Marius the Epicurean — Volume 2

  PART THE FOURTH

  CHAPTER XX: TWO CURIOUS HOUSES

  I. GUESTS

  "Your old men shall dream dreams."+

  [75] A NATURE like that of Marius, composed, in about equal parts, ofinstincts almost physical, and of slowly accumulated intellectualjudgments, was perhaps even less susceptible than other men'scharacters of essential change. And yet the experience of thatfortunate hour, seeming to gather into one central act of vision allthe deeper impressions his mind had ever received, did not leave himquite as he had been. For his mental view, at least, it changedmeasurably the world about him, of which he was still indeed a curiousspectator, but which looked further off, was weaker in its hold, and,in a sense, less real to him than ever. It was as if he viewed itthrough a diminishing glass. And the permanency of this change hecould note, some years later, when it [76] happened that he was a guestat a feast, in which the various exciting elements of Roman life, itsphysical and intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity andfar-fetched elegances, its strange, mystic essays after the unseen,were elaborately combined. The great Apuleius, the literary ideal ofhis boyhood, had arrived in Rome,--was now visiting Tusculum, at thehouse of their common friend, a certain aristocratic poet who lovedevery sort of superiorities; and Marius was favoured with an invitationto a supper given in his honour.

  It was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to his own earlyboyish hero-worship, yet with some sense of superiority in himself,seeing his old curiosity grown now almost to indifference when on thepoint of satisfaction at last, and upon a juster estimate of itsobject, that he mounted to the little town on the hillside, thefoot-ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gatheredround a single great house under shadow of the "haunted" ruins ofCicero's villa on the wooded heights. He found a touch of weirdness inthe circumstance that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meetthe writer who was come to seem almost like one of the personages inhis own fiction. As he turned now and then to gaze at the eveningscene through the tall narrow openings of the street, up which thecattle were going home slowly from the [77] pastures below, the Albanmountains, stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses,seemed close at hand--a screen of vaporous dun purple against thesetting sun--with those waves of surpassing softness in the boundarylines which indicate volcanic formation. The coolness of the littlebrown market-place, for profit of which even the working-people, inlong file through the olive-gardens, were leaving the plain for thenight, was grateful, after the heats of Rome. Those wild countryfigures, clad in every kind of fantastic patchwork, stained by wind andweather fortunately enough for the eye, under that significant lightinclined him to poetry. And it was a very delicate poetry of its kindthat seemed to enfold him, as passing into the poet's house he pausedfor a moment to glance back towards the heights above; whereupon, thenumerous cascades of the precipitous garden of the villa, framed in thedoorway of the hall, fell into a harmless picture, in its place amongthe pictures within, and scarcely more real than they--alandscape-piece, in which the power of water (plunging into what unseendepths!) done to the life, was pleasant, and without its naturalterrors.

  At the further end of this bland apartment, fragrant with the rarewoods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of aromatic oil from theready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses of theguests, as with odours from the [78] altars of the gods, thesupper-table was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of theagreeable petit-maitre, who entertained. He was already most carefullydressed, but, like Martial's Stella, perhaps consciously, meant tochange his attire once and again during the banquet; in the lastinstance, for an ancient vesture (object of much rivalry among theyoung men of fashion, at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) atoga, of altogether lost hue and texture. He wore it with a gracewhich became the leader of a thrilling movement then on foot for therestoration of that disused garment, in which, laying aside thecustomary evening dress, all the visitors were requested to appear,setting off the delicate sinuosities and well-disposed "golden ways" ofits folds, with harmoniously tinted flowers. The opulent sunset,blending pleasantly with artificial light, fell across the quietancestral effigies of old consular dignitaries, along the wide floorstrewn with sawdust of sandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of coolcoronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard ofold citron. The crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues ofthe early autumn fruit--mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that hadlong been hanging under careful protection upon the vines, were almostas much a feast for the eye, as the dusky fires of the raretwelve-petalled roses. A favourite animal, white as snow, brought byone of the visitors, purred its way [79] gracefully among thewine-cups, coaxed onward from place to place by those at table, as theyreclined easily on their cushions of German eider-down, spread over thelong-legged, carved couches.

