CHAPTER XVIII

THE BUSINESS OF CÆSAR

Thrusting Spado aside without ceremony, and disregarding the eunuch’s expostulations in obedience to the orders he had received, Esca burst through a narrow door, tore down a velvet curtain, and found himself in the private apartment of the Emperor. Cæsar’s business was at that moment scarcely of an urgency to weigh against the consideration of Cæsar’s life. Vitellius was reclining on a couch, his dress disordered and ungirt, a garland of roses at his feet, his heavy face, of which the swollen features had lost all their early comeliness, expressing nothing but sullen torpid calm; his eye fixed on vacancy, his weak nerveless hands crossed in front of his unwieldy person, and his whole attitude that of one who had little to occupy his attention, save his own personal indulgence and comfort. Yet for all this, the mind was busy within that bloated form. There are moments in existence, when the past comes back to us day by day, and incident by incident, shining out in colours vivid and lifelike as the present. On the eve of an important crisis, during the crisis itself if we are not permitted to take an active part in it but compelled to remain passive, the mere sport of its contingencies, for the few minutes that succeed a complete demolition of the fabric we have been building all our lives, we become possessed of this faculty, and seem, in a strange dream‐like sense, to live our time over again.

For the last few days, even Vitellius had awoke to the conviction that his diadem was in danger, for the last few hours he had seen cause to tremble for his life; nevertheless, none of the usual habits of the palace had been altered; and even when Primus, the successful general of his dangerous rival, Vespasian, occupied the suburbs, his reverses did but elicit from the Emperor a call for more wine and a heartless jest. To‐day he must have seen clearly that all was lost, yet the supper to which he sat down with half a dozen favourite eunuchs, was no less elaborate than usual, the wine flowed as freely, the Emperor ate as enormously, and when he could eat no more, retired to pass his customary half‐hour in perfect silence and repose, nor suffered the important process of digestion to be disturbed by the fact that his very gates must ere midnight be in possession of the enemy.

Nevertheless, as if in warning of what was to come, the pageant of his life seemed to move past his half‐closed eyes; and who shall say how vain and empty such a pageant may have appeared even to the besotted glutton, who, though he had the address to catch the diadem of the Cæsars, when it was thrown to him by chance, knew but too well that he had no power to retain it on his head when wrested by the grasp of force. Though feeble and worn out, he was not old, far short of threescore years, yet what a life of change and turmoil and vicissitudes his had been! Proconsul of Africa, favourite of four emperors, it must have been a certain versatility of talent that enabled him to rule such an important province with tolerable credit, and yet retain the good graces of successive tyrants, resembling each other in nothing save incessant caprice. An informer with Tiberius; a pander to the crimes, and a proselyte to the divinity of mad Caligula; a screen for Messalina’s vices, and an easy adviser to her easy and timid lord; lastly, everything in turn with Nero—chariot‐driver, singer, parasite, buffoon, and in all these various parts, preserving the one unfailing characteristic of a consummate and systematic debauchee. It seemed but yesterday that he had thrown the dice with Claudius, staking land and villas as freely as jewels and gold, losing heavily to his imperial master; and, though he had to borrow the money at high usury, quick‐witted enough to perceive the noble reversion he had thus a chance of purchasing. It seemed but yesterday that he flew round the dusky circus, grazing the goal with practised skill, and, by a happy dexterity, suffering Caligula to win the race so narrowly, as to enchance the pleasure of imperial triumph. It seemed but yesterday that he sang with Nero, and flattered the monster by comparing him with the sirens, whose voices charmed mariners to their destruction.

And now was it all over? Must he indeed give up the imperial purple and the throne of blazing gold?—the luxurious banquets and the luscious wines? He shuddered and sickened while he thought of a crust of brown bread and a pitcher of water. Nay, worse than this, was he sure his life was safe? He had seen death often—what Roman had not? But at his best, in the field, clad in corselet and headpiece, and covered with a buckler, he had thought him an ugly and unwelcome visitor. Even at Bedriacum, when he told his generals as he rode over the slain, putrefying on the ground, that “a dead enemy smelt sweet, and the sweeter for being a citizen,” he remembered now that his gorge had risen while he spoke. He remembered, too, the German body‐guard that had accompanied him, and the faithful courage with which his German levies fought. There were a few of them in the palace yet. It gave him confidence to recollect this. For a moment the soldier‐spirit kindled up within, and he felt as though he could put himself at the head of those blue‐eyed giants, lead them into the very centre of the enemy, and die there like a man. He rose to his feet, and snatched at one of the weapons hanging for ornament against the wall, but the weak limbs failed, the pampered body asserted itself, and he sank back helpless on the couch.

