All legislation which has stood the test of time has flowed from the

divinely-inspired fountain of natural justice, illuminated by her

wisdom, corrected by her experience, interpreted by her theology

and philosophy. All tyranny, injustice, force, cruelty, violence,

and oppression follow as the result of violation of the organic law

as interpreted by the church, or from systems of legislation in

opposition to, or abrogation of, her eternal principles.

While immunity from temporal suffering is nowhere promised, it is

nevertheless true that the greater portion of evils and sorrows are

capable of prevention or relief.

Wealth can be deprived of its satiety, poverty of its sting, labor of

its pain, ease of its slothfulness, learning of its pride, power of

its arrogance, ignorance of its stupidity.

But though we expect no natural Utopia or earthly paradise, we are no

less bound to oppose and correct vices, sorrows, evils, dangers, and

oppressions, as they spring, ever fierce and relentless, with their

countless heads, whether personal, social, national, or legislative.

The Catholic armed with his vote becomes the champion of faith, law,

order, social and political morality, and Christian civilization, no

less--in fact, a greater degree, for our present enemies are more

dangerous--than his ancestor who hung a wallet over his leathern

jerkin, and, shouldering his halberd, followed the lord of the manor

to Palestine; than he who aided the Catholic Ferdinand and Isabella

to drive the Moor from the soil of Christian Spain, or, under John

Sobieski, rolled back the tide of Mohammedan invasion from the

European shores of the Mediterranean.

He goes forth furnished with this weapon, which, faithfully and

honorably employed, must become invincible, arrest the swollen

current of corruption, crime, and lawlessness which threatens to

sweep away religion, morality, and liberty, insure the preëminence

of law, order, and republican institutions, preserve and perfect the

results of material and natural science, put an end to poverty in

its abject and hopeless forms, and banish suffering from unrelieved

want, and develop and complete a system of jurisprudence which shall

sustain what the world has not yet seen, a pure republic of equal

rights, exact justice, and assured temporal prosperity, presided

over, influenced, and informed by true religion.

The great and undeniably wonderful and valuable fruits of human

genius and materialistic science, may be utilized to meet the ends

of ideal justice, and true individual and national prosperity and

happiness.

With the means of instant intelligent communication and rapid

transportation, it is not an impossibility to hope that the head of

the church may again become the acknowledged head of the reunited

family of Christian nations; the arbiter and judge between princes

and peoples, between government and government, the exponent of the

supreme justice and highest law, in all important questions affecting

the rights, the interests, and the welfare of communities and

individuals.

Under such a system, force would give place to reason; the nations

would learn war no more, and a general disarmament could be safely

imposed. The door of the temple of the demon god of war, which has

stood open since Cain imbrued his fratricidal hands in the blood of

Abel, would be closed for ever.

"Yea, truth and justice then,

Will down return to men,

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down-steering,

And heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall."

Although we are far from expecting a result grand, glorious, and

wonderful, realizing in the highest degree the promise made to the

human race if faithful to the object of their creation, still we do

not hesitate to assert that it is within the power of the ballot,

wielded by Catholic hands and directed by Catholic conscience, to

accomplish as much and more.

It is no more than the church has a right to expect from her

subjects; it is no more than they owe her and themselves; it would be

a triumph worthy of the nineteenth century, and worthy of a fallen

race deemed worthy to be redeemed by the blood of a God.

The two great questions of marriage and education present themselves

in a discussion of the relations which the Catholic sustains toward

civil society, as elements of prime and indispensable importance.

There can be no permanent Christian society, no civilized and

enduring government, which are not perpetuated by Catholic marriage,

elevated, instructed, and disciplined by Catholic education. The

great civilizations which have arisen and flourished independently,

vitalized by the tradition of primitive revelation, are wanting

or have forfeited the characteristics of true civilization. Many

have perished; others have reached their term, and the hour of

their destruction is at hand. The ancient and most remarkable

social, civil, and religious polity of India is withering under the

remorseless touch of English rule, and China is destined to succumb

to steam, machinery, railroads, and sewing-machines.

Nothing but the pure gold of Catholicity can withstand the material

flame which burns brightest and hottest in the nineteenth century,

and it may only survive stripped of every earthly and human quality,

attribute, and advantage.

It is not in our power at this time to follow the line of reflection

suggested by the great unchristian and anti-christian civilizations,

the Indian, the Persian, the Chinese, and the Mohammedan; but we must

confine ourselves to the proposition which their history, brilliant,

startling, and splendid though it be, and, to superficial human

views, does not in any degree invalidate, that true civilization

rests for its foundation upon Catholic marriage and Catholic

education.

In contradistinction from suffrage, which is an acquired privilege,

marriage is a _natural_ right. Its regulation and control belong

exclusively to the church, and are particularly her care and

prerogative under the supernatural order.

Marriage is the sacrament of nature, as well as one of grace, and

the church insists upon her rightful control, because she depends

upon this sacrament not only for perpetuity on earth, but for her

eternal representation. She regulates the conditions of marriage

and witnesses the contract in whose fulfilment she has such a vital

interest, and she becomes the arbiter between the contracting parties

in the subsequent stages of their career. She claims its offspring

at their birth, and immediately impresses upon them the seal of her

proprietorship in baptism; she accompanies them throughout their

lives, and dismisses them with unction and benediction; she follows

them into the unseen world, and does not relax her grasp till they

attain their fruition and become in turn protectors and benefactors

of the mother who has given them both natural and supernatural birth.

Marriage is the crystal fountain on earth whence flows the perennial

living stream which fertilizes and makes glad the plains of heaven.

The Catholic view, or Christian idea of marriage, implies by

necessity the Catholic view of all the relations and obligations

growing out of it: the education of the young, the custody of

foundlings and orphans, and all measures of correction and

reformation applicable to youthful offenders and disturbers of the

peace of society.

The same view would consign to her care the permanent infants of

society, the idiotic, those defective in important organs or senses,

the insane, the criminal, the sick poor, and the helpless and

wretched of every class. The church is capable, through her orders

and congregations of men and women, of undertaking these trusts.

There is in this work occupation for all who have not definite

vocations, and for the aid and assistance of those who have. It is

a species of labor which has never been efficiently and completely

performed, and can only be accomplished by those who undertake

it under the direction of religion from the motive of heroic and

supernatural charity. No compensation, no hope of human reward or

praise, can procure such service, tenderness, and succor as that

which the unpaid and nameless religious bestows upon the poor and

nameless cast-away, for the sake of the humanity of Christ.

The function of education is most closely connected with the

authority claimed and exercised over marriage. The custodian of the

tree has certainly the right to the fruit of the tree, and to protect

it from wayfarers and robbers.

The control and prevention of poverty is an example of the profound

science of political economy which is manifested by the church. No

state can flourish where hopeless poverty becomes an institution.

A godless system of education, or, what is the same thing, an

uncatholic system, is the more refined and elegant but not less

certain method of modern times of offering our children to Moloch,

and causing our sons to pass through the fire. The right which

the church exerts over education does not in any manner impair

or contravene the legitimate authority of parents; but, on the

contrary, strengthens and supports it, since it is an assertion of

the principle of authority and the final obligations toward God due

from both parents and children. It asserts the rights of parents and

the right which children have to Christian education. Every human

creature born into the world has the inalienable right of knowing and

obeying the truth, and seeking to attain its own eternal happiness.

While parents have rights over their children, children, in turn,

have rights as respects their parents, and the chief of these is

Christian education.

The church asserts and defends these principles, and she flatly

contradicts the assumption on the part of the state of the

prerogative of education, and determinedly opposes the effort to

bring up the youth of the country for purely secular and temporal

purposes. The state is in its nature godless and material, and,

in accordance with its nature, seeks only material ends. No state

or nation as such has a supernatural destiny; its rewards and

punishments are temporary and finite, and its views, policy, and

conduct short-sighted, corrupt, and selfish. While the state has

rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the superior

authority, and that authority can only be expressed through the

church, that is, through the organic law infallibly announced and

unchangeably asserted, regardless of temporal consequences. The

church yields, however, to temporal conditions as far as she can

without departing from her organic principle. She resembles a mighty

tree tossed by the winds, and apparently yielding to the tempest from

whatever quarter it comes, but never giving up its roots, firmly

fixed in the ground, and stretching their fibres far out under the

surface of things. If she could be moved from her position, torn up

by the roots, rifted from her organic basis on the rock of Peter,

she would cease to be the church, become a human and fallible

institution, and entitled to no more consideration than any other

human organization or voluntary society. The hostile and opposing

forces recognize distinctly the value and importance to us of the

two fundamental institutions, marriage and education. Their efforts

are particularly directed at the present time, and in this country,

to corrupt and undermine the one and usurp complete control over the

other. The attitude of the church on these questions is the cause

of nearly all the opposition she encounters, of the secret and open

attacks she suffers, and of most of the great persecutions she has

experienced. She is attacked in respect to marriage by sensuality,

and in regard to education by the arrogance of the state, and the

jealousy which human power always manifests of the divine authority.

The order, regularity, charity, and chastity required in marriage by

the church--and of which she is the emblem--are repudiated by the

world.

This repudiation is manifested by sensuality in its protean forms,

from platonic love and sentimental and religious melancholy,

all through the descending scale of folly, vice, and crime to

the lowest depths, whither the mind refuses to follow and where

demons veil their faces, and by legislation the result of this

opposition, such as is expressed in the laxity of divorce laws, and

a public sentiment which sanctions and countenances divorce and the

marriage of divorced parties. It is more or less boldly or covertly

expressed in almost the whole range of anti-catholic and uncatholic

literature, and in the increasing license of conversation, manners,

and amusements. Marriage has lost its dignity and sanctity by being

divested of its sacramental character, and its manifest and natural

duties and obligations are shunned, despised, and disregarded by

a large proportion of those living in outward regard for decorum

and morality. The spirit of the nineteenth century, unchastened by

Catholicity, by whatever sounding title it may be called--progress,

liberty, emancipation of the intellect, dignity of the race,

independence of science--is a spirit of gross, cruel, and irrational

sensuality, which tends directly and inevitably toward ignorance,

bondage, anarchy, and barbarism, and consequent stupidity.

Stupidity may, perhaps, be considered the lowest hell of a creature

originally constituted _active_ and _intellectual_.

It is directly against these elements, whose consequences she

distinctly foresees, that the church opposes her laws of marriage,

and the absolute supernatural chastity of her priests and religious.

It is not that she forbids marriage, as she is sometimes accused,

that she offers to certain persons the privilege of electing a

superior state and beginning on earth the life of heaven, but in

order to provide herself with angels and ministers of grace to do her

will, accomplish her work, perform her innumerable acts of spiritual

and corporeal mercy, and be literally the godfathers and godmothers

to the orphaned human race, while they obtain for themselves and

others countless riches of merit. The spirit which we reprobate

substitutes lust for love, philanthropy for charity. By subtracting

charity from marriage, it virtually divorces the married, and leads

directly to the destruction of the species. The children whom it

permits to survive it educates for material and temporal objects

alone, and the most noble destiny it has to offer is death on the

field of battle; its highest reward, a short-lived, temporal honor,

and a brief posthumous reputation. The pursuits of honor, of science,

literature and art, are noble, and in some degree satisfying. They

are, when true and real, Catholic in their nature, and the growth

of Catholic soil. Whenever--as in pre-Christian times--they become

detached from original revelation, or, in modern, divorced from or

hostile to Catholic inspiration, they incline toward cruelty, false

science or incomplete science, and in literature and art to decay.

