The Emperor. Complete
The girl’s pretty cheeks had flushed with her eager reminiscence of what she had seen, and, as she spoke, moving her hands with expressive gestures, the tall structure of curls which crowned her small head shook from side to side.
“Your description begins to be quite poetical,” said the Empress, interrupting her young companion. “Perhaps the Muse may even inspire you with verse.”
“All the Pierides,” said the praetor, “are represented at Lochias. We saw eight of them, but the ninth, that patroness of the arts, who protects the stargazer, the lofty Urania, has at present, in place of a head—allow me to leave it to you to guess divine Sabina?”
“Well—what?”
“A wisp of straw.”
“Alas,” sighed the Empress. “What do you say, Florus? Are there not among your learned and verse spinning associates certain men who resemble this Urania?”
“At any rate,” replied Florus, “we are more prudent than the goddess, for we conceal the contents of our heads in the hard nut of the skull, and under a more or less abundant thatch of hair. Urania displays her straw openly.”
“That almost sounds,” said Balbilla laughing and pointing to her abundant locks, “as if I especially needed to conceal what is covered by my hair.”
“Even the Lesbian swan was called the fair-haired,” replied Florus.
“And you are our Sappho,” said the praetor’s wife, drawing the girl’s arm to her bosom.
“Really! and will you not write in verse all that you have seen to-day?” asked the Empress.
Balbilla looked down on the ground a minute and then said brightly: “It might inspire me, everything strange that I meet with prompts me to write verse.”
“But follow the counsel of Apollonius the philologer,” advised Florus. “You are the Sappho of our day, and therefore you should write in the ancient Aeolian dialect and not Attic Greek.” Verus laughed, and the Empress, who never was strongly moved to laughter, gave a short sharp giggle, but Balbilla said eagerly:
“Do you think that I could not acquire it and do so? To-morrow morning I will begin to practise myself in the old Aeolian forms.”
“Let it alone,” said Domitia Lucilla; “your simplest songs are always the prettiest.”
“No one shall laugh at me!” declared Balbilla pertinaciously. “In a few weeks I will know how to use the Aeolian dialect, for I can do anything I am determined to do—anything, anything.”
“What a stubborn little head we have under our curls!” exclaimed the Empress, raising a graciously threatening finger.
“And what powers of apprehension,” added Florus.
“Her master in language and metre told me his best pupil was a woman of noble family and a poetess besides—Balbilla in short.”
The girl colored at the words, and said with pleased excitement:
“Are you flattering me or did Hephaestion really say that?”
“Woe is me!” cried the praetor, “for Hephaestion was my master too, and I am one of the masculine scholars beaten by Balbilla. But it is no news to me, for the Alexandrian himself told me the same thing as Florus.”
“You follow Ovid and she Sappho,” said Florus; “you write in Latin and she in Greek. Do you still always carry Ovid’s love-poems about with you?”
“Always,” replied Verus, “as Alexander did his Homer.”
“And out of respect for his master your husband endeavors, by the grace of Venus, to live like him,” added Sabina, addressing herself to Domitia Lucilla.
The tall and handsome Roman lady only shrugged her shoulders slightly in answer to this not very kindly-meant speech; but Verus said, while he picked up Sabina’s silken coverlet, and carefully spread it over her knees:
“My happiest fortune consists in this: that Venus Victrix favors me. But we are not yet at the end of our story; our Lesbian swan met at Lochias with another rare bird, an artist in statuary.”
“How long have the sculptors been reckoned among birds?” asked Sabina. “At the utmost can they be compared to woodpeckers.”
“When they work in wood,” laughed Verus. “Our artist, however, is an assistant of Papias, and handles noble materials in the grand style. On this occasion, however, he is building a statue out of a very queer mixture of materials.”
“Verus may very well call our new acquaintance a bird,” interrupted Balbilla, “for as we approached the screen behind which he is working he was whistling a tune with his lips, so pure and cheery, and loud, that it rang through the empty hall above all the noise of the workmen. A nightingale does not pipe more sweetly. We stood still to listen till the merry fellow, who had no idea that we were by, was silent again; and then hearing the architect’s voice, he called to him over the screen. ‘Now we must clap Urania’s head on; I saw it clearly in my mind and would have had it finished with a score of touches, but Papias said he had one in the workshop. I am curious to see what sort of a sugarplum face, turned out by the dozen, he will stick on my torso—which will please me, at any rate, for a couple of days. Find me a good model for the bust of the Sappho I am to restore. A thousand gadflies are buzzing in my brain—I am so tremendously excited! What I am planning now will come to something!’”
