CHAPTER 22.
THE BANQUET OF FAMINE.
Of all prophecies, none are, perhaps, so frequently erroneous as thoseon which we are most apt to venture in endeavouring to foretell theeffect of outward events on the characters of men. In no form of ouranticipations are we more frequently baffled than in such attempts toestimate beforehand the influence of circumstance over conduct, notonly in others, but also even in ourselves. Let the event but happen,and men, whom we view by the light of our previous observation of them,act under it as the living contradictions of their own characters. Thefriend of our daily social intercourse, in the progress of life, andthe favourite hero of our historic studies, in the progress of thepage, astonish, exceed, or disappoint our expectations alike. We findit as vain to foresee a cause as to fix a limit for the arbitraryinconsistencies in the dispositions of mankind.
But, though to speculate upon the future conduct of others underimpending circumstances be but too often to expose the fallacy of ourwisest anticipations, to contemplate the nature of that conduct afterit has been displayed is a useful subject of curiosity, and may perhapsbe made a fruitful source of instruction. Similar events which succeedeach other at different periods are relieved from monotony, and derivenew importance from the ever-varying effects which they produce on thehuman character. Thus, in the great occurrence which forms thefoundation of our narrative, we may find little in the siege of Rome,looking at it as a mere event, to distinguish it remarkably from anyformer siege of the city--the same desire for glory and vengeance,wealth and dominion, which brought Alaric to her walls, brought otherinvaders before him. But if we observed the effect of the Gothicdescent upon Italy on the inhabitants of her capital, we shall findample matter for novel contemplation and unbounded surprise.
We shall perceive, as an astonishing instance of the inconsistencies ofthe human character, the spectacle of a whole people resolutely defyingan overwhelming foreign invasion at their very doors, just at theperiod when they had fallen most irremediably from the highest positionof national glory to the lowest depths of national degradation;resisting an all-powerful enemy with inflexible obstinacy, for thehonour of the Roman name, which they had basely dishonoured orcarelessly forgotten for ages past. We shall behold men who havehitherto laughed at the very name of patriotism, now starvingresolutely in their country's cause; who stopped at no villainy toobtain wealth, now hesitating to employ their ill-gotten gains in thepurchase of the most important of all gratifications--their ownsecurity and peace. Instances of the unimaginable effect produced bythe event of the siege of Rome on the characters of her inhabitantsmight be drawn from all classes, from the lowest to the highest, frompatrician to plebeian; but to produce them here would be to admit toolong an interruption in the progress of the present narrative. If weare to enter at all into detail on such a subject, it must be only in acase clearly connected with the actual requirements of our story; andsuch a case may be found, at this juncture, in the conduct of thesenator Vetranio, under the influence of the worst calamities attendingthe blockade of Rome by the Goths.
Who, it may be asked, knowing the previous character of this man, hisfrivolity of disposition, his voluptuous anxiety for unremittingenjoyment and ease, his horror of the slightest approaches ofaffliction or pain, would have imagined him capable of rejecting indisdain all the minor chances of present security and future prosperitywhich his unbounded power and wealth might have procured for him, evenin a famine-stricken city, and rising suddenly to the sublime ofcriminal desperation, in the resolution to abandon life as worthlessthe moment it had ceased to run in the easy current of all formeryears? Yet to this determination had he now arrived; and, still moreextraordinary, in this determination had he found others, of his ownpatrician order, to join him.
The reader will remember his wild announcement of his intended orgie tothe Prefect Pompeianus during the earlier periods of the siege; thatannouncement was now to be fulfilled. Vetranio had bidden his gueststo the Banquet of Famine. A chosen number of the senators of the greatcity were to vindicate their daring by dying the revellers that theyhad lived; by resigning in contempt all prospect of starving, like thecommon herd, on a lessening daily pittance of loathsome food; by makingtheir triumphant exit from a fettered and ungrateful life, drowned infloods of wine, and lighted by the fires of the wealthiest palace ofRome!
It had been intended to keep this frantic determination a profoundsecret, to let the mighty catastrophe burst upon the remaininginhabitants of the city like a prodigy from heaven; but the slavesintrusted with the organisation of the suicide banquet had been bribedto their tasks with wine, and in the carelessness of intoxication hadrevealed to others whatever they heard within the palace walls. Thenews passed from mouth to mouth. There was enough in the prospect ofbeholding the burning palace and the drunken suicide of its desperateguests to animate even the stagnant curiosity of a famishing mob.
On the appointed evening the people dragged their weary limbs from allquarters of the city towards the Pincian Hill. Many of them died onthe way; many lost their resolution to proceed to the end of theirjourney, and took shelter sullenly in the empty houses on the road;many found opportunities for plunder and crime as they proceeded, whichtempted them from their destination; but many persevered in theirpurpose--the living dragging the dying along with them, the desperatedriving the cowardly before them in malignant sport, until they gainedthe palace gates. It was by their voices, as they reached her ear fromthe street, that the fast-sinking faculties of Antonina had beenstartled, though not revived; and there, on the broad pavement, laythese citizens of a fallen city--a congregation of pestilence andcrime--a starving and an awful band!
The moon, brightened by the increasing darkness, now clearlyilluminated the street, and revealed, in a narrow space, a various andimpressive scene.
One side of the roadway in which stood Vetranio's palace was occupied,along each extremity, as far as the eye could reach at night, by thegroves and outbuildings attached to the senator's mansion. The palacegrounds, at the higher and farther end of the street--looking from thePincian Gate--crossed it by a wide archway, and then stretchedbackward, until they joined the trees of the little garden ofNumerian's abode. In a line with this house, but separated from it by ashort space, stood a long row of buildings, let out floor by floor toseparate occupants, and towering to an unwieldy altitude; for inancient Rome, as in modern London, in consequence of the high price ofland in an over-populated city, builders could only secure space in adwelling by adding inconveniently to its height. Beyond thesehabitations rose the trees surrounding another patrician abode; andbeyond that the houses took a sudden turn, and nothing more was visiblein a straight line but the dusky, indefinite objects of the distantview.
The whole appearance of the street before Vetranio's mansion, had itbeen unoccupied by the repulsive groups now formed in it, would havebeen eminently beautiful at the hours of which we now write. The noblysymmetrical frontage of the palace itself, with its graceful successionof long porticoes and colossal statues, contrasted by the picturesquelyirregular appearance of the opposite dwelling of Numerian and the loftyhouses by its side; the soft, indistinct masses of foliage runningparallel along the upper ends of the street, terminated and connectedby the archway garden across the road, on which was planted a group oftall pine-trees, rising in gigantic relief against the transparent sky;the brilliant light streaming across the pavement from Vetranio'sgaily-curtained windows, immediately opposed by the tranquil moonlightwhich lit the more distant view--formed altogether a prospect in whichthe natural and the artificial were mingled together in the mostexquisite proportions--a prospect whose ineffable poetry and beautymight, on any other night, have charmed the most careless eye andexalted the most frivolous mind. But now, overspread as it was bygroups of people gaunt with famine and hideous with disease; startledas it was, at gloomy intervals, by contending cries of supplication,defiance, and despair--its brightest beauties of Nature and Artappeared but to shine with
an aspect of bitter mockery around the humanmisery which their splendour disclosed.
