music she gracefully
waved her flower-basket round, inviting the loiterers to buy; and many a
sesterce was showered into the basket, either in compliment to the music or
in compassion to the songstress--for she was blind.

'It is my poor Thessalian,' said Glaucus, stopping; 'I have not seen her
since my return to Pompeii. Hush! her voice is sweet; let us listen.'

THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL'S SONG

I.

Buy my flowers--O buy--I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar;
If the earth be as fair as I hear them say,
These flowers her children are!
Do they her beauty keep?
They are fresh from her lap, I know;
For I caught them fast asleep
In her arms an hour ago.
With the air which is her breath--
Her soft and delicate breath--
Over them murmuring low!

On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet,
And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet.
For she weeps--that gentle mother weeps--
(As morn and night her watch she keeps,
With a yearning heart and a passionate care)
To see the young things grow so fair;
She weeps--for love she weeps;
And the dews are the tears she weeps
From the well of a mother's love!

II.

Ye have a world of light,
Where love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind girl's home is the House of Night,
And its beings are empty voices.

As one in the realm below,
I stand by the streams of woe!
I hear the vain shadows glide,
I feel their soft breath at my side.
And I thirst the loved forms to see,
And I stretch my fond arms around,
And I catch but a shapeless sound,
For the living are ghosts to me.

Come buy--come buy?--
Hark! how the sweet things sigh
For they have a voice like ours),
`The breath of the blind girl closes
The leaves of the saddening roses--
We are tender, we sons of light,
We shrink from this child of night;
From the grasp of the blind girl free us--
We yearn for the eyes that see us--
We are for night too gay,
In your eyes we behold the day--
O buy--O buy the flowers!'

'I must have yon bunch of violets, sweet Nydia,' said Glaucus, pressing
through the crowd, and dropping a handful of small coins into the basket;
'your voice is more charming than ever.'

The blind girl started forward as she heard the Athenian's voice; then as
suddenly paused, while the blood rushed violently over neck, cheek, and
temples.

'So you are returned!' said she, in a low voice; and then repeated half to
herself, 'Glaucus is returned!'

'Yes, child, I have not been at Pompeii above a few days. My garden wants
your care, as before; you will visit it, I trust, to-morrow. And mind, no
garlands at my house shall be woven by any hands but those of the pretty
Nydia.'

Nydia smiled joyously, but did not answer; and Glaucus, placing in his
breast the violets he had selected, turned gaily and carelessly from the
crowd.

'So she is a sort of client of yours, this child?' said Clodius.

'Ay--does she not sing prettily? She interests me, the poor slave! Besides,
she is from the land of the Gods' hill--Olympus frowned upon her cradle--she
is of Thessaly.'

'The witches' country.'

'True: but for my part I find every woman a witch; and at Pompeii, by Venus!
the very air seems to have taken a love-philtre, so handsome does every face
without a beard seem in my eyes.'

'And lo! one of the handsomest in Pompeii, old Diomed's daughter, the rich
Julia!' said Clodius, as a young lady, her face covered by her veil, and
attended by two female slaves, approached them, in her way to the baths.

'Fair Julia, we salute thee!' said Clodius.

Julia partly raised her veil, so as with some coquetry to display a bold
Roman profile, a full dark bright eye, and a cheek over whose natural olive
art shed a fairer and softer rose.

'And Glaucus, too, is returned!' said she, glancing meaningly at the
Athenian. 'Has he forgotten,' she added, in a half-whisper, 'his friends of
the last year?'

'Beautiful Julia! even Lethe itself, if it disappear in one part of the
earth, rises again in another. Jupiter does not allow us ever to forget for
more than a moment: but Venus, more harsh still, vouchsafes not even a
moment's oblivion.'

'Glaucus is never at a loss for fair words.'

'Who is, when the object of them is so fair?'

'We shall see you both at my father's villa soon,' said Julia, turning to
Clodius.

'We will mark the day in which we visit you with a white stone,' answered
the gamester.

Julia dropped her veil, but slowly, so that her last glance rested on the
Athenian with affected timidity and real boldness; the glance bespoke
tenderness and reproach.

The friends passed on.

'Julia is certainly handsome,' said Glaucus.

'And last year you would have made that confession in a warmer tone.'

'True; I was dazzled at the first sight, and mistook for a gem that which
was but an artful imitation.'

'Nay,' returned Clodius, 'all women are the same at heart. Happy he who
weds a handsome face and a large dower. What more can he desire?'

Glaucus sighed.

They were now in a street less crowded than the rest, at the end of which
they beheld that broad and most lovely sea, which upon those delicious
coasts seems to have renounced its prerogative of terror--so soft are the
crisping winds that hover around its bosom, so glowing and so various are
the hues which it takes from the rosy clouds, so fragrant are the perfumes
which the breezes from the land scatter over its depths. From such a sea
might you well believe that Aphrodite rose to take the empire of the earth.

'It is still early for the bath,' said the Greek, who was the creature of
every poetical impulse; 'let us wander from the crowded city, and look upon
the sea while the noon yet laughs along its billows.'

'With all my heart,' said Clodius; 'and the bay, too, is always the most
animated part of the city.'

Pompeii was the miniature of the civilization of that age. Within the narrow
compass of its walls was contained, as it were, a specimen of every gift
which luxury offered to power. In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny
palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its circus--in the energy yet
corruption, in the refinement yet the vice, of its people, you beheld a
model of the whole empire. It was a toy, a plaything, a showbox, in which
the gods seemed pleased to keep the representation of the great monarchy of
earth, and which they afterwards hid from time, to give to the wonder of
posterity--the moral of the maxim, that under the sun there is nothing new.

Crowded in the glassy bay were the vessels of commerce and the gilded
galleys for the pleasures of the rich citizens. The boats of the fishermen
glided rapidly to and fro; and afar off you saw the tall masts of the fleet
under the command of Pliny. Upon the shore sat a Sicilian who, with
vehement gestures and flexile features, was narrating to a group of
fishermen and peasants a strange tale of shipwrecked mariners and friendly
dolphins--just as at this day, in the modern neighborhood, you may hear upon
the Mole of Naples.

Drawing his comrade from the crowd, the Greek bent his steps towards a
solitary part of the beach, and the two friends, seated on a small crag
which rose amidst the smooth pebbles, inhaled the voluptuous and cooling
breeze, which dancing over the waters, kept music with its invisible feet.
There was, perhaps, something in the scene that invited them to silence and
reverie. Clodius, shading his eyes from the burning sky, was calculating
the gains of the last week; and the Greek, leaning upon his hand, and
shrinking not from that sun--his nation's tutelary deity--with whose fluent
light of poesy, and joy, and love, his own veins were filled, gazed upon the
broad expanse, and envied, perhaps, every wind that bent its pinions towards
the shores of Greece.

'Tell me, Clodius,' said the Greek at last, 'hast thou ever been in love?'

'Yes, very often.'

'He who has loved often,' answered Glaucus, 'has loved never. There is but
one Eros, though there are many counterfeits of him.'

'The counterfeits are not bad little gods, upon the whole,' answered
Clodius.

'I agree with you,' returned the Greek. 'I adore even the shadow of Love;
but I adore himself yet more.'

'Art thou, then, soberly and honestly in love? Hast thou that feeling which
the poets describe--a feeling that makes us neglect our suppers, forswear
the theatre, and write elegies? I should never have thought it. You
dissemble well.'

'I am not far gone enough for that,' returned Glaucus, smiling, 'or rather I
say with Tibullus--

He whom love rules, where'er his path may be,
Walks safe and sacred.

In fact, I am not in love; but I could be if there were but occasion to see
the object. Eros would light his torch, but the priests have given him no
oil.'

'Shall I guess the object?--Is it not Diomed's daughter? She adores you,
and does not affect to conceal it; and, by Hercules, I say again and again,
she is both handsome and rich. She will bind the door-posts of her husband
with golden fillets.'

'No, I do not desire to sell myself. Diomed's daughter is handsome, I
grant: and at one time, had she not been the grandchild of a freedman, I
might have... Yet no--she carries all her beauty in her face; her manners
are not maiden-like, and her mind knows no culture save that of pleasure.'

'You are ungrateful. Tell me, then, who is the fortunate virgin?'

'You shall hear, my Clodius. Several months ago I was sojourning at
Neapolis, a city utterly to my own heart, for it still retains the manners
and stamp of its Grecian origin--and it yet merits the name of Parthenope,
from its delicious air and its beautiful shores. One day I entered the
temple of Minerva, to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for the
city on which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was empty and deserted.
The recollections of Athens crowded fast and meltingly upon me: imagining
myself still alone in the temple, and absorbed in the earnestness of my
devotion, my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, and I wept as I prayed.
I was startled in the midst of my devotions, however, by a deep sigh; I
turned suddenly round, and just behind me was a female. She had raised her
veil also in prayer: and when our eyes met, methought a celestial ray shot
from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my soul. Never, my Clodius,
have I seen mortal face more exquisitely molded: a certain melancholy
softened and yet elevated its expression: that unutterable something, which
springs from the soul, and which our sculptors have imparted to the aspect
of Psyche, gave her beauty I know not what of divine and noble; tears were
rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was also of Athenian
lineage; and that in my prayer for Athens her heart had responded to mine.
I spoke to her, though with a faltering voice--"Art thou not, too,
Athenian?" said I, "O beautiful virgin!" At the sound of my voice she
blushed, and half drew her veil across her face.--"My forefathers' ashes,"
said she, "repose by the waters of Ilissus: my birth is of Neapolis; but my
heart, as my lineage, is Athenian."--"Let us, then," said I, "make our
offerings together": and, as the priest now appeared, we stood side by side,
while we followed the priest in his ceremonial prayer; together we touched
the knees of the goddess--together we laid our olive garlands on the altar.
I felt a strange emotion of almost sacred tenderness at this companionship.
We, strangers from a far and fallen land, stood together and alone in that
temple of our country's deity: was it not natural that my heart should yearn
to my countrywoman, for so I might surely call her? I felt as if I had
known her for years; and that simple rite seemed, as by a miracle, to
operate on the sympathies and ties of time. Silently we left the temple,
and I was about to ask her where she dwelt, and if I might be permitted to
visit her, when a youth, in whose features there was some kindred
resemblance to her own, and who stood upon the steps of the fane, took her
by the hand. She turned round and bade me farewell. The crowd separated
us: I saw her no more. On reaching my home I found letters, which obliged
me to set out for Athens, for my relations threatened me with litigation
concerning my inheritance. When that suit was happily over, I repaired once
more to Neapolis; I instituted inquiries throughout the whole city, I could
discover no clue of my lost countrywoman, and, hoping to lose in gaiety all
remembrance of that beautiful apparition, I hastened to plunge myself amidst
the luxuries of Pompeii. This is all my history. I do not love; but I
remember and regret.'

As Clodius was about to reply, a slow and stately step approached them, and
at the sound it made amongst the pebbles, each turned, and each recognized
the new-comer.

It was a man who had scarcely reached his fortieth year, of tall stature,
and of a thin but nervous and sinewy frame. His skin, dark and bronzed,
betrayed his Eastern origin; and his features had something Greek in their
outline (especially in the chin, the lip, and the brow), save that the nose
was somewhat raised and aquiline; and the bones, hard and visible, forbade
that fleshy and waving contour which on the Grecian physiognomy preserved
even in manhood the round and beautiful curves of youth. His eyes, large
and black as the deepest night, shone with no varying and uncertain lustre.
A deep, thoughtful, and half-melancholy calm seemed unalterably fixed in
their majestic and commanding gaze. His step and mien were peculiarly
sedate and lofty, and something foreign in the fashion and the sober hues of
his sweeping garments added to the impressive effect of his quiet
countenance and stately form. Each of the young men, in saluting the
new-comer, made mechanically, and with care to conceal it from him, a slight
gesture or sign with their fingers; for Arbaces, the Egyptian, was supposed
to possess the fatal gift of the evil eye.

'The scene must, indeed, be beautiful,' said Arbaces, with a cold though
courteous smile, 'which draws the gay Clodius, and Glaucus the all admired,
from the crowded thoroughfares of the city.'

'Is Nature ordinarily so unattractive?' asked the Greek.

'To the dissipated--yes.'

'An austere reply, but scarcely a wise one. Pleasure delights in contrasts;
it is from dissipation that we learn to enjoy solitude, and from solitude
dissipation.'

'So think the young philosophers of the Garden,' replied the Egyptian; 'they
mistake lassitude for meditation, and imagine that, because they are sated
with others, they know the delight of loneliness. But not in such jaded
bosoms can Nature awaken that enthusiasm which alone draws from her chaste
reserve all her unspeakable beauty: she demands from you, not the exhaustion
of passion, but all that fervor, from which you only seek, in adoring her, a
release. When, young Athenian, the moon revealed herself in visions of
light to Endymion, it was after a day passed, not amongst the feverish
haunts of men, but on the still mountains and in the solitary valleys of the
hunter.'

'Beautiful simile!' cried Glaucus; 'most unjust application! Exhaustion!
that word is for age, not youth. By me, at least, one moment of satiety has
never been known!'

Again the Egyptian smiled, but his smile was cold and blighting, and even
the unimaginative Clodius froze beneath its light. He did not, however,
reply to the passionate exclamation of Glaucus; but, after a pause, he said,
in a soft and melancholy voice:

'After all, you do right to enjoy the hour while it smiles for you; the rose
soon withers, the perfume soon exhales. And we, O Glaucus! strangers in the
land and far from our fathers' ashes, what is there left for us but pleasure
or regret!--for you the first, perhaps for me the last.'

The bright eyes of the Greek were suddenly suffused with tears. 'Ah, speak
not, Arbaces,' he cried--'speak not of our ancestors. Let us forget that
there were ever other liberties than those of Rome! And Glory!--oh, vainly
would we call her ghost from the fields of Marathon and Thermopylae!'

'Thy heart rebukes thee while thou speakest,' said the Egyptian; 'and in thy
gaieties this night, thou wilt be more mindful of Leoena than of Lais.
Vale!'

Thus saying, he gathered his robe around him, and slowly swept away.

'I breathe more freely,' said Clodius. 'Imitating the Egyptians, we
sometimes introduce a skeleton at our feasts. In truth, the presence of
such an Egyptian as yon gliding shadow were spectre enough to sour the
richest grape of the Falernian.'

'Strange man! said Glaucus, musingly; 'yet dead though he seem to pleasure,
and cold to the objects of the world, scandal belies him, or his house and
his heart could tell a different tale.'

'Ah! there are whispers of other orgies than those of Osiris in his gloomy
mansion. He is rich, too, they say. Can we not get him amongst us, and
teach him the charms of dice? Pleasure of pleasures! hot fever of hope and
fear! inexpressible unjaded passion! how fiercely beautiful thou art, O
Gaming!'

'Inspired--inspired!' cried Glaucus, laughing; 'the oracle speaks poetry in
Clodius. What miracle next!'

Chapter III

PARENTAGE OF GLAUCUS. DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSES OF POMPEII. CLASSIC 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
inspiration of glory. His house at Rome was the theme of the debauchees,
but also of the lovers of art; and the sculptors of Greece delighted to task
their skill in adorning the porticoes and exedrae of an Athenian. His
retreat in Pompeii--alas! the colors 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 to Glaucus the wit and the heroism of his race, that fairy
mansion was adorned with representations of AEschylus 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'.

Previous to our description of this house, it may be as well to convey to
the reader a general notion of the houses of Pompeii, which he will find to
resemble strongly the plans of Vitruvius; but with all those differences in
detail, of caprice and taste, which being natural to mankind, have always
puzzled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make this description as clear
and unpedantic as possible.

You enter then, usually, by a small entrance-passage (called cestibulum),
into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently without) the ornament of
columns; around three sides of this hall are doors communicating with
several bedchambers (among which is the porter's), 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 is large, there are two
small recesses, rather than chambers, generally devoted to the ladies of the
mansion; and in the centre of the tessellated pavement of the hall is
invariably a square, shallow reservoir for rain water (classically termed
impluvium), which was admitted by an aperture in the roof above; the said
aperture being covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had
a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, 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. It is supposed that
this chest was the money-box, or coffer, of the master of the house; though
as no money has been found in any of the chests discovered at Pompeii, it is
probable that it was sometimes rather designed for ornament than use.

In this hall (or atrium, to speak classically) the clients and visitors of
inferior rank were usually received. In the houses of the more
'respectable', an atriensis, or slave peculiarly devoted to the service of
the hall, was invariably retained, and his 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. Right opposite the entrance, at the other end of the hall, was
an apartment (tablinum), in which the pavement was usually adorned with rich
mosaics, and the walls covered with elaborate paintings. Here were usually
kept the records of the family, or those of any public office that had been
filled by the owner: on one side of this saloon, if we may so call it, was
often a dining-room, or triclinium; on the other side, perhaps, what we
should now term a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were
deemed most rare and costly; and invariably 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 a square or oblong colonnade,
technically termed peristyle. If the house was small, its boundary ceased
with this colonnade; and in that 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 ancients 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 affected
letters, a cabinet, dignified by the name of library--for a very small room
was sufficient to contain the few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed
a notable collection of books.

At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the house
was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre thereof was not
in that case a garden, but might be, perhaps, adorned with a fountain, or
basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to the tablinum, was
generally another eating-room, on either side of which were bedrooms, and,
perhaps, a picture-saloon, or pinacotheca. These apartments communicated
again with a square or oblong space, usually adorned on three sides with a
colonnade like the peristyle, and very much resembling the peristyle, only
usually longer. This was the proper viridarium, 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 (or caenaculum) on the second
floor. The apartments themselves were ordinarily of small size; for in
those delightful climes they received any extraordinary number of visitors
in the peristyle (or portico), the hall, or the garden; and even their
banquet-rooms, however elaborately adorned and carefully selected in point
of aspect, were of diminutive proportions; for the intellectual ancients,
being fond of society, not of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a
time, so that large dinner-rooms were not so necessary with them as with us.
But the suite of rooms seen at once from the entrance, must have had a very
imposing effect: you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted--the
tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and (if the house extended farther) the
opposite banquet-room and the garden, which closed the view with some
gushing fount or marble statue.

The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses, which
resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman fashion of
domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some difference in
detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the same in all. In all
you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle, communicating with each
other; in all you find the walls richly painted; and all the evidence of a
people fond of the refining elegancies of life. The purity of the taste of
the Pompeians in decoration is, however, questionable: they were fond of the
gaudiest colors, of fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of
their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncolored; and where the garden
was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its
extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, etc., in perspective--a
meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted,
with a complacent pride in its ingenuity.

But the house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest, and yet one of the
most adorned and finished of all the private mansions of Pompeii: it would
be a model at this day for the house of 'a single man in Mayfair'--the envy
and despair of the coelibian purchasers of buhl and marquetry.

You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which is the image
of a dog in mosaic, with the well-known 'Cave canem'--or 'Beware the dog'.
On either side is 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 in
the penetralia of the mansion.

Advancing up the vestibule you enter an atrium, that when first discovered
was rich in paintings, which in point of expression would scarcely disgrace
a Rafaele. You may see them now transplanted to the Neapolitan Museum: they
are still the admiration of connoisseurs--they depict the parting of
Achilles and Briseis. Who does not acknowledge the force, the vigour, the
beauty, employed in delineating the forms and faces of Achilles and the
immortal slave!

On one side the atrium, a small staircase admitted to the apartments 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, etc.

You now enter the tablinum, across which, at either end, hung rich draperies
of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn. On the walls was 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.

You passed through this saloon and entered the peristyle; and here (as I
have said before was usually the case with the smaller houses of Pompeii)
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
bronzed 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 room is usually termed by the antiquaries of Naples 'The Chamber of
Leda'; and in the beautiful work of Sir William Gell, the reader will find
an engraving from that most delicate and graceful painting of Leda
presenting her newborn to her husband, from which the room derives its name.
This charming apartment opened upon the fragrant garden. Round the table of
citrean wood, highly polished and delicately wrought with silver arabesques,
were placed the three couches, which were yet 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 broidery, and yielding luxuriously to the
pressure.

'Well, I must own,' said the aedile Pansa, 'that your house, though scarcely
larger than a case for one's fibulae, is a gem of its kind. How beautifully
painted is that parting of Achilles and Briseis!--what a style!--what
heads!--what a-hem!'

'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,' quoth the aedile, 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--AEdepol, yes--in the colors, 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 yet 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
altar of Vesta, with a beautiful muraena (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. As these were placed on the table, young slaves
bore round to each of the five guests (for there were no more) the silver
basin of perfumed water, and napkins edged with a purple fringe. But the
aedile 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 cools, but to inflame the
more.'

'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 have a most 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 aedile,
gravely. 'It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to send our own
slaves to the wild beasts. Not to let us do what we like with our own,
that's what I call an infringement on property itself.'

'Not so in the good old days of the Republic,' sighed Sallust.

'And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a disappointment to the
poor people. How they do love to see a good tough battle between a man and
a lion; and all this innocent pleasure they may lose (if the gods don't send
us a good criminal soon) from this cursed law!'

'What can be worse policy,' said Clodius, sententiously, 'than to interfere
with the manly amusements of the people?'

'Well thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present,' said
Sallust.

'He was, indeed, a tyrant; 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 the
young Sallust, with sparkling eyes.

Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life like
eating--perhaps he had exhausted all the others: yet had he some talent, and
an excellent heart--as far as it went.

'I know its face, by Pollux!' cried Pansa. 'It is an Ambracian Kid. Ho
(snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the slaves) we must prepare a new
libation in honour to the new-comer.'

'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 Caesar have forbid
us the oysters.'

'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 flavor; they
want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But, at Rome, 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 would produce us a gladiator,' said the aedile, whose provident
mind was musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.

'By Pallas!' cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his streaming
locks with a new chaplet, 'I love these wild spectacles well enough when
beast fights beast; 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: I sicken--I gasp for breath--I long to rush and defend him. 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 aedile 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 'AEdepol!' 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 'AEdepol!'

'Well, you Italians are used to these spectacles; we Greeks are more
merciful. Ah, shade of Pindar!--the rapture of a true Grecian game--the
emulation of man against man--the generous strife--the half-mournful
triumph--so proud to contend with a noble foe, so sad to see him overcome!
But ye understand me not.'

'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?' said Pansa.

'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 women,' said the Greek, carelessly rearranging his chaplet.

The musicians, who were stationed in the portico without, had commenced
their office with the kid; they now directed the melody into a more soft, a
more gay, yet it may be a more intellectual strain; and they chanted that
song of Horace beginning 'Persicos odi', etc., so impossible to translate,
and which they imagined applicable to a feast that, effeminate as it seems
to us, was simple enough for the gorgeous revelry of the time. We are
witnessing the domestic, and not the princely feast--the entertainment of a
gentleman, not an emperor or a senator.

'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 Spuraena; 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 colors of painting, its life, and its
action. Immortal Fulvius!'

'By the way,' said Sallust, 'have you seen the new ode by Spuraena, in
honour of our Egyptian Isis? It is magnificent--the true religious fervor.'

'Isis seems a favorite 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, none of your 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 treasured.'

'He certainly possesses the gift of the evil eye,' said Clodius. 'If I ever
come upon that Medusa front without the previous charm, I am sure to lose a
favorite 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 aedile of Rome,
banished all such terrible citizens. But a rich man--it is the duty of an
aedile 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 the least
inclined to break the silence, but Clodius began already to think that they
wasted time.

'Bene vobis! (Your health!) my Glaucus,' said he, quaffing a cup 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? See, the dice court
us.'

'As you will,' said Glaucus.

'The dice in summer, and I an aedile!' 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 aedile.

'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 confectionery tortured into a thousand fantastic and
airy shapes, was now placed upon the table; and the ministri, or 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 flavor.'

'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 favorite 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 voice in the band chanted forth, in Greek words, as numbers, the
following strain:-

THE EVENING HYMN OF THE HOURS

I

"Through the summer day, through the weary day,
We have glided long;
Ere we speed to the Night through her portals grey,
Hail us with song!--
With song, with song,
With a bright and joyous song;
Such as the Cretan maid,
While the twilight made her bolder,
Woke, high through the ivy shade,
When the wine-god first consoled her.
From the hush'd, low-breathing skies,
Half-shut look'd their starry eyes,
And all around,
With a loving sound,
The AEgean waves were creeping:
On her lap lay the lynx's head;
Wild thyme was her bridal bed;
And aye through each tiny space,
In the green vine's green embrace
The Fauns were slily peeping--
The Fauns, the prying Fauns--
The arch, the laughing Fauns--
The Fauns were slily peeping!

II

Flagging and faint are we
With our ceaseless flight,
And dull shall our journey be
Through the realm of night,
Bathe us, O bathe our weary wings
In the purple wave, as it freshly springs
To your cups from the fount of light--
From the fount of light--from the fount of light,

For there, when the sun has gone down in night,
There in the bowl we find him.
The grape is the well of that summer sun,
Or rather the stream that he gazed upon,
Till he left in truth, like the Thespian youth,
His soul, as he gazed, behind him.

III

A cup to Jove, and a cup to Love,
And a cup to the son of Maia;
And honour with three, the band zone-free,
The band of the bright Aglaia.
But since every bud in the wreath of pleasure
Ye owe to the sister Hours,
No stinted cups, in a formal measure,
The Bromian law makes ours.
He honors us most who gives us most,
And boasts, with a Bacchanal's honest boast,
He never will count the treasure.
Fastly we fleet, then seize our wings,
And plunge us deep in the sparkling springs;
And aye, as we rise with a dripping plume,
We'll scatter the spray round the garland's bloom;
We glow--we glow,
Behold, as the girls of the Eastern wave
Bore once with a shout to the crystal cave
The prize of the Mysian Hylas,
Even so--even so,
We have caught the young god in our warm embrace
We hurry him on in our laughing race;
We hurry him on, with a whoop and song,
The cloudy rivers of night along--
Ho, ho!--we have caught thee, Psilas!

The guests 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 the 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 word puts
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, conceitedly; '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 cithara, 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 Vestal 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; 'meanwhile...' 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
caniculae' (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--whom he who wins money, indeed, usually propitiates!

'Venus is ungrateful to me,' said Glaucus, gaily; '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 illumined 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 colors of the artist; and under the
portico which surrounded the odorous viridarium 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 of Ione, gave to his view that bright, that nymph-like beauty, which
for months had shone down upon the waters of his memory.

Chapter IV

THE TEMPLE OF ISIS. ITS PRIEST. THE CHARACTER OF ARBACES DEVELOPS ITSELF.

THE story returns to the Egyptian. We left Arbaces upon the shores of the
noonday sea, after he had parted from Glaucus and his companion. As he
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; 'whether
business or pleasure, trade or religion, be your pursuit, you are equally
cheated by the passions that ye should rule! How I could loathe you, if I
did not hate--yes, hate! Greek or Roman, it is from us, from the dark lore
of Egypt, that ye have stolen the fire that gives you souls. Your
knowledge--your poesy--your laws--your arts--your barbarous mastery of war
(all how tame and mutilated, when compared with the vast original!)--ye have
filched, as a slave filches the fragments of the feast, from us! And now,
ye mimics of a mimic!--Romans, forsooth! the mushroom herd of robbers! ye
are our masters! the pyramids look down no more on the race of Rameses--the
eagle cowers over the serpent of the Nile. Our masters--no, not mine. My
soul, by the power of its wisdom, controls and chains you, though the
fetters are unseen. So long as craft can master force, so long as religion
has a cave from which oracles can dupe mankind, the wise hold an empire over
earth. Even from your vices Arbaces distills his pleasures--pleasures
unprofaned by vulgar eyes--pleasures vast, wealthy, inexhaustible, of which
your enervate minds, in their unimaginative sensuality, cannot conceive or
dream! Plod on, plod on, fools of ambition and of avarice! your petty
thirst for fasces and quaestorships, and all the mummery of servile power,
provokes my laughter and my scorn. My power can extend wherever man
believes. I ride over the souls that the purple veils. Thebes may fall,
Egypt be a name; the world itself furnishes the subjects of Arbaces.'

Thus saying, the Egyptian moved slowly on; and, entering the town, his tall
figure towered above the crowded throng of the forum, and swept towards the
small but graceful temple consecrated to Isis.

That edifice was then but of recent erection; the ancient temple had been
thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years before, and the new building had
become as much in vogue with the versatile Pompeians as a new church or a
new preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess at Pompeii were
indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious language in which they were
clothed, than for the credit which was attached to their mandates and
predictions. If they were not dictated by a divinity, they were framed at
least by a profound knowledge of mankind; they applied themselves exactly to
the circumstances of individuals, and made a notable contrast to the vague
and loose generalities of their rival temples. As Arbaces now arrived at
the rails which separated the profane from the sacred place, a crowd,
composed of all classes, but especially of the commercial, collected,
breathless and reverential, before the many altars which rose in the open
court. In the walls of the cella, elevated on seven steps of Parian marble,
various statues stood in niches, and those walls were ornamented with the
pomegranate consecrated to Isis. An oblong pedestal occupied the interior
building, on which stood two statues, one of Isis, and its companion
represented the silent and mystic Orus. But the building contained many
other deities to grace the court of the Egyptian deity: her kindred and
many-titled Bacchus, and the Cyprian Venus, a Grecian disguise for herself,
rising from her bath, and the dog-headed Anubis, and the ox Apis, and
various Egyptian idols of uncouth form and unknown appellations.

But we must not suppose that among the cities of Magna Graecia, Isis was
worshipped with those forms and ceremonies which were of right her own. The
mongrel and modern nations of the South, with a mingled arrogance and
ignorance, confounded the worships of all climes and ages. And the profound
mysteries of the Nile were degraded by a hundred meretricious and frivolous
admixtures from the creeds of Cephisus and of Tibur. The temple of Isis in
Pompeii was served by Roman and Greek priests, ignorant alike of the
language and the customs of her ancient votaries; and the descendant of the
dread Egyptian kings, beneath the appearance of reverential awe, secretly
laughed to scorn the puny mummeries which imitated the solemn and typical
worship of his burning clime.

Ranged now on either side the steps was the sacrificial crowd, arrayed in
white garments, while at the summit stood two of the inferior priests, the
one holding a palm branch, the other a slender sheaf of corn. In the narrow
passage in front thronged the bystanders.

'And what,' whispered Arbaces to one of the bystanders, who was a merchant
engaged in the Alexandrian trade, which trade had probably first introduced
in Pompeii the worship of the Egyptian goddess--'what occasion now assembles
you before the altars of the venerable Isis? It seems, by the white robes
of the group before me, that a sacrifice is to be rendered; and by the
assembly of the priests, that ye are prepared for some oracle. To what
question is it to vouchsafe a reply?'

'We are merchants,' replied the bystander (who was no other than Diomed) in
the same voice, 'who seek to know the fate of our vessels, which sail for
Alexandria to-morrow. We are about to offer up a sacrifice and implore an
answer from the goddess. I am not one of those who have petitioned the
priest to sacrifice, as you may see by my dress, but I have some interest in
the success of the fleet--by Jupiter! yes. I have a pretty trade, else how
could I live in these hard times?

The Egyptian replied gravely--'That though Isis was properly the goddess of
agriculture, she was no less the patron of commerce.' Then turning his head
towards the east, Arbaces seemed absorbed in silent prayer.

And now in the centre of the steps appeared a priest robed in white from
head to foot, the veil parting over the crown; two new priests relieved
those hitherto stationed at either corner, being naked half-way down to the
breast, and covered, for the rest, in white and loose robes. At the same
time, seated at the bottom of the steps, a priest commenced a solemn air
upon a long wind-instrument of music. Half-way down the steps stood another
flamen, holding in one hand the votive wreath, in the other a white wand;
while, adding to the picturesque scene of that eastern ceremony, the stately
ibis (bird sacred to the Egyptian worship) looked mutely down from the wall
upon the rite, or stalked beside the altar at the base of the steps.

At that altar now stood the sacrificial flamen.

The countenance of Arbaces seemed to lose all its rigid calm while the
aruspices inspected the entrails, and to be intent in pious anxiety--to
rejoice and brighten as the signs were declared favorable, and the fire
began bright and clearly to consume the sacred portion of the victim amidst
odorous of myrrh and frankincense. It was then that a dead silence fell
over the whispering crowd, and the priests gathering round the cella,
another priest, naked save by a cincture round the middle, rushed forward,
and dancing with wild gestures, implored an answer from the goddess. He
ceased at last in exhaustion, and a low murmuring noise was heard within the
body of the statue: thrice the head moved, and the lips parted, and then a
hollow voice uttered these mystic words:

There are waves like chargers that meet and glow,
There are graves ready wrought in the rocks below,
On the brow of the future the dangers lour,
But blest are your barks in the fearful hour.

The voice ceased--the crowd breathed more freely--the merchants looked at
each other. 'Nothing can be more plain,' murmured Diomed; 'there is to be a
storm at sea, as there very often is at the beginning of autumn, but our
vessels are to be saved. O beneficent Isis!'

'Lauded eternally be the goddess!' said the merchants: 'what can be less
equivocal than her prediction?'

Raising one hand in sign of silence to the people, for the rites of Isis
enjoined what to the lively Pompeians was an impossible suspense from the
use of the vocal organs, the chief priest poured his libation on the altar,
and after a short concluding prayer the ceremony was over, and the
congregation dismissed. Still, however, as the crowd dispersed themselves
here and there, the Egyptian lingered by the railing, and when the space
became tolerably cleared, one of the priests, approaching it, saluted him
with great appearance of friendly familiarity.

The countenance of the priest was remarkably unprepossessing--his shaven
skull was so low and narrow in the front as nearly to approach to the
conformation of that of an African savage, save only towards the temples,
where, in that organ styled acquisitiveness by the pupils of a science
modern in name, but best practically known (as their sculpture teaches us)
amongst the ancients, two huge and almost preternatural protuberances yet
more distorted the unshapely head--around the brows the skin was puckered
into a web of deep and intricate wrinkles--the eyes, dark and small, rolled
in a muddy and yellow orbit--the nose, short yet coarse, was distended at
the nostrils like a satyr's--and the thick but pallid lips, the high
cheek-bones, the livid and motley hues that struggled through the parchment
skin, completed a countenance which none could behold without repugnance,
and few without terror and distrust: whatever the wishes of the mind, the
animal frame was well fitted to execute them; the wiry muscles of the
throat, the broad chest, the nervous hands and lean gaunt arms, which were
bared above the elbow, betokened a form capable alike of great active
exertion and passive endurance.

'Calenus,' said the Egyptian to this fascinating flamen, 'you have improved
the voice of the statue much by attending to my suggestion; and your verses
are excellent. Always prophesy good fortune, unless there is an absolute
impossibility of its fulfilment.'

'Besides,' added Calenus, 'if the storm does come, and if it does overwhelm
the accursed ships, have we not prophesied it? and are the barks not blest
to be at rest?--for rest prays the mariner in the AEgean sea, or at least so
says Horace--can the mariner be more at rest in the sea than when he is at
the bottom of it?'

'Right, my Calenus; I wish Apaecides would take a lesson from your wisdom.
But I desire to confer with you relative to him and to other matters: you
can admit me into one of your less sacred apartments?'

'Assuredly,' replied the priest, leading the way to one of the small
chambers which surrounded the open gate. Here they seated themselves before
a small table spread with dishes containing fruit and eggs, and various cold
meats, with vases of excellent wine, of which while the companions partook,
a curtain, drawn across the entrance opening to the court, concealed them
from view, but admonished them by the thinness of the partition to speak
low, or to speak no secrets: they chose the former alternative.

'Thou knowest,' said Arbaces, in a voice that scarcely stirred the air, so
soft and inward was its sound, 'that it has ever been my maxim to attach
myself to the young. From their flexile and unformed minds I can carve out
my fittest tools. I weave--I warp--I mould them at my will. Of the men I
make merely followers or servants; of the women...'

'Mistresses,' said Calenus, as a livid grin distorted his ungainly features.

'Yes, I do not disguise it: woman is the main object, the great appetite, of
my soul. As you feed the victim for the slaughter, I love to rear the
votaries of my pleasure. I love to train, to ripen their minds--to unfold
the sweet blossom of their hidden passions, in order to prepare the fruit to
my taste. I loathe your ready-made and ripened courtesans; it is in the
soft and unconscious progress of innocence to desire that I find the true
charm of love; it is thus that I defy satiety; and by contemplating the
freshness of others, I sustain the freshness of my own sensations. From the
young hearts of my victims I draw the ingredients of the caldron in which I
re-youth myself. But enough of this: to the subject before us. You know,
then, that in Neapolis some time since I encountered Ione and Apaecides,
brother and sister, the children of Athenians who had settled at Neapolis.
The death of their parents, who knew and esteemed me, constituted me their
guardian. I was not unmindful of the trust. The youth, docile and mild,
yielded readily to the impression I sought to stamp upon him. Next to
woman, I love the old recollections of my ancestral land; I love to keep
alive--to propagate on distant shores (which her colonies perchance yet
people) her dark and mystic creeds. It may be, that it pleases me to delude
mankind, while I thus serve the deities. To Apaecides I taught the solemn
faith of Isis. I unfolded to him something of those sublime allegories
which are couched beneath her worship. I excited in a soul peculiarly alive
to religious fervor that enthusiasm which imagination begets on faith. I
have placed him amongst you: he is one of you.'

'He is so,' said Calenus: 'but in thus stimulating his faith, you have
robbed him of wisdom. He is horror-struck that he is no longer duped: our
sage delusions, our speaking statues and secret staircases dismay and revolt
him; he pines; he wastes away; he mutters to himself; he refuses to share
our ceremonies. He has been known to frequent the company of men suspected
of adherence to that new and atheistical creed which denies all our gods,
and terms our oracles the inspirations of that malevolent spirit of which
eastern tradition speaks. Our oracles--alas! we know well whose
inspirations they are!'

'This is what I feared,' said Arbaces, musingly, 'from various reproaches he
made me when I last saw him. Of late he hath shunned my steps. I must find
him: I must continue my lessons: I must lead him into the adytum of Wisdom.
I must teach him that there are two stages of sanctity--the first,
FAITH--the next, DELUSION; the one for the vulgar, the second for the sage.'

'I never passed through the first, I said Calenus; 'nor you either, I think,
my Arbaces.'

'You err,' replied the Egyptian, gravely. 'I believe at this day (not
indeed that which I teach, but that which I teach not). Nature has a
sanctity against which I cannot (nor would I) steel conviction. I believe
in mine own knowledge, and that has revealed to me--but no matter. Now to
earthlier and more inviting themes. If I thus fulfilled my object with
Apaecides, what was my design for Ione? Thou knowest already I intend her
for my queen--my bride--my heart's Isis. Never till I saw her knew I all
the love of which my nature is capable.'

'I hear from a thousand lips that she is a second Helen,' said Calenus; and
he smacked his own lips, but whether at the wine or at the notion it is not
easy to decide.

'Yes, she has a beauty that Greece itself never excelled,' resumed Arbaces.
'But that is not all: she has a soul worthy to match with mine. She has a
genius beyond that of woman--keen--dazzling--bold. Poetry flows spontaneous
to her lips: utter but a truth, and, however intricate and profound, her
mind seizes and commands it. Her imagination and her reason are not at war
with each other; they harmonize and direct her course as the winds and the
waves direct some lofty bark. With this she unites a daring independence of
thought; she can stand alone in the world; she can be brave as she is
gentle; this is the nature I have sought all my life in woman, and never
found till now. Ione must be mine! In her I have a double passion; I wish
to enjoy a beauty of spirit as of form.'

'She is not yours yet, then?' said the priest.

'No; she loves me--but as a friend--she loves me with her mind only. She
fancies in me the paltry virtues which I have only the profounder virtue to
disdain. But you must pursue with me her history. The brother and sister
were young and rich: Ione is proud and ambitious--proud of her genius--the
magic of her poetry--the charm of her conversation. When her brother left
me, and entered your temple, in order to be near him she removed also to
Pompeii. She has suffered her talents to be known. She summons crowds to
her feasts; her voice enchants them; her poetry subdues. She delights in
being thought the successor of Erinna.'

'Or of Sappho?'

'But Sappho without love! I encouraged her in this boldness of career--in
this indulgence of vanity and of pleasure. I loved to steep her amidst the
dissipations and luxury of this abandoned city. Mark me, Calenus! I
desired to enervate her mind!--it has been too pure to receive yet the
breath which I wish not to pass, but burningly to eat into, the mirror. I
wished her to be surrounded by lovers, hollow, vain, and frivolous (lovers
that her nature must despise), in order to feel the want of love. Then, in
those soft intervals of lassitude that succeed to excitement--I can weave my
spells--excite her interest--attract her passions--possess myself of her
heart. For it is not the young, nor the beautiful, nor the gay, that should
fascinate Ione; her imagination must be won, and the life of Arbaces has
been one scene of triumph over the imaginations of his kind.'

'And hast thou no fear, then, of thy rivals? The gallants of Italy are
skilled in the art to please.'

'None! Her Greek soul despises the barbarian Romans, and would scorn itself
if it admitted a thought of love for one of that upstart race.'

'But thou art an Egyptian, not a Greek!'