The inevitable tendency of incomplete science, that is, imperfect

from a radical defect, like a defective formula in mathematics, is

to error, obscurity, and confusion. The absence of the supernatural

element is the radical defect in all uncatholic natural and

metaphysical science; and every superstructure erected upon it,

however splendid in appearance, is built upon the sand.

The reason why civil marriage, state religion and education, natural

society, and material science do not become more rapidly corrupt,

and manifest more speedily their inherent defects, is on account of

the vast amount of latent Catholicity which they retain, and without

which they could not survive a single day.

It is the tendency of the natural to consume the supernatural, in its

efforts to attain its destiny, and, unless fed by new infusions of

the divine element, to sink lower and lower toward the abyss.

It is the function of the supernatural society, that is, the church

through her ministry and sacraments, to furnish continual supplies of

this divine element, to antagonize the decomposition which followed

close upon the steps of the terrible twin brethren, sin and death,

when they entered the world; renew the almost exhausted life of the

soul, and enable it to rise higher and higher, till it is absorbed

once more into the source of life eternal, from whence it sprang.

The more respectable and conservative of the uncatholic institutions,

which retain most of the latent Catholicity not yet expended in three

centuries of separation from the parent fountain, preserve many

Catholic ideas, customs, and forms of speech and action.

Such publications as the _New-Englander_, the _Princeton_,

_Mercersburg_, and _North British Reviews_, advocate to a great

extent the Christian doctrines of marriage and education, and the

superiority of religion in all temporal and secular affairs, and

deprecate, without the power to remedy or arrest, the evils which

they acknowledge to exist.

The advanced portion of the opposing forces, they who have expended

their latent Catholicity, denied the faith and impugned the truth,

and sunk to the lowest level compatible with life, do not seek

to defend their position by any hollow appeals to religion or

conscience, but boldly deny all authority excepting their own

depraved wills.

Red-republicanism, Fourierism, communism, free love, Mormonism, the

Oneida community, the false sciences of mesmerism and phrenology,

spiritism and sentimental philanthropy, are exemplary expressions

of the forms which sensuality and the denial of authority assume in

their retrograde metamorphoses.

The woman's rights movement is the most subtle, dangerous, and

treacherous of the later manifestations of the evil spirit of the

nineteenth century.

It is more threatening to the public peace than the abolition

agitation was at its commencement, and is fostered and fomented by

the same or kindred influences, and under some one or other of its

forms and phases comprehends every falsehood, error, delusion, and

heresy, from the original lie uttered in Eden to the last invented

and promulgated by the Satanic press. It has a certain, irresistible

tendency to vitiate suffrage, degrade legislation, disturb society,

abolish religion, superinduce crime, disease, insanity, idiocy,

physical decay, deformity, suicide and early death, abrogate

matrimony and extinguish the race.

Every count in this terrible charge is capable of being sustained

by the most abundant evidence in history, analogy, facts of daily

experience, the declarations of religion, and evidences of the legal

and medical sciences.

It is absolutely anti-catholic and unchristian, and could not exist,

much less flourish, in an age not far gone on the road to ruin.

It is the Catholic Church, and she alone, which guarantees

the rights, freedom, and honor of women. She raises them to a

participation in her ministry and apostleship, and pledges herself

and all the power of heaven to the protection of the humblest as well

as the most exalted of the sex, in her rights and dignity as woman,

wife, and mother. She has suffered persecution and dismemberment

rather than yield an iota of the vested rights of helpless woman; she

has decreed the immaculate conception, the most perfect testimony of

the exalted function of maternity and the crowning human glory of

the sex, and raised one of their number to be queen of heaven, the

crowning superhuman glory.

All that woman can claim is accorded to her by the church, and

asserted as her indefeasible right. The only security for woman, her

only refuge from the artifice of men and the undeniable oppression

of society, is in the church, and the legislation deduced from the

original organic law; in the inviolability of the marriage contract,

and the sacramental character of marriage.

The difficult and vexed question of mixed education obtrudes itself

upon our attention at every step of a discussion like the one in

which we are engaged. It is not our purpose to enter upon its details

at present. The chief pastors in solemn council assembled will

undoubtedly decide upon the line of conduct most expedient for us to

follow. While asserting the absolute dependence of natural science

for its truth and perpetuity upon divine illumination, we do not

intend to disparage human learning and the pursuits of philosophy

and science. Philosophy on the intellectual and natural sciences is

the most elevating and ennobling of human employments. As truth is

simple in its nature and essence, every truth discovered, learned,

and elaborated tends to draw the soul toward God. There is and can be

no quarrel or discrepancy between revelation and science. The truths

of revelation and the truths of science tend infallibly toward mutual

illustration and final unity. It is only the effect of false science

or imperfect science to divert the mind from God, the origin of

truth, or truth itself, and enter upon the path which leads to error,

doubt, ignorance, and darkness.

The supremacy asserted for the church in matters of education

implies the additional and cognate function of the censorship of

ideas, and the right to examine and approve or disapprove all

books, publications, writings, and utterances intended for public

instruction, enlightenment, or entertainment, and the supervision of

places of amusement.

This is the principle upon which the church has acted in handing over

to the civil authority for punishment _criminals in the order of

ideas_.

It is the principle upon which every civilized government acts in

emergencies, and it was asserted rigorously and unsparingly North and

South during the recent revolution. It is the principle upon which

a father would act in expelling summarily and ignominiously from

his house a person detected in corrupting the minds, manners, and

morals of his children. It is in fact nothing more than the principle

of self-preservation, which is the first law of nature. It is not

necessary to raise the question whether this principle has been

abused by individuals for mistaken or corrupt objects. It is safe to

say that it has been. The admission in no way invalidates the right

and obligation involved. There are few good things which men have not

abused.

Crimes, cruelties, oppressions and persecutions (especially in the

order of ideas) are laid at the door of the Catholic Church, which

are the fruit of human passion, avarice, ambition, and resentment,

and that strange and devilish infatuation of cruelty which sometimes

seizes upon a whole community, and which is analogous to the

destructive and suicidal insanities of individuals. The church,

however, in her official and organic character, has never abused this

principle or any other, whether of discipline or policy. These moral

and political catastrophes are wholly independent of Catholicity, are

in direct violation of religion, and in disobedience to the commands

and entreaties of the church.

Government and legislation informed, directed, and guided by Catholic

justice is the most humane, benignant, equal, just, merciful,

and forbearing of any that can possibly exist, and the temporal

government of the head of the church is to-day the best in the world.

These subjects bring us back to the question of suffrage, and to the

Catholic as voter. It is necessary that we should have just laws,

primarily and immediately in regard to education and marriage, and

that they should have the sanction of sound public opinion, without

which the best laws are inoperative.

These laws must grow out of the Catholic conscience of the community,

if they are to grow at all.

The labor of strengthening these foundations of society belongs

to the Catholic voter, and to him we must look for future safety,

peace, and permanence. Every principle of justice is assailed, every

bulwark is undermined.

Social eminence, literary ability, exalted political station, and

so-called religion combine to give public sanction to unblushing and

monstrous adultery, and brand the scarlet letter upon a soul already

crimson with guilt as it trembles on the verge of eternity.

Every species and form of vice, crime, and corruption are paraded

and presented under disguises, more or less specious or flimsy, of

science, literature, religion, or art.

The old are divested of gravity and reserve, and the young have lost

the freshness, the sweetness, the innocence, the candor, and the

bloom which should belong to youth.

The burlesque is invoked with horrid incantation to degrade the

reason, paralyze the understanding, and brutalize the imagination,

and oriental lasciviousness to apply the torch of passion to the

intellectual and moral ruins.

Current literature is penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness,

from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and flippant daily

newspaper, and the weekly and monthly publications are mostly heathen

or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand, stoical,

cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or, on the other, empty

and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver to

caricature the institutions and offices of our religion, and others

to exhibit the grossest forms of vice and the most distressing scenes

of crime and suffering.

The illustrated press has become to us what the amphitheatre was to

the Romans when men were slain, women were outraged, and Christians

given to the lions to please a degenerate populace.

It is obvious, then, if what we have said be true, that there is a

great work for the Catholic voter to perform.

The Constitution and Declaration of Independence guarantee life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Catholic values his life

that he may devote it to the service of the church, and, if required,

offer it for her safety and honor; liberty, to be and remain

Catholic, enjoy freedom in the exercise of his religion, and transmit

this priceless inheritance unimpaired to his descendants; the pursuit

of happiness, that he may attain the happiness of heaven!

The Catholic voter meditates no invasion of vested rights. The

constitution and government of the United States have the approval of

the holy see. The Catholic is satisfied with the laws of his country,

and only dissatisfied with local legislation, which contravenes the

implied pledges of the constitution and the common law, based upon

the canon law.

He demands nothing that natural justice and the legitimate

interpretation of the constitution do not guarantee him. Freedom in

religion entitles him to protection against open and secret attacks

upon what he holds most dear, under the guise of state education, and

which are invariably made in every system of uncatholic or infidel

education. The great majority of English-speaking Catholics have had

a personal and national experience of the bitter fruit of systems of

education divorced from the control of the church, and in the French

revolution they recognize the results of infidel science, literature,

and sentiment practically applied to the reformation of society.

France gave the world a terrible illustration of the violent, frantic

creed and futile efforts which humanity makes when it would be

sufficient for itself and become its own redeemer. France almost

expired. Her Catholicity alone saved her. The Goths and Vandals

entered Paris, but were compelled to retire. They entered ancient

Rome, and remained.

With these truths, lessons, and experiences before his mind, the

Catholic anxiously considers the subject of public education, and is

resolved when the question is adjudicated to sustain the decision

of the church. If he cannot peacefully enact legitimate, equal, and

just regulations, he will consent to bear, as he has done before,

a double burden; but he, for his part, will make sure that his

children are taught to discriminate between the specious and false

assertions which are put forth as history and history itself, between

human philanthropy and divine charity, between communism and the

communion of saints, between spiritism and those things which are

spiritual, between pure, noble, and lovely sentiments and a rotting

sentimentalism, between the false and the true, injustice and

justice, the human and the divine.

By an extraordinary example of divine justice, and the operation of

the law of compensation, the men and their descendants who uprooted

Catholicity in England and Ireland; who extinguished, as far as they

were able, Catholic literature and tradition; who destroyed the

venerable seats of learning and charity, sacked the monasteries and

despoiled the abbeys, were compelled to prepare a home for Catholics,

and establish a political order most acceptable to them, and capable

under Catholic auspices of attaining the highest degree of temporal

happiness and prosperity.

The men who composed the Protector's famous Ironsides levelled the

New England forests and subdued the savage, and now in every city,

village, and hamlet of this fair land the cross which they tore

down again rises aloft, the first to kindle in the saluting beams

of the morning sun, the last to detain his parting lingering rays,

and thousands of happy, prosperous people the descendants of those

whom Cromwell's dragoons trampled under their bloody hoofs, assemble

around that altar and assist at that mass which he could not abide.

