Part 14
On this the painter, leaving Sextus, advanced to her side, and after a pause of some moments, spent in contemplating alternately his own work and the original, said, with a courteous simper, “How much am I indebted to you, most noble lady, for this visit, and these judicious remarks! I only wish you had accompanied the senator, for then, without question, his countenance would have worn the look you desiderate; and I perhaps might have more easily succeeded in catching it, being aided by your suggestions. I hope it may yet be amended.”—“How modest he is!” ejaculated the spouse. “A single sitting will suffice, I am sure. We shall come some day when you are quite alone, and I will sit by you, and talk to Rupilius all the while.”—“Delightful!” replied the artist; “how happy shall I be in such an opportunity of improving both the picture and myself! We must positively prevail on the senator to give us this one sitting more.”—“Never ask his consent,” quoth the matron, smiling upon her lord; “leave the whole matter to me. The picture is for me. And besides, if he were to refuse, I know how I should be certain to overcome him; for he has asked me to sit to you myself, and you know if I were to persist in sitting with my gloomy face, as he has with his, we should soon bring him to his right reason.”—“_Your_ gloomy face, noble lady!” replied the artist, strutting back a pace or two. “I am afraid, if that is the charm by which alone he is to be softened, we must give up all our hopes.”—“I protest,” says the lady, “I believe you will keep me laughing all the time I sit. And pray now, what dress do you think I should wear? Prima says, I ought certainly to be in green; but I was thinking, that perhaps a yellow byssine would suit me better. But I shall send over half a dozen robes, and then we can choose whichever seems to be the best. One thing only I am quite resolved upon, and that is, that I shall have my golden chain, with the miniature of the Pro-prætor—the Senator, I mean—at the end of it.”—“Nothing could be in finer taste,” he made answer; “and if my lady should think of green, or purple, or any dark colour for the gown, the rings of the chain and the setting of the miniature would have the richest effect.”—“And do, my dear mother,” interrupted Prima; “and do have on the sapphire tiara when you sit to Agaso. Or what would you think of having your own hair simply like this lady here? What a beauty!”—“A smart little girl, indeed,” quoth the mother. “I think I should know that face. Is she Roman, Agaso?”—“No, not a Roman,” answered the artist; “nor do I think my lady can ever have met with her. But perhaps my Lord Rupilius may, for she is a Spaniard.”
Agaso turned with a smile to the Senator; but he, scarcely appearing to look at the picture, answered, with great gravity, “I think I have seen the countenance before; and perhaps it was in my province. The face is certainly a pretty one; but nothing so very extraordinary.”—“They may say what they like,” observed the spouse, drawing herself up; “but there is no such thing as a really urbane air to be got out of Rome.”
Meantime, in another part of the room, some other picture appeared to be exciting a scarcely inferior measure of curiosity. On approaching the party, I perceived that this was a sketch, in chalk only, of the head and shoulders of an old man; and when I had gained an opportunity of more nearly surveying it, I recognized without difficulty the features of Tisias of Antioch. The greater number of those who were looking on it, seemed also to have been present at his death; for I heard pointed out by them with exactness the parts in which the resemblance had been most successfully taken. The beauty of the old man’s lineaments, and the serenity of his aspect, they all admired; and while they were loud in praising these, Agaso himself also joined them, saying, “Oh, so you have found out my old Christian! How did you get hold of him? for I meant it not to be seen till I had lain on a little of the colour. But is it not a fine study?—is it not a noble head? I think I shall introduce it in the picture I am painting for Pliny. The subject is the sacrifice of Iphigenia. I went to the Amphitheatre,” he continued, “rather late, without expecting any thing particular; but it immediately struck me that he might be turned to some account. I made several little sketches of him, for it was a long time ere it was over; and this is from the one I took just after he had made his oration. His hands and feet were singularly fine, I thought. Here,” said he, turning over the leaves of his tablets—“here you have him in a variety of shapes!—the muscles shewed powerfully when he knelt;—there, again, you have his fingers as they were folded on his breast—not much flesh, but the lines good—veins well expressed.”
But about this time the great bell rung in the tower above the Baths, and the greater part of the young loungers soon dispersed themselves; some to fence or wrestle—others to play in the tennis-court—others to ride in the Hippodrome, in preparation for the bath. So Agaso, being left alone with Sextus, Rubellia, and myself, had at length leisure to proceed with his portrait of the youth.
Much did the lady and the painter discourse, and many merry things were said by them both; but all they said could not entirely remove the embarrassment fixed on the countenance of Sextus; nor, of a truth, did he present himself with much advantage before the artist. Rubellia, nevertheless, sate over against him with looks of no severe criticism; and I doubt not she would have remained to the end of the sitting, had not one of her household come with a message, which, as it seemed, rendered necessary her departure. It struck me, that the messenger answered very well to Dromo’s description of the fat Calabrian with whom he and Boto had been drinking; but of this I said nothing to Sextus.