'Egypt,' replied Arbaces, 'is the mother of Athens. Her tutelary Minerva is
our deity; and her founder, Cecrops, was the fugitive of Egyptian Sais.
This have I already taught to her; and in my blood she venerates the eldest
dynasties of earth. But yet I will own that of late some uneasy suspicions
have crossed my mind. She is more silent than she used to be; she loves
melancholy and subduing music; she sighs without an outward cause. This may
be the beginning of love--it may be the want of love. In either case it is
time for me to begin my operations on her fancies and her heart: in the one
case, to divert the source of love to me; in the other, in me to awaken it.
It is for this that I have sought you.'

'And how can I assist you?'

'I am about to invite her to a feast in my house: I wish to dazzle--to
bewilder--to inflame her senses. Our arts--the arts by which Egypt trained
her young novitiates--must be employed; and, under veil of the mysteries of
religion, I will open to her the secrets of love.'

'Ah! now I understand:--one of those voluptuous banquets that, despite our
dull vows of mortified coldness, we, the priests of Isis, have shared at thy
house.'

'No, no! Thinkest thou her chaste eyes are ripe for such scenes? No; but
first we must ensnare the brother--an easier task. Listen to me, while I
give you my instructions.'

Chapter V

MORE OF THE FLOWER-GIRL. THE PROGRESS OF LOVE.

THE sun shone gaily into that beautiful chamber in the house of Glaucus,
which I have before said is now called the 'Room of Leda'. The morning rays
entered through rows of small casements at the higher part of the room, and
through the door which opened on the garden, that answered to the
inhabitants of the southern cities the same purpose that a greenhouse or
conservatory does to us. The size of the garden did not adapt it for
exercise, but the various and fragrant plants with which it was filled gave
a luxury to that indolence so dear to the dwellers in a sunny clime. And
now the odorous, fanned by a gentle wind creeping from the adjacent sea,
scattered themselves over that chamber, whose walls vied with the richest
colors of the most glowing flowers. Besides the gem of the room--the
painting of Leda and Tyndarus--in the centre of each compartment of the
walls were set other pictures of exquisite beauty. In one you saw Cupid
leaning on the knees of Venus; in another Ariadne sleeping on the beach,
unconscious of the perfidy of Theseus. Merrily the sunbeams played to and
fro on the tessellated floor and the brilliant walls--far more happily came
the rays of joy to the heart of the young Glaucus.

'I have seen her, then,' said he, as he paced that narrow chamber--'I have
heard her--nay, I have spoken to her again--I have listened to the music of
her song, and she sung of glory and of Greece. I have discovered the
long-sought idol of my dreams; and like the Cyprian sculptor, I have
breathed life into my own imaginings.'

Longer, perhaps, had been the enamoured soliloquy of Glaucus, but at that
moment a shadow darkened the threshold of the chamber, and a young female,
still half a child in years, broke upon his solitude. She was dressed
simply in a white tunic, which reached from the neck to the ankles; under
her arm she bore a basket of flowers, and in the other hand she held a
bronze water-vase; her features were more formed than exactly became her
years, yet they were soft and feminine in their outline, and without being
beautiful in themselves, they were almost made so by their beauty of
expression; there was something ineffably gentle, and you would say patient,
in her aspect. A look of resigned sorrow, of tranquil endurance, had
banished the smile, but not the sweetness, from her lips; something timid
and cautious in her step--something wandering in her eyes, led you to
suspect the affliction which she had suffered from her birth--she was blind;
but in the orbs themselves there was no visible defect--their melancholy and
subdued light was clear, cloudless, and serene. 'They tell me that Glaucus
is here,' said she; 'may I come in?'

'Ah, my Nydia,' said the Greek, 'is that you I knew you would not neglect my
invitation.'

'Glaucus did but justice to himself,' answered Nydia, with a blush; 'for he
has always been kind to the poor blind girl.'

'Who could be otherwise?' said Glaucus, tenderly, and in the voice of a
compassionate brother.

Nydia sighed and paused before she resumed, without replying to his remark.
'You have but lately returned?'

'This is the sixth sun that hath shone upon me at Pompeii.'

'And you are well? Ah, I need not ask--for who that sees the earth, which
they tell me is so beautiful, can be ill?'

'I am well. And you, Nydia--how you have grown! Next year you will be
thinking what answer to make your lovers.'

A second blush passed over the cheek of Nydia, but this time she frowned as
she blushed. 'I have brought you some flowers,' said she, without replying
to a remark that she seemed to resent; and feeling about the room till she
found the table that stood by Glaucus, she laid the basket upon it: 'they
are poor, but they are fresh-gathered.'

'They might come from Flora herself,' said he, kindly; 'and I renew again my
vow to the Graces, that I will wear no other garlands while thy hands can
weave me such as these.'

'And how find you the flowers in your viridarium?--are they thriving?'

'Wonderfully so--the Lares themselves must have tended them.'

'Ah, now you give me pleasure; for I came, as often as I could steal the
leisure, to water and tend them in your absence.'

'How shall I thank thee, fair Nydia?' said the Greek. 'Glaucus little
dreamed that he left one memory so watchful over his favorites at Pompeii.'

The hand of the child trembled, and her breast heaved beneath her tunic.
She turned round in embarrassment. 'The sun is hot for the poor flowers,'
said she, 'to-day and they will miss me; for I have been ill lately, and it
is nine days since I visited them.'

'Ill, Nydia!--yet your cheek has more color than it had last year.'

'I am often ailing,' said the blind girl, touchingly; 'and as I grow up I
grieve more that I am blind. But now to the flowers!' So saying, she made a
slight reverence with her head, and passing into the viridarium, busied
herself with watering the flowers.

'Poor Nydia,' thought Glaucus, gazing on her; 'thine is a hard doom! Thou
seest not the earth--nor the sun--nor the ocean--nor the stars--above all,
thou canst not behold Ione.'

At that last thought his mind flew back to the past evening, and was a
second time disturbed in its reveries by the entrance of Clodius. It was a
proof how much a single evening had sufficed to increase and to refine the
love of the Athenian for Ione, that whereas he had confided to Clodius the
secret of his first interview with her, and the effect it had produced on
him, he now felt an invincible aversion even to mention to him her name. He
had seen Ione, bright, pure, unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most
profligate gallants of Pompeii, charming rather than awing the boldest into
respect, and changing the very nature of the most sensual and the least
ideal--as by her intellectual and refining spells she reversed the fable of
Circe, and converted the animals into men. They who could not understand
her soul were made spiritual, as it were, by the magic of her beauty--they
who had no heart for poetry had ears, at least, for the melody of her voice.
Seeing her thus surrounded, purifying and brightening all things with her
presence, Glaucus almost for the first time felt the nobleness of his own
nature--he felt how unworthy of the goddess of his dreams had been his
companions and his pursuits. A veil seemed lifted from his eyes; he saw
that immeasurable distance between himself and his associates which the
deceiving mists of pleasure had hitherto concealed; he was refined by a
sense of his courage in aspiring to Ione. He felt that henceforth it was
his destiny to look upward and to soar. He could no longer breathe that
name, which sounded to the sense of his ardent fancy as something sacred and
divine, to lewd and vulgar ears. She was no longer the beautiful girl once
seen and passionately remembered--she was already the mistress, the divinity
of his soul. This feeling who has not experienced?--If thou hast not, then
thou hast never loved.

When Clodius therefore spoke to him in affected transport of the beauty of
Ione, Glaucus felt only resentment and disgust that such lips should dare to
praise her; he answered coldly, and the Roman imagined that his passion was
cured instead of heightened. Clodius scarcely regretted it, for he was
anxious that Glaucus should marry an heiress yet more richly endowed--Julia,
the daughter of the wealthy Diomed, whose gold the gamester imagined he
could readily divert into his own coffers. Their conversation did not flow
with its usual ease; and no sooner had Clodius left him than Glaucus bent
his way to the house of Ione. In passing by the threshold he again
encountered Nydia, who had finished her graceful task. She knew his step on
the instant.

'You are early abroad?' said she.

'Yes; for the skies of Campania rebuke the sluggard who neglects them.'

'Ah, would I could see them!' murmured the blind girl, but so low that
Glaucus did not overhear the complaint.

The Thessalian lingered on the threshold a few moments, and then guiding her
steps by a long staff, which she used with great dexterity, she took her way
homeward. 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 sort of 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 those petty profits, my Burbo. The girl's 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 send me not there.'

'And why?' asked the same voice.

'Because--because I am young, and delicately born, and the female companions
I meet there are not fit associates for one who--who...'

'Is a slave in the house of Burbo,' returned the voice ironically, and with
a coarse laugh.

The Thessalian put down the flowers, and, leaning her face on her hands,
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 night: not the less so from a certain
paleness that overspread her transparent hues--not the less so from the
blush that mounted over them when he approached. Accustomed to flatter,
flattery died upon his lips when he addressed Ione. He felt it beneath her
to utter the homage which every look conveyed. 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. He had seen
the land of poetry chiefly in the poetical age of early youth; and the
associations of patriotism were blended with those of the flush and spring
of life. 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 daily saw each other. At the cool of the
evening they made excursions on the placid sea. By night they met again in
Ione's porticoes and halls. 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. As you take some obstacle from two objects
that have a mutual attraction, they met, and united at once; their wonder
was, that they had lived separate so long. And it was natural that they
should so love. Young, beautiful, and gifted--of the same birth, and the
same soul--there was poetry in their very union. They imagined the heavens
smiled upon their affection. As the persecuted seek refuge at the shrine,
so they recognized in the altar of their love an asylum from the sorrows of
earth; they covered it with flowers--they knew not of the serpents that lay
coiled behind.

One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, Glaucus and
Ione, with a small party of chosen friends, were returning from an excursion
round the bay; their vessel skimmed lightly over the twilight waters, whose
lucid mirror was only broken by the dripping oars. As the rest of the party
conversed gaily with each other, Glaucus lay at the feet of Ione, and he
would have looked up in her face, but he did not dare. Ione 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. Occupied with you, I
have thought of nothing else, or I should have asked if that was not your
brother for whose companionship you left me at the Temple of Minerva, in
Neapolis?'

'It was.'

'And is he here?'

'He is.

'At Pompeii! and not constantly with you? Impossible!'

'He has other duties,' answered Ione, sadly; 'he is a priest of Isis.'

'So young, too; and that priesthood, in its laws at least, so severe!' said
the warm and bright-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 intenseness of his zeal, he found in the severity of that peculiar
priesthood its peculiar attraction.'

'And he does not repent his choice?--I trust 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.'

'Like myself,' said Glaucus, with a deep meaning in his voice.

Ione cast down her eyes as she resumed:

'And Arbaces sought to supply the place of our parent. You must know him.
He loves genius.'

'Arbaces! I know him already; at least, we speak when we meet. But for your
praise I would not seek to know more of him. My heart inclines readily to
most of my kind. But that dark Egyptian, with his gloomy brow and icy
smiles, seems to me to sadden the very sun. One would think that, like
Epimenides, the Cretan, he had spent forty years in a cave, and had found
something unnatural in the daylight ever afterwards.'

'Yet, like Epimenides, he is kind, and wise, and gentle,' answered Ione.

'Oh, happy that he has thy praise! He needs no other virtues to make him
dear to me.'

'His calm, his coldness,' said Ione, 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 for ever 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 half-way 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 thus 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?

Chapter VI

THE FOWLER SNARES AGAIN THE BIRD THAT HAD JUST ESCAPED, AND SETS HIS NETS
FOR A NEW VICTIM.

IN the history I relate, the events are crowded and rapid as those of the
drama. I write of an epoch in which days sufficed to ripen the ordinary
fruits of years.

Meanwhile, Arbaces had not of late much frequented the house of Ione; and
when he had visited her he had not encountered Glaucus, nor knew he, as yet,
of that love which had so suddenly sprung up between himself and his
designs. In his interest for the brother of Ione, he had been forced, too,
a little while, to suspend his interest in Ione herself. His pride and his
selfishness were aroused and alarmed at the sudden change which had come
over the spirit of the youth. He trembled lest he himself should lose a
docile pupil, and Isis an enthusiastic servant. Apaecides had ceased to
seek or to consult him. He was rarely to be found; he turned sullenly from
the Egyptian--nay, he fled when he perceived him in the 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 ever elude his grasp.
He swore inly that Apaecides should not escape him.

It was with this resolution 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
unawares on the young priest of Isis.

'Apaecides!' said he--and he laid his hand affectionately on the young man's
shoulder.

The priest started; and his first instinct seemed to be that of flight. 'My
son,' said the Egyptian, 'what has chanced that you desire to shun me?'

Apaecides 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 those gloomy forms there
was something congenial to the shade and solitude of the place.

Apaecides 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
worn and colorless; 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 from that majestic and
spiritual calm which breathed so divine and classical a repose over his
sister's beauty. In her, enthusiasm was visible, but it seemed always
suppressed and restrained; this made the charm and sentiment of her
countenance; you longed to awaken a spirit which reposed, but evidently did
not sleep. In Apaecides the whole aspect betokened the fervor 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 less 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 you--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 Apaecides; '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 the holy life of men
resigning themselves to knowledge--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 their cheats and deluders! Oh! it was basely
done!--you have robbed me of the glory of youth, of the convictions of
virtue, of the sanctifying thirst after wisdom. Young as I was, rich,
fervent, the sunny pleasures of earth before me, I resigned all without a
sign, nay, 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, and ran
profusely down his vest.

'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
novitiate--think no more of those dull cheats--assort no more with those
menials of the goddess, the atrienses of her hall--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 around to see that they were still alone. 'From
Egypt came all the knowledge of the world; from Egypt came the lore of
Athens, and the profound policy of Crete; 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 civilization
into barbarism and darkness) possessed all the arts of wisdom and the graces
of intellectual life. From Egypt came the rites and the grandeur of that
solemn Caere, whose inhabitants taught their iron vanquishers of Rome all
that they yet know of elevated in religion and sublime in worship. And how
deemest thou, young man, that that 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,
coveting 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!--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, impostors if you will. But think you, young man, that if they had
not deceived their kind they could have served them? The ignorant 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 the conflicting and
disunited elements; thence come 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 impostures, 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.'

Apaecides 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 whose life chaos is destroyed, namely, the obedience and
reverence of the multitude for the few, they drew from their majestic and
starred meditations 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 civilization. Were not their very
cheats a virtue! Trust me, whosoever in yon far heavens of a diviner and
more beneficent nature look down upon our world, smile 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
late ages so fearfully decayed, thus by Genius only can the dominion be
restored. I saw in you, Apaecides, 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, Apaecides, I had
defeated my own object; your noble nature would have at once revolted, and
Isis would have lost her priest.'

Apaecides groaned aloud. The Egyptian continued, without heeding the
interruption.

'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 pursuit, religion opens
more god-like 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, Apaecides, without its
substance. Come to me this night. Your hand.'

Impressed, excited, bewildered by the language of the Egyptian, Apaecides
gave him his hand, and master and pupil parted.

It was true that for Apaecides 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 yet 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 in the
air, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the sultry noon. The
handmaids, almost invariably attendant on Ione, who with her freedom of life
preserved the most delicate modesty, sat at a little distance; by the feet
of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had been playing to Ione one of the
Lesbian airs. The scene--the group before Arbaces, was stamped by that
peculiar and refined ideality of poesy which we yet, 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 recognized behind the seat of Ione the cold and sarcastic
face of the Egyptian.

'You are a sudden guest,' said Glaucus, rising, and 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 from the corner
of his eye he stole 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 coloring, 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
rumor, 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, like you, I shall be doubtless 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,' replied Ione,
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 spoke according to the customs of his country, and that country is your
boasted Greece.'

'To different periods different customs. Had our forefathers 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 Glaucus and her friend, '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 that I
have chosen: yet it is not greater than the Roman women are accustomed
to--it is not greater than the Grecian ought to be. Alas! is it only to be
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? Ah!
believe me, it has been the great error of men--and one that has worked
bitterly on their destinies--to imagine that the nature of women is (I will
not say inferior, that may be so, but) so different from their own, in
making laws unfavorable to the intellectual advancement of women. Have they
not, in so doing, made laws against their children, whom women are to
rear?--against the husbands, of whom women are to be the friends, nay,
sometimes the advisers?' Ione stopped short suddenly, and her face was
suffused with the most enchanting blushes. She feared lest her enthusiasm
had led her too far; yet she feared the austere Arbaces less than the
courteous Glaucus, for she loved the last, and it was not the custom of the
Greeks to allow their women (at least such of their women as they most
honored) the same liberty and the same station as those of Italy enjoyed.
She felt, therefore, a thrill of delight as Glaucus earnestly replied:

'Ever mayst thou think thus, Ione--ever be your pure heart your unerring
guide! Happy it had been for Greece if she had given to the chaste the same
intellectual charms that are so celebrated amongst the less worthy of her
women. No state falls from freedom--from knowledge, while your sex smile
only on the free, and by appreciating, encourage the wise.'

Arbaces was silent, for it was neither his part to sanction the sentiment of
Glaucus, nor to condemn that of Ione, and, after a short and embarrassed
conversation, Glaucus took his leave of Ione.

When he was gone, Arbaces, drawing his seat nearer to the fair Neapolitan's,
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
that liberty you adorn while you assume: but which, if not greater, as you
rightly observe, than that possessed by the Roman women, must at least be
accompanied by great circumspection, when arrogated by one unmarried.
Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise themselves, to
your feet--continue to charm them with the conversation of an Aspasia, 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? Hast thou
seen him often?' And as Arbaces spoke, he fixed his gaze steadfastly upon
Ione, 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 within this last week or so: but why these questions?'

'Forgive me,' said Arbaces; 'I thought you might have known him longer.
Base insinuator that he is!'

'How! what mean you? 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 speak. What has Glaucus insinuated? or rather, in what do
you suppose he has offended?'

Smothering his resentment at the last part of Ione's question, Arbaces
continued: 'You know his pursuits, his companions his habits; the comissatio
and the alea (the revel and the dice) make his occupation; and amongst the
associates of vice how can he dream of virtue?'

'Still you speak riddles. By the gods! I entreat you, say the worst at
once.'

'Well, then, it must be so. Know, my Ione, that it was but yesterday that
Glaucus boasted openly--yes, in the public baths--of your love to him. He
said it amused him to take advantage of it. Nay, I will do him justice, he
praised your beauty. Who could deny it? But he laughed scornfully when his
Clodius, or his Lepidus, 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 now painfully been 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 to 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?'

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, Ione, for a
moment; for a gay thing like this could never have been honored by even a
serious thought from Ione. These insults only wound when they come from one
we love; far different indeed is he whom the lofty Ione shall stoop to
love.'

'Love!' muttered Ione, with an hysterical laugh. 'Ay, indeed.'

It is not without interest to observe in those remote times, and under a
social system so widely different from the modern, the same small causes
that ruffle and interrupt the 'course of love', which operate so commonly at
this day--the same inventive jealousy, the same cunning slander, the same
crafty and fabricated retailings of petty gossip, which so often now suffice
to break the ties of the truest love, and counteract the tenor of
circumstances most apparently propitious. When the bark sails on over the
smoothest wave, the fable tells us of the diminutive fish that can cling to
the keel and arrest its progress: so is it ever with the great passions of
mankind; and we should paint life but ill if, even in times the most
prodigal of romance, and of the romance of which we most largely avail
ourselves, we did not also describe the mechanism of those trivial and
household springs of mischief which we see every day at work in our chambers
and at our hearths. It is in these, the lesser intrigues of life, that we
mostly find ourselves at home with the past.

Most cunningly had the Egyptian appealed to Ione's ruling foible--most
dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to her pride. He fancied he
had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known
Glaucus, was, at most, 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.

No sooner had his shadow glided from her presence, than woman's pride--her
sex's dissimulation--deserted his intended victim, and the haughty Ione
burst into passionate tears.

Chapter VII

THE GAY LIFE OF THE POMPEIAN LOUNGER. A MINIATURE LIKENESS OF THE ROMAN
BATHS.

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 earth and
heaven seemed too narrow to afford a vent. Unconscious of the sudden enemy
he had left behind, and forgetting not only his taunts but his very
existence, Glaucus passed through the gay streets, repeating to himself, in
the wantonness of joy, the music of the soft air to which Ione had listened
with such intentness; and now he entered the Street of Fortune, with its
raised footpath--its houses painted without, and the open 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 from the temple
rose the triumphal 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 the Eastern costume, whose loose and peculiar
robes, painted and gemmed slippers, and composed and serious countenances,
formed a striking contrast to the tunicked forms and animated gestures of
the Italians. For that impatient and lively people had, as now, a language
distinct from speech--a language of signs and motions, inexpressibly
significant and vivacious: their descendants retain it, and the learned
Jorio hath written a most entertaining work upon that species of
hieroglyphical gesticulation.

Sauntering through the crowd, Glaucus soon found himself amidst a group of
his merry and 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,' returned Sallust, '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,' returned Sallust, with a sigh, 'it is no longer lawful to give
them a slave to eat. I am very often tempted to make away with a very fat
carptor (butler) whom I possess, and pop him slily into the reservoir. He
would give the fish a most oleaginous flavor! But slaves are not slaves
nowadays, and have no sympathy with their masters' interest--or Davus would
destroy himself to oblige me!'

'What news from Rome?' said 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,' quoth Lepidus; 'they say 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 favor to one Roman, must
always do it at the expense of another. Be sure, that for every smile Titus
has caused, a hundred eyes have wept.'

'Long live Titus!' cried Pansa, overhearing the emperor's name, as he swept
patronizingly through the crowd; 'he has promised my brother a quaestorship,
because he had run through his fortune.'

'And wishes now to enrich himself among the people, my Pansa,' said Glaucus.

'Exactly so,' said Pansa.

'That is putting the people to some use,' said Glaucus.

'To be sure, returned Pansa. 'Well, I must go and look after the
aerarium--it is a little out of repair'; and followed by a long train of
clients, distinguished from the rest of the throng by the togas they wore
(for togas, once the sign of freedom in a citizen, were now the badge of
servility to a patron), the aedile fidgeted fussily away.

'Poor Pansa!' said Lepidus: 'he never has time for pleasure. Thank Heaven I
am not an aedile!'

'Ah, Glaucus! how are you? gay as ever?' said Clodius, joining the group.

'Are you come to sacrifice to Fortune?' said 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 a flower-girl, who stood beside.

'The rose is the 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 from his
girdle: 'I see that he asks us an hour earlier than usual: an earnest of
something sumptuous.'

'Oh! he is 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 thermae, or baths, were instituted rather for the poorer
citizens than the wealthy (for the last had baths in their own houses), yet,
to the crowds of all ranks who resorted to them, it was a favorite place for
conversation, and for that indolent lounging so dear to a gay and
thoughtless people. The baths at Pompeii differed, of course, in plan and
construction from the vast and complicated thermae of Rome; and, indeed, it
seems that in each city of the empire there was always some slight
modification of arrangement in the general architecture of the public baths.
This mightily puzzles the learned--as if architects and fashion were not
capricious before the nineteenth century! 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, one 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 to and fro the portico,
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 new-comer 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 aediles 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 one jolly-looking man, who was a goldsmith, 'I think the
emperor, if he is 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 gods 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, and who, but for this history, would never have been heard of in
our neglectful age, came eagerly up to Glaucus. 'Oh, my Athenian, my
Glaucus, 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 patron is an amphora
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 him 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.

'A poor place this, compared with the Roman thermae!' said Lepidus,
disdainfully.

'Yet is there some taste in the ceiling,' said Glaucus, who was in a mood to
be pleased with everything; pointing to the stars which studded the roof.

Lepidus shrugged his shoulders, but was too languid to reply.

They now entered a somewhat spacious chamber, which served for the purposes
of the apodyterium (that is, a place where the bathers prepared themselves
for their luxurious ablutions). The vaulted ceiling was raised from a
cornice, glowingly colored with motley and grotesque paintings; the ceiling
itself was paneled 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 did not require much pressing. He 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 that wonderful ode, of which, to the great
mortification of the author of this history, no single verse can be
discovered.

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 odes 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
thermae, loose robes in exchange, withdrew into that graceful 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 fireplace,
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 skillfully tessellated 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 sudatorium, which answered the purpose of our
vapor-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.

In order to complete this sketch, and give to the reader an adequate notion
of this, the main luxury of the ancients, we will accompany Lepidus, who
regularly underwent the whole process, save only the cold bath, which had
gone lately out of fashion. Being then gradually warmed in the tepidarium,
which has just been described, the delicate steps of the Pompeian elegant
were conducted to the sudatorium. Here let the reader depict to himself the
gradual process of the vapor-bath, accompanied by an exhalation of spicy
perfumes. After our bather had undergone this operation, he was seized by
his slaves, who always awaited him at the baths, and the dews of heat were
removed by a kind of scraper, which (by the way) a modern traveler has
gravely declared to be used only to remove the dirt, not one particle of
which could ever settle on the polished skin of the practised bather.
Thence, somewhat cooled, he passed into the water-bath, over which fresh
perfumes were profusely scattered, and on emerging from the opposite part of
the room, a cooling shower played over his head and form. Then wrapping
himself in a light robe, he returned once more to the tepidarium, where he
found Glaucus, who had not encountered the sudatorium; and now, the main
delight and extravagance of the bath commenced. Their slaves anointed the
bathers from vials of gold, of alabaster, or of crystal, studded with
profusest gems, and containing the rarest unguents gathered from all
quarters of the world. The number of these smegmata used by the wealthy
would fill a modern volume--especially if the volume were printed by a
fashionable publisher; Amaracinum, Megalium, Nardum--omne quod exit in
um--while soft music played in an adjacent chamber, and such as used the
bath in moderation, refreshed and restored by the grateful ceremony,
conversed with all the zest and freshness of rejuvenated life.

'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 that 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 thermae 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 in which the doors
are opened, and remain till that in which the doors 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 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 splendor; 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.'

While Glaucus was thus conversing, Lepidus, with closed eyes and scarce
perceptible breath, was undergoing all the mystic operations, not one of
which he ever suffered his attendants to omit. After the perfumes and the
unguents, they scattered over him the luxurious powder which prevented any
further accession of heat: and this being rubbed away by the smooth surface
of the pumice, he began to indue, not the garments he had put off, but those
more festive ones termed 'the synthesis', with which the Romans marked their
respect for the coming ceremony of supper, if rather, from its hour (three
o'clock in our measurement of time), it might not be more fitly denominated
dinner. This done, he at length opened his eyes and gave signs of returning
life.

At the same time, too, Sallust betokened by a long yawn the evidence of
existence.

'It is supper time,' said the epicure; 'you, Glaucus and Lepidus, come and
sup with me.'

'Recollect you are all three engaged to my house next week,' cried Diomed,
who was mightily proud of the acquaintance of men of fashion.

'Ah, ah! we recollect,' said Sallust; 'the seat of memory, my Diomed, is
certainly in the stomach.'

Passing now once again into the cooler air, and so into the street, our
gallants of that day concluded the ceremony of a Pompeian bath.

Chapter VIII

ARBACES COGS HIS DICE WITH PLEASURE AND WINS THE GAME.

THE evening darkened over the restless city as Apaecides took his way to the
house of the Egyptian. He avoided the more lighted and populous streets;
and as he strode onward with his head buried in his bosom, and his arms
folded within his robe, there was something startling in the contrast, which
his solemn mien and wasted form presented to the thoughtless brows and
animated air of those who occasionally crossed his path.

At length, however, a man of a more sober and staid demeanor, and who had
twice passed him with a curious but doubting look, touched him on the
shoulder.

'Apaecides!' 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 fervor; 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 have a being or a name? Am I to break down, as
something blasphemous and profane, the very altars which I have deemed most
sacred? or 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 in the reformation of His own religion--men who were
formed to convert, because formed to endure. It is men of this mould whom
nothing discourages, nothing dismays; in the fervor of belief they are
inspired and they inspire. Their reason first kindles their passion, but
the passion is the instrument they use; they force themselves into men's
hearts, while they appear only to appeal to their judgment. Nothing is so
contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus--it
moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and
truth accomplishes no victories without it.

Olinthus did not then suffer Apaecides thus easily to escape him. He
overtook and addressed him thus:

'I do not wonder, Apaecides, 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 of yore 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 infinitely prodigal in its gifts!
It troubles you for an hour, it repays you by immortality.'

'Such promises,' said Apaecides, 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? You are told not to murder, but you
worship murderers; you are told not to commit adultery, and you make your
prayers to an adulterer! Oh! what is this but a mockery of the holiest
part of man's nature, which is faith? Turn now to the God, the one, the
true God, to whose shrine I would lead you. If He seem to you too sublime,
two 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 by the practice of all its virtues. In Him are united the austerest
morals with the tenderest affections. If He were but a mere man, He had
been worthy to become a god. You honour Socrates--he has his sect, his
disciples, his schools. But what are the doubtful virtues of the Athenian,
to the bright, the undisputed, the active, the unceasing, the devoted
holiness of Christ? I speak to you now only of His human character. He
came in that as the pattern of future ages, to show us the form of virtue
which Plato thirsted to see embodied. This was the true sacrifice that He
made for man; but the halo that encircled His dying hour not only brightened
earth, but opened to us the sight of heaven! You are touched--you are
moved. God works in your heart. His Spirit is with you. Come, resist not
the holy impulse; come at once--unhesitatingly. A few of us are now
assembled to expound the word of God. Come, let me guide you to them. 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 Apaecides; 'another time.'

'Now--now!' exclaimed Olinthus, earnestly, and clasping him by the arm.

But Apaecides, 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 darksome vines clustered far and wide in front
of the building and behind it 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 traveler beholds it now.

Apaecides 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, and 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 and
unwaving 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 colors, 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 color 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 Apaecides 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 of the priest's notice, Apaecides
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, from
the incense in 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
Apaecides. 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, Apaecides,' said the Egyptian, without rising.

The young man obeyed.

'You ask me,' resumed Arbaces, after a short pause, in which he seemed
absorbed in thought--'You ask me, or would do so, the mightiest secrets
which the soul of man is fitted to receive; it is the enigma of life itself
that you desire me to solve. Placed like children in the dark, and but for
a little while, in this dim and confined existence, we shape our spectres in
the obscurity; our thoughts now sink back into ourselves in terror, now
wildly plunge themselves into the guideless gloom, guessing what it may
contain; stretching our helpless hands here and there, lest, blindly, we
stumble upon some hidden danger; not knowing the limits of our boundary, now
feeling them suffocate us with compression, now seeing them extend far away
till they vanish into eternity. In this state all wisdom consists
necessarily in the solution of two questions: "What are we to believe? and
What are we to reject?" These questions you desire me to decide.'

Apaecides bowed his head in assent.

'Man must have some belief,' continued the Egyptian, in a tone of sadness.
'He must fasten his hope to something: is our common nature that you inherit
when, aghast and terrified to see that in which you have been taught to
place your faith swept away, you float over a dreary and shoreless sea of
incertitude, you cry for help, you ask for some plank to cling to, some
land, however dim and distant, to attain. Well, then, have not forgotten
our conversation of to-day?'

'Forgotten!'

'I confessed to you that those deities for whom smoke so many altars were
but inventions. I confessed to you that our rites and ceremonies were but
mummeries, to delude and lure the herd to their proper good. I explained to
you that from those delusions came the bonds of society, the harmony of the
world, the power of the wise; that power is in the obedience of the vulgar.
Continue we then these salutary delusions--if man must have some belief,
continue to him that which his fathers have made dear to him, and which
custom sanctifies and strengthens. In seeking a subtler faith for us, whose
senses are too spiritual for the gross one, let us leave others that support
which crumbles from ourselves. This is wise--it is benevolent.'

'Proceed.'

'This being settled,' resumed the Egyptian, 'the old landmarks being left
uninjured for those whom we are about to desert, we gird up our loins and
depart to new climes of faith. Dismiss at once from your recollection, from
your thought, all that you have believed before. Suppose the mind a blank,
an unwritten scroll, fit to receive impressions for the first time. Look
round the world--observe its order--its regularity--its design. Something
must have created it--the design speaks a designer: in that certainty we
first touch land. But what is that something?--A god, you cry. Stay--no
confused and confusing names. Of that which created the world, we know, we
can know, nothing, save these attributes--power and unvarying
regularity--stern, crushing, relentless regularity--heeding no individual
cases--rolling--sweeping--burning on; no matter what scattered hearts,
severed from the general mass, fall ground and scorched beneath its wheels.
The mixture of evil with good--the existence of suffering and of crime--in
all times have perplexed the wise. They created a god--they supposed him
benevolent. How then came this evil? why did he permit it--nay, why invent,
why perpetuate it? To account for this, the Persian creates a second
spirit, whose nature is evil, and supposes a continual war between that and
the god of good. In our own shadowy and tremendous Typhon, the Egyptians
image a similar demon. Perplexing blunder that yet more bewilders
us!--folly that arose from the vain delusion that makes a palpable, a
corporeal, a human being, of this unknown power--that clothes the Invisible
with attributes and a nature similar to the Seen. No: to this designer let
us give a name that does not command our bewildering associations, and the
mystery becomes more clear--that name is NECESSITY. Necessity, say the
Greeks, compels the gods. Then why the gods?--their agency becomes
unnecessary--dismiss them at once. Necessity is the ruler of all we
see--power, regularity--these two qualities make its nature. Would you ask
more?--you can learn nothing: whether it be eternal--whether it compel us,
its creatures, to new careers after that darkness which we call death--we
cannot tell. There leave we this ancient, unseen, unfathomable power, and
come to that which, to our eyes, is the great minister of its functions.
This we can task more, from this we can learn more: its evidence is around
us--its name is NATURE. The error of the sages has been to direct their
researches to the attributes of necessity, where all is gloom and blindness.
Had they confined their researches to Nature--what of knowledge might we not
already have achieved? Here patience, examination, are never directed in
vain. We see what we explore; our minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes
and effects. Nature is the great agent of the external universe, and
Necessity imposes upon it the laws by which it acts, and imparts to us the
powers by which we examine; those powers are curiosity and memory--their
union is reason, their perfection is wisdom. Well, then, I examine by the
help of these powers this inexhaustible Nature. I examine the earth, the
air, the ocean, the heaven: I find that all have a mystic sympathy with each
other--that the moon sways the tides--that the air maintains the earth, and
is the medium of the life and sense of things--that by the knowledge of the
stars we measure the limits of the earth--that we portion out the epochs of
time--that by their pale light we are guided into the abyss of the
past--that in their solemn lore we discern the destinies of the future. And
thus, while we know not that which Necessity is, we learn, at least, her
decrees. And now, what morality do we glean from this religion?--for
religion it is. I believe in two deities--Nature and Necessity; I worship
the last by reverence, the first by investigation. What is the morality my
religion teaches? This--all things are subject but to general rules; the
sun shines for the joy of the many--it may bring sorrow to the few; the
night sheds sleep on the multitude--but it harbors murder as well as rest;
the forests adorn the earth--but shelter the serpent and the lion; the ocean
supports a thousand barks--but it engulfs the one. It is only thus for the
general, and not for the universal benefit, that Nature acts, and Necessity
speeds on her awful course. This is the morality of the dread agents of the
world--it is mine, who am their creature. I would preserve the delusions of
priestcraft, for they are serviceable to the multitude; I would impart to
man the arts I discover, the sciences I perfect; I would speed the vast
career of civilizing lore: in this I serve the mass, I fulfill the general
law, I execute the great moral that Nature preaches. For myself I claim the
individual exception; I claim it for the wise--satisfied that my individual
actions are nothing in the great balance of good and evil; satisfied that
the product of my knowledge can give greater blessings to the mass than my
desires can operate evil on the few (for the first can extend to remotest
regions and humanize nations yet unborn), I give to the world wisdom, to
myself freedom. I enlighten the lives of others, and I enjoy my own. Yes;
our wisdom is eternal, but our life is short: make the most of it while it
lasts. Surrender thy youth to pleasure, and thy senses to delight. Soon
comes the hour when the wine-cup is shattered, and the garlands shall cease
to bloom. Enjoy while you may. Be still, O Apaecides, my pupil and my
follower! I will teach thee the mechanism of Nature, her darkest and her
wildest secrets--the lore which fools call magic--and the mighty mysteries
of the stars. By this shalt thou discharge thy duty to the mass; by this
shalt thou enlighten thy race. But I will lead thee also to pleasures of
which the vulgar do not dream; and the day which thou givest to men shall be
followed by the sweet night which thou surrenderest to thyself.'

As the Egyptian ceased there rose about, around, beneath, the softest music
that Lydia ever taught, or Iona ever perfected. It came like a stream of
sound, bathing the senses unawares; enervating, subduing with delight. It
seemed the melodies of invisible spirits, such as the shepherd might have
heard in the golden age, floating through the vales of Thessaly, or in the
noontide glades of Paphos. The words which had rushed to the lip of
Apaecides, in answer to the sophistries of the Egyptian, died tremblingly
away. He felt it as a profanation to break upon that enchanted strain--the
susceptibility of his excited nature, the Greek softness and ardour of his
secret soul, were swayed and captured by surprise. He sank on the seat with
parted lips and thirsting ear; while in a chorus of voices, bland and
melting as those which waked Psyche in the halls of love, rose the following
song:

THE HYMN OF EROS

By the cool banks where soft Cephisus flows,
A voice sail'd trembling down the waves of air;
The leaves blushed brighter in the Teian's rose,
The doves couch'd breathless in their summer lair;

While from their hands the purple flowerets fell,
The laughing Hours stood listening in the sky;--
From Pan's green cave to AEgle's haunted cell,
Heaved the charm'd earth in one delicious sigh.

Love, sons of earth! I am the Power of Love!
Eldest of all the gods, with Chaos born;
My smile sheds light along the courts above,
My kisses wake the eyelids of the Morn.

Mine are the stars--there, ever as ye gaze,
Ye meet the deep spell of my haunting eyes;
Mine is the moon--and, mournful if her rays,
'Tis that she lingers where her Carian lies.

The flowers are mine--the blushes of the rose,
The violet--charming Zephyr to the shade;
Mine the quick light that in the Maybeam glows,
And mine the day-dream in the lonely glade.

Love, sons of earth--for love is earth's soft lore,
Look where ye will--earth overflows with ME;
Learn from the waves that ever kiss the shore,
And the winds nestling on the heaving sea.

'All teaches love!'--The sweet voice, like a dream,
Melted in light; yet still the airs above,
The waving sedges, and the whispering stream,
And the green forest rustling, murmur'd 'LOVE!'

As the voices died away, the Egyptian seized the hand of Apaecides, and led
him, wandering, intoxicated, yet half-reluctant, across the chamber towards
the curtain at the far end; and now, from behind that curtain, there seemed
to burst a thousand sparkling stars; the veil itself, hitherto dark, was now
lighted by these fires behind into the tenderest blue of heaven. It
represented heaven itself--such a heaven, as in the nights of June might
have shone down over the streams of Castaly. Here and there were painted
rosy and aerial clouds, from which smiled, by the limner's art, faces of
divinest beauty, and on which reposed the shapes of which Phidias and
Apelles dreamed. And the stars which studded the transparent azure rolled
rapidly as they shone, while the music, that again woke with a livelier and
lighter sound, seemed to imitate the melody of the joyous spheres.

'Oh! what miracle is this, Arbaces,' said Apaecides in faltering accents.
'After having denied the gods, art thou about to reveal to me...'

'Their pleasures!' interrupted Arbaces, in a tone so different from its
usual cold and tranquil harmony that Apaecides started, and thought the
Egyptian himself transformed; and now, as they neared the curtain, a wild--a
loud--an exulting melody burst from behind its concealment. With that sound
the veil was rent in twain--it parted--it seemed to vanish into air: and a
scene, which no Sybarite ever more than rivalled, broke upon the dazzled
gaze of the youthful priest. A vast banquet-room stretched beyond, blazing
with countless lights, which filled the warm air with the scents of
frankincense, of jasmine, of violets, of myrrh; all that the most odorous
flowers, all that the most costly spices could distil, seemed gathered into
one ineffable and ambrosial essence: from the light columns that sprang
upwards to the airy roof, hung draperies of white, studded with golden
stars. At the extremities of the room two fountains cast up a spray, which,
catching the rays of the roseate light, glittered like countless diamonds.
In the centre of the room as they entered there rose slowly from the floor,
to the sound of unseen minstrelsy, a table spread with all the viands which
sense ever devoted to fancy, and vases of that lost Myrrhine fabric, so
glowing in its colors, so transparent in its material, were crowned with the
exotics of the East. The couches, to which this table was the centre, were
covered with tapestries of azure and gold; and from invisible tubes the
vaulted roof descended showers of fragrant waters, that cooled the delicious
air, and contended with the lamps, as if the spirits of wave and fire
disputed which element could furnish forth the most delicious odorous. And
now, from behind the snowy draperies, trooped such forms as Adonis beheld
when he lay on the lap of Venus. They came, some with garlands, others with
lyres; they surrounded the youth, they led his steps to the banquet. They
flung the chaplets round him in rosy chains. The earth--the thought of
earth, vanished from his soul. He imagined himself in a dream, and
suppressed his breath lest he should wake too soon; the senses, to which he
had never yielded as yet, beat in his burning pulse, and confused his dizzy
and reeling sight. And while thus amazed and lost, once again, but in brisk
and Bacchic measures, rose the magic strain:

ANACREONTIC

In the veins of the calix foams and glows
The blood of the mantling vine,
But oh! in the bowl of Youth there glows
A Lesbian, more divine!
Bright, bright,
As the liquid light,
Its waves through thine eyelids shine!

Fill up, fill up, to the sparkling brim,
The juice of the young Lyaeus;
The grape is the key that we owe to him
From the gaol of the world to free us.
Drink, drink!
What need to shrink,
When the lambs alone can see us?

