The Last Days of Pompeii

  BOOK THE FIFTH

  Chapter I

  THE DREAM OF ARBACES. A VISITOR AND A WARNING TO THE EGYPTIAN.THE awful night preceding the fierce joy of the amphitheatre rolleddrearily away, and greyly broke forth the dawn of THE LAST DAY OFPOMPEII! The air was uncommonly calm and sultry--a thin and dull mistgathered over the valleys and hollows of the broad Campanian fields.But yet it was remarked in surprise by the early fishermen, that,despite the exceeding stillness of the atmosphere, the waves of the seawere agitated, and seemed, as it were, to run disturbedly back from theshore; while along the blue and stately Sarnus, whose ancient breadth ofchannel the traveler now vainly seeks to discover, there crept a hoarseand sullen murmur, as it glided by the laughing plains and the gaudyvillas of the wealthy citizens. Clear above the low mist rose thetime-worn towers of the immemorial town, the red-tiled roofs of thebright streets, the solemn columns of many temples, and thestatue-crowned portals of the Forum and the Arch of Triumph. Far in thedistance, the outline of the circling hills soared above the vapors, andmingled with the changeful hues of the morning sky. The cloud that hadso long rested over the crest of Vesuvius had suddenly vanished, and itsrugged and haughty brow looked without a frown over the beautiful scenesbelow.

  Despite the earliness of the hour, the gates of the city were alreadyopened. Horsemen upon horsemen, vehicle after vehicle, poured rapidlyin; and the voices of numerous pedestrian groups, clad in holidayattire, rose high in joyous and excited merriment; the streets werecrowded with citizens and strangers from the populous neighborhood ofPompeii; and noisily--fast--confusedly swept the many streams of lifetowards the fatal show.

  Despite the vast size of the amphitheatre, seemingly so disproportionedto the extent of the city, and formed to include nearly the wholepopulation of Pompeii itself, so great, on extraordinary occasions, wasthe concourse of strangers from all parts of Campania, that the spacebefore it was usually crowded for several hours previous to thecommencement of the sports, by such persons as were not entitled bytheir rank to appointed and special seats. And the intense curiositywhich the trial and sentence of two criminals so remarkable hadoccasioned, increased the crowd on this day to an extent whollyunprecedented.

  While the common people, with the lively vehemence of their Campanianblood, were thus pushing, scrambling, hurrying on--yet, amidst all theireagerness, preserving, as is now the wont with Italians in suchmeetings, a wonderful order and unquarrelsome good humor, a strangevisitor to Arbaces was threading her way to his sequestered mansion. Atthe sight of her quaint and primaeval garb--of her wild gait andgestures--the passengers she encountered touched each other and smiled;but as they caught a glimpse of her countenance, the mirth was hushed atonce, for the face was as the face of the dead; and, what with theghastly features and obsolete robes of the stranger, it seemed as if onelong entombed had risen once more amongst the living. In silence andawe each group gave way as she passed along, and she soon gained thebroad porch of the Egyptian's palace.

  The black porter, like the rest of the world, astir at an unusual hour,started as he opened the door to her summons.

  The sleep of the Egyptian had been usually profound during the night;but, as the dawn approached, it was disturbed by strange and unquietdreams, which impressed him the more as they were colored by thepeculiar philosophy he embraced.

  He thought that he was transported to the bowels of the earth, and thathe stood alone in a mighty cavern supported by enormous columns of roughand primaeval rock, lost, as they ascended, in the vastness of a shadowathwart whose eternal darkness no beam of day had ever glanced. And inthe space between these columns were huge wheels, that whirled round andround unceasingly, and with a rushing and roaring noise. Only to theright and left extremities of the cavern, the space between the pillarswas left bare, and the apertures stretched away into galleries--notwholly dark, but dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that,meteor-like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and danksoil; and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across the vast gloomin wild gambols--suddenly disappearing, and as suddenly bursting intotenfold brilliancy and power. And while he gazed wonderingly upon thegallery to the left, thin, mist-like, aerial shapes passed slowly up;and when they had gained the hall they seemed to rise aloft, and tovanish, as the smoke vanishes, in the measureless ascent.