It was at this moment that Esca burst so unceremoniously into the Emperor’s presence.

Vitellius did not rise again, less alarmed, perhaps, than astonished. The Briton threw himself upon his knees, and touched the broad crimson binding of the imperial gown.

“There is not a moment to lose!” said he. “They are forcing the gates. The guard has been driven back. It is too late for resistance; but Cæsar may yet escape if he will trust himself to me.”

Vitellius looked about him, bewildered. At that moment a shout was heard from the palace‐gardens, accompanied by a rush of many feet, and the ominous clash of steel. Esca knew that the assailants were gladiators. If they came in with their blood up, they would give no quarter.

“Cæsar must disguise himself,” he insisted earnestly. “The slaves have been leaving the palace in hundreds. If the Emperor would put on a coarse garment and come with me, I can show him the way to safety; and Placidus, hastening to this apartment, will find it empty.”

With all his sensual vices, there was yet something left of the old Roman spirit in Vitellius, which sparkled out in an emergency. After the first sudden surprise of Esca’s entrance, he became cooler every moment. At the mention of the tribune’s name he seemed to reflect.

“Who are you?” said he, after a pause; “and how came you here?”

Short as had been his reign he had acquired the tone of royalty; and could even assume a certain dignity, notwithstanding the urgency of his present distress. In a few words Esca explained to him his danger, and his enemies.

“Placidus,” repeated the Emperor thoughtfully, and as if more concerned than surprised; “then there is no chance of the design failing; no hope of mercy when it has succeeded. Good friend! I will take your advice. I will trust you, and go with you, where you will. If I am an Emperor to‐morrow, you will be the greatest man in Rome.”

Hitherto he had been leaning indolently back on the couch. Now he seemed to rouse himself for action, and stripped the crimson‐bordered gown from his shoulders, the signet‐ring from his hand.

“They will make a gallant defence,” said he, “but if I know Julius Placidus, he will outnumber them ten to one. Nevertheless they may hold him at bay with their long swords till we get clear of the palace. The gardens are dark and spacious; we can hide there for a time, and take an opportunity of reaching my wife’s house on Mount Aventine; Galeria will not betray me, and they will never think of looking for me there.”

Speaking thus coolly and deliberately, but more to himself than his companion, Cæsar, divested of all marks of splendour in his dress and ornaments, stripped to a plain linen garment, turning up his sleeves and girding himself the while, like a slave busied in some household work requiring activity and despatch, suffered the Briton to lead him into the next apartment, where, deserted by his comrades, and sorely perplexed between a vague sense of duty and a strong inclination to run away, Spado was pacing to and fro in a ludicrous state of perturbation and dismay. Already the noise of fighting was plainly distinguished in the outer court. The gladiators, commanded by Hippias and guided by the treacherous tribune, had overpowered the main body of the Germans who occupied the imperial gardens, and were now engaged with the remnant of these faithful barbarians at the very doors of the palace.

The latter, though outnumbered, fought with the desperate courage of their race. The Roman soldier in his cool methodical discipline, was sometimes puzzled to account for that frantic energy, which acknowledged no superiority either of position or numbers, which seemed to gather a fresher and more stubborn courage from defeat; and even the gladiators, men whose very livelihood was slaughter, and whose weapons were never out of their hands, found themselves no match for these large savage warriors in the struggle of a hand‐to‐hand combat, recoiled more than once in baffled rage and astonishment from the long swords, and the blue eyes, and the tall forms that seemed to tower and dilate in the fierce revelry of battle.

The military skill of Placidus, exercised before many a Jewish rampart, and on many a Syrian plain, had worsted the main body of the Germans by taking them in flank. Favoured by the darkness of the shrubberies, he had contrived to throw a hundred practised swordsmen unexpectedly on their most defenceless point. Surprised and outnumbered, they retreated nevertheless in good order, though sadly diminished, upon their comrades at the gate. Here the remaining handful made a desperate stand, and here Placidus, wiping his bloody sword upon his tunic, whispered to Hippias—

“We must put Hirpinus and the supper‐party in front! If we can but carry the gate, there are a score of entrances into the palace. Remember! we give no quarter, and we recognise no one.”