Drink, drink, as I quaff from thine eyes
The wine of a softer tree;
Give the smiles to the god of the grape--thy sighs,
Beloved one, give to me.
Turn, turn,
My glances burn,
And thirst for a look from thee!

As the song ended, a group of three maidens, entwined with a chain of
starred flowers, and who, while they imitated, might have shamed the Graces,
advanced towards him in the gliding measures of the Ionian dance: such as
the Nereids wreathed in moonlight on the yellow sands of the AEgean
wave--such as Cytherea taught her handmaids in the marriage-feast of Psyche
and her son.

Now approaching, they wreathed their chaplet round his head; now kneeling,
the youngest of the three proffered him the bowl, from which the wine of
Lesbos foamed and sparkled. The youth resisted no more, he grasped the
intoxicating cup, the blood mantled fiercely through his veins. He sank
upon the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and turning with swimming
eyes to seek for Arbaces, whom he had lost in the whirl of his emotions, he
beheld him seated beneath a canopy at the upper end of the table, and gazing
upon him with a smile that encouraged him to pleasure. He beheld him, but
not as he had hitherto seen, with dark and sable garments, with a brooding
and solemn brow: a robe that dazzled the sight, so studded was its whitest
surface with gold and gems, blazed upon his majestic form; white roses,
alternated with the emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like, crowned his
raven locks. He appeared, like Ulysses, to have gained the glory of a
second youth--his features seemed to have exchanged thought for beauty, and
he towered amidst the loveliness that surrounded him, in all the beaming and
relaxing benignity of the Olympian god.

'Drink, feast, love, my pupil!' said he, 'blush not that thou art passionate
and young. That which thou art, thou feelest in thy veins: that which thou
shalt be, survey!'

With this he pointed to a recess, and the eyes of Apaecides, following the
gesture, beheld on a pedestal, placed between the statues of Bacchus and
Idalia, the form of a skeleton.

'Start not,' resumed the Egyptian; 'that friendly guest admonishes us but of
the shortness of life. From its jaws I hear a voice that summons us to
ENJOY.'

As he spoke, a group of nymphs surrounded the statue; they laid chaplets on
its pedestal, and, while the cups were emptied and refilled at that glowing
board, they sang the following strain:

BACCHIC HYMNS TO THE IMAGE OF DEATH

I

Thou art in the land of the shadowy Host,
Thou that didst drink and love:
By the Solemn River, a gliding ghost,
But thy thought is ours above!
If memory yet can fly,
Back to the golden sky,
And mourn the pleasures lost!
By the ruin'd hall these flowers we lay,
Where thy soul once held its palace;
When the rose to thy scent and sight was gay,
And the smile was in the chalice,
And the cithara's voice
Could bid thy heart rejoice
When night eclipsed the day.

Here a new group advancing, turned the tide of the music into a quicker and
more joyous strain.

II

Death, death is the gloomy shore
Where we all sail--
Soft, soft, thou gliding oar;
Blow soft, sweet gale!
Chain with bright wreaths the Hours;
Victims if all
Ever, 'mid song and flowers,
Victims should fall!

Pausing for a moment, yet quicker and quicker danced the silver-footed
music:

Since Life's so short, we'll live to laugh,
Ah! wherefore waste a minute!
If youth's the cup we yet can quaff,
Be love the pearl within it!

A third band now approached with brimming cups, which they poured in
libation upon that strange altar; and once more, slow and solemn, rose the
changeful melody:

III

Thou art welcome, Guest of gloom,
From the far and fearful sea!
When the last rose sheds its bloom,
Our board shall be spread with thee!
All hail, dark Guest!
Who hath so fair a plea
Our welcome Guest to be,
As thou, whose solemn hall
At last shall feast us all
In the dim and dismal coast?
Long yet be we the Host!
And thou, Dead Shadow, thou,
All joyless though thy brow,
Thou--but our passing GUEST!

At this moment, she who sat beside Apaecides suddenly took up the song:

IV

Happy is yet our doom,
The earth and the sun are ours!
And far from the dreary tomb
Speed the wings of the rosy Hours--
Sweet is for thee the bowl,
Sweet are thy looks, my love;
I fly to thy tender soul,
As bird to its mated dove!
Take me, ah, take!
Clasp'd to thy guardian breast,
Soft let me sink to rest:
But wake me--ah, wake!
And tell me with words and sighs,
But more with thy melting eyes,
That my sun is not set--
That the Torch is not quench'd at the Urn
That we love, and we breathe, and burn,
Tell me--thou lov'st me yet!

BOOK THE SECOND

Chapter I

A FLASH HOUSE IN POMPEII, AND THE GENTLEMEN OF THE CLASSIC RING.

TO one of those parts of Pompeii, which were tenanted not by the lords of
pleasure, but by its minions and its victims; the haunt of gladiators and
prize-fighters; of the vicious and the penniless; of the savage and the
obscene; the Alsatia of an ancient city--we are now transported.

It was a large room, that opened at once on the confined and crowded lane.
Before the threshold was a group of men, whose iron and well-strung muscles,
whose short and Herculean necks, whose hardy and reckless countenances,
indicated the champions of the arena. On a shelf, without the shop, were
ranged jars of wine and oil; and right over this was inserted in the wall a
coarse painting, which exhibited gladiators drinking--so ancient and so
venerable is the custom of signs! Within the room were placed several small
tables, arranged somewhat in the modern fashion of 'boxes', and round these
were seated several knots of men, some drinking, some playing at dice, some
at that more skilful game called 'duodecim scriptae', which certain of the
blundering learned have mistaken for chess, though it rather, perhaps,
resembled backgammon of the two, and was usually, though not always, played
by the assistance of dice. The hour was in the early forenoon, and nothing
better, perhaps, than that unseasonable time itself denoted the habitual
indolence of these tavern loungers.

Yet, despite the situation of the house and the character of its inmates, it
indicated none of that sordid squalor which would have characterized a
similar haunt in a modern city. The gay disposition of all the Pompeians,
who sought, at least, to gratify the sense even where they neglected the
mind, was typified by the gaudy colors which decorated the walls, and the
shapes, fantastic but not inelegant, in which the lamps, the drinking-cups,
the commonest household utensils, were wrought.

'By Pollux!' said one of the gladiators, as he leaned against the wall of
the threshold, 'the wine thou sellest us, old Silenus'--and as he spoke he
slapped a portly personage on the back--'is enough to thin the best blood in
one's veins.'

The man thus caressingly saluted, and whose bared arms, white apron, and
keys and napkin tucked carelessly within his girdle, indicated him to be the
host of the tavern, was already passed into the autumn of his years; but his
form was still so robust and athletic, that he might have shamed even the
sinewy shapes beside him, save that the muscles had seeded, as it were, into
flesh, that the cheeks were swelled and bloated, and the increasing stomach
threw into shade the vast and massive chest which rose above it.

'None of thy scurrilous blusterings with me,' growled the gigantic landlord,
in the gentle semi-roar of an insulted tiger; 'my wine is good enough for a
carcass which shall so soon soak the dust of the spoliarium.'

'Croakest thou thus, old raven!' returned the gladiator, laughing
scornfully; 'thou shalt live to hang thyself with despite when thou seest me
win the palm crown; and when I get the purse at the amphitheatre, as I
certainly shall, my first vow to Hercules shall be to forswear thee and thy
vile potations evermore.'

'Hear to him--hear to this modest Pyrgopolinices! He has certainly served
under Bombochides Cluninstaridysarchides,' cried the host. 'Sporus, Niger,
Tetraides, he declares he shall win the purse from you. Why, by the gods!
each of your muscles is strong enough to stifle all his body, or I know
nothing of the arena!'

'Ha!' said the gladiator, coloring with rising fury, 'our lanista would tell
a different story.'

'What story could he tell against me, vain Lydon?' said Tetraides, frowning.

'Or me, who have conquered in fifteen fights?' said the gigantic Niger,
stalking up to the gladiator.

'Or me?' grunted Sporus, with eyes of fire.

'Tush!' said Lydon, folding his arms, and regarding his rivals with a
reckless air of defiance. 'The time of trial will soon come; keep your
valor till then.'

'Ay, do,' said the surly host; 'and if I press down my thumb to save you,
may the Fates cut my thread!'

'Your rope, you mean,' said Lydon, sneeringly: 'here is a sesterce to buy
one.'

The Titan wine-vender seized the hand extended to him, and griped it in so
stern a vice that the blood spirted from the fingers' ends over the garments
of the bystanders.

They set up a savage laugh.

'I will teach thee, young braggart, to play the Macedonian with me! I am no
puny Persian, I warrant thee! What, man! have I not fought twenty years in
the ring, and never lowered my arms once? And have I not received the rod
from the editor's own hand as a sign of victory, and as a grace to
retirement on my laurels? And am I now to be lectured by a boy?' So saying,
he flung the hand from him in scorn.

Without changing a muscle, but with the same smiling face with which he had
previously taunted mine host, did the gladiator brave the painful grasp he
had undergone. But no sooner was his hand released, than, crouching for one
moment as a wild cat crouches, you might see his hair bristle on his head
and beard, and with a fierce and shrill yell he sprang on the throat of the
giant, with an impetus that threw him, vast and sturdy as he was, from his
balance--and down, with the crash of a falling rock, he fell--while over him
fell also his ferocious foe.

Our host, perhaps, had had no need of the rope so kindly recommended to him
by Lydon, had he remained three minutes longer in that position. But,
summoned to his assistance by the noise of his fall, a woman, who had
hitherto kept in an inner apartment, rushed to the scene of battle. This
new ally was in herself a match for the gladiator; she was tall, lean, and
with arms that could give other than soft embraces. In fact, the gentle
helpmate of Burbo the wine-seller had, like himself, fought in the
lists--nay under the emperor's eye. And Burbo himself--Burbo, the
unconquered in the field, according to report, now and then yielded the palm
to his soft Stratonice. This sweet creature no sooner saw the imminent
peril that awaited her worse half, than without other weapons than those
with which Nature had provided her, she darted upon the incumbent gladiator,
and, clasping him round the waist with her long and snakelike arms, lifted
him by a sudden wrench from the body of her husband, leaving only his hands
still clinging to the throat of his foe. So have we seen a dog snatched by
the hind legs from the strife with a fallen rival in the arms of some
envious groom; so have we seen one half of him high in air--passive and
offenceless--while the other half, head, teeth, eyes, claws, seemed buried
and engulfed in the mangled and prostrate enemy. Meanwhile, the gladiators,
lapped, and pampered, and glutted upon blood, crowded delightedly round the
combatants--their nostrils distended--their lips grinning--their eyes
gloatingly fixed on the bloody throat of the one and the indented talons of
the other.

'Habet! (he has got it!) habet!' cried they, with a sort of yell, rubbing
their nervous hands.

'Non habeo, ye liars; I have not got it!' shouted the host, as with a mighty
effort he wrenched himself from those deadly hands, and rose to his feet,
breathless, panting, lacerated, bloody; and fronting, with reeling eyes, the
glaring look and grinning teeth of his baffled foe, now struggling (but
struggling with disdain) in the gripe of the sturdy amazon.

'Fair play!' cried the gladiators: 'one to one'; and, crowding round Lydon
and the woman, they separated our pleasing host from his courteous guest.

But Lydon, feeling ashamed at his present position, and endeavoring in vain
to shake off the grasp of the virago, slipped his hand into his girdle, and
drew forth a short knife. So menacing was his look, so brightly gleamed the
blade, that Stratonice, who was used only to that fashion of battle which we
moderns call the pugilistic, started back in alarm.

'O gods!' cried she, 'the ruffian!--he has concealed weapons! Is that fair?
Is that like a gentleman and a gladiator? No, indeed, I scorn such
fellows.' With that she contemptuously turned her back on the gladiator, and
hastened to examine the condition of her husband.

But he, as much inured to the constitutional exercises as an English
bull-dog is to a contest with a more gentle antagonist, had already
recovered himself. The purple hues receded from the crimson surface of his
cheek, the veins of the forehead retired into their wonted size. He shook
himself with a complacent grunt, satisfied that he was still alive, and then
looking at his foe from head to foot with an air of more approbation than he
had ever bestowed upon him before:

'By Castor!' said he, 'thou art a stronger fellow than I took thee for! I
see thou art a man of merit and virtue; give me thy hand, my hero!'

'Jolly old Burbo!' cried the gladiators, applauding, 'staunch to the
backbone. Give him thy hand, Lydon.'

'Oh, to be sure,' said the gladiator: 'but now I have tasted his blood, I
long to lap the whole.'

'By Hercules!' returned the host, quite unmoved, 'that is the true gladiator
feeling. Pollux! to think what good training may make a man; why, a beast
could not be fiercer!'

'A beast! O dullard! we beat the beasts hollow!' cried Tetraides.

'Well, well said Stratonice, who was now employed in smoothing her hair and
adjusting her dress, 'if ye are all good friends again, I recommend you to
be quiet and orderly; for some young noblemen, your patrons and backers,
have sent to say they will come here to pay you a visit: they wish to see
you more at their ease than at the schools, before they make up their bets
on the great fight at the amphitheatre. So they always come to my house for
that purpose: they know we only receive the best gladiators in Pompeii--our
society is very select--praised be the gods!'

'Yes,' continued Burbo, drinking off a bowl, or rather a pail of wine, 'a
man who has won my laurels can only encourage the brave. Lydon, drink, my
boy; may you have an honorable old age like mine!'

'Come here,' said Stratonice, drawing her husband to her affectionately by
the ears, in that caress which Tibullus has so prettily described--'Come
here!'

'Not so hard, she-wolf! thou art worse than the gladiator,' murmured the
huge jaws of Burbo.

'Hist!' said she, whispering him; 'Calenus has just stole in, disguised, by
the back way. I hope he has brought the sesterces.'

'Ho! ho! I will join him, said Burbo; 'meanwhile, I say, keep a sharp eye on
the cups--attend to the score. Let them not cheat thee, wife; they are
heroes, to be sure, but then they are arrant rogues: Cacus was nothing to
them.'

'Never fear me, fool!' was the conjugal reply; and Burbo, satisfied with the
dear assurance, strode through the apartment, and sought the penetralia of
his house.

'So those soft patrons are coming to look at our muscles,' said Niger. 'Who
sent to previse thee of it, my mistress?'

'Lepidus. He brings with him Clodius, the surest better in Pompeii, and the
young Greek, Glaucus.'

'A wager on a wager,' cried Tetraides; 'Clodius bets on me, for twenty
sesterces! What say you, Lydon?'

'He bets on me!' said Lydon.

'No, on me!' grunted Sporus.

'Dolts! do you think he would prefer any of you to Niger?' said the
athletic, thus modestly naming himself.

'Well, well,' said Stratonice, as she pierced a huge amphora for her guests,
who had now seated themselves before one of the tables, 'great men and
brave, as ye all think yourselves, which of you will fight the Numidian lion
in case no malefactor should be found to deprive you of the option?'

'I who have escaped your arms, stout Stratonice,' said Lydon, 'might safely,
I think, encounter the lion.'

'But tell me,' said Tetraides, 'where is that pretty young slave of
yours--the blind girl, with bright eyes? I have not seen her a long time.'

'Oh! she is too delicate for you, my son of Neptune,' said the hostess, 'and
too nice even for us, I think. We send her into the town to sell flowers
and sing to the ladies: she makes us more money so than she would by waiting
on you. Besides, she has often other employments which lie under the rose.'

'Other employments!' said Niger; 'why, she is too young for them.'

'Silence, beast!' said Stratonice; 'you think there is no play but the
Corinthian. If Nydia were twice the age she is at present, she would be
equally fit for Vesta--poor girl!'

'But, hark ye, Stratonice,' said Lydon; 'how didst thou come by so gentle
and delicate a slave? She were more meet for the handmaid of some rich
matron of Rome than for thee.'

'That is true,' returned Stratonice; 'and some day or other I shall make my
fortune by selling her. How came I by Nydia, thou askest.'

'Ay!'

'Why, thou seest, my slave Staphyla--thou rememberest Staphyla, Niger?'

'Ay, a large-handed wench, with a face like a comic mask. How should I
forget her, by Pluto, whose handmaid she doubtless is at this moment!'

'Tush, brute!--Well, Staphyla died one day, and a great loss she was to me,
and I went into the market to buy me another slave. But, by the gods! they
were all grown so dear since I had bought poor Staphyla, and money was so
scarce, that I was about to leave the place in despair, when a merchant
plucked me by the robe. "Mistress," said he, "dost thou want a slave cheap
I have a child to sell--a bargain. She is but little, and almost an infant,
it is true; but she is quick and quiet, docile and clever, sings well, and
is of good blood, I assure you." "Of what country?" said I. "Thessalian."
Now I knew the Thessalians were acute and gentle; so I said I would see the
girl. I found her just as you see her now, scarcely smaller and scarcely
younger in appearance. She looked patient and resigned enough, with her
hands crossed on her bosom, and her eyes downcast. I asked the merchant his
price: it was moderate, and I bought her at once. The merchant brought her
to my house, and disappeared in an instant. Well, my friends, guess my
astonishment when I found she was blind! Ha! ha! a clever fellow that
merchant! I ran at once to the magistrates, but the rogue was already gone
from Pompeii. So I was forced to go home in a very ill humor, I assure you;
and the poor girl felt the effects of it too. But it was not her fault that
she was blind, for she had been so from her birth. By degrees, we got
reconciled to our purchase. True, she had not the strength of Staphyla, and
was of very little use in the house, but she could soon find her way about
the town, as well as if she had the eyes of Argus; and when one morning she
brought us home a handful of sesterces, which she said she had got from
selling some flowers she had gathered in our poor little garden, we thought
the gods had sent her to us. So from that time we let her go out as she
likes, filling her basket with flowers, which she wreathes into garlands
after the Thessalian fashion, which pleases the gallants; and the great
people seem to take a fancy to her, for they always pay her more than they
do any other flower-girl, and she brings all of it home to us, which is more
than any other slave would do. So I work for myself, but I shall soon
afford from her earnings to buy me a second Staphyla; doubtless, the
Thessalian kidnapper had stolen the blind girl from gentle parents. Besides
her skill in the garlands, she sings and plays on the cithara, which also
brings money, and lately--but that is a secret.'

'That is a secret! What!' cried Lydon, 'art thou turned sphinx?'

'Sphinx, no!--why sphinx?'

'Cease thy gabble, good mistress, and bring us our meat--I am hungry,' said
Sporus, impatiently.

'And I, too,' echoed the grim Niger, whetting his knife on the palm of his
hand.

The amazon stalked away to the kitchen, and soon returned with a tray laden
with large pieces of meat half-raw: for so, as now, did the heroes of the
prize-fight imagine they best sustained their hardihood and ferocity: they
drew round the table with the eyes of famished wolves--the meat vanished,
the wine flowed. So leave we those important personages of classic life to
follow the steps of Burbo.

Chapter II

TWO WORTHIES.

IN the earlier times of Rome the priesthood was a profession, not of lucre
but of honour. It was embraced by the noblest citizens--it was forbidden to
the plebeians. Afterwards, and long previous to the present date, it was
equally open to all ranks; at least, that part of the profession which
embraced the flamens, or priests--not of religion generally but of peculiar
gods. Even the priest of Jupiter (the Flamen Dialis) preceded by a lictor,
and entitled by his office to the entrance of the senate, at first the
especial dignitary of the patricians, was subsequently the choice of the
people. The less national and less honored deities were usually served by
plebeian ministers; and many embraced the profession, as now the Roman
Catholic Christians enter the monastic fraternity, less from the impulse of
devotion than the suggestions of a calculating poverty. Thus Calenus, the
priest of Isis, was of the lowest origin. His relations, though not his
parents, were freedmen. He had received from them a liberal education, and
from his father a small patrimony, which he had soon exhausted. He embraced
the priesthood as a last resource from distress. Whatever the state
emoluments of the sacred profession, which at that time were probably small,
the officers of a popular temple could never complain of the profits of
their calling. There is no profession so lucrative as that which practises
on the superstition of the multitude.

Calenus had but one surviving relative at Pompeii, and that was Burbo.
Various dark and disreputable ties, stronger than those of blood, united
together their hearts and interests; and often the minister of Isis stole
disguised and furtively from the supposed austerity of his devotions; and
gliding through the back door of the retired gladiator, a man infamous alike
by vices and by profession, rejoiced to throw off the last rag of an
hypocrisy which, but for the dictates of avarice, his ruling passion, would
at all time have sat clumsily upon a nature too brutal for even the mimicry
of virtue.

Wrapped in one of those large mantles which came in use among the Romans in
proportion as they dismissed the toga, whose ample folds well concealed the
form, and in which a sort of hood (attached to it) afforded no less a
security to the features, Calenus now sat in the small and private chamber
of the wine-cellar, whence a small passage ran at once to that back
entrance, with which nearly all the houses of Pompeii were furnished.

Opposite to him sat the sturdy Burbo, carefully counting on a table between
them a little pile of coins which the priest had just poured from his
purse--for purses were as common then as now, with this difference--they
were usually better furnished!

'You see,' said Calenus, that we pay you handsomely, and you ought to thank
me for recommending you to so advantageous a market.'

'I do, my cousin, I do,' replied Burbo, affectionately, as he swept the
coins into a leathern receptacle, which he then deposited in his girdle,
drawing the buckle round his capacious waist more closely than he was wont
to do in the lax hours of his domestic avocations. 'And by Isis, Pisis, and
Nisis, or whatever other gods there may be in Egypt, my little Nydia is a
very Hesperides--a garden of gold to me.'

'She sings well, and plays like a muse,' returned Calenus; 'those are
virtues that he who employs me always pays liberally.'

'He is a god,' cried Burbo, enthusiastically; 'every rich man who is
generous deserves to be worshipped. But come, a cup of wine, old friend:
tell me more about it. What does she do? she is frightened, talks of her
oath, and reveals nothing.'

'Nor will I, by my right hand! I, too, have taken that terrible oath of
secrecy.'

'Oath! what are oaths to men like us?'

'True oaths of a common fashion; but this!'--and the stalwart priest
shuddered as he spoke. 'Yet,' he continued, in emptying a huge cup of
unmixed wine, 'I own to thee, that it is not so much the oath that I dread
as the vengeance of him who proposed it. By the gods! he is a mighty
sorcerer, and could draw my confession from the moon, did I dare to make it
to her. Talk no more of this. By Pollux! wild as those banquets are which
I enjoy with him, I am never quite at my ease there. I love, my boy, one
jolly hour with thee, and one of the plain, unsophisticated, laughing girls
that I meet in this chamber, all smoke-dried though it be, better than whole
nights of those magnificent debauches.'

'Ho! sayest thou so! To-morrow night, please the gods, we will have then a
snug carousal.'

'With all my heart,' said the priest, rubbing his hands, and drawing himself
nearer to the table.

At this moment they heard a slight noise at the door, as of one feeling the
handle. The priest lowered the hood over his head.

'Tush!' whispered the host, 'it is but the blind girl,' as Nydia opened the
door, and entered the apartment.

'Ho! girl, and how durst thou? thou lookest pale--thou hast kept late
revels? No matter, the young must be always the young,' said Burbo,
encouragingly.

The girl made no answer, but she dropped on one of the seats with an air of
lassitude. Her color went and came rapidly: she beat the floor impatiently
with her small feet, then she suddenly raised her face, and said with a
determined voice:

'Master, you may starve me if you will--you may beat me--you may threaten me
with death--but I will go no more to that unholy place!'

'How, fool!' said Burbo, in a savage voice, and his heavy brows met darkly
over his fierce and bloodshot eyes; 'how, rebellious! Take care.'

'I have said it,' said the poor girl, crossing her hands on her breast.

'What! my modest one, sweet vestal, thou wilt go no more! Very well, thou
shalt be carried.'

'I will raise the city with my cries,' said she, passionately; and the color
mounted to her brow.

'We will take care of that too; thou shalt go gagged.'

'Then may the gods help me!' said Nydia, rising; 'I will appeal to the
magistrates.'

'Thine oath remember!' said a hollow voice, as for the first time Calenus
joined in the dialogue.

At these words a trembling shook the frame of the unfortunate girl; she
clasped her hands imploringly. 'Wretch that I am!' she cried, and burst
violently into sobs.

Whether or not it was the sound of that vehement sorrow which brought the
gentle Stratonice to the spot, her grisly form at this moment appeared in
the chamber.

'How now? what hast thou been doing with my slave, brute?' said she,
angrily, to Burbo.

'Be quiet, wife,' said he, in a tone half-sullen, half-timid; 'you want new
girdles and fine clothes, do you? Well then, take care of your slave, or
you may want them long. Voe capiti tuo--vengeance on thy head, wretched
one!'

'What is this?' said the hag, looking from one to the other.

Nydia started as by a sudden impulse from the wall against which she had
leaned: she threw herself at the feet of Stratonice; she embraced her knees,
and looking up at her with those sightless but touching eyes:

'O my mistress!' sobbed she, 'you are a woman--you have had sisters--you
have been young like me, feel for me--save me! I will go to those horrible
feasts no more!'

'Stuff!' said the hag, dragging her up rudely by one of those delicate
hands, fit for no harsher labor than that of weaving the flowers which made
her pleasure or her trade; 'stuff! these fine scruples are not for slaves.'

'Hark ye,' said Burbo, drawing forth his purse, and chinking its contents:
'you hear this music, wife; by Pollux! if you do not break in yon colt with
a tight rein, you will hear it no more.'

'The girl is tired,' said Stratonice, nodding to Calenus; 'she will be more
docile when you next want her.'

'You! you! who is here?' cried Nydia, casting her eyes round the apartment
with so fearful and straining a survey, that Calenus rose in alarm from his
seat.

'She must see with those eyes!' muttered he.

'Who is here! Speak, in heaven's name! Ah, if you were blind like me, you
would be less cruel,' said she; and she again burst into tears.

'Take her away,' said Burbo, impatiently; 'I hate these whimperings.'

'Come!' said Stratonice, pushing the poor child by the shoulders. Nydia
drew herself aside, with an air to which resolution gave dignity.

'Hear me,' she said; 'I have served you faithfully--I who was brought
up--Ah! my mother, my poor mother! didst thou dream I should come to this?'
She dashed the tear from her eyes, and proceeded: 'Command me in aught else,
and I will obey; but I tell you now, hard, stern, inexorable as you are--I
tell you that I will go there no more; or, if I am forced there, that I will
implore the mercy of the praetor himself--I have said it. Hear me, ye gods,
I swear!'

The hag's eyes glowed with fire; she seized the child by the hair with one
hand, and raised on high the other--that formidable right hand, the least
blow of which seemed capable to crush the frail and delicate form that
trembled in her grasp. That thought itself appeared to strike her, for she
suspended the blow, changed her purpose, and dragging Nydia to the wall,
seized from a hook a rope, often, alas! applied to a similar purpose, and
the next moment the shrill, the agonized shrieks of the blind girl, rang
piercingly through the house.

Chapter III

GLAUCUS MAKES A PURCHASE THAT AFTERWARDS COSTS HIM DEAR.

'HOLLA, my brave fellows!' said Lepidus, stooping his head as he entered the
low doorway of the house of Burbo. 'We have come to see which of you most
honors your lanista.' The gladiators rose from the table in respect to three
gallants known to be among the gayest and richest youths of Pompeii, and
whose voices were therefore the dispensers of amphitheatrical reputation.

'What fine animals!' said Clodius to Glaucus: 'worthy to be gladiators!'

'It is a pity they are not warriors,' returned Glaucus.

A singular thing it was to see the dainty and fastidious Lepidus, whom in a
banquet a ray of daylight seemed to blind--whom in the bath a breeze of air
seemed to blast--in whom Nature seemed twisted and perverted from every
natural impulse, and curdled into one dubious thing of effeminacy and art--a
singular thing was it to see this Lepidus, now all eagerness, and energy,
and life, patting the vast shoulders of the gladiators with a blanched and
girlish hand, feeling with a mincing gripe their great brawn and iron
muscles, all lost in calculating admiration at that manhood which he had
spent his life in carefully banishing from himself.

So have we seen at this day the beardless flutterers of the saloons of
London thronging round the heroes of the Fives-court--so have we seen them
admire, and gaze, and calculate a bet--so have we seen them meet together,
in ludicrous yet in melancholy assemblage, the two extremes of civilized
society--the patrons of pleasure and its slaves--vilest of all slaves--at
once ferocious and mercenary; male prostitutes, who sell their strength as
women their beauty; beasts in act, but baser than beasts in motive, for the
last, at least, do not mangle themselves for money!

'Ha! Niger, how will you fight?' said Lepidus: 'and with whom?'

'Sporus challenges me,' said the grim giant; 'we shall fight to the death, I
hope.'

'Ah! to be sure,' grunted Sporus, with a twinkle of his small eye.

'He takes the sword, I the net and the trident: it will be rare sport. I
hope the survivor will have enough to keep up the dignity of the crown.'

'Never fear, we'll fill the purse, my Hector,' said Clodius:

'let me see--you fight against Niger? Glaucus, a bet--I back Niger.'

'I told you so,' cried Niger exultingly. 'The noble Clodius knows me; count
yourself dead already, my Sporus.'

Clodius took out his tablet. 'A bet--ten sestertia. What say you?'

'So be it,' said Glaucus. 'But whom have we here? I never saw this hero
before'; and he glanced at Lydon, whose limbs were slighter than those of
his companions, and who had something of grace, and something even of
nobleness, in his face, which his profession had not yet wholly destroyed.

'It is Lydon, a youngster, practised only with the wooden sword as yet,'
answered Niger, condescendingly. 'But he has the true blood in him, and has
challenged Tetraides.'

'He challenged me,' said Lydon: 'I accept the offer.'

'And how do you fight?' asked Lepidus. 'Chut, my boy, wait a while before
you contend with Tetraides.' Lydon smiled disdainfully.

'Is he a citizen or a slave?' said Clodius.

'A citizen--we are all citizens here,' quoth Niger.

'Stretch out your arm, my Lydon,' said Lepidus, with the air of a
connoisseur.

The gladiator, with a significant glance at his companions, extended an arm
which, if not so huge in its girth as those of his comrades, was so firm in
its muscles, so beautifully symmetrical in its proportions, that the three
visitors uttered simultaneously an admiring exclamation.

'Well, man, what is your weapon?' said Clodius, tablet in hand.

'We are to fight first with the cestus; afterwards, if both survive, with
swords,' returned Tetraides, sharply, and with an envious scowl.

'With the cestus!' cried Glaucus; 'there you are wrong, Lydon; the cestus is
the Greek fashion: I know it well. You should have encouraged flesh for
that contest: you are far too thin for it--avoid the cestus.'

'I cannot,' said Lydon.

'And why?'

'I have said--because he has challenged me.'

'But he will not hold you to the precise weapon.'

'My honour holds me!' returned Lydon, proudly.

'I bet on Tetraides, two to one, at the cestus,' said Clodius; shall it be,
Lepidus?--even betting, with swords.'

'If you give me three to one, I will not take the odds, said Lepidus: 'Lydon
will never come to the swords. You are mighty courteous.'

'What say you, Glaucus?' said Clodius.

'I will take the odds three to one.'

'Ten sestertia to thirty.'

'Yes.'

Clodius wrote the bet in his book.

'Pardon me, noble sponsor mine,' said Lydon, in a low voice to Glaucus: 'but
how much think you the victor will gain?'

'How much? why, perhaps seven sestertia.'

'You are sure it will be as much?'

'At least. But out on you!--a Greek would have thought of the honour, and
not the money. O Italians! everywhere ye are Italians!'

A blush mantled over the bronzed cheek of the gladiator.

'Do not wrong me, noble Glaucus; I think of both, but I should never have
been a gladiator but for the money.'

'Base! mayest thou fall! A miser never was a hero.'

'I am not a miser,' said Lydon, haughtily, and he withdrew to the other end
of the room.

'But I don't see Burbo; where is Burbo? I must talk with Burbo,' cried
Clodius.

'He is within,' said Niger, pointing to the door at the extremity of the
room.

'And Stratonice, the brave old lass, where is she?' quoth Lepidus.

'Why, she was here just before you entered; but she heard something that
displeased her yonder, and vanished. Pollux! old Burbo had perhaps caught
hold of some girl in the back room. I heard a female's voice crying out;
the old dame is as jealous as Juno.'

'Ho! excellent!' cried Lepidus, laughing. 'Come, Clodius, let us go shares
with Jupiter; perhaps he has caught a Leda.'

At this moment a loud cry of pain and terror startled the group.

'Oh, spare me! spare me! I am but a child, I am blind--is not that
punishment enough?'

'O Pallas! I know that voice, it is my poor flower-girl!' exclaimed
Glaucus, and he darted at once into the quarter whence the cry rose.

He burst the door; he beheld Nydia writhing in the grasp of the infuriate
hag; the cord, already dabbled with blood, was raised in the air--it was
suddenly arrested.

'Fury!' said Glaucus, and with his left hand he caught Nydia from her grasp;
'how dare you use thus a girl--one of your own sex, a child! My Nydia, my
poor infant!'

'Oh? is that you--is that Glaucus?' exclaimed the flower-girl, in a tone
almost of transport; the tears stood arrested on her cheek; she smiled, she
clung to his breast, she kissed his robe as she clung.

'And how dare you, pert stranger! interfere between a free woman and her
slave. By the gods! despite your fine tunic and your filthy perfumes, I
doubt whether you are even a Roman citizen, my mannikin.'

'Fair words, mistress--fair words!' said Clodius, now entering with Lepidus.
'This is my friend and sworn brother; he must be put under shelter of your
tongue, sweet one; it rains stones!'

'Give me my slave!' shrieked the virago, placing her mighty grasp on the
breast of the Greek.

'Not if all your sister Furies could help you,' answered Glaucus. 'Fear
not, sweet Nydia; an Athenian never forsook distress!'

'Holla!' said Burbo, rising reluctantly, 'What turmoil is all this about a
slave? Let go the young gentleman, wife--let him go: for his sake the pert
thing shall be spared this once.' So saying, he drew, or rather dragged off,
his ferocious help-mate.

'Methought when we entered,' said Clodius, 'there was another man present?'

'He is gone.'

For the priest of Isis had indeed thought it high time to vanish.

'Oh, a friend of mine! a brother cupman, a quiet dog, who does not love
these snarlings,' said Burbo, carelessly. 'But go, child, you will tear the
gentleman's tunic if you cling to him so tight; go, you are pardoned.'

'Oh, do not--do not forsake me!' cried Nydia, clinging yet closer to the
Athenian.

Moved by her forlorn situation, her appeal to him, her own innumerable and
touching graces, the Greek seated himself on one of the rude chairs. He
held her on his knees--he wiped the blood from her shoulders with his long
hair--he kissed the tears from her cheeks--he whispered to her a thousand of
those soothing words with which we calm the grief of a child--and so
beautiful did he seem in his gentle and consoling task, that even the fierce
heart of Stratonice was touched. His presence seemed to shed light over
that base and obscene haunt--young, beautiful, glorious, he was the emblem
of all that earth made most happy, comforting one that earth had abandoned!

'Well, who could have thought our blind Nydia had been so honored!' said the
virago, wiping her heated brow.

Glaucus looked up at Burbo.

'My good man,' said he, 'this is your slave; she sings well, she is
accustomed to the care of flowers--I wish to make a present of such a slave
to a lady. Will you sell her to me?' As he spoke he felt the whole frame of
the poor girl tremble with delight; she started up, she put her disheveled
hair from her eyes, she looked around, as if, alas, she had the power to
see!

'Sell our Nydia! no, indeed,' said Stratonice, gruffly.

Nydia sank back with a long sigh, and again clasped the robe of her
protector.

'Nonsense!' said Clodius, imperiously: 'you must oblige me. What, man! what,
old dame! offend me, and your trade is ruined. Is not Burbo my kinsman
Pansa's client? Am I not the oracle of the amphitheatre and its heroes? If
I say the word, break up your wine-jars--you sell no more. Glaucus, the
slave is yours.'

Burbo scratched his huge head, in evident embarrassment.

'The girl is worth her weight in gold to me.'

'Name your price, I am rich,' said Glaucus.

The ancient Italians were like the modern, there was nothing they would not
sell, much less a poor blind girl.

'I paid six sestertia for her, she is worth twelve now,' muttered
Stratonice.

'You shall have twenty; come to the magistrates at once, and then to my
house for your money.'

'I would not have sold the dear girl for a hundred but to oblige noble
Clodius,' said Burbo, whiningly. 'And you will speak to Pansa about the
place of designator at the amphitheatre, noble Clodius? it would just suit
me.'

'Thou shalt have it,' said Clodius; adding in a whisper to Burbo, 'Yon Greek
can make your fortune; money runs through him like a sieve: mark to-day with
white chalk, my Priam.'

'An dabis?' said Glaucus, in the formal question of sale and barter.

'Dabitur,' answered Burbo.

'Then, then, I am to go with you--with you? O happiness!' murmured Nydia.

'Pretty one, yes; and thy hardest task henceforth shall be to sing thy
Grecian hymns to the loveliest lady in Pompeii.'

The girl sprang from his clasp; a change came over her whole face, bright
the instant before; she sighed heavily, and then once more taking his hand,
she said:

'I thought I was to go to your house?'

'And so thou shalt for the present; come, we lose time.'

Chapter IV

THE RIVAL OF GLAUCUS PRESSES ONWARD IN THE RACE.

IONE was one of those brilliant characters which, but once or twice, flash
across our career. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of
earthly gifts--Genius and Beauty. No one ever possessed superior
intellectual qualities without knowing them--the alliteration of modesty and
merit is pretty enough, but where merit is great, the veil of that modesty
you admire never disguises its extent from its possessor. It is the proud
consciousness of certain qualities that it cannot reveal to the everyday
world, that gives to genius that shy, and reserved, and troubled air, which
puzzles and flatters you when you encounter it.

Ione, then, knew her genius; but, with that charming versatility that
belongs of right to women, she had the faculty so few of a kindred genius in
the less malleable sex can claim--the faculty to bend and model her graceful
intellect to all whom it encountered. The sparkling fountain threw its
waters alike upon the strand, the cavern, and the flowers; it refreshed, it
smiled, it dazzled everywhere. That pride, which is the necessary result of
superiority, she wore easily--in her breast it concentred itself in
independence. She pursued thus her own bright and solitary path. She asked
no aged matron to direct and guide her--she walked alone by the torch of her
own unflickering purity. She obeyed no tyrannical and absolute custom. She
moulded custom to her own will, but this so delicately and with so feminine
a grace, so perfect an exemption from error, that you could not say she
outraged custom but commanded it. The wealth of her graces was
inexhaustible--she beautified the commonest action; a word, a look from her,
seemed magic. Love her, and you entered into a new world, you passed from
this trite and commonplace earth. You were in a land in which your eyes saw
everything through an enchanted medium. In her presence you felt as if
listening to exquisite music; you were steeped in that sentiment which has
so little of earth in it, and which music so well inspires--that
intoxication which refines and exalts, which seizes, it is true, the senses,
but gives them the character of the soul.

She was peculiarly formed, then, to command and fascinate the less ordinary
and the bolder natures of men; to love her was to unite two passions, that
of love and of ambition--you aspired when you adored her. It was no wonder
that she had completely chained and subdued the mysterious but burning soul
of the Egyptian, a man in whom dwelt the fiercest passions. Her beauty and
her soul alike enthralled him.

Set apart himself from the common world, he loved that daringness of
character which also made itself, among common things, aloof and alone. He
did not, or he would not see, that that very isolation put her yet more from
him than from the vulgar. Far as the poles--far as the night from day, his
solitude was divided from hers. He was solitary from his dark and solemn
vices--she from her beautiful fancies and her purity of virtue.

If it was not strange that Ione thus enthralled the Egyptian, far less
strange was it that she had captured, as suddenly as irrevocably, the
bright and sunny heart of the Athenian. The gladness of a temperament which
seemed woven from the beams of light had led Glaucus into pleasure. He
obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations of
his time, than the exhilarating voices of youth and health. He threw the
brightness of his nature over every abyss and cavern through which he
strayed. His imagination dazzled him, but his heart never was corrupted.
Of far more penetration than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought
to prey upon his riches and his youth: but he despised wealth save as the
means of enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to
them. He felt, it is true, the impulse of nobler thoughts and higher aims
than in pleasure could be indulged: but the world was one vast prison, to
which the Sovereign of Rome was the Imperial gaoler; and the very virtues,
which in the free days of Athens would have made him ambitious, in the
slavery of earth made him inactive and supine. For in that unnatural and
bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden.
Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the
contest of flattery and craft. Avarice had become the sole ambition--men
desired praetorships and provinces only as the license to pillage, and
government was but the excuse of rapine. It is in small states that glory
is most active and pure--the more confined the limits of the circle, the
more ardent the patriotism. In small states, opinion is concentrated and
strong--every eye reads your actions--your public motives are blended with
your private ties--every spot in your narrow sphere is crowded with forms
familiar since your childhood--the applause of your citizens is like the
caresses of your friends. But in large states, the city is but the court:
the provinces--unknown to you, unfamiliar in customs, perhaps in
language--have no claim on your patriotism, the ancestry of their
inhabitants is not yours. In the court you desire favor instead of glory;
at a distance from the court, public opinion has vanished from you, and
self-interest has no counterpoise.