Balbilla, as she spoke the last words, tried to mimic a man’s deep voice, and seeing the Empress smile she went on eagerly.
“It all came out so fresh, from a heart full to bursting of happy vigorous creative joy, that it quite fired me, and we all went up to the screen and begged the sculptor to let us see his work.”
“And you found?” asked Sabina.
“He positively refused to let us into his retreat,” replied the praetor; “but Balbilla coaxed the permission out of him, and the tall young fellow seems to have really learnt something. The fall of the drapery that covers the Muse’s figure is perfectly thought out with reference to possibility—rich, broadly handled, and at the same time of surprising delicacy. Urania has drawn her mantle closely round her, as if to protect herself from the keen night-air while gazing at the stars. When he has finished his Muse, he is to repair some mutilated busts of women; he was fixing the head of a finished Berenice to-day, and I proposed to him to take Balbilla as the model for his Sappho.”
“A good idea” said the Empress. “If the bust is successful I will take him with me to Rome.”
“I will sit to him with pleasure,” said the girl. “The bright young fellow took my fancy.”
“And Balbilla his,” added the praetor’s wife; “he gazed at her as a marvel, and she promised him that, with your permission, she would place her face at his disposal for three hours to-morrow.”
“He begins with the head,” interposed Verus. “What a happy man is an artist such as he! He may turn about her head, or lay her peplum in folds without reproof or repulse, and to-day when we had to get past bogs of plaster, and lakes of wet paint, she scarcely picked up the hem of her dress, and never once allowed me—who would so willingly have supported her—to lift her over the worst places.”
Balbilla reddened and said angrily:
“Really Verus, in good earnest, I will not allow you to speak to me in that way, so now you know it once for all; I have so little liking for what is not clean that I find it quite easy to avoid it without assistance.”
“You are too severe,” interrupted the Empress with a hideous smile. “Do not you think Domitia Lucilla, that she ought to allow your husband to be of service to her?”
“If the Empress thinks it right and fitting,” replied the lady raising her shoulders, and with an expressive movement of her hands. Sabina quite took her meaning, and suppressing another yawn she said angrily:
“In these days we must be indulgent toward a husband who has chosen Ovid’s amatory poems as his faithful companion. What is the matter Titianus?”
While Balbilla had been relating her meeting with the sculptor Pollux, a chamberlain had brought in to the prefect an important letter, admitting of no delay. The state official had withdrawn to the farther side of the room with it, had broken the strong seal and had just finished reading it, when the Empress asked her question.
Nothing of what went on around her escaped Sabina’s little eyes, and she had observed that while the governor was considering the document addressed to him he had moved uneasily. It must contain something of importance.
“An urgent letter,” replied Titianus, “calls me home. I must take my leave, and I hope ere long to be able to communicate to you something agreeable.”
“What does that letter contain?”
“Important news from the provinces,” said Titianus.
“May I inquire what?”
“I grieve to say that I must answer in the negative. The Emperor expressly desired that this matter should be kept secret. Its settlement demands the promptest haste, and I am therefore unfortunately obliged to quit you immediately.”
Sabina returned the prefect’s parting salutations with icy coldness and immediately desired to be conducted to her private rooms to dress herself for supper.
Balbilla escorted her, and Florus betook himself to the “Olympian table,” the famous eating-house kept by Lycortas, of whom he had been told wonders by the epicures at Rome.
When Verus was alone with his wife he went up in a friendly manner and said:
“May I drive you home again?”
Domitia Lucilla had thrown herself on a couch, and covered her face with her hands, and she made no reply. “May I?” repeated the praetor. As his wife persisted in her silence, he went nearer to her, laid his hand on her slender fingers that concealed her face, and said:
“I believe you are angry with me!” She pushed away his hand, with a slight movement, and said: “Leave me.”
“Yes, unfortunately I must leave you. Business takes me into the city and I will—”
“You will let the young Alexandrians, with whom you revelled through the night, introduce you to new fair ones—I know it.”