  A highly refined modification of the acroama--a musical performanceduring supper for the diversion of the guests--was presently heardhovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that thecompany could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it hadbeen designed by their entertainer. They inclined on the whole tothink it some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wildneighbourhood, turning, as it did now and then, to a solitaryreed-note, like a bird's, while it wandered into the distance. Itwandered quite away at last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight cameon, and made way for another sort of entertainment. An odd, rapid,phantasmal glitter, advancing from the garden by torchlight, defineditself, as it came nearer, into a dance of young men in armour. Arrivedat length in a portico, open to the supper-chamber, they contrived thattheir mechanical march-movement should fall out into a kind of highlyexpressive dramatic action; and with the utmost possible emphasis ofdumb motion, their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air,they danced the Death of Paris. The young Commodus, already an adeptin these matters, who had condescended to [80] welcome the eminentApuleius at the banquet, had mysteriously dropped from his place totake his share in the performance; and at its conclusion reappeared,still wearing the dainty accoutrements of Paris, including abreastplate, composed entirely of overlapping tigers' claws, skilfullygilt. The youthful prince had lately assumed the dress of manhood, onthe return of the emperor for a brief visit from the North; putting uphis hair, in imitation of Nero, in a golden box dedicated to CapitolineJupiter. His likeness to Aurelius, his father, was become, inconsequence, more striking than ever; and he had one source of genuineinterest in the great literary guest of the occasion, in that thelatter was the fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition ofwild beasts and gladiatorial shows in the province of Carthage, wherehe resided.

  Still, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes ofthe emperor's son, it was felt that with a guest like Apuleius whomthey had come prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, theconversation should be learned and superior, and the host at lastdeftly led his company round to literature, by the way of bindings.Elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine library of ancient Greekbooks passed from hand to hand about the table. It was a sign for thevisitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiositiesfrom their bags, as their contribution to the banquet; and one of them,a [81] famous reader, choosing his lucky moment, delivered in tenorvoice the piece which follows, with a preliminary query as to whetherit could indeed be the composition of Lucian of Samosata,+ understoodto be the great mocker of that day:--

  "What sound was that, Socrates?" asked Chaerephon. "It came from thebeach under the cliff yonder, and seemed a long way off.--And howmelodious it was! Was it a bird, I wonder. I thought all sea-birdswere songless."

  "Aye! a sea-bird," answered Socrates, "a bird called the Halcyon, andhas a note full of plaining and tears. There is an old story peopletell of it. It was a mortal woman once, daughter of Aeolus, god of thewinds. Ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her in her earlymaidenhood. The son was not less fair than the father; and when itcame to pa
ss that he died, the crying of the girl as she lamented hissweet usage, was, Just that! And some while after, as Heaven willed,she was changed into a bird. Floating now on bird's wings over the seashe seeks her lost Ceyx there; since she was not able to find him afterlong wandering over the land."

  "That then is the Halcyon--the kingfisher," said Chaerephon. "I neverheard a bird like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kindof a bird is it, Socrates?"

  "Not a large bird, though she has received [82] large honour from thegods on account of her singular conjugal affection. For whensoever shemakes her nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon'sweather,--days distinguishable among all others for their serenity,though they come sometimes amid the storms of winter--days like to-day!See how transparent is the sky above us, and how motionless thesea!--like a smooth mirror."

  True! A Halcyon day, indeed! and yesterday was the same. But tell me,Socrates, what is one to think of those stories which have been toldfrom the beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals intobirds? To me nothing seems more incredible."