Upwards of a hundred people--mostly of the lowest orders--werecongregated before the senator's devoted dwelling. Some few among thempassed slowly to and fro in the street, their figures gliding shadowyand solemn through the light around them; but the greater number lay onthe pavement before the wall of Numerian's dwelling and the doorways ofthe lofty houses by its side. Illuminated by the full glare of thelight from the palace windows, these groups, huddled together in thedistorted attitudes of suffering and despair, assumed a fearful andunearthly appearance. Their shrivelled faces, their tattered clothing,their wan forms, here prostrate, there half-raised, were bathed in asteady red glow. High above them, at the windows of the tall houses,now tenanted in every floor by the dead, appeared a few figures (themercenary guardians of the dying within) bending forward to look outupon the palace opposite--their haggard faces showing pale in the clearmoonlight. Sometimes their voices were heard calling in mockery to themass of people below to break down the strong steel gates of thepalace, and tear the full wine-cup from its master's lips. Sometimesthose beneath replied with execrations, which rose wildly mingled withthe wailing of women and children, the moans of the plague-stricken,and the supplications of the famished to the slaves passing backwardsand forwards behind the palace railings for charity and help.
In the intervals, when the tumult of weak voices was partially lulled,there was heard a dull, regular, beating sound, produced by those whohad found dry bones on their road to the palace, and were pounding themon the pavement, in sheltered places, for food. The wind, which hadbeen refreshing during the day, had changed at sunset, and now swept upslowly over the street in hot, faint gusts, plague-laden, from theEast. Particles of the ragged clothing on some prostrate forms lyingmost exposed in its course waved slowly to and fro, as it passed, likebanners planted by Death on the yielding defences of the citadel ofLife. It wound through the open windows of the palace, hot andmephitic, as if tainted with the breath of the foul and furious wordswhich it bore onward into the banqueting-hall of the senator's recklessguests. Driven over such scenes as now spread beneath it, it derivedfrom them a portentous significance; it seemed to blow like anatmosphere exuded from the furnace-depths of centre earth, breathingsinister warnings of some deadly convulsion in the whole fabric ofNature over the thronged and dismal street.
Such was the prospect before the palace, and such the spectatorsassembled in ferocious anxiety to behold the destruction of thesenator's abode. Meanwhile, within the walls of the building, thebeginning of the fatal orgie was at hand.
It had been covenanted by the slaves (who, during the calamities in thebesieged city, had relaxed in their accustomed implicit obedience totheir master with perfect impunity), that, as soon as the last laboursof preparation were completed, they should be free to consult their ownsafety by quitting the devoted palace. Already some of the weakest andmost timid of their numbers might be seen passing out hastily into thegardens by the back gates, like engineers who had fired a train, andwere escaping ere the explosion burst forth. Those among the menialswho still remained in the palace were for the greater part occupied indrinking from the vases of wine which had been placed before them, topreserve to the last moment their failing strength.
The mockery of festivity had been extended even to their dresses--greenliveries girt with cherry-coloured girdles arrayed their wasted forms.They drank in utter silence. Not the slightest appearance of revelryor intoxication prevailed among their ranks. Confusedly huddledtogether, as if for mutual protection, they ever and anon cast quickglances of suspicion and apprehension upon some six or eight of thesuperior attendants of the palace, who walked backwards and forwards atthe outer extremity of the hall occupied by their comrades, andoccasionally advancing along the straight passages before them to thefront gates of the building, appeared to be exchanging furtive signalswith some of the people in the street. Reports had been vaguely spreadof a secret conspiracy between some of the principal of the slaves andcertain chosen ruffians of the populace, to murder all the inmates ofthe palace, seize on its treasures, and, opening the city gates to theGoths, escape with their booty during the confusion of the pillage ofRome. Nothing had as yet been positively discovered; but the fewattendants who kept ominously apart from the rest were unanimouslysuspected by their fellows, who now watched them over their wine-cupswith anxious eyes. Different as was the scene among the slaves stillleft in the palace from the scene among the people dispersed in thestreet, the one was nevertheless in its own degree as gloomilysuggestive of some great impending calamity as the other.
The grand banqueting-hall of the palace, prepared though it now was forfestivity, wore a changed and melancholy aspect.
The massive tables still ran down the whole length of the noble room,surrounded by luxurious couches, as in former days, but not a vestigeof food appeared upon their glittering surfaces. Rich vases, flasks,and drinking-cups, all filled with wine, alone occupied the festalboard. Above, hanging low from the ceiling, burnt ten large lamps,corresponding to the number of guests assembled, as the only procurablerepresentatives of the hundreds of revellers who had feasted atVetranio's expense during the brilliant nights that were now passed forever. At the lower end of the room, beyond the grand door of entrance,hung a thick black curtain, apparently intended to conceal mysteriouslysome object behind it. Before the curtain burnt a small lamp of yellowglass, raised upon a high gilt pole, and around and beneath it, heapedagainst the side walls, and over part of the table, lay a various andconfused mass of rich objects, all of a nature more or lessinflammable, and all besprinkled with scented oils. Hundreds of yardsof gorgeously variegated hangings, rolls upon rolls of manuscripts,gaudy dresses of all colours, toys, utensils, innumerable articles offurniture formed in rare and beautifully inlaid woods, were carelesslyflung together against the walls of the apartment, and rose hightowards its ceiling.
On every part of the tables not occupied by the vases of wine were laidgold and jewelled ornaments which dazzled the eye by their brilliancy;while, in extraordinary contrast to the magnificence thus profuselydisplayed, there appeared in one of the upper corners of the hall anold wooden stand covered by a coarse cloth, on which were placed one ortwo common earthenware bowls, containing what my be termed a 'mash' ofboiled bran and salted horseflesh. Any repulsive odour which mighthave arisen from this strange compound was overpowered by the variousperfumes sprinkled about the room, which, mingling with the hot breezeswafted through the windows from the street, produced an atmosphere asoppressive and debilitating, in spite of its artificial allurements tothe sense of smell, as the air of a dungeon or the vapours of a marsh.
Remarkable as was the change in the present appearance of thebanqueting-hall, it was but the feeble reflection of the alteration forthe worse in the aspect of the host and his guests. Vetranio reclinedat the head of the table, dressed in a scarlet mantle. An embroideredtowel with purple tassels and fringes, connected with rings of gold,fell over his breast, and silver and ivory bracelets were clasped roundhis arms. But of the former man the habiliments were all thatremained. His head was bent forward, as if with the weakness of age;his emaciated arms seemed barely able to support the weight of theornaments which glittered on them; his eyes had contracted a wild,unsettled expression; and a deadly paleness overspread the once plumpand jovial cheeks which so many mistresses had kissed in mercenaryrapture in other days. Both in countenance and manner the elegantvoluptuary of our former acquaintance at the Court of Ravenna wasentirely and fatally changed. Of the other eight patricians who lay onthe couches around their altered host--some wild and reckless, somegloomy and imbecile--all had suffered in the ordeal of the siege, thefamine, and the pestilence, like him.