“There are in fact women here of incredible charm,” replied Verus quite coolly. “White, brown, copper-colored, black—and all delightful in their way. I could never be tired of admiring them.”
“And your wife?” asked Lucilla, facing him, sternly. “My wife? yes, my fairest. Wife is a solemn title of honor and has nothing to do with the joys of life. How could I mention your name in the same hour with those of the poor children who help me to beguile an idle hour.”
Domitia Lucilla was used to such phrases, and yet on this occasion they gave her a pang. But she concealed it, and crossing her arms she said resolutely and with dignity:
“Go your way—through life with your Ovid, and your gods of love, but do not attempt to crush innocence under the wheels of your chariot.”
“Balbilla do you mean,” asked the praetor with a loud laugh. “She knows how to take care of herself and has too much spirit to let herself get entangled in erotics. The little son of Venus has nothing to say to two people who are such good friends as she and I are.”
“May I believe you?”
“My word for it, I ask nothing of her but a kind word,” cried he, frankly offering his hand to his wife. Lucilla only touched it lightly with her fingers and said:
“Send me back to Rome. I have an unutterable longing to see my children, particularly the boys.”
“It cannot be,” said Verus. “Not at present; but in a few weeks, I hope.”
“Why not sooner?”
“Do not ask me.”
“A mother may surely wish to know why she is separated from her baby in the cradle.”
“That cradle is at present in your mother’s house, and she is taking care of our little ones. Have patience, a little longer for that which I am striving after, for you, and for me, and not last, for our son, is so great, so stupendously great and difficult that it might well outweigh years of longing.”
Verus spoke the last words in a low tone, but with a dignity which characterized him only in decisive moments, but his wife, even before he had done speaking, clasped his right-hand in both of hers and said in a low frightened voice:
“You aim at the purple?” He nodded assent.
“That is what it means then!”
“What?”
“Sabina and you—”
“Not on that account only; she is hard and sharp to others, but to me she has shown nothing but kindness, ever since I was a boy.”
“She hates me.”
“Patience, Lucilla; patience! The day is coming when the daughter of Nigrinus, the wife of Caesar, and the former Empress—but I will not finish. I am, as you know, warmly attached to Sabina, and sincerely wish the Emperor a long life.”
“And he will adopt.”
“Hush!—he is thinking of it, and his wife wishes It.”
“Is it likely to happen soon?”
“Who can tell at this moment what Caesar may decide on in the very next hour. But probably his decision may be made on the thirtieth of December.”
“Your birthday.”
“He asked what day it was, and he is certainly casting my horoscope, for the night when my mother bore me—”
“The stars then are to seal our fate?”
“Not they alone. Hadrian must also be inclined to read them in my favor.”
“How can I be of use to you?”
“Show yourself what you really are in your intercourse with the Emperor”
“I thank you for those words—and I beg you do not provoke me any more. If it might yet be something more than a mere post of honor to be the wife of Verus, I would not ask for the new dignity of becoming wife to Caesar.”
“I will not go into the town to-day; I will stay with you. Now are you happy?”
“Yes, yes,” cried she, and she raised her arm to throw it round her husband’s neck, but he held her aside and whispered:
“That will do. The idyllic is out of place in the race for the purple.”
CHAPTER VIII
Titianus had ordered his charioteer to drive at once to Lochias. The road led past the prefect’s palace, his residence on the Bruchiom, and he paused there; for the letter which lay hidden in the folds of his toga, contained news, which, within a few hours, might put him under the necessity of not returning home till the following morning. Without allowing himself to be detained by the officials, subalterns, or lictors, who were awaiting his return to make communications, or to receive his orders, he went straight through the ante-room and the large public rooms for men, to find his wife in the women’s apartments which looked upon the garden. He met her at the door of her room, for she had heard his step approaching and came out to receive him.
“I was not mistaken,” said the matron with sincere pleasure. “How pleasant that you have been released so early to-day. I did not expect you till supper was over.”