  "Dear Chaerephon," said Socrates, "methinks we are but half-blindjudges of the impossible and the possible. We try the question by thestandard of our human faculty, which avails neither for true knowledge,nor for faith, nor vision. Therefore many things seem to us impossiblewhich are really easy, many things unattainable which are within ourreach; partly through inexperience, partly through the childishness ofour minds. For in truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like alittle child, so brief and babyish are the years of our life incomparison of eternity. Then, how can we, who comprehend not thefaculties of gods and of the heavenly host, tell whether aught of thatkind be possible or no?--What a tempest you saw [83] three days ago!One trembles but to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps, theviolence of the wind! You might have thought the whole world was goingto ruin. And then, after a little, came this wonderful serenity ofweather, which has continued till to-day. Which do you think thegreater and more difficult thing to do: to exchange the disorder ofthat irresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this, and becalm thewhole world again, or to refashion the form of a woman into that of abird? We can teach even little children to do something of thatsort,--to take wax or clay, and mould out of the same material manykinds of form, one after another, without difficulty. And it may bethat to the Deity, whose power is too vast for comparison with ours,all processes of that kind are manageable and easy. How much wider isthe whole circle of heaven than thyself?--Wider than thou canst express.

  "Among ourselves also, how vast the difference we may observe in men'sdegrees of power! To you and me, and many another like us, many thingsare impossible which are quite easy to others. For those who areunmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who havenot yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women ofbirds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms ofwinged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret[84] art in the wide air around us. She takes from the honeycomb alittle memberless live thing; she brings it wings and feet, brightensand beautifies it with quaint variety of colour:--and Lo! the bee inher wisdom, making honey worthy of the gods.

  "It follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little account, ablewholly to discern no great matter, sometimes not even a little one, forthe most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves, mayhardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortalgods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale. Yet the glory of thymythus, as my fathers bequeathed it to me, O tearful songstress! thatwill I too hand on to my children, and tell it often to my wives,Xanthippe and Myrto:--the story of thy pious love to Ceyx, and of thymelodious hymns; and, above all, of the honour thou hast with the gods!"

  The reader's well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, almostuncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of lettersthen present. The impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before therecital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no meansdesigned, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the beautyof his teeth. One of the company, expert in his humours, made ready totranscribe what he would say, the sort of [85] things of which acollection was then forming, the "Florida" or Flowers, so to call them,he was apt to let fall by the way--no impromptu ventures at random; butrather elaborate, carved ivories of speech, drawn, at length, out ofthe rich treasure-house of a memory stored with such, and as with afine savour of old musk about them. Certainly in this case, as Mariusthought, it was worth while to hear a charming writer speak.Discussing, quite in our modern way, the peculiarities of thosesuburban views, especially the sea-views, of which he was a professedlover, he was also every inch a priest of Aesculapius, patronal god ofCarthage. There was a piquancy in his rococo, very African, and as itwere perfumed personality, though he was now well-nigh sixty years old,a mixture there of that sort of Platonic spiritualism which can speakof the soul of man as but a sojourner m the prison of the body--ablending of that with such a relish for merely bodily graces as availedto set the fashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent, and thelike, nay! with something also which reminded Marius of the vein ofcoarseness he had found in the "Golden Book." All this made the totalimpression he conveyed a very uncommon one. Marius did not wonder, ashe watched him speaking, that people freely attributed to him many ofthe marvellous adventures he had recounted in that famous romance, [86]over and above the wildest version of his own actual story--hisextraordinary marriage, his religious initiations, his acts of madgenerosity, his trial as a sorcerer.

