CHAPTER 26.
RETRIBUTION.
As, in the progress of Life, each man pursues his course with thepassions, good and evil, set, as it were, on either side of him; andviewing their results in the actions of his fellow-men, finds hisattention, while still attracted by the spectacle of what is noble andvirtuous, suddenly challenged by the opposite display of what is meanand criminal--so, in the progress of this narrative, which aims to bethe reflection of Life, the reader who has journeyed with us thus far,and who may now be inclined to follow the little procession ofChristian devotees, to walk by the side of the afflicted father, and tohold with him the hand of his ill-fated child, is yet, in obedience tothe conditions of the story, required to turn back for awhile to thecontemplation of its darker passages of guilt and terror--he must enterthe temple again; but he will enter it for the last time.
The scene before the altar of idols was fast proceeding to its fatalclimax.
The Pagan's frenzy had exhausted itself in its own fury--his insanitywas assuming a quieter and a more dangerous form; his eye grew cunningand suspicious; a stealthy deliberation and watchfulness appeared inall his actions. He now slowly lifted his foot from Goisvintha'sbreast, and raised his hands at the same time to strike her back if sheshould attempt to escape. Seeing that she lay senseless from her fall,he left her; retired to one of the corners of the temple, took from ita rope that lay there, and returning, bound her arms behind her at thehands and wrists. The rope cut deep through the skin--the painrestored her to her senses; she suffered the sharp agony in her ownbody, in the same place where she had inflicted it on the youngchieftain at the farm-house beyond the suburbs.
The minute after, she felt herself dragged along the ground, fartherinto the interior of the building. The madman drew her up to the irongates of the passage through the partition, and fastening the end ofthe rope to them, left her there. This part of the temple wasenveloped in total darkness--her assailant addressed not a word toher--she could not obtain even a glimpse of his form, but she couldhear him still laughing to himself in hoarse, monotonous tones, thatsounded now near, and now distant again.
She abandoned herself as lost--prematurely devoted to the torment anddeath that she had anticipated; but, as yet, her masculine resolutionand energy did not decline. The very intensity of the anguish shesuffered from the bindings at her wrists, producing a fierce bodilyeffort to resist it, strengthened her iron-strung nerves. She neithercried for help nor appealed to the Pagan for pity. The gloomy fatalismwhich she had inherited from her savage ancestors sustained her in asuicide-pride.
Ere long the laughter of Ulpius, while he moved slowly hither andthither in the darkness of the temple, was overpowered by the sound ofher voice--deep, groaning, but yet steady--as she uttered her lastwords--words poured forth like the wild dirges, the fierce death-songsof the old Goths when they died deserted on the bloody battle-field, orwere cast bound into deep dungeons, a prey to the viper and the asp.Thus she spoke:-- 'I swore to be avenged! while I went forth fromAquileia with the child that was killed and the child that was wounded;while I climbed the high wall in the night-time, and heard the tumultof the beating waves near the bank where I buried the dead; while Iwandered in the darkness over the naked heath and through the lonelyforest; while I climbed the pathless sides of the mountains, and mademy refuge in the cavern by the waters of the dark lake.
'I swore to be avenged! while the warriors approached me on theirmarch, and the roaring of the trumpets and the clash of the armoursounded in my ears; while I greeted my kinsman, Hermanric, a mightychieftain, at the king's side, among the invading hosts; while I lookedon my last child, dead like the rest, and knew that he was buried afarfrom the land of his people, and from the others that the Romans hadslain before him.
'I swore to be avenged! while the army encamped before Rome, and Istood with Hermanric, looking on the great walls in the misty evening;while the daughter of the Roman was a prisoner in our tent, and I eyedher as she lay on my knees; while for her sake my kinsman turnedtraitor, and withheld my hand from the blow; while I passed unseen intothe lonely farm-house to deal judgment on him with my knife; while Isaw him die the death of a deserter at my feet, and knew that it was aRoman who had lured him from his people, and blinded him to therighteousness of revenge.
'I swore to be avenged! while I walked round the grave of the chieftainwho was the last of my race; while I stood alone out of the army of mypeople in the city of the slayers of my babes; while I tracked thefootsteps of the Roman who had twice escaped me, as she fled throughthe street; while I watched and was patient among the pillars of thetemple, and waited till the sun went down, and the victim wasunshielded for the moment to strike.
'I swore to be avenged! and my oath has been fulfilled--the knife thatstill bleeds drops with her blood; the chief vengeance has beenwreaked! The rest that were to be slain remain for others, and not forme! For now I go to my husband and my children; now the hour is nearat hand when I shall herd with their spirits in the Twilight World ofShadows, and make my long-abiding place with them in the Valley ofEternal Repose! The Destinies have willed it--it is enough!'
Her voice trembled and grew faint as she pronounced the last words.The anguish of the fastenings at her wrists was at last overpoweringher senses--conquering, in spite of all resistance, her stubbornendurance. For a little while yet she spoke at intervals, but herspeech was fragmentary and incoherent. At one moment she still gloriedin her revenge, at another she exulted in the fancied contemplation ofthe girl's body still lying before her, and her hands writhed beneaththeir bonds in the effort to repossess themselves of the knife andstrike again. But soon all sounds ceased to proceed from her lips,save the loud, thick, irregular breathings, which showed that she wasyet conscious and yet lived.
Meanwhile the madman had passed into the inner recess of the temple,and had drawn the shutter over the opening in the wall, through whichlight had been admitted into the place when Numerian and Antonina firstentered it. Even the black chasm formed by the mouth of the vault ofthe dragon now disappeared, with all other objects, in the thickdarkness. But no obscurity could confuse the senses of Ulpius in thetemple, whose every corner he visited in his restless wanderings bynight and by day alike. Led as if by a mysterious penetration ofsight, he traced his way unerringly to the entrance of the vault, kneltdown before it, and placing his hands on the first of the steps bywhich it was descended, listened, breathless and attentive, to thesounds that rose from the abyss--listened, rapt and unmoving, aformidable and unearthly figure--like a magician waiting for a voicefrom the oracles of Hell--like a spirit of Night looking down into themid-caverns of the earth, and watching the mysteries of subterraneancreation, the giant pulses of Action and Heat, which are thelife-springs of the rolling world.
The fitful wind whistled up, wild and plaintive; the river chafed andbubbled through the iron grating below; the loose scales of the dragonclashed as the night breezes reached them: and these sounds were stillto him as the language of his gods, which filled him with a fearfulrapture, and inspired him, in the terrible degradation of his being, aswith a new soul. He listened and listened yet. Fragments of wildfancies--the vain yearnings of the disinherited mind to recover itsdivine birthright of boundless thought--now thrilled through him, andheld him still and speechless where he knelt.
But at length, through the gloomy silence of the recess, he heard thevoice of Goisvintha raised once more, and in hoarse, wild tones callingaloud for light and help. The agony of pain and suspense, the awfulsense of darkness and stillness, of solitary bondage and slow torment,had at last effected that which no open peril, no common menace ofviolent death could have produced. She yielded to fear anddespair--sank prostrate under a paralysing, superstitious dread. Themisery that she had inflicted on others recoiled in retribution onherself, as she now shuddered under the consciousness of the firstemotions of helpless terror that she had ever felt.
Ulpius instantly rose from the vault, and advanced strai
ght through thedarkness to the gates of the partition; but he passed his prisonerwithout stopping for an instant, and hastening into the outer apartmentof the temple, began to grope over the floor for the knife which thewoman had dropped when he bound her. He was laughing to himself oncemore, for the evil spirit was prompting him to a new project, temptinghim to a pitiless refinement of cruelty and deceit.
