Читать книгу Empress Octavia - Wilhelm Walloth - Страница 4

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MEANWHILE Rufus, who had been on guard before sunrise, was relieved. Instead of watching the spectacle, he left the Circus and, absorbed in thought, walked around the building, passing the booths of the shopkeepers under the arcades of the amphitheatre without noticing their wares; even the smile of the Assyrian dancing-girl, whose alluring gestures invited the attention of strolling idlers, could not efface from his imagination the image of the Christian maiden led forth to death. He felt a dull, vague compassion when he thought of Lucretia's head as the trembling girl pressed it against his knees,—a compassion which angered him, because he knew that whoever wished to attain a good position in Rome must contemptuously thrust pity aside as weakness, and to attain a good position had been the ambitious Jew's aspiration from his early youth. Hitherto he had not made much progress,—he was a private soldier in the fifth maniple of the Praetorians; but who, at twenty-four, loses the hope of being at least a centurion in the imperial guard when he reaches the age of fifty?

Rufus now tried to interest himself in the dancing of a Phoenician, whose nude limbs were relieved in artistic beauty against the dark archway, but the fair one's smile only called before his imagination, in still more vivid colors, the death-agony of the Christian maiden whose limbs were now perhaps quivering on the sand of the arena; and he could no longer watch the dancer's movements, which reminded him hideously of the last convulsions of a dying form.

As a Jew, his nature was more sensitive; and being averse to the brutal deeds of these Pagans, his sole consolation was that the girl's sufferings were over. To him a human life was of more value than to these Romans, and, though recklessly ambitious, he felt a certain respect for every human being that Jehovah had created. Yet, after all, what was this girl to him?

Shrugging his shoulders, as was his habit, he muttered to himself: "What do you mean, Rufus? She is dead! Have you the power to call her back to life? Nonsense! I forbid you to think any more about her."

Then he really felt relieved; military discipline had so pervaded his nature, he was so thoroughly convinced of its necessity, that he treated himself with the strictness with which his superior officer, whom he always implicitly obeyed, would have treated him.

As, clinching his black beard between his lips, he hurriedly turned around a pillar, he ran against one of the street astrologers, who usually enjoyed excellent patronage in this place. The man, an Assyrian, was crouching on the ground, completely enveloped in a long robe, which was intended to lend the necessary dignity to his lofty calling. His knees almost touched his chin; he clasped his pointed beard thoughtfully in his hand; his brow, with its bushy eyebrows, was bent over a tablet covered with all sorts of strange characters; while several bystanders were listening patiently to hear what the august man would read from the stars concerning their future. After some time he raised his head and beckoned to a muffled woman, into whose ear, as she bent near him, he whispered the result of his investigations She gave him money and hurried off with a light step; the news she had received of the future of her lover in Egypt had doubtless been pleasant. Another person

to whom the result of the calculation was communicated left the astrologer with less satisfaction. The heritage expected by the smooth faced young dandy would never come to him—if the learned man's opinion was correct.

Now the astrologer sat alone in the shade of the pillar. The burning noontide sun was blazing outside; the smooth leaves of the distant laurel- trees glittered as if set with tiny mirrors or gems, whenever a sunbeam touched their green enamel; high above, towered the stone I blocks of the Circus wall, partly covered with clinging ivy. Opposite to the Circus rose the Aventine, whose white temples gleamed in dazzling radiance against the deep blue sky. Not a human being was visible at the moment. Rufus pondered whether he should try his fortune too. True, his religion forbade him to meddle with magic, and he valued it no more than a dream, yet he could scarcely resist the impulse of his gnawing ambition. For what was he destined? He would but ask jestingly; Jehovah could not be wrathful with him for playing a prank with the Pagans. Yet his heart throbbed violently as, glancing timidly around him, he approached the crouching figure. ^The Assyrian started up, trying to assume a majestic air, as the excited soldier's footsteps cast gravel on his tablets.

"So you can unveil the future," exclaimed the Jew, while an incredulous smile hovered around his bearded lips.

The Magian, with a majestic gesture, answered: "Thou hast said."