  But a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for thecompany to separate. He was entertaining his immediate neighbours atthe table with a trick from the streets; tossing his olives in rapidsuccession into the air, and catching them, as they fell, between hislips. His dexterity in this performance made the mirth around himnoisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor: the learned partybroke up; and Marius withdrew, glad to escape into the open air. Thecourtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair, were lurking forthe guests, with groups of curious idlers. A great conflagration wasvisible in the distance. Was it in Rome; or in one of the villages ofthe country? Pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it,Marius was for the first time able to converse intimately withApuleius; and in this moment of confidence the "illuminist," himselfwith locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full ofaffectations, almost like one of those light women there, dropped aveil as it were, and appeared, though still permitting the play of acertain element of theatrical interest in his bizarre tenets, to beready to explain and defend his position reasonably. For a moment hisfantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal [87] vision seemedto fall into some intelligible congruity with each other. In truth, itwas the Platonic Idealism, as he conceived it, which for him literallyanimated, and gave him so lively an interest in, this world of thepurely outward aspects of men and things.--Did material things, suchthings as they had had around them all that evening, really needapology for being there, to interest one, at all? Were not all visibleobjects--the whole material world indeed, according to the consistenttestimony of philosophy in many forms--"full of souls"? embarrassedperhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent souls? Certainly, thecontemplative philosophy of Plato, with its figurative imagery andapologue, its manifold aesthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, itsmusic for the outward ear, had been, like Plato's old master himself, atwo-sided or two-coloured thing. Apuleius was a Platonist: only, forhim, the Ideas of Plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, butin very truth informing souls, in every type and variety of sensiblethings. Those noises in the house all supper-time, sounding throughthe tables and along the walls:--were they only startings in the oldrafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; or ratherimportunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of thepersons, nay! of the very things around, essaying to break throughtheir frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of ab
idingessentials beyond them, [88] which might have their say, their judgmentto give, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life'stable would be over? And was not this the true significance of thePlatonic doctrine?--a hierarchy of divine beings, associatingthemselves with particular things and places, for the purpose ofmediating between God and man--man, who does but need due attention onhis part to become aware of his celestial company, filling the airabout him, thick as motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympatheticintelligence he casts through it.

  "Two kinds there are, of animated beings," he exclaimed: "Gods,entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode,since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision--thosemysterious stars!--in the eternity of their existence, in theperfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: andmen, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, withinfirm and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain;taken altogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but,severally, quitting the scene in irresistible succession.

  "What then? Has nature connected itself together by no bond, alloweditself to be thus crippled, and split into the divine and humanelements? And you will say to me: If so it be, that man is thusentirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication isdenied [89] him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as ashepherd his sheep--to whom shall I address my prayers? Whom, shall Iinvoke as the helper of the unfortunate, the protector of the good?

  "Well! there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, through whomour aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and theirs to us. Passingbetween the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry from one to theother prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being a kindof interpreters. This interval of the air is full of them! Throughthem, all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected. For,specially appointed members of this order have their special provinces,with a ministry according to the disposition of each. They go to andfro without fixed habitation: or dwell in men's houses"--

  Just then a companion's hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder ofthe speaker carried him away, and the discourse broke off suddenly. Itssingular intimations, however, were sufficient to throw back on thisstrange evening, in all its detail--the dance, the readings, thedistant fire--a kind of allegoric expression: gave it the character ofone of those famous Platonic figures or apologues which had then beenin fact under discussion. When Marius recalled its circumstances heseemed to hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading,from amidst a [90] scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldlymystical a view of man and his position in the world. For a moment,but only for a moment, as he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old,to be growing "close against the sky." Yes! the reception of theory, ofhypothesis, of beliefs, did depend a great deal on temperament. Theywere, so to speak, mere equivalents of temperament. A celestialladder, a ladder from heaven to earth: that was the assumption whichthe experience of Apuleius had suggested to him: it was what, indifferent forms, certain persons in every age had instinctivelysupposed: they would be glad to find their supposition accredited bythe authority of a grave philosophy. Marius, however, yearning not lessthan they, in that hard world of Rome, and below its unpeopled sky, forthe trace of some celestial wing across it, must still object that theyassumed the thing with too much facility, too much of self-complacency.And his second thought was, that to indulge but for an hour fantasies,fantastic visions of that sort, only left the actual world more lonelythan ever. For him certainly, and for his solace, the little godshipfor whom the rude countryman, an unconscious Platonist, trimmed histwinkling lamp, would never slip from the bark of these immemorialolive-trees.--No! not even in the wildest moonlight. For himself, itwas clear, he must still hold by what his eyes really saw. Only, hehad to concede also, that [91] the very boldness of such theory borewitness, at least, to a variety of human disposition and a consequentvariety of mental view, which might--who can tell?--be correspondentto, be defined by and define, varieties of facts, of truths, just"behind the veil," regarding the world all alike had actually beforethem as their original premiss or starting-point; a world, wider,perhaps, in its possibilities than all possible fancies concerning it.

  NOTES

  75. Joel 2.28.

  81. +Halcyone.