The grim old regicide who sleeps his last sleep on the green behind

Centre church, in New Haven, if he could rise from his grave some

pleasant Sunday morning, would believe that time and old ocean had

both been rolled away, and that he was in merry, happy Catholic

England of five hundred years ago.

The past has been vindicated; wrongs have been righted.

The uncompromising defence of the rights of Queen Catharine is

justified. The Goddess of Reason, in the person of a prostitute,

enthroned on the high altar of Notre Dame, has given place to a

Catholic lady, wife, mother, and queen, who reigns enthroned in the

hearts of her people, the type of every royal, womanly, and Christian

virtue.

Absolute Cæsarism itself, touched by Catholic justice, has

voluntarily conceded constitutional government, and the successor

of him who was both the child and the victim of the revolution, who

dragged Pius VII. from the chair of Peter to a French prison, upholds

the chief of the apostles as he sits to-day enthroned prince and

patriarch and apostle of the assembled and united episcopate of the

world.

It is time for Catholics to cease complaining. The church is

vindicated. They are vindicated. Reason, science, and religion are

united in a species of intellectual trinity, capable of presiding

over and directing all human, temporal, and eternal destinies. All

that remains is for the individual Catholic, the Catholic voter,

to play well his part in the drama whose acts are realities, whose

curtain will never fall, and where the only change of scene will be

when the vault of the heavens parts in twain and the splendor of the

eternal world bursts upon his enraptured vision.

It is in the power of the Catholic voter of the nineteenth century

to achieve a consummation such as perhaps saints and prophets have

dreamed, but never seen. It is your part, Catholic freemen and

electors, to perpetuate the latest and most perfect effort in the

human science of government--the constitution of our glorious and

beloved country; to check the current of corruption in literature,

manners, and politics.

It is in your power to arrest the progress of demoralizing and

disintegrating legislation on the subject of marriage and suffrage,

and to provide the means for the permanent endowment of colleges,

seminaries, and universities. It is in your power to elect able,

honest, and virtuous men to office, and to reunite the principles of

government with the principles of religion.

Will you respond to the offer which is made you in this country

and the nineteenth century, and perfect and complete what may not

unlikely be the last opportunity for achieving temporal prosperity in

harmony with Catholic justice?

DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING

THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.

CHAPTER XII.

A short silence followed the concurring exclamations of Thellus and

our hero, recorded in the last chapter; and then the lanista said,

"Before I leave you, I will speak one word which came of the chance

of uttering while I brought you that letter, but which I would not

have pronounced had I found you to be a person of a different sort.

You are really Tiberius's prisoner, remember, although it is to

Velleius Paterculus you have given your parole. I know, by personal

experience and much observation, the men and the things of which you,

on the other hand, can have only a suspicion. Now, I conjecture, it

is hardly for your own sake that you are in custody. Beware of what

may happen to those dear to you; and as they have given no parole,

send them to some place of safety, some secret place. There is no

place safe in itself in the known world. Roman liberty is no more;

secrecy is the sole safety remaining. _Vale_."

With these words the lanista departed, leaving our young friend

buried in thought. As he left the court of the impluvium to seek

his mother, he remarked that Claudius had returned thither, and was

occupied in watering some flowers in pots at the opposite angle. "I

wonder," thought he, "can that fellow have overheard Thellus?"

Other and more important matters, however, were destined to invite

his attention. We have said enough to justify us in passing over

with a few words every interval void of more than ordinary daily

occurrences of the age and land. What has been related and described

will sufficiently enable a reader of intelligence to realize the

sort of life which lay before Paulus, his mother, and Agatha during

the next few days passed by them together at the inn of the Hundreth

Milestone.

Of course, Paulus detailed to his mother what he had observed or

heard, especially Thellus's warning. Further, he propounded thereon

his own conclusions. The family thought it well to summon Crispina

and Crispus to a council; and it was finally resolved that Aglais

should at once write to her brother-in-law, Marcus Æmilius Lepidus,

the ex-triumvir, and ask a temporary home under his roof for herself

and Agatha, with their female slave Melena. Old Philip and Paulus

could remain at the inn for some time longer. Aglais, Paulus, and

the worthy couple who kept the inn consulted together, carrying

their conferences rather far into the night, when the business of

the hostelry was over, upon the question what would be the best

course to pursue, should the triumvir, from timidity or any other

motive, refuse shelter to his brother's widow and child? During these

conferences Agatha and Benigna went to sit apart, each engaged in

some kind of needle-work.

It did not seem to the little council probable that Lepidus would

refuse the request submitted to him, and if he acceded to it,

Crispina assured Aglais that the castle of Lepidus at Monte Circello,

covering both the summit and the base of a cliff upon the edge of

the sea, was sufficiently capacious, intricate, and labyrinthine to

conceal a good part of a Roman legion in complete security.

Moreover, it had escapes both by land and by water; nor could any

one approach it without being visible to the inmates for miles.

"Considering," reasoned Crispina, "that there is no pretext for

ostensibly demanding the surrender of the ladies, who have not

committed any offence, and are not, or at all events are not supposed

to be, under any supervision, this retreat will afford all the

security that can be desired. But Master Paulus must never go near

you when once you leave this roof."

Aglais admitted the wisdom of the suggestion. A letter, a simple,

elegant, and affecting composition, was written by her, and intrusted

to Crispus for transmission. However, as it was the unanimous

opinion of all concerned that the family ought not to be detected in

any communications with Lepidus, or even suspected of any, it was

necessary for Crispus to observe great caution in forwarding the

document. Several days, therefore, passed away before an opportunity

was presented of sending a person who would neither be observed

in going, nor missed when gone, and who could at the same time be

implicitly trusted; none but old Philip could be found.

Crispus had been on the point of employing Claudius for the purpose,

when Crispina resolutely stopped him. "I have a high opinion of that

youth," said she, "or I would not consent that Benigna should marry

him; but at present he is a slave, and a slave of the very person

against whom we are guarding. Moreover, Claudius is young and very

timid; he has his way to make, and all his hopes are dependent on

this tyr--I mean the prince. I do not wish even Benigna to know any

thing about the present business. The more honest any young people

are, the more they betray themselves, if cross-questioned about

matters which they know, but have been told to conceal. If they know

nothing, why, they can tell nothing, and moreover none can punish or

blame them for not telling.

"A silent tongue, husband, like mine, and a simple heart like yours,

make safe necks. There, go about your business."

During the delay and suspense which necessarily followed, Paulus

fished, and took long walks through that beautiful country, many

aspects of which, already described by us, as they then were, have

for ever disappeared. He used to take with him something to eat in

the middle of the day, but always returned toward evening in time to

join the last light repast of his mother and sister. Each evening saw

them reassembled. Four tall, exquisitely tapering poles, springing

from firm pedestals, supported four little scallop-shaped lamps at

the four corners of their table. The supper was often enriched by

Paulus with some delicious fresh-water fish of his own catching.

Benigna waited upon them, and, being invariably engaged by Agatha in

lively conversation, amused and interested the circle by her mingled

simplicity, good feeling, and cleverness. After supper, Agatha would

insist that Benigna should stay with them awhile, and they either all

strolled through the garden, whence perfumes strong as incense rose

in the dewy air, or they sat conversing in the bower which overlooked

it. Then after a while Crispina would ascend the garden-stairs to

their landing; and while she inquired how they all were, and told

them any news she might have gathered, Benigna would steal silently

down to say good-night, as Agatha declared, to some shadowy figure

who was dimly discernible standing not far away among the myrtles,

and apparently contemplating the starry heavens. Such was their quiet

life, such the tenor of those fleeting days.

One evening--the sweet evening of a magnificent autumn day--Paulus

was returning across the country, with a rod and line, from a distant

excursion upon the banks of the Liris. The spot which he had chosen

that day for fishing was a deep, clear, silent pool, formed by a

bend of the river. A clump of shadowy chestnuts and hornbeam grew

nigh, and the water was pierced by the deep reflections of a row of

stately poplars, which mounted guard upon its margin. There seated,

his back supported against one of the trees, watching the float of

his line as it quivered upon the surface of the beautiful stream,

he heard no sound but the ripple of the little waves lapping on

the reeds, the twittering of birds, and the hum of insects. There,

with a mind attuned by the peaceful beauties of the solitary scene,

he had traversed a thousand considerations. He thought of the many

characters with whom he had so suddenly been brought into more or

less intercourse or contact. He thought much of Thellus, and of

his poor Alba, so cruelly sacrificed. He was puzzled by Claudius.

He mused about Sejanus, about Tiberius, about Velleius Paterculus,

about the two beautiful ladies in the litters; he thought of the

third gold-looking palanquin and its pallid occupant; of the haughty

and violent, yet, as it seemed, servile patrician and senator, who

had attempted suddenly to kill him, out of zeal for Cæsar; of the

singular reverse which had awaited the attempt; of Queen Berenice,

and Herod Agrippa, and Herodias; of the various unexpected incidents

and circumstances which had followed. He thought of his uncle

Lepidus; of the fate, whatever it might be, now to attend his mother,

his sister, and himself. He revolved the means of establishing his

rights and his claims. Ought he at once to employ some able orator

and advocate, and to appeal to the tribunals of justice? Should he

rather seek a hearing from the emperor in person, and, if so, how was

this to be managed?

From recollections and calculations, the spirit of his pastime and

the genius of the place bore him away and lured him into the realm

of day-dreams, vague and far-wandering! Up-stream, about a mile from

where he was sitting, towered high a splendid mansion. On its roof

glittered its company of gilt and colored statues, conversing and

acting above the top of a wood.

In that mansion his forefathers had lived.

On one of the streams lay ancient Latium, where he sat, teeming with

traditions--a monster or a demigod in every tree, rock, and river;

the cradle of the Roman race, the seed and germ of outspreading

conquest and universal empire. On the opposite banks was unrolled,

far to the south, the Campanian landscape, where Hannibal, the most

terrible of Romish enemies and rivals, had enervated his victorious

legions, and lost the chances of that ultimate success which would

have changed the destinies of mankind.

Suddenly, among the statues on the roof, Paulus beheld, not bigger

than children by comparison, moving figures of men and ladies in

dazzling attire. He perceived that salutations were exchanged,

groups formed and groups dispersed. Happening, the next moment, to

cast his eye over the landscape, he saw in the distance some horsemen

galloping toward the house, through the trees in the distance. Losing

sight of them behind intervening clumps of oleander, myrtle, and

other shrubs, he turned once more to watch the groups upon the roof.

In a short time new figures seemed to arrive, around whom all the

others gathered with the attitude and air of listening.

Paulus felt as if he was assisting at a drama. A moment later the

roof was deserted by its living visitors, the statues remained alone

and silent, gesticulating and flashing in the sun. Tidings must have

come. Something must have happened, thought Paulus; and, as the

day was already declining, he gathered up his fishing-tackle and

wended homeward. On the way he met a man in hide sandals, carrying

a large staff and piked with iron. It was a shepherd, of whom he

asked whether there was any thing new. "Have you not heard?" said the

man; "the flocks will fetch a better price--the emperor has come to

Formiæ."

