Читать книгу Fabiola; Or, The Church of the Catacombs - Nicholas Patrick Wiseman - Страница 12

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HEY found, on descending, all the guests assembled in a hall below. It was not a state banquet which they were going to share, but the usual meal of a rich house, where preparation for a tableful of friends was always made. We will therefore content ourselves with saying that every thing was elegant and exquisite in arrangement and material; and we will confine ourselves entirely to such incidents as may throw a light upon our story.

When the two ladies entered the exedra or hall, Fabius, after saluting his daughter, exclaimed, “Why, my child, you have come down, though late, still scarcely fittingly arranged! You have forgotten your usual trinkets.”

Fabiola was confused. She knew not what answer to make: she was ashamed of her weakness about her angry display; and still more of what she now thought a silly way of punishing herself for it. Agnes stepped in to the rescue, and blushingly said: “It is my fault, cousin Fabius, both that she is late and that she is so plainly dressed. I detained her with my gossip, and no doubt she wishes to keep me in countenance by the simplicity of her attire.”

“You, dear Agnes,” replied the father, “are privileged to do as you please. But, seriously speaking, I must say that, even with you, this may have answered while you were a mere child; now that you are marriageable,[23] you must begin to make a little more display, and try to win the affections of some handsome and eligible youth. A beautiful necklace, for instance, such as you have plenty of at home, would not make you less attractive. But you are not attending to me. Come, come, I dare say you have some one already in view.”

During most of this address, which was meant to be thoroughly good-natured, as it was perfectly worldly, Agnes appeared in one of her abstracted moods, her bewitched looks, as Fabiola called them, transfixed, in a smiling ecstasy, as if attending to some one else, but never losing the thread of the discourse, nor saying any thing out of place. She therefore at once answered Fabius: “Oh, yes, most certainly, one who has already pledged me to him by his betrothal-ring, and has adorned me with immense jewels.”[24]

“Really!” asked Fabius, “with what?”

“Why,” answered Agnes, with a look of glowing earnestness, and in tones of artless simplicity, “he has girded my hand and neck with precious gems, and has set in my ears rings of peerless pearls.”[25]

“Goodness! who can it be? Come, Agnes, some day you must tell me your secret. Your first love, no doubt; may it last long and make you happy!”

“For ever!” was her reply, as she turned to join Fabiola, and enter with her into the dining-room. It was well she had not overheard this dialogue, or she would have been hurt to the quick, as thinking that Agnes had concealed the most important thought of her age, as she would have considered it, from her most loving friend. But while Agnes was defending her, she had turned away from her father, and had been attending to the other guests. One was a heavy, thick-necked Roman sophist, or dealer in universal knowledge, named Calpurnius; another, Proculus, a mere lover of good fare, often at the house. Two more remain, deserving further notice. The first of them, evidently a favorite both with Fabiola and Agnes, was a tribune, a high officer of the imperial or prætorian guard. Though not above thirty years of age, he had already distinguished himself by his valor, and enjoyed the highest favor with the emperors Dioclesian in the East, and Maximian Herculius in Rome. He was free from all affectation in manner or dress, though handsome in person; and though most engaging in conversation, he manifestly scorned the foolish topics which generally occupied society. In short, he was a perfect specimen of a noble-hearted youth, full of honor and generous thoughts; strong and brave, without a particle of pride or display in him.

Quite a contrast to him was the last guest, already alluded to by Fabiola, the new star of society, Fulvius. Young, and almost effeminate in look, dressed with most elaborate elegance, with brilliant rings on every finger and jewels in his dress, affected in his speech, which had a slightly foreign accent, overstrained in his courtesy of manners, but apparently good-natured and obliging, he had in a short time quietly pushed his way into the highest society of Rome. This was, indeed, owing partly to his having been seen at the imperial court, and partly to the fascination of his manner. He had arrived in Rome accompanied by a single elderly attendant, evidently deeply attached to him; whether slave, freedman, or friend, nobody well knew. They spoke together always in a strange tongue, and the swarthy features, keen fiery eye, and unamiable expression of the domestic, inspired a certain degree of fear in his dependants; for Fulvius had taken an apartment in what was called an insula, or house let out in parts, had furnished it luxuriously, and had peopled it with a sufficient bachelor’s establishment of slaves. Profusion rather than abundance distinguished all his domestic arrangements; and, in the corrupted and degraded circle of pagan Rome, the obscurity of his history, and the suddenness of his apparition, were soon forgotten in the evidence of his riches, and the charm of his loose conversation. A shrewd observer of character, however, would soon notice a wandering restlessness of eye, and an eagerness of listening attention for all sights and sounds around him, which betrayed an insatiable curiosity; and in moments of forgetfulness, a dark scowl under his knit brows, from his flashing eyes, and a curling of the upper lip, which inspired a feeling of mistrust, and gave an idea that his exterior softness only clothed a character of feline malignity.

Banquet Table, from a Pompeian painting.

The guests were soon at table; and as ladies sat, while men reclined on couches during the repast, Fabiola and Agnes were together on one side, the two younger guests last described were opposite, and the master, with his two elder friends, in the middle—if these terms can be used to describe their position about three parts of a round table; one side being left unencumbered by the sigma,[26] or semi-circular couch, for the convenience of serving. And we may observe, in passing, that a table-cloth, a luxury unknown in the times of Horace, was now in ordinary use.

When the first claims of hunger, or the palate, had been satisfied, conversation grew more general.

“What news to-day at the baths?” asked Calpurnius; “I have no leisure myself to look after such trifles.”