He found the knife, and returning with it to Goisvintha, cut the ropethat confined her wrists. Then she became silent when the firstsharpness of her suffering was assuaged; he whispered softly in herear, 'Follow me, and escape!'
Bewildered and daunted by the darkness and mystery around her, shevainly strained her eyes to look through the obscurity as Ulpius drewher on into the recess. He placed her at the mouth of the vault, andhere she strove to speak; but low, inarticulate sounds alone proceededfrom her powerless utterance. Still there was no light; still theburning, gnawing agony at her wrists (relieved but for an instant whenthe rope was cut) continued and increased; and still she felt thepresence of the unseen being at her side, whom no darkness could blind,and who bound and loosed at his arbitrary will.
By nature fierce, resolute, and vindictive under injury, she was aterrible evidence of the debasing power of crime, as she now stood,enfeebled by the weight of her own avenging guilt, upraised to crushher in the hour of her pride; by the agency of Darkness, whose perilsthe innocent and the weak have been known to brave; by Suspense, whoseagony they have resisted; by Pain, whose infliction they have enduredin patience.
'Go down, far down the steep steps, and escape!' whispered the madman,in soft, beguiling tones. 'The darkness above leads to the light below!Go down, far down!'
He quitted his hold of her as he spoke. She hesitated, shuddered, anddrew back; but again she was urged forward, and again she heard thewhisper, 'The darkness above leads to the light below! Go down, fardown!'
Despair gave the firmness to proceed, and dread the hope to escape.Her wounded arms trembled as she now stretched them out and felt forthe walls of the vault on either side of her. The horror of death inutter darkness, from unseen hands, and the last longing aspiration tobehold the light of heaven once more, were at their strongest withinher as she began slowly and cautiously to tread the fatal stairs.
While she descended, the Pagan dropped into his former attitude at themonth of the vault, and listened breathlessly. Minutes seemed toelapse between each step as she went lower and lower down. Suddenly heheard her pause, as if panic-stricken in the darkness, and her voiceascended to him, groaning, 'Light! light! oh, where is the light!' Herose up, and stretched out his hands to hurl her back if she shouldattempt to return; but she descended again. Twice he heard her heavyfootfall on the steps--then there was an interval of deep silence--thena sharp, grinding clash of metal echoed piercingly through the vault,followed by the noise of a dull, heavy fall, faintly audible farbeneath--and then the old familiar sounds of the place were heardagain, and were not interrupted more. The sacrifice to the Dragon wasachieved!
* * * * *
The madman stood on the steps of the sacred building, and looked out onthe street shining before him in the bright Italian moonlight. Noremembrance of Numerian and Antonina, and of the earlier events in thetemple, remained within him. He was pondering imperfectly, in vaguepride and triumph, over the sacrifice that he had offered up at theshrine of the Dragon of brass. Thus secretly exulting, he now remainedinactive. Absorbed in his wandering meditations, he delayed to tracethe subterranean passages leading to the iron grating where the corpseof Goisvintha lay washed by the waters, as they struggled onwardthrough the bars, and waiting but his hand to be cast into the river,where all past sacrifices had been engulphed before it.
His tall solitary figure was lit by the moonlight streaming through thepillars of the portico; his loose robes waved slowly about him in thewind, as he stood firm and erect before the door of the temple: helooked more like the spectral genius of departed Paganism than a livingman. But, lifeless though he seemed, his quick eye was still on thewatch, still directed by the restless suspicion of insanity. Minuteafter minute quietly elapsed, and as yet nothing was presented to hisrapid observation but the desolate roadway, and the high, gloomy housesthat bounded it on either side. It was soon, however, destined to beattracted by objects which startled the repose of the tranquil streetwith the tumult of action and life.
He was still gazing earnestly on the narrow view before him, vaguelyimagining to himself, the while, Goisvintha's fatal descent into thevault, and thinking triumphantly of her dead body that now lay on thegrating beneath it, when a red glare of torchlight, thrown wildly onthe moon-brightened pavement, whose purity it seemed to stain, caughthis eye.
The light appeared at the end of the street leading from the morecentral portion of the city, and ere long displayed clearly a body offorty or fifty people advancing towards the temple. The Pagan lookedeagerly on them as they came nearer and nearer. The assembly wascomposed of priests, soldiers, and citizens--the priests bearingtorches, the soldiers carrying hammers, crowbars, and other similartools, or bending under the weight of large chests secured with ironfastenings, close to which the populace walked, as if guarding themwith jealous care. This strange procession was preceded by two men,who were considerably in advance of it--a priest and soldier. Anexpression of impatience and exultation appeared on their pale,famine-wasted countenances, as they approached the temple with rapidsteps.
Ulpius never moved from his position, but fixed his piercing eyes onthem as they advanced. Not vainly did he now stand, watchful andmenacing, before the entrance of his gloomy shrine. He had seen thefirst degradations heaped on fallen Paganism, and he was now to see thelast. He had immolated all his affections and all his hopes, all hisfaculties of body and mind, his happiness in boyhood, his enthusiasm inyouth, his courage in manhood, his reason in old age, at the altar ofhis gods; and now they were to exact from him, in their defence, lonelycriminal, maddened, as he already was in their cause, more than allthis! The decree had gone forth from the Senate which devoted tolegalised pillage the treasures in the temples of Rome.
Rulers of a people impoverished by former exactions, and comptrollersonly of an exhausted treasury, the government of the city had searchedvainly among all ordinary resources for the means of paying the heavyransom exacted by Alaric as the price of peace. The one chance ofmeeting the emergency that remained was to strip the Pagan temples ofthe mass of jewelled ornaments and utensils, the costly robes, theidols of gold and silver which they were known to contain, and which,under that mysterious hereditary influence of superstition, whose powerit is the longest labour of truth to destroy, had remained untouchedand respected, alike by the people and the senate, after the worshipthat they represented had been interdicted by the laws, and abandonedby the nation.
This last expedient for freeing Rome from the blockade was adoptedalmost as soon as imagined. The impatience of the starved populace forthe immediate collection of the ransom allowed the government littletime for the tedious preliminaries of deliberation. The soldiers wereprovided at once with the necessary implements for the task imposed onthem; certain chosen members of the senate and the people followedthem, to see that they honestly gathered in the public spoil; and thepriests of the Christian churches volunteered to hallow the expeditionby their presence, and led the way with their torches into every secretapartment of the temples where treasure might be contained. At theclose of the day, immediately after it had been authorised, thisstrange search for the ransom was hurriedly commenced. Already muchhad been collected; votive offerings of price had been snatched fromthe altars, where they had so long hung undisturbed; hiddentreasure-chests of sacred utensils had been discovered and broken open;idols had been stripped of their precious ornaments and torn from theirmassive pedestals; and now the procession of gold-seekers, proceedingalong the banks of the Tiber, had come in sight of the little temple ofSerapis, and were hastening forward to empty it, in i
ts turn, of everyvaluable that it contained.
The priest and the soldier, calling to their companions behind to hurryon, had now arrived opposite the temple steps, and saw confronting themin the pale moonlight, from the eminence on which he stood, the weirdand solitary figure of Ulpius--the apparition of a Pagan in thegorgeous robes of his priesthood, bidden back from the tombs to staythe hand of the spoiler before the shrine of his gods.