“I have come only to go again,” replied Titianus, entering his wife’s room. “Have some bread brought to me and a cup of mixed wine; why—really! here stands all I want ready as if I had ordered it. You are right, I was with Sabina a shorter time than usual; but she exerted herself in that short time to utter as many sour words as if we had been talking for half a day. And in five minutes I must quit you again, till when?—the gods alone know when I shall return. It is hard even to speak the words, but all our trouble and care, and all poor Pontius’ zeal and pains-taking labor are in vain.”
As he spoke the prefect threw himself on a couch; his wife handed him the refreshment he had asked for, and said, as she passed her hand over his grey hair:
“Poor man! Has Hadrian then determined after all to inhabit the Caesareum?”
“No. Leave us, Syra—you shall see directly. Please read me Caesar’s letter once more. Here it is.” Julia unfolded the papyrus, which was of elegant quality, and began:
“Hadrian to his friend Titianus, the Governor of Egypt. The deepest secrecy—Hadrian greets Titianus, as he has so often done for years at the beginning of disagreeable business letters, and only with half his heart. But to-morrow he hopes to greet the dear friend of his youth, his prudent vicegerent, not merely with his whole soul, but with hand and tongue. And now to be more explicit, as follows: I come to-morrow morning, the fifteenth of December, towards evening, to Alexandria, with none but Antinous, the slave Mastor, and my private secretary, Phlegon. We land at Lochias, in the little harbor, and you will know my ship by a large silver star at the prow. If night should fall before I arrive there, three red lanterns at the end of the mast shall inform you of the friend that is approaching. I have sent home the learned and witty men whom you sent to meet me, in order to detain me, and gain time for the restoration of the old nest in which I had a fancy to roost with Minerva’s birds—which have not, I hope, all been driven out of it—in order that Sabina and her following may not lack entertainment, nor the famous gentlemen themselves be unnecessarily disturbed in their labors. I need them not. If perchance it was not you who sent them, I ask your pardon. An error in this matter would certainly involve some humiliation, for it is easier to explain what has happened than to foresee what is to come. Or is the reverse the truth? I will indemnify the learned men for their useless journey by disputing this question with them and their associates in the Museum. The rapid movement to which the philologer was prompted on my account will prolong his existence; he bristles with learning at the tip of every hair, and he sits still more than is good for him.
“We shall arrive in modest disguise and will sleep at Lochias; you know that I have rested more than once on the bare earth, and, if need be, can sleep as well on a mat as on a couch. My pillow follows at my heels—my big dog, which you know; and some little room, where I can meditate undisturbed on my designs for next year, can no doubt be found.
“I entreat you to keep my secret strictly. To none—man nor woman—and I beseech you as urgently as friend or Caesar ever besought a favor—let the least suspicion of my arrival be known. Nor must the smallest preparation betray whom it is you receive. I cannot command so dear a friend as Titianus, but I appeal to his heart to carry out my wishes.
“I rejoice to see you again; what delight I shall find in the whirl of confusion that I hope to find at Lochias. You shall take me to see the artists, who are, no doubt, swarming in the old castle, as the architect Claudius Venator from Rome, who is to assist Pontius with his advice. But this Pontius, who carried out such fine works for Herodes Atticus, the rich Sophist, met me at his house, and will certainly recognize me. Tell him, therefore, what I propose doing. He is a serious and trustworthy man, not a chatterbox or scatter-brained simpleton who loses his head. Thus you may take him into the secret, but not till my vessel is in sight. May all be well with you.”
“Well, what do you say to that?” asked Titianus, taking the letter from his wife’s hand. “Is it not more than vexatious—our work was going on so splendidly.”
“But,” said Julia thoughtfully and with a meaning smile. “Perhaps it might not have been finished in time. As matters now stand it need not be complete, and Hadrian will see the good intention all the same. I am glad about the letter, for it takes a great responsibility off your otherwise overloaded shoulders.”
“You always see the right side,” cried the prefect. “It is well that I came home, for I can await Caesar with a much lighter heart. Let me lock up the letter, and then farewell. This parting is for some hours from you, and from all peace for many days.”
Titianus gave her his hand. She held it firmly and said:
“Before you go I must confess to you that I am very proud.”
“You have every right to be.”
“But you have not said a word to me about keeping silence.”
“Because you have kept other tests—still, to be sure, you are a woman, and a very handsome one besides.”
“An old grandmother, with grey hair!”