Whilst the chosen band who had left the tribune’s table were held in check by the guard, there was a moment’s respite, during which Cæsar might possibly escape. Esca, rapidly calculating the difficulties in his own mind, had resolved to hurry him through the most secluded part of the gardens into the streets, and so running the chance of recognition which in the darkness of night, and under the coarse garb of a household slave, was but a remote contingency, to convey him by a circuitous route to Galeria’s house, of which he knew the situation, and where he might be concealed for a time without danger of detection. The great obstacle was to get him out of the palace without being seen. The private door by which he had himself entered, he knew must be defended, or the assailants would have taken advantage of it ere this, and he dared not risk recognition, to say nothing of the chances of war, by endeavouring to escape through the midst of the conflict at the main gate. He appealed to Spado for assistance.

“There is a terrace at the back here,” stammered the eunuch; “if Cæsar can reach it, a pathway leads directly down to the summer‐house in the thickest part of the gardens; thence he can go between the fish‐ponds straight to the wicket that opens on the Appian Way.”

“Idiot!” exclaimed the Emperor angrily, “how am I to reach the terrace? There is no door, and the window must be a man’s height at least from the ground.”

“It is your only chance of life, illustrious!” observed Esca impatiently. “Guide us to the window, friend,” he added, turning to Spado, who looked from one to the other in helpless astonishment, “and tear that shawl from the couch; we may want it for a rope to let the Emperor down.”

A fresh shout from the combatants at the gate, while it completely paralysed the eunuch, seemed to determine Vitellius. He moved resolutely forward, followed by his two companions, Spado whispering to the Briton, “You are a brave young man. We will all escape together, I—I will stand by you to the last!”

They needed but to cross a passage and traverse another room. Cæsar peered over the window‐sill into the darkness below, and drew back.

“It is a long way down,” said he. “What if I were to break a limb?”

Esca produced the shawl he had brought with him from the adjoining apartment, and offered to place it under his arms and round his body.

“Shall I go first?” said Spado. “It is not five cubits from the ground.”

But the Emperor thought of his brother Lucius and the cohorts at Terracina. Could he but gain the camp there he would be safe, nay more, he could make head against his rival; he would return to Rome with a victorious army; he would retrieve the diadem and the purple, and the suppers at the palace once more.

“Stay where you are!” he commanded Spado, who was looking with an eager eye at the window. “I will risk it. One draught of Falernian, and I will risk it and be gone.”

He turned back towards the banqueting‐room, and while he did so another shout warned him that the gate was carried, and the palace in possession of the conspirators.

Esca followed the Emperor, vainly imploring him to fly. Spado, taking one more look from the window ere he risked his bones, heard the ring of armour and the tramp of feet coming round the corner of the palace, on the very terrace he desired to reach. White and trembling, he tore the garland from his head and gnawed its roses with his teeth in the inpotence of his despair. He knew the last chance was gone now, and they must die.

The Emperor returned to the room where he had supped; seized a flagon of Falernian, filled himself a large goblet which he half‐emptied at a draught, and set it down on the board with a deep sigh of satisfaction. The courtyard had been taken at last, and the palace surrounded. Resistance was hopeless, and escape impossible. The Germans were still fighting, indeed, within the rooms, disputing inch by inch the glittering corridors, and the carved doorways, and the shining polished floors, now more slippery than ever with blood. Pictures and statues seemed to look down in calm amazement at thrust and blow and death‐grapple, and all the reeling confusion of mortal strife. But the noise came nearer and nearer; the Germans, falling man by man, were rapidly giving ground. Esca knew the game was lost at last, and he turned to his companions in peril with a grave and clouded brow.

“There is nothing for it left,” said he, “but to die like men. Yet if there be any corner in which Cæsar can hide,” he added, with something of contempt in his tone, “I will gain him five minutes more of life, if this glittering toy holds together so long.”

Then he snatched from the wall an Asiatic javelin, all lacquered and ornamented with gold, cast one look at the others, as if to bid them farewell, and hurried from the room. Spado, a mass of shaking flesh, and tumbled garments and festive ornaments strangely out of keeping with his attitude, cowered down against the wall, hiding his face in his hands; but Vitellius, with something akin even to gratification on his countenance, returned to the half‐emptied cup, and raising it to his lips, deliberately finished his Falernian.