 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more, or to learn how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Becky Cook in Raleigh, North Carolina. Book I. CHAPTER VI. The Fowler snares again the bird that had just escaped and sets his nets for new victim. In the history I relate, the events are crowded and rapid as those of the drama. I rode of an epic, in which days suffice to ripe in the ordinary fruits of years. Meanwhile, Urbases had not of late much frequented the house of Vione, and when he had visited her, he had not encountered Glaucus, nor knew he as yet of that love which had so suddenly sprung up between himself and his designs. In his interest for the brother of Vione, he had been forced, too, a little while to suspend his interest in Vione herself. His pride and his selfishness were aroused and alarmed at the sudden change which had come over the spirit of the youth. He trembled lest he himself should lose the docile pupil, an Isis, an enthusiastic servant. Aposites had ceased to seek or to consult him. He was rarely to be found. He turned solemnly from the Egyptian, nay, he fled when he perceived him in the distance. Urbases was one of those haughty and powerful spirits accustomed to master others. He shaped at the notion that one once his own should ever lewd his grasp. He swore inly that Aposites should not escape him. It was with this resolution that he passed through a thick grove in the city which lay between his house and that of Vione in his way to the latter, and there, leaning against a tree and gazing on the ground, he came unawares on the young priest of Isis. Aposites, said he, and he laid his hand affectionately on the young man's shoulder. The priest started, and his first instinct seemed to be that of light. My son, said the Egyptian, what has chance that you desire to shun me? Aposites remained silent and silent, looking down on the earth, as his lips quivered and his breast heaved with emotion. Speak to me, my friend, continued the Egyptian, speak, something burdens thy spirit. What has thou to reveal? To thee, nothing. And why is it to me thou art thus unconfidential? Because thou hast been my enemy. Let us confer, said our bases, in a low voice, and drawing the reluctant arm of the priest and his own, he led him to one of the seats which were scattered within the grove. They sat down, and in those gloomy forms there was something congenial to the shade and solitude of the place. Aposites was in the spring of his years, yet he seemed to have exhausted even more of the life than the Egyptian. His delicate, regular features were born and colorless. His eyes were hollow, and shone with a brilliant and feverish glare. His frame bowed prematurely, and in his hands, which were small to the effeminacy, the blue and swollen veins indicated the lassitude and weakness of the reflexed fibers. You saw in his face strong resemblance to Ione, but the expression was altogether different from that majestic and spiritual calm which breathed so divine and classical a repose over his sister's beauty. In her, enthusiasm was always visible, but it seemed always suppressed and restrained. This made the charm and sentiment of her countenance. He longed to awaken the spirit which reposed, but evidently did not sleep. In Aposites the whole aspect betokened the fervor and passion of his temperament, and the intellectual portion of his nature seemed, by the wildfire of the eyes, the great breadth of the temples when compared with the height of the brow, the trembling restlessness of the lips, to be swayed and tyrannized over by the imaginative and ideal. Fancy, with the sister, had stopped short at the golden goal of poetry. With the brother, less happy and less restrained, it had wandered into visions more intangible and unembodied, and the faculties which gave genius to the one threatened madness to the other. You say I have been your enemy, said our bases. I know the cause of that unjust accusation. I have placed you amidst the priests' devices. You all revolted at their trickeries and imposture. You think that I too have deceived you. The purity of your mind is offended. You imagine that I am one of the deceitful. You knew the jugglings of that empires' craft, answered Aposites. Why did you disguise them from me? When you excited my desire to devote myself to the office whose garb I bear, you spoke to me of the holy life of men, resigning themselves to knowledge. You have given me for companions an ignorant and sensual herd. You have no knowledge but that of the grossest rods. You spoke to me of men sacrificing the earthlier pleasures to the sublime cultivation of virtue. You placed me amongst men, reeking with all the filthiness of vice. You spoke to me of the friends, the enlighteners of our common kind. I see but their cheats and deluders. Oh, it was basely done. You have rubbed me of the glory of youth, of the convictions of virtue, of the sanctifying thirst after wisdom. Young as I was, rich, fervent, the sunny pleasures of earth before me, I resigned all without to sign, nay, with happiness and exultation, and the thought that I resigned them for the abstruse mysteries of divine wisdom, for the companionship of gods, for the revelations of heaven. And now? Now? Convulsive sobs checked the priest's voice. He covered his face with his hands, and large chairs forced themselves through the wasted fingers and ran profusely down the vest. What I promise thee, that will I give, my friend, my pupil. These have been but trials to thy virtue. It comes forth the brighter for thy novitiate. Think no more of all those dull cheats. Assort no more with those menials of the goddess, the atrances of her hull. You are worthy to enter into the penetralia. I henceforth will be your priest, your guide, and you who now curse my friendship shall live to bless it. The young man lifted his head, engaged with a vacant and wondering stare upon the Egyptian. Listen to me, continued her bases, in an earnest and solemn voice, casting first to searching eyes around to see what they were still alone. From Egypt came all the knowledge of the world. From Egypt came the lore of Athens, and the profound policy of Crete. From Egypt came those early and mysterious tribes which, long before the hordes of Romulus swept over the plains of Italy, and in the eternal cycle of events drove back civilization into barbarism and darkness, possessed all the arts of wisdom and the graces of intellectual life. From Egypt came the rites and the grandeur of that solemn care, whose inhabitants taught their iron vanquishers of Rome all that they yet know of elevated in religion and sublime in worship. And how demist thou, young man, that, Egypt, the mother of countless nations, achieved her greatness and sword to her cloud-capped eminence of wisdom? It was the result of a profound and holy policy. Your modern nations owe their greatness to Egypt, Egypt her greatness to her priests. Wrapped in themselves, coveting its way over the nobler part of man, his soul and his belief, those ancient ministers of God were inspired with the grandest thought that ever exalted mortals. From the revolutions of the stars, from the seasons of the earth, from the round and unvarying circles of human destinies, they devised an August allegory. They made it gross and palpable to the vulgar by the sign of God and goddesses, and that which in reality was government thy name religion. Isis is a fable. Start not. That for which is Isis is a type, is a reality, an immortal being. Isis is nothing. Nature, which she represents, is the mother of all things. Dark, ancient, inscrutable, saved to the gifted few. None among mortals have ever lifted up my veil. So say it, the Isis that you adore, but to the wise that veil hath been removed, and we have stood face to face with the solemn loveliness of nature. The priests then were the benefactors, the civilisers of mankind. True, they were also cheats, and postures, if you will, but think you, young man, that if they had not deceived the kind they could have served them, the ignorant and servile vulgar must be blinded to attain to the proper good. They would not believe a maxim. They revere an oracle. The Emperor of Rome sways the vast and various tribes of earth, and harmonizes the conflicting and disunited elements, thence competes, order, law, the blessings of life. Think you, it is the man, the emperor, that thus sways? No, it is the pomp, the awe, the majesty that surround him. These are his imposters, his delusions, our oracles, and our divinations, our rites, and our ceremonies. Are they means of our sovereignty and the engines of our power? They are the same means to the same end, the welfare and harmony of mankind. You listen to me, wrapped in intent. The light begins to dawn upon you. Aposites remain silent, but the changes rapidly passing over his speaking countenance, betrayed the effect produced upon him by the words of the Egyptian, words made tenfold more eloquent by the voice, the aspect and the manner of the man. Well, then, resumed our bases. Our fathers of the Nile thus achieved the first elements by whose life chaos is destroyed, namely, the obedience and reverence of the multitude for the few. They drew from their majestic, and starred meditations that wisdom which was no delusion. They invented the codes and regularities of law, the arts and glories of existence. They asked belief. They returned the gift by civilization. Were not their very cheats of virtue? Trust me, whosoever in yon far heavens of a diviner and more beneficent nature looks down upon our world, smile approvingly on the wisdom which has worked such ends. But you wish me to apply these generalities to yourself? I hasten to obey the wish. The altars of the goddess of our ancient faith must be served, and served to by others than the solid and soulless things that are but as pegs and hooks wear on to hang the filet in the robe. Remember two sayings of Sextus, the Pythagorean, sayings borrowed from the law of Egypt. The first is, speak not of God to the multitude. And the second is, the man worthy of God is a God among men. As genius gave to the ministers of Egypt worship, that empire in late ages so fearfully decayed, thus by genius only can the dominion be restored. I saw in you, Aposites, a pupil worthy of my lessons, a minister worthy of the great ends which may yet be wrought. Your energy, your talent, your purity of faith, your earnestness of enthusiasm all fitted you for that calling which demands so imperiously high and ardent qualities. I fanned, therefore your sacred desires. I stimulated you to the step you have taken, but you blame me that I did not reveal to you the little souls and the juggling tricks of your companions. Had I done so, Aposites, I had defeated my own object. Your noble nature would have at once revolted, and Isis would have lost her priest. Aposites groaned aloud. The Egyptian continued, without heeding the interruption. I placed before you, therefore, without preparation in the temple. I left you suddenly to discover and to be sickened by all those mummies which dazzle the herd. I desired that you should perceive how those engines are moved by which the fountain that refreshes the world casts its waters in the air. It was the trial ordained of old to all our priests. They who accustom themselves to the imposters of the vulgar are left to practice them. For those like you, whose higher nature demands higher pursuit, religion opens more godlike secrets. I am pleased to find in you the character I had expected. You have taken the vows. You cannot recede. Advance. I will be your guide. And what wilt thou teach me, O singular and feel-for-man? New cheats, new—no. I have thrown thee into the abyss of disbelief. I will lead thee now to the eminence of faith. Thou hast seen the false types. Thou shalt learn now the realities they represent. There is no shadow, Aposites, without its substance. Come to me this night, your hand. Impressed, excited, bewildered by the language of the Egyptian, Aposites gave him his hand, and master, and pupil parted. It was true that for Aposites there was no retreat. He had taken the vows to celibacy. He had devoted himself to life that at present