Full of this intelligence, and anxious at once to consult Aglais

whether, before Augustus should leave the neighborhood, he ought not

to endeavor by all means now to obtain a hearing from him, Paulus

mended his pace; but while he thought he might be the bearer of

news, some news awaited him. He passed through the little western

trellis gate into the quoit-alley, and so by the garden toward the

house. A couple of female slaves, who were talking and laughing

about something like the impudence of a slave, and depend on it a

love-letter it is, but it's Greek, which seemed to afford them much

amusement, stood at the door of the lower arbor, which inclosed

the foot of the stairs leading up to the landing of his mother's

apartments. Noticing him, they hastily went about their business in

different directions, and he ran up the stairs, and found his mother

and sister talking in low tones, just inside the open door of the

upper arbor in the large sitting-room, which, as the reader knows,

was also the room where they took their meals.

"I am glad you have returned, Paulus," said his mother. "Look at

this; your sister found it about half an hour ago on the landing in

the arbor."

And Aglais handed him a piece of paper, on which was written, in a

clear and elegant hand, in Greek:

"_When power and craft hover in the air as hawks, let the ortolans

and ground-doves hide._"

Our hero read the words, turned the paper over, read the words again,

and said, "I don't see the meaning of this. It is some scrap of a

school-boy's theme, perhaps."

"School-boys do not often write such a hand," said Aglais; "nor is

the paper a scrap torn off--it is a complete leaf. And, again, why

should it be found upon our landing?"

"What school-boys could come up our stairs? There are none in the

inn, are there? Have you been in all day?" asked Paulus.

"No; we were returning from a walk across the fields to see the place

near Cicero's villa of Formianum, where the assassins overtook him,

and as Agatha, who ran up-stairs before me, reached the landing, she

observed something white on the ground, and picked it up. It was that

paper. Some stranger must have been up-stairs while we were away."

"Crispus or Crispina would not have said this to us by means of an

anonymous writing. They have given us the same warning without

disguise, personally."

"But they spoke only according to their own opinion," returned

Paulus. "Coming from some one else, the same advice acquires yet

greater importance. Some unknown person bears witness of the danger

which our host and hostess merely suspect, and at which Thellus, the

lanista, hinted, as perhaps impending, but which even he did not

affirm to be a reality."

"That is," added Paulus, "if this bit of paper has been intended for

us--I mean for you and for Agatha, because I am not a ground-dove."

"Well, I do not see," said the lady, musing, "what more we can do for

the moment. Our trusty Philip is on the way with my letter to your

uncle; he may be by this time on the way back. Till he returns, what

can we do?"

"I know not," said Paulus. "Have you asked Crispina about this paper?"

"We waited first to consult you," said Aglais; "and," added Agatha,

"there is another singular thing--we have not seen Benigna all day,

who was so regular in attending upon us. The hostess told us that

Benigna was suffering with a bad headache; and when I wanted to go

and tend her, Crispina hindered me, saying she had lain down and was

trying to sleep."

"What about the lover?" inquired Paulus--"the slave Claudius?"

"He has gone away all of a sudden, though his holiday has not

expired. I really suspect that Benigna and he must have had a

quarrel, and that this is why he has left the place, and why Benigna

is so ill."

The _clepsydra_, or water-clock, on the floor in a corner, showed

that it was now past the time when their evening repast was usually

prepared. They were wondering at the delay, when Crispus, first

knocking at the door which led from the passage, entered. He seemed

alarmed. They put various questions to him which the circumstances

rendered natural, showing him the paper that had been dropped on the

landing. He said that he thought he could make a pretty good surmise

about that matter; but inasmuch as Benigna, who had been crying out

her little heart, was much better, and had declared she would come

herself when they had supped, and tell them every thing, he would

prefer to leave the recital to her, if they would permit him.

Meantime he confirmed the news that the emperor had arrived at

the neighboring town, that the festivities had begun at the

Mamurran palace, and that in a day or two the public part of the

entertainments, the shows and battles of the circus, which would

last for several successive mornings and evenings, would be opened.

He said it was usual to publish a sort of promissory plan of these

entertainments; and he expected to receive, through the kindness of

a friend at court, (a slave,) some copies of the document early next

morning, when he would hasten to place it in their hands. While thus

speaking to them with an air of affected cheerfulness, he laid the

table for supper. Actuated by a curiosity in which a good deal of

uneasiness was mingled, since he would not himself tell them all they

desired to know, they requested him to go and send Benigna as soon as

possible; and when at last he retired with this injunction, they took

their supper in unbroken silence.

Benigna came. The secret was disclosed, and it turned slow-growing

apprehension into present and serious alarm.

"What! Claudius a spy! The spy of Tiberius set as a sort of secret

sentry over us! Who would have thought it?"

Benigna, turning very red and very pale by turns, had related what

she had learnt, and how she had acted. Little knowing either the

secret ties between her mother and this half-Greek family, or the

interest and affection she had herself conceived for them, her lover

had told her that she might help most materially in a business of

moment intrusted to him by his master; adding that, if he gave the

Cæsar satisfaction in this, he should at once obtain his liberty,

and then they might be married. She answered that he must know how

ready she was to further his plans, and bade him explain himself,

in order that she might learn how to afford him immediately the

service which he required. But no sooner had she understood what

were his master's commands, than she was filled with consternation.

She informed him that her father and mother would submit to death

rather than betray the last scions of the Æmilian race, and that she

herself would spurn all the orders of Tiberius before she would hurt

a hair of their heads. She mentioned, with a little sob, that she had

further informed Claudius that she never would espouse a man capable

of plotting mischief against them. Upon this announcement Claudius

had behaved in a way "worthy of any thing." He there and then took

an oath to renounce the mission he had undertaken. He had neither

known its objects nor suspected its villainy. But Benigna, whose mind

he thus relieved, he filled with a new anxiety by expressing his

conviction that Tiberius Cæsar would forthwith destroy him. However,

of this he had now gone to take his chance.

"Did Claudius," asked Paulus, "intend to tell the Cæsar that he

disapproved of the service upon which he had been sent, and would not

help to execute it?"

"No, sir," said Benigna. "We were a long time consulting what he

should, what he could say. He is very timid; it is his only fault.

He is going to throw all the blame upon me, and thus he will mention

that I, that he, that we, were going to be married, and that, in

order the more effectually to watch the movements of ladies to

whom he personally could get no access under this roof, the bright

notion had occurred to him to enlist my services, so as to render

it impossible that these ladies should escape him; or that their

movements should remain unknown, when lo! unfortunately for his plan,

he finds I love these ladies too well to play the spy upon them;

that I refused, and even threatened, if he did not retire from his

sentry-box forthwith, not only to break off my nuptial engagement

with him, but to divulge to the family that they were the objects of

espial."

"Which you have done," said Aglais, "even though he has complied with

your demands."

Poor Benigna smiled. "Yes," said she, "I was bent upon that the

instant I knew; but what my dear, unfortunate Claudius had to say

to Tiberius Cæsar was the point. The Cæsar is not to be told every

thing. My head is bursting to think what will happen."

Here she broke into a fit of crying. They all, except Paulus, tried

to comfort her. He had started to his feet when he first understood

the one fact, that this young girl had sacrificed not only her

matrimonial hopes, but the very safety of her lover himself, to

the claims of honor and the laws of friendship. He was now pacing

the width of the room in long strides with an abstracted air, from

which he awaked every now and then to contemplate with a thoughtful

look the anguish and terror depicted in the innocent face of the

innkeeper's little daughter.

At last he stopped and said to her,

"Of what are you afraid?"

"The anger of that dreadful man."

"What dreadful man?"

She answered with a couple of sobs,

"The august, red-faced, big, divine beast."

"But neither you nor your lover have done any thing unlawful, any

thing wrong."

"That is no security," said poor Benigna, shaking her head and

wringing her hands.

"That ought to be a security," said Aglais; adding in a mutter, "but

often is a danger."

"It is not even allowed by people that it ought to be a security,"

returned the girl.

"Until it is so allowed, and so practised too, the earth will

resemble Tartarus rather than the Elysian Fields," said Aglais with

energy.

Benigna began to cry amid her sympathetic audience, and said,

"It was so like the Elysian Fi-fields yesterday, and now it is like

Tar-tartarus! They will kill him."

"For supper, do you mean?" asked Paulus, laying his powerful, white,

long-fingered hand upon Benigna's head, while Agatha embraced her.

"But then, how will they cook him? How ought a Claudius to be cooked?"

The young girl looked up wistfully through her tears, and said,

"You do not know that awful divine man."

"I think I half suspect him," answered Paulus. "But the red-faced,

big, divine beast, as you call him, will reward Claudius, instead of

being angry with him, and this I will show you clearly. Was it not

a proof both of zeal and of prudence, on Claudius's part, in the

service of his master, to endeavor to enlist your assistance? And

again, upon finding, contrary to all likelihood--as Tiberius himself

will admit, and would be the first to contend--that you preferred

virtue, and truth, and honor, and good faith, to your own manifest

and immediate interests, and to success in love--upon finding this

extraordinary and unlikely fact occurring, was it not clearly the

duty of Claudius to his master to hasten away at once and tell him

the precise turn which events had taken? _Now, what else has been his

conduct, young damsel?_ What, except exactly all this, has Claudius

done? Will he not, then, be rewarded by his master, instead of being

eaten for supper?"

"Ah noble sir!" cried Benigna with clasped hands, "what wisdom and

what beautiful language the gods have given you! This must be what

people call Greek philosophy, expounded with Attic taste."

CHAPTER XIII.

Next morning at breakfast, Paulus announced that he had resolved to

go to Formiæ and seek an audience of the emperor himself.

"How will you get one?" asked Aglais; "and if you get one, what good

will it do you?"

"It will depend upon circumstances," he replied; "for, whether I fail

to get speech of the emperor, or, succeeding in that, fail to get

justice from him, process of law remains equally open, and so does

process of interest. Both means are, I suppose, always doubtful, and

generally dilatory. I spoil no chance by trying a sudden and direct

method of recovering our family rights; while if I succeed, which is

just possible, I shall save a world of trouble and suspense."

After some discussion, his mother yielded to her son's impetuous

representations, more with the view of undeceiving him, and

reconciling him to other proceedings, than with any hope of a good

result.

Paulus had taken his broad-brimmed hat, saying that in three or four

hours he expected to be back again at the inn; but that if he did

not reappear, they were to conclude that he had found a lodging at

Formiæ, and that he was remaining there for some good reason; when

the door was flung open, and breathless, radiant, holding an unfolded

letter in her hand, Benigna rushed into the room.

"Read, read," she cried, "and give me joy! I was unjust to the noble

prince."

She handed the letter to Aglais, who read aloud what follows:

"FORMIÆ.

"Ælius Sejanus, the prætorian prefect greets Crispus, keeper

of the inn at 100 Milestone. Our Cæsar is so pleased with the

slave Claudius, that he has resolved to give him his freedom

and the sum of fifty thousand sesterces, upon which to take a

wife and to begin any calling he may prefer. And understanding

that he is engaged, whenever he becomes a free man, to marry

your daughter Benigna, and knowing not only that good news

is doubly agreeable when it comes from the mouth of a person

beloved, but that to the person who loves it is agreeable also

to be the bearer of it, he desires that your daughter, whose

qualities and disposition he admires, should be the first

to tell her intended husband Claudius of his happy fortune.

Let her, therefore, come to-morrow to Formiæ, where, at the

Mamurran palace, Cæsar will give her a message which is to be

at once communicated to the slave Claudius. Farewell."