Such were the members of the assemblage, represented from the ceilingby nine of the burning lamps. The tenth and last lamp indicated thepresence of one more guest who reclined a little apart from the rest.
This man
was hump-backed; his gaunt, bony features were repulsivelydisproportioned to his puny frame, which looked doubly contemptible,enveloped as it was in an ample tawdry robe. Sprung from the lowestranks of the populace, he had gradually forced himself into the favourof his superiors by his skill in coarse mimicry, and his readiness inministering to the worst vices of all who would employ him. Havinglost the greater part of his patrons during the siege, finding himselfabandoned to starvation on all sides, he had now, as a last resource,obtained permission to participate in the Banquet of Famine, to enlivenit by a final exhibition of his buffoonery, and to die with hismasters, as he had lived with them--the slave, the parasite, and theimitator of the lowest of their vices and the worst of their crimes.
At the commencement of the orgie, little was audible beyond the clashof the wine-cups, the low occasional whispering of the revellers, andthe confused voices of the people without, floating through the windowfrom the street. The desperate compact of the guests, now that itsexecution had actually begun, awed them at first in spite ofthemselves. At length, when there was a lull of all sounds--when atemporary calm prevailed over the noises outside--when the wine-cupswere emptied, and left for a moment ere they were filledagain--Vetranio feebly rose, and, announcing with a mocking smile thathe was about to speak a funeral oration over his friends and himself,pointed to the wall immediately behind him as to an object fitted toawaken the astonishment or the hilarity of his moody guests.
Against the upper part of the wall were fixed various small statues inbronze and marble, all representing the owner of the palace, and allhung with golden plates. Beneath these appeared the rent-roll of hisestates, written in various colours on white vellum, and beneath that,scratched on the marble in faint irregular characters, was no less anobject than his own epitaph, composed by himself. It may be translatedthus:--
Stop, Spectator! If thou has reverently cultivated the pleasures of the taste, pause amid these illustrious ruins of what was once a palace, and peruse with respect on this stone the epitaph of VETRANIO, a senator. He was the first man who invented a successful nightingale sauce; his bold and creative genius added much, and would have added more, to THE ART OF COOKERY; but, alas for the interests of science! he lived in the days when the Gothic barbarians besieged THE IMPERIAL CITY; famine left him no matter for gustatory experiment; and pestilence deprived him of cooks to enlighten! Opposed at all points by the force of adverse circumstances, finding his life of no further use to the culinary interests of Rome, he called his chosen friends together to assist him, conscientiously drank up every drop of wine remaining in his cellars, lit the funeral pile of himself and his guests, in the banqueting-hall of his own palace, and died, as he had lived, the patriotic CATO of his country's gastronomy!
'Behold!' cried Vetranio, pointing triumphantly to the epitaph--'beholdin every line of those eloquent letters at once the seal of my resoluteadherence to the engagement that unites us here, and the foundation ofmy just claim to the reverence of posterity on the most useful of thearts which I exercised for the benefit of my species! Read, friends,brethren, fellow-martyrs of glory, and, as you read, rejoice with meover the hour of our departure from the desecrated arena, no longerworthy the celebration of the Games of Life! Yet, ere the feastproceeds, hear me while I speak--I make my last oration as the arbiterof our funeral sports, as the host of the Banquet of Famine!
'Who would sink ignobly beneath the slow superiority of starvation, orperish under the quickly glancing steel of the barbarian conqueror'ssword, when such a death as ours is offered to the choice?--when wineflows bright, to drown sensation in oblivion, and a palace and itstreasures furnish alike the scene of the revel and the radiant funeralpile? The mighty philosophers of India--the inspiredGymnosophists--died as we shall die! Calanus before Alexander, Zamarusin the presence of Augustus, lit the fires that consumed them! Let usfollow their glorious example! No worms will prey upon our bodies, nohired mourners will howl discordant at our funerals! Purified in theradiance of primeval fire, we shall vanish triumphant from enemies andfriends--a marvel to the earth, a vision of glory to the godsthemselves!
'Is it a day more or a day less of life that is now of importance tous? No; it is only towards the easiest and the noblest death that ouraspirations can turn! Among our number there is now not one whom thecare of existence can further occupy!
'Here, at my right hand, reclines my estimable comrade of a thousandformer feasts, Furius Balburius Placidus, who, when we sailed on theLucrine Lake, was wont to complain of intolerable hardship if a flysettled on the gilded folds of his umbrella; who languished for a landof Cimmerian darkness if a sunbeam penetrated the silken awnings of hisgarden-terrace; and who now wrangles for a mouthful of horseflesh withthe meanest of his slaves, and would exchange the richest of hiscountry villas for a basket of dirty bread! O Furius BalburiusPlacidus, of what further use is life to thee?
'There, at my left, I discern the changed though still expressivecountenance of the resolute Thascius, he who chastised a slave with ahundred lashes if his warm water was not brought immediately at hiscommand; he whose serene contempt for every member of the human speciesby himself once ranked him among the greatest of human philosophers;even he now wanders through his palace unserved, and fawns upon theplebeian who will sell him a measure of wretched bran! Oh, admiredfriend, oh, rightly reasoning Thascius, say, is there anything in Romewhich should delay thee on thy journey to the Elysian Fields?
'Farther onward at the table, drinking largely while I speak, I behold,O Marcus Moecius Moemmius, thy once plump and jovial form!--thou, informer days accustomed to rejoice in the length of thy name, because itenabled thy friends to drink the more in drinking a cup to each letterof it, tell me what banqueting-hall is now open to thee but this?--andthus desolate in the city of thy social triumphs, what shoulddisincline thee to make of our festal solemnity thy last revel on earth?
'Thou, too, facetious hunchback, prince of parasites, unscrupulousReburrus, where, but at this banquet of famine, will thy buffoonery nowprocure for thee a draught of reviving wine? Thy masters haveabandoned thee to thy native dunghill! No more shalt thou wheedle forthem when they borrow, or bully for them when they pay! No morecharges of poisoning or magic shalt thou forge to imprison theirtroublesome creditors! Oh, officious sycophant, thy occupations are nomore! Drink while thou canst, and then resign thy carcass to congenialmire!
'And you, my five remaining friends, whom--little desirous of furtherdelay--I will collectively address, think on the days when thesuspicion of an infectious malady in any one of your companions wassufficient to separate you from the dearest of them; when the slaveswho came to you from their palaces underwent long ceremonies ofablution before they approached your presence; and remembering this,reflect that most, perhaps all of us, now meet here plague-taintedalready; and then say, of what advantage is it to languish for a lifewhich is yours no longer?
'No, my friends, my brethren of the banquet; feeling that when life isworthless it is folly to live, you cannot shrink from the loftyresolution by which we are bound, you cannot pause on our joyfuljourney of departure from the scenes of earth--I wrong you even by adoubt! Let me now, rather, ask your attention for a worthiersubject--the enumeration of the festal ceremonies by which the progressof the banquet will be marked. That task concluded, that last ceremonyof my last welcome to you these halls duly performed, I join you oncemore in your final homage to the deity of our social lives--the God ofWine!