Italy, Italy, while I write, your skies are over me--your seas flow beneath
my feet, listen not to the blind policy which would unite all your crested
cities, mourning for their republics, into one empire; false, pernicious
delusion! your only hope of regeneration is in division. Florence, Milan,
Venice, Genoa, may be free once more, if each is free. But dream not of
freedom for the whole while you enslave the parts; the heart must be the
centre of the system, the blood must circulate freely everywhere; and in
vast communities you behold but a bloated and feeble giant, whose brain is
imbecile, whose limbs are dead, and who pays in disease and weakness the
penalty of transcending the natural proportions of health and vigour.

Thus thrown back upon themselves, the more ardent qualities of Glaucus found
no vent, save in that overflowing imagination which gave grace to pleasure,
and poetry to thought. Ease was less despicable than contention with
parasites and slaves, and luxury could yet be refined though ambition could
not be ennobled. But all that was best and brightest in his soul woke at
once when he knew Ione. Here was an empire, worthy of demigods to attain;
here was a glory, which the reeking smoke of a foul society could not soil
or dim. Love, in every time, in every state, can thus find space for its
golden altars. And tell me if there ever, even in the ages most favorable to
glory, could be a triumph more exalted and elating than the conquest of one
noble heart?

And whether it was that this sentiment inspired him, his ideas glowed more
brightly, his soul seemed more awake and more visible, in Ione's presence.
If natural to love her, it was natural that she should return the passion.
Young, brilliant, eloquent, enamoured, and Athenian, he was to her as the
incarnation of the poetry of her father's land. They were not like
creatures of a world in which strife and sorrow are the elements; they were
like things to be seen only in the holiday of nature, so glorious and so
fresh were their youth, their beauty, and their love. They seemed out of
place in the harsh and every-day earth; they belonged of right to the
Saturnian age, and the dreams of demigod and nymph. It was as if the poetry
of life gathered and fed itself in them, and in their hearts were
concentrated the last rays of the sun of Delos and of Greece.

But if Ione was independent in her choice of life, so was her modest pride
proportionably vigilant and easily alarmed. The falsehood of the Egyptian
was invented by a deep knowledge of her nature. The story of coarseness, of
indelicacy, in Glaucus, stung her to the quick. She felt it a reproach upon
her character and her career, a punishment above all to her love; she felt,
for the first time, how suddenly she had yielded to that love; she blushed
with shame at a weakness, the extent of which she was startled to perceive:
she imagined it was that weakness which had incurred the contempt of
Glaucus; she endured the bitterest curse of noble natures--humiliation! Yet
her love, perhaps, was no less alarmed than her pride. If one moment she
murmured reproaches upon Glaucus--if one moment she renounced, she almost
hated him--at the next she burst into passionate tears, her heart yielded to
its softness, and she said in the bitterness of anguish, 'He despises me--he
does not love me.'

From the hour the Egyptian had left her she had retired to her most secluded
chamber, she had shut out her handmaids, she had denied herself to the
crowds that besieged her door. Glaucus was excluded with the rest; he
wondered, but he guessed not why! He never attributed to his Ione--his
queen--his goddess--that woman--like caprice of which the love-poets of
Italy so unceasingly complain. He imagined her, in the majesty of her
candour, above all the arts that torture. He was troubled, but his hopes
were not dimmed, for he knew already that he loved and was beloved; what
more could he desire as an amulet against fear?

At deepest night, then, when the streets were hushed, and the high moon only
beheld his devotions, he stole to that temple of his heart--her home; and
wooed her after the beautiful fashion of his country. He covered her
threshold with the richest garlands, in which every flower was a volume of
sweet passion; and he charmed the long summer night with the sound of the
Lydian lute: and verses, which the inspiration of the moment sufficed to
weave.

But the window above opened not; no smile made yet more holy the shining air
of night. All was still and dark. He knew not if his verse was welcome and
his suit was heard.

Yet Ione slept not, nor disdained to hear. Those soft strains ascended to
her chamber; they soothed, they subdued her. While she listened, she
believed nothing against her lover; but when they were stilled at last, and
his step departed, the spell ceased; and, in the bitterness of her soul, she
almost conceived in that delicate flattery a new affront.

I said she was denied to all; but there was one exception, there was one
person who would not be denied, assuming over her actions and her house
something like the authority of a parent; Arbaces, for himself, claimed an
exemption from all the ceremonies observed by others. He entered the
threshold with the license of one who feels that he is privileged and at
home. He made his way to her solitude and with that sort of quiet and
unapologetic air which seemed to consider the right as a thing of course.
With all the independence of Ione's character, his heart had enabled him to
obtain a secret and powerful control over her mind. She could not shake it
off; sometimes she desired to do so; but she never actively struggled
against it. She was fascinated by his serpent eye. He arrested, he
commanded her, by the magic of a mind long accustomed to awe and to subdue.
Utterly unaware of his real character or his hidden love, she felt for him
the reverence which genius feels for wisdom, and virtue for sanctity. She
regarded him as one of those mighty sages of old, who attained to the
mysteries of knowledge by an exemption from the passions of their kind. She
scarcely considered him as a being, like herself, of the earth, but as an
oracle at once dark and sacred. She did not love him, but she feared. His
presence was unwelcome to her; it dimmed her spirit even in its brightest
mood; he seemed, with his chilling and lofty aspect, like some eminence
which casts a shadow over the sun. But she never thought of forbidding his
visits. She was passive under the influence which created in her breast,
not the repugnance, but something of the stillness of terror.

Arbaces himself now resolved to exert all his arts to possess himself of
that treasure he so burningly coveted. He was cheered and elated by his
conquests over her brother. From the hour in which Apaecides fell beneath
the voluptuous sorcery of that fete which we have described, he felt his
empire over the young priest triumphant and insured. He knew that there is
no victim so thoroughly subdued as a young and fervent man for the first
time delivered to the thraldom of the senses.

When Apaecides recovered, with the morning light, from the profound sleep
which succeeded to the delirium of wonder and of pleasure, he was, it is
true, ashamed--terrified--appalled. His vows of austerity and celibacy
echoed in his ear; his thirst after holiness--had it been quenched at so
unhallowed a stream? But Arbaces knew well the means by which to confirm
his conquest. From the arts of pleasure he led the young priest at once to
those of his mysterious wisdom. He bared to his amazed eyes the initiatory
secrets of the sombre philosophy of the Nile--those secrets plucked from the
stars, and the wild chemistry, which, in those days, when Reason herself was
but the creature of Imagination, might well pass for the lore of a diviner
magic. He seemed to the young eyes of the priest as a being above
mortality, and endowed with supernatural gifts. That yearning and intense
desire for the knowledge which is not of earth--which had burned from his
boyhood in the heart of the priest--was dazzled, until it confused and
mastered his clearer sense. He gave himself to the art which thus addressed
at once the two strongest of human passions, that of pleasure and that of
knowledge. He was loth to believe that one so wise could err, that one so
lofty could stoop to deceive. Entangled in the dark web of metaphysical
moralities, he caught at the excuse by which the Egyptian converted vice
into a virtue. His pride was insensibly flattered that Arbaces had deigned
to rank him with himself, to set him apart from the laws which bound the
vulgar, to make him an august participator, both in the mystic studies and
the magic fascinations of the Egyptian's solitude. The pure and stern
lessons of that creed to which Olinthus had sought to make him convert, were
swept away from his memory by the deluge of new passions. And the Egyptian,
who was versed in the articles of that true faith, and who soon learned from
his pupil the effect which had been produced upon him by its believers,
sought, not unskilfully, to undo that effect, by a tone of reasoning,
half-sarcastic and half-earnest.

'This faith,' said he, 'is but a borrowed plagiarism from one of the many
allegories invented by our priests of old. Observe,' he added, pointing to
a hieroglyphical scroll--'observe in these ancient figures the origin of the
Christian's Trinity. Here are also three gods--the Deity, the Spirit, and
the Son. Observe, that the epithet of the Son is "Saviour"--observe, that
the sign by which his human qualities are denoted is the cross.' Note here,
too, the mystic history of Osiris, how he put on death; how he lay in the
grave; and how, thus fulfilling a solemn atonement, he rose again from the
dead! In these stories we but design to paint an allegory from the
operations of nature and the evolutions of the eternal heavens. But the
allegory unknown, the types themselves have furnished to credulous nations
the materials of many creeds. They have travelled to the vast plains of
India; they have mixed themselves up in the visionary speculations of the
Greek; becoming more and more gross and embodied, as they emerge farther
from the shadows of their antique origin, they have assumed a human and
palpable form in this novel faith; and the believers of Galilee are but the
unconscious repeaters of one of the superstitions of the Nile!'

This was the last argument which completely subdued the priest. It was
necessary to him, as to all, to believe in something; and undivided and, at
last, unreluctant, he surrendered himself to that belief which Arbaces
inculcated, and which all that was human in passion--all that was flattering
in vanity--all that was alluring in pleasure, served to invite to, and
contributed to confirm.

This conquest, thus easily made, the Egyptian could now give himself wholly
up to the pursuit of a far dearer and mightier object; and he hailed, in his
success with the brother, an omen of his triumph over the sister.

He had seen Ione on the day following the revel we have witnessed; and which
was also the day after he had poisoned her mind against his rival. The next
day, and the next, he saw her also: and each time he laid himself out with
consummate art, partly to confirm her impression against Glaucus, and
principally to prepare her for the impressions he desired her to receive.
The proud Ione took care to conceal the anguish she endured; and the pride
of woman has an hypocrisy which can deceive the most penetrating, and shame
the most astute. But Arbaces was no less cautious not to recur to a subject
which he felt it was most politic to treat as of the lightest importance.
He knew that by dwelling much upon the fault of a rival, you only give him
dignity in the eyes of your mistress: the wisest plan is, neither loudly to
hate, nor bitterly to contemn; the wisest plan is to lower him by an
indifference of tone, as if you could not dream that he could be loved.
Your safety is in concealing the wound to your own pride, and imperceptibly
alarming that of the umpire, whose voice is fate! Such, in all times, will
be the policy of one who knows the science of the sex--it was now the
Egyptian's.

He recurred no more, then, to the presumption of Glaucus; he mentioned his
name, but not more often than that of Clodius or of Lepidus. He affected to
class them together as things of a low and ephemeral species; as things
wanting nothing of the butterfly, save its innocence and its grace.
Sometimes he slightly alluded to some invented debauch, in which he declared
them companions; sometimes he adverted to them as the antipodes of those
lofty and spiritual natures, to whose order that of Ione belonged. Blinded
alike by the pride of Ione, and, perhaps, by his own, he dreamed not that
she already loved; but he dreaded lest she might have formed for Glaucus the
first fluttering prepossessions that lead to love. And, secretly, he ground
his teeth in rage and jealousy, when he reflected on the youth, the
fascinations, and the brilliancy of that formidable rival whom he pretended
to undervalue.

It was on the fourth day from the date of the close of the previous book,
that Arbaces and Ione sat together.

'You wear your veil at home,' said the Egyptian; 'that is not fair to those
whom you honour with your friendship.'

'But to Arbaces,' answered Ione, who, indeed, had cast the veil over her
features to conceal eyes red with weeping--'to Arbaces, who looks only to
the mind, what matters it that the face is concealed?'

'I do look only to the mind,' replied the Egyptian: 'show me then your
face--for there I shall see it.'

'You grow gallant in the air of Pompeii,' said Ione, with a forced tone of
gaiety.

'Do you think, fair Ione, that it is only at Pompeii that I have learned to
value you?' The Egyptian's voice trembled--he paused for a moment, and then
resumed.

'There is a love, beautiful Greek, which is not the love only of the
thoughtless and the young--there is a love which sees not with the eyes,
which hears not with the ears; but in which soul is enamoured of soul. The
countryman of thy ancestors, the cave-nursed Plato, dreamed of such a
love--his followers have sought to imitate it; but it is a love that is not
for the herd to echo--it is a love that only high and noble natures can
conceive--it hath nothing in common with the sympathies and ties of coarse
affection--wrinkles do not revolt it--homeliness of feature does not deter;
it asks youth, it is true, but it asks it only in the freshness of the
emotions; it asks beauty, it is true, but it is the beauty of the thought
and of the spirit. Such is the love, O Ione, which is a worthy offering to
thee from the cold and the austere. Austere and cold thou deemest me--such
is the love that I venture to lay upon thy shrine--thou canst receive it
without a blush.'

'And its name is friendship!' replied Ione: her answer was innocent, yet it
sounded like the reproof of one conscious of the design of the speaker.

'Friendship!' said Arbaces, vehemently. 'No; that is a word too often
profaned to apply to a sentiment so sacred. Friendship! it is a tie that
binds fools and profligates! Friendship! it is the bond that unites the
frivolous hearts of a Glaucus and a Clodius! Friendship! no, that is an
affection of earth, of vulgar habits and sordid sympathies; the feeling of
which I speak is borrowed from the stars'--it partakes of that mystic and
ineffable yearning, which we feel when we gaze on them--it burns, yet it
purifies--it is the lamp of naphtha in the alabaster vase, glowing with
fragrant odorous, but shining only through the purest vessels. No; it is
not love, and it is not friendship, that Arbaces feels for Ione. Give it no
name--earth has no name for it--it is not of earth--why debase it with
earthly epithets and earthly associations?'

Never before had Arbaces ventured so far, yet he felt his ground step by
step: he knew that he uttered a language which, if at this day of affected
platonisms it would speak unequivocally to the ears of beauty, was at that
time strange and unfamiliar, to which no precise idea could be attached,
from which he could imperceptibly advance or recede, as occasion suited, as
hope encouraged or fear deterred. Ione trembled, though she knew not why;
her veil hid her features, and masked an expression, which, if seen by the
Egyptian, would have at once damped and enraged him; in fact, he never was
more displeasing to her--the harmonious modulation of the most suasive voice
that ever disguised unhallowed thought fell discordantly on her ear. Her
whole soul was still filled with the image of Glaucus; and the accent of
tenderness from another only revolted and dismayed; yet she did not conceive
that any passion more ardent than that platonism which Arbaces expressed
lurked beneath his words. She thought that he, in truth, spoke only of the
affection and sympathy of the soul; but was it not precisely that affection
and that sympathy which had made a part of those emotions she felt for
Glaucus; and could any other footstep than his approach the haunted adytum
of her heart?

Anxious at once to change the conversation, she replied, therefore, with a
cold and indifferent voice, 'Whomsoever Arbaces honors with the sentiment of
esteem, it is natural that his elevated wisdom should color that sentiment
with its own hues; it is natural that his friendship should be purer than
that of others, whose pursuits and errors he does not deign to share. But
tell me, Arbaces, hast thou seen my brother of late? He has not visited me
for several days; and when I last saw him his manner disturbed and alarmed
me much. I fear lest he was too precipitate in the severe choice that he
has adopted, and that he repents an irrevocable step.'

'Be cheered, Ione,' replied the Egyptian. 'It is true that, some little
time since he was troubled and sad of spirit; those doubts beset him which
were likely to haunt one of that fervent temperament, which ever ebbs and
flows, and vibrates between excitement and exhaustion. But he, Ione, he
came to me his anxieties and his distress; he sought one who pitied me and
loved him; I have calmed his mind--I have removed his doubts--I have taken
him from the threshold of Wisdom into its temple; and before the majesty of
the goddess his soul is hushed and soothed. Fear not, he will repent no
more; they who trust themselves to Arbaces never repent but for a moment.'

'You rejoice me,' answered Ione. 'My dear brother! in his contentment I am
happy.'

The conversation then turned upon lighter subjects; the Egyptian exerted
himself to please, he condescended even to entertain; the vast variety of
his knowledge enabled him to adorn and light up every subject on which he
touched; and Ione, forgetting the displeasing effect of his former words,
was carried away, despite her sadness, by the magic of his intellect. Her
manner became unrestrained and her language fluent; and Arbaces, who had
waited his opportunity, now hastened to seize it.

'You have never seen,' said he, 'the interior of my home; it may amuse you
to do so: it contains some rooms that may explain to you what you have often
asked me to describe--the fashion of an Egyptian house; not indeed, that you
will perceive in the poor and minute proportions of Roman architecture the
massive strength, the vast space, the gigantic magnificence, or even the
domestic construction of the palaces of Thebes and Memphis; but something
there is, here and there, that may serve to express to you some notion of
that antique civilization which has humanized the world. Devote, then, to
the austere friend of your youth, one of these bright summer evenings, and
let me boast that my gloomy mansion has been honored with the presence of
the admired Ione.'

Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger that awaited
her, Ione readily assented to the proposal. The next evening was fixed for
the visit; and the Egyptian, with a serene countenance, and a heart beating
with fierce and unholy joy, departed. Scarce had he gone, when another
visitor claimed admission.... But now we return to Glaucus.

Chapter V

THE POOR TORTOISE. NEW CHANGES FOR NYDIA.

THE morning sun shone over the small and odorous garden enclosed within the
peristyle of the house of the Athenian. He lay reclined, sad and
listlessly, on the smooth grass which intersected the viridarium; and a
slight canopy stretched above, broke the fierce rays of the summer sun.

When that fairy mansion was first disinterred from the earth they found in
the garden the shell of a tortoise that had been its inmate. That animal,
so strange a link in the creation, to which Nature seems to have denied all
the pleasure of life, save life's passive and dream-like perception, had
been the guest of the place for years before Glaucus purchased it; for
years, indeed which went beyond the memory of man, and to which tradition
assigned an almost incredible date. The house had been built and
rebuilt--its possessors had changed and fluctuated--generations had
flourished and decayed--and still the tortoise dragged on its slow and
unsympathizing existence. In the earthquake, which sixteen years before had
overthrown many of the public buildings of the city, and scared away the
amazed inhabitants, the house now inhabited by Glaucus had been terribly
shattered. The possessors deserted it for many days; on their return they
cleared away the ruins which encumbered the viridarium, and found still the
tortoise, unharmed and unconscious of the surrounding destruction. It
seemed to bear a charmed life in its languid blood and imperceptible
motions; yet it was not so inactive as it seemed: it held a regular and
monotonous course; inch by inch it traversed the little orbit of its domain,
taking months to accomplish the whole gyration. It was a restless voyager,
that tortoise!--patiently, and with pain, did it perform its self-appointed
journeys, evincing no interest in the things around it--a philosopher
concentrated in itself. There was something grand in its solitary
selfishness!--the sun in which it basked--the waters poured daily over
it--the air, which it insensibly inhaled, were its sole and unfailing
luxuries. The mild changes of the season, in that lovely clime, affected it
not. It covered itself with its shell--as the saint in his piety--as the
sage in his wisdom--as the lover in his hope.

It was impervious to the shocks and mutations of time--it was an emblem of
time itself: slow, regular, perpetual; unwitting of the passions that fret
themselves around--of the wear and tear of mortality. The poor tortoise!
nothing less than the bursting of volcanoes, the convulsions of the riven
world, could have quenched its sluggish spark! The inexorable Death, that
spared not pomp or beauty, passed unheedingly by a thing to which death
could bring so insignificant a change.

For this animal the mercurial and vivid Greek felt all the wonder and
affection of contrast. He could spend hours in surveying its creeping
progress, in moralizing over its mechanism. He despised it in joy--he
envied it in sorrow.

Regarding it now as he lay along the sward--its dull mass moving while it
seemed motionless, the Athenian murmured to himself:

'The eagle dropped a stone from his talons, thinking to break thy shell: the
stone crushed the head of a poet. This is the allegory of Fate! Dull
thing! Thou hadst a father and a mother; perhaps, ages ago, thou thyself
hadst a mate. Did thy parents love, or didst thou? Did thy slow blood
circulate more gladly when thou didst creep to the side of thy wedded one?
Wert thou capable of affection? Could it distress thee if she were away from
thy side? Couldst thou feel when she was present? What would I not give to
know the history of thy mailed breast--to gaze upon the mechanism of thy
faint desires--to mark what hair--breadth difference separates thy sorrow
from thy joy! Yet, methinks, thou wouldst know if Ione were present! Thou
wouldst feel her coming like a happier air--like a gladder sun. I envy thee
now, for thou knowest not that she is absent; and I--would I could be like
thee--between the intervals of seeing her! What doubt, what presentiment,
haunts me! why will she not admit me? Days have passed since I heard her
voice. For the first time, life grows flat to me. I am as one who is left
alone at a banquet, the lights dead, and the flowers faded. Ah! Ione,
couldst thou dream how I adore thee!'

From these enamoured reveries, Glaucus was interrupted by the entrance of
Nydia. She came with her light, though cautious step, along the marble
tablinum. She passed the portico, and paused at the flowers which bordered
the garden. She had her water-vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the
thirsting plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She bent to
inhale their odor. She touched them timidly and caressingly. She felt,
along their stems, if any withered leaf or creeping insect marred their
beauty. And as she hovered from flower to flower, with her earnest and
youthful countenance and graceful motions, you could not have imagined a
fitter handmaid for the goddess of the garden.

'Nydia, my child!' said Glaucus.

At the sound of his voice she paused at once--listening, blushing,
breathless; with her lips parted, her face upturned to catch the direction
of the sound, she laid down the vase--she hastened to him; and wonderful it
was to see how unerringly she threaded her dark way through the flowers, and
came by the shortest path to the side of her new lord.

'Nydia,' said Glaucus, tenderly stroking back her long and beautiful hair,
'it is now three days since thou hast been under the protection of my
household gods. Have they smiled on thee? Art thou happy?'

'Ah! so happy!' sighed the slave.

'And now,' continued Glaucus, 'that thou hast recovered somewhat from the
hateful recollections of thy former state,--and now that they have fitted
thee (touching her broidered tunic) with garments more meet for thy delicate
shape--and now, sweet child, that thou hast accustomed thyself to a
happiness, which may the gods grant thee ever! I am about to pray at thy
hands a boon.'

'Oh! what can I do for thee?' said Nydia, clasping her hands.

'Listen,' said Glaucus, 'and young as thou art, thou shalt be my confidant.
Hast thou ever heard the name of Ione?'

The blind girl gasped for breath, and turning pale as one of the statues
which shone upon them from the peristyle, she answered with an effort, and
after a moment's pause:

'Yes! I have heard that she is of Neapolis, and beautiful.'

'Beautiful! her beauty is a thing to dazzle the day! Neapolis! nay, she is
Greek by origin; Greece only could furnish forth such shapes. Nydia, I love
her!'

'I thought so,' replied Nydia, calmly.

'I love, and thou shalt tell her so. I am about to send thee to her. Happy
Nydia, thou wilt be in her chamber--thou wilt drink the music of her
voice--thou wilt bask in the sunny air of her presence!'

'What! what! wilt thou send me from thee?'

'Thou wilt go to Ione,' answered Glaucus, in a tone that said, 'What more
canst thou desire?'

Nydia burst into tears.

Glaucus, raising himself, drew her towards him with the soothing caresses of
a brother.

'My child, my Nydia, thou weepest in ignorance of the happiness I bestow on
thee. She is gentle, and kind, and soft as the breeze of spring. She will
be a sister to thy youth--she will appreciate thy winning talents--she will
love thy simple graces as none other could, for they are like her own.
Weepest thou still, fond fool? I will not force thee, sweet. Wilt thou not
do for me this kindness?'

'Well, if I can serve thee, command. See, I weep no longer--I am calm.'

'That is my own Nydia,' continued Glaucus, kissing her hand. 'Go, then, to
her: if thou art disappointed in her kindness--if I have deceived thee,
return when thou wilt. I do not give thee to another; I but lend. My home
ever be thy refuge, sweet one. Ah! would it could shelter all the
friendless and distressed! But if my heart whispers truly, I shall claim
thee again soon, my child. My home and Ione's will become the same, and
thou shalt dwell with both.'

A shiver passed through the slight frame of the blind girl, but she wept no
more--she was resigned.

'Go, then, my Nydia, to Ione's house--they shall show thee the way. Take her
the fairest flowers thou canst pluck; the vase which contains them I will
give thee: thou must excuse its unworthiness. Thou shalt take, too, with
thee the lute that I gave thee yesterday, and from which thou knowest so
well to awaken the charming spirit. Thou shalt give her, also, this letter,
in which, after a hundred efforts, I have embodied something of my thoughts.
Let thy ear catch every accent, every modulation of her voice, and tell me,
when we meet again, if its music should flatter me or discourage. It is
now, Nydia, some days since I have been admitted to Ione; there is something
mysterious in this exclusion. I am distracted with doubts and fears;
learn--for thou art quick, and thy care for me will sharpen tenfold thy
acuteness--learn the cause of this unkindness; speak of me as often as thou
canst; let my name come ever to thy lips: insinuate how I love rather than
proclaim it; watch if she sighs whilst thou speakest, if she answer thee;
or, if she reproves, in what accents she reproves. Be my friend, plead for
me: and oh! how vastly wilt thou overpay the little I have done for thee!
Thou comprehendest, Nydia; thou art yet a child--have I said more than thou
canst understand?'

'No.'

'And thou wilt serve me?'

'Yes.'

'Come to me when thou hast gathered the flowers, and I will give thee the
vase I speak of; seek me in the chamber of Leda. Pretty one, thou dost not
grieve now?'

'Glaucus, I am a slave; what business have I with grief or joy?'

'Sayest thou so? No, Nydia, be free. I give thee freedom; enjoy it as thou
wilt, and pardon me that I reckoned on thy desire to serve me.'

'You are offended. Oh! I would not, for that which no freedom can give,
offend you, Glaucus. My guardian, my saviour, my protector, forgive the
poor blind girl! She does not grieve even in leaving thee, if she can
contribute to thy happiness.'

'May the gods bless this grateful heart!' said Glaucus, greatly moved; and,
unconscious of the fires he excited, he repeatedly kissed her forehead.

'Thou forgivest me,' said she, 'and thou wilt talk no more of freedom; my
happiness is to be thy slave: thou hast promised thou wilt not give me to
another...'

'I have promised.'

'And now, then, I will gather the flowers.'

Silently, Nydia took from the hand of Glaucus the costly and jewelled vase,
in which the flowers vied with each other in hue and fragrance; tearlessly
she received his parting admonition. She paused for a moment when his voice
ceased--she did not trust herself to reply--she sought his hand--she raised
it to her lips, dropped her veil over her face, and passed at once from his
presence. She paused again as she reached the threshold; she stretched her
hands towards it, and murmured:

'Three happy days--days of unspeakable delight, have I known since I passed
thee--blessed threshold! may peace dwell ever with thee when I am gone! And
now, my heart tears itself from thee, and the only sound it utters bids
me--die!'

Chapter VI

THE HAPPY BEAUTY AND THE BLIND SLAVE.

A SLAVE entered the chamber of Ione. A messenger from Glaucus desired to be
admitted.

Ione hesitated an instant.

'She is blind, that messenger,' said the slave; 'she will do her commission
to none but thee.'

Base is that heart which does not respect affliction! The moment she heard
the messenger was blind, Ione felt the impossibility of returning a chilling
reply. Glaucus had chosen a herald that was indeed sacred--a herald that
could not be denied.

'What can he want with me? what message can he send?' and the heart of Ione
beat quick. The curtain across the door was withdrawn; a soft and echoless
step fell upon the marble; and Nydia, led by one of the attendants, entered
with her precious gift.

She stood still a moment, as if listening for some sound that might direct
her.

'Will the noble Ione,' said she, in a soft and low voice, 'deign to speak,
that I may know whither to steer these benighted steps, and that I may lay
my offerings at her feet?'

'Fair child,' said Ione, touched and soothingly, 'give not thyself the pain
to cross these slippery floors, my attendant will bring to me what thou hast
to present'; and she motioned to the handmaid to take the vase.

'I may give these flowers to none but thee,' answered Nydia; and, guided by
her ear, she walked slowly to the place where Ione sat, and kneeling when
she came before her, proffered the vase.

Ione took it from her hand, and placed it on the table at her side. She
then raised her gently, and would have seated her on the couch, but the girl
modestly resisted.

'I have not yet discharged my office,' said she; and she drew the letter of
Glaucus from her vest. 'This will, perhaps, explain why he who sent me
chose so unworthy a messenger to Ione.'

The Neapolitan took the letter with a hand, the trembling of which Nydia at
once felt and sighed to feel. With folded arms, and downcast looks, she
stood before the proud and stately form of Ione--no less proud, perhaps, in
her attitude of submission. Ione waved her hand, and the attendants
withdrew; she gazed again upon the form of the young slave in surprise and
beautiful compassion; then, retiring a little from her, she opened and read
the following letter:

'Glaucus to Ione sends more than he dares to utter. Is Ione ill? thy slaves
tell me "No", and that assurance comforts me. Has Glaucus offended
Ione?--ah! that question I may not ask from them. For five days I have been
banished from thy presence. Has the sun shone?--I know it not. Has the sky
smiled?--it has had no smile for me. My sun and my sky are Ione. Do I
offend thee? Am I too bold? Do I say that on the tablet which my tongue
has hesitated to breathe? Alas! it is in thine absence that I feel most the
spells by which thou hast subdued me. And absence, that deprives me of joy,
brings me courage. Thou wilt not see me; thou hast banished also the common
flatterers that flock around thee. Canst thou confound me with them? It is
not possible! Thou knowest too well that I am not of them--that their clay
is not mine. For even were I of the humblest mould, the fragrance of the
rose has penetrated me, and the spirit of thy nature hath passed within me,
to embalm, to sanctify, to inspire. Have they slandered me to thee, Ione?
Thou wilt not believe them. Did the Delphic oracle itself tell me thou wert
unworthy, I would not believe it; and am I less incredulous than thou I
think of the last time we met--of the song which I sang to thee--of the look
that thou gavest me in return. Disguise it as thou wilt, Ione, there is
something kindred between us, and our eyes acknowledged it, though our lips
were silent. Deign to see me, to listen to me, and after that exclude me if
thou wilt. I meant not so soon to say I loved. But those words rush to my
heart--they will have way. Accept, then, my homage and my vows. We met
first at the shrine of Pallas; shall we not meet before a softer and a more
ancient altar?

'Beautiful! adored Ione! If my hot youth and my Athenian blood have
misguided and allured me, they have but taught my wanderings to appreciate
the rest--the haven they have attained. I hang up my dripping robes on the
Sea-god's shrine. I have escaped shipwreck. I have found THEE. Ione,
deign to see me; thou art gentle to strangers, wilt thou be less merciful to
those of thine own land? I await thy reply. Accept the flowers which I
send--their sweet breath has a language more eloquent than words. They take
from the sun the odorous they return--they are the emblem of the love that
receives and repays tenfold--the emblem of the heart that drunk thy rays,
and owes to thee the germ of the treasures that it proffers to thy smile. I
send these by one whom thou wilt receive for her own sake, if not for mine.
She, like us, is a stranger; her fathers' ashes lie under brighter skies:
but, less happy than we, she is blind and a slave. Poor Nydia! I seek as
much as possible to repair to her the cruelties of Nature and of Fate, in
asking permission to place her with thee. She is gentle, quick, and docile.
She is skilled in music and the song; and she is a very Chloris to the
flowers. She thinks, Ione, that thou wilt love her: if thou dost not, send
her back to me.

'One word more--let me be bold, Ione. Why thinkest thou so highly of yon
dark Egyptian? he hath not about him the air of honest men. We Greeks learn
mankind from our cradle; we are not the less profound, in that we affect no
sombre mien; our lips smile, but our eyes are grave--they observe--they
note--they study. Arbaces is not one to be credulously trusted: can it be
that he hath wronged me to thee? I think it, for I left him with thee; thou
sawest how my presence stung him; since then thou hast not admitted me.
Believe nothing that he can say to my disfavor; if thou dost, tell me so at
once; for this Ione owes to Glaucus. Farewell! this letter touches thy
hand; these characters meet thine eyes--shall they be more blessed than he
who is their author. Once more, farewell!'

It seemed to Ione, as she read this letter, as if a mist had fallen from her
eyes. What had been the supposed offence of Glaucus?--that he had not
really loved! And now, plainly, and in no dubious terms, he confessed that
love. From that moment his power was fully restored. At every tender word
in that letter, so full of romantic and trustful passion, her heart smote
her. And had she doubted his faith, and had she believed another? and had
she not, at least, allowed to him the culprit's right to know his crime, to
plead in his defence?--the tears rolled down her cheeks--she kissed the
letter--she placed it in her bosom: and, turning to Nydia, who stood in the
same place and in the same posture:

'Wilt thou sit, my child,' said she, 'while I write an answer to this
letter?'

'You will answer it, then!' said Nydia, coldly. 'Well, the slave that
accompanied me will take back your answer.'

'For you,' said Ione, 'stay with me--trust me, your service shall be light.'

Nydia bowed her head.

'What is your name, fair girl?'

'They call me Nydia.'

'Your country?'

'The land of Olympus--Thessaly.'

'Thou shalt be to me a friend,' said Ione, caressingly, 'as thou art already
half a countrywoman. Meanwhile, I beseech thee, stand not on these cold and
glassy marbles. There! now that thou art seated, I can leave thee for an
instant.'

'Ione to Glaucus greeting. Come to me, Glaucus,' wrote Ione, 'come to me
to-morrow. I may have been unjust to thee; but I will tell thee, at least,
the fault that has been imputed to thy charge. Fear not, henceforth, the
Egyptian--fear none. Thou sayest thou hast expressed too much--alas! in
these hasty words I have already done so. Farewell.'

As Ione reappeared with the letter, which she did not dare to read after she
had written (Ah! common rashness, common timidity of love!)--Nydia started
from her seat.

'You have written to Glaucus?'

'I have.'

'And will he thank the messenger who gives to him thy letter?'

Ione forgot that her companion was blind; she blushed from the brow to the
neck, and remained silent.

'I mean this,' added Nydia, in a calmer tone; 'the lightest word of coldness
from thee will sadden him--the lightest kindness will rejoice. If it be the
first, let the slave take back thine answer; if it be the last, let me--I
will return this evening'

'And why, Nydia,' asked Ione, evasively, 'Wouldst thou be the bearer of my
letter?'

'It is so, then!' said Nydia. 'Ah! how could it be otherwise; who could be
unkind to Glaucus?'

'My child,' said Ione, a little more reservedly than before, 'thou speakest
warmly--Glaucus, then, is amiable in thine eyes?'

'Noble Ione! Glaucus has been that to me which neither fortune nor the gods
have been--a friend!'

The sadness mingled with dignity with which Nydia uttered these simple
words, affected the beautiful Ione: she bent down and kissed her. 'Thou art
grateful, and deservedly so; why should I blush to say that Glaucus is
worthy of thy gratitude? Go, my Nydia--take to him thyself this letter--but
return again. If I am from home when thou returnest--as this evening,
perhaps, I shall be--thy chamber shall be prepared next my own. Nydia, I
have no sister--wilt thou be one to me?' The Thessalian kissed the hand of
Ione, and then said, with some embarrassment:

'One favor, fair Ione--may I dare to ask it?'

'Thou canst not ask what I will not grant,' replied the Neapolitan.

'They tell me,' said Nydia, 'that thou art beautiful beyond the loveliness
of earth. Alas! I cannot see that which gladdens the world! Wilt thou
suffer me, then, to pass my hand over thy face?--that is my sole criterion
of beauty, and I usually guess aright.'

She did not wait for the answer of Ione, but, as she spoke, gently and
slowly passed her hand over the bending and half-averted features of the
Greek--features which but one image in the world can yet depicture and
recall--that image is the mutilated, but all-wondrous, statue in her native
city--her own Neapolis--that Parian face, before which all the beauty of the
Florentine Venus is poor and earthly--that aspect so full of harmony--of
youth--of genius--of the soul--which modern critics have supposed the
representation of Psyche.

Her touch lingered over the braided hair and polished brow--over the downy
and damask cheek--over the dimpled lip--the swan-like and whitish neck. 'I
know now, that thou art beautiful,' she said: 'and I can picture thee to my
darkness henceforth, and for ever!'

When Nydia left her, Ione sank into a deep but delicious reverie. Glaucus
then loved her; he owned it--yes, he loved her. She drew forth again that
dear confession; she paused over every word, she kissed every line; she did
not ask why he had been maligned, she only felt assured that he had been so.
She wondered how she had ever believed a syllable against him; she wondered
how the Egyptian had been enabled to exercise a power against Glaucus; she
felt a chill creep over her as she again turned to his warning against
Arbaces, and her secret fear of that gloomy being darkened into awe. She
was awakened from these thoughts by her maidens, who came to announce to her
that the hour appointed to visit Arbaces was arrived; she started, she had
forgotten the promise. Her first impression was to renounce it; her second,
was to laugh at her own fears of her eldest surviving friend. She hastened
to add the usual ornaments to her dress, and doubtful whether she should yet
question the Egyptian more closely with respect to his accusation of
Glaucus, or whether she should wait till, without citing the authority, she
should insinuate to Glaucus the accusation itself, she took her way to the
gloomy mansion of Arbaces.

Chapter VII

IONE ENTRAPPED. THE MOUSE TRIES TO GNAW THE NET.

'DEAREST Nydia!' exclaimed Glaucus as he read the letter of Ione, 'whitest
robed messenger that ever passed between earth and heaven--how, how shall I
thank thee?'

'I am rewarded,' said the poor Thessalian.

'To-morrow--to-morrow! how shall I while the hours till then?'

The enamoured Greek would not let Nydia escape him, though she sought
several times to leave the chamber; he made her recite to him over and over
again every syllable of the brief conversation that had taken place between
her and Ione; a thousand times, forgetting her misfortune, he questioned her
of the looks, of the countenance of his beloved; and then quickly again
excusing his fault, he bade her recommence the whole recital which he had
thus interrupted. The hours thus painful to Nydia passed rapidly and
delightfully to him, and the twilight had already darkened ere he once more
dismissed her to Ione with a fresh letter and with new flowers. Scarcely
had she gone, than Clodius and several of his gay companions broke in upon
him; they rallied him on his seclusion during the whole day, and absence
from his customary haunts; they invited him to accompany them to the various
resorts in that lively city, which night and day proffered diversity to
pleasure. Then, as now, in the south (for no land, perhaps, losing more of
greatness has retained more of custom), it was the delight of the Italians
to assemble at the evening; and, under the porticoes of temples or the shade
of the groves that interspersed the streets, listening to music or the
recitals of some inventive tale-teller, they hailed the rising moon with
libations of wine and the melodies of song. Glaucus was too happy to be
unsocial; he longed to cast off the exuberance of joy that oppressed him.
He willingly accepted the proposal of his comrades, and laughingly they
sallied out together down the populous and glittering streets.

In the meantime Nydia once more gained the house of Ione, who had long left
it; she inquired indifferently whither Ione had gone.

The answer arrested and appalled her.

'To the house of Arbaces--of the Egyptian? Impossible!'

'It is true, my little one,' said the slave, who had replied to her
question. 'She has known the Egyptian long.'

'Long! ye gods, yet Glaucus loves her?' murmured Nydia to herself.

'And has,' asked she aloud, 'has she often visited him before?'

'Never till now,' answered the slave. 'If all the rumored scandal of
Pompeii be true, it would be better, perhaps, if she had not ventured there
at present. But she, poor mistress mine, hears nothing of that which
reaches us; the talk of the vestibulum reaches not to the peristyle.'

'Never till now!' repeated Nydia. 'Art thou sure?'

'Sure, pretty one: but what is that to thee or to us?'

Nydia hesitated a moment, and then, putting down the flowers with which she
had been charged, she called to the slave who had accompanied her, and left
the house without saying another word.

Not till she had got half-way back to the house of Glaucus did she break
silence, and even then she only murmured inly:

'She does not dream--she cannot--of the dangers into which she has plunged.
Fool that I am--shall I save her?--yes, for I love Glaucus better than
myself.'

When she arrived at the house of the Athenian, she learnt that he had gone
out with a party of his friends, and none knew whither. He probably would
not be home before midnight.

The Thessalian groaned; she sank upon a seat in the hall and covered her
face with her hands as if to collect her thoughts. 'There is no time to be
lost,' thought she, starting up. She turned to the slave who had
accompanied her.

'Knowest thou,' said she, 'if Ione has any relative, any intimate friend at
Pompeii?'

'Why, by Jupiter!' answered the slave, 'art thou silly enough to ask the
question? Every one in Pompeii knows that Ione has a brother who, young and
rich, has been--under the rose I speak--so foolish as to become a priest of
Isis.'

'A priest of Isis! O Gods! his name?'

'Apaecides.'

'I know it all,' muttered Nydia: 'brother and sister, then, are to be both
victims! Apaecides! yes, that was the name I heard in... Ha! he well, then,
knows the peril that surrounds his sister; I will go to him.'

She sprang up at that thought, and taking the staff which always guided her
steps, she hastened to the neighboring shrine of Isis. Till she had been
under the guardianship of the kindly Greek, that staff had sufficed to
conduct the poor blind girl from corner to corner of Pompeii. Every street,
every turning in the more frequented parts, was familiar to her; and as the
inhabitants entertained a tender and half-superstitious veneration for those
subject to her infirmity, the passengers had always given way to her timid
steps. Poor girl, she little dreamed that she should, ere many days were
passed, find her blindness her protection, and a guide far safer than the
keenest eyes!

But since she had been under the roof of Glaucus, he had ordered a slave to
accompany her always; and the poor devil thus appointed, who was somewhat of
the fattest, and who, after having twice performed the journey to Ione's
house, now saw himself condemned to a third excursion (whither the gods only
knew), hastened after her, deploring his fate, and solemnly assuring Castor
and Pollux that he believed the blind girl had the talaria of Mercury as
well as the infirmity of Cupid.

