 Book 2, Chapter 3 of the Last Days of Pompeii. The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, Book 2, Chapter 3. Glockus makes a purchase that afterwards costs him dear. Hola, my brave fellows, said Lepidus, stooping his head as he entered the low doorway of the House of Berbo. We have come to see which of you most honours your Linnista. The gladiators rose from the table in respect to three gallants known to be among the gayest and richest youths of Pompeii, and whose voices were therefore the dispensers of amphitheatrical reputation. What fine animals, said Claudius to Glockus, worthy to be gladiators. It is a pity they are not warriors, returned Glockus. A singular thing it was to see the dainty and fastidious Lepidus, whom in a banquet array of daylight seemed to blind, whom in the bath a breeze of air seemed to blast, in whom nature seemed twisted and perverted from every natural impulse, and curdled into one dubious thing of a feminicity and art. A singular thing it was to see this Lepidus, now all eagerness and energy and life, patting the vast shoulders of the gladiators with a blanched and girlish hand, feeling with a mincing grip their great brawn and iron muscles, all lost in calculating admiration at that manhood which he had spent his life and carefully banishing from himself. So we have seen at this day the beardless flutterers of the saloons of London thrombing round the heroes of the fives court. So have we seen them admire, and gaze, and calculate a bet. So we have seen them meet together, in ludicrous yet in melancholy assemblage, the two extremes of civilized society, the patrons of pleasure and its slaves, vilest of all slaves, at once ferocious and mercenary, male prostitutes, who sell their strength as women their beauty, beasts enact, but baser than beasts in motive, for the last, at least, do not mangle themselves for money. Ha, Niger, how will you fight? said Lepidus, and with whom? Sporus challenges me, said the grim giant. We shall fight to the death, I hope. Ah, to be sure, grunted Sporus, with a twinkle of his small eye. He takes the sword, I the net, and the trident. It will be rare sport. I hope the survivor will have enough to keep up the dignity of the crown. Never fear, we'll fill the purse, my hector, said Claudius. Let me see, you fight against Niger. Glocus, a bet, I back Niger. I told you so, cried Niger exultingly. The noble Claudius knows me. Count yourself dead already, my Sporus. Claudius took out his tablet. A bet, ten sister show. What say you? So be it, said Glocus, but whom have we here? I never saw this hero before. And he glanced at Leiden, whose limbs were slider than those of his companions, and who had something of grace and something of even nobleness in his face, which his profession had not yet wholly destroyed. It is Leiden, a youngster, practiced only with the wooden sword as yet, answered Niger condescendingly, but he has the true blood in him and has challenged to try these. He challenged me, said Leiden. I accept the offer. And how do you fight? asked Lepidus. Chut, my boy, wait a while before you contend with to try these. Leiden smiled disdainfully. Is he a citizen or a slave? said Claudius. A citizen. We are all citizens here, quoth Niger. Stretch out your arm, my Leiden, said Lepidus, with the air of a connoisseur. The gladiator, with a significant glance at his companions, extended an arm which, if not so huge in its girth as those of his comrades, was so firm in its muscles, so beautifully symmetrical in its proportions, that the three visitors uttered simultaneously an admiring exclamation. Well, man, what is your weapon? said Claudius, tablet in hand. We are to fight first with the cestus. Afterwards, if both survive, with swords return to try these, sharply, and with an envious scowl. With the cestus, cried Glaucus. There you are wrong, Leiden. The cestus is the Greek fashion. I know it well. You should have encouraged flesh for that contest. You are far too thin for it. Avoid the cestus. I cannot, said Leiden. And why? I have said, because he has challenged me. But he will not hold you to the precise weapon. My honor holds me, returned Leiden, proudly. I bet on to try these, two to one at the cestus, said Claudius. Shall it be, Lepidus, even betting with swords? If you give me three to one, I will not take the odds, said Lepidus. Leiden will never come to the swords. You are mighty courteous. What say you, Glaucus? said Claudius. I will take the odds, three to one. Ten cestersia, two thirty. Yes. Claudius wrote the bet in his book. Pardon me, noble sponsor mine, said Leiden, in a low voice to Glaucus, but how much think you the victor will gain? How much? Why? Perhaps seven cestersia? You are sure it will be as much? At least. But out on you, a Greek would have thought of the honor, and not the money. Oh, Italians, everywhere ye are Italians. A blush manored over the bronze cheek of the gladiator. Do not wrong me, noble Glaucus. I think of both, but I should never have been a gladiator but for the money. Base, mayest thou fall, a miser never was a hero. I am not a miser, said Leiden, hotly, and he withdrew to the other end of the room. But I don't see Berbo. Where is Berbo? I must talk with Berbo, cried Claudius. He is within, said Niger, pointing to the door at the extremity of the room. And Stratonis, the brave old lass, where is she, quote Lepidus? Why, she was here just before you entered, but she heard something that displeased her yonder and vanished. Pollux, old Berbo, had perhaps caught hold of some girl in the back room. I heard a female's voice crying out, the old dame is as jealous as Juno. Oh, excellent, cried Lepidus, laughing. Come, Claudius, let us go shears with Jupiter. Perhaps he has caught Alida. At this moment, a loud cry of pain and terror startled the group. Oh, spare me, spare me. I am but a child. I am blind. Is not that punishment enough? Oh, Pallas, I know that voice. It is my poor flower girl, exclaimed Glocus. And he darted at once into the quarter whence the cry rose. He burst the door. He beheld Nidia, writhing in the grasp of the infuriated hag. The cord, already dabbled with blood, was raised in the air. It was suddenly arrested. Fury, said Glocus, and with his left hand he caught Nidia from her grasp. How dare you use thus a girl? One of your own sex, a child. My Nidia, my poor infant. Oh, is that you? Is that Glocus? exclaimed the flower girl, in a tone of almost transport. The tears stood arrested on her cheek. She smiled. She clung to his breast. She kissed his robe as she clung. And how dare you, pert stranger, interfere between a free woman and her slave. By the gods, despite your fine tunic and your filthy perfumes, I doubt whether you are even a Roman citizen, my mannequin. Fair words, mistress. Fair words, said Claudius, now entering with lepidus. This is my friend and sworn brother. He must be put under shelter of your tongue. Sweet one, it rains stones. Give me my slave, shrieked the varago, placing her mighty grasp on the breast of the Greek. Not if all your sister furies could help you, answered Glocus. Fear not, sweet Nidia, an Athenian never foresoaked distress. Hola, said Berbo, rising reluctantly. What turmoil is all this about a slave? Let go the young gentleman. Wife, let him go. For his sake the pert thing shall be spared this once. So saying, he drew, or rather dragged off, his ferocious helpmate. We thought when we entered, said Claudius, there was another man present. He is gone. For the priest of Isis had indeed thought at high time to vanish. Oh, a friend of mine, a brother cupman, a quiet dog who does not love these snarlings, said Berbo, carelessly. But go, child, you will tear the gentleman's tunic if you cling to him so tight. Go, you are pardoned. Oh, do not, do not forsake me, cried Nidia, clinging it closer to the Athenian. Moved by her forlorn situation, her appeal to him, her own innumerable and touching graces, the Greek seated himself on one of the rude chairs. He held her on his knees. He wiped the blood from her shoulders with his long hair. He kissed the tears from her cheeks. He whispered to her a thousand of those soothing words with which we calm the grief of a child. And so beautiful did he seem in his gentle and consoling task that even the fierce heart of stritanacy was touched. His presence seemed to shed light over that basin of seen haunt. Young, beautiful, glorious, he was the emblem of all that the earth made most happy, comforting one that the earth had abandoned. Well, who could have thought that our blind Nidia had been so honored? said the Virago, wiping her heated brow. Glockus looked up at Virgo. My good man, said he, this is your slave. She sings well. She is accustomed to the care of flowers. I wish to make a present of such a slave to a lady. Will you sell her to me? As he spoke, he felt the whole frame of the poor girl tremble with delight. She started up. She put her disheveled hair from her eyes. She looked around. As if, alas, she had the power to see. Sell our Nidia? No, indeed, said stritanacy, gruffly. Nidia sank back with a long sigh and again clasped the robe of her protector. Nonsense, said Claudius, imperiously. You must oblige me. What, man? What, oh dame, offend me? And your trade is ruined. Is not Berbo my kinsman Pons's client? Am I not the oracle of the amphitheater and his heroes? If I say the word, break up your wine jars. You sell no more. Glockus, the slave, is yours. Berbo scratched his huge head in evident embarrassment. The girl is worth her weight in gold to me. Name your price. I am rich, said Glockus. The ancient Italians were like the modern. There was nothing they would not sell, much less a poor, blind girl. I paid sixth sister's chef for her. She is worth 12 now, muttered stritanacy. You shall have 20. Come to the magistrates at once, and then to my house for your money. I would not have sold the dear girl for 100, but to oblige noble Claudius, said Berbo, whiningly. And you will speak to Pansa about the place of designator at the amphitheater, noble Claudius. It would just suit me. Thou shalt have it, said Claudius, adding in a whisper to Berbo. You on Greek can make your fortune. Money runs through him like a sieve. Mark today with white chalk, my priam. On Davis, said Glockus, in the formal question of sale and barter. Davitur answered Berbo. Then, then, I am to go with you. With you? Oh, happiness! murmured Nydia. Pretty one, yes. Thy hardest task henceforth shall be to sing thy Grecian hymns to the loveliest lady in Pompeii. The girl sprang up from his clasp. A change came over her whole face. Bright the instant before, she sighed heavily. And then, once more, taking his hand, she said, I thought I was to go to your house. And so thou shalt for the present. Come, we lose time. End of Book Two, Chapter Three. Book Two, Chapter Four of The Last Days of Pompeii. This is 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. Bulwer-Lytton, Book Two, Chapter Four. The rival of Glockus presses onward in the race. Ioni was one of those brilliant characters which, but once or twice, flashed across our career. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of earthly gifts, genius and beauty. No one ever possessed the superior intellectual qualities without knowing them. The alliteration of modesty and merit is pretty enough, but where merit is great, the veil of that modesty you admire never disguises its extent from its possessor. It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that it cannot reveal to the everyday world, that gives to genius that shy and reserved and troubled air, which puzzles and flatters you when you encounter it. Ioni then knew her genius, but with that charming versatility that belongs of right to women, she had the faculty so few of a kindred genius in the less malleable sex can claim, the faculty to bend and model her graceful intellect to all whom it encountered. The sparkling fountain through its waters alike upon the strand, the cavern and the flowers, it refreshed, it smiled, it dazzled everywhere. That pride, which is the necessary result of superiority, she wore easily. In her breast, it consented itself in independence. She pursued thus her own bright and solitary path. She asked no aged matron to direct and guide her. She walked alone by the torch of her own unflickering purity. She obeyed no tyrannical and absolute custom. She molded custom to her own will, but this so delicately and with so feminine a grace, so perfect an exemption from error that you could not say she outraged custom but commanded it. The wealth of her graces was inexhaustible. She beautified the commonest action. A word, a look from her, seemed magic. Love her, and you entered into a new world. You passed from this trite and commonplace earth. You were in a land in which your eyes saw everything through an enchanted medium. In her presence you felt as if listening to exquisite music. You were steeped in that sentiment which has so little of earth in it, and which music so well inspires. That intoxication which refines and exalts, which seizes, it is true, the senses, but gives them the character of the soul. She was peculiarly formed, then, to command and fascinate the less ordinary and the bolder natures of men. To love her was to unite two passions, that of love and of ambition. You aspired when you adored her. It was no wonder that she had completely chained and subdued the mysterious but burning soul of the Egyptian, a man in whom dwelt the fiercest passions. Her beauty and her soul alike enthralled him. Set apart himself from the common world, he loved that daringness of character which also made itself, among common things, aloof and alone. He did not, or he would not, see that that very isolation put her yet more from him than from the vulgar. Far as the poles, far as the night from day, his solitude was divided from hers. He was solitary from his dark and solemn vices. She from her beautiful fancies and her purity of virtue. If it was not strange that Ioni thus enthralled the Egyptian, far less strange was it that she had captured, as suddenly as irrevocably, the bright and sunny heart of the Athenian. The gladness of a temperament which seemed woven from the beams of light had led Glockus into pleasure. He obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations of his time, than the exhilarating voices of youth and health. He threw the brightness of his nature over every abyss and cavern through which he strayed. His imagination dazzled him, but his heart was never corrupted. Of far more penetration than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought to prey upon his riches in his youth, but he despised wealth save as a means of enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to them. He felt, it is true, the impulse of nobler thoughts and higher aims than in pleasure could be indulged, but the world was one vast prison, to which the sovereign of Rome was the imperial Galer, and the very virtues, which in the free days of Athens would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive and supine. For in that unnatural and bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden. Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the contest of flattery and craft. Averus had become the sole ambition. Men desired preterships and provinces only as the license to pillage, and the government was but an excuse of repine. It is in small states that glory is most active and pure. The more confined the limits of the circle, the more art of the patriotism. In small states, opinion is concentrated and strong. Every eye reads your actions. Your public motives are blended with your private ties. Every spot in your narrow sphere is crowded with forms familiar since your childhood. The applause of your citizens is like the caresses of your friends. But in large states, the city is but the court. The provinces, unknown to you, unfamiliar in customs, perhaps in language, have no claim on your patriotism. The ancestry of their inhabitants is not yours. In the court you desire favor instead of glory. At a distance from the court, public opinion is vanished from you, and self-interest has no counter-poise. Italy, Italy. While I write, your skies are over me, your seas flow beneath my feet, listen not to the blind policy which would unite all your crested cities, mourning for their republics, into one empire. False, pernicious delusion. Your only hope of regeneration is in division. Florence, Milan, Venice, Genoa may be free once more if each is free. But dream not of freedom for the whole while you enslave the parts. The heart must be the center of the system. The blood must circulate freely everywhere, and in vast communities you behold but a bloated and feeble giant whose brain is imbecile, whose limbs are dead, and who pays in disease and weakness the penalty of transcending the natural proportions of health and vigor. Thus, thrown back upon themselves, the more ardent qualities of glockus found no vent, save in that overflowing imagination which gave grace to pleasure and poetry to thought. Ease was less despicable than contention with parasites and slaves, and luxury could yet be refined though ambition could not be ennobled. But all that was best and brightest in his soul woke at once when he knew Ioni. Here was an empire worthy of demigods to attain. Here was a glory, which the reeking smoke of a foul society could not soil or dim. Love, in every time, in every state, can thus find space for its golden altars. And tell me if there ever, even in the age most favorable to glory, could be a triumph more exalted and elading than the conquest of one noble heart. And whether it was that this sentiment inspired him, his ideas glowed more brightly, his soul seemed more awake and more visible in Ioni's presence. If natural to love her, it was natural that she should return the passion. Young, brilliant, eloquent, enamored, and Athenian, he was to her as the incarnation of the poetry of her father's land. They were not like creatures of a world in which strife and sorrow are the elements. They were like the things to be seen only in the holiday of nature, so glorious and so fresh were their youth, their beauty, and their love. They seemed out of place in the harsh and everyday earth. They belonged of right to the Saturnian age, and the dreams of demigod and nymph. It was as if the poetry of life gathered and fed itself in them, and in their hearts were concentrated the last rays of the sun of Delos and of Greece. But if Ioni was independent in her choice of life, so was her modest pride proportionably vigilant and easily alarmed. The falsehood of the Egyptian was invented by a deep knowledge of her nature. The story of coarseness, of indelicacy, in Glocus, stung her to the quick. She felt it a reproach upon her character and her career, a punishment above all to her love. She felt, for the first time, how suddenly she had yielded to that love. She blushed with shame at a weakness, the extent of which she was startled to perceive. She imagined it was a weakness which had incurred the contempt of Glocus. She endured the bitterest curse of noble natures, humiliation. Yet her love, perhaps, was no less alarmed than her pride. If one moment she murmured reproaches upon Glocus, if one moment she renounced, she almost hated him. At the next she burst into passionate tears. Her heart yielded to its softness, and she said in the bitterest of anguish, He despises me. He does not love me. From the hour the Egyptian had left her, she had retired to her most secluded chamber. She had shout out her handmaids. She had denied herself to the crowds that beseeched her door. Glocus was excluded with the rest. He wondered, but he guessed not why. He never attributed to his irony, his queen, his goddess, that woman like Caprice, of which the love poets of Italy so unceasingly complained. He imagined her, in the majesty of her candor, above all the arts of torture. He was troubled, but his hopes were not dimmed, for he knew already that he was loved and beloved. What more could he desire as an amulet against fear? At deepest night, then, when the streets were hushed, and the high moon only beheld his devotions, he stole to that temple of his heart, her home, and wooed her after the beautiful fashion of his country. He covered her threshold with the richest garlands, in which every flower was a volume of sweet passion, and he charmed the long summer night with the sound of the Lydian lute, and verses, which the inspiration of the moment sufficed to weave. But the window above opened not. No smile made yet more holy the shining air of night. All was still and dark. He knew not if his verse was welcome and his suit was heard. Yet I any slept not, nor disdained to hear. Though soft strains ascended to her chamber, they soothed, they subdued her. While she listened, she believed nothing against her lover, but when they were stilled at last, and his step departed, the spell ceased. And, in the bitterness of her soul, she almost conceived in that delicate flattery a new affront. I said she was denied to all, but there was one exception. There was one person who would not be denied, assuming over her actions and her house something like the authority of a parent, Arbyses, for himself, claimed an exemption from all the ceremonies observed by others. He entered the threshold with the license of one who feels that he is privileged and at home. He made his way to her solitude and with that sort of quiet and unapologetic air which seemed to consider the right as being a thing of course. With all the independence of Ione's character, his heart had enabled him to obtain a secret and powerful control over her mind. She could not shake it off. Sometimes she desired to do so, but she never actively struggled against it. She was fascinated by his serpent eye. He arrested, he commanded her, by the magic of a mind long accustomed to awe and to subdue. Utterly unaware of his real character or his hidden love, she felt for him the reverence which genius feels for wisdom and virtue for sanctity. She regarded him as one of those mighty sages of old who attained to the mysteries of knowledge by an exemption from the passions of their kind. She scarcely considered him as a being, like herself, of the earth, but as an oracle at one's dark and sacred. She did not love him, but she feared. His presence was unwelcome to her. It dimmed her spirit even in its brightest mood. He seemed, with his chilling and lofty aspect, like some eminence which casts a shadow over the sun. But she never thought of forbidding his visits. She was passive under the influence which created in her breast. Not the repugnance, but something of the stillness of terror. Harba sees himself now resolved to exert all his arts to possess himself of that treasure he so burningly coveted. He was cheered and elated by his conquests over her brother. From the hour in