The soldier dropped his weapon to the ground, and, trembling in everylimb, refused to proceed. But the priest, a tall, stern, emaciated man,went on defenceless and undaunted. He signed himself solemnly with thecross as he slowly ascended the steps; fixed his unflinching eyes onthe madman, who glared back on him in return; and called aloud in aharsh, steady voice: 'Man or demon! in the name of Christ, whom thoudeniest, stand back!'
For an instant, as the priest approached him, the Pagan averted hiseyes and looked on the concourse of people and the armed soldiersrapidly advancing. His fingers closed round the hilt of Goisvintha'sknife, which he had hitherto held loosely in his hand, as he exclaimedin low, concentrated tones, 'Aha! the siege--the siege of Serapis!'The priest, now standing on the same step with him, stretched out hisarm to thrust him back, and at that moment received the stroke of theknife. He staggered, lifted his hand again to sign his forehead withthe cross, and, as he raised it, rolled back dead on the pavement ofthe street.
The soldier, standing motionless with superstitious terror a few feetfrom the corpse, called to his companions for help. Hurling his bloodyweapon at them in defiance, as they ran in confusion to the base of thetemple steps, Ulpius entered the building, and locked and chained thegates.
Then the assembled people thronging round the corpse of the priest,heard the madman shouting in his frenzy, as if to a great body ofadherents round him, to pour down the molten lead and the scorchingsand; to hurl back every scaling ladder planted against the walls; tomassacre each prisoner who was seized mounting the ramparts to theassault; and as they looked up to the building from the street, theysaw at intervals, through the bars of the closed gates, the figure ofUlpius passing swift and shadowy, his arms extended, his long grey hairand white robes streaming behind him, as he rushed round and round thetemple reiterating his wild Pagan war-cries as he went. The enfeebled,superstitious populace trembled while they gazed--a spectre driven on awhirlwind would not have been more terrible to their eyes.
But the priest among the crowd, roused to fury by the murder of one oftheir own body, revived the courage of those around them. Even theshouts of Ulpius were now overpowered by the sound of their voices,raised to the highest pitch, promising heavenly and earthlyrewards--salvation, money, absolution, promotion--to all who wouldfollow them up the steps and burst their way into the temple. Animatedby the words of the priests, and growing gradually confident in theirown numbers, the boldest in the throng seized a piece of timber lyingby the river side, and using it as a battering-ram, assailed the gate.But they were weakened with famine; they could gain little impetus,from the necessity of ascending the temple steps to the attack; theiron quivered as they struck it, but hinge and lock remained firmalike. They were preparing to renew the attempt, when a tremendousshock--a crash as if the whole heavy roof of the building had fallenin--drove them back in terror to the street.
Recalled by the sight of the armed men, the priests and the attendantcrowd of people who were advancing to invade his sanctuary, to the dayswhen he had defended the great Temple of Serapis at Alexandria, againstenemies similar in appearance, though far superior in numbers;persuaded in the revival of these, the most sanguinary visions of hisinsanity, that he was still resisting the Christian fanatics, supportedby his adherents in his sacred fortress of former years, the Pagandisplayed none of his accustomed cunning and care in moving through thedarkness around him. He hurried hither and thither, encouraging hisimaginary followers, and glorying in his dreams of slaughter andsuccess, forgetful in his frenzy of all that the temple contained.
As he pursued his wild course round and round the altar of idols, hisrobe became entangled, and was torn by the projecting substances at onecorner of it. The whole overhanging mass tottered at the moment, butdid not yet fall. A few of the smaller idols, however, at the outsidedropped to the ground, and with them an image of Serapis, which theyhappened partially to support--a heavy monstrous figure, carvedlife-size in wood, and studded with gold, silver, and preciousstones--fell at the Pagan's feet. But this was all--the outermaterials of the perilous structure had been detached only at onepoint; the pile itself still remained in its place.
The madman seized the image of Serapis in his arms, and passed blindlyonward with it through the passage in the partition into the recessbeyond. At that instant the shock of the first attack on the gatesresounded through the building. Shouting, as he heard it, 'A sally! asally! men of the Temple, the gods and the high priest lead you on!'and still holding the idol before him, he rushed straight forward tothe entrance, and struck in violent collision against the backward partof the pile.
The ill-balanced, top-heavy mass of images and furniture of manytemples swayed, parted, and fell over against the gates and the wall oneither side of them. Maimed and bleeding, struck down by the lowerpart of the pile, as it was forced back against the partition when theupper part fell, the fury of Ulpius was but increased by the crashingruin around him. He struggled up again into an erect position; mountedon the top of the fallen mass--now spread out at the sides over thefloor of the building, but confined at one end by the partition, and atthe other by the opposite wall and the gates--and still clasping theimage of Serapis in his arms, called louder and louder to 'the men ofthe Temple' to mount with him the highest ramparts and pour down on thebesiegers the molten lead!
The priests were again the first men to approach the gates of thebuilding after the shock that had been heard within it. The strugglefor the possession of the temple had assumed to them the character of aholy warfare against heathenism and magic--a sacred conflict to besustained by the Church, for the sake of her servant who had fallen amartyr at the outset of the strife. Strong in their fanaticalboldness, they advanced with one accord close to the gates. Some ofthe smaller images of the fallen pile had been forced through the bars,behind which appeared the great idols, the broken masses of furniture,the long robes and costly hangings, all locked together in every wildvariety of position--a chaos of distorted objects heaped up by anearthquake! Above and further inward, the lower part of the Pagan'srobe was faintly discernible through the upper interstices in the gate,as he stood, commanding, on the summit of his prostrate altar, with hisidol in his arms.
The priests felt an instant conviction of certain triumph when theydiscerned the cause of the shock that had been heard within the temple.One of their number snatched up a small image that had fallen throughto the pavement where he stood, and holding it before the people below,exclaimed exultingly--
'Children of the Church! the mystery is revealed! Idols more preciousthan this lie by hundreds on the floor of the temple! It is no demon,but a man, one man, who still defies us within!--a robber who woulddefraud the Romans of the ransom of their lives!--the pillage of manytemples is around him. Remember now, that the nearer we came to thisplace the fewer were the spoils of idolatry that we gathered in; thetreasure which is yours, the treasure which is to free you from thefamine, has been seized by the assassin of our holy brother; it isthere scattered at his feet! To the gates! To the gates again!Absolution for all their sins to the men who burst in the gates!'
Again the mass of timber was taken up; again the gates were assailed;and again they stood firm--they were now strengthened, barricaded bythe fallen pile. It seemed hopeless to attempt to break them downwithout a reinforcement of men, without employing against them theheaviest missiles, the strongest engines of war.
The people gave vent to a cry of fury as they heard from the temple thehollow laughter of the madman triumphing in their defeat. The words ofthe priest, in allaying their supers
titious fears, had aroused thedeadly passions that superstition brings forth. A few among the thronghurried to the nearest guard-house for assistance, but the greater partpressed closely round the temple--some pouring forth impotentexecrations against the robber of the public spoil, some joining thepriests in calling on him to yield. But the clamour lasted not long;it was suddenly and strangely stilled by the voice of one man in thecrowd, calling loudly to the rest to fire the temple!
The words were hardly spoken ere they were repeated triumphantly on allsides. 'Fire the temple!' cried the people ferociously. 'Burn it overthe robber's head! A furnace--a furnace! to melt down the gold andsilver ready to our hands! Fire the temple! Fire the temple!'
Those who were most active among the crowd (which was now greatlyincreased by stragglers from all parts of the city) entered the housesbehind them, and returned in a few minutes with every inflammablesubstance that they could collect in their hands. A heap of fuel, twoor three feet in height, was raised against the gates immediately, andsoldiers and people pressed forward with torches to light it. But thepriest who had before spoken waved them back. 'Wait!' he cried; 'thefate of his body is with the people, but the fate of his soul is withthe Church!'