seemed to possess all the austerities of fanaticism without any of the consolations of belief. It was natural that he should yet cling to a yearning desire to reconcile himself to an irrevocable career. The powerful and profound mind of the Egyptian yet claimed an empire over his young imagination, excited him with vague conjecture, and kept him alternately vibrating between hope and fear. Meanwhile, Arbaicis pursued his slow and stately way to the house of Ione. As he entered the Tablinum, he heard a voice from the porticoes of the Peristyle beyond, which, music as it was, sounded displeasingly on his ear. It was the voice of the young and beautiful Glaucus, and for the first time an involuntary thrill of jealousy shot through the breast of the Egyptian. On entering the Peristyle he found Glaucus seated by the side of Ione. The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver spray in the air, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the sultry noon. The handmaids, almost invariably attendant on Ione, who, with her freedom of life, persevered the most delicate modesty, sat at a little distance. By the feet of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had been playing to Ione, one of the lesbian heirs. The scene, the group before Arbaicis, was stamped by that peculiar and refined ideology of posey, which we yet, not erroneously, imagined to be the distinction of the ancients. The marble columns, the vases of flowers, the statue white and tranquil, closing every vista, and, above all, the two living forms from which a sculptor might have caught either inspiration or despair. Arbaicis, pausing for a moment, gazed on the pair with a brow from which all the usual stern serenity had fled. He recovered himself by an effort, and slowly approached them, but with a step so soft and echoless that even the attendants heard him not, much less Ione and her lover. And yet, said Glaucus, it is only before we love that we imagine that our poets have truly described the passion. The instant the sun rises, all the stars that had shown in his absence vanished into air. The poets exist only in the night of the heart. They are nothing to us when we feel the full glory of the God. A gentle and most glowing image know will Glaucus. Both started and recognized behind the seat of Ione, the cold and sarcastic face of the Egyptian. You are a sudden guest, said Glaucus, rising and with a forced smile. So ought all to be who knew they are welcome. Return our bases, seating himself and motioning to Glaucus to do the same. I am glad, said Ione, to see you at length together, for you are suited to each other and you are formed to be friends. Give me back some fifteen years of life, replied the Egyptian, before you can place me on inequality with Glaucus. Happy should I be to receive his friendship, but what can I give to him in return? Can I make to him the same confidences that he would repose in me of banquets and garlands, of Parthian steeds and the chances of dice? These pleasures suit his age, his nature, his career. They are not for mine. So, saying, the artful Egyptian looked down inside, but from the corner of his eye he stole a glance towards Ione to see how she received these insinuations of the pursuits of her visitor. Her countenance did not satisfy him. Glaucus, slightly coloring, hastened gaily to reply. Nor was he, perhaps, without the wish and his turn to disconcert and abashed the Egyptian. You are right, wise are bases, said he. We can't esteem each other, but we cannot be friends. My banquets lack the secret salt which, according to Rumer, gives such zest to your own, and by Hercules, when I have reached your age, if I, like you, may think it wise to pursue the pleasures of manhood, like you, I shall be doubtless sarcastic on the gallantries of youth. The Egyptian raised his eyes to Glaucus with a sudden and piercing glance. I do not understand you, said he coldly, but it is the custom to consider that wit lies in obscurity. He turned from Glaucus as he spoke, with a scarcely perceptible sneer of contempt, and after a moment's pause addressed himself to Ione. I have not, beautiful Ione, said he, been fortunate enough to find you with indoors the last two or three times that I visited your vestibule. The smoothness of the sea has tempted me for my home, replied Ione, with a little embarrassment. The embarrassment did not escape our bases, but without seeming to heed it, he replied with a smile. You know the old port says that women should keep within doors, and there converse. The poet was a cynic, said Glaucus, and hated women. He spoke according to the customs of his country, and that country is your boasted Greece. Two different periods, different customs. Had our forefathers known Ione, they had made a different law. Did you suppose these pretty gallantries at Rome? said our bases, with ill-suppressed emotion. One certainly would not go for gallantries to Egypt, retorted Glaucus, playing carelessly with his chain. Come, come, said Ione, hastening to interrupt a conversation which she sought, to her greatest stress, was so little likely to cement the intimacy she had desired to effect between Glaucus and her friend. Our bases must not be so hard upon his poor pupil, an orphaned, and without a mother's care. I may be to blame for the independent and almost masculine liberty of life that I have chosen. And it is not greater than the Roman women are accustomed to. It is not greater than the Grecianot to be. Alas, is it only to be among men that freedom and virtue are to be deemed united? Why should the slavery that destroys you be considered the only method to preserve us? Ah, believe me, it has been the great error of men, and one that has worked bitterly on their destinies, to imagine that the nature of women is. I cannot say you inferior, that may be but so. So different from their own, in making laws unfavorable to the intellectual advancement of women. Have they not, in so doing, made laws against their children, whom women are to rear, against the husbands of whom women are to be friends? Nay, sometimes the advisers. Ione stops short suddenly, and her face was suffused with the most enchanting blushes. She feared lest her enthusiasm had led her too far, yet she feared that the Asterobases less than the courteous Glaucus, for she loved the last, and it was not the custom of Greeks to allow their women, at least such of their women as they honored, the same liberty and the same station of those of Italy enjoyed. She felt, therefore, a thrill of delight as Glaucus earnestly replied, Ever mayest you think thus Ione, ever be your pure heart to your unerring guide. Happy it had been for Greece, if she had given to the chase the same intellectual charms that are so celebrated amongst the lest worthy of her women. No state falls from freedom. From knowledge, while your sex smile only on the free, and by appreciating, encourage the otherwise. Our Basis was silent. Ford was neither his part to sanction the sentiment of Glaucus, nor to condemn that of Ione, and, after a short and embarrassed conversation Glaucus took his leave of Ione. When he was gone, our Basis, drying his seat nearer to the fair Neapolitan said, in those bland and subdued tones in which he knew so well how to veil the mingled art and fierceness of his character. Think not, my sweet people, if so I may call you, that I wish to shackle that liberty you adorn while you assume, but which, if not greater, as you rightly observe, than that possessed by the Roman women, must at least be accompanied by great circumspection when irrigated by Ione unmarried. Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise themselves to your feet. Continue to charm them with the conversation of Espagia, the music of an arena, but reflect, at least, on those sensorious tongues which can so easily blight the tender reputation of a young maiden, and while you provoke admiration, give, I beseech you, no victory to Envy. What mean you, our Basis? said Ione, in an alarmed and trembling voice. I know you are my friend, that you desire only my honour and my welfare. What is it you would say? Your friend? Ah! How sincerely? May I speak then as a friend, without reserve and without offence? I beseech you do so. This young profligate, this glaucus, how didst thou know him? Hast thou seen him often? And as our Basis spoke, he fixed his gaze steadfastly upon Ione, as if he sought to penetrate into her soul. Recoiling before that gaze, with the strange fear which she could not explain, the Neapolitan answered with confusion and hesitation, he was brought to my house as a country man of my fathers, and I may say of mine, I have known him only within this last week or so. But why these questions? Forgive me, said our Basis. I thought you might have known him longer, base insinuator that he is. How? What mean you? Why thy term? It matters not. Let me not rouse your indignation against one who does not deserve so grave an honour. I implore you speak. What has Glaucus insinuated? Or rather, in what do you suppose he has offended? Smothering his resentment at these last part of Ione's question, our Basis continued. You know his pursuits, his companions, his habits. Camisaccio and the alia, the revel and the dice, make his occupation, and amongst the associates advice, how can he dream of virtue? Still you speak of riddles, by the gods. I entreat you, say the worst at once. Well then, it must be so. No, my Ione, that it was but yesterday that Glaucus boasted openly. Yes, in the public baths of your love to him. He said it amused him to take advantage of it. I will do him justice. He praised your beauty. Who could deny it? But he laughed scornfully when Claudius, or his lepidus, asked him if he loved you enough for a marriage, and when he purposed to doarn his doorposts with flowers. Impossible! How hurt you this base slander? Nay, would you have me relate to you all the comments of the insolent coxcoves with which the story has circled through the town. Be assured that I myself disbelieved at first, and that I have now painfully been convinced by several ear-witnesses of the truth of what I have reluctantly told thee. Ione sank back, and her face was wider than the pillar against which she leaned for support. Ione it vexed me. It irritated me—to hear your name thus lightly pitched from lip to lip, like some mere dancing girl's fame. I hastened this morning to seek and to warn you. I found Glaucus here. I was stung for my self-possession. I could not conceal my feelings. Nay, I was uncourteous in thy presence. Canst thou forgive me thy friend, Ione? Ione placed her hand in his, but replied not. Think no more of this, said he, but let it be a warning voice. To tell thee how much prudence thy lot requires. It cannot hurt thee, Ione, for a moment, for a gay thing like this could never have been honoured by even a serious thought from Ione. These insults only wound when they come from one we love. Far different indeed is he whom the lofty Ione shall stoop to love. Love! muttered Ione, with an hysterical laugh. I indeed! It is not without interest to observe in these remote times an under-a-social system so widely different from the modern, the same small causes that ruffle and interrupt the course of love, which operates so commonly at this day. The same inventive jealousy, the same cunning slander, the same crafty and fabricated retailings of petty gossip, which so often now suffice to break the ties of the truest love and counteract the tenor of circumstances most apparently propitious. When the bark sails on over the smoothest wave the fable tells us of the diminutive fish that can cling to the keel and arrest its progress. So is it ever with the great passions of mankind, and we should paint life but ill if, even in times the most prodigal of romance, into the romance of which we most largely avail ourselves, we did not also describe the mechanism of those trivial and household springs of our mischief, which we see every day at work in our chambers and at our hearths. It is in these, the lesser intrigues of life, that we mostly find ourselves at home with the past. Most cunningly had the Egyptian appeal to Yone's ruling foible, most dexterously had he applied the poison dart to her pride. He found he had arrested what he had hoped from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus was, at most, an incipient fancy, and hastening to change the subject he now led her to talk of her brother. Their conversation did not last long. He left her resolved not again to trust so much to his absence but to visit, to watch her every day. No sooner had his shadow glided from her presence than woman's pride, her sexist dissimulation deserted his intended victim, and the haughty Yone burst into passionate tears. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings on the public domain. To find out more, or to learn how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Becky Cook in Raleigh, North Carolina. Book I. CHAPTER VII. OF THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. by Edward G. Bulwer-Lightin. The gay life of the Pompeian lounger, a miniature likeness of the Roman baths. When Glaucus left Yone, he felt as if he tried upon air. In the interview with which he had just been blessed, he had for the first time gathered from her distinctly that his love was not unwelcome to, and would not be unrewarded by her. This hope filled him with a rapture for which earth and heaven seemed too narrow to afford event. Unconscious of the sudden enemy he had left behind and forgetting not only his taunts but his very existence, Glaucus passed through the gay streets repeating to himself in the wantonness of joy the music of the soft air to which Yone had listened with such intentness, and now he entered the street of fortune with its raised footpath, its houses painted without, and the open doors admitting the view of the glowing frescoes within. Each end of the street was adorned with a triumphal arc, and as Glaucus now came before the temple of fortune, the jetting portico of that beautiful fane, which is supposed to have been built by one of the family of Cicero, perhaps by the orator himself, imparted a dignified and venerable feature to a scene otherwise more brilliant than Lofty in its character. That temple was one of the most graceful specimens of Roman architecture. It was raised on a somewhat lofty podium, and between two flights of steps ascending to a platform stood the altar of the goddess. From this platform another flight of broad stairs led to the portico, from which the height of whose fluted columns hung festoons of the richest flowers. On either side the extremities of the temple were placed statues of Grecian workmanship, and at a little distance from the temple rose the triumphal arc crowned with an equestrian statue of Caligula, which was flanked by trophies of bronze. In this space before the temple a lively throng were assembled. Some seated on benches and discussing the politics of the empire, some conversing on the approaching spectacle of the amphitheater. One nod of young men were lauding a new beauty, another discussing the merits of the last play. A third group, more stricken in age, were speculating on the chance of the trade with Alexandria, and admits these were many merchants in the eastern costume, whose loose and peculiar robes, painted in gem slippers, and composed in serious countenances, formed a striking contrast to the tunic forms and animated gestures of the Italians. For that impatient and lively people had, as now, a language distinct from speech, a language of signs and motions, inexpressibly significant and vivacious, their descendants retain it, and the learned Giorgio hath written a most entertaining work upon that species of hieroglyphical gesticulation. Sauntering through the crowd, Glaucus soon found himself amidst a group of his merry, anticipated friends. Ah, said Celest, it is a lustrum since I saw you. And how have you spent the lustrum? What new dishes have you discovered? I have been scientific, returned Celest, and have made some experiments in the feeding of lampraise. I confess I despair of bringing them to the perfection which a Roman ancestor has attained. Miserable man, and why? Because, returned Celest with a sigh, it is no longer a lawful to give them a slave to eat. I am very often tempted to make away with the very fat Carptor, whom I possess, and pop him slyly into the reservoir. He would give the fish a most oligenious flavour. But slaves are not slaves nowadays, and have no sympathy with their master's interest, or Davis would destroy himself to oblige me. What news from Rome? said Lepidus, as he languidly joined the group. The Emperor has been giving a splendid supper to the Senators, answered Celest. He is a good creature, quoth Lepidus. They say he never sends a man away without granting his request. Perhaps he would let me kill a slave for my reservoir, returned Celest eagerly. Not unlikely, said Glaucus, for he who grants a favour to one Roman must always do it at the expense of another. Be sure that for every smile Titus has caused a hundred eyes of wept. Long live Titus! cried Pansa, overhearing the Emperor's name as he swept patronizingly through the crowd. He has promised my brother a quaster ship, because he had run through his fortune. And wishes now to enrich himself among the people, my Pansa, said Glaucus. Exactly so, said Pansa. That is putting the people to some use, said Glaucus. To be sure, returned Pansa, while I must go and look after their arrarium, it is a little out of repair. And followed by a long train of clients, distinguished from the rest of the throng by the Togas they wore. For Togas, once beside a freedom and a citizen, were now a badger's servility to a patron, the A-dial fidgeted fussily away. Poor Pansa, so lepidus, he never has time for pleasure. Thank heaven I am not an A-dial. Ah, Glaucus, how are you? Gay as ever? said Claudius, joining the group. Are you come to sacrifice to fortune? said Celest. I sacrifice to her every night, returned the game-ster. I do not doubt it. No man has made more victims. By Hercules, abiding speech, cried Glaucus, laughing. The dog's letter is never out of your mouth, Celest, said Claudius angrily. You are always snarling. I may well have the dog's letter in my mouth, since, whenever I play with you, I have the dog's throne in my hand, returned Celest. Hissed, said Glaucus, taking a rose from a flower-girl who stood beside. The rose is the token of silence, repel Celest, but I love only to see it at the supper-table. Talking of that, Diomed gives a grand-feast next week, said Celest. Are you invited, Glaucus? Yes, I received an invitation this morning. And I, too, said Celest, trying a square piece of papyrus from his girdle. I see that he asks us an hour earlier than usual, and earnest of something subduous. Oh, he is rich as Crocius, said Claudius, and his bill of fare is as long as an epic. Well, let us to the baths, said Glaucus. This is the time when all the world is there, and Fulveus, whom you admire so much, is going to read us his last ode. The young men assented readily to the proposal, and they strolled to the baths. Although the public thermae, or baths, were instituted rather for the poor citizens than the wealthy, for the last had baths in their own houses, yet, to the crowds of all ranks who resorted to them, it was a favorite place for conversation, and for that indolent lounging so dear to a gay and thoughtless people. The baths at Pompey differed, of course, in planning construction from the vast and complicated thermae of Rome, and, indeed, it seems that in each city of the empire there was always some slight modification of arrangement in the general architecture of the public baths. This mightily puzzles the learned, as if architects and fashion were not capricious before the nineteenth century. Our party entered by the principal porch in the street of Fortune. At the wing of the portico sat the keeper of the baths, with his two boxes before him, one for the money he received, one for the tickets he dispensed. Round the walls of the portico were seats crowded with persons of all ranks, while others, as the regiment of the physicians prescribed, were walking briskly to and fro the portico, stopping every now and then to gaze on the innumerable notices of shows, games, sales, expeditions, which were painted or inscribed upon the walls. The general subject of conversation was, however, the spectacle announced in the amphitheater, and each newcomer was fastened upon by a group eager to know if Pompey had been so fortunate as to produce some monstrous criminal, some happy case of sacrilege or of murder, which would allow the Adiles to provide a man for the jaws of the lion. All other more common exhibitions seemed to duel and tame when compared with the possibility of this fortunate occurrence. For my part, said one jolly-looking man who was a goldsmith, I think the emperor, if he is as good as they say, might have sent us a Jew. Why not take one of the new sect of Nazarenes, said a philosopher? I am not cruel, but an atheist, one who denies Jupiter himself, deserves no mercy. I care not how many gods a man likes to believe in, said them what goldsmith, but to deny all gods is something monstrous. Yet I fancy, said Glaucus, that these people are not absolutely atheists. I am told that they believe in a god, nay, in a future state. Quite a mistake, my dear Glaucus, said the philosopher. I have conferred with them. They laughed at my face when I talked of Pluto and Hades. Oh, ye gods! exclaimed the goldsmith in horror. Are there any of these wretches in Pompey? I know there are a few, but they meet so privately that it is impossible to discover who they are. As Glaucus turned away, a sculptor, who was a great enthusiast in his art, looked after him admiringly. Ah! said he, if we could get him on the arena, there would be a model for you, with limbs, with a head. He ought to have been a gladiator, a subject worthy of our art. Why don't they give him to the lion? Meanwhile, Fulveus, the Roman poet, whom his contemporaries declared immortal and who, but for this history, would never have been heard of in our neglectful age, came eagerly up to Glaucus. Oh, my Athenian, my Glaucus, you have come to hear my ode. That is indeed an honour. You, a Greek, to whom the very language of common life is poetry. How I thank you. It is but a trifle, but if I secure your approbation, perhaps I may get an introduction to Titus. Oh, Glaucus, a poet without a patron, is an emphora without a label. The wine may be good, but nobody will laud it. And what says Pythagoras? Frankincense to the gods, but praise to the men. A patron, then, is the poet's priest. He procures him the incense, and it tames him his believers. But all Pompey is your patron, and every portico in altering your praise. Ah! the poor Pompeians are very civil. They loved honour merit, but they are only the inhabitants of a petty town. Sparrow, Melora, shall we within? Certainly, we lose time till we hear your poem. At this instant there was a rush of some trunty persons from the baths into the portico, and a slave stationed at the door of a small corridor now admitted the poet, Glaucus, Clodius, in a troupe of the bard's other friends into the passage. A poor place this, compared with the Roman thermae, said Lepidus disdainfully. Yet as there's some taste in the ceiling, said Glaucus, who was in the mood to be pleased with everything, pointing to the stars which studded the roof. Lepidus shrugged his shoulders, but was too languid to reply. They now entered a somewhat spacious chamber which served for the purposes of the apoditarium, that is, a place where the bathers prepared themselves for their luxurious ablutions. The vaulted ceiling was raised from a cornice, glowingly colored with motley and grotesque paintings. The ceiling itself was paneled in white compartments bordered with rich crimson. The unsoldied and shining floor was paved with white mosaics, and along the walls arranged benches for the accommodation of the loiterers. This chamber did not possess the numerous and spacious windows, which Vitruvius attributes to his more magnificent frigidarium. The bans, as all the southern Italians, were fond of banishing the light from their sultry skies, and combined in their voluptuous associations the idea of luxury with