“And still more upright and more charming than a thousand of the most admired younger beauties.”
“You are trying to convert my pride into vanity, in my old age.”
“No, no! I was only looking at you with an examining eye, as our talk led me to do, and I remembered that Sabina had lamented that handsome Julia was not looking well. But where is there another woman of your age with such a carriage, such unwrinkled features, so clear a brow, such deep kind eyes, such beautifully-polished arms—”
“Be quiet,” exclaimed his wife. “You make me blush.”
“And may I not be proud that a grandmother, who is a Roman, as my wife is, can find it so easy to blush? You are quite different from other women.”
“Because you are different from other men.”
“You are a flatterer; since all our children have left us, it is as if we were newly married again.”
“Ah! the apple of discord is removed.”
“It is always over what he loves best that man is most prompt to be jealous. But now, once more, farewell.”
Titianus kissed his wife’s forehead and hurried towards the door; Julia called him back and said:
“One thing at any rate we can do for Caesar. I send food every day down to the architect at Lochias, and to-day there shall be three times the quantity.”
“Good; do so.”
“Farewell, then.”
“And we shall meet again, when it shall please the gods and the Emperor.”
…When the prefect reached the appointed spot, no vessel with a silver star was to be seen.
The sun went down and no ship with three red lanterns was visible.
The harbor-master, into whose house Titianus went, was told that he expected a great architect from Rome, who was to assist Pontius with his counsel in the works at Lochias, and he thought it quite intelligible that the governor should do a strange artist the honor of coming to meet him; for the whole city was well aware of the incredible haste and the lavish outlay of means that were being given to the restoration of the ancient palace of the Ptolemies as a residence for the Emperor.
While he was waiting, Titianus remembered the young sculptor Pollux, whose acquaintance he had made, and his mother in the pretty little gate-house. Well disposed towards them as he felt, he sent at once to old Doris, desiring her not to retire to rest early that evening, since he, the prefect, would be going late to Lochias.
“Tell her, too, as from yourself and not from me,” Titianus instructed the messenger, “that I may very likely look in upon her. She may light up her little room and keep it in order.”
No one at Lochias had the slightest suspicion of the honor which awaited the old palace.
After Verus had quitted it with his wife and Balbilla, and when he had again been at work for about an hour the sculptor Pollux came out of his nook, stretching himself, and called out to Pontius, who was standing on a scaffold:
“I must either rest or begin upon something new. One cures me of fatigue as much as the other. Do you find it so?”
“Yes, just as you do,” replied the architect, as he continued to direct the work of the slave-masons, who were fixing a new Corinthian capital in the place of an old one which had been broken.
“Do not disturb yourself,” Pollux cried up to him. “I only request you to tell my master Papias when he comes here with Gabinius, the dealer in antiquities, that he will find me at the rotunda that you inspected with me yesterday. I am going to put the head on to the Berenice; my apprentice must long since have completed his preparations; but the rascal came into the world with two left-hands, and as he squints with one eye everything that is straight looks crooked to him, and—according to the law of optics—the oblique looks straight. At any rate, he drove the peg which is to support the new head askew into the neck, and as no historian has recorded that Berenice ever had her neck on one side, like the old color-grinder there, I must see to its being straight myself. In about half an hour, as I calculate, the worthy Queen will no longer be one of the headless women.”
“Where did you get the new head?” asked Pontius. “From the secret archives of my memory,” replied Pollux. “Have you seen it?”
“Yes.”
“And do you like it?”
“Very much.”
“Then it is worthy to live,” sang the sculptor, and, as he quitted the hall, he waved his left-hand to the architect, and with his right-hand stuck a pink, which he had picked in the morning, behind his ear.
At the rotunda his pupil had done his business better than his master could have expected, but Pollux was by no means satisfied with his own arrangements. His work, like several others standing on the same side of the platform, turned its back on the steward’s balcony, and the only reason why he had parted with the portrait of Selene’s mother, of which he was so fond, was that his playfellow might gaze at the face whenever she chose. He found, however, to his satisfaction, that the busts were held in their places on their tall pedestals only by their own weight, and he then resolved to alter the historical order of the portrait-heads by changing their places, and to let the famous Cleopatra turn her back upon the palace, so that his favorite bust might look towards it.