It was near the hour of supper before we were dismissed, and we found Licinius already about to enter his eating chamber.
_CHAPTER V._
The orator received us with less coldness than I could have expected. I suppose his knowledge that our morning had been spent in Rubellia’s company, had in some measure softened his feelings of jealousy towards his son; and perhaps he had given me credit for advice, to the merit of which I had no claim. But he remained not long at table after supper was concluded, being summoned to discourse in private with a client:—so that Sextus and I were left to spend the evening as it might please ourselves; for as to Xerophrastes, he had not as yet made his appearance, and we took it for granted he had remained at the mansion of Fabricius, for the purpose of consoling with philosophical controversies his bereaved brother of Ionia.
We retired, therefore, into the apartment of my young friend; but he could not read a page without coming upon some verse which made him throw down the scroll to ruminate on the charms of his Sempronia. When he took up his lute, his fingers seemed to evoke only the most melancholy sounds. It was only in the exercise of the foil, that he succeeded in banishing from his thoughts the troubles of his situation; but both of us having contended till we were breathless, were soon compelled to sit down, and then the unhappy boy’s exhausted body seemed to communicate a new debility to his mind. We sat for the most part in silence, (for I soon found that I could not say any thing capable of interesting him,) until the shades of evening had quite darkened the chamber, and then we walked together, not less silently, in the adjoining open gallery, until the moon had arisen from above the tall poplars around the Pantheon and Baths of Agrippa, and diffused her radiance over all the beautiful gardens and noble edifices that lay beneath us down to the brink of the river. Lassitude of spirit then, if not expectation of sleep, rendered Sextus desirous of retiring to his couch; so, having exhorted the youth to wrestle with his grief, and to call hope to his aid, I at length left him to himself. But as for me, I had as yet no feeling of weariness, and, besides, I remembered the promise I had made to Dromo in the morning.
I was very much surprised, indeed, that the Cretan had not as yet come to me, and made inquiry concerning him of Boto; but hearing that the man was absent from the house, I thought from this there was the more likelihood of his being engaged in some scheme, the result of which I should by and by learn from his own lips. I dismissed my Briton, therefore, and prepared to read by my watch-light, and while I was considering what I should read, I remembered the scroll I had received from Tisias, which forthwith I took from the place in which I had locked it up on the morning of the preceding day. There fell from out of it, as I unfolded it, a letter sealed, but without any superscription. This I of course considered as meant only for the eye of Athanasia; so I kissed the parchment her fingers were destined to touch, and, before I began to read, restored it to its receptacle.
More than one of you, my young friends, have already heard me speak, on another occasion, of the impression which that night’s reading made upon my mind, and been told, from my own lips, what book it was that was contained in the scroll of Tisias; the rest of you will judge for yourselves with what astonishment it was that I, who had at the best expected to unfold some obscure treatise of Asiatic lore, some semi-barbarous exposition of mystical riddles, found myself engaged in the perusal of a plain and perspicuous narrative of facts, written evidently by a man of accomplishment and learning, and in Greek of which the most elegant penman of these times could have had no occasion to be ashamed. In a word, it was the Gospel of the holy physician St Luke which had been put into my hands; and at this day I am still grateful that this was the first of the Christian books which I had an opportunity of seeing; for such had been my education, that I am afraid others, not less worthy of the true faith, might have repelled me by the peculiarities of their composition, as well as by the acquaintance with many things, to me then entirely unknown, which they take for granted in the style of their commencement. Here, however, there was enough only of mystery, the more effectually to stimulate my curiosity, while the eagerness with which I engaged myself in its gratification, was abundantly repaid from the beginning, both by the beauty of the simple narrative itself, and the sublimity of the conceptions embodied and evolved in its course.
Considering the book which I was reading, as one merely of human origin and invention, I could not help regarding it with such admiration, that it appeared to me above all things wonderful, I had never seen it mentioned by any of the writers of the age, or heard it spoken of by any of those who, in my presence, since I came to Rome, had talked concerning the faith and doctrines of the persecuted Christians. But this was not all. At least, said I to myself, there is something here which deserves to be inquired into and examined. Of things such as these, if told falsely, it must needs have been—nay, it must still be, easy to prove the falsehood. It is impossible that, in the days of Tiberius, any such events should have occurred in Palestine, without being more or less submitted to the inspection of Roman eyes. This is no wild tale, handed down from the dark ages of a barbarous race. Here I have a Roman Centurion described as among the witnesses of this man’s miraculous power, and acknowledging the divinity of his benevolence. Here, at least, must have been one spectator without prejudices, otherwise than against this Prophet of Nazareth. Of a surety, the legends of Rome herself contain many tales which demand a much greater measure of indulgence; since the wonders they narrate appear to have been oftentimes attended with no beneficial consequences, either to individuals or to the state; whereas here the occasion seems always to have been such as might justify the interference of supernatural might. The power of this person seems to have been exerted only for good; and his precepts are full of such godlike loftiness as neither Socrates, nor Plato, nor any of those Greek sages, who bowed in reverence to the hoary wisdom of Egypt and India, would have disdained to admire.