Then, turning to the temple, he called solemnly and sternly to themadman, 'Thy hour is come! repent, confess, and save thy soul!'
'Slay on! slay on!' answered the raving voice from within. 'Slay, tillnot a Christian is left! Victory! Serapis! See, they drop from ourwalls!--they writhe bleeding on the earth beneath us! There is noworship but the worship of the gods! Slay! Slay on!'
'Light!' cried the priest. 'His damnation be on his own head!Anathema! Maranatha! Let him die accursed!'
The dry fuel was fired at once at all points--it was an anticipation ofan 'Auto da Fe', a burning of a heretic, in the fifth century! As theflames rose, the people fell back and watched their rapid progress.The priests, standing before them in a line, stretched out their handsin denunciation against the temple, and repeated together the awfulexcommunication service of the Roman Church.
* * * * *
The fire at the gates had communicated with the idols inside. It wasno longer on his prostrate altar, but on his funeral pile that Ulpiusnow stood; and the image that he clasped was the stake to which he wasbound. A red glare, dull at first, was now brightening and brighteningbelow him; flames, quick and noiseless, rose and fell, and rose again,at different points, illuminating the interior of the temple withfitful and changing light. The grim, swarthy forms of the idols seemedto sway and writhe like living things in torment, as fire and smokealternately displayed and concealed them. A deadly stillness nowoverspread the face and form of the Pagan, as he looked downsteadfastly on the deities of his worship engendering his destructionbeneath him. His cheek--the cheek which had rested in boyhood on hismother's bosom--was pressed against the gilded breast of the godSerapis, his taskmaster in life--his pillow in death!
'I rise! I rise to the world of light, with my deities whom I haveserved!' he murmured; 'the brightness of their presence is like aflaming fire; the smoke of their breath pours forth around me like thesmoke of incense! I minister in the Temples of the Clouds; and theglory of eternal sunlight shines round me while I adore! I rise! Irise!'
The smoke whirled in black volumes over his head; the fierce voice ofthe fast-spreading fire roared on him; the flames leapt up at hisfeet--his robes kindled, burst into radiant light, as the pile yawnedand opened under him.
* * * * *
Time had passed. The strife between the Temple and the Church wasended. The priests and the people had formed a wider circle round thedevoted building; all that was inflammable in it had been burnt; smokeand flame now burst only at intervals through the gates, and graduallyboth ceased to appear. Then the crowd approached nearer to the temple,and felt the heat of the furnace they had kindled, as they looked in.
The iron gates were red hot--from the great mass behind (still glowingbright in some places, and heaving and quivering with its own heat) athin, transparent vapour rose slowly to the stone roof of the building,now blackened with smoke. The priests looked eagerly for the corpse ofthe Pagan; they saw two dark, charred objects closely united together,lying in a chasm of ashes near the gate, at a spot where the fire hadalready exhausted itself, but it was impossible to discern which wasthe man and which was the idol.
The necessity of providing means for entering the temple had not beenforgotten while the flames were raging. Proper implements for forcingopen the gates were now at hand, and already the mob began to dip theirbuckets in the Tiber, and pour water wherever any traces of the fireremained. Soon all obstacles were removed; the soldiers crowded intothe building with spades in their hands, trampled on the black, waterymire of cinders which covered what had once been the altar of idols,and throwing out into the street the refuse ashes and the stone imageswhich had remained unconsumed, dug in what was left, as in a new mine,for the gold and silver which the fire could not destroy.
The Pagan had lived with his idols, had perished with his idols!--andnow where they were cast away, there he was cast away with them. Thesoldiers, as they dug into fragments the black ruins of his altar,mingled him in fragments with it! The people, as they cast the refusethrown out to them into the river, cast what remained of him with whatremained of his gods! And when the temple was deserted, when thecitizens had borne off all the treasure they could collect, whennothing but a few heaps of dust was left of all that had been burnt,the night-wind blew away before it the ashes of Ulpius with the ashesof the deities that Ulpius had served!
CHAPTER 27.
THE VIGIL OF HOPE.
A new prospect now opens before us. The rough paths through which wehave hitherto threaded our way grow smoother as we approach theirclose. Rome, so long dark and gloomy to our view, brightens at lengthlike a landscape when the rain is past and the first rays of returningsunlight stream through the parting clouds. Some days have elapsed,and in those days the temples have yielded all their wealth; theconquered Romans have bribed the triumphant barbarians to mercy; theransom of the fallen city has been paid.
The Gothic army is still encamped round the walls, but the gates areopened, markets for food are established in the suburbs, boats appearon the river and waggons on the highroads, laden with provisions, andproceeding towards Rome. All the hidden treasure kept back by thecitizens is now bartered for food; the merchants who hold the marketreap a rich harvest of spoil, but the hungry are filled, the weak arerevived, every one is content.
It is the end of the second day since the free sale of provisions andthe liberty of egress from the city have been permitted by the Goths.The gates are closed for the night, and the people are quietlyreturning, laden with their supplies of food, to their homes. Theireyes no longer encounter the terrible traces of the march of pestilenceand famine through every street; the corpses have been removed, and thesick are watched and sheltered. Rome is cleansed from her pollutions,and the virtues of household life begin to revive wherever they onceexisted. Death has thinned every family, but the survivors againassemble together in the social hall. Even the veriest criminals, thelowest outcasts of the population, are united harmlessly for a while inthe general participation of the first benefits of peace.
To follow the citizens to their homes; to trace in their thoughts,words, and action the effect on them of their deliverance from thehorrors of the blockade; to contemplate in the people of a whole city,now recovering as it were from a deep swoon, the varying forms of thefirst reviving symptoms in all classes, in good and bad, rich andpoor--would afford matter enough in itself for a romance of searchinghuman interest, for a drama of the passions, moving absorbingly throughstrange, intricate, and contrasted scenes. But another employment thanthis now claims our care. It is to an individual, and not to a dividedsource of interest, that our attention turns; we relinquish allobservations on the general mass of the populace to revert to Num
erianand Antonina alone--to penetrate once more into the little dwelling onthe Pincian Hill.
The apartment where the father and daughter had suffered the pangs offamine together during the period of the blockade, presented anappearance far different from that which it had displayed on theoccasion when they had last occupied it. The formerly bare walls werenow covered with rich, thick hangings; and the simple couch and scantytable of other days had been exchanged for whatever was most luxuriousand complete in the household furniture of the age. At one end of theroom three women, attended by a little girl, were engaged in preparingsome dishes of fruit and vegetables; at the other, two men wereoccupied in low, earnest conversation, occasionally looking roundanxiously to a couch placed against the third side of the apartment, onwhich Antonina lay extended, while Numerian watched by her in silence.The point of Goisvintha's knife had struck deep, but, as yet, the fatalpurpose of the assassination had failed.
The girl's eyes were closed; her lips were parted in the languor ofsuffering; one of her hands lay listless on her father's knee. Aslight expression of pain, melancholy in its very slightness, appearedon her pale face, and occasionally a long-drawn, quivering breathescaped her--nature's last touching utterance of its own feebleness!The old man, as he sat by her side, fixed on her a wistful, inquiringglance. Sometimes he raised his hand, and gently and mechanicallymoved to and fro the long locks of her hair, as they spread over thehead of the couch; but he never turned to communicate with the otherpersons in the room--he sat as if he saw nothing save his daughter'sfigure stretched before him, and heard nothing save the faint,fluttering sound of her breathing, close at his ear.