“Very interesting news indeed,” answered Proculus. “It seems quite certain that orders have been received from the divine Dioclesian, to finish his Thermæ in three years.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed Fabius. “I looked in at the works the other day, on my way to Sallust’s gardens, and found them very little advanced in the last year. There is an immense deal of heavy work to be done, such as carving marbles and shaping columns.”

“True,” interposed Fulvius; “but I know that orders have been sent to all parts, to forward hither all prisoners, and all persons condemned to the mines in Spain, Sardinia, and even Chersonesus, who can possibly be spared, to come and labor at the Thermæ. A few thousand Christians, thus set to the work, will soon finish it.”

“And why Christians better than other criminals?” asked, with some curiosity, Fabiola.

“Why, really,” said Fulvius, with his most winning smile, “I can hardly give a reason for it; but the fact is so. Among fifty workmen so condemned, I would engage to pick out a single Christian.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed several at once; “pray how?”

“Ordinary convicts,” answered he, “naturally do not love their work, and they require the lash at every step to compel them to perform it; and when the overseer’s eye is off them, no work is done. And, moreover, they are, of course, rude, sottish, quarrelsome, and querulous. But the Christians, when condemned to these public works, seem, on the contrary, to be glad, and are always cheerful and obedient. I have seen young patricians so occupied in Asia, whose hands had never before handled a pickaxe, and whose weak shoulders had never borne a weight, yet working hard, and as happy, to all appearance, as when at home. Of course, for all that, the overseers apply the lash and the stick very freely to them; and most justly; because it is the will of the divine emperors that their lot should be made as hard as possible; but still they never complain.”

“I cannot say that I admire this sort of justice,” replied Fabiola; “but what a strange race they must be! I am most curious to know what can be the motive or cause of this stupidity, or unnatural insensibility, in these Christians?”

Proculus replied, with a facetious look: “Calpurnius here no doubt can tell us; for he is a philosopher, and I hear could declaim for an hour on any topic, from the Alps to an ant-hill.”

Calpurnius, thus challenged, and thinking himself highly complimented, solemnly gave mouth: “The Christians,” said he, “are a foreign sect, the founder of which flourished many ages ago in Chaldea. His doctrines were brought to Rome at the time of Vespasian by two brothers named Peter and Paul. Some maintain that these were the same twin brothers as the Jews call Moses and Aaron, the second of whom sold his birthright to his brother for a kid, the skin of which he wanted to make chirothecæ[27] of. But this identity I do not admit; as it is recorded in the mystical books of the Jews, that the second of these brothers, seeing the other’s victims give better omens of birds than his own, slew him, as our Romulus did Remus, but with the jaw-bone of an ass; for which he was hung by King Mardochæus of Macedon, upon a gibbet fifty cubits high, at the suit of their sister Judith. However, Peter and Paul coming, as I said, to Rome, the former was discovered to be a fugitive slave of Pontius Pilate, and was crucified by his master’s orders on the Janiculum. Their followers, of whom they had many, made the cross their symbol, and adore it; and they think it the greatest honor to suffer stripes, and even ignominious death, as the best means of being like their teachers, and, as they fancy, of going to them in a place somewhere among the clouds.”[28]

This lucid explanation of the origin of Christianity was listened to with admiration by all except two. The young officer gave a piteous look towards Agnes, which seemed to say, “Shall I answer the goose, or shall I laugh outright?” But she put her finger on her lips, and smiled imploringly for silence.

“Well, then, the upshot of it is,” observed Proculus, “that the Thermæ will be finished soon, and we shall have glorious sport. Is it not said Fulvius, that the divine Dioclesian will himself come to the dedication?”

“It is quite certain; and so will there be splendid festivals and glorious games. But we shall not have to wait so long; already, for other purposes, have orders been sent to Numidia for an unlimited supply of lions and leopards to be ready before winter.” Then turning round sharp to his neighbor, he said, bending a keen eye upon his countenance: “A brave soldier like you, Sebastian, must be delighted with the noble spectacles of the amphitheatre, especially when directed against the enemies of the august emperors, and of the republic.”

The officer raised himself upon his couch, looked on his interrogator with an unmoved, majestic countenance, and answered calmly:

“Fulvius, I should not deserve the title which you give me, could I contemplate with pleasure, in cold blood, the struggle, if it deserve the name, between a brute beast and a helpless child or woman, for such are the spectacles which you call noble. No, I will draw my sword willingly against any enemy of the princes or the state; but I would as readily draw it against the lion or the leopard that should rush, even by imperial order, against the innocent and defenceless.” Fulvius was starting up; but Sebastian placed his strong hand upon his arm, and continued: “Hear me out. I am not the first Roman, nor the noblest, who has thought thus before me. Remember the words of Cicero: ‘Magnificent are these games, no doubt; but what delight can it be to a refined mind to see either a feeble man torn by a most powerful beast, or a noble animal pierced through by a javelin?’[29] I am not ashamed of agreeing with the greatest of Roman orators.”

“Then shall we never see you in the amphitheatre, Sebastian?” asked Fulvius, with a bland but taunting tone.

“If you do,” the soldier replied, “depend upon it, it will be on the side of the defenceless, not on that of the brutes that would destroy them.”

David with his Sling, from the Catacomb of St. Petronilla.

“Sebastian is right,” exclaimed Fabiola, clapping her hands, “and I close the discussion by my applause. I have never heard Sebastian speak, except on the side of generous and high-minded sentiments.”

Fulvius bit his lip in silence, and all rose to depart.