The doubts, suspicions, and distrusts, with which such thoughts were mingled,—the under-current of reluctance with which I felt myself all along contending,—were such as you may more easily imagine than I can describe.
As the narrative went on, however, you will have no difficulty in supposing that my attention became more and more rivetted, and that, occupied with the strange events and sublime scenes it unfolds—and agitated by turns with the pity, the wonder, the terror, and the admiration that matchless story must ever awaken,—I had forgotten every thing beyond the page of the volume on which my finger was fixed.
It was only the rustling of Dromo’s cloak against the edge of my chair, that made me aware my privacy was disturbed. His hands seemed to be busied in tightening his girdle even before he was able to speak, and the first words he uttered, were—“Come, sir—this is no time for study. I have acquaintance with some of the soldiers at the Capene Gate, and they will let us pass through; but they are relieved at the next watch, and then we shall have no chance.”—“And why,” said I, hastily thrusting the scroll into my bosom—“why, Dromo, or for what purpose should we desire to pass through the Capene Gate at the dead hour of night?”—“Come,” said he; “there is no time for explanation. It is simply because it is the dead hour of night that we must pass through the gate; for it would do nobody any good to pass through at any other time. Come—or abandon Sextus to his fate.”
Thus adjured, I could not oppose any obstacle to his zeal. The chained porter was lying asleep across the threshold; but Dromo had already found means to have the door opened, so he leaped lightly over the man, and I imitated his agility. The Cretan then locked the gate on the outside, by means of a key which he carried in his bosom; and I followed his rapid steps without farther question.
This cunning varlet, (who seemed, indeed, to move as if he had a natural aversion to every open place,) threaded one obscure lane after another, keeping always, where the moonlight had any access, to the dark side of the way; a person better skilled than myself might well have been somewhat puzzled; as for me, I had not the least conception whither I was going. Close, however, did I adhere to him; and we reached the Capene Port, which is on the south side of the city, not many bow-shots from the Anio, before I could have imagined it possible to traverse so great a space.
Here Dromo told me to wait for him a single moment, and stepped down into a cellar, in which a light was burning; but he staid not long, and when he returned to me, I observed that his style of walking was more clumsy than usual, which, indeed, was not to be wondered at, considering that he had now to carry, not only himself, but two huge skins of wine, intended, as I at once suspected, for the purpose of facilitating our passage. I told him my suspicion in a whisper; but he made no answer, except by handing to me one of his burdens. So laden, we crept on as well as we could to the portal, beneath the shadow of which two Prætorians were pacing, their armour ringing audibly upon them amidst the silence of the night.—Silently did the well-oiled hinges turn, and very silently stooping did we step beneath the lintel of the Capene Gate, which as silently was again made fast.
As we advanced among the funereal monuments which line the Appian Way on either side, Dromo stood still every now and then for a moment, as if to listen; but whatever he might have heard, or expected to hear, I perceived nothing, except here and there the howl of a dog, or the lazy hooting of the night-owl, from the top of some of the old cypresses that rose between us and the moon.
At last he seemed to catch the sound he had been expecting, for he started suddenly; and laying his finger on his lip, crept to the parapet.
The ground behind was more desolate of aspect than any part of that which we had traversed—stoney and hard, with here and there tufts of withered fern; and immediately below the wall two human figures were visible. The one was sitting on the ground, wrapped in a dark cloak which entirely concealed the countenance: the other was a half-naked boy, holding in a string a little new-shorn lamb, which with one of his hands he continually caressed. But forthwith the sitter arose, and throwing away the cloak, displayed the gray tangled tresses of an old woman, and two strong boney arms, one of which was stretched forth with an impatient gesture towards the stripling, while the other was pointed upwards to the visible moon. “Strike,” said she, “strike deeply—beware lest the blood tinge your feet or your hands;”—and I recognized at once the voice of the same Pona that had attracted my notice in the morning, at the foot of the Palatine.