Nydia, however, required but little of his assistance to find her way to the
popular temple of Isis: the space before it was now deserted, and she won
without obstacle to the sacred rail.

'There is no one here,' said the fat slave. 'What dost thou want, or whom
Knowest thou not that the priests do not live in the temple?'

'Call out,' said she, impatiently; 'night and day there is always one
flamen, at least, watching in the shrine of Isis.'

The slave called--no one appeared.

'Seest thou no one?'

'No one.'

'Thou mistakest; I hear a sigh: look again.'

The slave, wondering and grumbling, cast round his heavy eyes, and before
one of the altars, whose remains still crowd the narrow space, he beheld a
form bending as in meditation.

'I see a figure, said he; 'and by the white garments, it is a priest.'

'O flamen of Isis!' cried Nydia; 'servant of the Most Ancient, hear me!'

'Who calls?' said a low and melancholy voice.

'One who has no common tidings to impart to a member of your body: I come to
declare and not to ask oracles.'

'With whom wouldst thou confer? This is no hour for thy conference; depart,
disturb me not; the night is sacred to the gods, the day to men.'

'Methinks I know thy voice? thou art he whom I seek; yet I have heard thee
speak but once before. Art thou not the priest Apaecides?'

'I am that man,' replied the priest, emerging from the altar, and
approaching the rail.

'Thou art! the gods be praised!' Waving her hand to the slave, she bade him
withdraw to a distance; and he, who naturally imagined some superstition
connected, perhaps, with the safety of Ione, could alone lead her to the
temple, obeyed, and seated himself on the ground, at a little distance.
'Hush!' said she, speaking quick and low; 'art thou indeed Apaecides?'

'If thou knowest me, canst thou not recall my features?'

'I am blind,' answered Nydia; 'my eyes are in my ear, and that recognizes
thee: yet swear that thou art he.'

'By the gods I swear it, by my right hand, and by the moon!'

'Hush! speak low--bend near--give me thy hand; knowest thou Arbaces? Hast
thou laid flowers at the feet of the dead? Ah! thy hand is cold--hark
yet!--hast thou taken the awful vow?'

'Who art thou, whence comest thou, pale maiden?' said Apaecides, fearfully:
'I know thee not; thine is not the breast on which this head hath lain; I
have never seen thee before.'

'But thou hast heard my voice: no matter, those recollections it should
shame us both to recall. Listen, thou hast a sister.'

'Speak! speak! what of her?'

'Thou knowest the banquets of the dead, stranger--it pleases thee, perhaps,
to share them--would it please thee to have thy sister a partaker? Would it
please thee that Arbaces was her host?'

'O gods, he dare not! Girl, if thou mockest me, tremble! I will tear thee
limb from limb!'

'I speak the truth; and while I speak, Ione is in the halls of Arbaces--for
the first time his guest. Thou knowest if there be peril in that first
time! Farewell! I have fulfilled my charge.'

'Stay! stay!' cried the priest, passing his wan hand over his brow. 'If
this be true, what--what can be done to save her? They may not admit me. I
know not all the mazes of that intricate mansion. O Nemesis! justly am I
punished!'

'I will dismiss yon slave, be thou my guide and comrade; I will lead thee to
the private door of the house: I will whisper to thee the word which admits.
Take some weapon: it may be needful!'

'Wait an instant,' said Apaecides, retiring into one of the cells that flank
the temple, and reappearing in a few moments wrapped in a large cloak, which
was then much worn by all classes, and which concealed his sacred dress.
'Now,' he said, grinding his teeth, 'if Arbaces hath dared to--but he dare
not! he dare not! Why should I suspect him? Is he so base a villain? I
will not think it--yet, sophist! dark bewilderer that he is! O gods
protect--hush! are there gods? Yes, there is one goddess, at least, whose
voice I can command; and that is--Vengeance!'

Muttering these disconnected thoughts, Apaecides, followed by his silent and
sightless companion, hastened through the most solitary paths to the house
of the Egyptian.

The slave, abruptly dismissed by Nydia, shrugged his shoulders, muttered an
adjuration, and, nothing loath, rolled off to his cubiculum.

Chapter VIII

THE SOLITUDE AND SOLILOQUY OF THE EGYPTIAN. HIS CHARACTER ANALYSED.

WE must go back a few hours in the progress of our story. At the first grey
dawn of the day, which Glaucus had already marked with white, the Egyptian
was seated, sleepless and alone, on the summit of the lofty and pyramidal
tower which flanked his house. A tall parapet around it served as a wall,
and conspired, with the height of the edifice and the gloomy trees that
girded the mansion, to defy the prying eyes of curiosity or observation. A
table, on which lay a scroll, filled with mystic figures, was before him.
On high, the stars waxed dim and faint, and the shades of night melted from
the sterile mountain-tops; only above Vesuvius there rested a deep and massy
cloud, which for several days past had gathered darker and more solid over
its summit. The struggle of night and day was more visible over the broad
ocean, which stretched calm, like a gigantic lake, bounded by the circling
shores that, covered with vines and foliage, and gleaming here and there
with the white walls of sleeping cities, sloped to the scarce rippling
waves.

It was the hour above all others most sacred to the daring science of the
Egyptian--the science which would read our changeful destinies in the stars.

He had filled his scroll, he had noted the moment and the sign; and, leaning
upon his hand, he had surrendered himself to the thoughts which his
calculation excited.

'Again do the stars forewarn me! Some danger, then, assuredly awaits me!'
said he, slowly; 'some danger, violent and sudden in its nature. The stars
wear for me the same mocking menace which, if our chronicles do not err,
they once wore for Pyrrhus--for him, doomed to strive for all things, to
enjoy none--all attacking, nothing gaining--battles without fruit, laurels
without triumph, fame without success; at last made craven by his own
superstitions, and slain like a dog by a tile from the hand of an old woman!
Verily, the stars flatter when they give me a type in this fool of war--when
they promise to the ardour of my wisdom the same results as to the madness
of his ambition--perpetual exercise--no certain goal!--the Sisyphus task,
the mountain and the stone!--the stone, a gloomy image!--it reminds me that
I am threatened with somewhat of the same death as the Epirote. Let me look
again. "Beware," say the shining prophets, "how thou passest under ancient
roofs, or besieged walls, or overhanging cliffs--a stone hurled from above,
is charged by the curses of destiny against thee!" And, at no distant date
from this, comes the peril: but I cannot, of a certainty, read the day and
hour. Well! if my glass runs low, the sands shall sparkle to the last. Yet,
if I escape this peril--ay, if I escape--bright and clear as the moonlight
track along the waters glows the rest of my existence. I see honors,
happiness, success, shining upon every billow of the dark gulf beneath which
I must sink at last. What, then, with such destinies beyond the peril,
shall I succumb to the peril? My soul whispers hope, it sweeps exultingly
beyond the boding hour, it revels in the future--its own courage is its
fittest omen. If I were to perish so suddenly and so soon, the shadow of
death would darken over me, and I should feel the icy presentiment of my
doom. My soul would express, in sadness and in gloom, its forecast of the
dreary Orcus. But it smiles--it assures me of deliverance.'

As he thus concluded his soliloquy, the Egyptian involuntarily rose. He
paced rapidly the narrow space of that star-roofed floor, and, pausing at
the parapet, looked again upon the grey and melancholy heavens. The chills
of the faint dawn came refreshingly upon his brow, and gradually his mind
resumed its natural and collected calm. He withdrew his gaze from the
stars, as, one after one, they receded into the depths of heaven; and his
eyes fell over the broad expanse below. Dim in the silenced port of the
city rose the masts of the galleys; along that mart of luxury and of labor
was stilled the mighty hum. No lights, save here and there from before the
columns of a temple, or in the porticoes of the voiceless forum, broke the
wan and fluctuating light of the struggling morn. From the heart of the
torpid city, so soon to vibrate with a thousand passions, there came no
sound: the streams of life circulated not; they lay locked under the ice of
sleep. From the huge space of the amphitheatre, with its stony seats rising
one above the other--coiled and round as some slumbering monster--rose a
thin and ghastly mist, which gathered darker, and more dark, over the
scattered foliage that gloomed in its vicinity. The city seemed as, after
the awful change of seventeen ages, it seems now to the traveler,--a City of
the Dead.'

The ocean itself--that serene and tideless sea--lay scarce less hushed, save
that from its deep bosom came, softened by the distance, a faint and regular
murmur, like the breathing of its sleep; and curving far, as with
outstretched arms, into the green and beautiful land, it seemed
unconsciously to clasp to its breast the cities sloping to its
margin--Stabiae, and Herculaneum, and Pompeii--those children and darlings
of the deep. 'Ye slumber,' said the Egyptian, as he scowled over the
cities, the boast and flower of Campania; 'ye slumber!--would it were the
eternal repose of death! As ye now--jewels in the crown of empire--so once
were the cities of the Nile! Their greatness hath perished from them, they
sleep amidst ruins, their palaces and their shrines are tombs, the serpent
coils in the grass of their streets, the lizard basks in their solitary
halls. By that mysterious law of Nature, which humbles one to exalt the
other, ye have thriven upon their ruins; thou, haughty Rome, hast usurped
the glories of Sesostris and Semiramis--thou art a robber, clothing thyself
with their spoils! And these--slaves in thy triumph--that I (the last son
of forgotten monarchs) survey below, reservoirs of thine all-pervading power
and luxury, I curse as I behold! The time shall come when Egypt shall be
avenged! when the barbarian's steed shall make his manger in the Golden
House of Nero! and thou that hast sown the wind with conquest shalt reap the
harvest in the whirlwind of desolation!'

As the Egyptian uttered a prediction which fate so fearfully fulfilled, a
more solemn and boding image of ill omen never occurred to the dreams of
painter or of poet. The morning light, which can pale so wanly even the
young cheek of beauty, gave his majestic and stately features almost the
colors of the grave, with the dark hair falling massively around them, and
the dark robes flowing long and loose, and the arm outstretched from that
lofty eminence, and the glittering eyes, fierce with a savage gladness--half
prophet and half fiend!

He turned his gaze from the city and the ocean; before him lay the vineyards
and meadows of the rich Campania. The gate and walls--ancient, half
Pelasgic--of the city, seemed not to bound its extent. Villas and villages
stretched on every side up the ascent of Vesuvius, not nearly then so steep
or so lofty as at present. For, as Rome itself is built on an exhausted
volcano, so in similar security the inhabitants of the South tenanted the
green and vine-clad places around a volcano whose fires they believed at
rest for ever. From the gate stretched the long street of tombs, various in
size and architecture, by which, on that side, the city is as yet
approached. Above all, rode the cloud-capped summit of the Dread Mountain,
with the shadows, now dark, now light, betraying the mossy caverns and ashy
rocks, which testified the past conflagrations, and might have
prophesied--but man is blind--that which was to come!

Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the tradition of the
place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, in those smiling plains, for
miles around--to Baiae and Misenum--the poets had imagined the entrance and
thresholds of their hell--their Acheron, and their fabled Styx: why, in
those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they placed the battles of the
gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have sought the victory of
heaven--save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted summit, fancy
might think to read the characters of the Olympian thunderbolt.

But it was neither the rugged height of the still volcano, nor the fertility
of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy avenue of tombs, nor the
glittering villas of a polished and luxurious people, that now arrested the
eye of the Egyptian. On one part of the landscape, the mountain of Vesuvius
descended to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated ridge, broken here and
there by jagged crags and copses of wild foliage. At the base of this lay a
marshy and unwholesome pool; and the intent gaze of Arbaces caught the
outline of some living form moving by the marshes, and stooping ever and
anon as if to pluck its rank produce.

'Ho!' said he, aloud, 'I have then, another companion in these unworldly
night--watches. The witch of Vesuvius is abroad. What! doth she, too, as
the credulous imagine--doth she, too, learn the lore of the great stars?
Hath she been uttering foul magic to the moon, or culling (as her pauses
betoken) foul herbs from the venomous marsh? Well, I must see this
fellow-laborer. Whoever strives to know learns that no human lore is
despicable. Despicable only you--ye fat and bloated things--slaves of
luxury--sluggards in thought--who, cultivating nothing but the barren sense,
dream that its poor soil can produce alike the myrtle and the laurel. No,
the wise only can enjoy--to us only true luxury is given, when mind, brain,
invention, experience, thought, learning, imagination, all contribute like
rivers to swell the seas of SENSE!--Ione!'

As Arbaces uttered that last and charmed word, his thoughts sunk at once
into a more deep and profound channel. His steps paused; he took not his
eyes from the ground; once or twice he smiled joyously, and then, as he
turned from his place of vigil, and sought his couch, he muttered, 'If death
frowns so near, I will say at least that I have lived--Ione shall be mine!'

The character of Arbaces was one of those intricate and varied webs, in
which even the mind that sat within it was sometimes confused and perplexed.
In him, the son of a fallen dynasty, the outcast of a sunken people, was
that spirit of discontented pride, which ever rankles in one of a sterner
mould, who feels himself inexorably shut from the sphere in which his
fathers shone, and to which Nature as well as birth no less entitles
himself. This sentiment hath no benevolence; it wars with society, it sees
enemies in mankind. But with this sentiment did not go its common
companion, poverty. Arbaces possessed wealth which equalled that of most of
the Roman nobles; and this enabled him to gratify to the utmost the passions
which had no outlet in business or ambition. Travelling from clime to
clime, and beholding still Rome everywhere, he increased both his hatred of
society and his passion for pleasure. He was in a vast prison, which,
however, he could fill with the ministers of luxury. He could not escape
from the prison, and his only object, therefore, was to give it the
character of the palace. The Egyptians, from the earliest time, were
devoted to the joys of sense; Arbaces inherited both their appetite for
sensuality and the glow of imagination which struck light from its
rottenness. But still, unsocial in his pleasures as in his graver pursuits,
and brooking neither superior nor equal, he admitted few to his
companionship, save the willing slaves of his profligacy. He was the
solitary lord of a crowded harem; but, with all, he felt condemned to that
satiety which is the constant curse of men whose intellect is above their
pursuits, and that which once had been the impulse of passion froze down to
the ordinance of custom. >From the disappointments of sense he sought to
raise himself by the cultivation of knowledge; but as it was not his object
to serve mankind, so he despised that knowledge which is practical and
useful. His dark imagination loved to exercise itself in those more
visionary and obscure researches which are ever the most delightful to a
wayward and solitary mind, and to which he himself was invited by the daring
pride of his disposition and the mysterious traditions of his clime.
Dismissing faith in the confused creeds of the heathen world, he reposed the
greatest faith in the power of human wisdom. He did not know (perhaps no one
in that age distinctly did) the limits which Nature imposes upon our
discoveries. Seeing that the higher we mount in knowledge the more wonders
we behold, he imagined that Nature not only worked miracles in her ordinary
course, but that she might, by the cabala of some master soul, be diverted
from that course itself. Thus he pursued science, across her appointed
boundaries, into the land of perplexity and shadow. From the truths of
astronomy he wandered into astrological fallacy; from the secrets of
chemistry he passed into the spectral labyrinth of magic; and he who could
be sceptical as to the power of the gods, was credulously superstitious as
to the power of man.

The cultivation of magic, carried at that day to a singular height among the
would-be wise, was especially Eastern in its origin; it was alien to the
early philosophy of the Greeks; nor had it been received by them with favor
until Ostanes, who accompanied the army of Xerxes, introduced, amongst the
simple credulities of Hellas, the solemn superstitions of Zoroaster. Under
the Roman emperors it had become, however, naturalized at Rome (a meet
subject for Juvenal's fiery wit). Intimately connected with magic was the
worship of Isis, and the Egyptian religion was the means by which was
extended the devotion to Egyptian sorcery. The theurgic, or benevolent
magic--the goetic, or dark and evil necromancy--were alike in pre-eminent
repute during the first century of the Christian era; and the marvels of
Faustus are not comparable to those of Apollonius. Kings, courtiers, and
sages, all trembled before the professors of the dread science. And not the
least remarkable of his tribe was the most formidable and profound Arbaces.
His fame and his discoveries were known to all the cultivators of magic;
they even survived himself. But it was not by his real name that he was
honored by the sorcerer and the sage: his real name, indeed, was unknown in
Italy, for 'Arbaces' was not a genuinely Egyptian but a Median appellation,
which, in the admixture and unsettlement of the ancient races, had become
common in the country of the Nile; and there were various reasons, not only
of pride, but of policy (for in youth he had conspired against the majesty
of Rome), which induced him to conceal his true name and rank. But neither
by the name he had borrowed from the Mede, nor by that which in the colleges
of Egypt would have attested his origin from kings, did the cultivators of
magic acknowledge the potent master. He received from their homage a more
mystic appellation, and was long remembered in Magna Graecia and the Eastern
plain by the name of 'Hermes, the Lord of the Flaming Belt'. His subtle
speculations and boasted attributes of wisdom, recorded in various volumes,
were among those tokens 'of the curious arts' which the Christian converts
most joyfully, yet most fearfully, burnt at Ephesus, depriving posterity of
the proofs of the cunning of the fiend.

The conscience of Arbaces was solely of the intellect--it was awed by no
moral laws. If man imposed these checks upon the herd, so he believed that
man, by superior wisdom, could raise himself above them. 'If (he reasoned) I
have the genius to impose laws, have I not the right to command my own
creations? Still more, have I not the right to control--to evade--to
scorn--the fabrications of yet meaner intellects than my own?' Thus, if he
were a villain, he justified his villainy by what ought to have made him
virtuous--namely, the elevation of his capacities.

Most men have more or less the passion for power; in Arbaces that passion
corresponded exactly to his character. It was not the passion for an
external and brute authority. He desired not the purple and the fasces, the
insignia of vulgar command. His youthful ambition once foiled and defeated,
scorn had supplied its place--his pride, his contempt for Rome--Rome, which
had become the synonym of the world (Rome, whose haughty name he regarded
with the same disdain as that which Rome herself lavished upon the
barbarian), did not permit him to aspire to sway over others, for that would
render him at once the tool or creature of the emperor. He, the Son of the
Great Race of Rameses--he execute the orders of, and receive his power from,
another!--the mere notion filled him with rage. But in rejecting an
ambition that coveted nominal distinctions, he but indulged the more in the
ambition to rule the heart. Honoring mental power as the greatest of
earthly gifts, he loved to feel that power palpably in himself, by extending
it over all whom he encountered. Thus had he ever sought the young--thus
had he ever fascinated and controlled them. He loved to find subjects in
men's souls--to rule over an invisible and immaterial empire!--had he been
less sensual and less wealthy, he might have sought to become the founder of
a new religion. As it was, his energies were checked by his pleasures.
Besides, however, the vague love of this moral sway (vanity so dear to
sages!) he was influenced by a singular and dreamlike devotion to all that
belonged to the mystic Land his ancestors had swayed. Although he
disbelieved in her deities, he believed in the allegories they represented
(or rather he interpreted those allegories anew). He loved to keep alive
the worship of Egypt, because he thus maintained the shadow and the
recollection of her power. He loaded, therefore, the altars of Osiris and
of Isis with regal donations, and was ever anxious to dignify their
priesthood by new and wealthy converts. The vow taken--the priesthood
embraced--he usually chose the comrades of his pleasures from those whom he
made his victims, partly because he thus secured to himself their
secrecy--partly because he thus yet more confirmed to himself his peculiar
power. Hence the motives of his conduct to Apaecides, strengthened as these
were, in that instance, by his passion for Ione.

He had seldom lived long in one place; but as he grew older, he grew more
wearied of the excitement of new scenes, and he had sojourned among the
delightful cities of Campania for a period which surprised even himself. In
fact, his pride somewhat crippled his choice of residence. His unsuccessful
conspiracy excluded him from those burning climes which he deemed of right
his own hereditary possession, and which now cowered, supine and sunken,
under the wings of the Roman eagle. Rome herself was hateful to his
indignant soul; nor did he love to find his riches rivalled by the minions
of the court, and cast into comparative poverty by the mighty magnificence
of the court itself. The Campanian cities proffered to him all that his
nature craved--the luxuries of an unequalled climate--the imaginative
refinements of a voluptuous civilization. He was removed from the sight of
a superior wealth; he was without rivals to his riches; he was free from the
spies of a jealous court. As long as he was rich, none pried into his
conduct. He pursued the dark tenour of his way undisturbed and secure.

It is the curse of sensualists never to love till the pleasures of sense
begin to pall; their ardent youth is frittered away in countless
desires--their hearts are exhausted. So, ever chasing love, and taught by a
restless imagination to exaggerate, perhaps, its charms, the Egyptian had
spent all the glory of his years without attaining the object of his
desires. The beauty of to-morrow succeeded the beauty of to-day, and the
shadows bewildered him in his pursuit of the substance. When, two years
before the present date, he beheld Ione, he saw, for the first time, one
whom he imagined he could love. He stood, then, upon that bridge of life,
from which man sees before him distinctly a wasted youth on the one side,
and the darkness of approaching age upon the other: a time in which we are
more than ever anxious, perhaps, to secure to ourselves, ere it be yet too
late, whatever we have been taught to consider necessary to the enjoyment of
a life of which the brighter half is gone.

With an earnestness and a patience which he had never before commanded for
his pleasures, Arbaces had devoted himself to win the heart of Ione. It did
not content him to love, he desired to be loved. In this hope he had watched
the expanding youth of the beautiful Neapolitan; and, knowing the influence
that the mind possesses over those who are taught to cultivate the mind, he
had contributed willingly to form the genius and enlighten the intellect of
Ione, in the hope that she would be thus able to appreciate what he felt
would be his best claim to her affection: viz, a character which, however
criminal and perverted, was rich in its original elements of strength and
grandeur. When he felt that character to be acknowledged, he willingly
allowed, nay, encouraged her, to mix among the idle votaries of pleasure, in
the belief that her soul, fitted for higher commune, would miss the
companionship of his own, and that, in comparison with others, she would
learn to love herself. He had forgot, that as the sunflower to the sun, so
youth turns to youth, until his jealousy of Glaucus suddenly apprised him of
his error. From that moment, though, as we have seen, he knew not the
extent of his danger, a fiercer and more tumultuous direction was given to a
passion long controlled. Nothing kindles the fire of love like the
sprinkling of the anxieties of jealousy; it takes then a wilder, a more
resistless flame; it forgets its softness; it ceases to be tender; it
assumes something of the intensity--of the ferocity--of hate.

Arbaces resolved to lose no further time upon cautious and perilous
preparations: he resolved to place an irrevocable barrier between himself
and his rivals: he resolved to possess himself of the person of Ione: not
that in his present love, so long nursed and fed by hopes purer than those
of passion alone, he would have been contented with that mere possession.
He desired the heart, the soul, no less than the beauty, of Ione; but he
imagined that once separated by a daring crime from the rest of
mankind--once bound to Ione by a tie that memory could not break, she would
be driven to concentrate her thoughts in him--that his arts would complete
his conquest, and that, according to the true moral of the Roman and the
Sabine, the empire obtained by force would be cemented by gentler means.
This resolution was yet more confirmed in him by his belief in the
prophecies of the stars: they had long foretold to him this year, and even
the present month, as the epoch of some dread disaster, menacing life
itself. He was driven to a certain and limited date. He resolved to crowd,
monarch-like, on his funeral pyre all that his soul held most dear. In his
own words, if he were to die, he resolved to feel that he had lived, and
that Ione should be his own.

Chapter IX

WHAT BECOMES OF IONE IN THE HOUSE OF ARBACES. THE FIRST SIGNAL OF THE WRATH
OF THE DREAD FOE.

WHEN Ione entered the spacious hall of the Egyptian, the same awe which had
crept over her brother impressed itself also upon her: there seemed to her
as to him something ominous and warning in the still and mournful faces of
those dread Theban monsters, whose majestic and passionless features the
marble so well portrayed:

Their look, with the reach of past ages, was wise,
And the soul of eternity thought in their eyes.

The tall AEthiopian slave grinned as he admitted her, and motioned to her to
proceed. Half-way up the hall she was met by Arbaces himself, in festive
robes, which glittered with jewels. Although it was broad day without, the
mansion, according to the practice of the luxurious, was artificially
darkened, and the lamps cast their still and odor-giving light over the rich
floors and ivory roofs.

'Beautiful Ione,' said Arbaces, as he bent to touch her hand, 'it is you
that have eclipsed the day--it is your eyes that light up the halls--it is
your breath which fills them with perfumes.'

'You must not talk to me thus,' said Ione, smiling, 'you forget that your
lore has sufficiently instructed my mind to render these graceful flatteries
to my person unwelcome. It was you who taught me to disdain adulation: will
you unteach your pupil?'

There was something so frank and charming in the manner of Ione, as she thus
spoke, that the Egyptian was more than ever enamoured, and more than ever
disposed to renew the offence he had committed; he, however, answered
quickly and gaily, and hastened to renew the conversation.

He led her through the various chambers of a house, which seemed to contain
to her eyes, inexperienced to other splendor than the minute elegance of
Campanian cities, the treasures of the world.

In the walls were set pictures of inestimable art, the lights shone over
statues of the noblest age of Greece. Cabinets of gems, each cabinet itself
a gem, filled up the interstices of the columns; the most precious woods
lined the thresholds and composed the doors; gold and jewels seemed lavished
all around. Sometimes they were alone in these rooms--sometimes they passed
through silent rows of slaves, who, kneeling as she passed, proffered to her
offerings of bracelets, of chains, of gems, which the Egyptian vainly
entreated her to receive.

'I have often heard,' said she, wonderingly, 'that you were rich; but I
never dreamed of the amount of your wealth.'

'Would I could coin it all,' replied the Egyptian, 'into one crown, which I
might place upon that snowy brow!'

'Alas! the weight would crush me; I should be a second Tarpeia,' answered
Ione, laughingly.

'But thou dost not disdain riches, O Ione! they know not what life is
capable of who are not wealthy. Gold is the great magician of earth--it
realizes our dreams--it gives them the power of a god--there is a grandeur,
a sublimity, in its possession; it is the mightiest, yet the most obedient
of our slaves.'

The artful Arbaces sought to dazzle the young Neapolitan by his treasures
and his eloquence; he sought to awaken in her the desire to be mistress of
what she surveyed: he hoped that she would confound the owner with the
possessions, and that the charms of his wealth would be reflected on
himself. Meanwhile, Ione was secretly somewhat uneasy at the gallantries
which escaped from those lips, which, till lately, had seemed to disdain the
common homage we pay to beauty; and with that delicate subtlety, which woman
alone possesses, she sought to ward off shafts deliberately aimed, and to
laugh or to talk away the meaning from his warming language. Nothing in the
world is more pretty than that same species of defence; it is the charm of
the African necromancer who professed with a feather to turn aside the
winds.

The Egyptian was intoxicated and subdued by her grace even more than by her
beauty: it was with difficulty that he suppressed his emotions; alas! the
feather was only powerful against the summer breezes--it would be the sport
of the storm.

Suddenly, as they stood in one hall, which was surrounded by draperies of
silver and white, the Egyptian clapped his hands, and, as if by enchantment,
a banquet rose from the floor--a couch or throne, with a crimson canopy,
ascended simultaneously at the feet of Ione--and at the same instant from
behind the curtains swelled the invisible and softest music.

Arbaces placed himself at the feet of Ione--and children, young and
beautiful as Loves, ministered to the feast.

The feast was over, the music sank into a low and subdued strain, and
Arbaces thus addressed his beautiful guest:

'Hast thou never in this dark and uncertain world--hast thou never aspired,
my pupil, to look beyond--hast thou never wished to put aside the veil of
futurity, and to behold on the shores of Fate the shadowy images of things
to be? For it is not the past alone that has its ghosts: each event to come
has also its spectrum--its shade; when the hour arrives, life enters it, the
shadow becomes corporeal, and walks the world. Thus, in the land beyond the
grave, are ever two impalpable and spiritual hosts--the things to be, the
things that have been! If by our wisdom we can penetrate that land, we see
the one as the other, and learn, as I have learned, not alone the mysteries
of the dead, but also the destiny of the living.'

'As thou hast learned!--Can wisdom attain so far?'

'Wilt thou prove my knowledge, Ione, and behold the representation of thine
own fate? It is a drama more striking than those of AEschylus: it is one I
have prepared for thee, if thou wilt see the shadows perform their part.'

The Neapolitan trembled; she thought of Glaucus, and sighed as well as
trembled: were their destinies to be united? Half incredulous, half
believing, half awed, half alarmed by the words of her strange host, she
remained for some moments silent, and then answered:

'It may revolt--it may terrify; the knowledge of the future will perhaps
only embitter the present!'

'Not so, Ione. I have myself looked upon thy future lot, and the ghosts of
thy Future bask in the gardens of Elysium: amidst the asphodel and the rose
they prepare the garlands of thy sweet destiny, and the Fates, so harsh to
others, weave only for thee the web of happiness and love. Wilt thou then
come and behold thy doom, so that thou mayest enjoy it beforehand?'

Again the heart of Ione murmured 'Glaucus'; she uttered a half-audible
assent; the Egyptian rose, and taking her by the hand, he led her across the
banquet-room--the curtains withdrew as by magic hands, and the music broke
forth in a louder and gladder strain; they passed a row of columns, on
either side of which fountains cast aloft their fragrant waters; they
descended by broad and easy steps into a garden. The eve had commenced; the
moon was already high in heaven, and those sweet flowers that sleep by day,
and fill, with ineffable odorous, the airs of night, were thickly scattered
amidst alleys cut through the star-lit foliage; or, gathered in baskets, lay
like offerings at the feet of the frequent statues that gleamed along their
path.

'Whither wouldst thou lead me, Arbaces?' said Ione, wonderingly.

'But yonder,' said he, pointing to a small building which stood at the end
of the vista. 'It is a temple consecrated to the Fates--our rites require
such holy ground.'

They passed into a narrow hall, at the end of which hung a sable curtain.
Arbaces lifted it; Ione entered, and found herself in total darkness.

'Be not alarmed,' said the Egyptian, 'the light will rise instantly.' While
he so spoke, a soft, and warm, and gradual light diffused itself around; as
it spread over each object, Ione perceived that she was in an apartment of
moderate size, hung everywhere with black; a couch with draperies of the
same hue was beside her. In the centre of the room was a small altar, on
which stood a tripod of bronze. At one side, upon a lofty column of
granite, was a colossal head of the blackest marble, which she perceived, by
the crown of wheat-ears that encircled the brow, represented the great
Egyptian goddess. Arbaces stood before the altar: he had laid his garland
on the shrine, and seemed occupied with pouring into the tripod the contents
of a brazen vase; suddenly from that tripod leaped into life a blue, quick,
darting, irregular flame; the Egyptian drew back to the side of Ione, and
muttered some words in a language unfamiliar to her ear; the curtain at the
back of the altar waved tremulously to and fro--it parted slowly, and in the
aperture which was thus made, Ione beheld an indistinct and pale landscape,
which gradually grew brighter and clearer as she gazed; at length she
discovered plainly trees, and rivers, and meadows, and all the beautiful
diversity of the richest earth. At length, before the landscape, a dim
shadow glided; it rested opposite to Ione; slowly the same charm seemed to
operate upon it as over the rest of the scene; it took form and shape, and
lo!--in its feature and in its form Ione beheld herself!

Then the scene behind the spectre faded away, and was succeeded by the
representation of a gorgeous palace; a throne was raised in the centre of
its hall, the dim forms of slaves and guards were ranged around it, and a
pale hand held over the throne the likeness of a diadem.

A new actor now appeared; he was clothed from head to foot in a dark
robe--his face was concealed--he knelt at the feet of the shadowy Ione--he
clasped her hand--he pointed to the throne, as if to invite her to ascend
it.

The Neapolitan's heart beat violently. 'Shall the shadow disclose itself?'
whispered a voice beside her--the voice of Arbaces.

'Ah, yes!' answered Ione, softly.

Arbaces raised his hand--the spectre seemed to drop the mantle that
concealed its form--and Ione shrieked--it was Arbaces himself that thus
knelt before her.

'This is, indeed, thy fate!' whispered again the Egyptian's voice in her
ear. 'And thou art destined to be the bride of Arbaces.'

Ione started--the black curtain closed over the phantasmagoria: and Arbaces
himself--the real, the living Arbaces--was at her feet.

'Oh, Ione!' said he, passionately gazing upon her, 'listen to one who has
long struggled vainly with his love. I adore thee! The Fates do not
lie--thou art destined to be mine--I have sought the world around, and found
none like thee. From my youth upward, I have sighed for such as thou art.
I have dreamed till I saw thee--I wake, and I behold thee. Turn not away
from me, Ione; think not of me as thou hast thought; I am not that
being--cold, insensate, and morose, which I have seemed to thee. Never
woman had lover so devoted--so passionate as I will be to Ione. Do not
struggle in my clasp: see--I release thy hand. Take it from me if thou
wilt--well be it so! But do not reject me, Ione--do not rashly
reject--judge of thy power over him whom thou canst thus transform. I, who
never knelt to mortal being, kneel to thee. I, who have commanded fate,
receive from thee my own. Ione, tremble not, thou art my queen--my
goddess--be my bride! All the wishes thou canst form shall be fulfilled.
The ends of the earth shall minister to thee--pomp, power, luxury, shall be
thy slaves. Arbaces shall have no ambition, save the pride of obeying thee.
Ione, turn upon me those eyes--shed upon me thy smile. Dark is my soul when
thy face is hid from it: shine over me, my sun--my heaven--my
daylight!--Ione, Ione--do not reject my love!'

Alone, and in the power of this singular and fearful man, Ione was not yet
terrified; the respect of his language, the softness of his voice, reassured
her; and, in her own purity, she felt protection. But she was
confused--astonished: it was some moments before she could recover the power
of reply.

'Rise, Arbaces!' said she at length; and she resigned to him once more her
hand, which she as quickly withdrew again, when she felt upon it the burning
pressure of his lips. 'Rise! and if thou art serious, if thy language be in
earnest...'

'If!' said he tenderly.

'Well, then, listen to me: you have been my guardian, my friend, my monitor;
for this new character I was not prepared--think not,' she added quickly, as
she saw his dark eyes glitter with the fierceness of his passion--'think not
that I scorn--that I am untouched--that I am not honored by this homage;
but, say--canst thou hear me calmly?'

'Ay, though thy words were lightning, and could blast me!'

'I love another!' said Ione, blushingly, but in a firm voice.

'By the gods--by hell!' shouted Arbaces, rising to his fullest height; 'dare
not tell me that--dare not mock me--it is impossible!--Whom hast thou
seen--whom known? Oh, Ione, it is thy woman's invention, thy woman's art
that speaks--thou wouldst gain time; I have surprised--I have terrified
thee. Do with me as thou wilt--say that thou lovest not me; but say not
that thou lovest another!'

'Alas!' began Ione; and then, appalled before his sudden and unlooked-for
violence, she burst into tears.

Arbaces came nearer to her--his breath glowed fiercely on her cheek; he
wound his arms round her--she sprang from his embrace. In the struggle a
tablet fell from her bosom on the ground: Arbaces perceived, and seized
it--it was the letter that morning received from Glaucus. Ione sank upon
the couch, half dead with terror.

Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing; the Neapolitan did not
dare to gaze upon him: she did not see the deadly paleness that came over
his countenance--she marked not his withering frown, nor the quivering of
his lip, nor the convulsions that heaved his breast. He read it to the end,
and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said, in a voice of deceitful
calmness:

'Is the writer of this the man thou lovest?'

Ione sobbed, but answered not.

'Speak!' he rather shrieked than said.

'It is--it is!

'And his name--it is written here--his name is Glaucus!'

Ione, clasping her hands, looked round as for succour or escape.

'Then hear me,' said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper; 'thou shalt
go to thy tomb rather than to his arms! What! thinkest thou Arbaces will
brook a rival such as this puny Greek? What! thinkest thou that he has
watched the fruit ripen, to yield it to another! Pretty fool--no! Thou art
mine--all--only mine: and thus--thus I seize and claim thee!' As he spoke,
he caught Ione in his arms; and, in that ferocious grasp, was all the
energy--less of love than of revenge.

But to Ione despair gave supernatural strength: she again tore herself from
him--she rushed to that part of the room by which she had entered--she half
withdrew the curtain--he had seized her--again she broke away from him--and
fell, exhausted, and with a loud shriek, at the base of the column which
supported the head of the Egyptian goddess. Arbaces paused for a moment, as
if to regain his breath; and thence once more darted upon his prey.

At that instant the curtain was rudely torn aside, the Egyptian felt a
fierce and strong grasp upon his shoulder. He turned--he beheld before him
the flashing eyes of Glaucus, and the pale, worn, but menacing, countenance
of Apaecides. 'Ah,' he muttered, as he glared from one to the other, 'what
Fury hath sent ye hither?'

'Ate,' answered Glaucus; and he closed at once with the Egyptian.
Meanwhile, Apaecides raised his sister, now lifeless, from the ground; his
strength, exhausted by a mind long overwrought, did not suffice to bear her
away, light and delicate though her shape: he placed her, therefore, on the
couch, and stood over her with a brandishing knife, watching the contest
between Glaucus and the Egyptian, and ready to plunge his weapon in the
bosom of Arbaces should he be victorious in the struggle. There is,
perhaps, nothing on earth so terrible as the naked and unarmed contest of
animal strength, no weapon but those which Nature supplies to rage. Both
the antagonists were now locked in each other's grasp--the hand of each
seeking the throat of the other--the face drawn back--the fierce eyes
flashing--the muscles strained--the veins swelled--the lips apart--the teeth
set--both were strong beyond the ordinary power of men, both animated by
relentless wrath; they coiled, they wound, around each other; they rocked to
and fro--they swayed from end to end of their confined arena--they uttered
cries of ire and revenge--they were now before the altar--now at the base of
the column where the struggle had commenced: they drew back for
breath--Arbaces leaning against the column--Glaucus a few paces apart.

'O ancient goddess!' exclaimed Arbaces, clasping the column, and raising his
eyes toward the sacred image it supported, 'protect thy chosen--proclaim
they vengeance against this thing of an upstart creed, who with sacrilegious
violence profanes thy resting-place and assails thy servant.'

As he spoke, the still and vast features of the goddess seemed suddenly to
glow with life; through the black marble, as through a transparent veil,
flushed luminously a crimson and burning hue; around the head played and
darted coruscations of livid lightning; the eyes became like balls of lurid
fire, and seemed fixed in withering and intolerable wrath upon the
countenance of the Greek. Awed and appalled by this sudden and mystic
answer to the prayer of his foe, and not free from the hereditary
superstitions of his race, the cheeks of Glaucus paled before that strange
and ghastly animation of the marble--his knees knocked together--he stood,
seized with a divine panic, dismayed, aghast, half unmanned before his foe!
Arbaces gave him not breathing time to recover his stupor: 'Die, wretch!' he
shouted, in a voice of thunder, as he sprang upon the Greek; 'the Mighty
Mother claims thee as a living sacrifice!' Taken thus by surprise in the
first consternation of his superstitious fears, the Greek lost his
footing--the marble floor was as smooth as glass--he slid--he fell. Arbaces
planted his foot on the breast of his fallen foe. Apaecides, taught by his
sacred profession, as well as by his knowledge of Arbaces, to distrust all
miraculous interpositions, had not shared the dismay of his companion; he
rushed forward--his knife gleamed in the air--the watchful Egyptian caught
his arm as it descended--one wrench of his powerful hand tore the weapon
from the weak grasp of the priest--one sweeping blow stretched him to the
earth--with a loud and exulting yell Arbaces brandished the knife on high.
Glaucus gazed upon his impending fate with unwinking eyes, and in the stern
and scornful resignation of a fallen gladiator, when, at that awful instant,
the floor shook under them with a rapid and convulsive throe--a mightier
spirit than that of the Egyptian was abroad!--a giant and crushing power,
before which sunk into sudden impotence his passion and his arts. IT
woke--it stirred--that Dread Demon of the Earthquake--laughing to scorn
alike the magic of human guile and the malice of human wrath. As a Titan,
on whom the mountains are piled, it roused itself from the sleep of years,
it moved on its tortured couch--the caverns below groaned and trembled
beneath the motion of its limbs. In the moment of his vengeance and his
power, the self-prized demigod was humbled to his real clay. Far and wide
along the soil went a hoarse and rumbling sound--the curtains of the chamber
shook as at the blast of a storm--the altar rocked--the tripod reeled, and
high over the place of contest, the column trembled and waved from side to
side--the sable head of the goddess tottered and fell from its pedestal--and
as the Egyptian stooped above his intended victim, right upon his bended
form, right between the shoulder and the neck, struck the marble mass! The
shock stretched him like the blow of death, at once, suddenly, without sound
or motion, or semblance of life, upon the floor, apparently crushed by the
very divinity he had impiously animated and invoked!

'The Earth has preserved her children,' said Glaucus, staggering to his
feet. 'Blessed be the dread convulsion! Let us worship the providence of
the gods!' He assisted Apaecides to rise, and then turned upward the face of
Arbaces; it seemed locked as in death; blood gushed from the Egyptian's lips
over his glittering robes; he fell heavily from the arms of Glaucus, and the
red stream trickled slowly along the marble. Again the earth shook beneath
their feet; they were forced to cling to each other; the convulsion ceased
as suddenly as it came; they tarried no longer; Glaucus bore Ione lightly in
his arms, and they fled from the unhallowed spot. But scarce had they
entered the garden than they were met on all sides by flying and disordered
groups of women and slaves, whose festive and glittering garments contrasted
in mockery the solemn terror of the hour; they did not appear to heed the
strangers--they were occupied only with their own fears. After the
tranquillity of sixteen years, that burning and treacherous soil again
menaced destruction; they uttered but one cry, 'THE EARTHQUAKE! THE
EARTHQUAKE!' and passing unmolested from the midst of them, Apaecides and
his companions, without entering the house, hastened down one of the alleys,
passed a small open gate, and there, sitting on a little mound over which
spread the gloom of the dark green aloes, the moonlight fell on the bended
figure of the blind girl--she was weeping bitterly.