It was now dark, and one lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a softequal light over the room. The different persons occupying itpresented but little evidence of health and strength in theircountenances, to contrast them in appearance with the wounded girl; allhad undergone the wasting visitation of the famine, and all were paleand languid, like her. A strange, indescribable harmony prevailed overthe scene. Even the calmness of absorbing expectation and tremblinghope, expressed in the demeanour of Numerian, seemed reflected in theactions of those around him, in the quietness with which the womenpursued their employment, in the lower and lower whispers in which themen continued their conversation. There was something pervading theair of the whole apartment that conveyed a sense of the solemn,unworldly stillness which we attach to the abstract idea of religion.
Of the two men cautiously talking together, one was the patrician,Vetranio; the other, a celebrated physician of Rome.
Both the countenance and manner of the senator gave melancholy proofthat the orgie at his palace had altered him for the rest of his life.He looked what he was, a man changed for ever in constitution andcharacter. A fixed expression of anxiety and gloom appeared in hiseyes; his emaciated face was occasionally distorted by a nervous,involuntary contraction of the muscles; it was evident that theparalysing effect of the debauch which had destroyed his companionswould remain with him to the end of his existence. No remnant of hiscareless self-possession, his easy, patrician affability, appeared inhis manner, as he now listened to his companion's conversation; yearsseemed to have been added to his life since he had headed the table at'The Banquet of Famine'.
'Yes,' said the physician, a cold, calm man, who spoke much, butpronounced all his words with emphatic deliberation,--'Yes, as I havealready told you, the wound in itself was not mortal. If the blade ofthe knife had entered near the centre of the neck, she must have diedwhen she was struck. But it passed outwards and backwards; the largevessels escaped, and no vital part has been touched.'
'And yet you persist in declaring that you doubt her recovery!'exclaimed Vetranio, in low, mournful tones.
'I do,' pursued the physician. 'She must have been exhausted in mindand body when she received the blow--I have watched her carefully; Iknow it! There is nothing of the natural health and strength of youthto oppose the effects of the wound. I have seen the old die frominjuries that the young recover, because life in them was losing itspowers of resistance; she is in the position of the old!'
'They have died before me, and she will die before me! I shall loseall--all!' sighed Vetranio bitterly to himself.
'The resources of our art are exhausted,' continued the other; 'nothingremains but to watch carefully and wait patiently. The chances of lifeor death will be decided in a few hours; they are equally balanced now.'
'I shall lose all!--all!' repeated the senator mournfully, as if heheeded not the last words.
'If she dies,' said the physician, speaking in warmer tones, for he wasstruck with pity, in spite of himself, at the spectacle of Vetranio'sutter dejection, 'if she dies, you can at least remember that all thatcould be done to secure her life has been done by you. Her father,helpless in his lethargy and his age, was fitted only to sit and watchher, as he has sat and watched her day after day; but you have sparednothing, forgotten nothing. Whatever I have asked for, that you haveprovided; the hangings round the room, and the couch that she lies on,are yours; the first fresh supplies of nourishment from thenewly-opened markets were brought here from you; I told you that shewas thinking incessantly of what she had suffered, that it wasnecessary to preserve her against her own recollections, that thepresence of women about her might do good, that a child appearingsometimes in the room might soothe her fancy, might make her look atwhat was passing, instead of thinking of what had passed--you foundthem, and sent them! I have seen parents less anxious for theirchildren, lovers for their mistresses, than you for this girl.'
'My destiny is with her,' interrupted Vetranio, looking roundsuperstitiously to the frail form on the couch. 'I know nothing of themysteries that the Christians call their "Faith", but I believe now inthe soul; I believe that one soul contains the fate of another, andthat her soul contains the fate of mine!'
The physician shook his head derisively. His calling had determinedhis philosophy--he was as ardent a materialist as Epicurus himself.
'Listen,' said Vetranio; 'since I first saw her, a change came over mywhole being; it was as if her life was mingled with mine! I had noinfluence over her, save an influence for ill: I loved her, and shewas driven defenceless from her home! I sent my slaves to search Romenight and day; I exerted all my power, I lavished my wealth to discoverher; and, for the first time in this one effort, I failed in what I hadundertaken. I felt that through me she was lost--dead! Days passedon; life weighed weary on me; the famine came. You know in what way Idetermined that my career should close; the rumour of the Banquet ofFamine reached you as it reached others!'
'It did,' replied the physician. 'And I see before me in your face,'he added, after a momentary pause, 'the havoc which that ill-omenedbanquet has worked. My friend, be advised!--abandon for ever theturmoil of your Roman palace, and breathe in tranquillity the air of acountry home. The strength you once had is gone never to return--ifyou would yet live, husband what is still left.'
'Hear me,' pursued Vetranio, in low, gloomy tones. 'I stood alone inmy doomed palace; the friends whom I had tempted to their destructionlay lifeless around me; the torch was in my hand that was to light ourfuneral pile, to set us free from the loathsome world! I approachedtriumphantly to kindle the annihilating flames, when she stood beforeme--she, whom I had sought as lost and mourned as dead! A strong handseemed to wrench the torch from me; it dropped to the ground! Shedeparted again; but I was powerless to take it up; her look was stillbefore me; her face, her figure, she herself, appeared ever watchingbetween the torch and me!'
'Lower!--speak lower!' interrupted the physician, looking on thesenator's agitated features with unconcealed astonishment and pity.'You retard your own recovery,--you disturb the girl's repose bydiscourse such as this.'
'The officers of the senate,' continued Vetranio, sadly resuming hisgentler tones, 'when they entered the palace, found me still standingon the place where we had met! Days passed on again; I stood lookingout upon the street, and thought of m
y companions whom I had lured totheir death, and of my oath to partake their fate, which I had neverfulfilled. I would have driven my dagger to my heart; but her face wasyet before me, my hands were bound! In that hour I saw her for thesecond time; saw her carried past me--wounded, assassinated! She hadsaved me once; she had saved me twice! I knew that now the chance wasoffered me, after having wrought her ill, to work her good; afterfailing to discover her when she was lost, to succeed in saving herwhen she was dying; after having survived the deaths of my friends atmy own table, to survive to see life restored under my influence, aswell as destroyed! These were my thoughts; these are my thoughtsstill--thoughts felt only since I saw her! Do you know now why Ibelieve that her soul contains the fate of mine? Do you see me,weakened, shattered, old before my time; my friends lost, my freshfeelings of youth gone for ever; and can you not now comprehend thather life is my life?--that if she dies, the one good purpose of myexistence is blighted?--that I lose all I have henceforth to livefor?--all, all!'
As he pronounced the concluding words, the girl's eyes half unclosed,and turned languidly towards her father. She made an effort to lifther hand caressingly from his knee to his neck; but her strength wasunequal even to this slight action. The hand was raised only a fewinches ere it sank back again to its old position; a tear rolled slowlyover her cheek as she closed her eyes again, but she never spoke.
'See,' said the physician, pointing to her, 'the current of life is atits lowest ebb! If it flows again, it must flow to-night.'
Vetranio made no answer; he dropped down on the seat near him, andcovered his face with his robe.