  He turned in fear towards the opposite extremity--and behold! there cameswiftly, from the gloom above, similar shadows, which swept hurriedlyalong the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown thesides of some invisible stream; and the faces of these spectres weremore distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and onsome was joy, and on others sorrow--some were vivid with expectation andhope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror. And so they passed,swift and constantly on, till the eyes of the gazer grew dizzy andblinded with the whirl of an ever-varying succession of things impelledby a power apparently not their own.

  Arbaces turned away, and, in the recess of the hall, he saw the mightyform of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busyupon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated withthe numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements.He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards thefemale, and that he was borne onwards till he stood before her, face toface. The countenance of the giantess was solemn and hushed, andbeautifully serene. It was as the face of some colossal sculpture of hisown ancestral sphinx. No passion--no human emotion, disturbed itsbrooding and unwrinkled brow: there was neither sadness, nor joy, normemory, nor hope: it was free from all with which the wild human heartcan sympathize. The mystery of mysteries rested on its beauty--it awed,but terrified not: it was the Incarnation of the sublime. And Arbacesfelt the voice leave his lips, without an impulse of his own; and thevoice asked:

  'Who art thou, and what is thy task?'

  'I am That which thou hast acknowledged,' answered, without desistingfrom its work, the mighty phantom. 'My name is NATURE! These are thewheels of the world, and my hand guides them for the life of allthings.'

  'And what,' said the voice of Arbaces, 'are these galleries, thatstrangely and fitfully illumined, stretch on either hand into the abyssof gloom?'

  'That,' answered the giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, isthe gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward intothe world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being totheir destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thyright, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equallyunknown and dim, is the gallery of the Dead!'

  'And wherefore, said the voice of Arbaces, 'yon wandering lights, thatso wildly break the darkness; but only break, not reveal?'

  'Dark fool of the human sciences! dreamer of the stars, and would-bedecipherer of the heart and origin of things! those lights are but theglimmerings of such knowledge as is vouchsafed to Nature to work herway, to trace enough of the past and future to give providence to herdesigns. Judge, then, puppet as thou art, what lights are reserved forthee!'

  Arbaces felt himself tremble as he asked again, 'Wherefore am I here?'

  'It is the forecast of thy soul--the prescience of thy rushing doom--theshadow of thy fate lengthening into eternity as declines from earth.'

  Ere he could answer, Arbaces felt a rushing WIND sweep down the cavern,as the winds of a giant god. Borne aloft from the ground, and whirledon high as a leaf in the storms of autumn, he beheld himself in themidst of the Spectres of the Dead, and hurrying with them along thelength of gloom. As in vain and impotent despair he struggled againstthe impelling power, he thought the WIND grew into something like ashape--a spectral outline of the wings and talons of an eagle, withlimbs floating far and indistinctly along the air, and eyes that, aloneclearly and vividly seen, glared stonily and remorselessly on his own.

  'What art thou?' again said the voice of the Egyptian.

  'I am That which thou hast acknowledged'; and the spectre laug
hedaloud--'and my name is NECESSITY.'

  'To what dost thou bear me?'

  'To the Unknown.'

  'To happiness or to woe?'

  'As thou hast sown, so shalt thou reap.'

  'Dread thing, not so! If thou art the Ruler of Life, thine are mymisdeeds, not mine.'

  'I am but the breath of God!' answered the mighty WIND.

  'Then is my wisdom vain!' groaned the dreamer.

  'The husbandman accuses not fate, when, having sown thistles, he reapsnot corn. Thou hast sown crime, accuse not fate if thou reapest not theharvest of virtue.'

  The scene suddenly changed. Arbaces was in a place of human bones; andlo! in the midst of them was a skull, and the skull, still retaining itsfleshless hollows, assumed slowly, and in the mysterious confusion of adream, the face of Apaecides; and forth from the grinning jaws therecrept a small worm, and it crawled to the feet of Arbaces. He attemptedto stamp on it and crush it; but it became longer and larger with thatattempt. It swelled and bloated till it grew into a vast serpent: itcoiled itself round the limbs of Arbaces; it crunched his bones; itraised its glaring eyes and poisonous jaws to his face. He writhed invain; he withered--he gasped--beneath the influence of the blightingbreath--he felt himself blasted into death. And then a voice came fromthe reptile, which still bore the face of Apaecides and rang in hisreeling ear:

  'THY VICTIM IS THY JUDGE! THE WORM THOU WOULDST CRUSH BECOMES THESERPENT THAT DEVOURS THEE!'