"I want to go at once to Formiæ," cried Benigna.

"Well, I am even now going," said Paulus; "and if you intend to walk,

I will guard you from any annoyance either on the way or at Formiæ, a

town which you know is at present swarming with soldiers."

This offer was, of course, too valuable not to be cheerfully accepted.

A few moments after the foregoing conversation, Paulus and Benigna

left the inn of Crispus together. The roads were full of groups of

persons of all ranks, in carriages, on horseback, and on foot. Some

of these were bound countryward, but not one for every score of those

who were bound in their own direction. No adventure befell them, and

in less than two hours they arrived at their destination. It was easy

to find the Mamurran palace, to the principal door of which, guarded

by a Prætorian sentry on either hand, Paulus forthwith escorted

Benigna.

There was no footway on either side of the street, and as they

approached the door they heard the clang of the metal knocker resound

upon _the inside_. At the same moment the sentinel nearest to them

shouted "_linite_," (by your leave.) Two or three persons at this

warning shrank hurriedly into the middle of the road; a Numidian

rider made his horse bound aside, and the large folding-doors were

simultaneously flung open outward.

Immediately appeared the very man in the dark-dyed purple robe of

whom the little damsel was in quest, and upon whose personal aspect,

already minutely described in a former place, we need not here dwell.

A handsome gentleman, in middle life, with an acute and thoughtful

face, who wore the Greek mantle called χλαῖνα, (_læna_,) but

differently shaped from an augur's, followed. Both these persons

moved with that half-stoop which seems like a continued though very

faint bow; and when in the street, they turned, stood still and

waited. Then came forth, leaning on a knight's arm, and walking

somewhat feebly, a white-haired, ancient, and majestic man, around

whose person, in striking contrast with the many new fashions of

dress lately become prevalent, a snowy woollen toga, with broad

violet borders, flowed. Under this toga, indeed, was a tunic richly

embroidered with gold, and having painted upon it the head of the

idol called the Capitoline Jove, half hidden by a wide double stripe

of scarlet silk.

When this personage had come into the street, all those who chanced

to be there uncovered. Tiberius, the gentleman in the Greek mantle,

and the knight himself upon whose arm the object of all this

reverence continued to lean, did the same; and it was thus that

Paulus, who had already guessed from frequent descriptions formerly

received, knew for certain that he beheld for the first time Augustus

Cæsar, sovereign of three hundred million human beings, and absolute

master of the known world. In a moment those who formed the personal

company of the emperor resumed their head-gear; some soldiers who

happened to be passing did the same, and proceeded upon their

respective errands; but the inhabitants remained gazing until the

group began to move on foot up the street in the direction of the

temporary circus which had been completed by the knight Mamurra in

some fields north-west of the town.

Paulus turned to Benigna and said, "You perceive the red-faced--ehem!

the great man. He does not know you, though you know him. Shall I

tell him who you are? Indeed, I have not come hither merely to stare

about me; so wait you here."

He thereupon left her, and quickly overtaking, and then passing

before, the group in which was Augustus, turned round and stood

directly in their way, hat in hand; but all his sensations were

different from what he had expected. He grew very red and shamefaced,

and felt a sudden confusion that was new to his experience. As it

was impossible to walk over him, they, on their part, halted for a

moment, and looked at him with an expression of surprise which was

common to them all, though indeed not in the same degree. The person

who seemed the least astonished was the emperor; and the person who

seemed more so than any of the rest was Tiberius. Some displeasure,

too, seemed to flash in the glance which he bent upon the youth.

But Paulus, though abashed, did not lose presence of mind to such an

extent as to behave stupidly. He said,

"I ask our august emperor's pardon for interrupting his promenade, in

order to report to Tiberius Cæsar the execution of an order. Yonder

is Crispus's daughter, illustrious sir," he added, turning toward

Tiberius; "she has come hither according to your own commands."

"True," said Tiberius; "let her at once seek the prefect Sejanus, who

will give the necessary instructions."

Paulus's natural courage and enterprising temper had carried him thus

far; but his design of accosting and directly addressing Augustus

Cæsar now seemed, when he had more speedily found an opportunity of

doing so than he could have dared to hope, a strange and difficult

undertaking. How he should procure access to the emperor had been

the problem with him and his family heretofore; but now, when the

access was already achieved, and when he had only to speak--now when

his voice was sure to reach the ears of the emperor himself--he

knew not what to say or how to begin. He had thought of splendid

topics, of deductions which he would draw, certain arguments which

he would urge--a matter very plain and easy: in fine, a statement

simple, brief, and conclusive; but all this had vanished from his

mind. There before him, holding back the folds of his toga with

one white hand, upon the back of which more than seventy years had

brought out a tracery of blue varicose veins--a modern doctor would

call them--with the other hand, which was gloved, and grasping the

fellow glove, laid upon the arm of the knight already mentioned,

stood the person who, under forms, the republican semblance of which

he carefully preserved, exercised throughout the whole civilized

and nearly the whole known world, over at least two if not three

hundred million souls, a power as uncontrolled and as absolute for

all practical purposes as any which, before him or after him, ever

fell to man's lot; enthusiastically guarded and religiously obeyed by

legions before whom mankind trembled, and whose superiors as soldiers

had not been seen then and have not been seen since; the perpetual

tribune of the people, the prince, senator, perpetual consul, the

supreme judge, the arbiter of life and death, the umpire in the

greatest concerns between foreign disputants travelling from the

ends of the earth to plead before him; the dispenser of prefectures,

provinces, proconsulates, tetrarchies, and kingdoms; treated by kings

as those kings were themselves treated by the high functionaries whom

they had appointed or confirmed, and could in an instant dismiss; the

unprincipled, cruel, wicked, but moderate-tempered, cold-humored,

cautious, graceful-mannered, elegant-minded, worldly-wise, and

politic prince, who paid assiduous court to all the givers and

destroyers of reputation--I mean, to the men of letters. There he

stood, as we have described him, holding his toga with one hand and

leaning upon Mamurra's arm with the other; and Paulus stood before

him, and Paulus knew not what to say; hardly, indeed--so quickly

the sense of bashfulness, confusion, depression had gained upon

him--hardly how to look.

"If you have heard," observed Tiberius at length, "pray stand aside."

Paulus, who, while Tiberius was speaking, had looked at him, now

glanced again toward the emperor, and still hesitated, made a

shuffling bow, and stood partly aside.

"What is it you wish to say?" asked Augustus, in a somewhat feeble

voice, not at all ungraciously.

"I wish," said Paulus, becoming very pale, "to say, my sovereign,

that my father's property in this very neighborhood was taken away

after the battle of Philippi and given to strangers, and to beg of

your justice and clemency to give back that property or an equivalent

to me, who am my dead father's only son."

"But," said Augustus smiling, "half the land in Italy changed hands

about the time you mention. Your father fought for Brutus, I suppose?"

"My father fought for you, my lord," said Paulus.

"Singular!" exclaimed Augustus; "but this is not a court of

justice--the courts are open to you."

At this moment Sejanus and one whom Paulus presumed to be in Rome,

Cneius Piso, attended by a slave, appeared from a cross street. The

slave approached quickly, holding a pigeon; and having caught the eye

of Augustus, who beckoned to him, he handed the bird to the emperor.

Paulus withdrew a little, but lingered near the group. Augustus,

disengaging a piece of thin paper from the pigeon's neck, said,

"From Illyricum, I suppose. We shall now learn what progress those

Germans have made. O Varus, Varus!" added he, in words which he

had of late often been heard to repeat, "give me back the legions,

'_redde legiones! redde legiones!_'"

A breathless silence lasted while Augustus perused the message taken

from the neck of the carrier-pigeon. As he crushed the paper in his

hands, he muttered something; and while he muttered, the scorbutic

face of Tiberius (perhaps scrofulous would better render the epithet

used by Tacitus) burned ominously. In what the emperor said Paulus

caught the words, "_danger to Italy_, but Germanicus knows how."

"Varus lost the legions a thousand times, a thousand paces westward

of this irruption," said Tiberius.

"A calamity like that," said Augustus, "is felt far and near. The

whole empire suffers, nor will it recover in my time. Ah! the

legions."

Paulus perceived that he himself was now forgotten; moreover, looking

back, he saw the poor young damsel, left by him at the door of the

Mamurran palace, still standing alone and unprotected; but some

fascination riveted him.

In a moment a great noise was heard, which lasted a couple of

minutes; a mighty roar, indistinct, blended, hoarse, as of tens of

thousands of men uttering one immense shout. It was, had it lasted,

like the sound of the sea breaking upon some cavernous coast.

Upon a look of inquiry and surprise from the emperor, Sejanus sent

the slave who had brought the carrier-pigeon to ascertain the cause,

and before the sound had ceased the messenger returned, and reported

that it was only Germanicus Cæsar riding into camp. Augustus fixed

his eyes on the ground, and Tiberius looked at Sejanus and at Cneius

Piso.

The emperor, after a second or two of musing, resumed his way toward

the rustic circus and the camp, attended by those around.

Paulus felt he had not gained much by his interview. He now touched

the arm of Sejanus, who was about following the imperial group, and

said, pointing toward the spot where Benigna still stood waiting,

"Yonder is Crispina's daughter, who is here in obedience to your

letter."

Sejanus answered this reminder with a sour and peculiar smile.

"Good," said he; "she has come to announce the fine news to her

betrothed. Let her tell him that he has only to break a horse for

Tiberius Cæsar to obtain his freedom. I have no time to attend any

more to slaves and their mates. She has now but to ask for Claudius

at that palace. He has orders to expect her, and to receive from her

mouth the pleasing information I have just given you."

Saying this, he walked away.

Our hero conceived some undefined misgiving from these words, or

rather from the tone, perhaps, in which the prefect had uttered them.

Unable to question the speaker, he slowly returned to poor little

Benigna, and said, "Well, Benigna, I have ascertained what you have

to do; and, first of all, Claudius expects you within."

As he spoke, he knocked at the door. This time only one leaf of it

was opened, and a slave, standing in the aperture, and scanning

Paulus and his companion, demanded their business; while the sentries

on either hand at the sculptured pillars, or _antæ_ of the porch,

looked and listened superciliously.

"Is the secretary-slave Claudius here?" asked the youth.

Before the porter could reply, steps and voices resounded in the

hall within, and the porter sprang out of the way, flinging almost

into Paulus's face the other leaf of the door, and bowing low. Three

gentlemen, two of whom apparently were half-drunk, their faces

flushed, and their arms linked together, appeared staggering upon

the threshold, where they stood awhile to steady themselves before

emerging into the street.

"I tell you, my Pomponius Flaccus," said he who was in the middle--a

portly man, with a good-natured, shrewd, tipsy look--"it is all a

pretty contrivance, and there will be no slaughter, for the beast is

to be muzzled."

"And I tell you, my Lucius Piso," returned he on the left, a wiry

drinker, "my governor of Rome, my dedicatee of Horace--"

"I am not the dedicatee of Horace," interrupted the other; "poor

Horace dedicated the art-poetical to my two sons."

"How could he do that?" broke in Pomponius. "You see double. Two

sons, indeed! How many sons have you? tell me that. Again, how could

one man dedicate a single work to a double person? answer me that.