darkness. Two windows of glass alone admitted the soft and shaded ray, and the compartment in which one of these casements was placed was adorned with a large relief of the destruction of the Titans. In this apartment, Fulvia seated himself with a magisterial air, and his audience gathering round him encouraged him to commence his recital. The poet did not require much pressing. He drew forth from his vest a roll of papyrus, and after hemming three times, as much to command silence as to clear his throyes, he began that wonderful ode, of which, to the great mortification of the author of this history, no single verse can be discovered. By the plot that he received, it was doubtless worthy of his fame, and Glaucus was the only listener who did not find it excel the best odes of Horus. The poem concluded, those who took only the cold bath began to undress. They suspended the garments on hooks, fastened in the wall, and receiving, according to their condition, either from their own slaves or from those of the Thermae, loose robes in exchange, withdrew into that graceful circular building which yet exists to shame the unleaving posterity of the south. The more luxurious departed by another door to the Teppidarium, a place which was heeded to a voluptuous warmth, partly by a movable fireplace, principally by a suspended pavement, beneath which was conducted the caloric of the Laconicum. Here, this portion of the intended bathers, after unrobing themselves, remained for some time enjoying the artificial warmth of the luxurious air. In this room, as befitted its important rank in the long process of ablution, was more richly and elaborately decorated than the rest. The art's trough was beautifully carved and painted, the windows above of grand glass admitted but wandering in the uncertain rays. Below, the massive cornices were rows of figures and massive and bold relief. The walls glowed with crimson, the pavement was skillfully tessellated in the white mosaics. Here, the habituated bathers, men who bathed seven times a day, would remain in the state of a nervy and speechless latitude, either before, or mostly, after the water-bath, and many of these victims of the pursuit of health turned their listless eyes on the newcomers, recognizing their friends with a nod but dreading the fatigue of conversation. From this place, the party again diverged, according to their several fancies, some to the suitatorium which answered the purpose of our vapor baths, and thence to the warm bath itself. Those, more accustomed to exercise and capable of dispensing with so cheap a purchase of fatigue, resorted at once to the Caledarium, or water-bath. In order to complete the sketch and give to the reader an adequate notion of this, the main luxury of the ancients, we will accompany Lepidus, who regularly underwent the whole process, save only the cold bath, which had gone lately out of fashion. Being then gradually warmed in the Tepidarium, which has just been described, the delicate steps of the Pompeian elegant were conducted to the suitatorium. Here, let the reader depict to himself the gradual process of the vapor bath, accompanied by the exhalation of spicy perfumes. After a bather had undergone this operation, he was seized by his slaves, who always awaited him at the baths, and the dues of heat were removed by a kind of scraper, which, by the way, a modern traveller has gravely declared to be used only to remove the dirt, not one particle of which could ever settle on the polished skin of the practised bather. Thence, somewhat cooled, he passed into the water-bath, over which fresh perfumes were profusely scattered, and, on emerging from the opposite part of the room, a cooling shower played over his head in form. Then, wrapping himself in a light robe, he returned once more to the Tepidarium, where he found Glocus, who had not encountered the suitatorium, and now the main delight and extravagance of the bath commenced. Their slaves anointed the bathers with vials of gold, of alabaster or crystal, and set it with profusest gems, and containing the rarest unduance gathered from all quarters of the world. The number of these magmata, used by the wealthy, would fill a modern volume, especially if the volume were printed by a fashionable publisher. Americanum, Magallium, Nardum, Omniquod, Exit and Oom, was of music played in an adjacent chamber, and such as the use of the baths of moderation, refreshed and restored by the grateful ceremony, immersed with all the zest and freshness of rejuvenated life. Blessed be he who invented baths, said Glocus stretching himself along one of those bronze seats, then covered with soft cushions, which the visitor to Pompey sees at this day in that same Tepidarium. Whether he were Hercules or Bacchus, he deserves deification. But tell me, said a corpulent citizen, who was groaning and wheezing under the operation of being rubbed down, tell me, O Glocus, evil chance to thy hands, O slave, why so rough? Tell me, agh, agh, are the baths at room really so magnificent? Glocus turned and recognized Iomed, though not without some difficulty, so red and so inflamed were the good man's cheeks by the suitatory and the scraping he had so lately undergone. I fancy there must be a great deal finer than these, eh? Suppressing a smile, Glocus replied, Imagine all Pompey converted into baths, and he will then form a notion of the size of the imperial thermae of Rome. But a notion of the size only. Imagine every entertainment from mind and body enumerate all the gymnastic games our fathers invented. Repeat all the books Italy and Greece have produced. Suppose places for all these games admires for all these works. Add to this baths of the vastest size, the most complicated construction, interspersed the whole with gardens, with theaters, with porticoes, with schools. Suppose, in one word, a city of the gods, composed but of palaces and public edifices, and you may form some faint idea of the glories of the great baths of Rome. By Hercules said Diomed, opening his eyes, why it would take a man's whole life to bathe. At Rome it often does so, replied Glocus gravely. There are many who live only at the baths. They who pair there at the first hour in which the doors are opened, and remain till that in which the doors are closed. They seem as if they need nothing of the rest of Rome, as if they despised all other existence. By Pollux you amaze me. Even those who bathe only thrice a day can try to consume their lives in this occupation. They take their exercise in the tennis court or the porticoes to prepare them for the first bath. They lounge into the theater to refresh themselves after it. They take their prandium under the trees and think over their second bath. By the time it is prepared the prandium is digested. From the second bath they stroll into one of the pair-styles to hear some new poet recite, or into the library to sleep over an old one. Then comes the supper, which they still consider but a part of the bath, and then a third time they bathe again as the best place to converse with their friends. Pair Hercules, but we have their imitators at Pompeii. Yes, and without their excuse, the magnificent philipsuaries of the Roman baths are happy. They see nothing but the gorgeousness and splendor. They visit not the squalid parts of the city. They know not that there is poverty in the world. All nature smiles for them, and her only frown is the last one who sends them to bathe in cosidus. Believe me, they are your only true philosophers. While Glaucas was thus conversing, Lepidus, with closed eyes and scarce perceptible breath, was undergoing all the mystic operations, not one of which he ever suffered his attendance to admit. After the perfumes and the unduance, they scattered over him the luxurious patterns which prevented any further accession of heat, and this being rubbed away by the smooth surface of the pumice. He began to endure, not the garments he had put off, but those more festive ones termed the synthesis, with which the Romans marked the respect for the coming ceremony of supper, if rather, from its hour, three o'clock in our measurement of time, it might not be a more fitly denominated dinner. This done, he at length opened his eyes and gave signs of returning to life. At the same time, too, so thus be tokened by long yawned evidence of existence. It is supper time, so the epicure, you, Glaucas, and Lepidus, come and sup with me. Where I collect you are all three engaged to my house next week, cried Diomed, who is mildly proud of the acquaintance of men of fashion. Ah, we recollect, said Celest. The seed of memory, my Diomed, is certainly in the stomach. Passing now, once again, into the cooler air, and so into the street, our gallons of the day concluded the ceremony of a Pompeian bath. End of Book I. CHAPTER VII The Last Days of Pompey by Edward G. Bulwer-Lighton Recording by Becky Cook and Raleigh, North Carolina This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To find out more, or to learn how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Becky Cook in Raleigh, North Carolina. Last Days of Pompey by Edward G. Bulwer-Lighton Book I. CHAPTER VIII Our bassist cogs his dice with pleasure and wins the game. The evening darkened over the restless city, as Aposites took his way to the house of the Egyptian. He avoided the more lighted and populous streets, and as he strode onward with his head buried in his bosom and his arms folded within his robes, there was something startling in the contrast, which was solemn mien and wasted form presented to the thoughtless brows and animated air of those who occasionally crossed his path. At length, however, a man of more sober and staid demeanor, and who had twice passed him with a curious but doubting look, touched him on the shoulder. Aposites! said he, and he made a rapid sign with his hands. It was the sign of the cross. Well, Nazarene, replied the priest, and his face grew paler. What wouldst thou? Nay, returned the stranger, I would not interrupt thy meditations, but the last time we met, I seemed not to be so unwelcome. You are not unwelcome, Olympus, but I am sad and weary, nor am I able this evening to discuss with you those themes which are most acceptable to you. O backward of heart! said Olympus, with bitter fervor, and art thou sad and weary, and wilt thou turn from the very springs that refresh and heal? O earth! cried the young priest, striking his breast passionately. From what region shall my eyes open to the true Olympus, where thy gods really dwell? Am I to believe with this man that none whom for so many centuries fathers worshipped have a being or a name? It might have break down as something blasphemous and profane, the very altars which I have deemed most sacred, who are my to think with our bases. What! he paused and strode rapidly away in the impatience of a man who strives to get rid of himself. But the Nazarene was one of those hearty, vigorous and enthusiastic men by whom God in all times has worked the revolutions of earth, and those, above all, in the establishment and in the reformation of his own religion. Men who were formed to convert, because formed to endure. It is men of this mold whom nothing discourages, nothing dismayes, in the fervor of belief they are so inspired and they inspire. Their reason first kindles their passion, but then passion is the instrument they use. They force themselves into men's hearts while they appear only to appeal to their judgment. Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus. It moves stones, it charms prutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it. Alunthus did not then suffer apesities thus easily to escape him. He overtook and addressed him thus. I do not wonder, apesities, that I distress you, that I shake all the elements of your mind, that you were lost in doubt, that you drift here and there in the vast ocean of uncertain and benighted thought. I wonder not at this, but bear with me a little while. Watch and pray. The darkness shall vanish, the storm sleep, and God himself, as he came of your on the seas of Samaria, shall walk over the lulled billows to the delivery of your soul. Ours is a religion jealous in its demands, but how infinitely prodigal in its gifts. It troubles you for an hour. It repays you by immortality. Such promises, said apesity Solani, are the tricks by which man is evergold. O glorious were the promises which led me to the shrine of Isis. But, answered the Nazarene, ask thy reason, can that religion be sound which outrages all morality? You were told to worship your gods. What are those gods, even according to yourselves? What their actions, what their attributes? Are they not all represented to you as the blacks of criminals? You were asked to serve them and serve divinities. Jupiter himself is a parasite and an adulterer. What are their meaner deities but imitators of his vices? You were told not to murder, but you worship murderers. You were told not to commit adultery, and you make your prayers to an adulterer. Oh! What is this but a mockery of the holiest part of man's nature, which is faith? Turn now to the God, who we seem to you to sublime, to shadowy for those human associations, those touching connections between creator and creature, to which the weak heart clings contemplate him and his son who put on mortality like ourselves. His mortality is not indeed declared like that of your fabled gods by the vices of our nature but by the practice of all its virtues. In him are united the austere smorals with the tenderest affections. If he were but a mere man, he had been worthy to become a god. You honor Socrates. He has a sect, his disciples, his schools. But what are the doubtful virtues of the Athenian to the bright, the undisputed, the active, the unceasing, the devoted holiness of Christ? I speak to you now only of his human character. He came in that as the pattern of the future ages to show us the form of virtue which Plato thirsted to see embodied. This was the true sacrifice that he made for man. But the halo that encircled his dying hour not only brightened earth, but opened to us the sight of heaven. You were touched, you were moved. God works in your heart. His spirit is with you. Come, resist not the holy impulse. Come at once unhesitatingly. A few of us are now assembled to expound the word of God. Come, let me guide you to them. You were sad and you were weary. Come to the words of God. Come to me, saith he, and all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I cannot now, said Aposite's, another time. Now, now, exclaimed Alintas earnestly and clasping him by the arm. But Aposite's, yet unprepared for the renunciation of that faith, that life for which he had sacrificed so much and still hunted by the promises of the Egyptian, extricated himself forcibly from the grasp, and feeling an effort necessary to conquer the irresolution which the eloquence of the Christian had begun to affect in his heated and feverish mind, he gathered up his robes and fled away with the speed that defied pursuit. Breathless and exhausted, he arrived at last in the remote and sequestered part of the city, and the lone house of the Egyptian stood before him. As he paused to recover himself, he left the station. No other house was near. The darksome vines clustered far and wide in the front of the building, and behind it rose a copse of lofty forestries, sleeping in the melancholy moonlight. Beyond stretched the dim outline of the distant hills, and amongst them the quiet crest of the Suvious, not then so lofty as the travel over holds it now. Aposite's passed through the arching vines and arrived at the broad and spacious portico. Before it, on either side of the steps, reposed the image of the Egyptian Sphinx, and the moonlight gave an additional and yet more solemn calm to this large and harmonious and passionless features in which the sculptures of that type of wisdom united so much of loveliness with awe. Halfway up the extremities of the steps darkened the green and massive foliage of the aloe, and thus shadow of the eastern palm cast its long and unwavering boughs partially over the surface of the stairs. Something there was in the stillness of the place, and the strange aspect of the sculptured Sphinxes which thrilled the blood of the priest with a nameless and ghostly fear, and he longed even for an echo to his noiseless steps as he ascended to the threshold. He knocked at the door, over which was rotten inscription and characters unfamiliar to his eyes. It opened without a sound, and a tall Ethiopian slave of valutation, motioned to him to proceed. The wide hall was lighted by lofty Kindelabra of elaborate bronze, and round the walls were wrought vast hieroglyphics and dark and solemn colors which contrasted strangely with the bright hues and graceful shapes with which the inhabitants of Italy decorated thoroughbodes. At the extremity of the hall a slave whose countenance, though not African, was darker by many shades than the usual color of the south of Rome. I seek our bases," said the priest, but his voice trembled even in his own ear. The slave bowed his head in silence and leading Aposites to a wing without the hall conducted him up a narrow staircase and then traversing several rooms in which the stern and thoughtful beauty of the Sphinx still made the chief and most impressive object of the priest's notice Aposites found himself in a dim and high-flighted chamber with the exception. Our bases were seated before a small table on which lay unfolded several scrolls of papyrus impressed with the same character as that on the threshold of the mansion. A small tripod stood at a little distance from the incense in which the smoke slowly rose. Near this was a vast globe depicting the signs of heaven and upon another table lay several instruments of curious and quaint shape whose uses were unknown to Aposites. The farther extremity of the room was concealed by a curtain and the oblong window in the roof admitted the rays of the moon mingling sadly with the single lamp which burned in the apartment. Seat yourself, Aposites said the Egyptian without rising. The young man obeyed. You ask me, resumed our bases after a short pause in which he seemed absorbed and thought, you ask me, or you would do so, the mightiest secrets the soul of man is fitted to receive. It is the enigma of life itself that you desire me to solve. Place like children in the dark and but for a little while in this dim and confined existence we shape our specters in the obscurity. Our thoughts now sink back into ourselves in terror now wildly plunge themselves into the guideless gloom guessing what it may contain. Stretching our helpless hands here and there, lest, finally, we stumble upon some hidden danger, not knowing the limits of our boundary, now feeling them suffocate us with compression, now seeing them extend far away till they vanish into eternity. In this state all wisdom consists necessarily in the solution of two questions. What are we to believe? And what are we to reject? These questions you desire me to decide. Aposites bowed his head nascent. Man must have some belief. Continued the Egyptian in a tone of sadness. He must fasten his hope to something. It is our common nature that you inherit when aghast and terrified to see that in which you have been taught to place your faith swept away, you float over a dreary and shoreless sea of insertitude. You cry for help. You ask for some plank to cling to, some land, however dim and distant to attain. Well then, have not forgotten the foundation of today? Forgotten. I confess to you that those deities for whom smoke so many altars were but inventions. I confess to you that our rites and ceremonies were but mummeries to delude and lure the herd to their proper good. Explained to you that from these delusions came the bonds of society, the harmony of the world, the power of the wise, that power is in the obedience to the salutary delusions. If man must have some belief, continue to him that which his fathers have made dear to him and which customs sanctifies and strengthens. In seeking a subtler faith for us, whose senses are too spiritual for the gross one, let us leave others that support which crumbles from ourselves. This is wise. It is benevolent. Proceed. This being settled, resumed the Egyptian, and injured for those whom we are about to desert, we gird up our loins and depart into new climes of faith, dismiss at once from your recollection, from your thought, all that you have believed before. Suppose the mind a blank, an unwritten scroll, fit to receive impressions for the first time. Look round the world, observe its order, its regularity, its design, something must have created it. That design speaks a designer. In that certainty we first touch land. But what is that something? A god, you cry? Stay. No confused and confusing names. Of that which created the world, we know. We can know. Nothing. Save these attributes. Power and unvarying regularity, stern, crushing, relentless regularity, heating no individual cases, rolling, sweeping, burning on. No matter what scattered hearts severed from the general mass, fell ground and scorched beneath its wheels, the mixture of evil with good, the existence of suffering and of crime in all times have perplexed the wise. They created a god. They supposed him benevolent. How then came this evil? Why did he permit it? Nay, why invent, why perpetuate it? To account for this, the Persians create a second spirit, evil, and suppose a continual war between that and the god of good. In our own shattery and tremendous typhon, the Egyptians image a similar demon, perplexing blunder that yet more bewilders us, folly that arose from the vain delusion that makes a palpable, a corporeal, a human being, of this unknown power that clothes the invisible with attributes and a nature similar to the scene. No. To this designer have let us give a name that does not command our bewildering associations and the mystery becomes more clear. That name is necessity. Necessity, say the Greeks, compels the gods. Then why the gods? Their agency becomes unnecessary. Dismiss them at once. Necessity is the ruler of all we see. Power, regularity, these two qualities make its nature. Would you ask more? Nothing, whether it be eternal, whether it compel us, its creatures to new careers after that darkness which we call death, we cannot tell. There leave we this ancient, unseen, unfathomable power and come to that which, to our eyes, is the great minister of its functions. This we can task more. From this we can learn more. Its evidence is around us. Its name is nature. The error of the sages has been to direct researches to the attributes of necessity where all is gloom and blindness. Had they confined the researches to nature, what of knowledge might we not already have achieved? Here patience, examination are never directed in vain. We see what we explore. Our minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes and effects. Nature is the great agent of the external universe and necessity imposes upon it the laws by which it acts and parts to us, the powers by which we examine. Those powers are curiosity and memory. Their union is reason. Their perfection is wisdom. Well then, I examine by the help of these powers the inexhaustible nature. I examine the earth, the air, the ocean, the heaven. I find that all have a mystic sympathy with each other, that the moon sways the tides, that the air maintains the earth, and is the sense of things. That by the knowledge of the stars we measure the limits of the earth. That we portion out the epochs of time. That by their pale light we are guided into the abyss of the past. That in their solemn lore we discern the destinies of the future. And thus, while we know not that which necessity is, we learn at least her decrees. And to know what morality do we glean from this religion, for religion it is. Nature and necessity. I worship the last by reverence, the first by investigation. What is the morality my religion teaches? This. All things are subject, but to general rules. The sun shines for the joy of many. It may bring sorrow to the few. The night sheds sleep on the multitude, but it harbors murder as well as rest. The forests adorn the earth, but shelter the serpent and the lion. The ocean supports a thousand barks, but it engulfs the one. It is only thus for the general and