'It is not unknown to you--learned as you are in the jovial antiquitiesof the table--that it was, among some of the ancients, a custom for amaster-spirit of philosophy to preside--the teacher as well as theguest--at their feasts. This usage it has been my care to revive, and,as this four meeting is unparalleled in its heroic design, so it was myambition to bid to it one unparalleled, either as a teacher or a guest.Fired by an original idea, unobserved of my slave
s, aided only by mysinging-boy, the faithful Glyco, I have succeeded in placing behindthat black curtain such an associate of our revels as you have neverfeasted with before, whose appearance at the fitting moment must strikeyou irresistibly with astonishment, and whose discourse--not of humanwisdom only--will be inspired by the midnight secrets of the tomb. Bymy side, on this parchment, lies the formulary of questions to beaddressed by Reburrus, when the curtain is withdrawn, to the Oracle ofthe Mysteries of other Spheres.
'Before you, behold in those vases all that remains of my oncewell-stocked cellars, and all that is provided for the palates of myguests! We sit at the Banquet of Famine, and no coarser sustenance thaninspiring wine finds admittance at the Bacchanalian board. Yet, shouldany among us, in his last moments, be feeble enough to pollute his lipswith nourishment alone worthy of the vermin of the earth, let him seekthe wretched and scanty table, type of the wretched and scanty foodthat covers it, placed yonder in obscurity behind me. There will hefind (in all barely sufficient for one man's poorest meal) the lastmorsels of the vilest nourishment left in the palace. For me, myresolution is fixed--it is only the generous wine-cup that shall nowapproach my lips!
'Above me are the ten lamps, answering to the number of my friends hereassembled. One after another, as the wine overpowers us, those burningimages of life will be extinguished in succession by the guests whoremain proof against our draughts; and the last of these, lighting thistorch at the last lamp, will consummate the banquet, and celebrate itsglorious close, by firing the funeral pile of my treasures heapedyonder against my palace walls! If my powers fail me before yours,swear to me that whoever among you is able to lift the cup to his lipsafter it has dropped from the hands of the rest, will fire the pile!Swear it by your lost mistresses, your lost friends, your losttreasures!--by your own lives, devoted to the pleasures of wine and thepurification of fire!'
As, with flashing eyes and flushed countenance, Vetranio sank back onhis couch, his companions, inflamed with the wine they had alreadydrunk, arose cup in hand, and turned towards him. Their voices,discordantly mingled, pronounced the oath together; then, as theyresumed their former positions, their eyes all turned towards the blackcurtain in ardent expectation.
They had observed the sinister and sarcastic expression of Vetranio'seye as he spoke of his concealed guest; they knew that the hunchbackReburrus possessed, among his other powers of buffoonery, the art ofventriloquism; and they suspected the presence of some hideous orgrotesque image of a heathen god or demon in the hidden recess, whichthe jugglery of the parasite was to gift with the capacity of speech.Blasphemous comments upon life, death, and immortality were eagerlyawaited. The general impatience for the withdrawal of the curtain wasperceived by Vetranio, who, waving his hand for silence,authoritatively exclaimed--
'The hour has not yet arrived. More draughts must be drunk, morelibations poured out, ere the mystery of the curtain is revealed! Ho,Glyco!' he continued, turning towards the singing-boy, who had silentlyentered the room, 'the moment is yours! Tune your lyre, and recite mylast ode, which I have addressed to you! Let the charms of Poetrypreside over the feast of Death!'
The boy advanced, trembling; his once ruddy face was colourless andhaggard; his eyes were fixed with a look of rigid terror on the blackcurtain; his features palpably expressed the presence within him ofsome secret and overwhelming recollection which had crushed all hisother faculties and perceptions. Steadily, almost guiltily, avertinghis face from his master's countenance, he stood by Vetranio's couch, afrail and fallen being, a mournful spectacle of perverted docility anddegraded youth.
Still true, however, to the duties of his vocation, he ran his thin,trembling fingers over the lyre, and mechanically preluded thecommencement of the ode. But during the silence of attention which nowprevailed, the confused noises from the people in the street penetratedmore distinctly into the banqueting-room; and at this moment, highabove them all--hoarse, raving, terrible, rose the voice of one man.
'Tell me not,' it cried, 'of perfumes wafted from the palace!--foulvapours flow from it!--see, they sink, suffocating over me!--they bathesky and earth, and men who move around us, in fierce, green light!'
Then other voices of men and women, shrill and savage, broke forth ininterruption together:--'Peace, Davus! you awake the dead about you!''Hide in the darkness; you are plague-struck; your skin is shrivelled;your gums are toothless!' 'When the palace is fired you shall be flunginto the flames to purify your rotten carcass!'
'Sing!' cried Vetranio furiously, observing the shudders that ran overthe boy's frame and held him speechless. 'Strike the lyre, asTimotheus struck it before Alexander! Drown in melody the barking ofthe curs who wait for our offal in the street!'
Feebly and interruptedly the terrified boy began; the wild continuousnoises of the moaning voices from without sounding their awfulaccompaniment to the infidel philosophy of his song as he breathed itforth in faint and faltering accents. It ran thus:--
TO GLYCO
Ah, Glyco! why in flow'rs array'd? Those festive wreaths less quickly fade Than briefly-blooming joy! Those high-prized friends who share your mirth Are counterfeits of brittle earth, False coin'd in Death's alloy!
The bliss your notes could once inspire, When lightly o'er the god-like lyre Your nimble fingers pass'd, Shall spring the same from others' skill-- When you're forgot, the music still The player shall outlast!
The sun-touch'd cloud that mounts the sky, That brightly glows to warm the eye, Then fades we know not where, Is image of the little breath Of life--and then, the doom of Death That you and I must share!
Helpless to make or mar our birth, We blindly grope the ways of earth, And live our paltry hour; Sure, that when life has ceased to please, To die at will, in Stoic ease, Is yielded to our pow'r!
Who, timely wise, would meanly wait The dull delay of tardy Fate, When Life's delights are shorn? No! When its outer gloss has flown, Let's fling the tarnish'd bauble down As lightly as 'twas worn.
'A health to Glyco! A deep draught to a singer from heaven come downupon earth!' cried the guests, seizing their wine-cups, as the ode wasconcluded, and draining them to the last drop. But their drunkenapplause fell noiseless upon the ear to which it was addressed. Theboy's voice, as he sang the final stanza of the ode, had suddenlychanged to a shrill, almost an unearthly tone, then suddenly sank againas he breathed forth the last few notes; and now as his dissoluteaudience turned towards him with approving glances, they saw himstanding before them cold, rigid, and voiceless. The next instant hisfixed features were suddenly distorted, his whole frame collapsed as iftorn by an internal spasm--he fell back heavily to the floor. Thosearound approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms.His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it;the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the great despot,Crime--'Be free!'
'We have heard the note of the swan singing its own funeral hymn!' saidthe patrician Placidus, looking in maudlin pity from the corpse of theboy to the face of Vetranio, which presented for the moment aninvoluntary expression of grief and remorse.
'Our miracle of beauty and boy-god of melody has departed before us tothe Elysian fields!' muttered the hunchback Reburrus, in harsh,sarcastic accents.