The physician, beholding the senator's situation, and reflecting on thestrange hurriedly-uttered confession which had just been addressed tohim, began to doubt whether the scenes through which his patron hadlately passed had not affected his brain. Philosopher though he was,the man of science had never observed the outward symptoms of the firstworking of good and pure influences in elevating a degraded mind; hehad never watched the denoting signs of speech and action which markthe progress of mental revolution while the old nature is changing forthe new; such objects of contemplation existed not for him. He gentlytouched Vetranio on the shoulder. 'Rise,' said he, 'and let us depart.Those are around her who can watch her best. Nothing remains for usbut to wait and hope. With the earliest morning we will return.'
He delivered a few farewell directions to one of the women inattendance, and then, accompanied by the senator, who, without speakingagain, mechanically rose to follow him, quitted the room. After this,the silence was only interrupted by the sound of an occasional whisper,and of quick, light footsteps passing backwards and forwards. Then thecooling, reviving draughts which had been prepared for the night werepoured ready into the cups; and the women approached Numerian, as if toaddress him, but he waved his hand impatiently when he saw them; andthen they too, in their turn, departed, to wait in an adjoiningapartment until they should be summoned again.
Nothing changed in the manner of the father when he was left alone inthe chamber of sickness, which the lapse of a few hours might convertinto the chamber of death. He sat watching Antonina, and touching theoutspread locks of her hair from time to time, as had been his wont.It was a fair, starry night; the fresh air of the soft winter climateof the South blew gently over the earth, the great city was sinkingfast into tranquillity, calling voices were sometimes heard faintlyfrom the principal streets, and the distant noises of martial musicsounded cheerily from the Gothic camp as the sentinels were postedalong the line of watch; but soon these noises ceased, and thestillness of Rome was as the stillness round the couch of the woundedgirl.
Day after day, and night after night, since the assassination in thetemple, Numerian had kept the same place by his daughter's side. Eachhour as it passed found him still absorbed in his long vigil of hope;his life seemed suspended in its onward course by the one influencethat now enthralled it. At the brief intervals when his bodilyweariness overpowered him on his melancholy watch, it was observed bythose around him that, even in his short dreaming clumbers, his faceremained ever turned in the same direction, towards the head of thecouch, as if drawn thither by some irresistible attraction, by somepowerful ascendancy, felt even amid the deepest repose of sensation,the heaviest fatigue of the overlaboured mind, and worn, sinking heart.He held no communication, save by signs, with the friends about him; heseemed neither to hope, to doubt, nor to despair with them; all hisfaculties were strung up to vibrate at one point only, and were dulland unimpressible in every other direction.
But twice had he been heard to speak more than the fewest, simplestwords. The first time, when Antonina uttered the name of Goisvintha,on the recovery of her senses after her wound, he answered eagerly byreiterated declarations that there was nothing henceforth to fear; forhe had seen the assassin dead under the Pagan's foot on leaving thetemple. The second time, when mention was incautiously made before himof rumours circulated through Rome of the burning of an unknown Paganpriest, hidden in the temple of Serapis, with vast treasures aroundhim, the old man was seen to start and shudder, and heard to pray forthe soul that was now waiting before the dread judgment-seat; to murmurabout a vain restoration and a discovery made too late; to mourn overhorror that thickened round him, over hope fruitlessly awakened, andbereavement more terrible than mortal had ever suffered before; toentreat that the child, the last left of all, might be spared--withmany words more, which ran on themes like these, and which were countedby all who listened to them but as the wanderings of a mind whosehigher powers were fatally prostrated by feebleness and grief.
One long hour of the night had already passed away since parent andchild had been left together, and neither word nor movement had beenaudible in the melancholy room. But, as the second hour began, thegirl's eyes unclosed again, and she moved painfully on the couch.Accustomed to interpret the significance of her slightest actions,Numerian rose and brought her one of the reviving draughts that hadbeen left ready for use. After she had drunk, when her eyes met herfather's fixed on her in mute and mournful inquiry, her lips closed,and formed themselves into an expression which he remembered they hadalways assumed when, as a little child, she used silently to hold upher face to him to be kissed. The miserable contrast between what shewas now and what she had been them, was beyond the passive endurance,the patient resignation of the spirit-broken old man; the empty cupdropped from his hands, he knelt down by the side of the couch andgroaned aloud.
'O father! father!' cried the weak, plaintive voice above him. 'I amdying! Let us remember that our time to be together here grows shorterand shorter, and let us pass it as happily as we can!'
He raised his head, and looked up at her, vacant and wistful, forlornalready, as if the death-parting was over.
'I have tried to live humbly and gratefully,' she sighed faintly. 'Ihave longed to do more good on the earth than I have done! Yet youwill forgive me now, father, as you have always forgiven me! You havebeen patient with me all my life; more patient than I have everdeserved! But I had no mother to teach me to love you as I ought, toteach me what I know now, when my death is near, and time andopportunity are mine no longer!'
'Hush! hush!' whispered the old man affrightedly; 'you will live! Godis good, and knows that we have suffered enough. The curse of the lastseparation is not pronounced against us! Live, live!'
'Father,' said the girl tenderly, 'we have that within us which notdeath itself can separate. In another world I shall still think of youwhen you think of me! I shall see you even when I am no more here,when you long to see me! When you go out alone, and sit under thetrees on the garden bank where I used to sit; when you look forth onthe far plains and mountains that I used to look on; when you read atnight in the Bible that we have read in together, and remember Antoninaas you lie down sorrowful to rest; then I shall see you! then you willfeel that I am looking on you! You will be calm and consoled, even bythe side of my grave; for you will think, not of the body that isbene
ath, but of the spirit that is waiting for you, as I have oftenwaited for you here when you were away, and I knew that the approach ofthe evening would bring you home again!'
'Hush! you will live!--you will live!' repeated Numerian in the samelow, vacant tones. The strength that still upheld him was in those fewsimple words; they were the food of a hope that was born in agony andcradled in despair.
'Oh, if I might live!' said the girl softly, 'if I might live but for afew days yet, how much I have to live for!' She endeavoured to bendher head towards her father as she spoke; for the words were beginningto fall faintly and more faintly from her lips--exhaustion wasmastering her once again. She dwelt for a moment now on the name ofHermanric, on the grave in the farm-house garden; then reverted againto her father. The last feeble sounds she uttered were addressed tohim; and their burden was still of consolation and of love.
Soon the old man, as he stooped over her, saw her eyes closeagain--those innocent, gentle eyes which even yet preserved their oldexpression while the face grew wan and pale around them--and darknessand night sank down over his soul while he looked. 'She sleeps,' hemurmured in a voice of awe, as he resumed his watching position by theside of the couch. 'They call death a sleep; but on her face there isno death!'
The night grew on. The women who were in attendance entered the roomabout midnight, wondering that their assistance had not yet beenrequired. They beheld the solemn, unruffled composure on the girl'swasted face; the rapt attention of Numerian, as he ever preserved thesame attitude by her side; and went out again softly without uttering aword, even in a whisper. There was something dread and impressive inthe very appearance of this room, where Death, that destroys, was inmortal conflict with Youth and Beauty, that adorn, while the eyes ofone old man watched in loneliness the awful progress of the strife.
Morning came, and still there was no change. Once, when the lamp thatlit the room was fading out as the dawn appeared, Numerian had risenand looked close on his daughter's face--he thought at that moment thather features moved; but he saw that the flickering of the dying lighton them had deceived him; the same stillness was over her. He placedhis ear close to her lips for an instant, and then resumed his place,not stirring from it again. The slow current of his blood seemed tohave come to a pause--he was waiting as a man waits with his head onthe block ere the axe descends--as a mother waits to hear that thebreath of life has entered her new-born child.