  With a shriek of wrath, and woe, and despairing resistance, Arbacesawoke--his hair on end--his brow bathed in dew--his eyes glazed andstaring--his mighty frame quivering as an infant's, beneath the agony ofthat dream. He awoke--he collected himself--he blessed the gods whom hedisbelieved, that he was in a dream--he turned his eyes from side toside--he saw the dawning light break through his small but loftywindow--he was in the Precincts of Day--he rejoiced--he smiled; his eyesfell, and opposite to him he beheld the ghastly features, the lifelesseye, the livid lip--of the hag of Vesuvius!

  'Ha!' he cried, placing his hands before his eyes, as to shut out thegrisly vision, 'do I dream still?--Am I with the dead?'

  'Mighty Hermes--no! Thou art with one death-like, but not dead.Recognize thy friend and slave.'

  There was a long silence. Slowly the shudders that passed over thelimbs of the Egyptian chased each other away, faintlier and faintlierdying till he was himself again.

  'It was a dream, then,' said he. 'Well--let me dream no more, or theday cannot compensate for the pangs of night. Woman, how camest thouhere, and wherefore?'

  'I came to warn thee,' answered the sepulchral voice of the saga.

  'Warn me! The dream lied not, then? Of what peril?'

  'Listen to me. Some evil hangs over this fated city. Fly while it betime. Thou knowest that I hold my home on that mountain beneath whichold tradition saith there yet burn the fires of the river of Phlegethon;and in my cavern is a vast abyss, and in that abyss I have of latemarked a red and dull stream creep slowly, slowly on; and heard many andmighty sounds hissing and roaring through the gloom. But last night, asI looked thereon, behold the stream was no longer dull, but intenselyand fiercely luminous; and while I gazed, the beast that liveth with me,and was cowering by my side, uttered a shrill howl, and fell down anddied, and the slaver and froth were round his lips. I crept back to mylair; but I distinctly heard, all the night, the rock shake and tremble;and, though the air was heavy and still, there were the hissing of pentwinds, and the grinding as of wheels, beneath the ground. So, when Irose this morning at the very birth of dawn, I looked again down theabyss, and I saw vast fragments of stone borne black and floatingly overthe lurid stream; and the stream itself was broader, fiercer, redderthan the night before. Then I went forth, and ascended to the summit ofthe rock: and in that summit there appeared a sudden and vast hollow,which I had never perceived before, from which curled a dim, faintsmoke; and the vapor was deathly, and I gasped, and sickened, and nearlydied. I returned home. I took my gold and my drugs, and left thehabitation of many years; for I remembered the dark Etruscan prophecywhich saith, "When the mountain opens, the city shall fall--when thesmoke crowns the Hill of the Parched Fields, there shall be woe andweeping in the hearths of the Children of the Sea." Dread master, ere Ileave these walls for some more distant dwelling, I come to thee. Asthou livest, know I in my heart that the earthquake that sixteen yearsago shook this city to its solid base, was but the forerunner of moredeadly doom. The walls of Pompeii are built above the fields of theDead, and the rivers of the sleepless Hell. Be warned and fly!'

  'Witch, I thank thee for thy care of one not ungrateful. On yon tablestands a cup of gold; take it, it is thine. I dreamt not that therelived one, out of the priesthood of Isis, who would have saved Arbacesfrom destruction. The signs thou hast seen in the bed of the extinctvolcano,' continued the Egyptian, musingly, 'surely tell of some comingdanger to the city; perhaps another earthquake--fiercer than the last.Be that as it may, there is a new reason for my hastening from thesewalls. After this day I will prepare my departure. Daughter ofEtruria, whither wendest thou?'

  'I shall cross over to Herculaneum this day, and, wandering thence alongthe coast, shall seek out a new home. I am friendless: my twocompanions, the fox and the snake, are dead. Great Hermes, thou hastpromised me twenty additional years of life!'

  'Aye,' said the Egyptian, 'I have promised thee. But, woman,' he added,lifting himself upon his arm, and gazing curiously on her face, 'tellme, I pray thee, wherefore thou wishest to live? What sweets dost thoudiscover in existence?'