which the apesities fell beneath the voluptuous sorcery of that feat which we have described, he felt his empire over the young priest triumphant and ensured. He knew that there is no victim so thoroughly subdued as a young and fervent man for the first time delivered to the thralldom of the senses. When apesities recovered, with the morning light, from the profound sleep which succeeded to the delirium of wonder and of pleasure, he was, it is true, ashamed, terrified, appalled. His vows of austerity and celibacy echoed in his ear. His thirst after holiness had it been quenched at so unhallowed a stream. But Harba sees knew well the means by which to confirm his conquest. From the arts of pleasure he led the young priest at once to those of his mysterious wisdom. He bared to his amazed eyes the initiatory secrets of the somber philosophy of the Nile, the secrets plucked from the stars, and the wild chemistry which, in those days, when reason herself was but the creature of imagination, might well pass for the lure of a diviner magic. He seemed to the young eyes of the priest as being above mortality, and endowed with supernatural gifts. That yearning an intense desire for the knowledge which is not of earth, which had burned from his boyhood in the heart of the priest, was dazzled, until it confused and mastered his clearer sense. He gave himself to the art which thus addressed at once the two strongest of human passions, that of pleasure and that of knowledge. He was loath to believe that one so wise could err, that one so lofty could stoop to deceive. Entangled in the dark web of metaphysical moralities, he caught at the excuse by which the Egyptian converted vice into a virtue. His pride was insensibly flattered that Arbyses had deigned to rank him with himself, to set him apart from the laws which bound the vulgar, to make him an august participator both in the mystic studies and the magic fascinations of the Egyptian solitude. The pure and stern lessons of that creed to which Alintas had sought to make him convert were swept away from his memory by the deluge of new passions. And the Egyptian, who was versed in the articles of that true faith and who soon learned from his pupil the effect which had been produced upon him by its believers, sought, not unskillfully, to undo that effect by a tone of reasoning half sarcastic and half earnest. This faith, said he, is but a borrowed plagiarism from one of the many allegories invented by our priests of old. Observe, he added, pointing to a hieroglyphical scroll. Observe in these ancient figures the origin of the Christian's trinity. Here are also three gods, the deity, the spirit, and the sun. Observe that the epithet of the sun is savior. Observe that the sign by which his human qualities are denoted is the cross. Note here, too, the mystic history of Osiris, how he was put on death, how he lay in the grave, and how, thus fulfilling a solemn atonement, he rose again from the dead. In these stories we are but designed to paint an allegory from the operations of nature and the evolutions of the eternal heavens. But the allegory, unknown, the types themselves have furnished to credulous nations the materials of many creeds. They have traveled to the vast plains of India. They have mixed themselves up in the visionary speculations of the Greek, becoming more and more gross and embodied as they emerge farther from the shadows of their antique origin. They have assumed a human and palpable form in this novel faith. And the believers of Galilee are but the unconscious repeaters of one of the superstitions of the Nile. This was the last argument which completely subdued the priest. It was necessary to him, as to all, to believe in something. And, undivided and, at last, unreluctant, he surrendered himself to that belief which Arbyses inculcated, and which all that was human in passion, all that was flattering in vanity, all that was alluring in pleasure, served to invite to, and contributed to confirm. This conquest, thus easily made, the Egyptian could now give himself wholly up to the pursuit of a far dearer and mightier object, and he hailed, in his success with the brother, an omen of his triumph over the sister. He had seen Ioni on the day following the revel which we have witnessed, and which was also the day after he had poisoned her mind against his rival. The next day, and the next, he saw her also, and each time he laid himself out with consummate art, partly to confirm her impression against Glocus, and principally to prepare her for the impressions he desired her to receive. The pride Ioni took care to conceal the anguish she endured, and the pride of woman has an hypocrisy which can deceive the most penetrating and shame the most astute. But Arbyses was no less cautious not to recur to a subject which he felt it was most politic to treat as of the lightest importance. He knew that by dwelling much upon the fault of a rival, you only give him dignity in the eyes of your mistress. The wisest plan is, neither loudly to hate nor bitterly to condemn, the wisest plan is to lower him by an indifference of tone as if you could not dream that he could be loved. Your safety is in concealing the wound to your own pride, and imperceptibly alarming that of the empire whose voice is fate. Such, in all times, will be the policy of one who knows the science of the sex. It was now the Egyptians. He recurred no more than to the presumption of Glocus. He mentioned his name, but not more often than that of Claudius or of Lepidus. He affected to class them together as things of a low and ephemeral species, as things wanting nothing of the butterfly save its innocence and its grace. Sometimes he slightly alluded to some invented debauch, in which he declared them companions. Sometimes he adverted to them as the antipodes of those lofty and spiritual natures, to whose order that of Ioni belonged. Blinded alike by the pride of Ioni, and perhaps by his own, he dreamed not that she already loved, but he dreaded lest she might have formed for Glocus the first fluttering prepossessions that lead to love. And secretly he ground his teeth in rage and jealousy when he reflected on the youth, the fascinations and the buoyancy of that formidable rival whom he pretended to undervalue. It was on the fourth day from the date of the close of the previous book that Arbyses and Ioni sat together. You wear your veil at home, said the Egyptian. That is not fair to those whom you honor with your friendship. But to Arbyses, answered Ioni, who, indeed, had cast the veil over her features to conceal eyes red with weeping. To Arbyses, who looks only to the mind, what matters it that the face is concealed? I do look only to the mind, replied the Egyptian. Show me then your face, for there I shall see it. You grow gallant in the air of Pompeii, said Ioni, with a forced tone of gaiety. Do you think, fair Ioni, that it is only at Pompeii that I have learned to value you? The Egyptians voice trembled. He paused for a moment, and then resumed. There is a love, beautiful Greek, which is not the love only of the thoughtless and the young. There is a love which sees not with the eyes, which hears not with the ears, but in which soul is enamored of soul. The countrymen of thy ancestors, the cave nurse Plato, dreamed of such a love. His followers have sought to imitate it, but it is a love that is not for the herd to echo. It is a love that only high and noble natures can conceive. It has nothing in common with the sympathies and ties of course affection. Wrinkles do not revolt it. Homeliness of feature does not deter. It asks youth, it is true, but it asks it only in the freshness of the emotions. It asks beauty, it is true, but it is the beauty of the thought and of the spirit. Such is the love, O Ioni, that is a worthy offering to thee from the cold and the austere. Astere and cold thou demist me. Such is the love that I ventured to lay upon thy shrine. Thou canst receive it without a blush. And its name is friendship, replied Ioni. Her answer was innocent, yet it sounded like the reproof of one conscious of the design of the speaker. Friendship, said Arbyses vehemently. No, that is a word too often profane to apply to a sentiment so sacred. Friendship, it is a tie that binds fools and profligates. Friendship, it is the bond that unites the frivolous hearts of a Glocus and a Claudius. Friendship, no, that is an affection of earth, of vulgar habits and sordid sympathies. The feeling of which I speak is borrowed from the stars. It partakes of that mystic and ineffable yearning which we feel when we gaze on them. It burns, yet it purifies. It is the lamp of Naptha in the alabaster vase. Glowing with the fragrant odorous, but shining only through the purest vessels. No, it is not love, and it is not friendship, that Arbyses feels for Ioni. Give it no name. Earth has no name for it. It is not of earth. Why debase it with earthly epithets and earthly associations? Never before had Arbyses ventured so far, yet he felt his grind step by step. He knew that he uttered a language which, if at this day of affected Platonisms, it could speak unequivocably to the ears of beauty, was at the same time strange and unfamiliar, to which no precise idea could be attached, from which he could imperceptibly advance or recede as occasion suited, as hope encouraged or fear deterred. Ioni trembled, though she knew not why. Her veil hid her features, and masked an expression which, if seen by the Egyptian, would have at once damped and enraged him. In fact, he never was more displeasing to her. The harmonious modulation of the most suasive voice that ever disguised unhallowed thought fell discordantly on her ear. Her whole soul was still filled with the image of Glacus, and the accent of tenderness from another only revolted and dismayed. Yet she did not conceive that any passion more ardent than that of Platonism, which Arbyses expressed lurked beneath his words. She thought that he, in truth, spoke only of the affection and sympathy of the soul. But was it not precisely that affection and that sympathy which had made a part of those emotions she felt for Glacus? And could any other footstep than his approach the haunted aditem of her heart? Anxious at once to change the conversation, she replied, therefore, with a cold and indifferent voice, whomsoever Arbyses honors with the sentiment of esteem, it is natural that his elevated wisdom should color that sentiment with its own use. It is natural that his friendship should be purer than that of others, whose pursuits and errors he does not deign to share. But tell me, Arbyses, has thou seen my brother of late? He has not visited me for several days, and when I last saw him his manner was disturbed and alarmed me much. I fear lest he was too precipitated in the severe choice that he adopted, and that he repents an irrevocable step. Be cheered, Ioni, replied the Egyptian, it is true that, some little time since he was troubled and sad of spirit, those doubts beset him which were likely to haunt one of that fervent temperament, whichever ebbs and flows, and vibrates between excitement and exhaustion. But he, Ioni, he came to me his anxieties and his distress. He sought one who pitied me and loved him. I have calmed his mind, I have removed his doubts. I have taken him from the threshold of wisdom into its temple, and before the majesty of the goddess his soul is hushed and soothed. Fear not, he will repent no more. They who trust themselves to Arbyses never repent but for a moment. You rejoice me, answered Ioni. My dear brother, in his contentment I am happy. The conversation then turned upon lighter subjects. The Egyptian exerted himself to please. He condescended even to entertain. The vast variety of his knowledge enabled him to adorn and light up every subject on which he touched, and Ioni, forgetting the displeasing effect of his former words, was carried away, despite her sadness, by the magic of his intellect. Her manner became unrestrained and her language fluent, and Arbyses, who had waited his opportunity, now hastened to seize it. You have never seen, said he, the interior of my home. It may amuse you to do so. It contains some rooms that may explain to you what you have often asked me to describe, the fashion of an Egyptian house. Not indeed that you will perceive in the poor and minute proportions of Roman architecture the massive strength, the vast space, the gigantic magnificence, or even the domestic construction of the palaces of Thebes and Memphis, but something there is, here and there, that may serve to express to you some notion of that antique civilization which has humanized the world. Devote, then, to the austere friend of your youth, one of these bright summer evenings, and let me boast that my gloomy mansion has been honored with the presence of the admired Ioni. Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger that awaited her, Ioni readily ascended to the proposal. The next evening was fixed for the visit, and the Egyptian, with a serene countenance, and a heart beating with fierce and unholy joy departed. Scares had he gone when another visitor claimed admission, but now we return to Glockus. End of Book 2, Chapter 4. Book 2, Chapter 5 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. Bulwer-Lytton. Book 2, Chapter 5. The Poor Tortoise, New Changes for Nydia. The morning sun shone over the small and odorous garden enclosed within the peristyle of the house of the Athenian. He lay reclined, sad and listlessly, on the smooth grass which intersected the viridarium, and a slight canopy stretched above, broke the fierce rays of the summer sun. When that fairy mansion was first disinterred from the earth, they found in the garden the shell of a tortoise that had been its inmate. That animal, so strange a link in the creation, to which nature seems to have denied all the pleasure of life, save life's passive and dreamlike perception, had been the guest of the place for years before Glocus purchased it, for years, indeed which went beyond the memory of man, and to which tradition assigned an almost incredible date. The house had been built and rebuilt, its possessors had changed and fluctuated, generations had flourished and decayed, and still the tortoise dragged on its slow and unsympathizing existence. In the earthquake, which sixteen years before had overthrown many of the public buildings of the city, and scared away the amazed inhabitants, the house now inhabited by Glocus had been terribly shattered. The possessors deserted it for many days. On their return they cleared away the ruins which encumbered the viridarium, and found still the tortoise unharmed and unconscious of the surrounding destruction. It seemed to bear a charmed life in its languid blood and imperceptible motions, yet it was not so inactive as it seemed. It held a regular and monotonous course. Inge by inch it traversed the little orbit of its domain, taking months to accomplish the whole gyration. It was a restless voyager, that tortoise, patiently, and with pain did it perform itself appointed journeys, evincing no interest in the things around it. A philosopher concentrated in itself. There was something grand in its solitary selfishness. The sun in which it basked, the waters poured daily over it, the air which it insensibly inhaled, were its sole and unfailing luxuries. The mild changes of the season in that lovely climb affected it not. It covered itself with its shell, as the saint in his piety, as the sage in his wisdom, as the lover in his hope. It was impervious to the shocks and mutations of time. It was an emblem of time itself, slow, regular, perpetual, unwitting of the passions that fret themselves around, of the wear and tear of mortality. The poor tortoise, nothing less than the bursting of volcanoes, the convulsions of the riven world, could have quenched its sluggish spark. The inex honorable death, that spared not pomp or beauty, passed unheedingly by a thing to which death could bring so insignificant a change. For this animal, the mercurial and vivid Greek felt all the wonder and affection of contrast. He could spend hours in surveying its creeping progress, in moralizing over its mechanism, he despised it in joy, he envied it in sorrow. Regarding it now as he lay along the sword, its dull mass moving while it seemed motionless, the Athenian murmur to himself. The eagle dropped a stone from his talons, thinking to break thy shell. The stone crushed the head of a poet. This is the allegory of fate. Dull thing. Thou hadst a father and a mother. Perhaps, ages ago, thou thyself hadst a mate. Did thy parents love, or didst thou? Did thy slow blood circulate more gladly when thou didst creep to the side of thy wedded one? Weren't thou capable of affection? Could it distress thee if she were away from thy side? Could itst thou feel when she was present? What would I not give to know the history of thy male breast, to gaze upon the mechanism of thy faint desires, to mark what hair-breath difference separates thy sorrow from thy joy? Yet, me thinks, thou wouldst know if I any were present. Thou wouldst feel her coming like a happier air, like a glatter sun. I envy thee now, for thou knowest not that she is absent, and I would I could be like thee between the intervals of seeing her. What doubt, what presentiment haunts me, why will she not admit me? Days have passed since I heard her voice. For the first time, life grows flat to me. I am as one who is left alone at a banquet. The light's dead, and the flowers faded. Ah, Ioni, couldest thou dream how I adore thee? From these enamored reveries, Glockus was interrupted by the entrance of Nydia. She came with her light, though cautious step, along the marble tablinum. She passed the portico, and paused at the flowers which bordered the garden. She had her water vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the thirsting plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She bent to inhale their odor. She touched them timidly and caressingly. She felt, along their stems, if any withered leaf or creeping insect, marred their beauty. And as she hovered from flower to flower, with her earnest and youthful countenance and graceful motions, you could not have imagined a fitter handmaid for the goddess of the garden. Nydia, my child, said Glockus. At the sound of his voice she paused at once, listening, blushing, breathless. With her lips parted, her face upturned to catch the direction of the sound. She laid down the vase. She hastened to him, and wonderful it was to see how unerringly she threaded her dark way through the flowers, and came by the shortest path to the side of her new lord. Nydia, said Glockus, tenderly stroking back her long and beautiful hair. It is now three days since thou hast been under the protection of my household gods. Have they smelt on thee? Art thou happy? Ah, so happy, sighed the slave. And now, continued Glockus, that thou hast recovered somewhat from the hateful recollections of thy former state, and now that they have fitted thee, touching her broidered tunic, with garments more meat for thy delicate shape, and now, sweet child, that thou has accustomed thyself to a happiness which may the gods grant thee ever, I am about to pray at thy hands a boon. Oh, what can I do for thee? said Nydia, clasping her hands. Listen, said Glockus, and young as thou art, thou shalt be my confidant. Has thou ever heard the name of Ioni? The blind girl gasped for breath, and turned pale as one of the statues which shone upon them from the peristyle. She answered with an effort, and after a moment's pause. Yes, I have heard that she is of Neopolis and beautiful. Beautiful, her beauty is a thing to dazzle the day. Neopolis? Nay, she is Greek by origin. Greece only could furnish forth such shapes. Nydia, I love her. I thought so, replied Nydia, calmly. I love, and thou shalt tell her so. I am about to send thee to her. Happy Nydia, thou wilt be in her chamber. Thou wilt drink the music of her voice. Thou wilt bask in the sunny air of her presence. What? What? Will thou send me from thee? Thou wilt go to Ioni, answered Glockus, in a tone that said, What more canst thou desire? Nydia burst into tears. Glockus, raising himself, drew her towards him with the soothing caresses of a brother. My child, my Nydia, thou weepest in ignorance of the happiness I bestow on thee. She is gentle and kind and soft as the breeze of spring. She will be a sister to thy youth. She will appreciate thy winning talents. She will love thy simple graces as none other could, for they are like her own. Weepest thou still, fawn fool? I will not force thee, sweet. Will thou not do for me this kindness? Well, if I can serve thee, command. See, I weep no longer. I am calm. That is my own Nydia, continued Glockus, kissing her hand. Go, then, to her. If thou art disappointed in her kindness, if I have deceived thee, return when thou wilt. I do not give thee to another, but I lend. My home ever be thy refuge, sweet one? Ah, what it could show to her all the friendless and distressed. But if my heart whispers truly, I shall claim thee again soon, my child. My home and Ionies will become the same, and thou shall dwell with both. A shiver passed through the slight frame of the blind girl, but she wept no more. She was resigned. Go, then, my Nydia, to Ionies' house. They shall show thee the way. Take her the fairest flowers thou canst pluck. The vase which contains them I will give thee. Thou must excuse its unworthiness. Thou shalt take, too, with thee the loot that I gave thee yesterday, and from which thou knowest so well to awaken the charming spirit. Thou shalt give her, also, this letter, in which, after a hundred efforts, I have embodied something of my thoughts. Let thy ear catch every accent, every modulation of her voice, and tell me, when we meet again, if its music should flatter me or discourage. It is now, Nydia, some days since I have been admitted to Ionies. There is something mysterious in this exclusion. I am distracted with doubts and fears. Learn, for thou art quick, and thy care for me will sharpen tenfold thy acuteness. Learn the cause of this unkindness. Speak of me as often as thou canst, let my name come ever to thy lips. Insinuate how I love rather than proclaim it. Watch if she sighs wilt thou speakest, if she answers thee, or if she reproves, in what accents she reproves. Be my friend, plead for me, and oh, how vastly wilt thou overpay the little I have done for thee. Thou comprehendest, Nydia? Thou art yet a child, have I said more than thou canst understand? No. And thou wilt serve me? Yes. Come to me when thou hast gathered the flowers, and I will give thee the vase I speak of. Seek me in the chamber of Leda. Pretty one, thou dost not grieve now? Glockus, I am a slave. What business have I with grief or joy? Sayest thou so? No, Nydia, be free. I give thee freedom, enjoy it as thou wilt, and pardon me that I reckoned