You know nothing whatever about poetry, except in so far as it is

fiction; but we don't want fiction in these matters. We want facts;

and it is a fact--a solemn fact--that the slave will be devoured."

"I hold it to be merely a pleasant fiction," retorted Piso fiercely.

"Then I appeal to Thrasyllus here," rejoined the other. "O thou

Babylonian seer! will not Claudius the slave be devoured in the

circus before the assembled people?"

At these words our hero looked at Benigna, and Benigna at him, and

she was astounded.

He who was thus questioned--a man of ghastly face, with long, black

hair hanging down to his shoulders, and sunken, wistful, melancholy

eyes--wore an Asiatic dress. He was not intoxicated, and seemed to

have fallen by chance into his present companionship, from which he

appeared eager to disengage himself.

Gently shaking off the vague hand of Pomponius Flaccus, he acted as

the oracles did.

"You are certainly right," he said; but he glanced at Lucius Piso

while speaking, and then stepped quickly into the street, which he

crossed.

Each of the disputants naturally deemed the point to have been

decided in his own favor.

"You hear?" cried Flaccus; "the horse is to paw him to death, and

then to devour him alive."

"How can he?" said Piso. "How can he, after d--d--death, devour him

alive? Besides, Thrasyllus declared that I was right."

"Why," shouted Flaccus, "if we had not been drinking together all the

morning, I should think you had lost your senses."

"Not by any means," said Piso; "and I will prove to you by logic that

Claudius the slave," (again at this name our hero and poor little

Benigna looked at each other--she starting and turning half-round, he

merely directing a glance at her,) "that Claudius the slave will not

and cannot be devoured by Sejanus--I mean that beast Sejanus."

Paulus, chancing to look toward the two prætorian sentries, whose

general he supposed to be mentioned, observed them covertly smiling.

More puzzled than ever, he gave all his attention to the tipsy

dispute which was raging in the palace doorway.

"Well, prove it then," roared Flaccus, "with your logic!"

"Have I not a thumb?" resumed Lucius Piso; "and can I not turn it

down in the nick of time, and so save the wretch?"

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed out the other; "and what notice will a horse

take of your thumb? Is this horse such an ass as to mind whether your

thumb be up or down, though you are governor of Rome?"

"Perhaps you think," retorted Piso, in a tone of concentrated

bitterness, "with your rules of logic, that the horse is not properly

trained to his manners?"

"Have I not told you," said Flaccus, "in spite of your rules of

thumb, that the horse is not an ass?"

The rudeness and coarseness of Pomponius Flaccus had succeeded in

sobering Lucius Piso. He here remained a moment silent, drew himself

up with dignity to the full height of his portly person, and at last

said,

"Enough! When you have drunk a little more, you will be able to

understand a plain demonstration. But whom have we here? Why, it is

our glorious Apicius, whose table no other table rivals for either

abundance or delicacy. Who is your venerable friend, Apicius?"

This was addressed to a dyspeptic-looking youth, magnificently

attired, who, in company with a person in the extreme decline of

life, approached the door. Paulus and Benigna stood aside, finding

themselves still constrained to listen while waiting for room to

enter the blocked-up door of the palace.

"Is it possible," replied Apicius, "that you forget Vedius Pollio,

who, since you mention my poor table, has often kindly furnished it

with such lampreys as no other mortal ever reared?"

The old man, whose age was not redolent of holiness, but reeking

with the peculiar aroma of a life passed in boundless and systematic

self-indulgence, leered with running, bloodshot eyes, and murmured

that they paid him too much honor.

"Sir, you feed your lampreys well," said Pomponius Flaccus, "in your

Vesuvian villa. _They eat much living, and they eat well dead._"

"I assure you," said Pollio, "that nothing but humorous exaggerations

and witty stories have been circulated upon that subject. I can,

with the strictest accuracy, establish the statement that no human

being ever died merely and simply in order that my lampreys should

grow fat and luscious. On the other hand, I do not deny that if some

slave, guilty of great enormities, had in any event to forfeit life,

the lampreys may in such cases, perhaps, have availed themselves of

the circumstance. An opportunity might then arise which they had

neither caused nor contrived."

"The flavor, in other words, never was the final cause of any slave's

punishment," said Lucius Piso.

"You use words, sir," said Pollio, "which are correct as to the fact,

and philosophical as to the style."

"Talking of philosophy," said Apicius, "do you hold with this young

Greek, this Athenian Dion who has lately visited the court, that man

eats in order to live? or with me, that he lives in order to eat?"

"Horror of horrors!" murmured Flaccus, "the Athenian boy is demented."

"Whenever there is any thing to eat with you, my Apicius," said

Lucius Piso, "unless there be something to drink with my Pomponius

here, may I be alive to do either the one or the other."

"Why not do both?" wheezed Vedius Pollio. "Whither are you even now

going?"

"To the camp for an appetite," said Pomponius Flaccus, descending the

steps out of the palace hall into the street, and reeling against

Paulus, who held him from staggering next against Benigna.

"What do you two want here?" he suddenly asked steadying himself.

"I am accompanying," replied Paulus, "this damsel, who comes hither

by Cæsar's order."

"What Cæsar?" asked Pomponius.

"Tiberius Claudius Nero," returned Paulus.

He naturally supposed that this formal-sounding answer would have

struck some awe into the curious company among whom he had so

unwittingly alighted with his rustic charge.

"What!" exclaimed Pomponius Flaccus, "Biberius Caldius Mero, say you?"

Paulus started in amazement.

"_Ebrius_, drunk," continued Piso, _ex quo_--How does it go on? _ex

quo_--"

"_Ex quo_," resumed Pomponius solemnly, "_semel factus est_."[160]

The astonishment of Paulus and Benigna knew no bounds. Was it

possible that in the very precincts of Cæsar's residence for the

time, at the door of an imperial palace, within hearing of two

prætorian sentries, in the public street and open daylight, persons

should be found, not reckless outcasts maddened by desperation, but

a whole company of patricians, who, correcting each other as they

might do in reciting a popular proverb, or an admired song, should

speak thus of the man to whom gladiators, having not an hour to

live, cried, "As we die we salute thee?" The man at whose name even

courageous innocence trembled?

"I said," repeated Paulus after a pause, "Tiberius Claudius Nero."

"And I said," replied Pomponius, "Biberius Caldius Mero."

"Drunk but once," added Lucius Piso, who had evidently quite

recovered from his own inebriation.

"Since ever he was so first," concluded Pomponius Flaccus.

A general laugh, in which all present joined save Paulus and Benigna,

greeted this sally, and, in the midst of their hilarity an elegant

open chariot of richly-sculptured bronze, the work being far more

costly than the material, drawn by two handsome horses, and driven by

a vigorous and expert charioteer, came swiftly down the street in the

contrary direction of the camp, and stopped opposite the door.

As the horses were pulled back upon their haunches, a youth, tall,

well made, and eminently graceful, sprang to the ground. He had

a countenance in the extraordinary beauty of which intellect,

attempered by a sweet, grave, and musing expression, played

masterful and luminous. He was neatly but gravely dressed, after

the Athenian fashion. The four personages at the door, who were,

by the by, far more floridly arrayed, and wore various ornaments,

nevertheless looked like bats among which a bird of paradise had

suddenly alighted. No gayety of attire could cover the unloveliness

of their minds, lives, and natures, nor could the plainness of his

costume cause the new-comer to be disregarded or mistaken anywhere.

In the whole company Lucius Piso alone was a man of sense, solid

attainments, and spirit, though he was a hard drinker. Even the

others, drivelling jesters as they were, became sober now at once;

they uncovered instinctively, and greeted the youth, as he passed,

with an obeisance as low as that performed by the _ostiarius_, who

stood ready to admit him. When, returning these salutes, he had

entered the palace, Piso said, for the information of Vedius Pollio,

who had come from Pompeii, "_That is he_."

"What! the young Athenian philosopher of whom we have heard so much?"

"Yes. Dionysius, young as he is, I am told that he is certain to fill

the next vacancy in their famous Areopagus."

"He is high in Augustus's good graces, is he not?" asked Pollio.

"Augustus would swear by him," said Flaccus. "It is lucky for all of

us that the youth has no ambition, and is going away again soon."

"What does Biberius say of him?" inquired Apicius.

"Say? Why, what does he ever say of any one, at least of any

distinguished man?"

"Simply not a word."

"Well, think then what does he think?"

"Not lovingly, I suspect. Their spirits, their geniuses, would not

long agree. If he was emperor, Dionysius of Athens would not have so

brilliant a reception at court."

"But is it then really brilliant? Does one so young sustain his own

part?" asked Pollio.

"You never heard any person like him; I will answer for that,"

replied Lucius Piso. "He is admirable. I was amazed when I met him.

Augustus, you know, is no dotard, and Augustus is enchanted with him.

The men of letters, besides, are all raving about him, from old Titus

Livy down to L. Varius, the twiddler of verses, the twiddle-de-dee

successor of our immortal Horace and our irreplaceable Virgil. And

then Quintus Haterius, who has scarcely less learning than Varro,

(and much more worldly knowledge;) Haterius, who is himself what

erudite persons rarely are, the most fascinating talker alive, and

certainly the finest public speaker that has addressed an assembly

since the death of poor Cicero, declares that Dionysius of Athens--"

"Ah! enough! enough!" cried Apicius, interrupting; "you make me

sick with these praises of airy, intangible nothings. I shan't eat

comfortably to-day. What are all his accomplishments, I should like

to know, compared to one good dinner?"

"You will have long ceased to eat," retorted Piso, "when his name

will yet continue to be pronounced."

"And what good will pronouncing do, if you are hungry?" said Apicius.

"What has he come to Italy for?" persisted old Pollio.

"You know," said Piso, "that all over the east, from immemorial time,

some great, mysterious, and stupendous being has been expected to

appear on earth about this very date."

"Not only in the east, good Piso," said Pollio; "my neighbor in

Italy, you know, the Cumæan sibyl, is construed now never to have had

any other theme."

"You are right," returned Piso; "I meant to say that the prevailing

notion has always been that it is in the east this personage will

appear, and then his sway is to extend gradually into every part

of the world. Old sayings, various warning oracles, traditions

among common peasants, who cannot speak each other's languages and

don't even know of each other's existence, the obscure songs of

the sibyls, the dream of all mankind, the mystical presentiments

of the world concur, and have long concurred, upon that singular

subject. Moreover, the increasing corruption of morals, to which

Horace adverts," added Piso, "will and must end in dissolving

society altogether, unless arrested by the advent of some such

being. That is manifest. Haterius and others, who are learned in

the Hebrew literature, tell me that prodigies and portents, so well

authenticated that it is no more possible to doubt them than it is to

doubt that Julius Cæsar was murdered in Rome, were performed by men

who, ages ago, much more distinctly and minutely foretold the coming

of this person at or near the very time in which we are living; and,

accordingly, that the whole nation of the Jews (convinced that those

who could perform such things must have enjoyed more than mortal

knowledge and power) fully expect and firmly believe that the being

predicted by these workers of portents is now immediately to appear.

Thus, Haterius--"

"No," said Pomponius Flaccus, shaking his head, looking on the

ground, and pressing the tip of his forefinger against his forehead,

"_that is not Haterius's_ argument, or rather, _that is only the half

of it_."