BOOK THE THIRD

Chapter I

THE FORUM OF THE POMPEIANS. THE FIRST RUDE MACHINERY BY WHICH THE NEW ERA
OF THE WORLD WAS WROUGHT.

IT was early noon, and the forum was crowded alike with the busy and the
idle. As at Paris at this day, so at that time in the cities of Italy, men
lived almost wholly out of doors: the public buildings, the forum, the
porticoes, the baths, the temples themselves, might be considered their real
homes; it was no wonder that they decorated so gorgeously these favorite
places of resort--they felt for them a sort of domestic affection as well as
a public pride. And animated was, indeed, the aspect of the forum of
Pompeii at that time! Along its broad pavement, composed of large flags of
marble, were assembled various groups, conversing in that energetic fashion
which appropriates a gesture to every word, and which is still the
characteristic of the people of the south. Here, in seven stalls on one
side the colonnade, sat the money-changers, with their glittering heaps
before them, and merchants and seamen in various costumes crowding round
their stalls. On one side, several men in long togas were seen bustling
rapidly up to a stately edifice, where the magistrates administered
justice--these were the lawyers, active, chattering, joking, and punning, as
you may find them at this day in Westminster. In the centre of the space,
pedestals supported various statues, of which the most remarkable was the
stately form of Cicero. Around the court ran a regular and symmetrical
colonnade of Doric architecture; and there several, whose business drew them
early to the place, were taking the slight morning repast which made an
Italian breakfast, talking vehemently on the earthquake of the preceding
night as they dipped pieces of bread in their cups of diluted wine. In the
open space, too, you might perceive various petty traders exercising the
arts of their calling. Here one man was holding out ribands to a fair dame
from the country; another man was vaunting to a stout farmer the excellence
of his shoes; a third, a kind of stall-restaurateur, still so common in the
Italian cities, was supplying many a hungry mouth with hot messes from his
small and itinerant stove, while--contrast strongly typical of the mingled
bustle and intellect of the time--close by, a schoolmaster was expounding to
his puzzled pupils the elements of the Latin grammar.' A gallery above the
portico, which was ascended by small wooden staircases, had also its throng;
though, as here the immediate business of the place was mainly carried on,
its groups wore a more quiet and serious air.

Every now and then the crowd below respectfully gave way as some senator
swept along to the Temple of Jupiter (which filled up one side of the forum,
and was the senators' hall of meeting), nodding with ostentatious
condescension to such of his friends or clients as he distinguished amongst
the throng. Mingling amidst the gay dresses of the better orders you saw
the hardy forms of the neighboring farmers, as they made their way to the
public granaries. Hard by the temple you caught a view of the triumphal
arch, and the long street beyond swarming with inhabitants; in one of the
niches of the arch a fountain played, cheerily sparkling in the sunbeams;
and above its cornice rose the bronzed and equestrian statue of Caligula,
strongly contrasting the gay summer skies. Behind the stalls of the
money-changers was that building now called the Pantheon; and a crowd of the
poorer Pompeians passed through the small vestibule which admitted to the
interior, with panniers under their arms, pressing on towards a platform,
placed between two columns, where such provisions as the priests had rescued
from sacrifice were exposed for sale.

At one of the public edifices appropriated to the business of the city,
workmen were employed upon the columns, and you heard the noise of their
labor every now and then rising above the hum of the multitude: the columns
are unfinished to this day!

All, then, united, nothing could exceed in variety the costumes, the ranks,
the manners, the occupations of the crowd--nothing could exceed the bustle,
the gaiety, the animation--where pleasure and commerce, idleness and labor,
avarice and ambition, mingled in one gulf their motley rushing, yet
harmonius, streams.

Facing the steps of the Temple of Jupiter, with folded arms, and a knit and
contemptuous brow, stood a man of about fifty years of age. His dress was
remarkably plain--not so much from its material, as from the absence of all
those ornaments which were worn by the Pompeians of every rank--partly from
the love of show, partly, also, because they were chiefly wrought into those
shapes deemed most efficacious in resisting the assaults of magic and the
influence of the evil eye. His forehead was high and bald; the few locks
that remained at the back of the head were concealed by a sort of cowl,
which made a part of his cloak, to be raised or lowered at pleasure, and was
now drawn half-way over the head, as a protection from the rays of the sun.
The color of his garments was brown, no popular hue with the Pompeians; all
the usual admixtures of scarlet or purple seemed carefully excluded. His
belt, or girdle, contained a small receptacle for ink, which hooked on to
the girdle, a stilus (or implement of writing), and tablets of no ordinary
size. What was rather remarkable, the cincture held no purse, which was the
almost indispensable appurtenance of the girdle, even when that purse had
the misfortune to be empty!

It was not often that the gay and egotistical Pompeians busied themselves
with observing the countenances and actions of their neighbors; but there
was that in the lip and eye of this bystander so remarkably bitter and
disdainful, as he surveyed the religious procession sweeping up the stairs
of the temple, that it could not fail to arrest the notice of many.

'Who is yon cynic?' asked a merchant of his companion, a jeweller.

'It is Olinthus,' replied the jeweller; 'a reputed Nazarene.'

The merchant shuddered. 'A dread sect!' said he, in a whispered and fearful
voice. 'It is said. that when they meet at nights they always commence
their ceremonies by the murder of a new-born babe; they profess a community
of goods, too--the wretches! A community of goods! What would become of
merchants, or jewellers either, if such notions were in fashion?'

'That is very true,' said the jeweller; 'besides, they wear no jewels--they
mutter imprecations when they see a serpent; and at Pompeii all our
ornaments are serpentine.'

'Do but observe,' said a third, who was a fabricant of bronze, 'how yon
Nazarene scowls at the piety of the sacrificial procession. He is murmuring
curses on the temple, be sure. Do you know, Celcinus, that this fellow,
passing by my shop the other day, and seeing me employed on a statue of
Minerva, told me with a frown that, had it been marble, he would have broken
it; but the bronze was too strong for him. "Break a goddess!" said I. "A
goddess!" answered the atheist; "it is a demon--an evil spirit!" Then he
passed on his way cursing. Are such things to be borne? What marvel that
the earth heaved so fearfully last night, anxious to reject the atheist from
her bosom?--An atheist, do I say? worse still--a scorner of the Fine Arts!
Woe to us fabricants of bronze, if such fellows as this give the law to
society!'

'These are the incendiaries that burnt Rome under Nero,' groaned the
jeweller.

While such were the friendly remarks provoked by the air and faith of the
Nazarene, Olinthus himself became sensible of the effect he was producing;
he turned his eyes round, and observed the intent faces of the accumulating
throng, whispering as they gazed; and surveying them for a moment with an
expression, first of defiance and afterwards of compassion, he gathered his
cloak round him and passed on, muttering audibly, 'Deluded idolaters!--did
not last night's convulsion warn ye? Alas! how will ye meet the last day?'

The crowd that heard these boding words gave them different interpretations,
according to their different shades of ignorance and of fear; all, however,
concurred in imagining them to convey some awful imprecation. They regarded
the Christian as the enemy of mankind; the epithets they lavished upon him,
of which 'Atheist' was the most favored and frequent, may serve, perhaps, to
warn us, believers of that same creed now triumphant, how we indulge the
persecution of opinion Olinthus then underwent, and how we apply to those
whose notions differ from our own the terms at that day lavished on the
fathers of our faith.

As Olinthus stalked through the crowd, and gained one of the more private
places of egress from the forum, he perceived gazing upon him a pale and
earnest countenance, which he was not slow to recognize.

Wrapped in a pallium that partially concealed his sacred robes, the young
Apaecides surveyed the disciple of that new and mysterious creed, to which
at one time he had been half a convert.

'Is he, too, an impostor? Does this man, so plain and simple in life, in
garb, in mien--does he too, like Arbaces, make austerity the robe of the
sensualist? Does the veil of Vesta hide the vices of the prostitute?'

Olinthus, accustomed to men of all classes, and combining with the
enthusiasm of his faith a profound experience of his kind, guessed, perhaps,
by the index of the countenance, something of what passed within the breast
of the priest. He met the survey of Apaecides with a steady eye, and a brow
of serene and open candour.

'Peace be with thee!' said he, saluting Apaecides.

'Peace!' echoed the priest, in so hollow a tone that it went at once to the
heart of the Nazarene.

'In that wish,' continued Olinthus, 'all good things are combined--without
virtue thou canst not have peace. Like the rainbow, Peace rests upon the
earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of
light--it springs up amidst tears and clouds--it is a reflection of the
Eternal Sun--it is an assurance of calm--it is the sign of a great covenant
between Man and God. Such peace, O young man! is the smile of the soul; it
is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light. PEACE be with you!'

'Alas!' began Apaecides, when he caught the gaze of the curious loiterers,
inquisitive to know what could possibly be the theme of conversation between
a reputed Nazarene and a priest of Isis. He stopped short, and then added
in a low tone: 'We cannot converse here, I will follow thee to the banks of
the river; there is a walk which at this time is usually deserted and
solitary.'

Olinthus bowed assent. He passed through the streets with a hasty step, but
a quick and observant eye. Every now and then he exchanged a significant
glance, a slight sign, with some passenger, whose garb usually betokened the
wearer to belong to the humbler classes; for Christianity was in this the
type of all other and less mighty revolutions--the grain of mustard-seed was
in the heart of the lowly. Amidst the huts of poverty and labor, the vast
stream which afterwards poured its broad waters beside the cities and
palaces of earth took its neglected source.

Chapter II

THE NOONDAY EXCURSION ON THE CAMPANIAN SEAS.

'BUT tell me, Glaucus,' said Ione, as they glided down the rippling Sarnus
in their boat of pleasure, 'how camest thou with Apaecides to my rescue from
that bad man?'

'Ask Nydia yonder,' answered the Athenian, pointing to the blind girl, who
sat at a little distance from them, leaning pensively over her lyre; 'she
must have thy thanks, not we. It seems that she came to my house, and,
finding me from home, sought thy brother in his temple; he accompanied her
to Arbaces; on their way they encountered me, with a company of friends,
whom thy kind letter had given me a spirit cheerful enough to join. Nydia's
quick ear detected my voice--a few words sufficed to make me the companion
of Apaecides; I told not my associates why I left them--could I trust thy
name to their light tongues and gossiping opinion?--Nydia led us to the
garden gate, by which we afterwards bore thee--we entered, and were about to
plunge into the mysteries of that evil house, when we heard thy cry in
another direction. Thou knowest the rest.'

Ione blushed deeply. She then raised her eyes to those of Glaucus, and he
felt all the thanks she could not utter. 'Come hither, my Nydia,' said she,
tenderly, to the Thessalian.

'Did I not tell thee that thou shouldst be my sister and friend? Hast thou
not already been more?--my guardian, my preserver!'

'It is nothing,' answered Nydia coldly, and without stirring.

'Ah! I forgot,' continued Ione, 'I should come to thee'; and she moved along
the benches till she reached the place where Nydia sat, and flinging her
arms caressingly round her, covered her cheeks with kisses.

Nydia was that morning paler than her wont, and her countenance grew even
more wan and colorless as she submitted to the embrace of the beautiful
Neapolitan. 'But how camest thou, Nydia,' whispered Ione, 'to surmise so
faithfully the danger I was exposed to? Didst thou know aught of the
Egyptian?'

'Yes, I knew of his vices.'

'And how?'

'Noble Ione, I have been a slave to the vicious--those whom I served were
his minions.'

'And thou hast entered his house since thou knewest so well that private
entrance?'

'I have played on my lyre to Arbaces,' answered the Thessalian, with
embarrassment.

'And thou hast escaped the contagion from which thou hast saved Ione?'
returned the Neapolitan, in a voice too low for the ear of Glaucus.

'Noble Ione, I have neither beauty nor station; I am a child, and a slave,
and blind. The despicable are ever safe.'

It was with a pained, and proud, and indignant tone that Nydia made this
humble reply; and Ione felt that she only wounded Nydia by pursuing the
subject. She remained silent, and the bark now floated into the sea.

'Confess that I was right, Ione,' said Glaucus, 'in prevailing on thee not
to waste this beautiful noon in thy chamber--confess that I was right.'

'Thou wert right, Glaucus,' said Nydia, abruptly.

'The dear child speaks for thee,' returned the Athenian. 'But permit me to
move opposite to thee, or our light boat will be over-balanced.'

So saying, he took his seat exactly opposite to Ione, and leaning forward,
he fancied that it was her breath, and not the winds of summer, that flung
fragrance over the sea.

'Thou wert to tell me,' said Glaucus, 'why for so many days thy door was
closed to me?'

'Oh, think of it no more!' answered Ione, quickly; 'I gave my ear to what I
now know was the malice of slander.'

'And my slanderer was the Egyptian?'

Ione's silence assented to the question.

'His motives are sufficiently obvious.'

'Talk not of him,' said Ione, covering her face with her hands, as if to
shut out his very thought.

'Perhaps he may be already by the banks of the slow Styx,' resumed Glaucus;
'yet in that case we should probably have heard of his death. Thy brother,
methinks, hath felt the dark influence of his gloomy soul. When we arrived
last night at thy house he left me abruptly. Will he ever vouchsafe to be my
friend?'

'He is consumed with some secret care,' answered Ione, tearfully. 'Would
that we could lure him from himself! Let us join in that tender office.'

'He shall be my brother,' returned the Greek.

'How calmly,' said Ione, rousing herself from the gloom into which her
thoughts of Apaecides had plunged her--'how calmly the clouds seem to repose
in heaven; and yet you tell me, for I knew it not myself, that the earth
shook beneath us last night.'

'It did, and more violently, they say, than it has done since the great
convulsion sixteen years ago: the land we live in yet nurses mysterious
terror; and the reign of Pluto, which spreads beneath our burning fields,
seems rent with unseen commotion. Didst thou not feel the earth quake,
Nydia, where thou wert seated last night? and was it not the fear that it
occasioned thee that made thee weep?'

'I felt the soil creep and heave beneath me, like some monstrous serpent,'
answered Nydia; 'but as I saw nothing, I did not fear: I imagined the
convulsion to be a spell of the Egyptian's. They say he has power over the
elements.'

'Thou art a Thessalian, my Nydia,' replied Glaucus, 'and hast a national
right to believe in magic.

'Magic!--who doubts it?' answered Nydia, simply: 'dost thou?'

'Until last night (when a necromantic prodigy did indeed appal me), methinks
I was not credulous in any other magic save that of love!' said Glaucus, in
a tremulous voice, and fixing his eyes on Ione.

'Ah!' said Nydia, with a sort of shiver, and she awoke mechanically a few
pleasing notes from her lyre; the sound suited well the tranquility of the
waters, and the sunny stillness of the noon.

'Play to us, dear Nydia, said Glaucus--'play and give us one of thine old
Thessalian songs: whether it be of magic or not, as thou wilt--let it, at
least, be of love!'

'Of love!' repeated Nydia, raising her large, wandering eyes, that ever
thrilled those who saw them with a mingled fear and pity; you could never
familiarize yourself to their aspect: so strange did it seem that those dark
wild orbs were ignorant of the day, and either so fixed was their deep
mysterious gaze, or so restless and perturbed their glance, that you felt,
when you encountered them, that same vague, and chilling, and
half-preternatural impression, which comes over you in the presence of the
insane--of those who, having a life outwardly like your own, have a life
within life--dissimilar--unsearchable--unguessed!

'Will you that I should sing of love?' said she, fixing those eyes upon
Glaucus.

'Yes,' replied he, looking down.

She moved a little way from the arm of Ione, still cast round her, as if
that soft embrace embarrassed; and placing her light and graceful instrument
on her knee, after a short prelude, she sang the following strain:

NYDIA'S LOVE-SONG

I

The Wind and the Beam loved the Rose,
And the Rose loved one;
For who recks the wind where it blows?
Or loves not the sun?

II

None knew whence the humble Wind stole,
Poor sport of the skies--
None dreamt that the Wind had a soul,
In its mournful sighs!

III

Oh, happy Beam! how canst thou prove
That bright love of thine?
In thy light is the proof of thy love.
Thou hast but--to shine!

IV

How its love can the Wind reveal?
Unwelcome its sigh;
Mute--mute to its Rose let it steal--
Its proof is--to die!

'Thou singest but sadly, sweet girl,' said Glaucus; 'thy youth only feels as
yet the dark shadow of Love; far other inspiration doth he wake, when he
himself bursts and brightens upon us.

'I sing as I was taught,' replied Nydia, sighing.

'Thy master was love-crossed, then--try thy hand at a gayer air. Nay, girl,
give the instrument to me.' As Nydia obeyed, her hand touched his, and, with
that slight touch, her breast heaved--her cheek flushed. Ione and Glaucus,
occupied with each other, perceived not those signs of strange and premature
emotions, which preyed upon a heart that, nourished by imagination,
dispensed with hope.

And now, broad, blue, bright, before them, spread that halcyon sea, fair as
at this moment, seventeen centuries from that date, I behold it rippling on
the same divinest shores. Clime that yet enervates with a soft and Circean
spell--that moulds us insensibly, mysteriously, into harmony with thyself,
banishing the thought of austerer labor, the voices of wild ambition, the
contests and the roar of life; filling us with gentle and subduing dreams,
making necessary to our nature that which is its least earthly portion, so
that the very air inspires us with the yearning and thirst of love. Whoever
visits thee seems to leave earth and its harsh cares behind--to enter by the
Ivory gate into the Land of Dreams. The young and laughing Hours of the
PRESENT--the Hours, those children of Saturn, which he hungers ever to
devour, seem snatched from his grasp. The past--the future--are forgotten;
we enjoy but the breathing time. Flower of the world's garden--Fountain of
Delight--Italy of Italy--beautiful, benign Campania!--vain were, indeed, the
Titans, if on this spot they yet struggled for another heaven! Here, if God
meant this working-day life for a perpetual holiday, who would not sigh to
dwell for ever--asking nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing, while thy
skies shine over him--while thy seas sparkle at his feet--while thine air
brought him sweet messages from the violet and the orange--and while the
heart, resigned to--beating with--but one emotion, could find the lips and
the eyes, which flatter it (vanity of vanities!) that love can defy custom,
and be eternal?

It was then in this clime--on those seas, that the Athenian gazed upon a
face that might have suited the nymph, the spirit of the place: feeding his
eyes on the changeful roses of that softest cheek, happy beyond the
happiness of common life, loving, and knowing himself beloved.

In the tale of human passion, in past ages, there is something of interest
even in the remoteness of the time. We love to feel within us the bond
which unites the most distant era--men, nations, customs perish; THE
AFFECTIONS ARE IMMORTAL!--they are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless
generations. The past lives again, when we look upon its emotions--it lives
in our own! That which was, ever is! The magician's gift, that revives the
dead--that animates the dust of forgotten graves, is not in the author's
skill--it is in the heart of the reader!

Still vainly seeking the eyes of Ione, as, half downcast, half averted, they
shunned his own, the Athenian, in a low and soft voice, thus expressed the
feelings inspired by happier thoughts than those which had colored the song
of Nydia.

THE SONG OF GLAUCUS

I

As the bark floateth on o'er the summer-lit sea,
Floats my heart o'er the deeps of its passion for thee;
All lost in the space, without terror it glides,
For bright with thy soul is the face of the tides.
Now heaving, now hush'd, is that passionate ocean,
As it catches thy smile or thy sighs;
And the twin-stars that shine on the wanderer's devotion
Its guide and its god--are thine eyes!

II

The bark may go down, should the cloud sweep above,
For its being is bound to the light of thy love.
As thy faith and thy smile are its life and its joy,
So thy frown or thy change are the storms that destroy.
Ah! sweeter to sink while the sky is serene,
If time hath a change for thy heart!
If to live be to weep over what thou hast been,
Let me die while I know what thou art!

As the last words of the song trembled over the sea, Ione raised her
looks--they met those of her lover. Happy Nydia!--happy in thy affliction,
that thou couldst not see that fascinated and charmed gaze, that said so
much--that made the eye the voice of the soul--that promised the
impossibility of change!

But, though the Thessalian could not detect that gaze, she divined its
meaning by their silence--by their sighs. She pressed her hands lightly
across her breast, as if to keep down its bitter and jealous thoughts; and
then she hastened to speak--for that silence was intolerable to her.

'After all, O Glaucus!' said she, 'there is nothing very mirthful in your
strain!'

'Yet I meant it to be so, when I took up thy lyre, pretty one. Perhaps
happiness will not permit us to be mirthful.'

'How strange is it,' said Ione, changing a conversation which oppressed her
while it charmed--'that for the last several days yonder cloud has hung
motionless over Vesuvius! Yet not indeed motionless, for sometimes it
changes its form; and now methinks it looks like some vast giant, with an
arm outstretched over the city. Dost thou see the likeness--or is it only
to my fancy?'

'Fair Ione! I see it also. It is astonishingly distinct. The giant seems
seated on the brow of the mountain, the different shades of the cloud appear
to form a white robe that sweeps over its vast breast and limbs; it seems to
gaze with a steady face upon the city below, to point with one hand, as thou
sayest, over its glittering streets, and to raise the other (dost thou note
it?) towards the higher heaven. It is like the ghost of some huge Titan
brooding over the beautiful world he lost; sorrowful for the past--yet with
something of menace for the future.'

'Could that mountain have any connection with the last night's earthquake?
They say that, ages ago, almost in the earliest era of tradition, it gave
forth fires as AEtna still. Perhaps the flames yet lurk and dart beneath.'

'It is possible,' said Glaucus, musingly.

'Thou sayest thou art slow to believe in magic,' said Nydia, suddenly. 'I
have heard that a potent witch dwells amongst the scorched caverns of the
mountain, and yon cloud may be the dim shadow of the demon she confers
with.'

'Thou art full of the romance of thy native Thessaly,' said Glaucus; 'and a
strange mixture of sense and all conflicting superstitions.'

'We are ever superstitious in the dark,' replied Nydia. 'Tell me,' she
added, after a slight pause, 'tell me, O Glaucus! do all that are beautiful
resemble each other? They say you are beautiful, and Ione also. Are your
faces then the same? I fancy not, yet it ought to be so.'

'Fancy no such grievous wrong to Ione,' answered Glaucus, laughing. 'But we
do not, alas! resemble each other, as the homely and the beautiful sometimes
do. Ione's hair is dark, mine light; Ione's eyes are--what color, Ione? I
cannot see, turn them to me. Oh, are they black? no, they are too soft.
Are they blue? no, they are too deep: they change with every ray of the
sun--I know not their color: but mine, sweet Nydia, are grey, and bright
only when Ione shines on them! Ione's cheek is...'

'I do not understand one word of thy description,' interrupted Nydia,
peevishly. 'I comprehend only that you do not resemble each other, and I am
glad of it.'

'Why, Nydia?' said Ione.

Nydia colored slightly. 'Because,' she replied, coldly, 'I have always
imagined you under different forms, and one likes to know one is right.'

'And what hast thou imagined Glaucus to resemble?' asked Ione, softly.

'Music!' replied Nydia, looking down.

'Thou art right,' thought Ione.

'And what likeness hast thou ascribed to Ione?'

'I cannot tell yet,' answered the blind girl; 'I have not yet known her long
enough to find a shape and sign for my guesses.'

'I will tell thee, then,' said Glaucus, passionately; 'she is like the sun
that warms--like the wave that refreshes.'

'The sun sometimes scorches, and the wave sometimes drowns,' answered Nydia.

'Take then these roses,' said Glaucus; 'let their fragrance suggest to thee
Ione.'

'Alas, the roses will fade!' said the Neapolitan, archly.

Thus conversing, they wore away the hours; the lovers, conscious only of the
brightness and smiles of love; the blind girl feeling only its darkness--its
tortures--the fierceness of jealousy and its woe!

And now, as they drifted on, Glaucus once more resumed the lyre, and woke
its strings with a careless hand to a strain, so wildly and gladly
beautiful, that even Nydia was aroused from her reverie, and uttered a cry
of admiration.

'Thou seest, my child,' cried Glaucus, 'that I can yet redeem the character
of love's music, and that I was wrong in saying happiness could not be gay.
Listen, Nydia! listen, dear Ione! and hear:

THE BIRTH OF LOVE

I

Like a Star in the seas above,
Like a Dream to the waves of sleep--
Up--up--THE INCARNATE LOVE--
She rose from the charmed deep!
And over the Cyprian Isle
The skies shed their silent smile;
And the Forest's green heart was rife
With the stir of the gushing life--
The life that had leap'd to birth,
In the veins of the happy earth!
Hail! oh, hail!
The dimmest sea-cave below thee,
The farthest sky-arch above,
In their innermost stillness know thee:
And heave with the Birth of Love!
Gale! soft Gale!
Thou comest on thy silver winglets,
From thy home in the tender west,
Now fanning her golden ringlets,
Now hush'd on her heaving breast.
And afar on the murmuring sand,
The Seasons wait hand in hand
To welcome thee, Birth Divine,
To the earth which is henceforth thine.

II

Behold! how she kneels in the shell,
Bright pearl in its floating cell!
Behold! how the shell's rose-hues,
The cheek and the breast of snow,
And the delicate limbs suffuse,
Like a blush, with a bashful glow.
Sailing on, slowly sailing
O'er the wild water;
All hail! as the fond light is hailing
Her daughter,
All hail!
We are thine, all thine evermore:
Not a leaf on the laughing shore,
Not a wave on the heaving sea,
Nor a single sigh
In the boundless sky,
But is vow'd evermore to thee!

III

And thou, my beloved one--thou
, As I gaze on thy soft eyes now,
Methinks from their depths I view
The Holy Birth born anew;
Thy lids are the gentle cell
Where the young Love blushing lies;
See! she breaks from the mystic shell,
She comes from thy tender eyes!
Hail! all hail!
She comes, as she came from the sea,
To my soul as it looks on thee;
She comes, she comes!
She comes, as she came from the sea,
To my soul as it looks on thee!
Hail! all hail!

Chapter III

THE CONGREGATION.

FOLLOWED by Apaecides, the Nazarene gained the side of the Sarnus--that
river, which now has shrunk into a petty stream, then rushed gaily into the
sea, covered with countless vessels, and reflecting on its waves the
gardens, the vines, the palaces, and the temples of Pompeii. From its more
noisy and frequented banks, Olinthus directed his steps to a path which ran
amidst a shady vista of trees, at the distance of a few paces from the
river. This walk was in the evening a favorite resort of the Pompeians, but
during the heat and business of the day was seldom visited, save by some
groups of playful children, some meditative poet, or some disputative
philosophers. At the side farthest from the river, frequent copses of box
interspersed the more delicate and evanescent foliage, and these were cut
into a thousand quaint shapes, sometimes into the forms of fauns and satyrs,
sometimes into the mimicry of Egyptian pyramids, sometimes into the letters
that composed the name of a popular or eminent citizen. Thus the false
taste is equally ancient as the pure; and the retired traders of Hackney and
Paddington, a century ago, were little aware, perhaps, that in their
tortured yews and sculptured box, they found their models in the most
polished period of Roman antiquity, in the gardens of Pompeii, and the
villas of the fastidious Pliny.

This walk now, as the noonday sun shone perpendicularly through the
chequered leaves, was entirely deserted; at least no other forms than those
of Olinthus and the priest infringed upon the solitude. They sat themselves
on one of the benches, placed at intervals between the trees, and facing the
faint breeze that came languidly from the river, whose waves danced and
sparkled before them--a singular and contrasted pair; the believer in the
latest--the priest of the most ancient--worship of the world!

'Since thou leftst me so abruptly,' said Olinthus, 'hast thou been happy?
has thy heart found contentment under these priestly robes? hast thou, still
yearning for the voice of God, heard it whisper comfort to thee from the
oracles of Isis? That sigh, that averted countenance, give me the answer my
soul predicted.'

'Alas!' answered Apaecides, sadly, 'thou seest before thee a wretched and
distracted man! From my childhood upward I have idolized the dreams of
virtue! I have envied the holiness of men who, in caves and lonely temples,
have been admitted to the companionship of beings above the world; my days
have been consumed with feverish and vague desires; my nights with mocking
but solemn visions. Seduced by the mystic prophecies of an impostor, I have
indued these robes;--my nature (I confess it to thee frankly)--my nature has
revolted at what I have seen and been doomed to share in! Searching after
truth, I have become but the minister of falsehoods. On the evening in which
we last met, I was buoyed by hopes created by that same impostor, whom I
ought already to have better known. I have--no matter--no matter! suffice
it, I have added perjury and sin to rashness and to sorrow. The veil is now
rent for ever from my eyes; I behold a villain where I obeyed a demigod; the
earth darkens in my sight; I am in the deepest abyss of gloom; I know not if
there be gods above; if we are the things of chance; if beyond the bounded
and melancholy present there is annihilation or an hereafter--tell me, then,
thy faith; solve me these doubts, if thou hast indeed the power!'

'I do not marvel,' answered the Nazarene, 'that thou hast thus erred, or
that thou art thus sceptic. Eighty years ago there was no assurance to man
of God, or of a certain and definite future beyond the grave. New laws are
declared to him who has ears--a heaven, a true Olympus, is revealed to him
who has eyes--heed then, and listen.'

And with all the earnestness of a man believing ardently himself, and
zealous to convert, the Nazarene poured forth to Apaecides the assurances of
Scriptural promise. He spoke first of the sufferings and miracles of
Christ--he wept as he spoke: he turned next to the glories of the Saviour's
Ascension--to the clear predictions of Revelation. He described that pure
and unsensual heaven destined to the virtuous--those fires and torments that
were the doom of guilt.

The doubts which spring up to the mind of later reasoners, in the immensity
of the sacrifice of God to man, were not such as would occur to an early
heathen. He had been accustomed to believe that the gods had lived upon
earth, and taken upon themselves the forms of men; had shared in human
passions, in human labours, and in human misfortunes. What was the travail
of his own Alcmena's son, whose altars now smoked with the incense of
countless cities, but a toil for the human race? Had not the great Dorian
Apollo expiated a mystic sin by descending to the grave? Those who were the
deities of heaven had been the lawgivers or benefactors on earth, and
gratitude had led to worship. It seemed therefore, to the heathen, a
doctrine neither new nor strange, that Christ had been sent from heaven,
that an immortal had indued mortality, and tasted the bitterness of death.
And the end for which He thus toiled and thus suffered--how far more
glorious did it seem to Apaecides than that for which the deities of old had
visited the nether world, and passed through the gates of death! Was it not
worthy of a God to, descend to these dim valleys, in order to clear up the
clouds gathered over the dark mount beyond--to satisfy the doubts of
sages--to convert speculation into certainty--by example to point out the
rules of life--by revelation to solve the enigma of the grave--and to prove
that the soul did not yearn in vain when it dreamed of an immortality? In
this last was the great argument of those lowly men destined to convert the
earth. As nothing is more flattering to the pride and the hopes of man than
the belief in a future state, so nothing could be more vague and confused
than the notions of the heathen sages upon that mystic subject. Apaecides
had already learned that the faith of the philosophers was not that of the
herd; that if they secretly professed a creed in some diviner power, it was
not the creed which they thought it wise to impart to the community. He had
already learned, that even the priest ridiculed what he preached to the
people--that the notions of the few and the many were never united. But, in
this new faith, it seemed to him that philosopher, priest, and people, the
expounders of the religion and its followers, were alike accordant: they did
not speculate and debate upon immortality, they spoke of as a thing certain
and assured; the magnificence of the promise dazzled him--its consolations
soothed. For the Christian faith made its early converts among sinners!
many of its fathers and its martyrs were those who had felt the bitterness
of vice, and who were therefore no longer tempted by its false aspect from
the paths of an austere and uncompromising virtue. All the assurances of
this healing faith invited to repentance--they were peculiarly adapted to
the bruised and sore of spirit! the very remorse which Apaecides felt for
his late excesses, made him incline to one who found holiness in that
remorse, and who whispered of the joy in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth.

'Come,' said the Nazarene, as he perceived the effect he had produced, 'come
to the humble hall in which we meet--a select and a chosen few; listen there
to our prayers; note the sincerity of our repentant tears; mingle in our
simple sacrifice--not of victims, nor of garlands, but offered by
white-robed thoughts upon the altar of the heart. The flowers that we lay
there are imperishable--they bloom over us when we are no more; nay, they
accompany us beyond the grave, they spring up beneath our feet in heaven,
they delight us with an eternal odor, for they are of the soul, they partake
of its nature; these offerings are temptations overcome, and sins repented.
Come, oh come! lose not another moment; prepare already for the great, the
awful journey, from darkness to light, from sorrow to bliss, from corruption
to immortality! This is the day of the Lord the Son, a day that we have set
apart for our devotions. Though we meet usually at night, yet some amongst
us are gathered together even now. What joy, what triumph, will be with us
all, if we can bring one stray lamb into the sacred fold!'

There seemed to Apaecides, so naturally pure of heart, something ineffably
generous and benign in that spirit of conversation which animated
Olinthus--a spirit that found its own bliss in the happiness of others--that
sought in its wide sociality to make companions for eternity. He was
touched, softened, and subdued. He was not in that mood which can bear to
be left alone; curiosity, too, mingled with his purer stimulants--he was
anxious to see those rites of which so many dark and contradictory rumours
were afloat. He paused a moment, looked over his garb, thought of Arbaces,
shuddered with horror, lifted his eyes to the broad brow of the Nazarene,
intent, anxious, watchful--but for his benefits, for his salvation! He drew
his cloak round him, so as wholly to conceal his robes, and said, 'Lead on,
I follow thee.'

Olinthus pressed his hand joyfully, and then descending to the river side,
hailed one of the boats that plyed there constantly; they entered it; an
awning overhead, while it sheltered them from the sun, screened also their
persons from observation: they rapidly skimmed the wave. From one of the
boats that passed them floated a soft music, and its prow was decorated with
flowers--it was gliding towards the sea.

'So,' said Olinthus, sadly, 'unconscious and mirthful in their delusions,
sail the votaries of luxury into the great ocean of storm and shipwreck! we
pass them, silent and unnoticed, to gain the land.'

Apaecides, lifting his eyes, caught through the aperture in the awning a
glimpse of the face of one of the inmates of that gay bark--it was the face
of Ione. The lovers were embarked on the excursion at which we have been
made present. The priest sighed, and once more sunk back upon his seat.
They reached the shore where, in the suburbs, an alley of small and mean
houses stretched towards the bank; they dismissed the boat, landed, and
Olinthus, preceding the priest, threaded the labyrinth of lanes, and arrived
at last at the closed door of a habitation somewhat larger than its
neighbors. He knocked thrice--the door was opened and closed again, as
Apaecides followed his guide across the threshold.

They passed a deserted atrium, and gained an inner chamber of moderate size,
which, when the door was closed, received its only light from a small window
cut over the door itself. But, halting at the threshold of this chamber,
and knocking at the door, Olinthus said, 'Peace be with you!' A voice from
within returned, 'Peace with whom?' 'The Faithful!' answered Olinthus, and
the door opened; twelve or fourteen persons were sitting in a semicircle,
silent, and seemingly absorbed in thought, and opposite to a crucifix rudely
carved in wood.

They lifted up their eyes when Olinthus entered, without speaking; the
Nazarene himself, before he accosted them, knelt suddenly down, and by his
moving lips, and his eyes fixed steadfastly on the crucifix, Apaecides saw
that he prayed inly. This rite performed, Olinthus turned to the
congregation--'Men and brethren,' said he, 'start not to behold amongst you
a priest of Isis; he hath sojourned with the blind, but the Spirit hath
fallen on him--he desires to see, to hear, and to understand.'

'Let him,' said one of the assembly; and Apaecides beheld in the speaker a
man still younger than himself, of a countenance equally worn and pallid, of
an eye which equally spoke of the restless and fiery operations of a working
mind.

'Let him,' repeated a second voice, and he who thus spoke was in the prime
of manhood; his bronzed skin and Asiatic features bespoke him a son of
Syria--he had been a robber in his youth.

'Let him,' said a third voice; and the priest, again turning to regard the
speaker, saw an old man with a long grey beard, whom he recognized as a
slave to the wealthy Diomed.

'Let him,' repeated simultaneously the rest--men who, with two exceptions,
were evidently of the inferior ranks. In these exceptions, Apaecides noted
an officer of the guard, and an Alexandrian merchant.

'We do not,' recommenced Olinthus--'we do not bind you to secrecy; we impose
on you no oaths (as some of our weaker brethren would do) not to betray us.
It is true, indeed, that there is no absolute law against us; but the
multitude, more savage than their rulers, thirst for our lives. So, my
friends, when Pilate would have hesitated, it was the people who shouted
"Christ to the cross!" But we bind you not to our safety--no! Betray us to
the crowd--impeach, calumniate, malign us if you will--we are above death,
we should walk cheerfully to the den of the lion, or the rack of the
torturer--we can trample down the darkness of the grave, and what is death
to a criminal is eternity to the Christian.'

A low and applauding murmur ran through the assembly.

'Thou comest amongst us as an examiner, mayest thou remain a convert! Our
religion? you behold it! Yon cross our sole image, yon scroll the mysteries
of our Caere and Eleusis! Our morality? it is in our lives!--sinners we all
have been; who now can accuse us of a crime? we have baptized ourselves from
the past. Think not that this is of us, it is of God. Approach, Medon,'
beckoning to the old slave who had spoken third for the admission of
Apaecides, 'thou art the sole man amongst us who is not free. But in
heaven, the last shall be first: so with us. Unfold your scroll, read and
explain.'

Useless would it be for us to accompany the lecture of Medon, or the
comments of the congregation. Familiar now are those doctrines, then
strange and new. Eighteen centuries have left us little to expound upon the
lore of Scripture or the life of Christ. To us, too, there would seem
little congenial in the doubts that occurred to a heathen priest, and little
learned in the answers they receive from men uneducated, rude, and simple,
possessing only the knowledge that they were greater than they seemed.

There was one thing that greatly touched the Neapolitan: when the lecture
was concluded, they heard a very gentle knock at the door; the password was
given, and replied to; the door opened, and two young children, the eldest
of whom might have told its seventh year, entered timidly; they were the
children of the master of the house, that dark and hardy Syrian, whose youth
had been spent in pillage and bloodshed. The eldest of the congregation (it
was that old slave) opened to them his arms; they fled to the shelter--they
crept to his breast--and his hard features smiled as he caressed them. And
then these bold and fervent men, nursed in vicissitude, beaten by the rough
winds of life--men of mailed and impervious fortitude, ready to affront a
world, prepared for torment and armed for death--men, who presented all
imaginable contrast to the weak nerves, the light hearts, the tender
fragility of childhood, crowded round the infants, smoothing their rugged
brows and composing their bearded lips to kindly and fostering smiles: and
then the old man opened the scroll and he taught the infants to repeat after
him that beautiful prayer which we still dedicate to the Lord, and still
teach to our children; and then he told them, in simple phrase, of God's
love to the young, and how not a sparrow falls but His eye sees it. This
lovely custom of infant initiation was long cherished by the early Church,
in memory of the words which said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me,
and forbid them not'; and was perhaps the origin of the superstitious
calumny which ascribed to the Nazarenes the crime which the Nazarenes, when
victorious, attributed to the Jew, viz. the decoying children to hideous
rites, at which they were secretly immolated.

And the stern paternal penitent seemed to feel in the innocence of his
children a return into early life--life ere yet it sinned: he followed the
motion of their young lips with an earnest gaze; he smiled as they repeated,
with hushed and reverent looks, the holy words: and when the lesson was
done, and they ran, released, and gladly to his knee, he clasped them to his
breast, kissed them again and again, and tears flowed fast down his
cheek--tears, of which it would have been impossible to trace the source, so
mingled they were with joy and sorrow, penitence and hope--remorse for
himself and love for them!

Something, I say, there was in this scene which peculiarly affected
Apaecides; and, in truth, it is difficult to conceive a ceremony more
appropriate to the religion of benevolence, more appealing to the household
and everyday affections, striking a more sensitive chord in the human
breast.

It was at this time that an inner door opened gently, and a very old man
entered the chamber, leaning on a staff. At his presence, the whole
congregation rose; there was an expression of deep, affectionate respect
upon every countenance; and Apaecides, gazing on his countenance, felt
attracted towards him by an irresistible sympathy. No man ever looked upon
that face without love; for there had dwelt the smile of the Deity, the
incarnation of divinest love--and the glory of the smile had never passed
away.

'My children, God be with you!' said the old man, stretching his arms; and
as he spoke the infants ran to his knee. He sat down, and they nestled
fondly to his bosom. It was beautiful to see that mingling of the extremes
of life--the rivers gushing from their early source--the majestic stream
gliding to the ocean of eternity! As the light of declining day seems to
mingle earth and heaven, making the outline of each scarce visible, and
blending the harsh mountain-tops with the sky, even so did the smile of that
benign old age appear to hallow the aspect of those around, to blend
together the strong distinctions of varying years, and to diffuse over
infancy and manhood the light of that heaven into which it must so soon
vanish and be lost.