The sun rose bright in a cloudless sky. As the fresh, sharp air of theearly dawn warmed under its spreading rays, the women entered theapartment again, and partly drew aside the curtain and shutter from thewindow. The beams of the new light fell fair and glorifying on thegirl's face; the faint, calm breezed ruffled the lighter locks of herhair. Once this would have awakened her; but it did not disturb hernow.
Soon after the voice of the child who sojourned with the women in thehouse was heard beneath, in the hall, through the half-opened door ofthe room. The little creature was slowly ascending the stairs, singingher faltering morning song to herself. She was preceded on herapproach by a tame dove, bought at the provision market outside thewalls, but preserved for the child as a pet and plaything by itsmother. The bird fluttered, cooing, into the room, perched upon thehead of the couch, and began dressing its feathers there. The womenhad caught the infection of the old man's enthralling suspense; andmoved not to bid the child retire, or to take away the dove from itsplace--they watched like him. But the soft, lulling notes of the birdwere powerless over the girl's ear, as the light sunbeam over herface--still she never woke.
The child entered, and pausing in her song, climbed on to the side ofthe couch. She held out one little hand for the dove to perch upon,placed the other lightly on Antonina's shoulder, and pressed her fresh,rosy lips to girl's faded cheek. 'I and my bird have come to makeAntonina well this morning,' she said gravely.
The still, heavily-closed eyelids moved!--they quivered, opened,closed, then opened again. The eyes had a faint, dreaming, unconsciouslook; but Antonina lived! Antonina was awakened at last to another dayon earth!
Her father's rigid, straining gaze still remained fixed upon her as atfirst, but on his countenance there was a blank, an absence of allappearance of sensation and life. The women, as they looked onAntonina and looked on him, began to weep; the child resumed verysoftly its morning song, now addressing it to the wounded girl and nowto the dove.
At this moment Vetranio and the physician appeared on the scene. Thelatter advanced to the couch, removed the child from it, and examinedAntonina intently. At length, partly addressing Numerian, partlyspeaking to himself, he said: 'She has slept long, deeply, withoutmoving, almost without breathing--a sleep like death to all who lookedon it.'
The old man spoke not in reply, but the women answered eagerly in theaffirmative.
'She is saved,' pursued the physician, leisurely quitting the side ofthe couch and smiling on Vetranio; 'be careful of her for days and daysto come.'
'Saved! saved!' echoed the child joyfully, setting the dove free in theroom, and running to Numerian to climb on his knees. The fatherglanced down when the clear young voice sounded in his ear. Thesprings of joy, so long dried up in his heart, welled forth again as hesaw the little hands raised towards him entreatingly; his grey headdrooped--he wept.
At a sign from the physician the child was led from the room. Thesilence of deep and solemn emotion was preserved by all who remained;nothing was heard but the suppressed sobs of the old man, and thefaint, retiring notes of the infant voice still singing its morningsong. And now one word, joyfully reiterated again and again, made allthe burden of the music--
'SAVED! SAVED!'
THE CONCLUSION. 'UBI THESAURUS IBI COR.'
Shortly after the opening of the provision markets outside the gates ofRome, the Goths broke up their camp before the city and retired towinter quarters in Tuscany. The negotiations which ensued betweenAlaric and the Court and Government at Ravenna, were conducted withcunning moderation by the conqueror, and with infatuated audacity bythe conquered, and ultimately terminated in a resumption ofhostilities. Rome was besieged a second and a third time by 'thebarbarians'. On the latter occasion the city was sacked, its palaceswere burnt, its treasures were seized; the monuments of the Christianreligion were alone respected.
But it is no longer with the Goths that our narrative is concerned; theconnection with them which it has hitherto maintained closes with theend of the first siege of Rome. We can claim the reader's attentionfor historical events no more--the march of our little pageant, arrayedfor his pleasure, is over. If, however, he has felt, and stillretains, some interest in Antonina, he will not refuse to follow us,and look on her again ere we part.
More than a month had passed since the besieging army had retired totheir winter quarters, when several of the citizens of Rome assembledthemselves on the plains beyond the walls, to enjoy one of those rusticfestivals of ancient times, which are still celebrated, under differentusages, but with the same spirit, by the Italians of modern days.
The place was a level plot of ground beyond the Pincian Gate, backed bya thick grove of pine trees, and looking towards the north over thesmooth extent of the country round Rome. The persons congregated weremostly of the lower class. Their amusements were dancing, music, gamesof strength and games of chance; and, above all, to people who hadlately suffered the extremities of famine, abundant eating anddrinking--long, serious, ecstatic enjoyment of the powers ofmastication and the faculties of taste.
Among the assembly were some individuals whose dress and manner raisedthem, outwardly at least, above the general mass. These persons walkedbackwards and forwards together on different parts of the ground asobservers, not as partakers in the sports. One of their number,however, in whatever direction he turned, preserved an isolatedposition. He held an open letter in his hand, which he looked at fromtime to time, and appeared to be wholly absorbed in his own thoughts.This man we may advantageously particularise on his o
wn account, aswell as on account of the peculiarity of his accidental situation; forhe was the favoured minister of Vetranio's former pleasures--'theindustrious Carrio'.
The freedman (who was last introduced to the reader in Chapter XIV., asexhibiting to Vetranio the store of offal which he had collected duringthe famine for the consumption of the palace) had contrived of lategreatly to increase his master's confidence in him. On theorganisation of the Banquet of Famine, he had discreetly refrained fromtestifying the smallest desire to save himself from the catastrophe inwhich the senator and his friends had determined to involve themselves.Securing himself in a place of safety, he awaited the end of the orgie;and when he found that its unexpected termination left his master stillliving to employ him, appeared again as a faithful servant, ready toresume his customary occupation with undiminished zeal.
After the dispersion of his household during the famine, and amid thegeneral confusion of the social system in Rome, on the raising of theblockade, Vetranio found no one near him that he could trust butCarrio--and he trusted him. Nor was the confidence misplaced: the manwas selfish and sordid enough; but these very qualities ensured hisfidelity to his master as long as that master retained the power topunish and the capacity to reward.
The letter which Carrio held in his hand was addressed to him at avilla--from which he had just returned--belonging to Vetranio, on theshores of the Bay of Naples, and was written by the senator from Rome.The introductory portions of this communication seemed to interest thefreedman but little: they contained praises of his diligence inpreparing the country-house for the immediate habitation of its owner,and expressed his master's anxiety to quit Rome as speedily aspossible, for the sake of living in perfect tranquillity, and breathingthe reviving air of the sea, as the physicians had counselled. It wasthe latter part of the letter that Carrio perused and re-perused, andthen meditated over with unwonted attention and labour of mind. It ranthus:--
'I have now to repose in you a trust, which you will execute withperfect fidelity as you value my favour or respect the wealth fromwhich you may obtain your reward. When you left Rome you left thedaughter of Numerian lying in danger of death: she has since revived.Questions that I have addressed to her during her recovery haveinformed me of much in her history that I knew not before; and haveinduced me to purchase, for reasons of my own, a farm-house and itslands, beyond the suburbs. (The extent of the place and its situationare written on the vellum that is within this.) The husbandman whocultivated the property had survived the famine, and will continue tocultivate it for me. But it is my desire that the garden, and all thatit contains, shall remain entirely at the disposal of Numerian and hisdaughter, who may often repair to it; and who must henceforth beregarded there as occupying my place and having my authority. You willdivide your time between overlooking the few slaves whom I leave at thepalace in my absence, and the husbandman and his labourers whom I haveinstalled at the farm; and you will answer to me for the dueperformance of your own duties and the duties of those under you--beingassured that by well filling this office you will serve your owninterests in these, and in all things besides.'