"And how do you do it?" asked Rufus.

"How do I do it?" The Magian did not exactly trust the stranger, and scanned him from head to foot, while reflecting whether he was dealing with a scorner or a respecter of his art. The examination finally convinced him that he need not conceal his wisdom in the presence of a comparatively untutored soldier.

"Yes. How do you do it?" Rufus repeated, leaning his spear against the pillar, raising his helmet, and passing his hand over,.^ his hair, dank with perspiration.

"Do you suppose that this secret can be explained to you in a few seconds?" replied the other, almost insulted. "Young man, go with me to Egypt, visit the temples, become initiated into the mysteries of the priests of Isis, hold intercourse, as I have done, with Thrassylus, the astrologer of Tiber, and Barbyllus, the astrologer of Nero, study medicine, mechanics, mathematics, astronomy, and live to be seventy years old; then perhaps you may have a vague idea of the wisdom I call mine."

The Assyrian again became absorbed in his figures, as if he did not desire to be accosted or questioned, muttered all sorts of Egyptian words, and drew strange circles with his stones, while Rufus began to feel some degree of respect for the knowledge of this observer of the stars.

"Have you studied all these things?" he asked in astonishment.

The learned man smiled contemptuously.

"And much more," he said, passing his hand across his brow with a bombastic gesture, which intimated that nothing was concealed from him.

"And your art," stammered Rufus,—" does it always tell the truth?"

"Truth?" replied the Magian, in a melancholy tone, and then suddenly added, stretching out his arm as if in ecstasy: "What is truth?"

After hurling this phrase, he remained several moments in his attitude of profound thought, but meanwhile secretly watching with a side glance what effect his acting was producing upon the young man. Rufus took his spear, leaned on it, and gazed intently at the ground.

"Yes," he murmured, looking watchfully about him, "it is strange! God must know what awaits us; why should not a sharp-sighted intellect endeavor to fathom His thoughts? If we could search into the councils of the gods—of God, I meant to say—"

We can," interrupted the sage, impetuously.

Yes, if one were God Himself, or, as that other called himself, the Son of God," added Rufus.

"That is wholly unnecessary," said the Magian, eagerly. "We need not be God; the gods are like little children in school,—that is, bad accountants. Yes, my son, everything in the world had its destiny fixed from the beginning, before the gods existed. Whoever can calculate how the elements were arranged when love brooded over them, can estimate how they are arranged now, can predict the fall of every grain of sand, the approach of every comet. The gods are but the servants of Fate, its torch-bearers: the gods know nothing, for they have no mathematics; but Prometheus is the great inventor of the science of numbers. Mathematics, young man, is the key of mysteries. Like a good hunting-dog, figures track the revolutions and courses of the stars, pierce the elements, and divide them into other elements, build temples, arrange the hewn stones like a sturdy Cyclops, and it is figures also which disclose the future of human beings, as a child's hand opens the closed bud."

Rufus was surprised; these words awed him. He felt a dread of calculations, and asked humbly if the sage would not reveal his future.

"Willingly," said the latter, clearing his throat, "but—it is again figures, according to which we value small as well as large coins."

Rufus understood. Horror of the mysterious figures disappeared, or rather it increased when the sage now named the sum after whose payment he was ready to announce the decree of fate.

"Five denarii?" asked the Jew,—" my pay for a fortnight! That 's too much. How am I to live?"

The sage pretended not to hear this ejaculation, which evidently proceeded from the depths of the heart, but played with his stones, and smoothed his Assyrian beard.

"How am I to live?" the soldier muttered again.

"And how am I to live?" answered the sage, coldly. "What is life? Unless you can be content with a sip of water from the hollow of your hand and a bit of mouldy bread, you are not worthy of the sun. Five denarii, young man, that is the will of Isis, the universal mother."

True, Rufus did not understand what the universal mother had to do with his five denarii, yet, sighing heavily, he resolved to pay them, and the Magian began his calculations.

"Will you not give me a short account of your family circumstances?" asked the mathematician after a brief silence. "I can investigate the course of your life better if I know its beginning."