'Father,' said Olinthus, 'thou on whose form the miracle of the Redeemer
worked; thou who wert snatched from the grave to become the living witness
of His mercy and His power; behold! a stranger in our meeting--a new lamb
gathered to the fold!'

'Let me bless him,' said the old man: the throng gave way. Apaecides
approached him as by an instinct: he fell on his knees before him--the old
man laid his hand on the priest's head, and blessed him, but not aloud. As
his lips moved, his eyes were upturned, and tears--those tears that good men
only shed in the hope of happiness to another--flowed fast down his cheeks.

The children were on either side of the convert; his heart was theirs--he
had become as one of them--to enter into the kingdom of Heaven.

Chapter IV

THE STREAM OF LOVE RUNS ON. WHITHER?

DAYS are like years in the love of the young, when no bar, no obstacle, is
between their hearts--when the sun shines, and the course runs smooth--when
their love is prosperous and confessed. Ione no longer concealed from
Glaucus the attachment she felt for him, and their talk now was only of
their love. Over the rapture of the present the hopes of the future glowed
like the heaven above the gardens of spring. They went in their trustful
thoughts far down the stream of time: they laid out the chart of their
destiny to come; they suffered the light of to-day to suffuse the morrow.
In the youth of their hearts it seemed as if care, and change, and death,
were as things unknown. Perhaps they loved each other the more because the
condition of the world left to Glaucus no aim and no wish but love; because
the distractions common in free states to men's affections existed not for
the Athenian; because his country wooed him not to the bustle of civil life;
because ambition furnished no counterpoise to love: and, therefore, over
their schemes and projects, love only reigned. In the iron age they
imagined themselves of the golden, doomed only to live and to love.

To the superficial observer, who interests himself only in characters
strongly marked and broadly colored, both the lovers may seem of too slight
and commonplace a mould: in the delineation of characters purposely subdued,
the reader sometimes imagines that there is a want of character; perhaps,
indeed, I wrong the real nature of these two lovers by not painting more
impressively their stronger individualities. But in dwelling so much on
their bright and birdlike existence, I am influenced almost insensibly by
the forethought of the changes that await them, and for which they were so
ill prepared. It was this very softness and gaiety of life that contrasted
most strongly the vicissitudes of their coming fate. For the oak without
fruit or blossom, whose hard and rugged heart is fitted for the storm, there
is less fear than for the delicate branches of the myrtle, and the laughing
clusters of the vine.

They had now advanced far into August--the next month their marriage was
fixed, and the threshold of Glaucus was already wreathed with garlands; and
nightly, by the door of Ione, he poured forth the rich libations. He
existed no longer for his gay companions; he was ever with Ione. In the
mornings they beguiled the sun with music: in the evenings they forsook the
crowded haunts of the gay for excursions on the water, or along the fertile
and vine-clad plains that lay beneath the fatal mount of Vesuvius. The
earth shook no more; the lively Pompeians forgot even that there had gone
forth so terrible a warning of their approaching doom. Glaucus imagined
that convulsion, in the vanity of his heathen religion, an especial
interposition of the gods, less in behalf of his own safety than that of
Ione. He offered up the sacrifices of gratitude at the temples of his
faith; and even the altar of Isis was covered with his votive garlands--as
to the prodigy of the animated marble, he blushed at the effect it had
produced on him. He believed it, indeed, to have been wrought by the magic
of man; but the result convinced him that it betokened not the anger of a
goddess.

Of Arbaces, they heard only that he still lived; stretched on the bed of
suffering, he recovered slowly from the effect of the shock he had
sustained--he left the lovers unmolested--but it was only to brood over the
hour and the method of revenge.

Alike in their mornings at the house of Ione, and in their evening
excursions, Nydia was usually their constant, and often their sole
companion. They did not guess the secret fires which consumed her--the
abrupt freedom with which she mingled in their conversation--her capricious
and often her peevish moods found ready indulgence in the recollection of
the service they owed her, and their compassion for her affliction. They
felt an interest in her, perhaps the greater and more affectionate from the
very strangeness and waywardness of her nature, her singular alternations of
passion and softness--the mixture of ignorance and genius--of delicacy and
rudeness--of the quick humors of the child, and the proud calmness of the
woman. Although she refused to accept of freedom, she was constantly
suffered to be free; she went where she listed; no curb was put either on
her words or actions; they felt for one so darkly fated, and so susceptible
of every wound, the same pitying and compliant indulgence the mother feels
for a spoiled and sickly child--dreading to impose authority, even where
they imagined it for her benefit. She availed herself of this license by
refusing the companionship of the slave whom they wished to attend her.
With the slender staff by which she guided her steps, she went now, as in
her former unprotected state, along the populous streets: it was almost
miraculous to perceive how quickly and how dexterously she threaded every
crowd, avoiding every danger, and could find her benighted way through the
most intricate windings of the city. But her chief delight was still in
visiting the few feet of ground which made the garden of Glaucus--in tending
the flowers that at least repaid her love. Sometimes she entered the
chamber where he sat, and sought a conversation, which she nearly always
broke off abruptly--for conversation with Glaucus only tended to one
subject--Ione; and that name from his lips inflicted agony upon her. Often
she bitterly repented the service she had rendered to Ione: often she said
inly, 'If she had fallen, Glaucus could have loved her no longer'; and then
dark and fearful thoughts crept into her breast.

She had not experienced fully the trials that were in store for her, when
she had been thus generous. She had never before been present when Glaucus
and Ione were together; she had never heard that voice so kind to her, so
much softer to another. The shock that crushed her heart with the tidings
that Glaucus loved, had at first only saddened and benumbed--by degrees
jealousy took a wilder and fiercer shape; it partook of hatred--it whispered
revenge. As you see the wind only agitate the green leaf upon the bough,
while the leaf which has lain withered and seared on the ground, bruised and
trampled upon till the sap and life are gone, is suddenly whirled aloft--now
here--now there--without stay and without rest; so the love which visits the
happy and the hopeful hath but freshness on its wings! its violence is but
sportive. But the heart that hath fallen from the green things of life,
that is without hope, that hath no summer in its fibres, is torn and whirled
by the same wind that but caresses its brethren--it hath no bough to cling
to--it is dashed from path to path--till the winds fall, and it is crushed
into the mire for ever.

The friendless childhood of Nydia had hardened prematurely her character;
perhaps the heated scenes of profligacy through which she had passed,
seemingly unscathed, had ripened her passions, though they had not sullied
her purity. The orgies of Burbo might only have disgusted, the banquets of
the Egyptian might only have terrified, at the moment; but the winds that
pass unheeded over the soil leave seeds behind them. As darkness, too,
favors the imagination, so, perhaps, her very blindness contributed to feed
with wild and delirious visions the love of the unfortunate girl. The voice
of Glaucus had been the first that had sounded musically to her ear; his
kindness made a deep impression upon her mind; when he had left Pompeii in
the former year, she had treasured up in her heart every word he had
uttered; and when any one told her that this friend and patron of the poor
flower-girl was the most brilliant and the most graceful of the young
revellers of Pompeii, she had felt a pleasing pride in nursing his
recollection. Even the task which she imposed upon herself, of tending his
flowers, served to keep him in her mind; she associated him with all that
was most charming to her impressions; and when she had refused to express
what image she fancied Ione to resemble, it was partly, perhaps, that
whatever was bright and soft in nature she had already combined with the
thought of Glaucus. If any of my readers ever loved at an age which they
would now smile to remember--an age in which fancy forestalled the reason,
let them say whether that love, among all its strange and complicated
delicacies, was not, above all other and later passions, susceptible of
jealousy? I seek not here the cause: I know that it is commonly the fact.

When Glaucus returned to Pompeii, Nydia had told another year of life; that
year, with its sorrows, its loneliness, its trials, had greatly developed
her mind and heart; and when the Athenian drew her unconsciously to his
breast, deeming her still in soul as in years a child--when he kissed her
smooth cheek, and wound his arm round her trembling frame, Nydia felt
suddenly, and as by revelation, that those feelings she had long and
innocently cherished were of love. Doomed to be rescued from tyranny by
Glaucus--doomed to take shelter under his roof--doomed to breathe, but for
so brief a time, the same air--and doomed, in the first rush of a thousand
happy, grateful, delicious sentiments of an overflowing heart, to hear that
he loved another; to be commissioned to that other, the messenger, the
minister; to feel all at once that utter nothingness which she was--which
she ever must be, but which, till then, her young mind had not taught
her--that utter nothingness to him who was all to her; what wonder that, in
her wild and passionate soul, all the elements jarred discordant; that if
love reigned over the whole, it was not the love which is born of the more
sacred and soft emotions? Sometimes she dreaded only lest Glaucus should
discover her secret; sometimes she felt indignant that it was not suspected:
it was a sign of contempt--could he imagine that she presumed so far? Her
feelings to Ione ebbed and flowed with every hour; now she loved her because
he did; now she hated him for the same cause. There were moments when she
could have murdered her unconscious mistress; moments when she could have
laid down life for her. These fierce and tremulous alternations of passion
were too severe to be borne long. Her health gave way, though she felt it
not--her cheek paled--her step grew feebler--tears came to her eyes more
often, and relieved her less.

One morning, when she repaired to her usual task in the garden of the
Athenian, she found Glaucus under the columns of the peristyle, with a
merchant of the town; he was selecting jewels for his destined bride. He
had already fitted up her apartment; the jewels he bought that day were
placed also within it--they were never fated to grace the fair form of Ione;
they may be seen at this day among the disinterred treasures of Pompeii, in
the chambers of the studio at Naples.

'Come hither, Nydia; put down thy vase, and come hither. Thou must take
this chain from me--stay--there, I have put it on. There, Servilius, does
it not become her?'

'Wonderfully!' answered the jeweller; for jewellers were well-bred and
flattering men, even at that day. 'But when these ear-rings glitter in the
ears of the noble Ione, then, by Bacchus! you will see whether my art adds
anything to beauty.'

'Ione?' repeated Nydia, who had hitherto acknowledged by smiles and blushes
the gift of Glaucus.

'Yes,' replied the Athenian, carelessly toying with the gems; 'I am choosing
a present for Ione, but there are none worthy of her.'

He was startled as he spoke by an abrupt gesture of Nydia; she tore the
chain violently from her neck, and dashed it on the ground.

'How is this? What, Nydia, dost thou not like the bauble? art thou
offended?'

'You treat me ever as a slave and as a child,' replied the Thessalian, with
ill-suppressed sobs, and she turned hastily away to the opposite corner of
the garden.

Glaucus did not attempt to follow, or to soothe; he was offended; he
continued to examine the jewels and to comment on their fashion--to object
to this and to praise that, and finally to be talked by the merchant into
buying all; the safest plan for a lover, and a plan that any one will do
right to adopt, provided always that he can obtain an Ione!

When he had completed his purchase and dismissed the jeweller, he retired
into his chamber, dressed, mounted his chariot, and went to Ione. He
thought no more of the blind girl, or her offence; he had forgotten both the
one and the other.

He spent the forenoon with his beautiful Neapolitan, repaired thence to the
baths, supped (if, as we have said before, we can justly so translate the
three o'clock coena of the Romans) alone, and abroad, for Pompeii had its
restaurateurs--and returning home to change his dress ere he again repaired
to the house of Ione, he passed the peristyle, but with the absorbed reverie
and absent eyes of a man in love, and did not note the form of the poor
blind girl, bending exactly in the same place where he had left her. But
though he saw her not, her ear recognized at once the sound of his step.
She had been counting the moments to his return. He had scarcely entered
his favorite chamber, which opened on the peristyle, and seated himself
musingly on his couch, when he felt his robe timorously touched, and,
turning, he beheld Nydia kneeling before him, and holding up to him a
handful of flowers--a gentle and appropriate peace-offering--her eyes,
darkly upheld to his own, streamed with tears.

'I have offended thee,' said she, sobbing, 'and for the first time. I would
die rather than cause thee a moment's pain--say that thou wilt forgive me.
See! I have taken up the chain; I have put it on: I will never part from
it--it is thy gift.'

'My dear Nydia,' returned Glaucus, and raising her, he kissed her forehead,
'think of it no more! But why, my child, wert thou so suddenly angry? I
could not divine the cause?'

'Do not ask!' said she, coloring violently. 'I am a thing full of faults
and humors; you know I am but a child--you say so often: is it from a child
that you can expect a reason for every folly?'

'But, prettiest, you will soon be a child no more; and if you would have us
treat you as a woman, you must learn to govern these singular impulses and
gales of passion. Think not I chide: no, it is for your happiness only I
speak.'

'It is true,' said Nydia, 'I must learn to govern myself I must bide, I must
suppress, my heart. This is a woman's task and duty; methinks her virtue is
hypocrisy.'

'Self-control is not deceit, my Nydia,' returned the Athenian; and that is
the virtue necessary alike to man and to woman; it is the true senatorial
toga, the badge of the dignity it covers!'

'Self-control! self-control! Well, well, what you say is right! When I
listen to you, Glaucus, my wildest thoughts grow calm and sweet, and a
delicious serenity falls over me. Advise, ah! guide me ever, my preserver!'

'Thy affectionate heart will be thy best guide, Nydia, when thou hast
learned to regulate its feelings.'

'Ah! that will be never,' sighed Nydia, wiping away her tears.

'Say not so: the first effort is the only difficult one.'

'I have made many first efforts,' answered Nydia, innocently. 'But you, my
Mentor, do you find it so easy to control yourself? Can you conceal, can
you even regulate, your love for Ione?'

'Love! dear Nydia: ah! that is quite another matter,' answered the young
preceptor.

'I thought so!' returned Nydia, with a melancholy smile. 'Glaucus, wilt
thou take my poor flowers? Do with them as thou wilt--thou canst give them
to Ione,' added she, with a little hesitation.

'Nay, Nydia,' answered Glaucus, kindly, divining something of jealousy in
her language, though he imagined it only the jealousy of a vain and
susceptible child; 'I will not give thy pretty flowers to any one. Sit here
and weave them into a garland; I will wear it this night: it is not the
first those delicate fingers have woven for me.'

The poor girl delightedly sat down beside Glaucus. She drew from her girdle
a ball of the many-colored threads, or rather slender ribands, used in the
weaving of garlands, and which (for it was her professional occupation) she
carried constantly with her, and began quickly and gracefully to commence
her task. Upon her young cheeks the tears were already dried, a faint but
happy smile played round her lips--childlike, indeed, she was sensible only
of the joy of the present hour: she was reconciled to Glaucus: he had
forgiven her--she was beside him--he played caressingly with her silken
hair--his breath fanned her cheek--Ione, the cruel Ione, was not by--none
other demanded, divided, his care. Yes, she was happy and forgetful; it was
one of the few moments in her brief and troubled life that it was sweet to
treasure, to recall. As the butterfly, allured by the winter sun, basks for
a little in the sudden light, ere yet the wind awakes and the frost comes
on, which shall blast it before the eve--she rested beneath a beam, which,
by contrast with the wonted skies, was not chilling; and the instinct which
should have warned her of its briefness, bade her only gladden in its smile.

'Thou hast beautiful locks,' said Glaucus. 'They were once, I ween well, a
mother's delight.'

Nydia sighed; it would seem that she had not been born a slave; but she ever
shunned the mention of her parentage, and, whether obscure or noble, certain
it is that her birth was never known by her benefactors, nor by any one in
those distant shores, even to the last. The child of sorrow and of mystery,
she came and went as some bird that enters our chamber for a moment; we see
it flutter for a while before us, we know not whence it flew or to what
region it escapes.

Nydia sighed, and after a short pause, without answering the remark, said:
'But do I weave too many roses in my wreath, Glaucus? They tell me it is
thy favorite flower.'

'And ever favored, my Nydia, be it by those who have the soul of poetry: it
is the flower of love, of festival; it is also the flower we dedicate to
silence and to death; it blooms on our brows in life, while life be worth
the having; it is scattered above our sepulchre when we are no more.'

'Ah! would,' said Nydia, 'instead of this perishable wreath, that I could
take thy web from the hand of the Fates, and insert the roses there!'

'Pretty one! thy wish is worthy of a voice so attuned to song; it is uttered
in the spirit of song; and, whatever my doom, I thank thee.'

'Whatever thy doom! is it not already destined to all things bright and
fair? My wish was vain. The Fates will be as tender to thee as I should.'

'It might not be so, Nydia, were it not for love! While youth lasts, I may
forget my country for a while. But what Athenian, in his graver manhood,
can think of Athens as she was, and be contented that he is happy, while she
is fallen?--fallen, and for ever?'

'And why for ever?'

'As ashes cannot be rekindled--as love once dead can never revive, so
freedom departed from a people is never regained. But talk we not of these
matters unsuited to thee.'

'To me, oh! thou errest. I, too, have my sighs for Greece; my cradle was
rocked at the foot of Olympus; the gods have left the mountain, but their
traces may be seen--seen in the hearts of their worshippers, seen in the
beauty of their clime: they tell me it is beautiful, and I have felt its
airs, to which even these are harsh--its sun, to which these skies are
chill. Oh! talk to me of Greece! Poor fool that I am, I can comprehend
thee! and methinks, had I yet lingered on those shores, had I been a Grecian
maid whose happy fate it was to love and to be loved, I myself could have
armed my lover for another Marathon, a new Plataea. Yes, the hand that now
weaves the roses should have woven thee the olive crown!'

'If such a day could come!' said Glaucus, catching the enthusiasm of the
blind Thessalian, and half rising.--'But no! the sun has set, and the night
only bids us be forgetful--and in forgetfulness be gay--weave still the
roses!'

But it was with a melancholy tone of forced gaiety that the Athenian uttered
the last words: and sinking into a gloomy reverie, he was only wakened from
it, a few minutes afterwards, by the voice of Nydia, as she sang in a low
tone the following words, which he had once taught her:-

THE APOLOGY FOR PLEASURE

I

Who will assume the bays
That the hero wore?
Wreaths on the Tomb of Days
Gone evermore!
Who shall disturb the brave,
Or one leaf on their holy grave?
The laurel is vowed to them,
Leave the bay on its sacred stem!
But this, the rose, the fading rose,
Alike for slave and freeman grows.

II

If Memory sit beside the dead
With tombs her only treasure;
If Hope is lost and Freedom fled,
The more excuse for Pleasure.
Come, weave the wreath, the roses weave,
The rose at least is ours:
To feeble hearts our fathers leave,
In pitying scorn, the flowers!

III

On the summit, worn and hoary,
Of Phyle's solemn hill,
The tramp of the brave is still!
And still in the saddening Mart,
The pulse of that mighty heart,
Whose very blood was glory!
Glaucopis forsakes her own,
The angry gods forget us;
But yet, the blue streams along,
Walk the feet of the silver Song;
And the night-bird wakes the moon;
And the bees in the blushing noon
Haunt the heart of the old Hymettus.
We are fallen, but not forlorn,
If something is left to cherish;
As Love was the earliest born,
So Love is the last to perish.

IV

Wreathe then the roses, wreathe
The BEAUTIFUL still is ours,
While the stream shall flow and the sky shall glow,
The BEAUTIFUL still is ours!
Whatever is fair, or soft, or bright,
In the lap of day or the arms of night,
Whispers our soul of Greece--of Greece,
And hushes our care with a voice of peace.
Wreathe then the roses, wreathe!
They tell me of earlier hours;
And I hear the heart of my Country breathe
From the lips of the Stranger's flowers.

Chapter V

NYDIA ENCOUNTERS JULIA. INTERVIEW OF THE HEATHEN SISTER AND CONVERTED
BROTHER. AN ATHENIAN'S NOTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

'WHAT happiness to Ione! what bliss to be ever by the side of Glaucus, to
hear his voice!--And she too can see him!'

Such was the soliloquy of the blind girl, as she walked alone and at
twilight to the house of her new mistress, whither Glaucus had already
preceded her. Suddenly she was interrupted in her fond thoughts by a female
voice.

'Blind flower-girl, whither goest thou? There is no pannier under thine
arm; hast thou sold all thy flowers?'

The person thus accosting Nydia was a lady of a handsome but a bold and
unmaidenly countenance: it was Julia, the daughter of Diomed. Her veil was
half raised as she spoke; she was accompanied by Diomed himself, and by a
slave carrying a lantern before them--the merchant and his daughter were
returning home from a supper at one of their neighbors'.

'Dost thou not remember my voice?' continued Julia. 'I am the daughter of
Diomed the wealthy.'

'Ah! forgive me; yes, I recall the tones of your voice. No, noble Julia, I
have no flowers to sell.'

'I heard that thou wert purchased by the beautiful Greek Glaucus; is that
true, pretty slave?' asked Julia.

'I serve the Neapolitan, Ione,' replied Nydia, evasively.

'Ah! and it is true, then...'

'Come, come!' interrupted Diomed, with his cloak up to his mouth, 'the night
grows cold; I cannot stay here while you prate to that blind girl: come, let
her follow you home, if you wish to speak to her.'

'Do, child,' said Julia, with the air of one not accustomed to be refused;
'I have much to ask of thee: come.'

'I cannot this night, it grows late,' answered Nydia. 'I must be at home; I
am not free, noble Julia.'

'What, the meek Ione will chide thee?--Ay, I doubt not she is a second
Thalestris. But come, then, to-morrow: do--remember I have been thy friend
of old.'

'I will obey thy wishes,' answered Nydia; and Diomed again impatiently
summoned his daughter: she was obliged to proceed, with the main question
she had desired to put to Nydia unasked.

Meanwhile we return to Ione. The interval of time that had elapsed that day
between the first and second visit of Glaucus had not been too gaily spent:
she had received a visit from her brother. Since the night he had assisted
in saving her from the Egyptian, she had not before seen him.

Occupied with his own thoughts--thoughts of so serious and intense a
nature--the young priest had thought little of his sister; in truth, men,
perhaps of that fervent order of mind which is ever aspiring above earth,
are but little prone to the earthlier affections; and it had been long since
Apaecides had sought those soft and friendly interchanges of thought, those
sweet confidences, which in his earlier youth had bound him to Ione, and
which are so natural to that endearing connection which existed between
them.

Ione, however, had not ceased to regret his estrangement: she attributed it,
at present, to the engrossing duties of his severe fraternity. And often,
amidst all her bright hopes, and her new attachment to her betrothed--often,
when she thought of her brother's brow prematurely furrowed, his unsmiling
lip, and bended frame, she sighed to think that the service of the gods
could throw so deep a shadow over that earth which the gods created.

But this day when he visited her there was a strange calmness on his
features, a more quiet and self-possessed expression in his sunken eyes,
than she had marked for years. This apparent improvement was but
momentary--it was a false calm, which the least breeze could ruffle.

'May the gods bless thee, my brother!' said she, embracing him.

'The gods! Speak not thus vaguely; perchance there is but one God!'

'My brother!'

'What if the sublime faith of the Nazarene be true? What if God be a
monarch--One--Invisible--Alone? What if these numerous, countless deities,
whose altars fill the earth, be but evil demons, seeking to wean us from the
true creed? This may be the case, Ione!'

'Alas! can we believe it? or if we believed, would it not be a melancholy
faith answered the Neapolitan. 'What! all this beautiful world made only
human!--mountain disenchanted of its Oread--the waters of their Nymph--that
beautiful prodigality of faith, which makes everything divine, consecrating
the meanest flowers, bearing celestial whispers in the faintest
breeze--wouldst thou deny this, and make the earth mere dust and clay? No,
Apaecides: all that is brightest in our hearts is that very credulity which
peoples the universe with gods.'

Ione answered as a believer in the poesy of the old mythology would answer.
We may judge by that reply how obstinate and hard the contest which
Christianity had to endure among the heathens. The Graceful Superstition
was never silent; every, the most household, action of their lives was
entwined with it--it was a portion of life itself, as the flowers are a part
of the thyrsus. At every incident they recurred to a god, every cup of wine
was prefaced by a libation; the very garlands on their thresholds were
dedicated to some divinity; their ancestors themselves, made holy, presided
as Lares over their hearth and hall. So abundant was belief with them, that
in their own climes, at this hour, idolatry has never thoroughly been
outrooted: it changes but its objects of worship; it appeals to innumerable
saints where once it resorted to divinities; and it pours its crowds, in
listening reverence, to oracles at the shrines of St. Januarius or St.
Stephen, instead of to those of Isis or Apollo.

But these superstitions were not to the early Christians the object of
contempt so much as of horror. They did not believe, with the quiet
scepticism of the heathen philosopher, that the gods were inventions of the
priests; nor even, with the vulgar, that, according to the dim light of
history, they had been mortals like themselves. They imagined the heathen
divinities to be evil spirits--they transplanted to Italy and to Greece the
gloomy demons of India and the East; and in Jupiter or in Mars they
shuddered at the representative of Moloch or of Satan.

Apaecides had not yet adopted formally the Christian faith, but he was
already on the brink of it. He already participated the doctrines of
Olinthus--he already imagined that the lively imaginations of the heathen
were the suggestions of the arch-enemy of mankind. The innocent and natural
answer of Ione made him shudder. He hastened to reply vehemently, and yet
so confusedly, that Ione feared for his reason more than she dreaded his
violence.

'Ah, my brother!' said she, 'these hard duties of thine have shattered thy
very sense. Come to me, Apaecides, my brother, my own brother; give me thy
hand, let me wipe the dew from thy brow--chide me not now, I understand thee
not; think only that Ione could not offend thee!'

'Ione,' said Apaecides, drawing her towards him, and regarding her tenderly,
'can I think that this beautiful form, this kind heart, may be destined to
an eternity of torment?'

'Dii meliora! the gods forbid!' said Ione, in the customary form of words by
which her contemporaries thought an omen might be averted.

The words, and still more the superstition they implied, wounded the ear of
Apaecides. He rose, muttering to himself, turned from the chamber, then,
stopping, half way, gazed wistfully on Ione, and extended his arms.

Ione flew to them in joy; he kissed her earnestly, and then he said:

'Farewell, my sister! when we next meet, thou mayst be to me as nothing;
take thou, then, this embrace--full yet of all the tender reminiscences of
childhood, when faith and hope, creeds, customs, interests, objects, were
the same to us. Now, the tie is to be broken!'

With these strange words he left the house.

The great and severest trial of the primitive Christians was indeed this;
their conversion separated them from their dearest bonds. They could not
associate with beings whose commonest actions, whose commonest forms of
speech, were impregnated with idolatry. They shuddered at the blessing of
love, to their ears it was uttered in a demon's name. This, their
misfortune, was their strength; if it divided them from the rest of the
world, it was to unite them proportionally to each other. They were men of
iron who wrought forth the Word of God, and verily the bonds that bound them
were of iron also!

Glaucus found Ione in tears; he had already assumed the sweet privilege to
console. He drew from her a recital of her interview with her brother; but
in her confused account of language, itself so confused to one not prepared
for it, he was equally at a loss with Ione to conceive the intentions or the
meaning of Apaecides.

'Hast thou ever heard much,' asked she, 'of this new sect of the Nazarenes,
of which my brother spoke?'

'I have often heard enough of the votaries,' returned Glaucus, 'but of their
exact tenets know I naught, save that in their doctrine there seemeth
something preternaturally chilling and morose. They live apart from their
kind; they affect to be shocked even at our simple uses of garlands; they
have no sympathies with the cheerful amusements of life; they utter awful
threats of the coming destruction of the world; they appear, in one word, to
have brought their unsmiling and gloomy creed out of the cave of Trophonius.
Yet,' continued Glaucus, after a slight pause, 'they have not wanted men of
great power and genius, nor converts, even among the Areopagites of Athens.
Well do I remember to have heard my father speak of one strange guest at
Athens, many years ago; methinks his name was PAUL. My father was amongst a
mighty crowd that gathered on one of our immemorial hills to hear this sage
of the East expound: through the wide throng there rang not a single
murmur!--the jest and the roar, with which our native orators are received,
were hushed for him--and when on the loftiest summit of that hill, raised
above the breathless crowd below, stood this mysterious visitor, his mien
and his countenance awed every heart, even before a sound left his lips. He
was a man, I have heard my father say, of no tall stature, but of noble and
impressive mien; his robes were dark and ample; the declining sun, for it
was evening, shone aslant upon his form as it rose aloft, motionless, and
commanding; his countenance was much worn and marked, as of one who had
braved alike misfortune and the sternest vicissitude of many climes; but his
eyes were bright with an almost unearthly fire; and when he raised his arm
to speak, it was with the majesty of a man into whom the Spirit of a God
hath rushed!

'"Men of Athens!" he is reported to have said, "I find amongst ye an altar
with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

Ye worship in ignorance the same Deity I serve.
To you unknown till now, to you be it now revealed."

'Then declared that solemn man how this great Maker of all things, who had
appointed unto man his several tribes and his various homes--the Lord of
earth and the universal heaven, dwelt not in temples made with hands; that
His presence, His spirit, were in the air we breathed--our life and our
being were with Him. "Think you," he cried, "that the Invisible is like
your statues of gold and marble? Think you that He needeth sacrifice from
you: He who made heaven and earth?" Then spoke he of fearful and coming
times, of the end of the world, of a second rising of the dead, whereof an
assurance had been given to man in the resurrection of the mighty Being
whose religion he came to preach.

'When he thus spoke, the long-pent murmur went forth, and the philosophers
that were mingled with the people, muttered their sage contempt; there might
you have seen the chilling frown of the Stoic, and the Cynic's sneer; and
the Epicurean, who believeth not even in our own Elysium, muttered a
pleasant jest, and swept laughing through the crowd: but the deep heart of
the people was touched and thrilled; and they trembled, though they knew not
why, for verily the stranger had the voice and majesty of a man to whom "The
Unknown God" had committed the preaching of His faith.'

Ione listened with wrapt attention, and the serious and earnest manner of
the narrator betrayed the impression that he himself had received from one
who had been amongst the audience that on the hill of the heathen Mars had
heard the first tidings of the word of Christ!

Chapter VI

THE PORTER. THE GIRL. AND THE GLADIATOR.

THE door of Diomed's house stood open, and Medon, the old slave, sat at the
bottom of the steps by which you ascended to the mansion. That luxurious
mansion of the rich merchant of Pompeii is still to be seen just without the
gates of the city, at the commencement of the Street of Tombs; it was a gay
neighborhood, despite the dead. On the opposite side, but at some yards
nearer the gate, was a spacious hostelry, at which those brought by business
or by pleasure to Pompeii often stopped to refresh themselves. In the space
before the entrance of the inn now stood wagons, and carts, and chariots,
some just arrived, some just quitting, in all the bustle of an animated and
popular resort of public entertainment. Before the door, some farmers,
seated on a bench by a small circular table, were talking over their morning
cups, on the affairs of their calling. On the side of the door itself was
painted gaily and freshly the eternal sign of the chequers. By the roof of
the inn stretched a terrace, on which some females, wives of the farmers
above mentioned, were, some seated, some leaning over the railing, and
conversing with their friends below. In a deep recess, at a little distance,
was a covered seat, in which some two or three poorer travellers were
resting themselves, and shaking the dust from their garments. On the other
side stretched a wide space, originally the burial-ground of a more ancient
race than the present denizens of Pompeii, and now converted into the
Ustrinum, or place for the burning of the dead. Above this rose the
terraces of a gay villa, half hid by trees. The tombs themselves, with
their graceful and varied shapes, the flowers and the foliage that
surrounded them, made no melancholy feature in the prospect. Hard by the
gate of the city, in a small niche, stood the still form of the
well-disciplined Roman sentry, the sun shining brightly on his polished
crest, and the lance on which he leaned. The gate itself was divided into
three arches, the centre one for vehicles, the others for the
foot-passengers; and on either side rose the massive walls which girt the
city, composed, patched, repaired at a thousand different epochs, according
as war, time, or the earthquake had shattered that vain protection. At
frequent intervals rose square towers, whose summits broke in picturesque
rudeness the regular line of the wall, and contrasted well with the modern
buildings gleaming whitely by.

The curving road, which in that direction leads from Pompeii to Herculaneum,
wound out of sight amidst hanging vines, above which frowned the sullen
majesty of Vesuvius.

'Hast thou heard the news, old Medon?' said a young woman, with a pitcher in
her hand, as she paused by Diomed's door to gossip a moment with the slave,
ere she repaired to the neighboring inn to fill the vessel, and coquet with
the travellers.

'The news! what news?' said the slave, raising his eyes moodily from the
ground.

'Why, there passed through the gate this morning, no doubt ere thou wert
well awake, such a visitor to Pompeii!'

'Ay,' said the slave, indifferently.

'Yes, a present from the noble Pomponianus.'

'A present! I thought thou saidst a visitor?'

'It is both visitor and present. Know, O dull and stupid! that it is a most
beautiful young tiger, for our approaching games in the amphitheatre. Hear
you that, Medon? Oh, what pleasure! I declare I shall not sleep a wink
till I see it; they say it has such a roar!'

'Poor fool!' said Medon, sadly and cynically.

'Fool me no fool, old churl! It is a pretty thing, a tiger, especially if
we could but find somebody for him to eat. We have now a lion and a tiger;
only consider that, Medon! and for want of two good criminals perhaps we
shall be forced to see them eat each other. By-the-by, your son is a
gladiator, a handsome man and a strong, can you not persuade him to fight
the tiger? Do now, you would oblige me mightily; nay, you would be a
benefactor to the whole town.'

'Vah! vah!' said the slave, with great asperity; 'think of thine own danger
ere thou thus pratest of my poor boy's death.'

'My own danger!' said the girl, frightened and looking hastily
around--'Avert the omen! let thy words fall on thine own head!' And the
girl, as she spoke, touched a talisman suspended round her neck. '"Thine own
danger!" what danger threatens me?'

'Had the earthquake but a few nights since no warning?' said Medon. 'Has it
not a voice? Did it not say to us all, "Prepare for death; the end of all
things is at hand?"'

'Bah, stuff!' said the young woman, settling the folds of her tunic. 'Now
thou talkest as they say the Nazarenes talked--methinks thou art one of
them. Well, I can prate with thee, grey croaker, no more: thou growest
worse and worse--Vale! O Hercules, send us a man for the lion--and another
for the tiger!'

Ho! ho! for the merry, merry show,
With a forest of faces in every row!
Lo, the swordsmen, bold as the son of Alcmena,
Sweep, side by side, o'er the hushed arena;
Talk while you may--you will hold your breath
When they meet in the grasp of the glowing death.
Tramp, tramp, how gaily they go!
Ho! ho! for the merry, merry show!

Chanting in a silver and clear voice this feminine ditty, and holding up her
tunic from the dusty road, the young woman stepped lightly across to the
crowded hostelry.

'My poor son!' said the slave, half aloud, 'is it for things like this thou
art to be butchered? Oh! faith of Christ, I could worship thee in all
sincerity, were it but for the horror which thou inspirest for these bloody
lists.'

The old man's head sank dejectedly on his breast. He remained silent and
absorbed, but every now and then with the corner of his sleeve he wiped his
eyes. His heart was with his son; he did not see the figure that now
approached from the gate with a quick step, and a somewhat fierce and
reckless gait and carriage. He did not lift his eyes till the figure paused
opposite the place where he sat, and with a soft voice addressed him by the
name of:

'Father!'

'My boy! my Lydon! is it indeed thou?' said the old man, joyfully. 'Ah, thou
wert present to my thoughts.'

'I am glad to hear it, my father,' said the gladiator, respectfully touching
the knees and beard of the slave; 'and soon may I be always present with
thee, not in thought only.'

'Yes, my son--but not in this world,' replied the slave, mournfully.

'Talk not thus, O my sire! look cheerfully, for I feel so--I am sure that I
shall win the day; and then, the gold I gain buys thy freedom. Oh! my
father, it was but a few days since that I was taunted, by one, too, whom I
would gladly have undeceived, for he is more generous than the rest of his
equals. He is not Roman--he is of Athens--by him I was taunted with the
lust of gain--when I demanded what sum was the prize of victory. Alas! he
little knew the soul of Lydon!'

'My boy! my boy!' said the old slave, as, slowly ascending the steps, he
conducted his son to his own little chamber, communicating with the entrance
hall (which in this villa was the peristyle, not the atrium)--you may see it
now; it is the third door to the right on entering. (The first door
conducts to the staircase; the second is but a false recess, in which there
stood a statue of bronze.) 'Generous, affectionate, pious as are thy
motives,' said Medon, when they were thus secured from observation, 'thy
deed itself is guilt: thou art to risk thy blood for thy father's
freedom--that might be forgiven; but the prize of victory is the blood of
another. oh, that is a deadly sin; no object can purify it. Forbear!
forbear! rather would I be a slave for ever than purchase liberty on such
terms!'

'Hush, my father!' replied Lydon, somewhat impatiently; 'thou hast picked up
in this new creed of thine, of which I pray thee not to speak to me, for the
gods that gave me strength denied me wisdom, and I understand not one word
of what thou often preachest to me--thou hast picked up, I say, in this new
creed, some singular fantasies of right and wrong. Pardon me if I offend
thee: but reflect! Against whom shall I contend? Oh! couldst thou know
those wretches with whom, for thy sake, I assort, thou wouldst think I
purified earth by removing one of them. Beasts, whose very lips drop blood;
things, all savage, unprincipled in their very courage: ferocious,
heartless, senseless; no tie of life can bind them: they know not fear, it
is true--but neither know they gratitude, nor charity, nor love; they are
made but for their own career, to slaughter without pity, to die without
dread! Can thy gods, whosoever they be, look with wrath on a conflict with
such as these, and in such a cause? Oh, My father, wherever the powers
above gaze down on earth, they behold no duty so sacred, so sanctifying, as
the sacrifice offered to an aged parent by the piety of a grateful son!'

The poor old slave, himself deprived of the lights of knowledge, and only
late a convert to the Christian faith, knew not with what arguments to
enlighten an ignorance at once so dark, and yet so beautiful in its error.
His first impulse was to throw himself on his son's breast--his next to
start away to wring his hands; and in the attempt to reprove, his broken
voice lost itself in weeping.

'And if,' resumed Lydon--'if thy Deity (methinks thou wilt own but one?) be
indeed that benevolent and pitying Power which thou assertest Him to be, He
will know also that thy very faith in Him first confirmed me in that
determination thou blamest.'

'How! what mean you?' said the slave.

'Why, thou knowest that I, sold in my childhood as a slave, was set free at
Rome by the will of my master, whom I had been fortunate enough to please.
I hastened to Pompeii to see thee--I found thee already aged and infirm,
under the yoke of a capricious and pampered lord--thou hadst lately adopted
this new faith, and its adoption made thy slavery doubly painful to thee; it
took away all the softening charm of custom, which reconciles us so often to
the worst. Didst thou not complain to me that thou wert compelled to
offices that were not odious to thee as a slave, but guilty as a Nazarene?
Didst thou not tell me that thy soul shook with remorse when thou wert
compelled to place even a crumb of cake before the Lares that watch over yon
impluvium? that thy soul was torn by a perpetual struggle? Didst thou not
tell me that even by pouring wine before the threshold, and calling on the
name of some Grecian deity, thou didst fear thou wert incurring penalties
worse than those of Tantalus, an eternity of tortures more terrible than
those of the Tartarian fields? Didst thou not tell me this? I wondered, I
could not comprehend; nor, by Hercules! can I now: but I was thy son, and my
sole task was to compassionate and relieve. Could I hear thy groans, could
I witness thy mysterious horrors, thy constant anguish, and remain inactive?
No! by the immortal gods! the thought struck me like light from Olympus! I
had no money, but I had strength and youth--these were thy gifts--I could
sell these in my turn for thee! I learned the amount of thy ransom--I
learned that the usual prize of a victorious gladiator would doubly pay it.
I became a gladiator--I linked myself with those accursed men, scorning,
loathing, while I joined--I acquired their skill--blessed be the lesson!--it
shall teach me to free my father!'

'Oh, that thou couldst hear Olinthus!' sighed the old man, more and more
affected by the virtue of his son, but not less strongly convinced of the
criminality of his purpose.

'I will hear the whole world talk if thou wilt,' answered the gladiator,
gaily; 'but not till thou art a slave no more. Beneath thy own roof, my
father, thou shalt puzzle this dull brain all day long, ay, and all night
too, if it give thee pleasure. Oh, such a spot as I have chalked out for
thee!--it is one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine shops of old Julia
Felix, in the sunny part of the city, where thou mayst bask before the door
in the day--and I will sell the oil and the wine for thee, my father--and
then, please Venus (or if it does not please her, since thou lovest not her
name, it is all one to Lydon)--then, I say, perhaps thou mayst have a
daughter, too, to tend thy grey hairs, and hear shrill voices at thy knee,
that shall call thee "Lydon's father!" Ah! we shall be so happy--the prize
can purchase all. Cheer thee! cheer up, my sire!--And now I must away--day
wears--the lanista waits me. Come! thy blessing!'

As Lydon thus spoke, he had already quitted the dark chamber of his father;
and speaking eagerly, though in a whispered tone, they now stood at the same
place in which we introduced the porter at his post.

'O bless thee! bless thee, my brave boy!' said Medon, fervently; 'and may
the great Power that reads all hearts see the nobleness of thine, and
forgive its error!'

The tall shape of the gladiator passed swiftly down the path; the eyes of
the slave followed its light but stately steps, till the last glimpse was
gone; and then, sinking once more on his seat, his eyes again fastened
themselves on the ground. His form, mute and unmoving, as a thing of stone.
His heart!--who, in our happier age, can even imagine its struggles--its
commotion?