on thy desire to serve me. You are offended. Oh, I would not, for that which no freedom can give, offend you. Glockus, my guardian, my savior, my protector, forgive the poor blind girl. She does not grieve even in leaving thee if she can contribute to thy happiness. May the gods bless this grateful heart, said Glockus, greatly moved, and unconscious of the fires he excited, he repeatedly kissed her forehead. Thou forgive us me, said she, and thou wilt talk no more of freedom? My happiness is to be thy slave. Thou hast promised thou wilt not give me to another? I have promised, and now, then, I will gather the flowers. Silently, Nydia took from the hand of Glockus the costly and jeweled vase, in which the flowers vied with each other in hue and fragrance. Tearlessly, she received his parting admonition. She paused for a moment when his voice ceased. She did not trust herself to reply. She sought his hand. She raised it to her lips, dropped her veil over her face, and passed at once from his presence. She paused again as she reached the threshold. She stretched her hands towards it and murmured. Three happy days, days of unspeakable delight, have I known since I passed thee. Blessed threshold, may peace dwell ever with thee when I am gone. And now my heart tears itself from thee, and the only sound it utters bids me die. The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton Book 2, Chapter 6 The Happy Beauty and the Blind Slave A slave entered the chamber of Ioni, a messenger from Glockus desired to be admitted. Ioni hesitated an instant. She is blind. That messenger said the slave. She will do her commission to none but thee. Bass is that heart which does not respect affliction. The moment she heard the messenger was blind, Ioni felt the impossibility of returning a chilling reply. Glockus had chosen a herald that was indeed sacred, a herald that could not be denied. What can he want with me? What message can he send? And the heart of Ioni beat quick. The curtain across the door was withdrawn. A soft and echo-less step fell upon the marble, and Nydia, led by one of the attendants, entered with her precious gift. She stood still a moment, as if listening for some sound that might direct her. Will the noble Ioni, said she, in a soft and low voice, dame to speak that I may know wither to steer these benighted steps, and that I may lay my offerings at her feet? Fair chow, said Ioni, touched ensueingly, give not by self the pain to cross these slippery floors. My attendant will bring to me that which thou has to present, and she motioned to the handmaid to take the vase. I may give these flowers to none but thee, answered Nydia, and, guided by her ear, she walked slowly to the place where Ioni sat, and kneeling when she came before her, proffered the vase. Ioni took it from her hand, and placed it on the table at her side. She then raised her gently, and would have seated her on the couch, but the girl modestly resisted. I have not yet discharged my office, said she, and she drew the letter of Glockus from her vest. This will, perhaps, explain why he who sent me chose so unworthy a messenger to Ioni. The Neapolin took the letter with a hand, the trembling of which Nydia at once felt inside to feel. With folded arms and donkast looks, she stood before the proud and stately form of Ioni, no less proud, perhaps, in her attitude of submission. Ioni waved her hand, and the attendance withdrew. She gazed again upon the form of the young slave in surprise and beautiful compassion. Then, retiring a little from her, she opened and read the following letter. Glockus to Ioni sends more than he dares to utter. Is Ioni ill? Thy slaves tell me no, and that assurance comforts me. Has Glockus offended Ioni? Ah, that question I may not ask from them. For five days I have been banished from thy presence. Has the sun shown? I know it not. Has the sky smiled? It has no smile for me. My sun and my sky are Ioni. Do I offend thee? Am I too bold? Do I say that on the tablet which my tongue has hesitated to breathe? Alas, it is in thine absence that I feel most the spells by which thou hast subdued me. An absence that deprives me of joy brings me courage. Thou wilt not see me. Thou hast banished also the common flatterers that flock around thee. Canst thou confound me with them? It is not possible. Thou knowest too well that I am not of them, that their clay is not mine. For even were I of the humblest mold, the fragrance of the rose has penetrated me, and the spirit of thy nature hath passed within me, to embalm, to sanctify, to inspire. Have they slandered me to thee, Ioni? Thou wilt not believe them. Did the Delphic Oracle itself tell me thou work unworthy? I would not believe it. And am I less incredulous than thou? I think of the last time we met, of the song which I sang to thee, of the look that thou gave us me in return. Disguise it as thou wilt, Ioni. There is something kindred between us, and our eyes acknowledged it, though our lips were silent. Dane to see me, to listen to me. And after that exclude me, if thou wilt. I meant not so soon to say I loved. But those words rushed to my heart, they will have way. Except, then, my homage and my vows. We met first at the Shrine of Palace. Shall we not meet before a softer and more ancient altar? Beautiful, adored Ioni. If my hot youth and my Athenian blood have misguided and allured me, they have but taught my wanderings to appreciate the rest, the haven they have attained. I hang up my dripping robes on the sea god's shrine. I have escaped shipwreck. I have found thee. Ioni, dain to see me. Thou art gentle to strangers. Wilt thou be less merciful to those of thine own land? I await thy reply. Accept the flowers which I send. Their sweet breath has a language more eloquent than words. They take from the sun the odorous they return. They are the emblem of the love that receives and repays tenfold, the emblem of the heart that has drunk thy rays, and owes to thee the germ of the treasures that it proffers to thy smile. I send these by one whom thou wilt receive for her own sake, if not for mine. She, like us, is a stranger. Her father's ashes lie under brighter skies, but less happy than we, she is blind and a slave. Poor Nydia, I seek as much as possible to repair to her the cruelties of nature and of fate in asking permission to place her with thee. She is gentle, quick, and docile. She is skilled in music and the song, and she is a very chorus to the flowers. She thinks, Ioni, that thou wilt love her. If thou dost not, send her back to me. One word more. Let me be bold, Ioni. Why thinkest thou so highly of young dark Egyptian? He hath not about him the air of honest men. We Greeks learn mankind from our cradle. We are not the less profound in that we effect no sombre mane. Our lips smile, but our eyes are grave. They observe, they note, they study. Arbises is not one to be credulously trusted. Can it be that he hath wronged me to thee? I think it, for I left him with thee. Thou sawest how my presence stung him. Since then thou hast not admitted me. Believe nothing that he can say to my disfavor. If thou dost, tell me so at once. For this, Ioni owes to Glacus. Farewell, this letter touches thy hand. These characters meet thine eyes. Shall they be more blessed than he who is their author? Once more, farewell. It seemed to Ioni, as she read this letter, as if a mist had fallen from her eyes. What had been the supposed defense of Glacus, that he had not really loved? And now, plainly, and in no dubious terms, he confessed that love. From that moment his power was fully restored. At every tender word in that letter, so full of romantic and trustful passion, her heart smote her. And had she doubted his faith, and had she believed another, and had she not, at least, allowed to him the culprit's right to know his crime, to plead in his defense, the tears rolled down her cheeks. She kissed the letter, she placed it in her bosom, and, turning to Nydia, who stood in the same place and in the same posture, Wilt thou sit, my child, said she, while I write an answer to this letter? You will answer it, then? said Nydia, coldly. Well, the slave that accompanied me will take back your answer. For you, said Ioni, stay with me, trust me, your service shall be light. Nydia bowed her head. What is your name, fair girl? They call me Nydia, your country? The land of Olympus, Thessaly? Thou shalt be to me a friend, said Ioni, caressingly, as thou art already half a countrywoman. Meanwhile, I beseech thee, stand not on these cold and glassy marbles. There, now that thou art seated, I can leave thee for an instant. Ioni, to Glockus, greeting. Come to me, Glockus, wrote Ioni. Come to me, tomorrow. I may have been unjust to thee, but I will tell thee, at least, the fault that that has been imputed to thy charge. Fear not, henceforth, the Egyptian. Fear none, thou sayest thou hast expressed too much. Alas, in these hasty words, I have already done so. Farewell. Farewell. As Ioni reappeared with the letter, which she did not dare to read after she had written, ah, common rashness, common timidity of love. Nydia started from her seat. You have written, Glockus? I have. And will he thank the messenger who gives him by letter? Ioni forgot that her companion was blind. She blushed from the brow to the neck and remained silent. I mean this, added Nydia, in a calmer tone. The lightest word of coldness from thee will sadden him. The lightest kindness will rejoice. If it be the first, let the slave take back thine answer. If it be the last, let me. I will return this evening. And why, Nydia, ask Ioni, evasively, wouldest thou be the bearer of my letter? It is so, then, said Nydia. Ah, how could it be otherwise? Who could be unkind to Glockus? My child, said Ioni, a little more reservedly than before. Thou speakest warmly. Glockus, then, is amable in thine eyes. Noble Ioni, Glockus has been that to me, which neither fortune nor the gods have been, a friend. The sadness mingled with dignity, with which Nydia uttered these simple words, affected the beautiful Ioni. She bent down and kissed her. Thou art grateful, and deservedly so. Why should I blush to say that Glockus is worthy of thy gratitude? Go, my Nydia, take to him thyself this letter, but return again. If I am from home when thou returnest, as this evening, perhaps, I shall be, thy chamber shall be prepared next my own. Nydia, I have no sister. What thou be one to me? The Thysalian kissed the hand of Ioni, and then said, with some embarrassment, One favor, fair Ioni, may I dare ask it? Thou canst not ask that which I will not grant, replied the Neapolitan. They tell me, said Nydia, that thou art beautiful beyond the loveliness of earth. Alas, I cannot see that which gladdens the world. Wilt thou suffer me, then, to pass my hand over thy face? That is my sole criterion of beauty, and I usually guess a right. She did not wait for the answer of Ioni, but, as she spoke, gently and slowly passed her hand over the bending and half averted features of the Greek. Features which but one image in the world can yet depict and recall. That image is the mutilated, but all wondrous, statue in her native city. Her own Neopolis. That perian face, before which all the beauty of the Florentine Venus is poor and earthly. That aspect so full of harmony, of youth, of genius, of the soul, which modern critics have supposed the representation of Psyche. Her touch lingered over the braided hair and polished brow, over the downy and