not for the universal benefit that nature acts, and necessity speeds on her awful course. This is the morality of the dread agents of the world. It is mine who am their creature. I would preserve the delusions of the priestcraft, for they are serviceable to the multitude. I would impart to man the arts I discover, the sciences I perfect. I would speed the vast career of civilizing lore. In this I serve the mass. I fulfill the general law. I execute the great moral that nature preaches. For myself I claim the individual exception. I claim it for the wise. Satisfied that my individual actions are nothing in the great balance of good and evil. Satisfied that the product of knowledge can give greater blessings to the mass than my desires can operate evil on the few. For the first can extend to unhumanized nations yet unborn. I give to the world wisdom to myself freedom. I enlighten the lives of others and I enjoy my own. Yes, our wisdom is eternal but our life is short. Make the most of it while it lasts. Surrender thy youth to pleasure and thy senses to delight. Soon comes the hour when the wine cup is shattered and the garland shall cease to bloom. Enjoy while you may. Be still, oh apesities. My people and my follower. I will teach thee the mechanism of nature, her darkest and wildest secrets, the lore which fools call magic and the mighty mysteries of the stars. By this shalt thou discharge thy duty to the mass. By this shalt thou enlighten thy race. But I will lead thee also to the pleasures of which the vulgar do not dream and the day which thou give us to mend will be followed by the sweet night which thou surrenderst to thyself. As the Egyptian ceased there, rose about, around, beneath the softest music that Lydia ever taught, or Iona ever perfected, it came like a stream of sound bathing the senses unawares, innervating, subduing with a delight. It seemed the melodious of invisible spirits, such as the shepherd might have heard in the golden age, floating through the veils of Thessaly, or in the noontime glades of Paphos, the wars which had rushed to the lip of Aposites, an answer to the sophisticies of the Egyptian died to trembling away. He felt it as a profanation to break upon that enchanted strain, the susceptibility of his excited nature, the Greek softness and ardour of his secret soul, were swayed and captured by surprise. He sank on the seat with parted lips and thirsting ear, while in chorus of voices, planned and melting as those which walked psyche in the halls of love, rose the following song, the hymn of Eros. By the cool banks where soft suffices flows, a voice still trembling down the waves of air, the leaves blush brighter in the tie-ins rose, the doves couch breathless in their summer lair, while from their hands the purple flower-ed spell, the laughing hours stood listening in the sky, from pans green cave to eagles hunted cell, heaven the charmed earth in one delicious sigh. In the hands of earth I am the power of love, elest of all the gods with chaos sporn. My smile sheds light along the quartz above, my kisses wake the eyelids of the mourn. Why now the stars there ever as you gaze, you meet the deep spell of my haunting eyes. Mine is the moon, and mournful of her rays, to that she lingers where her carrion lies. The flowers are mine, the blushes of the rose, the violet charming zephyr to the shade. Mine the quick light that in the may-beam glows, and mine the day dream in the lonely glade. Love, sons of earth, for love is earth's softest lore. Look where ye will, earth overflows with me. Learn from the waves that ever kiss the shore, and the winds nestling on the heaving sea. I'll teach his love the sweet voice like a dream melted in light yet still the airs above. The waving sedges and the whispering stream and the green forest rustling murmured, love. As the voice died away, the Egyptian seized the hand of Aposites, and led him, wandering intoxicated yet half reluctant, across the chamber towards the curtain at the far end. And now, from behind that curtain there seemed to burst a thousand sparkling stars. The veil itself, hither too dark, was now lighted by these fires behind into the tenderest blue of heaven. It represented heaven itself, such a heaven, as in the nights of June might have shown down over the streams of Castile. Here and there were painted rosy and aerial clouds, from which smiled by the limner's art, faces of divinous beauty, and on which reposed to the shapes of which Phidias and Apollus streamed. And the stars which started that transparent azure ruled rapidly as they shone, while the music that again woke with a livelier tone seemed to imitate the melody of the joyous fears. Oh, what miracle is this, our bassies? said Aposites, in faltering accents. After having denied the gods, art thou about to reveal to me their pleasures? Interrupted our basses, and atone so different from the usual cold and tranquil harmony that Aposites started, and thought the Egyptian himself transformed. And now, as they neared the curtain, a wild, a loud, and exulting melody burst forth from behind its concealment. With that sound the veil was rent and twain, it parted, it seemed to vanish into air. In a scene, which no Sibirite ever more than rivaled broke upon that dazzled gaze of the youthful priest. A vast banquet room stretched beyond, blazing with countless lights which filled the warm air with the sense of frankincense, of jasmine, of violets, of myrrh, all that the most odorous flowers, all that the most costly spices could distill, seemed gathered into one ineffable and imbrosial essence, from the light columns that spring upwards to the airy roof, hung draperies of white, studded with golden stars. At the extremities of the room, two fountains cast up a spray, which, catching the rays of the rosate light, glared like countless diamonds. In the center of the room, as they entered, they rose slowly from the floor to the sound of unseen minstrelsy, a table spread with all the vines which sense ever devoted to fancy, in vases of that lost marine fabric, so glowing in its colors, so transparent in its material, were crowned with the exotics of the east. The couches, to which this table was the center, were covered with tapestries of azura and gold, and from invisible tubes the vaulted roof descended showers of fragrant waters that cooled the delicious air and contended with the lamps, as if the spirits of wave and fire disputed which element could furnish forth the most delicious odorous. And now, from behind the snowy draperies, troops that forms as the dawn is beheld when he lay on the lap of Venus. They came, some with garlands, others with liars. They surrounded the youth. They led his steps to the banquet. They flung the chaplets round him in rosy chains. The earth, the thought of earth, vanished from his soul. He imagined himself in a dream and suppressed his breathless. He should wake too soon. The senses, to which he had never yielded as yet, beat in his burning pulse and confused his dizzying and reeling sight. And while thus amazed and lost once again, but in brisk and bockic measures rose the magic strain. And now, creontic, in the veins of the calyx foams and glows the blood of the mantling vine, but oh, in the bowl of youth there glows, a lesbian, more divine. Bright, bright as the liquid light, it waves through thine eyelid shine. Fill up, fill up to the sparkling brim, the juice of the young liais. The grape is the key that we owe to him, from the gall of the worlds to frees. Drink, drink, what need to shrink when the lambs alone can see us. Drink, drink, as I quaff from thine eyes the wine of the softer tree. Give the smiles to the god of the grape, thy size, beloved one, give to me. Turn, turn, my glances burn, and thirst for a look from thee. As the song ended, a group of three maidens entwined with the chain of starred flowers and who, while they imitated, might have shamed the graces, advanced toward him in the gliding measures of the Ionian dance, such as the naryads wreathed in moonlight on the yellow sands of the Aegean wave, such as Satharia taught her handmaid in the marriage feast of Psyche and her son. Now searching, they wreathed their chaplet round his head. Now kneeling, the youngest of the three proffered him the bowl from which the wine of lesbos foamed and sparkled. The youth resisted no more. He grasped the intoxicating cup, the blood mantled fiercely through his veins. He sank upon the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and turning with swimming eyes to seek for a basis whom he had lost in the world of his emotions, he beheld him, and gazing upon him with a smile that encouraged him to pleasure. He beheld him, but not as he had hitherto seen, with dark and sable garments, with a brooding and solemn brow, a robe that dazzled the sight, so studded with its whitest surface with gold and gems, blazed upon his majestic form. White roses, alternated with emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like crowned his raven locks. He appeared like Ulysses of a second youth. His features seemed to have exchanged thought for beauty, and he towered amidst the loveliness that surrounded him in all the beaming and relaxing benignity of the Olympian god. Drink! Feast! Love, my pupil! said he, blush not that thou art passionate and young, that which thou art, thou feelest in thy veins, that which thou shalt be, survey. With all the societies, following the gesture beheld a pedestal placed between the statues of Bacchus and Adalia, the form of a skeleton. Start not! resumed the Egyptian. That friendly guest admonishes us but of the shortness of life. From its jaws I hear a voice that summons us to enjoy. As he spoke, a group of nymphs surrounded the statue. They laid chaplets on its pedestal, and while the cups were emptied and straying strain, Bacchic hymns to the image of death. Thou art in the land of the shadowy host, thou that didst drink and love by the solemn river a gliding ghost, but thy thought is ours above. If memory yet can fly back to the golden sky and mourn the pleasures of lost by the ruined hall these flowers we lay where they so once held its palace. When the rose to thy scent and sight was gay and the smile was in the palace, and the kathara's voice could bid thy heart rejoice when night eclipsed the day. Here a new group advancing turned the tide of the music into a quicker and more joyous strain. Death, death is the gloomy shore, where we all sail, soft, soft, thou gliding oar, blow soft, sweet gale, chain with bright wreaths the hours, victims of all, ever mid the song and flowers, victims should fall, pausing for a moment yet quicker and quicker dense the silver-footed music, since life so short will live to laugh a weaver waste a minute. If youths the cup we yet can quaff be loved the pearl within it. A third band now approached with brimming cups which they poured in libation upon the strange altar, and once more slow and solemn rose the changeful melody. Thou art welcome, guest of gloom, from the far and fearful sea, when in gloom our board shall be spread with thee. All hail, dark guest, who hath so fair a plea are welcome, guest to be, as thou who solemn haul at laugh shall feast us all in the dim and dismal coast. Long yet be we the host, and thou, dead shadow thou, all joys though thy brow, thou but our passing guest. At this moment she who sat beside Apositey suddenly took up the song. Happy is yet our doom, the earth and the sun are ours, and far from the dreary tomb speed the wings of the rosy hours. Sweet is for thee the boa, sweet are they locks my love. I fly to thy tender soul, as bird to its mate adove. Take me ah, take, clasp to thy guardian breast, soft let me sink to rest, but wake me, ah, wake, and tell me with words and sighs, but no more with thy melting eyes that my son is not set, that the torch is not quenched at the urn, that we love and we breathe and burn. Tell me, there loves me yet. LibriVox.org The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward G. Boerlitten Book 2, Chapter 1 A Flash House in Pompeii and Gentlemen of the Classic Ring To one of those parts of Pompeii which were tenanted not by the lords of pleasure, but by its minions and its