'May I enter?' said a sweet voice. 'Is thy mistress Julia within?'

The slave mechanically motioned to the visitor to enter, but she who
addressed him could not see the gesture--she repeated her question timidly,
but in a louder voice.

'Have I not told thee!' said the slave, peevishly: 'enter.'

'Thanks,' said the speaker, plaintively; and the slave, roused by the tone,
looked up, and recognized the blind flower-girl. Sorrow can sympathize with
affliction--he raised himself, and guided her steps to the head of the
adjacent staircase (by which you descended to Julia's apartment), where,
summoning a female slave, he consigned to her the charge of the blind girl.

Chapter VII

THE DRESSING-ROOM OF A POMPEIAN BEAUTY. IMPORTANT CONVERSATION BETWEEN JULIA
AND NYDIA.

THE elegant Julia sat in her chamber, with her slaves around her--like the
cubiculum which adjoined it, the room was small, but much larger than the
usual apartments appropriated to sleep, which were so diminutive, that few
who have not seen the bed-chambers, even in the gayest mansions, can form
any notion of the petty pigeon-holes in which the citizens of Pompeii
evidently thought it desirable to pass the night. But, in fact, 'bed' with
the ancients was not that grave, serious, and important part of domestic
mysteries which it is with us. The couch itself was more like a very narrow
and small sofa, light enough to be transported easily, and by the occupant
himself, from place to place; and it was, no doubt, constantly shifted from
chamber to chamber, according to the caprice of the inmate, or the changes
of the season; for that side of the house which was crowded in one month,
might, perhaps, be carefully avoided in the next. There was also among the
Italians of that period a singular and fastidious apprehension of too much
daylight; their darkened chambers, which first appear to us the result of a
negligent architecture, were the effect of the most elaborate study. In
their porticoes and gardens they courted the sun whenever it so pleased
their luxurious tastes. In the interior of their houses they sought rather
the coolness and the shade.

Julia's apartment at that season was in the lower part of the house,
immediately beneath the state rooms above, and looking upon the garden, with
which it was on a level. The wide door, which was glazed, alone admitted
the morning rays: yet her eye, accustomed to a certain darkness, was
sufficiently acute to perceive exactly what colors were the most
becoming--what shade of the delicate rouge gave the brightest beam to her
dark glance, and the most youthful freshness to her cheek.

On the table, before which she sat, was a small and circular mirror of the
most polished steel: round which, in precise order, were ranged the
cosmetics and the unguents--the perfumes and the paints--the jewels and
combs--the ribands and the gold pins, which were destined to add to the
natural attractions of beauty the assistance of art and the capricious
allurements of fashion. Through the dimness of the room glowed brightly the
vivid and various colourings of the wall, in all the dazzling frescoes of
Pompeian taste. Before the dressing-table, and under the feet of Julia, was
spread a carpet, woven from the looms of the East. Near at hand, on another
table, was a silver basin and ewer; an extinguished lamp, of most exquisite
workmanship, in which the artist had represented a Cupid reposing under the
spreading branches of a myrtle-tree; and a small roll of papyrus, containing
the softest elegies of Tibullus. Before the door, which communicated with
the cubiculum, hung a curtain richly broidered with gold flowers. Such was
the dressing-room of a beauty eighteen centuries ago.

The fair Julia leaned indolently back on her seat, while the ornatrix (i.e.
hairdresser) slowly piled, one above the other, a mass of small curls,
dexterously weaving the false with the true, and carrying the whole fabric
to a height that seemed to place the head rather at the centre than the
summit of the human form.

Her tunic, of a deep amber, which well set off her dark hair and somewhat
embrowned complexion, swept in ample folds to her feet, which were cased in
slippers, fastened round the slender ankle by white thongs; while a
profusion of pearls were embroidered in the slipper itself, which was of
purple, and turned slightly upward, as do the Turkish slippers at this day.
An old slave, skilled by long experience in all the arcana of the toilet,
stood beside the hairdresser, with the broad and studded girdle of her
mistress over her arm, and giving, from time to time (mingled with judicious
flattery to the lady herself), instructions to the mason of the ascending
pile.

'Put that pin rather more to the right--lower--stupid one! Do you not
observe how even those beautiful eyebrows are?--One would think you were
dressing Corinna, whose face is all of one side. Now put in the
flowers--what, fool!--not that dull pink--you are not suiting colors to the
dim cheek of Chloris: it must be the brightest flowers that can alone suit
the cheek of the young Julia.'

'Gently!' said the lady, stamping her small foot violently: 'you pull my
hair as if you were plucking up a weed!'

'Dull thing!' continued the directress of the ceremony. 'Do you not know
how delicate is your mistress?--you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of
the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband--that's right. Fair Julia, look in
the mirror; saw you ever anything so lovely as yourself?'

When, after innumerable comments, difficulties, and delays, the intricate
tower was at length completed, the next preparation was that of giving to
the eyes the soft languish, produced by a dark powder applied to the lids
and brows; a small patch cut in the form of a crescent, skillfully placed by
the rosy lips, attracted attention to their dimples, and to the teeth, to
which already every art had been applied in order to heighten the dazzle of
their natural whiteness.

To another slave, hitherto idle, was now consigned the charge of arranging
the jewels--the ear-rings of pearl (two to each ear)--the massive bracelets
of gold--the chain formed of rings of the same metal, to which a talisman
cut in crystals was attached--the graceful buckle on the left shoulder, in
which was set an exquisite cameo of Psyche--the girdle of purple riband,
richly wrought with threads of gold, and clasped by interlacing
serpents--and lastly, the various rings, fitted to every joint of the white
and slender fingers. The toilet was now arranged according to the last mode
of Rome. The fair Julia regarded herself with a last gaze of complacent
vanity, and reclining again upon her seat, she bade the youngest of her
slaves, in a listless tone, read to her the enamoured couplets of Tibullus.
This lecture was still proceeding, when a female slave admitted Nydia into
the presence of the lady of the place.

'Salve, Julia!' said the flower-girl, arresting her steps within a few paces
from the spot where Julia sat, and crossing her arms upon her breast. 'I
have obeyed your commands.'

'You have done well, flower-girl,' answered the lady. 'Approach--you may
take a seat.'

One of the slaves placed a stool by Julia, and Nydia seated herself.

Julia looked hard at the Thessalian for some moments in rather an
embarrassed silence. She then motioned her attendants to withdraw, and to
close the door. When they were alone, she said, looking mechanically from
Nydia, and forgetful that she was with one who could not observe her
countenance:

'You serve the Neapolitan, Ione?'

'I am with her at present,' answered Nydia.

'Is she as handsome as they say?'

'I know not,' replied Nydia. 'How can I judge?'

'Ah! I should have remembered. But thou hast ears, if not eyes. Do thy
fellow-slaves tell thee she is handsome? Slaves talking with one another
forget to flatter even their mistress.'

'They tell me that she is beautiful.'

'Hem!--say they that she is tall?'

'Yes.'

'Why, so am I. Dark haired?'

'I have heard so.'

'So am I. And doth Glaucus visit her much?'

'Daily' returned Nydia, with a half-suppressed sigh.

'Daily, indeed! Does he find her handsome?'

'I should think so, since they are so soon to be wedded.'

'Wedded!' cried Julia, turning pale even through the false roses on her
cheek, and starting from her couch. Nydia did not, of course, perceive the
emotion she had caused. Julia remained a long time silent; but her heaving
breast and flashing eyes would have betrayed, to one who could have seen,
the wound her vanity had sustained.

'They tell me thou art a Thessalian,' said she, at last breaking silence.

'And truly!'

'Thessaly is the land of magic and of witches, of talismans and of
love-philtres,' said Julia.

'It has ever been celebrated for its sorcerers,' returned Nydia, timidly.

'Knowest thou, then, blind Thessalian, of any love-charms?'

'I!' said the flower-girl, coloring; 'I! how should I? No, assuredly not!'

'The worse for thee; I could have given thee gold enough to have purchased
thy freedom hadst thou been more wise.'

'But what,' asked Nydia, 'can induce the beautiful and wealthy Julia to ask
that question of her servant? Has she not money, and youth, and loveliness?
Are they not love-charms enough to dispense with magic?'

'To all but one person in the world,' answered Julia, haughtily: 'but
methinks thy blindness is infectious; and... But no matter.'

'And that one person?' said Nydia, eagerly.

'Is not Glaucus,' replied Julia, with the customary deceit of her sex.
'Glaucus--no!'

Nydia drew her breath more freely, and after a short pause Julia
recommenced.

'But talking of Glaucus, and his attachment to this Neapolitan, reminded me
of the influence of love-spells, which, for ought I know or care, she may
have exercised upon him. Blind girl, I love, and--shall Julia live to say
it?--am loved not in return! This humbles--nay, not humbles--but it stings
my pride. I would see this ingrate at my feet--not in order that I might
raise, but that I might spurn him. When they told me thou wert Thessalian,
I imagined thy young mind might have learned the dark secrets of thy clime.'

'Alas! no, murmured Nydia: 'would it had!'

'Thanks, at least, for that kindly wish,' said Julia, unconscious of what
was passing in the breast of the flower-girl.

'But tell me--thou hearest the gossip of slaves, always prone to these dim
beliefs; always ready to apply to sorcery for their own low loves--hast thou
ever heard of any Eastern magician in this city, who possesses the art of
which thou art ignorant? No vain chiromancer, no juggler of the
market-place, but some more potent and mighty magician of India or of
Egypt?'

'Of Egypt?--yes!' said Nydia, shuddering. 'What Pompeian has not heard of
Arbaces?'

'Arbaces! true,' replied Julia, grasping at the recollection. 'They say he
is a man above all the petty and false impostures of dull pretenders--that
he is versed in the learning of the stars, and the secrets of the ancient
Nox; why not in the mysteries of love?'

'If there be one magician living whose art is above that of others, it is
that dread man,' answered Nydia; and she felt her talisman while she spoke.

'He is too wealthy to divine for money?' continued Julia, sneeringly. 'Can
I not visit him?'

'It is an evil mansion for the young and the beautiful,' replied Nydia. 'I
have heard, too, that he languishes in...'

'An evil mansion!' said Julia, catching only the first sentence. 'Why so?'

'The orgies of his midnight leisure are impure and polluted--at least, so
says rumor.'

'By Ceres, by Pan, and by Cybele! thou dost but provoke my curiosity,
instead of exciting my fears,' returned the wayward and pampered Pompeian.
'I will seek and question him of his lore. If to these orgies love be
admitted--why the more likely that he knows its secrets!'

Nydia did not answer.

'I will seek him this very day,' resumed Julia; 'nay, why not this very
hour?'

'At daylight, and in his present state, thou hast assuredly the less to
fear,' answered Nydia, yielding to her own sudden and secret wish to learn
if the dark Egyptian were indeed possessed of those spells to rivet and
attract love, of which the Thessalian had so often heard.

'And who dare insult the rich daughter of Diomed?' said Julia, haughtily.
'I will go.'

'May I visit thee afterwards to learn the result?' asked Nydia, anxiously.

'Kiss me for thy interest in Julia's honour,' answered the lady. 'Yes,
assuredly. This eve we sup abroad--come hither at the same hour to-morrow,
and thou shalt know all: I may have to employ thee too; but enough for the
present. Stay, take this bracelet for the new thought thou hast inspired me
with; remember, if thou servest Julia, she is grateful and she is generous.'

'I cannot take thy present,' said Nydia, putting aside the bracelet; 'but
young as I am, I can sympathize unbought with those who love--and love in
vain.'

'Sayest thou so!' returned Julia. 'Thou speakest like a free woman--and
thou shalt yet be free--farewell!'

Chapter VIII

JULIA SEEKS ARBACES. THE RESULT OF THAT INTERVIEW.

ARBACES was seated in a chamber which opened on a kind of balcony or portico
that fronted his garden. His cheek was pale and worn with the sufferings he
had endured, but his iron frame had already recovered from the severest
effects of that accident which had frustrated his fell designs in the moment
of victory. The air that came fragrantly to his brow revived his languid
senses, and the blood circulated more freely than it had done for days
through his shrunken veins.

'So, then,' thought he, 'the storm of fate has broken and blown over--the
evil which my lore predicted, threatening life itself, has chanced--and yet
I live! It came as the stars foretold; and now the long, bright, and
prosperous career which was to succeed that evil, if I survived it, smiles
beyond: I have passed--I have subdued the latest danger of my destiny. Now
I have but to lay out the gardens of my future fate--unterrified and secure.
First, then, of all my pleasures, even before that of love, shall come
revenge! This boy Greek--who has crossed my passion--thwarted my
designs--baffled me even when the blade was about to drink his accursed
blood--shall not a second time escape me! But for the method of my
vengeance? Of that let me ponder well! Oh! Ate, if thou art indeed a
goddess, fill me with thy direst Inspiration!' The Egyptian sank into an
intent reverie, which did not seem to present to him any clear or
satisfactory suggestions. He changed his position restlessly, as he
revolved scheme after scheme, which no sooner occurred than it was
dismissed: several times he struck his breast and groaned aloud, with the
desire of vengeance, and a sense of his impotence to accomplish it. While
thus absorbed, a boy slave timidly entered the chamber.

A female, evidently of rank from her dress, and that of the single slave who
attended her, waited below and sought an audience with Arbaces.

'A female!' his heart beat quick. 'Is she young?'

'Her face is concealed by her veil; but her form is slight, yet round, as
that of youth.'

'Admit her,' said the Egyptian: for a moment his vain heart dreamed the
stranger might be Ione.

The first glance of the visitor now entering the apartment sufficed to
undeceive so erring a fancy. True, she was about the same height as Ione,
and perhaps the same age--true, she was finely and richly formed--but where
was that undulating and ineffable grace which accompanied every motion of
the peerless Neapolitan--the chaste and decorous garb, so simple even in the
care of its arrangement--the dignified yet bashful step--the majesty of
womanhood and its modesty?

'Pardon me that I rise with pain,' said Arbaces, gazing on the stranger: 'I
am still suffering from recent illness.'

'Do not disturb thyself, O great Egyptian!' returned Julia, seeking to
disguise the fear she already experienced beneath the ready resort of
flattery; 'and forgive an unfortunate female, who seeks consolation from thy
wisdom.'

'Draw near, fair stranger,' said Arbaces; 'and speak without apprehension or
reserve.'

Julia placed herself on a seat beside the Egyptian, and wonderingly gazed
around an apartment whose elaborate and costly luxuries shamed even the
ornate enrichment of her father's mansion; fearfully, too, she regarded the
hieroglyphical inscriptions on the walls--the faces of the mysterious
images, which at every corner gazed upon her--the tripod at a little
distance--and, above all, the grave and remarkable countenance of Arbaces
himself: a long white robe like a veil half covered his raven locks, and
flowed to his feet: his face was made even more impressive by its present
paleness; and his dark and penetrating eyes seemed to pierce the shelter of
her veil, and explore the secrets of her vain and unfeminine soul.

'And what,' said his low, deep voice, 'brings thee, O maiden! to the house
of the Eastern stranger?'

'His fame,' replied Julia.

'In what?' said he, with a strange and slight smile.

'Canst thou ask, O wise Arbaces? Is not thy knowledge the very gossip theme
of Pompeii?'

'Some little lore have I indeed, treasured up,' replied Arbaces: 'but in
what can such serious and sterile secrets benefit the ear of beauty?'

'Alas!' said Julia, a little cheered by the accustomed accents of adulation;
'does not sorrow fly to wisdom for relief, and they who love unrequitedly,
are not they the chosen victims of grief?'

'Ha!' said Arbaces, 'can unrequited love be the lot of so fair a form, whose
modelled proportions are visible even beneath the folds of thy graceful
robe? Deign, O maiden! to lift thy veil, that I may see at least if the
face correspond in loveliness with the form.'

Not unwilling, perhaps, to exhibit her charms, and thinking they were likely
to interest the magician in her fate, Julia, after some slight hesitation,
raised her veil, and revealed a beauty which, but for art, had been indeed
attractive to the fixed gaze of the Egyptian.

'Thou comest to me for advice in unhappy love,' said he; 'well, turn that
face on the ungrateful one: what other love-charm can I give thee?'

'Oh, cease these courtesies!' said Julia; 'it is a love-charm, indeed, that
I would ask from thy skill!'

'Fair stranger!' replied Arbaces, somewhat scornfully, 'love-spells are not
among the secrets I have wasted the midnight oil to attain.'

'Is it indeed so? Then pardon me, great Arbaces, and farewell!'

'Stay,' said Arbaces, who, despite his passion for Ione, was not unmoved by
the beauty of his visitor; and had he been in the flush of a more assured
health, might have attempted to console the fair Julia by other means than
those of supernatural wisdom.

'Stay; although I confess that I have left the witchery of philtres and
potions to those whose trade is in such knowledge, yet am I myself not so
dull to beauty but that in earlier youth I may have employed them in my own
behalf. I may give thee advice, at least, if thou wilt be candid with me.
Tell me then, first, art thou unmarried, as thy dress betokens?'

'Yes,' said Julia.

'And, being unblest with fortune, wouldst thou allure some wealthy suitor?'

'I am richer than he who disdains me.'

'Strange and more strange! And thou lovest him who loves not thee?'

'I know not if I love him,' answered Julia, haughtily; 'but I know that I
would see myself triumph over a rival--I would see him who rejected me my
suitor--I would see her whom he has preferred in her turn despised.'

'A natural ambition and a womanly,' said the Egyptian, in a tone too grave
for irony. 'Yet more, fair maiden; wilt thou confide to me the name of thy
lover? Can he be Pompeian, and despise wealth, even if blind to beauty?'

'He is of Athens,' answered Julia, looking down.

'Ha!' cried the Egyptian, impetuously, as the blood rushed to his cheek;
'there is but one Athenian, young and noble, in Pompeii. Can it be Glaucus
of whom thou speakest!'

'Ah! betray me not--so indeed they call him.'

The Egyptian sank back, gazing vacantly on the averted face of the
merchant's daughter, and muttering inly to himself: this conference, with
which he had hitherto only trifled, amusing himself with the credulity and
vanity of his visitor--might it not minister to his revenge?'

'I see thou canst assist me not,' said Julia, offended by his continued
silence; 'guard at least my secret. Once more, farewell!'

'Maiden,' said the Egyptian, in an earnest and serious tone, 'thy suit hath
touched me--I will minister to thy will. Listen to me; I have not myself
dabbled in these lesser mysteries, but I know one who hath. At the base of
Vesuvius, less than a league from the city, there dwells a powerful witch;
beneath the rank dews of the new moon, she has gathered the herbs which
possess the virtue to chain Love in eternal fetters. Her art can bring thy
lover to thy feet. Seek her, and mention to her the name of Arbaces: she
fears that name, and will give thee her most potent philtres.'

'Alas!' answered Julia, I know not the road to the home of her whom thou
speakest of: the way, short though it be, is long to traverse for a girl who
leaves, unknown, the house of her father. The country is entangled with wild
vines, and dangerous with precipitous caverns. I dare not trust to mere
strangers to guide me; the reputation of women of my rank is easily
tarnished--and though I care not who knows that I love Glaucus, I would not
have it imagined that I obtained his love by a spell.'

'Were I but three days advanced in health,' said the Egyptian, rising and
walking (as if to try his strength) across the chamber, but with irregular
and feeble steps, 'I myself would accompany thee. Well, thou must wait.'

'But Glaucus is soon to wed that hated Neapolitan.'

'Wed!'

'Yes; in the early part of next month.'

'So soon! Art thou well advised of this?'

'From the lips of her own slave.'

'It shall not be!' said the Egyptian, impetuously. 'Fear nothing, Glaucus
shall be thine. Yet how, when thou obtainest it, canst thou administer to
him this potion?'

'My father has invited him, and, I believe, the Neapolitan also, to a
banquet, on the day following to-morrow: I shall then have the opportunity
to administer it.'

'So be it!' said the Egyptian, with eyes flashing such fierce joy, that
Julia's gaze sank trembling beneath them. 'To-morrow eve, then, order thy
litter--thou hast one at thy command?'

'Surely--yes,' returned the purse-proud Julia.

'Order thy litter--at two miles' distance from the city is a house of
entertainment, frequented by the wealthier Pompeians, from the excellence of
its baths, and the beauty of its gardens. There canst thou pretend only to
shape thy course--there, ill or dying, I will meet thee by the statue of
Silenus, in the copse that skirts the garden; and I myself will guide thee
to the witch. Let us wait till, with the evening star, the goats of the
herdsmen are gone to rest; when the dark twilight conceals us, and none
shall cross our steps. Go home and fear not. By Hades, swears Arbaces, the
sorcerer of Egypt, that Ione shall never wed with Glaucus.'

'And that Glaucus shall be mine,' added Julia, filling up the incompleted
sentence.

'Thou hast said it!' replied Arbaces; and Julia, half frightened at this
unhallowed appointment, but urged on by jealousy and the pique of rivalship,
even more than love, resolved to fulfill it.

Left alone, Arbaces burst forth:

'Bright stars that never lie, ye already begin the execution of your
promises--success in love, and victory over foes, for the rest of my smooth
existence. In the very hour when my mind could devise no clue to the goal
of vengeance, have ye sent this fair fool for my guide?' He paused in deep
thought. 'Yes,' said he again, but in a calmer voice; 'I could not myself
have given to her the poison, that shall be indeed a philtre!--his death
might be thus tracked to my door. But the witch--ay, there is the fit, the
natural agent of my designs!'

He summoned one of his slaves, bade him hasten to track the steps of Julia,
and acquaint himself with her name and condition. This done, he stepped
forth into the portico. The skies were serene and clear; but he, deeply
read in the signs of their various change, beheld in one mass of cloud, far
on the horizon, which the wind began slowly to agitate, that a storm was
brooding above.

'It is like my vengeance,' said he, as he gazed; 'the sky is clear, but the
cloud moves on.'

Chapter IX

STORM IN THE SOUTH. THE WITCH'S CAVERN.

IT was when the heats of noon died gradually away from the earth, that
Glaucus and Ione went forth to enjoy the cooled and grateful air. At that
time, various carriages were in use among the Romans; the one most used by
the richer citizens, when they required no companion in their excursion, was
the biga, already described in the early portion of this work; that
appropriated to the matrons, was termed carpentum, which had commonly two
wheels; the ancients used also a sort of litter, a vast sedan-chair, more
commodiously arranged than the modern, inasmuch as the occupant thereof
could lie down at ease, instead of being perpendicularly and stiffly jostled
up and down. There was another carriage, used both for travelling and for
excursions in the country; it was commodious, containing three or four
persons with ease, having a covering which could be raised at pleasure; and,
in short, answering very much the purpose of (though very different in shape
from) the modern britska. It was a vehicle of this description that the
lovers, accompanied by one female slave of Ione, now used in their
excursion. About ten miles from the city, there was at that day an old
ruin, the remains of a temple, evidently Grecian; and as for Glaucus and
Ione everything Grecian possessed an interest, they had agreed to visit
these ruins: it was thither they were now bound.

Their road lay among vines and olive-groves; till, winding more and more
towards the higher ground of Vesuvius, the path grew rugged; the mules moved
slowly, and with labor; and at every opening in the wood they beheld those
grey and horrent caverns indenting the parched rock, which Strabo has
described; but which the various revolutions of time and the volcano have
removed from the present aspect of the mountain. The sun, sloping towards
his descent, cast long and deep shadows over the mountain; here and there
they still heard the rustic reed of the shepherd amongst copses of the
beechwood and wild oak. Sometimes they marked the form of the silk-haired
and graceful capella, with its wreathing horn and bright grey eye--which,
still beneath Ausonian skies, recalls the eclogues of Maro, browsing
half-way up the hills; and the grapes, already purple with the smiles of the
deepening summer, glowed out from the arched festoons, which hung pendent
from tree to tree. Above them, light clouds floated in the serene heavens,
sweeping so slowly athwart the firmament that they scarcely seemed to stir;
while, on their right, they caught, ever and anon, glimpses of the waveless
sea, with some light bark skimming its surface; and the sunlight breaking
over the deep in those countless and softest hues so peculiar to that
delicious sea.

'How beautiful!' said Glaucus, in a half-whispered tone, 'is that expression
by which we call Earth our Mother! With what a kindly equal love she pours
her blessings upon her children! and even to those sterile spots to which
Nature has denied beauty, she yet contrives to dispense her smiles: witness
the arbutus and the vine, which she wreathes over the arid and burning soil
of yon extinct volcano. Ah! in such an hour and scene as this, well might
we imagine that the Faun should peep forth from those green festoons; or,
that we might trace the steps of the Mountain Nymph through the thickest
mazes of the glade. But the Nymphs ceased, beautiful Ione, when thou wert
created!'

There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the
exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace. Strange and
prodigal exuberance, which soon exhausts itself by overflowing!

They arrived at the ruins; they examined them with that fondness with which
we trace the hallowed and household vestiges of our own ancestry--they
lingered there till Hesperus appeared in the rosy heavens; and then
returning homeward in the twilight, they were more silent than they had
been; for in the shadow and beneath the stars they felt more oppressively
their mutual love.

It was at this time that the storm which the Egyptian had predicted began to
creep visibly over them. At first, a low and distant thunder gave warning
of the approaching conflict of the elements; and then rapidly rushed above
the dark ranks of the serried clouds. The suddenness of storms in that
climate is something almost preternatural, and might well suggest to early
superstition the notion of a divine agency--a few large drops broke heavily
among the boughs that half overhung their path, and then, swift and
intolerably bright, the forked lightning darted across their very eyes, and
was swallowed up by the increasing darkness.

'Swifter, good Carrucarius!' cried Glaucus to the driver; 'the tempest comes
on apace.'

The slave urged on the mules--they went swift over the uneven and stony
road--the clouds thickened, near and more near broke the thunder, and fast
rushed the dashing rain.

'Dost thou fear?' whispered Glaucus, as he sought excuse in the storm to
come nearer to Ione.

'Not with thee,' said she, softly.

At that instant, the carriage, fragile and ill-contrived (as, despite their
graceful shapes, were, for practical uses, most of such inventions at that
time), struck violently into a deep rut, over which lay a log of fallen
wood; the driver, with a curse, stimulated his mules yet faster for the
obstacle, the wheel was torn from the socket, and the carriage suddenly
overset.

Glaucus, quickly extricating himself from the vehicle, hastened to assist
Ione, who was fortunately unhurt; with some difficulty they raised the
carruca (or carriage), and found that it ceased any longer even to afford
them shelter; the springs that fastened the covering were snapped asunder,
and the rain poured fast and fiercely into the interior.

In this dilemma, what was to be done? They were yet some distance from the
city--no house, no aid, seemed near.

'There is,' said the slave, 'a smith about a mile off; I could seek him, and
he might fasten at least the wheel to the carruca--but, Jupiter! how the
rain beats; my mistress will be wet before I come back.'

'Run thither at least,' said Glaucus; 'we must find the best shelter we can
till you return.'

The lane was overshadowed with trees, beneath the amplest of which Glaucus
drew Ione. He endeavored, by stripping his own cloak, to shield her yet
more from the rapid rain; but it descended with a fury that broke through
all puny obstacles: and suddenly, while Glaucus was yet whispering courage
to his beautiful charge, the lightning struck one of the trees immediately
before them, and split with a mighty crash its huge trunk in twain. This
awful incident apprised them of the danger they braved in their present
shelter, and Glaucus looked anxiously round for some less perilous place of
refuge. 'We are now,' said he, 'half-way up the ascent of Vesuvius; there
ought to be some cavern, or hollow in the vine-clad rocks, could we but find
it, in which the deserting Nymphs have left a shelter.' While thus saying he
moved from the trees, and, looking wistfully towards the mountain,
discovered through the advancing gloom a red and tremulous light at no
considerable distance. 'That must come,' said he, 'from the hearth of some
shepherd or vine-dresser--it will guide us to some hospitable retreat. Wilt
thou stay here, while I--yet no--that would be to leave thee to danger.'

'I will go with you cheerfully,' said Ione. 'Open as the space seems, it is
better than the treacherous shelter of these boughs.'

Half leading, half carrying Ione, Glaucus, accompanied by the trembling
female slave, advanced towards the light, which yet burned red and
steadfastly. At length the space was no longer open; wild vines entangled
their steps, and hid from them, save by imperfect intervals, the guiding
beam. But faster and fiercer came the rain, and the lightning assumed its
most deadly and blasting form; they were still therefore, impelled onward,
hoping, at last, if the light eluded them, to arrive at some cottage or some
friendly cavern. The vines grew more and more intricate--the light was
entirely snatched from them; but a narrow path, which they trod with labor
and pain, guided only by the constant and long-lingering flashes of the
storm, continued to lead them towards its direction. The rain ceased
suddenly; precipitous and rough crags of scorched lava frowned before them,
rendered more fearful by the lightning that illumined the dark and dangerous
soil. Sometimes the blaze lingered over the iron-grey heaps of scoria,
covered in part with ancient mosses or stunted trees, as if seeking in vain
for some gentler product of earth, more worthy of its ire; and sometimes
leaving the whole of that part of the scene in darkness, the lightning,
broad and sheeted, hung redly over the ocean, tossing far below, until its
waves seemed glowing into fire; and so intense was the blaze, that it
brought vividly into view even the sharp outline of the more distant
windings of the bay, from the eternal Misenum, with its lofty brow, to the
beautiful Sorrentum and the giant hills behind.

Our lovers stopped in perplexity and doubt, when suddenly, as the darkness
that gloomed between the fierce flashes of lightning once more wrapped them
round, they saw near, but high, before them, the mysterious light. Another
blaze, in which heaven and earth were reddened, made visible to them the
whole expanse; no house was near, but just where they had beheld the light,
they thought they saw in the recess of the cavern the outline of a human
form. The darkness once more returned; the light, no longer paled beneath
the fires of heaven, burned forth again: they resolved to ascend towards it;
they had to wind their way among vast fragments of stone, here and there
overhung with wild bushes; but they gained nearer and nearer to the light,
and at length they stood opposite the mouth of a kind of cavern, apparently
formed by huge splinters of rock that had fallen transversely athwart each
other: and, looking into the gloom, each drew back involuntarily with a
superstitious fear and chill.

A fire burned in the far recess of the cave; and over it was a small
cauldron; on a tall and thin column of iron stood a rude lamp; over that
part of the wall, at the base of which burned the fire, hung in many rows,
as if to dry, a profusion of herbs and weeds. A fox, couched before the
fire, gazed upon the strangers with its bright and red eye--its hair
bristling--and a low growl stealing from between its teeth; in the centre of
the cave was an earthen statue, which had three heads of a singular and
fantastic cast: they were formed by the real skulls of a dog, a horse, and a
boar; a low tripod stood before this wild representation of the popular
Hecate.

But it was not these appendages and appliances of the cave that thrilled the
blood of those who gazed fearfully therein--it was the face of its inmate.
Before the fire, with the light shining full upon her features, sat a woman
of considerable age. Perhaps in no country are there seen so many hags as
in Italy--in no country does beauty so awfully change, in age, to
hideousness the most appalling and revolting. But the old woman now before
them was not one of these specimens of the extreme of human ugliness; on the
contrary, her countenance betrayed the remains of a regular but high and
aquiline order of feature: with stony eyes turned upon them--with a look
that met and fascinated theirs--they beheld in that fearful countenance the
very image of a corpse!--the same, the glazed and lustreless regard, the
blue and shrunken lips, the drawn and hollow jaw--the dead, lank hair, of a
pale grey--the livid, green, ghastly skin, which seemed all surely tinged
and tainted by the grave!

'It is a dead thing,' said Glaucus.

'Nay--it stirs--it is a ghost or larva,' faltered Ione, as she clung to the
Athenian's breast.

'Oh, away, away!' groaned the slave, 'it is the Witch of Vesuvius!'

'Who are ye?' said a hollow and ghostly voice. 'And what do ye here?'

The sound, terrible and deathlike as it was--suiting well the countenance of
the speaker, and seeming rather the voice of some bodiless wanderer of the
Styx than living mortal, would have made Ione shrink back into the pitiless
fury of the storm, but Glaucus, though not without some misgiving, drew her
into the cavern.

'We are storm-beaten wanderers from the neighboring city,' said he, 'and
decoyed hither by yon light; we crave shelter and the comfort of your
hearth.'

As he spoke, the fox rose from the ground, and advanced towards the
strangers, showing, from end to end, its white teeth, and deepening in its
menacing growl.

'Down, slave!' said the witch; and at the sound of her voice the beast
dropped at once, covering its face with its brush, and keeping only its
quick, vigilant eye fixed upon the invaders of its repose. 'Come to the fire
if ye will!' said she, turning to Glaucus and his companions. 'I never
welcome living thing--save the owl, the fox, the toad, and the viper--so I
cannot welcome ye; but come to the fire without welcome--why stand upon
form?'

The language in which the hag addressed them was a strange and barbarous
Latin, interlarded with many words of some more rude, and ancient dialect.
She did not stir from her seat, but gazed stonily upon them as Glaucus now
released Ione of her outer wrapping garments, and making her place herself
on a log of wood, which was the only other seat he perceived at hand--fanned
with his breath the embers into a more glowing flame. The slave, encouraged
by the boldness of her superiors, divested herself also of her long palla,
and crept timorously to the opposite corner of the hearth.

'We disturb you, I fear,' said the silver voice of Ione, in conciliation.

The witch did not reply--she seemed like one who has awakened for a moment
from the dead, and has then relapsed once more into the eternal slumber.

'Tell me,' said she, suddenly, and after a long pause, 'are ye brother and
sister?'

'No,' said Ione, blushing.

'Are ye married?'

'Not so,' replied Glaucus.

'Ho, lovers!--ha!--ha!--ha!' and the witch laughed so loud and so long that
the caverns rang again.

The heart of Ione stood still at that strange mirth. Glaucus muttered a
rapid counterspell to the omen--and the slave turned as pale as the cheek of
the witch herself.

'Why dost thou laugh, old crone?' said Glaucus, somewhat sternly, as he
concluded his invocation.

'Did I laugh?' said the hag, absently.

'She is in her dotage,' whispered Glaucus: as he said this, he caught the
eye of the hag fixed upon him with a malignant and vivid glare.

'Thou liest!' said she, abruptly.

'Thou art an uncourteous welcomer,' returned Glaucus.

'Hush! provoke her not, dear Glaucus!' whispered Ione.

'I will tell thee why I laughed when I discovered ye were lovers,' said the
old woman. 'It was because it is a pleasure to the old and withered to look
upon young hearts like yours--and to know the time will come when you will
loathe each other--loathe--loathe--ha!--ha!--ha!'

It was now Ione's turn to pray against the unpleasing prophecy.

'The gods forbid!' said she. 'Yet, poor woman, thou knowest little of love,
or thou wouldst know that it never changes.'

'Was I young once, think ye?' returned the hag, quickly; 'and am I old, and
hideous, and deathly now? Such as is the form, so is the heart.' With these
words she sank again into a stillness profound and fearful, as if the
cessation of life itself.

'Hast thou dwelt here long?' said Glaucus, after a pause, feeling
uncomfortably oppressed beneath a silence so appalling.

'Ah, long!--yes.'

'It is but a drear abode.'

'Ha! thou mayst well say that--Hell is beneath us!' replied the hag,
pointing her bony finger to the earth. 'And I will tell thee a secret--the
dim things below are preparing wrath for ye above--you, the young, and the
thoughtless, and the beautiful.'

'Thou utterest but evil words, ill becoming the hospitable,' said Glaucus;
'and in future I will brave the tempest rather than thy welcome.'

'Thou wilt do well. None should ever seek me--save the wretched!'

'And why the wretched?' asked the Athenian.

'I am the witch of the mountain,' replied the sorceress, with a ghastly
grin; 'my trade is to give hope to the hopeless: for the crossed in love I
have philtres; for the avaricious, promises of treasure; for the malicious,
potions of revenge; for the happy and the good, I have only what life
has--curses! Trouble me no more.

With this the grim tenant of the cave relapsed into a silence so obstinate
and sullen, that Glaucus in vain endeavored to draw her into farther
conversation. She did not evince, by any alteration of her locked and rigid
features, that she even heard him. Fortunately, however, the storm, which
was brief as violent, began now to relax; the rain grew less and less
fierce; and at last, as the clouds parted, the moon burst forth in the
purple opening of heaven, and streamed clear and full into that desolate
abode. Never had she shone, perhaps, on a group more worthy of the
painter's art. The young, the all-beautiful Ione, seated by that rude
fire--her lover already forgetful of the presence of the hag, at her feet,
gazing upward to her face, and whispering sweet words--the pale and
affrighted slave at a little distance--and the ghastly hag resting her
deadly eyes upon them; yet seemingly serene and fearless (for the
companionship of love hath such power) were these beautiful beings, things
of another sphere, in that dark and unholy cavern, with its gloomy
quaintness of appurtenance. The fox regarded them from his corner with his
keen and fiery eye: and as Glaucus now turned towards the witch, he
perceived for the first time, just under her seat, the bright gaze and
crested head of a large snake: whether it was that the vivid coloring of the
Athenian's cloak, thrown over the shoulders of Ione, attracted the reptile's
anger--its crest began to glow and rise, as if menacing and preparing itself
to spring upon the Neapolitan--Glaucus caught quickly at one of the
half-burned logs upon the hearth--and, as if enraged at the action, the
snake came forth from its shelter, and with a loud hiss raised itself on end
till its height nearly approached that of the Greek.

'Witch!' cried Glaucus, 'command thy creature, or thou wilt see it dead.'

'It has been despoiled of its venom!' said the witch, aroused at his threat;
but ere the words had left her lip, the snake had sprung upon Glaucus; quick
and watchful, the agile Greek leaped lightly aside, and struck so fell and
dexterous a blow on the head of the snake, that it fell prostrate and
writhing among the embers of the fire.

The hag sprung up, and stood confronting Glaucus with a face which would
have befitted the fiercest of the Furies, so utterly dire and wrathful was
its expression--yet even in horror and ghastliness preserving the outline
and trace of beauty--and utterly free from that coarse grotesque at which
the imaginations of the North have sought the source of terror. 'Thou
hast,' said she, in a slow and steady voice--which belied the expression of
her face, so much was it passionless and calm--'thou hast had shelter under
my roof, and warmth at my hearth; thou hast returned evil for good; thou
hast smitten and haply slain the thing that loved me and was mine: nay,
more, the creature, above all others, consecrated to gods and deemed
venerable by man,--now hear thy punishment. By the moon, who is the
guardian of the sorceress--by Orcus, who is the treasurer of wrath--I curse
thee! and thou art cursed! May thy love be blasted--may thy name be
blackened--may the infernals mark thee--may thy heart wither and scorch--may
thy last hour recall to thee the prophet voice of the Saga of Vesuvius! And
thou,' she added, turning sharply towards Ione, and raising her right arm,
when Glaucus burst impetuously on her speech:

'Hag!' cried he, 'forbear! Me thou hast cursed, and I commit myself to the
gods--I defy and scorn thee! but breathe but one word against yon maiden,
and I will convert the oath on thy foul lips to thy dying groan. Beware!'

'I have done,' replied the hag, laughing wildly; 'for in thy doom is she who
loves thee accursed. And not the less, that I heard her lips breathe thy
name, and know by what word to commend thee to the demons. Glaucus--thou
art doomed!' So saying, the witch turned from the Athenian, and kneeling
down beside her wounded favorite, which she dragged from the hearth, she
turned to them her face no more.

'O Glaucus!' said Ione, greatly terrified, 'what have we done?--Let us
hasten from this place; the storm has ceased. Good mistress, forgive
him--recall thy words--he meant but to defend himself--accept this
peace-offering to unsay the said': and Ione, stooping, placed her purse on
the hag's lap.

'Away!' said she, bitterly--'away! The oath once woven the Fates only can
untie. Away!'

'Come, dearest!' said Glaucus, impatiently. 'Thinkest thou that the gods
above us or below hear the impotent ravings of dotage? Come!'

Long and loud rang the echoes of the cavern with the dread laugh of the
Saga--she deigned no further reply.

The lovers breathed more freely when they gained the open air: yet the scene
they had witnessed, the words and the laughter of the witch, still fearfully
dwelt with Ione; and even Glaucus could not thoroughly shake off the
impression they bequeathed. The storm had subsided--save, now and then, a
low thunder muttered at the distance amidst the darker clouds, or a
momentary flash of lightning affronted the sovereignty of the moon. With
some difficulty they regained the road, where they found the vehicle already
sufficiently repaired for their departure, and the carrucarius calling
loudly upon Hercules to tell him where his charge had vanished.

Glaucus vainly endeavored to cheer the exhausted spirits of Ione; and scarce
less vainly to recover the elastic tone of his own natural gaiety. They
soon arrived before the gate of the city: as it opened to them, a litter
borne by slaves impeded the way.

'It is too late for egress,' cried the sentinel to the inmate of the litter.

'Not so,' said a voice, which the lovers started to hear; it was a voice
they well recognized. 'I am bound to the villa of Marcus Polybius. I shall
return shortly. I am Arbaces the Egyptian.'

The scruples of him at the gate were removed, and the litter passed close
beside the carriage that bore the lovers.

'Arbaces, at this hour!--scarce recovered too, methinks!--Whither and for
what can he leave the city?' said Glaucus.

'Alas!' replied Ione, bursting into tears, 'my soul feels still more and
more the omen of evil. Preserve us, O ye Gods! or a