Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century

closely packed,they poured the liquid cement, which had been mixed close at hand,over them. It hardened at once, and the dead were entombed forever.Then the box was lifted and the work of sepulture went on.

  While I stood watching the scene I heard a thrilling, ear-piercingshriek--a dreadful cry! A young man, who was helping to carry acorpse, let go his hold and fell down on the pavement. I went over tohim. He was writhing and moaning. He had observed something familiarabout the form he was bearing--it was the body of a woman. He hadpeered through the disheveled hair at the poor, agonized,blood-stained features, and recognized--_his wife!_

  One of the guards raised his whip to strike him, and shouted:

  "Here! Get up! None of this humbugging."

  "I caught the ruffian's arm. The poor wretch was embracing the deadbody, and moaning pitiful expressions of love and tenderness into theears that would never hear him more. The ruffian threatened me. Butthe mob was moved to mercy, and took my part; and even permitted thepoor creature to carry off his dead in his arms, out into the outerdarkness. God only knows where he could have borne it.

  I grew sick at heart. The whole scene was awful.

  I advanced toward the column. It was already several feet high, andladders were being made, up which the dead might be borne. Coffee andbread and meat were served out to the workers.

  I noticed a sneaking, ruffianly fellow, going about among theprisoners, peering into every face. Not far from me a ragged,hatless, gray-haired man, of over seventy, was helping another,equally old, to bear a heavy body to the ladders. The ruffian lookedfirst into the face of the man at the feet of the corpse; then hecame to the man at the head. He uttered an exclamation of delight.

  "Ha! you old scoundrel," he cried, drawing his pistol. "So I've foundyou. You're the man that turned my sick wife out of your house,because she couldn't pay the rent. I've got you now."

  The old man fell on his knees, and held up his hands, and begged formercy. I heard an explosion--a red spot suddenly appeared on hisforehead, and he fell forward, over the corpse he had beencarrying--dead.

  "Come! move lively!" cried one of the guards, snapping his whip;"carry them both to the workmen."

  I grew dizzy. Maximilian came up.

  "How pale you are," he said.

  "Take me away!" I exclaimed, "or I shall faint."

  We rode back in another chariot of revolution--a death-cart.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  THE SECOND DAY

  It was a dreadful night. Crowds of farmers from the surroundingcountry kept pouring into the city. They were no longer the honestyeomanry who had filled, in the old time, the armies of Washington,and Jackson, and Grant, and Sherman, with brave patriotic soldiers;but their brutalized descendants--fierce serfs--cruel andbloodthirsty peasants. Every man who owned anything was their enemyand their victim. They invaded the houses of friend and foe alike,and murdered men, women and children. Plunder! plunder! They had noother thought.

  One of our men came to me at midnight, and said:

  "Do you hear those shrieks?"

  "Yes," I replied.

  "They are murdering the family next door."

  These were pleasant, kindly people, who had never harmed any one. Butthis maelstroem swallows good and bad alike.

  Another came running to me, and cried:

  "They are attacking the house!"

  "Where?" I asked.

  "At the front door."

  "Throw over a hand-grenade," I said.

  There was a loud crash, and a scurrying of flying feet. The cowardlymiscreants had fled. They were murderers, not warriors.

  All night long the awful Bedlam raged. The dark streets swarmed.Three times we had to have recourse to the hand-grenades. Firessprang up all over the city, licking the darkness with their hideoustongues of flame, and revealing by their crimson glare the awfulsights of that unparalleled time. The dread came upon me: What ifsome wretch should fire a house in our block? How should we choosebetween the conflagration and those terrible streets? Would it not bebetter to be ashes and cinders, than to fall into the hands of thatdemoniacal mob?

  No one slept. Max sat apart and thought. Was he considering--toolate!--whether it was right to have helped produce this terriblecatastrophe? Early in the morning, accompanied by three of his men,he went out.

  We ate breakfast in silence. It seemed to me we had no right to eatin the midst of so much death and destruction.

  There was an alarm, and the firing of guns above us. Some miscreantshad tried to reach the roof of our house from the adjoiningbuildings. We rushed up. A lively fusillade followed. Our magazinerifles and hand-grenades were too much for them; some fell dead andthe rest beat a hasty retreat. They were peasants, searching forplunder.

  After awhile there came a loud rapping at the front door. I leanedover the parapet and asked who was there. A Tough-looking man replied:

  "I have a letter for you."

  Fearing some trick, to break into the house, I lowered a long cordand told him to tie the letter to it. He did so. I pulled up a largesheet of dirty wrapping-paper. There were some lines scrawled uponit, in lead-pencil, in the large hand of a schoolboy--almostundecipherable. With some study I made out these words:

  MISTER GABRIEL, MAX'S FRIEND: Caesar wants that thing to put on the front of the column.

  BILL.

  It took me a few minutes to understand it. At last I realized thatCaesar's officer--Bill--had sent for the inscription for the monument,about which Caesar had spoken to Max.

  I called down to the messenger to wait, and that I would give it tohim.

  I sat down, and, after some thought, wrote, on the back of thewrapping-paper, these words:

  THIS GREAT MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY CAESAR LOMELLINI, COMMANDING GENERAL OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF DESTRUCTION, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MODERN CIVILIZATION.

  It is composed of the bodies of a quarter of a million of human beings, who were once the rulers, or the instruments of the rulers, of this mighty, but, alas! this ruined city.

  They were dominated by leaders who were altogether evil.

  They corrupted the courts, the juries, the newspapers, the legislatures, the congresses, the ballot-boxes and the hearts and souls of the people.

  They formed gigantic combinations to plunder the poor; to make the miserable more miserable; to take from those who had least and give it to those who had most.

  They used the machinery of free government to effect oppression; they made liberty a mockery, and its traditions a jest; they drove justice from the land and installed cruelty, ignorance, despair and vice in its place.

  Their hearts were harder than the nether mill-stone; they degraded humanity and outraged God.

  At length indignation stirred in the vasty courts of heaven; and overburdened human nature rose in universal revolt on earth.

  By the very instruments which their own wickedness had created they perished; and here they lie, sepulchred in stone, and heaped around explosives as destructive as their own lives. We execrate their vices, while we weep for their misfortunes. They were the culmination of centuries of misgovernment; and they paid an awful penalty for the sins of generations of short-sighted

  and selfish ancestors, as well as for their own cruelty and wickedness.

  Let this monument, O man! stand forever.

  Should civilization ever revive on earth, let the human race come hither and look upon this towering shaft, and learn to restrain selfishness and live righteously. From this ghastly pile let it derive the great lesson, that no earthly government can endure which is not built on mercy, justice, truth and love.

  I tie
d the paper to the cord and lowered it down to the waitingmessenger.

  At noon Max returned. His clothes were torn, his face pale, his eyeswild-looking, and around his head he wore a white bandage, stainedwith his own blood. Christina screamed and his mother fainted.

  "What is the matter, Max?" I asked.

  "It is all in vain," he replied despairingly; "I thought I would beable to create order out of chaos and reconstruct society. But thatdream is past."

  "What has happened?" I asked.

  "I went this morning to Prince Cabano's palace to get Caesar to helpme. He had held high carnival all night and was beastly drunk, inbed. Then I went out to counsel with the mob. But another calamityhad happened. Last night the vice-president--the Jew--fled, in one ofthe Demons, carrying away one hundred million dollars that had beenleft in his charge."

  "Where did he go?" I asked.

  "No one knows. He took several of his trusted followers, of his ownnation, with him. It is