"I now remember," resumed Lucius Piso; "you are correct in checking

my version of it. These ancient seers and wonder-workers had also

foretold several things that were to come to pass earlier than

the advent of the great being, and these things having in their

respective times all duly occurred, serve to convince the Jews,

and indeed have also convinced many philosophic inquirers, of whom

Dionysius is one, studying the prophetical books in question, and

then exploring the history of the Hebrews, to see whether subsequent

events really correspond with what had been foretold--that seers who

could perform the portents which they performed in their day, and

who besides possessed a knowledge of future events verified by the

issue, were and must be genuinely and truly prophets, and that their

predictions deserved belief concerning this great, mysterious, and

much-needed personage, who is to appear in the present generation.

And then there is the universal tradition, there is the universal

expectation, to confirm such reasonings," added Piso.

The astounding character, as well as the intrinsic importance and

interest of this conversation, its reference to his half-countryman

Dionysius, of whom he had heard so much, and the glimpses of society,

the hints about men and things which it afforded him, had prevented

Paulus from asking these exalted gentlefolk to make room for him and

Benigna to pass, and had held him, and indeed her also, spell-bound.

"But how all this accounts, most noble Piso, for the visit of the

Athenian to the court of Augustus, you have forgotten to say,"

remarked Pollio.

"He obtained," replied Piso, "the emperor's permission to study the

Sibylline books."

"What a pity," said Flaccus, "that the first old books were burnt in

the great fire at Rome."

"Well," resumed Lucius Piso, "he brought this permission to me, as

governor of Rome, and I went with him myself to the quindecemviri and

the other proper authorities. Oh! as to the books, it is the opinion

of those learned in such matters that there is little or nothing in

the old books which has not been recovered in the collection obtained

by the senate afterward from Cumæ, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and all

places where either the sibyls still lived, or their oracles were

preserved."

"But, after all," said Pollio, "are not these oracles the ravings of

enthusiasm, if not insanity?"

"Cicero, although in general so sarcastic and disdainful, so

incredulous and so hard to please," answered Piso, "has settled that

question."

"He has, I allow it," added Pomponius Flaccus, "and settled it most

completely. What a charming passage that is wherein the incomparable

thinker, matchless writer, and fastidious critic expresses his

reverential opinion of the Sibylline books, and demonstrates with

triumphant logic their claims upon the attention of all rational, all

clear-headed and philosophic inquirers!"

"I am not a rational, or clear-headed, or philosophic inquirer,"

broke in Apicius, "Come, do come to the camp; and do pray at last

allow this foreign-looking young gentleman and rustic damsel to enter

the doorway."

And so they all departed together.

The _atriensis_ had meanwhile summoned the master of admissions, who

beckoned to Paulus, and he, followed by Benigna, now entered the

hall, which was flagged with lozenge-formed marbles of different

hues, and supported by four pillars of porphyry. The adventurers

passed the perpetual fire in the ancestral or image-room, and saw

the images of the Mamurras, dark with the smoke of many generations;

they crossed another chamber hung with pictures, and went half round

the galleried and shady impluvium, inclosing a kind of internal

garden, where, under the blaze of the sunlight, from which they were

themselves sheltered, they beheld, like streams of shaken diamonds,

the spray of the plashing fountains, the statues in many-tinted

marble, and the glowing colors of a thousand exquisite flowers. Near

the end of one wing of the colonnaded quadrangle they arrived at a

door, which they were passing when their guide stopped them, and as

the door flew open to his knock, he made them a bow and preceded them

through the aperture.

They noticed, as they followed, that the slave who had opened this

door was chained to a staple. Several slaves, who scarcely looked up,

were writing in the room which they now entered.

The master of admissions, glancing round the chamber, said,

addressing the slaves in general, "Claudius is not here, I perceive;

let some one go for him, and say that the daughter of Crispus, of the

One Hundredth Milestone, has been charged to communicate to him the

pleasure of Tiberius Cæsar touching his immediate manumission; and

that I, the master of admissions in the Mamurran palace, am to add

a circumstance or two which will complete the information the damsel

has to give. Let some one, therefore, fetch Claudius forthwith, and

tell him that he keeps us waiting."

During this speech, which was rather pompously delivered, Paulus

noticed that, close to a second door in the chamber at the end

opposite to that where they had entered, a young slave was seated

upon a low settle, with a hide belt round his waist, to which was

padlocked a light but strong brass chain, soldered at the nether link

to a staple in the floor. This slave now rose, and opening the door,

held it ajar till one of the clerks, after a brief whisper among

themselves, was detached to execute the errand which the steward had

delivered. The slave closed the door again, the clerks continued

their writing, the steward half-shut his eyes, and leaned against

a pillar in an attitude of serene if not sublime expectation; and

Paulus and Benigna waited in silence.

During the pause which ensued, Paulus beheld the steward suddenly

jump out of his dignified posture, and felt a hand at the same time

laid lightly on his own shoulder. Turning round, he saw the youth who

had a few minutes before descended from the bronze chariot.

"Ought I not to be an acquaintance of yours?" asked the new-comer

with an agreeable smile. "You are strikingly like one whom I have

known. He was a valiant Roman knight, once resident in Greece; I mean

Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, who helped, with Mark Antony, to win the

great day of Philippi."

"I am, indeed, his only son," said Paulus.

"You and a sister, I think," returned the other, "had been left at

home, in Thrace, with your nurse and the servants, when some business

a little more than three years ago brought your father and his wife,

the Lady Aglais, to Athens. There I met them. Alas! he is gone. I

have heard it. But where are your mother and your sister?"

Paulus told him.

"Well, I request you to say to them that Dionysius of Athens--so

people style me--remembers them with affection. I will visit them

and you. Do I intrude if I ask who is this damsel?" (glancing kindly

toward Benigna, who had listened with visible interest.)

Paulus told him, in a few rapid words, not only who she was, but with

distinct details upon what errand she had come.

He had scarcely finished when Claudius, the slave, arrived

breathless, in obedience to the summons of the magister.

"The orders of Tiberius Cæsar to me," observed this functionary in

a slow, loud voice, but with rather a shamefaced glance at Dion,

"are, that I should see that you, Claudius, learnt from this maiden

the conditions upon which he is graciously pleased to grant you your

liberty, and then that I should myself communicate something in

addition."

"O Claudius!" began Benigna, blushing scarlet, "we, that is, not you,

but I--I was not fair, I was not just to Tib--that is--just read this

letter from the illustrious prefect Sejanus to my father."

Claudius, very pale and biting his lip, ran his eye in a moment

through the document, and giving it back to Benigna awaited the

communication.

"Well," said she, "only this moment have I learnt the easy, the

trifling condition which the generous Cæsar, and tribune of the

people, attaches to his bounty."

There was a meaning smile interchanged among the slaves, which

escaped none present except Benigna; and Claudius became yet more

pallid.

"The prefect Sejanus has just told Master Paulus," pursued the young

maiden, "that you have only to break a horse for Tiberius Cæsar to

obtain forthwith your freedom, and fifty thousand sesterces too," she

added in a lower voice.

A dead silence ensued, and lasted for several instants.

Paulus Æmilius, naturally penetrating and of a vivid though

imperfectly-educated mind, discerned this much, that some mystery,

some not insignificant secret, was in the act of disclosure. The

illustrious visitor from Athens had let the hand which lay on

Paulus's shoulder fall negligently to his side, and with his head

thrown a little back, and a somewhat downward-sweeping glance, was

surveying the scene. He possessed a far higher order of intellect

than the gallant and bright-witted youth who was standing beside

him; and had received, in the largest measure that the erudite

civilization of classic antiquity could afford, that finished mental

training which was precisely what Paulus, however accomplished in all

athletic exercises, rather lacked. Both the youths easily saw that

something was to come; they both felt that a secret was on the leap.

"Break a horse!" exclaimed the slave Claudius, with parched, white

lips; "I am a poor lad who have always been at the desk! What do I

know of horses or of riding?"

There was an inclination to titter among the clerks, but it was

checked by their good-nature--indeed, by their liking for Claudius;

they all looked up, however.

"Your illustrious master," replied the magister or steward, or

major-domo, "has thought of this, and, indeed, of every thing;" again

the man directed the same shamefaced glance as before toward Dion.

"Knowing, probably, your unexpertness in horses, which is no secret

among your fellow-slaves, and in truth, among all your acquaintances,

Tiberius Cæsar has, in the first place, selected for you the very

animal, out of all his stables, which you are to ride at the games

in the circus before the couple of hundred thousand people who will

crowd the champaign."

"At the games!" interrupted Claudius, "and in the circus! Why, all

who know me know that I an arrant coward."

Like a burst of bells, peal upon peal, irrepressible, joyous,

defiant, and frank, as if ringing with astonishment and scorn at the

thing, yet also full of friendliness and honest pitying love for the

person, broke forth the laugh of Paulus. It was so genuine and so

infectious, that even Dion smiled in a critical, musing way, while

all the slaves chuckled audibly, and the slave chained to the staple

near the door rattled his brass fastenings at his sides. Only three

individuals preserved their gravity, the shamefaced steward, poor

little frightened Benigna, and the astonished Claudius himself.

"In the second place," pursued the magister or steward, "besides

choosing for you the very animal, the individual and particular

horse, which you are to ride, the Cæsar has considerately determined

and decided, in view of your deserved popularity among all your

acquaintances, that, if any acquaintance of yours, any of your

numerous friends, any other person, in fine, whoever, in your stead

shall volunteer to break this horse for Tiberius Cæsar, you shall

receive your freedom and the fifty thousand sesterces the very next

morning, exactly the same."

A rather weak and vague murmur of applause from the slaves followed

this official statement.

"And so the Cæsar," said Claudius, "has both selected me the steed,

and has allowed me a substitute to break him, if I can find any

substitute. Suppose, however, that I decline such conditions of

liberty altogether--what then?"

"Then Tiberius Cæsar sells you to-morrow morning to Vedius Pollio of

Pompeii, who has come hither on purpose to buy you, and carry you

home to his Cumæan villa."

"To his tank, you mean," replied poor Claudius, "in order that I may

fatten his lampreys. I am in a pretty species of predicament. But

name the horse which I am to break at the games."

Dion turned his head slightly toward the steward, who was about to

answer, and the steward remained silent. A sort of excitement shot

through the apartment.

"Name the horse, if you please, honored magister," said Claudius.

Even now the steward could not, or did not, speak.

Before the painful pause was broken, the attention of all present was

arrested by a sudden uproar in the street. The noise of a furious

trampling, combined with successive shrieks, whether of pain or

terror, was borne into the palace.

Dionysius, followed by Paulus, by Claudius, by the steward, and

Benigna, ran to the window, if such it can be termed, drew aside

the silken curtain, and pushed open the gaudily-painted, perforated

shutter, when a strange and alarming spectacle was presented in the

open space formed by cross-streets before the left front of the

mansion.