The letter concluded by directing the freedman to return to Rome on acertain day, and to go to the farm-house at an appointed hour, there tomeet his master, who had further directions to give him, and who wouldvisit the newly acquired property before he proceeded on his journey toNaples.
Nothing could exceed the perplexity of Carrio as he read the passage inhis patron's letter which we have quoted above. Remembering theincidents attending Vetranio's early connection with Antonina and herfather, the mere circumstances of a farm having been purchased toflatter what was doubtless some accidental caprice on the part of thegirl, would have little perplexed him. But that this act should befollowed by the senator's immediate separation of himself from thesociety of Numerian's daughter; that she was to gain nothing after allfrom these lands which had evidently been bought at her instigation,but the authority over a little strip of garden; and yet, theinviolability of this valueless privilege should be insisted on in suchserious terms, and with such an imperative tone of command as thesenator had never been known to use before--these were inconsistencieswhich all Carrio's ingenuity failed to reconcile. The man had beenborn and reared in vice; vice had fed him, clothed him, freed him,given him character, reputation, power in his own small way--he livedin it as in the atmosphere that he breathed; to show him an action,referable only to a principle of pure integrity, was to set him aproblem which it was hopeless to solve. And yet it is impossible, inone point of view, to pronounce him utterly worthless. Ignorant of alldistinctions between good and bad, he thought wrong from sheerinability to see right.
However his instructions might perplex him, he followed them now--andcontinued in after days to follow them--to the letter. If to serveone's own interests be an art, of that art Carrio deserved to be headprofessor. He arrived at the farm-house, not only punctually, butbefore the appointed time, and calling the honest husbandman and thelabourers about him, explained to them every particular of theauthority that his patron had vested in him, with a flowing andperemptory solemnity of speech which equally puzzled and impressed hissimple audience. He found Numerian and Antonina in the garden when heentered it. The girl had been carried there daily in a litter sinceher recovery, and her father had followed. They were never separatednow; the old man, when his first absorbing anxiety for her was calmed,remembered again more distinctly the terrible disclosure in the temple,and the yet more terrible catastrophe that followed it, and he soughtconstant refuge from the horror of the recollection in the presence ofhis child.
The freedman, during his interview with the father and daughter,observed, for once, an involuntary and unfeigned respect; but he spokebriefly, and left them together again almost immediately. Humble andhelpless as they were, they awed him; they looked, thought, and spokelike beings of another nature than his; they were connected, he knewnot how, with the mystery of the grave in the garden. He would havebeen self-possessed in the presence of the Emperor himself, but he wasuneasy in theirs. So he retired to the more congenial scene of thepublic festival which was in the immediate neighbourhood of thefarm-house, to await the hour of his patron's arrival, and to perplexhimself afresh by a re-perusal of Vetranio's letter.
The time was now near at hand when it was necessary for the freedman toreturn to his appointed post. He carefully rolled up his note ofinstructions, stood for a few minutes vacantly regarding the amusementswhich had hitherto engaged so little of his attention, and then,turning, he proceeded through the pine-grove on his way back. We willfollow him.
On leaving the grove, a footpath conducted over some fields to thefarm-house. Arrived here, Carrio hesitated for a moment; then movedslowly onward to await his master's approach in the lane that led tothe highroad. At this point we will part company with him, to enterthe garden by the wicket-gate.
The trees, the flower-beds, and the patches of grass, all remained intheir former positions--nothing had been added or taken away since themelancholy days that were past; but a change was visible in Hermanric'sgrave. The turf above it had been renewed, and a border of smallevergreen shrubs was planted over the track which Goisvintha'sfootsteps had traced. A white marble cross was raised at one end ofthe mound; the short Latin inscription on it signified--'PRAY FOR THEDEAD'.
The sunlight was shining calmly over the grave, and over Numerian andAntonina as they sat by it. Sometimes when the mirth grew louder at therustic festival, it reached them in faint, subdued notes; sometimesthey heard the voices of the labourers in the neighbouring fieldstalking to each other at their work; but, besides these, no othersounds were loud enough to be distinguished. There was still anexpression of the melancholy and feebleness that grief and sufferingleave behind them on the countenances of the father and daughter; butresignation and peace appeared there as well--resignation that wasperfected by the hard teaching of woe, and peace that was purer forbeing imparted from the one to t
he other, like the strong and deathlesslove from which it grew.
There was something now in the look and attitude of the girl, as shesat thinking of the young warrior who had died in her defence and forher love, and training the shrubs to grow closer round the grave,which, changed though she was, recalled in a different form the oldpoetry and tranquillity of her existence when we first saw her singingto the music of her lute in the garden on the Pincian Hill. No thoughtsof horror and despair were suggested to her as she now looked on thefarm-house scene. Hers was not the grief which shrinks selfishly fromall that revives the remembrance of the dead: to her, their influenceover the memory was a grateful and a guardian influence that gave abetter purpose to the holiest life, and a nobler nature to the purestthoughts.
Thus they were sitting by the grave, sad yet content; footsore alreadyon the pilgrimage of life, yet patient to journey farther if theymight--when an unusual tumult, a noise of rolling wheels, mingled witha confused sound of voices, was heard in the lane behind them. Theylooked round, and saw that Vetranio was approaching them alone throughthe wicket-gate.
He came forward slowly; the stealthy poison instilled by the Banquet ofFamine palpably displayed its presence within him as the clear sunlightfell on his pale, wasted face. He smiled kindly as he addressedAntonina; but the bodily pain and mental agitation which that smile wasintended to conceal, betrayed themselves in his troubled voice as hespoke.
'This is our last meeting for years--it may be our last meeting forlife,' he said; 'I linger at the outset of my journey, but to beholdyou as guardian of the one spot of ground that is most precious to youon earth--as mistress, indeed, of the little that I give you here!' Hepaused a moment and pointed to the grave, then continued: 'All theatonement that I owe to you, you can never know--I can nevertell!--think only that I bear away with me a companion in the solitudeto which I go in the remembrance of you. Be calm, good, happy still,for my sake, and while you forgive the senator of former days, forgetnot the friend who now parts from you in some sickness and sorrow, butalso in much patience and hope! Farewell!'
His hand trembled as he held it out; a flush overspread the girl'scheek while she murmured a few inarticulate words of gratitude, and,bending over it, pressed it to her lips. Vetranio's heart beat quick;the action revived an emotion that he dared not cherish; but he lookedat the wan, downcast face before him, at the grave that rose mournfulby his side, and quelled it again. Yet an instant he lingered toexchange a farewell with the old man, then turned quickly, passedthrough the gate, and they saw him no more.
Antonina's tears fell fast on the grass beneath as she resumed herplace. When she raised her head again, and saw that her father waslooking at her, she nestled close to him and laid one of her arms roundhis neck: the other gradually dropped to her side, until her handreached the topmost leaves of the shrubs that grew round the grave.
* * * * *
Shall we longer delay in the farm-house garden? No! For us, as forVetranio, it is now time to depart! While peace still watches round thewalls of Rome; while the hearts of the father and daughter still reposetogether in security, after the trials that have wrung them, let usquit the scene! Here, at last, the narrative that we have followedover a dark and stormy track reposes on a tranquil field; and here letus cease to pursue it!
So the traveller who traces the course of a river wanders through theday among the rocks and precipices that lead onward from its troubledsource; and, when the evening is at hand, pauses and rests where thebanks are grassy and the stream is smooth.
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