damask cheek, over the dimpled lip, the swan-like and whitish neck. I know now that thou art beautiful, she said, and I can picture thee to my darkness henceforth and forever. When Nydia left her, Ioni sank into a deep but delicious reverie. Glockus then loved her. He owned it. Yes, he loved her. She drew forth again that dear confession. She paused over every word. She kissed every line. She did not ask why he had been maligned. She only felt assured that he had been so. She wondered how she had ever believed a syllable against him. She wondered how the Egyptian had been unable to exercise a power against Glockus. She felt a choke creep over her as she again turned to his warning against Arbyses, and her secret fear of that gloomy being darkened into awe. She was awakened from these thoughts by her maidens, who came to announce to her that the hour appointed to visit Arbyses had arrived. She started. She had forgotten the promise. Her first impression was to renounce it. Her second was to laugh at her own fears of her eldest surviving friend. She hastened to add the usual ornaments to her dress, and doubtful whether she should yet question the Egyptian more closely with respect to his accusation of Glockus, or whether she should wait till, without citing the authority, she should insinuate to Glockus the accusation itself, she took her way to the gloomy mansion of Arbyses. End of Book 2 Chapter 6 Book 2 Chapter 7 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. Bulwer-Lytton Book 2 Chapter 7 Ioni and Trapped The Mouse Tries to Gnaw the Net Dearest Nydia, exclaimed Glockus, as he read the letter of Ioni, whitest road messenger that ever passed between heaven and earth. How? How shall I thank thee? I am rewarded, said the poor Thessalian. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! How shall I wow the hours till then? The enamored Greek would not let Nydia escape him, though she sought several times to leave the chamber. He made her recite to him over and over again every syllable of the brief conversation that had taken place between her and Ioni. A thousand times, forgetting her misfortune, he questioned her of the looks, of the countenance of his beloved, and then, quickly, again excusing his fault, he bade her recommence the whole recital which he had thus interrupted. The hours thus painful to Nydia passed rapidly and delightfully to him, and the twilight had already darkened ere he once more dismissed her to Ioni with a fresh letter and with new flowers. Scarcely had she gone, then Claudius and several of his gay companions broke in upon him. They rallied him on his seclusion during the whole day, and absence from his customary haunts. They invited him to accompany them to the various resorts in that lively city, which night and day proffered diversity to pleasure. Then, as now, in the south, for no land, perhaps, losing more of the greatness, has retained more of custom, it was the delight of the Italians to assemble at the evening. And, under the porticoes of temples or the shade of the groves that interspersed the streets, listening to music or the recitals of some inventive tale-teller, they hailed the rising moon with libations of wine and the melodies of song. Claudius was too happy to be unsociate. He longed to cast off the exuberance of joy that oppressed him. He willingly accepted the proposal of his comrades, and, laughingly, they sallied out together down the populous and glittering streets. In the meantime, Nydia once more gained the house of Ioni, who had longed left it. She inquired indifferently whether Ioni had gone. The answer arrested and appalled her. To the house of Arbisces, of the Egyptian, impossible. It is true, my little one, said the slave, who had replied to her question. She has known the Egyptian long. Long, ye gods, yet Claudius loves her, murmured Nydia to herself. And has, asked she aloud, has she often visited him before? Never till now, answered the slave, if all the rumored scandal of Pompeii be true, it would be better, perhaps, if she had not ventured there at present. But she, poor Mistress Mine, hears nothing of that which reaches us. The talk of the vestibulum reaches not to the peristyle. Never till now, repeated Nydia, aren't thou sure? Sure, pretty one, but what is that to thee or to us? Nydia hesitated a moment, and then, putting down the flowers with which she had been charged, she called to the slave who had accompanied her, and left the house without saying another word. Not till she had got halfway back to the house of Glaucus did she break silence, and even then she only murmured Inly. She does not dream, she cannot, of the dangers into which she has plunged. Fool that I am. Shall I save her? Yes, for I love Glaucus better than myself. When she arrived at the house of the Athenian, she learnt that he had gone out with a party of his friends, and none knew with her. He probably would not be home before midnight. The Thessalian groaned. She sank upon a seat in the hall, and covered her face with her hands, as if to collect her thoughts. There was no time to be lost, thought she, starting up. She turned to the slave who had accompanied her. Noah's Thou, said she, if Iani has any relative, any intimate friend at Pompeii. Why? By Jupiter, answered the slave, thou art silly enough to ask the question. Everyone in Pompeii knows that Iani has a brother who, young and rich, has been under the rose I speak, so foolish as to become a priest of Isis. A priest of Isis? Oh, gods, his name? Apesides. I know it all, Mother Nidia. Brother and sister, then, are to be both victims. Apesides. Yes, that was the name I heard in. Ha! He well, then, knows the peril that surrounds his sister. I will go to him. She sprang up at the thought, and taking the staff which always guided her steps, she hastened to the neighboring shrine of Isis, till she had been under the guardianship of the kindly Greek, that staff had sufficed to conduct the poor blind girl from corner to corner of Pompeii. Every street, every turning in the more frequented parts, was familiar to her, and as the inhabitants entertained a tender and half superstitious veneration for those subject to her infirmity, the passengers had always given way to her timid steps. Poor girl, she little dreamed that she should, ere many days had passed, find her blindness her protection, and a guide far safer than the keenest eyes. But since she had been under the roof of Glockus, he had ordered a slave to accompany her always, and the poor devil, thus appointed, who was somewhat of the fattest, and who, after having twice performed the journey to Ionys house, now saw himself condemned to a third excursion, wither the gods only knew, hastened after her, deploring his fate, and solemnly assuring castor and pollux that he believed the blind girl had the telaria of Mercury, as well as the infirmity of Cupid. Nydia, however, required but little of his assistance to find her way to the popular temple of Isis. The space before it was now deserted, and she won without obstacle to the sacred rail. There is no one here, said the fat slave. What does thou want, or whom knowest thou not that the priests do not live in the temple? Call out, said she, impatiently. Night and day there was always one flamen, at least, watching in the shrine of Isis. The slave called out, no one appeared. Seeest thou no one? No one. Thou mistakenest, I hear a sigh, look again. The slave, wandering and grumbling, cast round his heavy eyes, and before one of the altars, whose remains still crowd the narrow space, he beheld a form bending as in meditation. I see a figure, said he, and by the white garments it is a priest. O flamen of Isis, cried Nydia, servant of the most ancient, hear me? Who calls, said a low and melancholy voice. One who has no common tidings to impart to a member of your body, I come to declare and not to ask oracles. With whom wouldest thou confer? This is no hour for thy conference. Depart, disturb me not. The night is sacred to the gods, the day to men. Me thinks I know thy voice. Thou art he whom I seek. Yet I have heard thee speak but once before. Art thou not the priest, appeasities? I am that man, replied the priest, emerging from the altar and approaching the rail. Thou art the gods be praised. Waving her hand to the slave, she bade him withdraw to a distance. And he, who naturally imagined some superstition connected, perhaps with the safety of Ayeni, could alone lead her to the temple, obeyed and seated himself on the ground at a little distance. Hush, said she, speaking quick and low, thou art indeed appeasities. If thou knowest me, canst thou not recall my features? I am blind, answered Nydia. My eyes are in my ear, and that recognizes thee. Yet swear that thou art he. By the gods I swear it, by my right hand and by the moon. Hush, speak low, bend near, give me thy hand. Knowest thou arbises? Hast thou laid flowers at the feet of the dead? Ah, thy hand is cold. Hark yet, hast thou taken the awful vow? Who art thou? Once comeest thou, Palmaiden, said appeasities, fearfully? I know thee not. Thine is not the breast on which this head hath lain. I have never seen thee before. But thou hast heard my voice. No matter, those recollections it should shame us both to recall. Listen, thou hast a sister. Speak, speak, what of her? Thou knowest the banquets of the dead, stranger? It pleases thee, perhaps, to share them? Would it please thee to have thy sister a partaker? Would it please thee that arbises was her host? O gods, he dare not. Girl, if thou mockest me, tremble, I will tear thee limb from limb. I speak the truth, and while I speak, Ioni is in the halls of arbises, for the first time his guest. Thou knowest if there be peril in that first time? Farewell, I have fulfilled my charge. Stay, stay, cried the priest, passing his one hand over his brow. If this be true, what, what can be done to save her? They may not admit me. I know not all the mazes of that intricate mansion. O nemesis, justly am I punished. I will dismiss you, enslaved, be thou my guide and comrade. I will lead thee to the private door of the house. I will whisper to thee the word which admits. Take some weapon. It may be needful. Wait an instant, said Apesides, retiring into one of the cells that flanked the temple, and reappearing in a few moments wrapped in a large cloak, which was then much worn by all classes in which concealed his sacred dress. Now, he said, grinding his teeth, if arbises have dared to, but he dare not. He dare not. Why should I suspect him? Is he so base a villain? I will not think it. Yet, softest, dark bewildererer that he is? Oh, gods protect. Hush, are there gods? Yes, there was one goddess, at least, whose voice I can command, and that is vengeance. Muddering these disconnected thoughts, Apesides, followed by his silent and sightless companion, hastened through the most solitary paths to the house of the Egyptian. The slave, abruptly dismissed by Nydia, shrugged his shoulders, muttered in adoration, and, nothing loath, rolled off to his cubiculum. End of Book 2, Chapter 7. Book 2, Chapter 8 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. Recording by Rachel Trishka. Last days of Pompeii by Edward G. Bo Willerton. Book 2, Chapter 8 of the solitude and soliloquy of the Egyptian, his character analysed. We must go back a few hours in the progress of our story. At the first gray dawn of the day, which Glockus had already marked with white, the Egyptian was seated, sleepless