The boy drew forth instantly a knife from his bosom, whose glittering blade was buried in the throat of the yearling, and it was then first that I perceived a small ditch dug between the boy and the woman, into which, the lamb’s throat being held over it, the blood was made to drop from the wound. So surely had the blow been given, that not one bleat escaped from the animal, and so deeply, that the blood flowed in a strong stream, dashing audibly upon the bottom of the trench. And while it was dropping, the old woman muttering a sort of chant to Hecate, as I gathered, showered from her girdle I know not what of bones or sticks, mingled with leaves and roots, which afterwards she seemed to be stirring about in the blood with one of the tall strong stems of the fern that grew there. The wildness of her gestures was such, that I could not doubt she had herself some faith in the efficacy of the foul charms to which she had resorted; nor could I see her stirring that trench of innocent blood, without remembering the still more ruthless charms, whose practice the poets of Italy have ascribed to such hoary enchantresses. The dreariness of the midnight wind, too, as it whistled along the bare and steril soil around us, and the perpetual variations in the light, by reason of the careering of those innumerable clouds, and the remembrance of the funereal purposes for which, as it seemed, all this region was set apart—the whole of this together produced, I know not how, a certain pressure upon my spirits, and I confess to you, I felt, kneeling there by the side of my now trembling Cretan, as if I owed him no great thanks for having brought me that night beyond the Capene Gate.
It seemed as if the goddess, to whom the witch’s song had been addressed, did not listen to it with favourable ear; for the clouds gathered themselves more thickly than ever, while the wind howled only more loudly among the tombs, and the half-scared owl sent up a feebler hooting. Notwithstanding, the old woman continued fixed in the same attitude of expectation, and the stripling still held the well-nigh drained throat of his lamb above the trench. By degrees, however, the patience of both seemed to be exhausted; and there arose between them an angry altercation. “Infernal brat of Hades!” quoth the witch, “look ye, if you have not stained your filthy hands, and if the thirsty shadows be not incensed, because you have deprived them of some of the sweet blood which they love!”—“Curse not me, mother,” replied the boy—“Did you think, in truth, that the blood of a stolen lamb would ever propitiate Hecate?”—“Imp!” quoth she, “Hold thy peace, or I will try whether no other blood may make the charm work better!”—“Beware!” quoth the boy, leaping backwards—“beware what you do! I am no longer so weak that I must bear all your blows.”
“Stop,” cried I, “for there are eyes that you think not of, to take note of your wickedness;” and in my vehemence I shook one of the great loose stones that were on the top of the wall, which rolled down and bounded into the ditch beside them; and the woman, huddling her cloak over her head, began to run swiftly away from us, along the wall over which we were leaning. The boy only stood still for a moment, and looked upwards towards the place where we were, and then he also fled, but in the opposite direction; and Dromo said to me in a very piteous whisper, but not till both were out of sight,—“Heaven and earth! was ever such madness as to scare the witch from her incantation? Alas! for you and for me, sir—and, most of all, alas for Sextus—for I fear me after this we shall have no luck in counteracting the designs of Rubellia.”
“Rubellia! what? can you possibly imagine Rubellia to have any thing to do with this madness?”
“Imagine?” quoth he; “do you need to be told, that if things had gone well with that woman and her ditch, we should never have been able to preserve Sextus from her clutches?”
“By the rod of Hermes, good Dromo!” said I, “this will never do. I shall believe much on your credit, but not things quite so extravagant as this.”
He made no reply save a long, incredulous, and, I think, contemptuous whistle, which seemed to reach the ears of every owl between us and the Appian; with such a hooting and screeching did they echo its note from every cypress. And when Dromo heard that doleful concert, his dread redoubled within him, for he shook from head to foot, while I held his arm in mine; until, at last, he seemed to make one violent effort, and springing on his feet, said—“Come, Master Valerius, let us behave after all like men!”—I smiled when he said so—“The hour has not yet come, if my Calabrian friend is to be trusted, at which the lady was to visit Pona in her dwelling. It is but daring a little more. If she has seen and known us already, then nothing can endanger us farther; and if she hath not, we may escape again.”—“Well spoken,” said I, “most shrewd Dromo, and like yourself; but what is it that you would have us to do?”—“The first thing,” he replied, “is what has already been too long delayed.”
The Cretan produced from under his cloak a long fictitious beard, which he immediately proceeded to fix upon his own face with a string. A thin tall cap of black cloth was next brought forth, which he fastened in like manner around his brows; and a little piece of chalk, with which he once or twice rubbed over his black bushy eye-brows, completed a disguise beneath which I should certainly have sought in vain to discover any trace of the natural countenance of Dromo. In short, after a few changes in the folding of his cloak, there stood before me a figure so venerably mysterious, that had I met it unawares at midnight, in the neighbourhood of so many tombs, I am not sure, although of no superstitious temper, that I could have regarded it without awe.