"My father was a physician," said Rufus, frowning, and evidently dissatisfied.

"What is your mother's name?" asked the other.

"Esther. My father died, leaving us in poverty."

"Where do you live?"

"In one of the streets in the Tiber district, near the Covered Way."

"Have you any brothers or sisters?"

"No."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-four."

"What is your favorite occupation?"

"Ask me no more questions," answered Rufus, sullenly; "it is enough for you to know that I—" he paused in the midst of a remark concerning his ambitious aspirations, and added, "that I don't like to be catechised."

"Very well," murmured the mathematician, and continued his calculations. The warrior intently watched the stones as they formed figures, shaking his head as he gazed at the curves which the soothsayer, with an air of the deepest thought, drew upon the tablet. Several passers-by lingered, to the Jew's great annoyance. One, a young stranger, asked what was going on here. Rufus made no reply; he sincerely regretted having asked counsel of the soothsayer, whose whole manner was gradually awakening his distrust. Yet he awaited the answer with some little curiosity, and then asked the stranger what he wanted. The latter walked on laughing, saying that the sights in Rome were wonderful; except the rude soldiers, everything was quite different from the provinces. At last the. work was finished. The old man raised his head, but Rufus motioned to him to be silent until the idlers had moved on. Then he made him a sign.

"Beware of woman!" said the sage, solemnly, "thus speaks the voice of Fate."

"Explain that," replied Rufus.

"Explain? What is there to explain?" said the Assyrian.

"I don't understand," answered the soldier.

"Can you expect me to understand the decrees of the gods?" said the sage. "Please give me my fee."

"But you just called the gods bad accountants," Rufus was beginning to expostulate, when the august astrologer interrupted with the exclamation: "Beware of woman!" and in the same breath added: "Will you pay me?"

The soldier drew out his purse and threw a denarius on the table, patting the sage on the back as he said: "You know how to calculate, my friend, and will be able to make yourself believe that this is five denarii as easily as you led me to think you could unveil the future."

The scholar, however, understood no jesting, and was by no means so estranged from all worldly things that he was willing to relinquish four denarii. Grasping the soldier's cloak, he vehemently demanded the remainder of his fee. But a sinister glance from the Jew's eyes rested upon him.

"You predicted," said the latter under his breath, "that misfortune would come to me through woman, my friend; with your leave, I believe the prophecy is false. I will now make a far more reliable one in the words: Let me go, or there will be a shower of blows."

The Magian did not seem to feel any special liking for this novice in the art of prophecy; he dropped his cloak and, muttering angrily, thrust the denarius into his pocket.

The Jew left the soothsayer, and, greatly dissatisfied with himself, strode off, passing the shops near the Circus without taking the slightest notice of the various invitations shouted by tavern-keepers, cooks, and pretty dancing-girls. "A base generation," he thought, scanning the various scenes, " a base generation, dreaming life away over these boiling sausages and steaming dishes of lentils." Rufus had imposed upon himself, as his supreme law of life, contempt for sensual pleasures; only by ruling his passions could he expect to reach his lofty goals. True, it was sometimes very difficult for him to refrain from responding to an ardent glance, but even when he yielded he always ruled passion with a cold curb of reason, which enabled him to cast pleasure aside as soon as he perceived that it might become an obstacle in the path of his ambition. He had secretly drained many a goblet of wine, but always remained sober; he had cradled many a Syrian beauty on his knees, and laughed at her the next day when she protested that she could not live without him. Meanwhile he secretly enjoyed seeing his comrades swimming in the pool of pleasure till they were stupefied and robbed of their senses; nay, like some destructive power of nature, he even led more than one youth into drinking, gaming, and libertinism, by which, in a certain degree, he made them subject to him.

Rufus had reached the extreme end of the Circus and was admiring a magnificent litter which had just been carried past him, ardently wishing at the same time that he might some day be surrounded with the same splendor, when he saw a bald-headed, corpulent old man stagger out of one of the Circus taverns, leading by the hand a boy who was evidently trying to support the reeling figure. Dragged to and fro by the unsteady hand of the gray-haired servant of Bacchus, the poor child was sometimes thrown into very strange positions, nay, was often literally dragged along.