  'It is not life that is sweet, but death that is awful,' replied thehag, in a sharp, impressive tone, that struck forcibly upon the heart ofthe vain star-seer. He winced at the truth of the reply; and no longeranxious to retain so uninviting a companion, he said, 'Time wanes; Imust prepare for the solemn spectacle of this day. Sister, farewell!enjoy thyself as thou canst over the ashes of life.'

  The hag, who had placed the costly gift of Arbaces in the loose folds ofher vest, now rose to depart. When she had gained the door she paused,turned back, and said, 'This may be the last time we meet on earth; butwhither flieth the flame when it leaves the ashes?--Wandering to andfro, up and down, as an exhalation on the morass, the flame may be seenin the marshes of the lake below; and the witch and the Magian, thepupil and the master, the great one and the accursed one, may meetagain. Farewell!'

  'Out, croaker!' muttered Arbaces, as the door closed on the hag'stattered robes; and, impatient of his own thoughts, not yet recoveredfrom the past dream, he hastily summoned his slaves.

  It was the custom to attend the ceremonials of the amphitheatre infestive robes, and Arbaces arrayed himself that day with more than usualcare. His tunic was of the most dazzling white: his many fibulae wereformed from the most precious stones: over his tunic flowed a looseeastern robe, half-gown, half-mantle, glowing in the richest hues of theTyrian dye; and the sandals, that reached half way up the knee, werestudded with gems, and inlaid with gold. In the quackeries thatbelonged to his priestly genius, Arbaces never neglected, on greatoccasions, the arts which dazzle and impose upon the vulgar; and on thisday, that was for ever to release him, by the sacrifice of Glaucus, fromthe fear of a rival and the chance of detection, he felt that he wasarraying himself as for a triumph or a nuptial feast.

  It was customary for men of rank to be accompanied to the shows of theamphitheatre by a procession of their slaves and freedmen; and the long'family' of Arbaces were already arranged in order, to attend the litterof their lord.

  Only, to their great chagrin, the slaves in attendance on Ione, and theworthy Sosia, as gaoler to Nydia, were condemned to remain at home.

  'Callias,' said Arbaces, apart to his freedman, who was buckling on hisgirdle, 'I am weary of Pompeii; I propose to quit it in three days,should the wind favor. Thou knowest the vessel that lies in the harborwhich belonged to Narses, of Alexandria; I have purchased it of him.The day after tomorrow we shall begin to remove my stores.
'

  'So soon! 'Tis well. Arbaces shall be obeyed--and his ward, Ione?'

  'Accompanies me. Enough!--Is the morning fair?'

  'Dim and oppressive; it will probably be intensely hot in the forenoon.'

  'The poor gladiators, and more wretched criminals! Descend, and seethat the slaves are marshalled.'

  Left alone, Arbaces stepped into his chamber of study, and thence uponthe portico without. He saw the dense masses of men pouring fast intothe amphitheatre, and heard the cry of the assistants, and the crackingof the cordage, as they were straining aloft the huge awning under whichthe citizens, molested by no discomforting ray, were to behold, atluxurious ease, the agonies of their fellow creatures. Suddenly a wildstrange sound went forth, and as suddenly died away--it was the roar ofthe lion. There was a silence in the distant crowd; but the silence wasfollowed by joyous laughter--they were making merry at the hungryimpatience of the royal beast.

  'Brutes!' muttered the disdainful Arbaces are ye less homicides than Iam? I slay but in self-defence--ye make murder pastime.'

  He turned with a restless and curious eye, towards Vesuvius. Beautifullyglowed the green vineyards round its breast, and tranquil as eternitylay in the breathless skies the form of the mighty hill.

  'We have time yet, if the earthquake be nursing,' thought Arbaces; andhe turned from the spot. He passed by the table which bore his mysticscrolls and Chaldean calculations.

  'August art!' he thought, 'I have not consulted thy decrees since Ipassed the danger and the crisis they foretold. What matter?--I knowthat henceforth all in my path is bright and smooth. Have not eventsalready proved it? Away, doubt--away, pity! Reflect O my heart--reflect, for the future, but two images--Empire and Ione!'