victims, the haunt of gladiators of the vicious and the penniless of the savage and the obscene, the Alsatia of an ancient city we are now transported. It was a large room that opened at once on the confined and crowded lane. Before the threshold was a group of men whose iron and well-strung muscles, whose short and herculean necks, whose hardy and reckless countenances indicated the champions of the arena. On the shelf, without the shop, were arranged jars of wine and oil. And right over this was inserted in the wall a course painting which exhibited gladiators drinking. So ancient and so venerable is the custom of signs. Within the room were placed several small tables, arranged somewhat in the modern fashion of boxes and round these receded several knots of men. Some drinking, some playing at dice, some at that more skillful game called duodesim scripti, which certain of the blundering learned have mistaken for chess, though it rather, perhaps, resembled backgammon of the two and was usually, though not always, played by the assistance of dice. The hour was in the early forenoon and nothing better, perhaps, than that on reasonable time itself denoted the habitual indolence of these tavern loungers. Yet, despite the situation of the house and the character of its inmates, it indicated none of that sordid squalor which would have characterized a similar haunt in a modern city. The gay disposition of all the Pompeians, who sought, at least, to gratify the sense even where they neglected the mind, was typified by the many colors which decorated the walls and the shapes, fantastic but not inelegant, in which the lamps, the drinking cups, the commonest household utensils were wrought. By Pollux, said one of the gladiators, as he leaned against the wall of the threshold, the wine thou sellest us, old Silanus, and as he spoke he slapped a portly personage on the back, is enough to thin the best blood in one's veins. The man thus caressingly saluted and whose bare arms, white apron, and keys and neck and tucked carelessly within his girdle indicated him to be the host of the tavern, was already passing into the autumn of his years, but his form was still so robust and athletic that he might have shamed even the sinewy shapes beside him, save that the muscles had seated as it were into flesh that the cheeks were swelled and bloated and the increasing stomach threw into shade the vast and massive chest which rose above it. None of thy scurrilous blusterings with me growled the gigantic landlord, in the gentle semi-roar of an insulted tiger, my wine is good enough for a carcass which shall so soon soak the dust of the Spallarium. Crocus thou thus, old Raven, return the gladiator, laughing scornfully. Thou shalt live to hang thyself with, despite, when thou seest me win the palm crown. And when I get the purse at the amphitheater, as I certainly shall, my first vow to Hercules shall be to forswear thee in thy vow potations evermore. Here to him, here to this modest Pirgopala Nices, he has certainly served under Bombucaitis clunistara disarchaitis, cried the host. Sporus, Niger, Titridis, he declares he shall win the purse from you. Why? By the gods. Each of your muscles is strong enough to stifle all his body, or I know nothing of the arena. Ha! said the gladiator, coloring with rising fury. Arlanista would tell a different story. What story could he tell against me? Leiden, said Titridis, frowning. Or me, who have conquered in fifteen fights, said the gigantic Niger, stalking up to the gladiator. Or me, Grenad Sporus, with eyes of fire. Tush, said Leiden, folding his arms, and regarding his rivals with a reckless air of defiance. The time of trial will soon come. Keep your valor till then. I, who, said the surly host, and if I press down my thumb to save you, may the fates cut my thread. Your rope, you mean, said Leiden, sneeringly. Here's a sistercy to buy one. The Titan wine-vendor seized the hand extended to him, and gripped it in so stern a vice that the blood spurred it from the fingers' ends over the garments of the bystanders. They set up a savage laugh. I will teach thee, young braggart, to play the Macedonian with me. I am no puny Persian, I warrant thee. What, man? Have I not fought twenty years in the ring, and never lowered my arms once? And have I not received the rod from the editor's own hand as a sign of victory, and as a grace to retirement on my laurels? And am I now to be lectured by a boy? So say, he flung the hand from him in scorn. Without changing a muscle, but with the same smiling face with which he had previously taunted my host, did the gladiator brave the painful grip he had undergone. But no sooner was his hand released than, crouching for one moment, as the wild cat crouches, you might see his hair bristle on his head and beard, and with a fierce and shrill yell, he sprang on the throat of the giant, with an impetus that threw him, vast and sturdy as he was, from his balance, and down, with a crash of a falling rock he fell, while over him fell also his ferocious foe. Our host, perhaps, had had no need of the rope so kindly recommended to him by Leiden, had he remained three minutes longer in that position, but summoned to his assistance by his foe, a woman who had hitherto kept in an inner apartment, rushed to the scene of battle. This new ally was in herself a match for the gladiator. She was tall, lean, and with arms that could give other than soft embraces. In fact, the general help made of Burbo the wine cellar had, like himself, fought in the lists. Ney under the emperor's eye, and Burbo himself, the unconquered in the field, according to report, now and then yielded the palm to his soft stratonacy. This sweet creature no sooner saw the imminent peril that awaited her worse half, than without other weapons than those with which nature had provided her, she darted upon the incumbent gladiator, and, clasping him round the waist with her long and snake-like arms, lifted him by a sudden wrench from the body of her husband, leaving only his hands still clinging to the throat of his foe. So we have seen a dog snatched by the hind legs from the strife with a fallen rival in the arms of some envious groom. So have we seen one half of him high in the air, passive and offenseless, while the other half, head, teeth, eyes, claws, seemed buried and engulfed in the mangled and prostrate enemy. Meanwhile, the gladiators lapped and pampered and glutted upon blood crowded delightedly round the combatants. Their nostrils distended, their lips grinning, their eyes gloatingly fixed on the bloody throat of the one and the indented talons of the other. Hobbit! He has got it! Hobbit! cried they, with a sort of yell, rubbing their nervous hands. Not hobbio, Eliars, I have not got it! shouted the host, as with a mighty effort he wrenched himself from those deadly hands and rose to his feet, breathless, panting, lacerated, bloody, and fronting with reeling eyes, the glaring look and grinning teeth of his baffled foe, now struggling, but struggling with disdain in the grip of the sturdy Amazon. Fair play! cried the gladiators, one to one, and, crowding round Leiden and the woman, they separated our pleasing host from his courteous guest. But Leiden, feeling ashamed at his present position and endeavoring in vain to shake off the grasp of the varago, slipped his hand into his girdle and drew forth a short knife. So menacing was his look, so brightly gleamed the blade, that's Tritonacy, who was used only to that fashion of battle which we moderns call pugilistic, started back in alarm. Oh, gods! cried she, the Ruffian, he has concealed weapons. Is that fair? Is that like a gentleman and a gladiator? No, indeed, I scorn such fellows. With that she contemptuously turned her back on the gladiator and hastened to examine the condition of her husband. But he, as much inured to the constitutional exercises as an English bulldog is to a contest with a more gentle antagonist, had already recovered himself. The purple hues receded from the crimson surface of his cheek, the veins of the forehead retired into their wanted size. He shook himself with a complacent grunt, satisfied that he was still alive, and then, looking at his foe from head to foot with an air of more approbation than he had ever bestowed upon him before. By castor, said he, thou art a stronger fellow than I took thee for. I see thou art a man of merit and virtue. Give me thy hand, my hero. Jolly old burbo, cried the gladiators, applauding, staunch to the backbone. Give him thy hand, Leiden. Oh, to be sure, said the gladiator, but now I have tasted his blood. I long to lap the whole. By Hercules returned the host, quite unmoved. That is the true gladiator feeling. Pollocks could think what good training may make a man why a beast could not be fiercer. A beast, oh, dullard, we beat the beast's hollow, cried to Trities. Well, well said Stretonacy, who was now employed in smoothing her hair and adjusting her dress. If you are all good friends again, I recommend you to be quiet and orderly. For some young noblemen, your patrons and backers, have sent to say they will come here to pay you a visit. They wish to see you more at their ease than at the schools, before they make up their bets on the great fight at the amphitheater. So they always come to my house for that purpose. They know we only receive the best gladiators in Pompeii. Our society is very select. Be the gods. Yes, continued Berbo, drinking off a bowl, or rather a pail of wine. A man who has won my laurels can only encourage the brave. Liden, drink, my boy. May you have an honorable old age like mine. Come here, said Stretonacy, drawing her husband to her affectionately by the ears, in that caress which Tbilis had so prettily described. Come here. Not so hard, she-wolf. Thou art worse than the gladiator, murmured the huge jaws of Berbo. Hiss, said she, whispering him. Kalanus has just stole in, disguised, by the back way. I hope he has brought the sistercies. Ho, ho, I will join him, said Berbo. Meanwhile, I say, keep a sharp eye on the cups. Attend to the score. Let them not cheat thee, wife. They are heroes, to be sure. But then they are errant rogues. Kakus was nothing to them. Never fear me, fool, was the conjugal reply, and Berbo, satisfied with the dear assurance, strode through the apartment, and sought the penetralia of his house. So those soft patrons are coming to look at our muscles, said Niger. Who sent to provise thee of it, my mistress? Lepidus. He brings with him Claudius, the surest better in Pompeii, and the young Greek, Glockus. A wager on a wager, cried to Trides. Claudius bets on me for twenty sistercies. What say you, Leiden? He bets on me, said Leiden. No, on me, on Edsporus. Doltz. Do you think he would prefer any of you to Niger, said the athletic, thus modestly naming himself? Well, well, said Stritanici, as she pierced a huge amphora for her guests, who had now seated themselves before one of the tables. Great men and brave, as ye all think yourselves, which of you will fight the Numidian lion in case no malefactor should be found in any of you of the option? I who have escaped your arms, stout Stritanici, said Leiden, might safely, I think, encounter the lion. But tell me, said to Trides, where is that pretty young slave of yours? The blind girl, with bright eyes. I have not seen her a long time. Oh, she is too delicate for you, my son of Neptune, said the hostess, we send her into time to self-flowers and sing to the ladies. She makes us more money so than she would by waiting on you. Besides, she has often other employments which lie under the rose. Other employments, said Niger, why, she is too young for them. Silence, beast, said Stritanici, you think there is no play but the Corinthian. If Nydia were twice the age she is at present, she would be equally fit for Vesta, poor girl. But Harky, Stritanici, said Leiden, how didest thou come by so gentle and delicate a slave? She were more meat for the handmaid of some rich matron of Rome than for thee. That is true, returned Stritanici, and some day or other I shall make my fortune by selling her. How came I by Nydia, thou askest. Why, thou seeest, my slave Staphala, thou rememberst