"Why, father, what ails you to-day?" asked the innocent little fellow. "Take care! People are looking at us."

But the old man, with a foolish smile on his red face, framed by a white beard well suited to inspire reverence, vainly tried to force his legs into their usual gait. He stumbled and skipped, sometimes smacking his tongue as if he still tasted the Falernian. Sometimes he rubbed his hairy thigh, and at last even leaned against the wall for a purpose which it is not well to describe more closely,—in doing which he dropped both cloak and sandals,—and rubbed his shoulder persistently against a projecting stone.

Rufus laughed; but a bystander called out that he must not ridicule him, it was a very serious matter. When the old Silenus moved slowly on, Rufus, to his surprise, recognized the father of the Christian girl who had just lost her life. As he staggered past the soldier, he was talking volubly; and though the words were greatly mangled as they fell from his flabby lips, they afforded a glimpse of the overwhelming sorrow of the father's heart.

"My friend," he stammered, with his glassy eyes turned heavenward, "the gods are great, my friend, and man is little. Whoever denies it, by Zeus, is a drunkard! Have you thought of this? We must submit, my friend, submit. Fate is calm, very calm, and sometimes even cruel,—Oedipus learned that; but I would rather lead my own wife astray and marry my father than to deal with the Sphinx. But man has a comfort for his sorrows, my friend; behold it in me, for my heart is merry, very merry—" Then he began to sing a little Egyptian song, but never got beyond the first verse, which he repeated constantly, then with drooping head relapsed into silence, which he suddenly interrupted with the angry question whether anybody supposed that he was drunk? Then, when Rufus advised him to go home, he began to weep until the teardrops trickled down upon his beard. " Don't say that; don't say that," he sobbed. "It's no use for me to go home: I shall not find my child. Do you see the big house yonder? They shut my child up there, and she was such a good daughter; she always said: 'Father, take care not to drink more Falernian than is good for you,' and I obeyed her. You must know that I have a little weakness for Falernian; and now, since she can no longer give me this warning, I shall go downhill. It 's a pity; I know that very well. I should have made a good mime; it's a pity, a great pity."

He went off sighing; Rufus still heard him muttering: "A Stoic must not weep; a Stoic conquers pain." Then he saw the boy, who was dragged along, turn around a pillar, and walked on toward his home greeting every one who was standing near with studied humility. On reaching the neighborhood of the

Forum, he was stopped by a litter with closed curtains, surrounded by numerous richly clad bearers. It was obliged to wait for a moment opposite to the Temple of Vesta, because one of the slaves had sprained his foot. The curtains were instantly pushed back; a woman's face, pallid but very beautiful, appeared, and the captain of the bearers gave the information requested. Rufus recognized the Empress Octavia. Her features wore an expression of sympathy as she heard of the accident to the bearer, who sat on the pavement, clasping his ankle. The royal lady wished to get out and walk, but the captain entreated her not to do so.

"Send the slave home," she said in a gentle tone, "and see that he receives the best possible care."

As she was about to leave the litter, a citizen, apparently a dyer, forced his way through the slaves.

"Permit me, august sovereign, to be your bondman to-day!" he exclaimed. " Come, my men, I'll take the lame bearer's place."

The Empress smiled.

"I cannot accept your offer, my good man," she said pleasantly; but when the dyer persisted, she murmured, with an expression of the most winning kindness in her large eyes: "Be it so, then."

The bystanders applauded, and the litter moved on amid the joyous cheers of the populace.

"Now I understand why the people love this woman," Rufus said to himself; and a baker at his side told his neighbor that Octavia had visited the funeral pyre of her father Claudius, which Nero had scattered, to weep there for the basely murdered Emperor, and perhaps to pour libations of wine upon the last remnants of the pile. Another citizen, laughing loudly, was relating Nero's last nocturnal prank. The Emperor, with his own hands, had flung into the cloaca a teacher who was returning home. Not a night passes," said the narrator, in which the Caesar does not play some mischievous trick. A few days ago he even robbed a cook-shop."