Then, during the short silence that ensued, the voices from the street,joined on this occasion to a noise of approaching footsteps on thepavement, became again distinctly audible in the banqueting-hall.'News! news!' cried these fresh auxiliaries of the horde alreadyassembled before the palace. 'Keep together, you who still care foryour lives! Solitary citizens have been lured by strange men intodesolate streets, and never seen again! Jars of newly salted flesh,which there were no beasts left in the city to supply, have been foundin a butcher's shop! Keep together! Keep together!'
'No cannibals among the mob shall pollute the body of my poor boy!'cried Vetranio, rousing himself from his sh
ort lethargy of grief. 'Ho!Thascius! Marcus! you who can yet stand! let us bear him to the funeralpile! He has died first--his ashes shall be first consumed!'
The two patricians arose as the senator spoke, and aided him incarrying the body to the lower end of the room, where it was laidacross the table, beneath the black curtain, and between the heaps ofdrapery and furniture piled up against each of the walls. Then, as hisguests reeled back to their places, Vetranio, remaining by the side ofthe corpse, and seizing in his unsteady hands a small vase of wine,exclaimed in tones of fierce exultation: 'The hour has come--theBanquet of Famine has ended--the Banquet of Death has begun! A healthto the guest behind the curtain! Fill--drink--behold!'
He drank deeply from the vase as he ceased, and drew aside the blackdrapery above him. A cry of terror and astonishment burst from theintoxicated guests as they beheld in the recess now disclosed to viewthe corpse of an aged woman, clothed in white, and propped up on ahigh, black throne, with the face turned towards them, and the arms(artificially supported) stretched out as if in denunciation over thebanqueting-table. The lamp of yellow glass, which burnt high above thebody, threw over it a lurid and flickering light; the eyes were open,the jaw had fallen, the long grey tresses drooped heavily on eitherside of the white hollow cheeks.
'Behold!' cried Vetranio, pointing to the corpse--'Behold my secretguest! Who so fit as the dead to preside at the Banquet of Death?Compelling the aid of Glyco, shrouded by congenial night, seizing onthe first corpse exposed before me in the street, I have set up there,unsuspected by all, the proper idol of our worship, and philosopher atour feast! Another health to the queen of the fatal revels--to theteacher of the mysteries of worlds unseen--rescued from rottingunburied, to perish in the consecrated flames with the senators ofRome! A health!--a health to the mighty mother, ere she begin themystic revelations! Fill--drink!'
Fired by their host's example, recovered from their momentary awe,already inflamed by the mad recklessness of debauchery, the guestsstarted from their couches, and with Bacchanalian shouts answeredVetranio's challenge. The scene at this moment approached thesupernatural. The wild disorder of the richly laden tables; the wineflowing over the floor from overthrown vases; the great lamps burningbright and steady over the confusion beneath; the fierce gestures, thedisordered countenances of the revellers, as they waved their jewelledcups over their heads in frantic triumph; and then the gloomy andterrific prospect at the lower end of the hall--the black curtain, thelight burning solitary on its high pole, the dead boy lying across thefestal table, the living master standing by his side, and, like an evilspirit, pointing upward in mockery to the white-robed corpse of thewoman, as it towered above all in its unnatural position, with itsskinny arms stretched forth, with its ghastly features appearing tomove as the faint and flickering light played over them,--producedtogether such a combination of scarce-earthly objects as might bepainted, but cannot be described. It was an embodiment of a sorcerer'svision--an apocalypse of sin triumphing over the world's last relics ofmortality in the vaults of death.
'To your task, Reburrus!' cried Vetranio, when the tumult was lulled;'to your questions without delay! Behold the teacher with whom you areto hold commune! Peruse carefully the parchment in your hand;question, and question loudly--you speak to the apathetic dead!'
For some time before the disclosure of the corpse, the hunchback hadbeen seated apart at the end of the banqueting-hall opposite theblack-curtained recess, conning over the manuscript containing the listof questions and answers which formed the impious dialogue he was tohold, by the aid of his powers of ventriloquism, with the violateddead. When the curtain was withdrawn he had looked up for a moment,and had greeted the appearance of the sight behind it with a laugh ofbrutal derision, returning immediately to the study of his blasphemousformulary which had been confided to his care. At the moment whenVetranio's commands were addressed to him he arose, reeled down theapartment towards the corpse, and, opening the dialogue as heapproached it, began in loud jeering tones: 'Speak, miserable relictof decrepit mortality!'
He paused as he uttered the last word, and gaining a point of view fromwhich the light of the lamp fell full upon the solemn and stonyfeatures of the corpse, looked up defiantly at it. In an instant afrightful change passed over him, the manuscript dropped from his hand,his deformed frame shrank and tottered, a shrill cry of recognitionburst from his lips, more like the yell of a wild beast than the voiceof a man.
The next moment, when the guests started up to question or deride him,he turned slowly and faced them. Desperate and drunken as they were,his look awed them into utter silence. His face was deathlike in hue,as the face of the corpse above him--thick drops of perspirationtrickled down it like rain--his dry glaring eyes wandered fiercely overthe startled countenances before him, and, as he extended towards themhis clenched hands, he muttered in a deep gasping whisper: 'Who hasdone this? MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'
As these few words--of awful import though of simple form--fell uponthe ears of those whom he addressed, such of them as were not alreadysunk in insensibility looked round on each other almost sobered for themoment, and all speechless alike. Not even the clash of the wine-cupswas now heard at the banqueting-table--nothing was audible but thesound, still fitfully rising and falling, of the voices of terror,ribaldry, and anguish from the street; and the hoarse convulsiveaccents of the hunchback, still uttering at intervals his fearfulidentification of the dead body above him: 'MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'
At length Vetranio, who was the first to recover himself, addressed theterrified and degraded wretch before him, in tones which, in spite ofhimself, betrayed, as he began, an unwonted tremulousness andrestraint. 'What, Reburrus!' he cried, 'are you already drunken toinsanity, that you call the first dead body which by chance Iencountered in the street, and by chance brought hither, your mother?Was it to talk of your mother, whom dead or alive we neither know norcare for, that you were admitted here? Son of obscurity and inheritorof rags, what are your plebeian parents to us!' he continued, refillinghis cup, and lashing himself into assumed anger as he spoke. 'To yourdialogue without delay, or you shall be flung from the windows tomingle with your rabble-equals in the street!'
Neither by word nor look did the hunchback answer the senator'smenaces. For him, the voice of the living was stifled in the presenceof the dead. The retribution that had gone forth against him hadstruck his moral, as a thunderbolt might have stricken his physicalbeing. His soul strove in agony within him, as he thought on the awfulfatality which had set the dead mother in judgment on the degradedson--which had directed the hand of the senator unwittingly to selectthe corpse of the outraged parent as the object for the infidelbuffoonery of the reckless child, at the very close of his impiouscareer. His past life rose before him, for the first time, like a foulvision, like a nightmare of horror, impurity, and crime. He staggeredup the room, groping his way along the wall, as if the darkness ofmidnight had closed round his eyes, and crouched down by the openwindow. Beneath him rose the evil and ominous voices from the street;around him spread the pitiless array of his masters; before himappeared the denouncing vision of the corpse.