and alone, on the summit of the lofty and pyramideal tower which flanked his house. A tall parapet around it served as a wall, and conspired, with the height of the edifice and the gloomy trees that girded the mansion, to defy the prying eyes of curiosity or observation. A table, on which lay a scroll, filled with mystic figures, was before him. On high, the stars wept dim and faint, and the shades of night melted from the sterile mountain tops. Only above Vesuvius they rested a deep and messy cloud, for which several days past had gathered dark and more solid over its summit. The struggle of night and day was more visible over the broad ocean, which stretched calm, like a gigantic lake, bounded by the circling shores that, covered with vines and foliage, and gleaming here and there with the white walls of sleeping cities, sloped to the scarce rippling waves. It was the hour above all others most sacred to the daring science of the Egyptian, the science which would read out changeful destinies in the stars. He had filled his scroll, he had noted the moment in the sign, and, cleaning upon his hand, he had surrendered himself to the thought which his calculation excited. Again did the stars forewarn me, some danger then assuredly wrote to me, said he slowly. Some danger, violent and sudden in its nature, the stars wear for me the same mocking menace which, of our chronicles, do not err. There were once for Paris, for him, doomed to strive for all things, to enjoy none, all attacking, nothing gaining, battles without fruit, laurels without triumph, fame without success, at last made craven by his own superstitions, and slain like a dog by a tile from the hand of an old woman. Verily the stars fatter when they give me a type in this fall of war, when they promise to the ardour of my wisdom the same results as to the madness of his ambition. Perpetual exercise, no certain goal. This is the first task, the mountain of the stone, the stone, including the edge, reminding that I am threatened with some more to the same death as the upright. Let me look again. Beware, say the shining prophets, how thou pastest under ancient roofs, or besieged walls, or overhanging cliffs, the stone hurled from above is charged by the curses of destiny against thee. And, at no distant date from this comes the peril, but I cannot of a certainty read thee day and hour. Well, if my glass runs low, the sand shall sparkle to the last. Yet, if I escape this peril, I, if I escape, bright and clear as the moonlight tracks across the water glows the rest of my existence, I see honours, happiness, success, shining upon every billow of the dark gulf beneath which I must sink at last. But, then, with such destinies beyond the peril, shall I succumb to the peril? My soul was just hope, but sweeps exultingly beyond the boating hour, which reveals in the future its own courage as the fittest omen. If I were to perish so suddenly and so soon, the shadow of death would darken over me, and I should feel the icy presentment of my doom. My soul will express in sadness and in gloom, as forecast of the dreary orcus, but it smiles and assures me of deliverance. As he thus concluded his soliloquy, the Egyptian involuntarily rose. He paced rapidly the narrow space of the star-roofed floor, and, pausing at the parapet, looked again upon the grey and melancholy heavens. The chill as the faint dawn came refreshingly upon his brow, and gradually his mind resumed as natural and clipped to calm. He withdrew his gaze from the stars, as, one after one, there receded into the depths of heaven, and his eyes fell over the broad expanse below. Dim in the silenced port of the city rose the mass of the galleys, along that mart of luxury and labour was still the mighty hum. No lights, save here and there from before the columns of a temple, or on the porticoes of the voiceless forum, broke the wan and fluctuating light of the struggling worn. From the heart of the torped city, so soon to vibrate with a thousand passions, became no sound. The streams of life circulated not. They lay locked under the ice of sleep. From the huge space of the amphitheatre, with its stony seeds rising one above the other, coiled and drowned with some slumbering monster, rose a thin and ghastly mist, which gathered darker and more dark over the scattered foliage that gloomed in its vicinity. The city seemed as, after the awful change of 17 ages, it seemed now to the traveller, the city of the dead. The ocean itself, that serene and tideless sea, lay scarcely hushed, save that from its deep bosom came, softened by the distance, a faint and regular murmur, like the breathing of its sleep, and curving far, as without stretched arms, into the green and beautiful land, seemed unconsciously to clasp to its breast the city's sloping to its margin. Stabiae, and Herculaneum, and Pompeii, those children and darlings of the deep. Ye slumber, said the Egyptian, as he scowled over the cities, the boasts and flyer of Campania. Ye slumber, would at the eternal repose of death, and ye now, jewels in the crown of the empire, so once were the cities of the Nile, their greatness hath perished from them, they sleep amidst ruins, their palaces and their shrines of tombs, the serpent coils in the grass of their streets, the lizard baskets and the solitary halls. By that mysterious law of nature, which humbles one to exalt the other, ye have driven upon their ruins, thou haughty Rome has to serve their glories of Cystostris and Semiramis, the art of robber clothing thyself in their spoils, and these slaves in thy triumph, that I, the last son of forgotten monarchs, survey below, reservoirs of thine all-pervading power and luxury, I curse as I behold, the time shall come when Egypt shall be avenged, when the barbarian steed shall make his mane from the golden house of Nero, and thou that hast sown the one with conquests shall reap the harvest and the whirlwind of desolation. As the Egyptian uttered a prediction which fates so fiercely fulfilled, a more solemn boating image of Iloman never occurred to the dreams of painter or opponent. The morning light, which compiles so whanley, even the young cheek of beauty, gave his majestic and stately features almost the colours of the grave, with the dark hair falling massively round them, and the dark robes flowing loose and long, and the arm outstretched from the lofty eminence, and the glittering eyes fierce with a savage gladness, half profit and half fined. He turned his gaze from the cities in the ocean, before him lay the vineyards and meadows of the rich campania, the gate and the walls, ancient, half palestic, of the city, but seemed not to bound its extent. Villas and villages stretched on every side up the ascent of Vesuvius, not nearly then so steep or so lofty as it present. Four, as Rome itself is built on an exhorted volcano, so in the similar security the inhabitants of the south turn into the green and vine-clad places around a volcano whose fires are believed to rest forever. From the gate stretched the long street of tombs, various in size and architecture, by which, on that side, the city is as yet approached, above all row the cloud-capped summit of the dread mountain, with the shadows, now dark, now light, portraying the mossy caverns and ashy rocks, which testify the past conflagrations and might have prophesied, but man is blind, that which was to come. Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the tradition of the place was so gloomy and stern a hue, why, in those smiling plains, for miles around, to buy aid and missing them, the poets had imagined the entrance and thresholds of their hell, their archeron, and their failed stick, why, and those flea-grey, now laughing with the vine, they placed the battles of the gods, and supposed the daring titans to have sought the victory of heaven. Save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted summit, fancy might think to read the characters of the Olympian Thunderbolt, but it was neither the rugged height of the still volcano, nor the fertility of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy avenue of tombs, nor the glittering villas of the of a polished, maturious people, that now arrested the eye of the Egyptian. On one part of the landscape, Martin of Asuvius ascended to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated ridge, broken here and there by Jacob Craggs and copters of wild foliage. At the base of this lay a marsh in unwholesome pool, and the intent gaze of our overseas caught the outline of some living form moving by the marshes, and stooping every run and on as if to pluck its rank produce. Ho! said he aloud. I have, then, another companion in these unworldly night-watches, for which of the serious is abroad. What? Doth she, too, is a credulous imagine? Doth she, too, learn the law of the great stars? Has she been uttering full magic to the moon, or culling, as it pours as the token? Foulhoods from the venomous marsh? Well, I must see this fellow labourer. Whoever strives to know learns that no human law is despicable. Despicable only you, you fat and bloated things, slaves of luxury, sluggards and thought, who, cultivating nothing but the barren scents, dream its poor soil can produce like the myrtle and the laurel? No, the wise only can enjoy. To us only true luxury is given, when mine, brain, invention, experience, thought, learning, imagination, or contribute like rivers to swell the seas of scents. I only? As our besieged are uttered the last in child words, whose thoughts sank at once into a deep and more profound channel. The steps pours, he took not his eyes from the ground, once or twice he smiled joyously, and then, as he turned from his place of vigil, and sought his couch, he muttered, if death frowns so near, I will say at least that I have lived, I only shall be mine. The character of Arbisseys is one of those intricate and varied webs, in which even the mind that sat within it was sometimes confused and perplexed. In him, the son of a fallen dynasty, the outcast of a sunken people, was that spirit of discontented pride, whichever rankles a one of a stern emold, who feels himself inexorably shut from the sphere in which his father shone, into which nature as well as birth, no less entitled as himself. This sentiment hath no benevolence, to wars with society, it sees enemies in mankind. But with this sentiment did not go its common companion, poverty. Arbisseys possessed wealth which equaled that of most of the Roman nobles, and this enabled him to gratify to the utmost the passions which had no outlet in business or ambition. Travelling from climb to climb, and beholding still Rome everywhere, he increased both his hatred of society and his passion for pleasure. He was in a vast prison, which, however, he could fill with the ministers of luxury. He could not escape from the prison, and his only object, therefore, was to go at the character of Arbisseys. The Egyptians, from the earliest time, devoted to the sentries of sense. Arbisseys inherited both the apatite sensuality, and the glove imagination which struck light from its rottenness. But still, on the social and his pleasures, as in his grave of pursuits, and broken neither superior nor equal, he'd miss a few to his companionship, save the willing slaves of his profligacy. He was a solitary lord of a crowded harem, but, with all, felt condemned to that satiety which is the constant curse of a man who's intellect is above their pursuit. And that