Staphala, Niger? I, a large-handed wench, with a face like a comic mask. How should I forget her? By Pluto, whose handmaid she doubtless is at this moment? Tush, brute. Well, Staphala died one day, and a great loss she was to me, and I went to the market to buy me another slave. By the gods, they were all grown so dear since I had bought poor Staphala, and money was so scarce that I was about to leave the place in despair. When a merchant plucked me by the robe, Mistress, said he, dost thou want a slave cheap? I have a child to sell, a bargain. She is but little, and almost an infant. It is true, but she is quick and quiet, docile and clever, well, and is of good blood, I assure you. Of what country, said I? Thessalion. Now I knew that Thessalions were acute and gentle, so I said I would see the girl. I found her just as you see her now, scarcely smaller and scarcely younger in appearance. She looked patient and resigned enough, with her hands crossed on her bosom, and her eyes downcast. I asked the merchant his price, it was moderate, and I bought her at once. The merchant brought her to my house and disappeared in an instant. Well, my friends, guess my astonishment when I found she was blind. Ha, ha! A clever fellow that merchant. I ran at once to the magistrates, but the rogue had already gone from Pompey. So I was forced to go home in a very ill humor, I assure you. And the poor girl felt the effects of it too. But it was not her fault that she was blind, for she had been so from her birth. By degrees, we got reconciled to our purchase. True, she had not the strength of Staphala, and was of little use in the house. But she could soon find her way about the town, as well as if she had the eyes of Argus. And when one morning she brought us home a handful of sistercies, which she said she had got from selling some flowers she had gathered we thought that gods had sent her to us. So from that time we let her go out as she likes, filling her basket with flowers, which she wreaths into garlands after the Thessalian fashion, which pleases the gallants. And the great people seemed to take a fancy to her, for they always pay her more than they do any other flower girl. And she brings all of it home to us, which is more than any other slave would do. So I work for myself, but I shall soon afford from her earnings to buy me a second Staphala. Dauntless the Thessalian kidnapper had stolen the blind girl from gentle parents. Besides her skill in the garlands, she sings and plays on the Sathara, which also brings money, and lately, but that is a secret. That is a secret? What? cried Leiden. Art thou turn Sphinx? Sphinx? No. Why Sphinx? Cease thy gavel, good mistress, and bring us our meat. I am hungry, said Sporus, impatiently. And I, too, echoed the grim Niger, wetting his knife on the palm of his hand. The Amazon stocked away to the kitchen, and soon returned with a tray laden with large pieces of meat half-raw. For so, as now, did the heroes of the prize fight and they best sustained their hardyhood and ferocity, they drew round the table with the eyes of famished wolves. The meat vanished, the wine flowed. So leave we those important personages of classic life to follow the steps of Burbo. End of Book 2, Chapter 1. Book 2, Chapter 2 of the last days of Pompeii. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The last days of Pompeii by Edward G. Boerlitten, Book 2, Chapter 2. Two Worthies. In the earlier times of Rome, the priesthood was a profession, not of lukr, but of honor. It was embraced by the noblest citizens. It was forbidden to the plebeians. Afterwards, and long previous to the present date, it was equally open to all ranks. At least, that part of the profession which embraced the Flamens were priests. Not of religion generally, but of peculiar gods. Even the priest of Jupiter, the Flamendialis, preceded by a lictor, and entitled by his office to the entrance of the Senate, at first the special dignitaria of the patricians was subsequently the place of the people. The less national and less honored deities were usually served by Publian ministers. And many embraced the profession, as now the Roman Catholic Christians enter the monastic fraternity, less from the impulse of devotion than the suggestions of a calculating poverty. Thus Calanus, the priest of Isis, was of the lowest origin. His relations, though not his parents, were freedmen. He had received from them a liberal education, and from his father a small patrimony which he soon exhausted. He embraced the priesthood as a last resource from distress. Whatever the state emoluments of the sacred profession, which at that time were probably small, the officers of a popular temple could never complain of the profits of their calling. There is no profession so lucrative as that which practices on the superstition of the multitude. Calanus had but one surviving relative at Pompeii, and that was Berbo. Various dark and disreputable ties, stronger than those of blood, united together their hearts and interests. And often the minister of Isis stalled disguised and furtively from the supposed austerity of his devotions and gliding through the back door of the retired gladiator, a man infamous alike by vices and by profession rejoiced to throw off the last rag of an hypocrisy which but for the dictates of avarice his ruling passion would at all time have set clumsily upon a nature too brutal for even the mimicry of virtue. Wrapped in one of those large mantles which came in use among the Romans in proportion as they dismissed the toga, whose ample folds well concealed the form and in which a sort of hood attached to it afforded no less security to the features Calanus now sat in the small and private chamber of the wine cellar once a small passage ran at once to that back entrance with which nearly all the houses of Pompeii were furnished. Opposite to him sat the sturdy Berbo, carefully coning on a table between them a little pile of coins which the priest had just poured from his purse. The purses were as common then as now with this difference they were usually better furnished. You see said Calanus that we pay you handsomely and you ought to thank me for recommending you to so advantageous a market. I do my cousin, I do replied Berbo affectionately as he swept the coins into a leather receptacle which he then deposited in his girdle drawing the buckle round his capacious more closely than he was want to do in the lax hours of his domestic avocations. And by Isis, Pisces and Nicis, or whatever other gods there may be in Egypt my little Nidia is a very heresperides a garden of gold to me. She sings well and plays like a muse, returned Calanus those are virtues that he who employs me always pays liberally. He is a god cried Berbo enthusiastically every rich man who is generous deserves to be worshipped but come a cup of wine, old friend tell me more about it what does she do she is frightened talks of her oath and reveals nothing nor will I by my right hand I too have taken that terrible oath of secrecy. Oath, what are oaths to men like us? True oaths of a common fashion but this and the stalwart priest shuttered as he spoke yet he continued in emptying a huge cup of unmixed wine I own to thee that it is not so much the oath that I dread as the vengeance of him who proposed it by the gods he is a mighty sorcerer and could draw my confession from the moon did I dare to make it to her talk no more of this by Pollux wow does those banquets are which I enjoy with him I am never quite at my ease there I love my boy one jolly hour with thee and one of the plain unsophisticated laughing girls that I meet in this chamber all smoke derived though it be better than whole nights in those magnificent debauches Oh, say us thou so tomorrow night please the gods we will have then a snug carousel with all my heart said the priest rubbing his hands and drawing himself nearer to the table at this moment they heard a slight noise at the door as of one feeling the handle the priest lowered the hood over his head Tush whispered the host it is but the blind girl as Nydia opened the door and entered the apartment Oh girl, how durst thou thou lookest pale thou hast kept late revels no matter the young must be always the young said Berbo encouragingly the girl made no answer but she dropped on one of the seats with an air of lassitude her color went and came rapidly she beat the floor impatiently with her small feet then she suddenly raised her face and said with a determined voice Master, you may starve me if you will you may beat me you may threaten me with death but I will go no more to that unholy place How, fool, said Berbo in a savage voice and his heavy brows met darkly over his fierce and bloodshot eyes How, rebellious, take care I have said it said the poor girl crossing her hands on her breast What, my modest one sweet Vestal thou wilt go no more very well, thou shalt be carried I will raise the city with my cries said she passionately and the color mounted to her brow We will take care of that too thou shalt go gagged Then may the gods help me said Nadia, rising I will appeal to the magistrates Thine oath remember said a hollow voice last time Kalanus joined in the dialogue At these words a trembling shook the frame of the unfortunate girl She clasped her hands imploringly Rich that I am she cried and burst violently into sobs Whether or not it was the sound of that vehemence sorrow which brought the general stritanacy to the spot her gristly form at this moment appeared in the chamber How now what has thou been doing with my slave I have been rude, said she angrily to Burbow Be quiet, wife, said he in a tone half sullen half timid You want new girdles and fine clothes, do you Well then, take care of your slave or you may want them long Vau capiti tuo vengeance on thy head wretched one What is this, said the hag looking from one to the other Nadia started as by a sudden impulse from the wall against which she had leaned She threw herself at the feet of stritanacy She embraced her knees and looking up at her with those sightless but touching eyes Oh, my mistress, sobs she You are a woman, you have had sisters You have been young like me Feel for me, save me I will go to those horrible feasts no more Stuff, said the hag Dragging her up rudely by one of those hands, fit for no harsher labor than that of weaving the flowers which made her pleasure or her trade Stuff, these fine scruples are not for slaves Harky, said Burbow drawing forth his purse and chinking its contents You hear this music, wife Bipolics, if you do not break in yon cult with a tight reign, you will hear it no more The girl is tired, said stritanacy, nodding to Kalanus, she will be more docile when you next want her You, you Who is here? cried Nidia Casting her eyes round the apartment with so fearful and straining a survey that Kalanus rose in alarm from his seat She must see with those eyes, mother he Who is here? Speak, in heaven's name Ah, if you were blind like me you would be less cruel, said she and she again burst into tears Take her away said Burbow, impatiently I hate these whimperings Come, said stritanacy pushing the poor child by the shoulders, Nidia drew herself aside with an air to which resolution gave dignity Hear me, she said I have served you faithfully I who was brought up Ah, my mother, my poor mother Didest thou dream that I should come to this and dash the tear from her eyes and proceeded Command me in awe else and I will obey But I tell you now hard, stern, inex honorable as you are I tell you that I will go there no more Or, if I am forced there that I will implore the mercy of the pre-tour himself I have said it Hear me, ye gods, I swear The hag's eyes glowed with fire by the hair with one hand and raised on high the other that formidable right hand the least blow of which seemed capable to crush the frail and delicate form that trembled in her grasp That thought itself appeared to strike her for she suspended the blow changed her purpose and dragged Nidia to the wall seized from a hook a rope often, alas, applied to a similar purpose and the next moment the shrill the most shrieks of the blind girl rang piercingly through the house End of Book 2, Chapter 2