He would have remained but a short time unmolested in his place ofrefuge, but for an event which now diverted from him the attention ofVetranio and his guests. Drinking furiously to drown all recollectionof the catastrophe they had just witnessed, three of the revellers hadalready suffered the worst consequences of an excess, which theirweakened frames were ill-fitted to bear. One after another, at shortintervals, they fell back senseless on their couches; and one afteranother, as they succumbed, the three lamps burning nearest to themwere extinguished. The same speedy termination to the debauch seemedto be in reserve for the rest of their companions, with the exceptionof Vetranio and the two patricians who reclined at his right hand andhis left. These three still preserved the appearance ofself-possession, but an ominous change had already overspread theircountenances. The expression of wild joviality, of fiercer
ecklessness, had departed from their wild features; they silentlywatched each other with vigilant and suspicious eyes; each in turn, ashe filled his wine-cup, significantly handled the torch with which thelast drinker was to fire the funeral pile. As the numbers of theirrivals decreased, and the flame of lamp after lamp was extinguished,the fatal contest for a suicide supremacy assumed a present andpowerful interest, in which all other purposes and objects wereforgotten. The corpse at the foot of the banqueting-table, and thewretch cowering in his misery at the window, were now alike unheeded.In the bewildered and brutalised minds of the guests, one sensationalone remained--the intensity of expectation which precedes the resultof a deadly strife.
But ere long--awakening the attention which might otherwise never havebeen aroused--the voice of the hunchback was heard, as the spirit ofrepentance now moved within him, uttering, in wild, moaning tones, astrange confession of degradation and sin--addressed to none;proceeding, independent of consciousness or will, from the depths ofhis stricken soul. He half raised himself, and fixed his sunken eyesupon the dead body, as these words dropped from his lips: 'It was thelast time that I beheld her alive, when she approached me--lonely, andfeeble, and poor--in the street, beseeching me to return to her in thedays of her old age and her solitude, and to remember how she had lovedme in my childhood for my very deformity, how she had watched methroughout the highways of Rome, that none should oppress or deride me!The tears ran down her cheeks, she knelt to me on the hard pavement,and I, who had deserted her for her poverty, to make myself a slave inpalaces among the accursed rich, flung down money to her as to a beggarwho wearied me, and passed on! She died desolate; her body layunburied, and I knew it not! The son who had abandoned the mothernever saw her more, until she rose before him there--avenging,horrible, lifeless--a sight of death never to leave him! Woe, woe tothe accursed in his deformity, and the accursed of his mother's corpse!'
He paused, and fell back again to the ground, grovelling andspeechless. The tyrannic Thascius, regarding him with a scowl ofdrunken wrath, seized an empty vase, and poising it in his unsteadyhand, prepared to hurl it at the hunchback's prostrate form, when againa single cry--a woman's--rising above the increasing uproar in thestreet, rang shrill and startling through the banqueting-hall. Thepatrician suspended his purpose as he heard it, mechanically listeningwith the half-stupid, half-cunning attention of intoxication. 'Help!help!' shrieked the voice beneath the palace windows--'he follows mestill--he attacked my dead child in my arms! As I flung myself downupon it on the ground, I saw him watching his opportunity to drag it bythe limbs from under me--famine and madness were in his eyes--I drovehim back--I fled--he follows me still!--save us, save us!'
At this instant her voice was suddenly stifled in the sound of fiercecries and rushing footsteps, followed by an appalling noise of heavyblows, directed at several points, against the steel railings beforethe palace doors. Between the blows, which fell slowly and together atregular intervals, the infuriated wretches, whose last exertions ofstrength were strained to the utmost to deal them, could be heardshouting breathlessly to each other: 'Strike harder, strike harder!the back gates are guarded against us by our comrades admitted to thepillage of the palace instead of us. You who would share the booty,strike firm! the stones are at your feet, the gates of entrance yieldbefore you.'
Meanwhile a confused sound of trampling footsteps and contending voicesbecame audible from the lower apartments of the palace. Doors wereviolently shut and opened--shouts and execrations echoed and re-echoedalong the lofty stone passages leading from the slaves' waiting-roomsto the grand staircase; treachery betrayed itself as openly within thebuilding as violence still proclaimed itself in the assault on thegates outside. The chief slaves had not been suspected by theirfellows without a cause; the bands of pillage and murder had beenorganised in the house of debauchery and death; the chosen adherentsfrom the street had been secretly admitted through the garden gates,and had barred and guarded them against further intrusion--another doomthan the doom they had impiously prepared for themselves wasapproaching the devoted senators, at the hands of the slaves whom theyhad oppressed, and the plebeians whom they had despised.
At the first sound of the assault without and the first intimation ofthe treachery within, Vetranio, Thascius, and Marcus started from theircouches; the remainder of the guests, incapable either of thought oraction, lay, in stupid insensibility, awaiting their fate. These threemen alone comprehended the peril that threatened them, and, maddenedwith drink, defied, in their ferocious desperation, the death that wasin store for them. 'Hark! they approach, the rabble revolted from ourrule,' cried Vetranio scornfully, 'to take the lives that we despiseand the treasures that we have resigned! The hour has come; I go tofire the pile that involves in one common destruction our assassins andourselves!'
'Hold!' exclaimed Thascius, snatching the torch from his hand; 'theentrance must first be defended, or, ere the flames are kindled, theslaves will be here! Whatever is movable--couches, tables,corpses--let us hurl them all against the door!'
As he spoke he rushed towards the black-curtained recess, to set theexample to his companions by seizing the corpse of the woman; but hehad not passed more than half the length of the apartment, when thehunchback, who had followed him unheeded, sprang upon him from behind,and, with a shrill cry, fastening his fingers on his throat, hurled himtorn and senseless to the floor. 'Who touches the body that is mine?'shrieked the deformed wretch, rising from his victim, and threateningwith his blood-stained hands Vetranio and Marcus, as they stoodbewildered, and uncertain for the moment whether first to avenge theircomrade or to barricade the door--'The son shall rescue the mother! Igo to bury her! Atonement! Atonement!'
He leaped upon the table as he spoke, tore asunder with resistlessstrength the cords which fastened the corpse to the throne, seized itin his arms, and the next instant gained the door. Uttering fierce,inarticulate cries, partly of anguish and partly of defiance, he threwit open, and stepped forward to descend, when he was met at the head ofthe stairs by the band of assassins hurrying up, with drawn swords andblazing torches, to their work of pillage and death. He stood beforethem--his deformed limbs set as firmly on the ground as if he werepreparing to descend the stairs at one leap--with the corpse raisedhigh on his breast; its unearthly features were turned towards them,its bare arms were still stretched forth as they had been extended overthe banqueting-table, its grey hair streamed back and mingled with hisown: under the fitful illumination of the torches, which played red andwild over him and his fearful burden, the dead and the living lookedjoined to each other in one monstrous form.