which once had been the impulse of passion froze down the ordinance of custom. From the disappointments of sense, he sought to raise himself by the cultivation of knowledge. But as it was not his object to serve mankind, so he despised that knowledge which is practically useful. His dark imagination loved to exercise itself in those more visionary and obscure researchers, which are ever the most delightful to a wayward and solitary mind. And to which he himself was invited by the daring pride of his disposition, and the mysterious traditions of his climb. Dismissing faith in the confused creeds of the heathen world, he opposed the greatest faith in the power of human wisdom. He did not know, perhaps no one in their age distinctly did, the limits which nature imposes upon our discoveries. Seeing that the highly-mounted knowledge them all wonderfully behold, he measured that nature not only worked miracles in her ordinary cause, but that she might, in the cabala of some master soul, which averted from that cause itself. Thus he pursued science, across her appointed boundaries, into the land of her plexity and shadow. From the truths of astronomy, he wandered into astrological fallacy. From the secrets of chemistry, he passed into the spectral labyrinth of magic. And he, who could be sceptical as to the power of the gods, as crudely superstitious as the power of man. The cultivation of magic, carried at that date with singular height and among the would-be-wise, was especially eastern in its origin. It was alien to the early philosophy of the Greeks, nor had it re-received by them with favourable austenies, who accompanied the army of Xerxes. Introduced amongst the simple credulities of Helus, the solemn superstitions of Xoraster. Under the Roman emperors it had become, however, neutralised at Rome, as a meat subject for juveniles fiery wit. Intimately connected with magic was a worship of Vesus, and the Egyptian religion was the means by which it was extended the devotion to Egyptian sorcery. The third chick, or benevolent magic, the goatech, or dark and evil in the Chromacy, were alike in the preeminent repute during the first century of the Christian era. And the marvels of Forstus are not comparable to those of Epilonius. Kings, courtiers, and sages all trembled before the professors of the dreaded science. Another least remarkable of his tribe was the most formidable and profound Arbyses. His fame and his discoveries were known to all the corpoboaches of magic. They even survived himself. But it was not by his real name that he was honoured by the sorcerer and the sage. His real name, indeed, was unknowingly. For Arbyses is not a genuinely Egyptian, but a median appellation, which, in the admixture and unsettlement of the ancient races, had become common in the country of the Nile, and there were various reasons, not only a pride, but a policy, for a new fear conspired against the majesty of Rome, which induced him to conceal his true name and rank. But neither by the name he had borrowed from the me, nor by that which in the colleges of Egypt would have attested his origin from kings. To the cultivators of magic acknowledged the potent master. He received from their homogen more mystic appellation, and was long remembered in Magna Crescia and in the eastern plain, by the name of Hermes, the lord of flaming belt. His subtle speculations and boasted attributes of wisdom, recorded in various volumes, were among those tokens of the curious arts, which the Christian converts most joyfully, yet most fearfully, birded Ephesius, depriving posterity of the proofs of the cunning of the fiend. The contrast of Arbyses was solely of the intellect, but it was awed by no moral laws. If man imposed those checks upon the herd, so he believed that man, by superior wisdom, could raise himself above them. If, he reasoned, I have the genius to impose laws, have I not the right to command my own creations? Still more, have I not the right to control, to evade, to scorn, the fabrications of yet meaner intellects than my own? Thus, if he were a villain, he justified his villainy by what ought to have made him virtuous, namely, the elevation of his capacities. Most men have more or less the passion for power, than Arbyses, that passion corresponded exactly to his character. It was not the passion for an external and brute authority. He desired not the purple in the faces, the insignia of all good command. His useful ambition once fought and defeated. Scorn has supplied its place. His pride is contempt for Rome. Rome should become the synonym of the world. Rome, whose haughty name he regarded with the same disdain as that which Rome herself relavished upon the barbarian, did not permit him to aspire to sway over others, for that would render him at once the tawd of the creature of the emperor. He, the son of the great eras of Arbyses, he execute the order of, and receive his power from, another. The mere notion filled him with reign, but in rejecting an ambition that coveted nominal distinctions, he buttoned old to the moron, and the ambition to rule the heart. Honoring mental power is the greatest of earthly gift. He loved to feel that power palpably in himself, by extending it over all whom he encountered. Thus he had ever sought the young, thus he had ever fascinated and controlled them. He loved to find subjects and men sold, to rule over an invisible and immaterial empire, for he being less sensual and less wealthy, he might have sought to become the founder of a new religion. As it was, his energies were checked by his pleasures. Besides, however, the vague logarithm for this moral sway, the vanity so dear to sages, he was influenced by singular and dream-like devotion to all that belonged to the mystic land his ancestors had swayed. Although he disbelieved in her deities, he believed in the allegories they represented, or rather he interpreted those allegories anew. He loved to keep alive the worship of Egypt, because he thus maintained the shadow and the recollection of the power. He loaded, therefore, the altars of Osiris and Ovisus, with regal donations, and was ever anxious to dignify their priesthood by new and wealthy converts. The vow taken, the priesthood embraced, was usually chosen by the comrade of his pleasures from those whom he made his victims, partly because he thus secured to himself their secrecy, partly because he thus yet more confirmed to himself as peculiar power. Hence, the motives of his conduct to opacities, strengthed than these were, in that instance, by his passion for Ioni. He had seldom lived long in one place, but as he grew older, he grew more worried of the excitement of new scenes, and he had sojourned among the delightful cities of Campania, for a period which surprised even himself. In fact, his pride somewhat crippled his choice of residence. His unsuccessful conspiracy excluded him from those burning climes which he deemed of right his own hereditary position, in which now cowered, subpoena and sunken, under the wings of the Roman eagle. Rome, herself, was hateful to his indignant soul, nor did he love to find his riches rivaled by the minions of the court, and cast into comparative poverty by the mighty magnificence of the court itself. The companion cities proffered to him all that is named to crave, the luxuries of an only-called climate, the immediate refinements for voluptuous civilization. He was removed from the side of his superior wealth. He was without rivals to his riches. He was free from the spies of a jealous court. As long as he was rich, none pried into his conduct. He pursued the dark tenor of his ways undisturbed and insecure. It is the curse of sensualists never to love that the pleasures of sense begin to pile. Their ardent youth is fritted away in countless desires, their hearts are exhausted. So, ever chasing love, and taught by a restless imagination to exaggerate, perhaps its charms, the Egyptian had spent all the glory of his years without attaining the object of his desires. The beauty of tomorrow succeeded the beauty of its day, and the shadows be oiled at him in his pursuit of the substance. When, two years before the present date, he beheld Ioni, he saw, for the first time, one whom he had imagined he could love. He stood, then, upon that bridge of life, from which man sees before him distinctly a wasted youth on one side, and the darkness of approaching age on the other. The time in which we are more than ever anxious, perhaps, to secure to ourselves ere it be yet too late, whatever we have been taught to consider necessary to the enjoyment of a life for which the brighter half has gone. With an earnestness and patience, which he had never before commanded for his pleasures, Arbuses had devoted himself to win the heart of Ioni. It did not content him to love, he desired to be loved. In this hope he had watched the expanding youth of the beautiful Neapolitan, and, knowing the influence that the mind possesses over those who are taught to cultivate the mind, he contributed willingly to form the genius and lie to the internet of Ioni, in the hope that he should be thus able to appreciate what he felt would be his best claim to her fiction. These, a character which, however criminal and perverted, was richness in the original elements of strength and grandeur. When he felt that character to be acknowledged, he willingly allowed, nay, and encouraged her, to mix among the ardour of Rotary's pleasure, in the belief that her soul, fixed for higher commune, would miss the companionship of his own. In that, in comparison with others, she would learn to love herself. He had forgot that as his son flew out of the sun, so youth turns to youth, until his jealousy of bloke suddenly appraised him of his error. From that moment, though, as we have seen, he knew not the extent of his danger, if fiercely or more tumultuous direction was given to a passion long controlled. Nothing can love the fire of love like the sprinkling of the anxieties of jealousy. It takes in a wilder, more resistless flame, which forgets its softness, that seizes to be tender, that assumes something of the intensity, of the ferocity, of hate. Hover seas resolved to lose no further time upon cautious and perilous preparations. He resolved to place an irrevocable barrier between himself and his rivals. He resolved to possess himself with the person of Ioni, not that in his present love, so long nursed and fed by hopes pureer than those of passion alone, he would have been contented with that, in the opposition. He desired the heart, the soul, no less than the beauty. Of Ioni. But he imagined that once separated by a daring crime for the rest of mankind, once bound to Ioni by a tie that memory could not break, should be driven to concentrate her thoughts on him, that his arts were completely at his conquest, and that, according to the true moral of the Roman and the Sabine, the empire obtained by force would be cemented by gentler means. This resolution was yet more confirmed in him by his belief in the prophecies of the stars. That long foretold to him this year, and even the present month, is the epoch of some dread disaster menacing life itself. He was driven to a certain and limited day. He resolved to crowd, monarch-like, on his funeral pyre all that his soul held most dear. In his own words, if he wished to die, he resolved to feel that he had lived, and that Ioni should be his own. End of Book 2, Chapter 8. Recorded by Rachel Triska, Australia.