Huddled together, motionless, on the stairs, their shouts of vengeanceand fury frozen on their lips, the assassins stood for one moment,staring mechanically, with fixed, spell-bound eyes, upon the hideousbulwark opposing their advance on the victims whom they had expected soeasily to surprise. The next instant a superstitious panic seizedthem; as the hunchback suddenly moved towards them to descend, thecorpse seemed to their terror-stricken eyes to be on the eve ofbursting its way through their ranks. Ignorant of its introductioninto the palace, imagining it, in the revival of their slavish fears,to be the spectral offspring of the magic incantations of the senatorsabove, they turned with one accord and fled down the stairs. The soundof their cries of fear grew fainter and fainter in the direction of thegarden as they hurried through the secret gates at the back of thebuilding. Then the heavy, regular tamp of the hunchback's footsteps,as he paced the solitary corridors after them, bearing his burden ofdeath, became audible in awful distinctness; then that sound also diedaway and was lost, and nothing more was heard in the banqueting-roomsave the sharp clang of the blows still dealt against the steelrailings from the street.
But now these grew rare and more rare in their recurrence; the strongmetal resisted triumphantly the utmost efforts of the exhausted rabblewho assailed it. As the minutes moved on, the blows grew rapidlyfainter and fewer; soon they diminished to three, stru
ck at longintervals; soon to one, followed by deep execrations of despair; and,after that, a great silence sank down over the palace and the street,where such strife and confusion had startled the night-echoes but a fewmoments before.
In the banqueting-hall this rapid succession of events--the marvels ofa few minutes--passed before Vetranio and Marcus as visions beheld bytheir eyes, but neither contained nor comprehended by their minds.Stolid in their obstinate recklessness, stupefied by the spectacle ofthe startling perils--menacing yet harmless, terrifying thoughtransitory--which surrounded them, neither of the senators moved amuscle or uttered a word, from the period when Thascius had fallenbeneath the hunchback's attack, to the period when the last blowagainst the palace railings, and the last sound of voices from thestreet, had ceased in silence. Then the wild current of drunkenexultation, suspended within them during this brief interval, flowedonce more, doubly fierce, in its old course. Insensible, the momentafter they had passed away, to the warning and terrific scenes they hadbeheld, each now looked round on the other with a glance of triumphantlevity. 'Hark!' cried Vetranio, 'the mob without, feeble and cowardlyto the last, abandon their puny efforts to force my palace gates!Behold our banqueting-tables still sacred from the intrusion of therevolted menials, driven before my guest from the dead, like a flock ofsheep before a single dog! Say, O Marcus! did I not well to set thecorpse at the foot of our banqueting-table? What marvels has it noteffected, borne before us by the frantic Reburrus, as a banner of thehosts of death, against the cowardly slaves whose fit inheritance isoppression, and whose sole sensation is fear! See, we are free tocontinue and conclude the banquet as we had designed! The godsthemselves have interfered to raise us in security above ourfellow-mortals, whom we despise! Another health, in gratitude to ourdeparted guest, the instrument of our deliverance, under the auspicesof omnipotent Jove!'
As Vetranio spoke, Marcus alone, out of all the revellers, answered hischallenge. These two--the last-remaining combatants of thestrife--having drained their cups to the health proposed, passed slowlydown each side of the room, looking contemptuously on their prostratecompanions, and extinguishing every lamp but the two which burnt overtheir own couches. Then returning to the upper end of the tables, theyresumed their places, not to leave them again until the fatal rivalrywas finally decided, and the moment of firing the pile had actuallyarrived.
The torch lay between them; the last vases of wine stood at theirsides. Not a word escaped the lips of either, to break the deepstillness prevailing over the palace. Each fixed his eyes on theother, in stern and searching scrutiny, and cup for cup, drank in slowand regular alternation. The debauch, which had hitherto presented aspectacle of brutal degradation and violence, now that it wasrestricted to two men only--each equally unimpressed by the scenes ofhorror he had beheld, each vying with the other for the attainment ofthe supreme of depravity--assumed an appearance of hardly humaniniquity; it became a contest for a satanic superiority of sin.
For some time little alteration appeared in the countenances of eitherof the suicide-rivals; but they had now drunk to that final point ofexcess at which wine either acts as its own antidote, or overwhelms infatal suffocation the pulses of life. The crisis in the strife wasapproaching for both, and the first to experience it was Marcus.Vetranio, as he watched him, observed a dark purple flush overspreadinghis face, hitherto pale, almost colourless. His eyes suddenly dilated;he panted for breath. The vase of wine, when he strove with a lasteffort to fill his cup from it, rolled from his hand to the floor. Thestare of death was in his face as he half-raised himself and for oneinstant looked steadily on his companion; the moment after, withoutword or groan, he dropped backward over his couch.
The contest of the night was decided! The host of the banquet and themaster of the palace had been reserved to end the one and to fire theother!
A smile of malignant triumph parted Vetranio's lips as he now arose andextinguished the last lamp burning besides his own. That done, hegrasped the torch. His eyes, as he raised it, wandered dreamily overthe array of his treasures, and the forms of his dead or insensiblefellow-patricians around him, to be consumed by his act in annihilatingfire. The sensation of his solemn night-solitude in his fated palacebegan to work in vivid and varying impressions on his mind, which waspartially recovering some portion of its wonted acuteness, under thebodily reaction now produced in him by the very extravagance of thenight's excess. His memory began to retrace confusedly the scenes withwhich the dwelling that he was about to destroy had been connected atdistant or at recent periods. At one moment the pomp of formerbanquets, the jovial congregation of guests since departed or dead,revived before him; at another, he seemed to be acting over again hissecret departure from his dwelling on the night before his last feast,his stealthy return with the corpse that he had dragged from thestreet, his toil in setting it up in mockery behind the black curtain,and inventing the dialogue to be spoken before it by the hunchback.Now his thoughts reverted to the minutest circumstances of theconfusion and dismay among the members of his household when the firstextremities of the famine began to be felt in the city; and now,without visible connection or cause, they turned suddenly to themorning when he had hurried through the most solitary paths in hisgrounds to meet the betrayer Ulpius at Numerian's garden gate. Oncemore the image of Antonina--so often present to his imagination sincethe original was lost to his eyes--grew palpable before him. Hethought of her, as listening at his knees to the sound of his lute; asawakening, bewildered and terrified, in his arms; as flyingdistractedly before her father's wrath; as now too surely lying dead,in her beauty and her innocence, amid the thousand victims of thefamine and the plague.
These and other reflections, while they crowded in whirlwind rapidityon his mind, wrought no alteration in the deadly purpose which theysuspended. His delay in lighting the torch was the unconscious delayof the suicide, secure in his resolution ere he lifts the poison to hislips--when life rises before him as a thing that is past, and he standsfor one tremendous moment in the dark gap between the present and thefuture--no more the pilgrim of Time--not yet the inheritor of Eternity!
So, in the dimly lighted hall, surrounded by the victims whom he hadhurried before him to their doom, stood the lonely master of the greatpalace; and so spoke within him the mysterious voices of his lastearthly thoughts. Gradually they sank and ceased, and stillness andvacancy closed like dark veils over his mind. Starting like oneawakened from a trance he once more felt the torch in his hand, andonce more the expression of fierce desperation appeared in his eyes ashe lit it steadily at the lamp above him.
The dew was falling pure to the polluted earth; the light breezes sangtheir low daybreak anthem among the leaves to the Power that bade themforth; night had expired, and morning was already born of it, asVetranio, with the burning torch in his hand, advanced towards thefuneral pile.
He had already passed the greater part of the length of the room, whena faint sound of footsteps ascending a private staircase which led tothe palace gardens, and communicated with the lower end of thebanqueting-hall by a small door of inlaid ivory, suddenly attracted hisattention. He hesitated in his deadly purpose, listening to the slow,regular approaching sound, which, feeble though it was, struckmysteriously impressive upon his ear in the dreary silence of allthings around him. Holding the torch high above his head, as thefootsteps came nearer, he fixed his eyes in intense expectation uponthe door. It opened, and the figure of a young girl clothed in whitestood before him. One moment he looked upon her with startled eyes;the next the torch dropped from his hand, and smouldered unheeded onthe marble floor. It was Antonina!
Her face was overspread with a strange transparent paleness; her oncesoft, round cheeks had lost their girlish beauty of form; herexpression, ineffably mournful, hopeless, and subdued, threw a simple,spiritual solemnity over her whole aspect. She was changed, awfullychanged to the profligate senator from the being of his formeradmiration; but still there remained in her despairing eyes enou
gh ofthe old look of gentleness and patience, surviving through all anguishand dread, to connect her, even as she was now, with what she had been.She stood in the chamber of debauchery and suicide between the funeralpile and the desperate man who was vowed to fire it, a feeble, helplesscreature, yet powerful in the influence of her presence, at such amoment and in such a form, as a saving and reproving spirit, armed withthe omnipotence of Heaven to mould the purposes of man.
Awed and astounded, as if he beheld an apparition from the tomb,Vetranio looked upon this young girl--whom he had loved with the leastselfish passion that ever inspired him; whom he had lamented as longsince lost and dead with the sincerest grief he had ever felt; whom henow saw standing before him at the very moment ere he doomed himself todeath, altered, desolate, supplicating--with emotions which held himspeechless in wonder, and even in dread. While he still gazed upon herin silence, he heard her speaking to him in low, melancholy, imploringaccents, which fell upon his ear, after the voices of terror anddesperation that had risen around him throughout the night, like tonesnever addressed to it before.
'Numerian, my father, is sinking under the famine,' she began; 'if nohelp is given to him, he may die even before sunrise! You are rich andpowerful; I have come to you, having nothing now but his life to livefor, to beg sustenance for him!' She paused, overpowered for themoment, and bent her eyes wistfully on the senator's face. Then seeingthat he vainly endeavoured to answer her, her head drooped upon herbreast, and her voice sank lower as she continued:--
'I have striven for patience under much sorrow and pain through thelong night that is past; my eyes were heavy and my spirit was faint; Icould have rendered up my soul willingly in my loneliness andfeebleness to God who gave it, but that it was my duty to struggle formy life and my father's, now that I was restored to him after I hadlost all beside! I could not think, or move, or weep, as, lookingforth upon your palace, I watched and waited through the hours ofdarkness. But, as morning dawned, the heaviness at my heart waslightened; I remembered that the palace I saw before me was yours; and,though the gates were closed, I knew that I could reach it through yourgarden that joins to my father's land. I had none in Rome to ask mercyof but you; so I set forth hastily, ere my weakness should overpowerme, remembering that I had inherited much misery at your hands, buthoping that you might pity me for what I had suffered when you saw meagain. I came wearily through the garden; it was long before I foundmy way hither; will you send me back as helpless as I came? You firsttaught me to disobey my father in giving me the lute; will you refuseto aid me in succouring him now? He is all that I have left in theworld! Have mercy upon him!--have mercy upon me!'
Again she looked up in Vetranio's face. His trembling lips moved, butstill no sound came from them. The expression of confusion and awe yetprevailed over his features as he pointed slowly towards the upper endof the banqueting-table. To her this simple action was eloquent beyondall power of speech; she turned her feeble steps instantly in thedirection he had indicated.
He watched her, by the light of the single lamp that still burnt,passing--strong in the shielding inspiration of her good purpose--amidthe bodies of his suicide companions without pausing on her way.Having gained the upper end of the room, she took from the table aflask of wine, and from the wooden stand behind it the bowl of offaldisdained by the guests at the fatal banquet, returning immediately tothe spot where Vetranio still stood. Here she stopped for a moment, asif about to speak once more; but her emotions overpowered her. Fromthe sources which despair and suffering had dried up, the long-prisonedtears once more flowed forth at the bidding of gratitude and hope. Shelooked upon the senator, silent as himself, and her expression at thatinstant was destined to remain on his memory while memory survived.Then, with faltering and hasty steps, she departed by the way she hadcome; and in the great palace, which his evil supremacy over the willsof others had made a hideous charnel-house, he was once more left alone.
He made no effort to follow or detain her as she left him. The torchstill smouldered beside him on the floor, but he never stooped to takeit up; he dropped down on a vacant couch, stupefied by what he hadbeheld. That which no entreaties, no threats, no fierce violence ofopposition could have effected in him, the appearance of Antonina hadproduced--it had forced him to pause at the very moment of theexecution of his deadly design.
He remembered how, from the very first day when he had seen her, shehad mysteriously influenced the whole progress of his life; how hisardour to possess her had altered his occupations, and even interruptedhis amusements; how all his energy and all his wealth had been baffledin the attempt to discover her when she fled from her father's house;how the first feeling of remorse that he had ever known had beenawakened within him by his knowledge of the share he had had inproducing her unhappy fate. Recalling all this; reflecting that, hadshe approached him at an earlier period, she would have been drivenback affrighted by the drunken clamour of his companions; and had shearrived at a later, would have found his palace in flames; thinking atthe same time of her sudden presence in the banqueting-hall when he hadbelieved her to be dead, when her appearance at the moment before hefired the pile was most irresistible in its supernatural influence overhis actions--that vague feeling of superstitious dread which existsintuitively in all men's minds, which had never before been aroused inhis, thrilled through him. His eyes were fixed on the door by whichshe had departed, as if he expected her to return. Her destiny seemedto be portentously mingled with his own; his life seemed to move, hisdeath to wait at her bidding. There was no repentance, no moralpurification in the emotions which now suspended his bodily facultiesin inaction; he was struck for the time with a mental paralysis.
The restless moments moved onward and onward, and still he delayed theconsummation of the ruin which the night's debauch had begun. Slowlythe tender daylight grew and brightened in its beauty, warmed the coldprostrate bodies in the silent hall, and dimmed the faint glow of thewasting lamp; no black mist of smoke, no red glare of devouring firearose to quench its fair lustre; no roar of flames interrupted themurmuring morning tranquillity of nature, or startled from their heavyrepose the exhausted outcasts stretched upon the pavement of thestreet. Still the noble palace stood unshaken on its firm foundations;still the adornments of its porticoes and its statues glittered as ofold in the rays of the rising sun; and still the hand of the master whohad sworn to destroy it, as he had sworn to destroy himself, hung idlynear the torch which lay already extinguished in harmless ashes at hisfeet.