A magnificent horse of bigger stature, yet of more elegant

proportions, than the horses which were then used for the Roman

cavalry, was in the act of rearing; and within stroke of his

fore-feet, on coming down, lay a man, face under, motionless, a

woollen tunic ripped open behind at the shoulder, and disclosing some

sort of wound, from which blood was flowing. The horse, which was of

a bright roan color, was neither ridden nor saddled, but girt with

a cloth round the belly, and led, or rather held back, by two long

cavassons, which a couple of powerfully-built, swarthy men, dressed

like slaves, held at the further ends on opposite sides of the beast,

considerably apart, and perhaps thirty feet behind him. One of these

lines or reins--that nearest the palace--was taut, the other was

slack; and the slave who held the former had rolled it twice or

thrice round his bare arm, and was leaning back, and hauling, hand

over hand.

The animal had apparently stricken on the back, unawares, with a

fore-foot play and a pawing blow, the man who was lying so still and

motionless on the pavement, and the beast, having reared, was now

trying to come down upon his victim. But no sooner were his fore-legs

in the air than he, of course, thereby yielded a sudden purchase to

the groom who was pulling him with the taut cavasson, and this man

was thus at last enabled to drag him fairly off his hind-legs, and

to bring him with a hollow thump to the ground upon his side. Before

the brute could again struggle to his feet, four or five soldiers who

happened to be nigh, running to the rescue, had lifted, and carried

out of harm's way, the prostrate and wounded man.

"That is the very horse!" exclaimed the magister, stretching his neck

between the shoulders of Dion and Paulus, at the small window of the

palace.

"I observe," said Paulus, "that the cavasson is ringed to a

muzzle--the beast is indisputably muzzled."

"Why is he muzzled?"

"Because," replied the magister, "he eats people!"

"Eats people!" echoed Paulus, in surprise.

"O gods!" cried Benigna.

"Yes," quoth the steward; "the horse is priceless; he comes of an

inestimable breed; that is the present representative of the _Sejan

race of steeds_. Your Tauric horses are cats in comparison; your

cavalry horses but goats. That animal is directly descended from

the real horse Sejanus, and excels, they even say, his sire, and

indeed he also in his turn goes now by the old name. He is the horse

Sejanus."

At these words Paulus could not, though he tried hard, help casting

one glance toward Benigna, who had been with him only so short a time

before at the top of the palace, listening to the conversation of the

tipsy patricians. The poor little girl had become very white and very

scare-faced.

"Tell us more," said Dionysius, "of this matter, worthy magister. We

have all heard that phrase of ill omen--'such and such a person has

the horse Sejanus'--meaning that he is unlucky, that he is doomed to

destruction. Now, what is the origin and what is the true value of

this popular proverb?"

"Like all popular proverbs," replied the steward, with a bow of

the deepest reverence to the young Athenian philosopher, "it has

some value, my lord, and a real foundation, although Tiberius has

determined to confute it by practical proof. You must know, most

illustrious senator of Athens, that during the civil wars which

preceded the summer-day stillness of this glorious reign of Augustus,

no one ever appeared in battle-field or festive show so splendidly

mounted as the knight Cneius Sejus, whose name has attached itself to

the race.

"His horse, which was of enormous proportions, like the beast you

have just beheld, would try to throw you first and would try to eat

you afterward. Few could ride him: and then his plan was simple.

Those whom he threw he would beat to death with his paws, and then

tear them to pieces with his teeth. Moreover, if he could not

dislodge his rider from the ephippia by honest plunging and fair

play, he would writhe his neck round like a serpent--indeed, the

square front, large eyes, and supple neck remind one of a serpent;

he would twist his head back, I say, all white and dazzling, with

the ears laid close, the lips drawn away, and the glitter of his

teeth displayed, and, seizing the knee-cap or the shinbone, would

tear it off, and bring down the best horseman that ever bestrode

a Bucephalus. What usually followed was frightful to behold; for,

once a rider was dismounted, the shoulder has been seen to come away

between the brute's teeth, with knots and tresses of tendons dripping

blood like tendrils, and the ferocious horse has been known with his

great fat grinders to crush the skull of the fallen person, and lap

up the brains--as you would crack a nut--after which, he paws the

prostrate figure till it no longer resembles the form of man. But

the present horse Sejanus, which you have just beheld, excels all in

strength, beauty, and ferocity; he belongs to my master Tiberius."

"Ah gods!" exclaimed poor Benigna; "this is the description of a

demon rather than of a beast."

Dionysius and Paulus exchanged one significant glance, and the former

said:

"What became of the first possessor, who yields his name to so

unexampled a breed of horses? what became of the knight Sejus?"

"A whisper had transpired, illustrious sir," replied the steward,

"that this unhappy man had fed the brute upon human flesh. Mark

Antony, who coveted possession of the horse, brought some accusation,

but not this, against the knight, who was eventually put to death;

but Dolabella, the former lieutenant of Julius Cæsar, had just before

given a hundred thousand sesterces (£800) to Sejus for the animal;

therefore Antony killed the knight for nothing, and failed to get

Sejanus; at least he failed that time. Dolabella, however, did not

prosper; he almost immediately afterward murdered himself. Cassius

thereupon became the next master of the Sejan horse, and Cassius rode

him at the fatal battle of Philippi, losing which, Cassius in his

turn, after that resolute fashion of which we all have heard, put an

end to his own existence."

"To one form of it," observed Dionysius.

"This time," continued the magister, bowing, "Mark Antony had his

way--he became at last the lord of the Sejan horse, but likewise he,

in his turn, was doomed to exemplify the brute's ominous reputation;

for Antony, as you know, killed himself a little subsequently at

Alexandria. The horse had four proprietors in a very short period,

and in immediate succession, the first of whom was cruelly slain, and

the three others slew themselves. Hence, noble sir, the proverb."

By this time, the magister had told his tale, the street outside

had become empty and silent, and the parties within the chamber had

thoroughly mastered and understood the horrible truth which underlay

the case of the slave Claudius, and this new instance of Tiberius's

wrath and vengeance.

The magister, Claudius, and Benigna had returned to the other end of

the room, where the slaves were writing, and had left Paulus and Dion

still standing thoughtfully near the window.

Claudius exclaimed, "My turn it is at present; it will be some one

else's soon!"

He and Benigna were now whispering together. The magister stood a

little apart, looking on the ground in a deep reverie, his chin

buried in the hollow of his right hand, the arm of which was folded

across his chest. The slaves were bending over their work in silence.

Says Paulus in a low voice to Dion, "You have high credit with the

emperor, illustrious Athenian; and surely if you were to tell him the

whole case, he would interfere to check the cruelty of this man, this

Tiberius."

"What, Augustus do this for a slave?" replied Dion mournfully. "The

emperor would not, and by the laws could not, interfere with Vedius

Pollio, or any private knight, in the treatment or government of

his slaves, who are deemed to be the absolute property of their

respective lords; what chance, then, that he should meddle, or, if he

meddled, that he should successfully meddle, with Tiberius Cæsar on

behalf of an offending mance? And this too for the sake, remember,

of a low-born girl? Women are accounted void of deathless souls,

my friend, even by some who suspect that men may be immortal. By

astuteness, by beauty, not beauteously employed, and, above all, by

the effect of habit, imperceptible as a plant in its growth, stealthy

as the prehensile ivy, some few individual women, like Livia,

Tiberius's mother, and Julia, Augustus's daughter, have acquired

great accidental power. But to lay down the principle that the

slightest trouble should be taken for these slaves, would in this

Roman world raise a symphony of derision as musical as the cry of the

Thessalian hounds when their game is afoot."

Paulus, buried in thought, stole a look full of pity toward the

further end of the apartment. "Slaves, women, laws, gladiators,"

he muttered, "and brute power prevalent as a god. Every day, noble

Athenian, I learn something which fills me with hatred and scorn for

the system amid which we are living." He then told Dion the story of

Thellus and Alba; he next laid before him the exact circumstances of

Benigna and Claudius; relating what had occurred that very morning,

and by no means omitting the strange and wonder-fraught conversation

at the door of the palace, after which he added,

"I declare to you solemnly--but then I am no more than an

uninstructed youth, having neither your natural gifts nor your

acquired knowledge--I never heard any thing more enchanting, more

exalted, more consoling, and to my poor mind more reasonable, or

more probable, than that some god is quickly to come down from

heaven and reform and control this abominable world. Why do I say

probable? Because it would be god-like to do it. I would ask nothing

better, therefore, than to be allowed to join you and go with you

all over the world; searching and well weighing whatever evidences

and signs may be accessible to man's righteously discontented and

justly wrathful industry in such a task; and I would be in your

company when you explored and decided whether this sublime dream,

this noble, generous, compensating hope, this grand and surely divine

tradition, be a truth, or, ah me! ah me! nothing but a vain poem of

the future--a beautiful promise never to be realized, the specious

mockery of some cruel muse."

Dion's blue eyes kindled and burned, but he remained silent.

"In the mean time, listen further," added Paulus. "What would the

divine being who is thus expected, were he in this room, deem of

this transaction before our eyes? You have heard the steward's

account of the horse Sejanus; you have heard Claudius's allusion to

Vedius Pollio's lampreys. Now, you are a wise, witty, and eloquent

person, and you can correct me if I say wrong--in what is the man

whom the horse Sejanus, for instance, throws and tears to pieces

better than the horse? In what is the man whom the lampreys devour

better than the lampreys? I say the horse and the lampreys are better

than the man, if mere power be a thing more to be esteemed and

honored than what is right, and just, and honorable, and estimable;

for the lampreys and the horse possess the greater might, most

indubitably, in the cases mentioned. The elephant is stronger than

we, the hound is swifter, the raven lives much longer. Either the

mere power to do a thing deserves my esteem more than any other

object or consideration, and therefore whoever can trample down his

fellow-men, and gratify all his brutal instincts at the expense

of their lives, their safety, their happiness, their reasonable

free-will, is more estimable than he who is just, truthful, kind,

generous, and noble--either, I say, the man who is strong against

his fellows is more good than he who is good--and the words justice,

right, gentleness, humanity, honor, keeping faith in promises, pity

for poor little women who are oppressed and brutally used, virtue,

and such noises made by my tongue against my palate, express nothing

which can be understood, nothing in which any mind can find any

meaning--either, I again say, the lampreys and the Sejan horse are

more to be esteemed, and valued, and loved than my sister and my

mother, or it is not true that the mere power of Tiberius, combined

with the brutish inclination to do a thing, terminates the question

whether it is right to do it. The moment I like to do any thing, if

I can do it, is it necessarily right that I should do it? The moment

two persons have a difference, is it right for either of them, and

equally right for each of them, to murder the other? But if it was

the intention of this great being, this god who is expected to appear

immediately among us, that we should be dependent upon each other,

each doing for the other what the other cannot do for himself--and I

am sure of it--then it will please him, Dion, if I consider what is

helpful and just and generous. Or am I wrong? Is virtue a dream? Are

contrary things in the same cases equally good? Are contrary things

in the same cases equally beautiful?

"Are my brutish instincts or inclinations, which vary as things vary

round me, my only law? Is each of us intended by this great being to

be at war with all the rest? to regard the positive power each of

us may have as our sole restriction? to destroy and injure all the

others by whom we could be served, if we would for our parts also

serve and help? And must women, for instance, being the weaker, be

brutally used? Tell me, Dion, will it please this great being if

I try to render service to my fellow-men, who must have the same

natural claims to his consideration as I have? or does he wish me

to hurt them and them to hurt me, according as we may each have the

power? Is there nothing higher in a man than his external power of

action? Answer--you are a philosopher."

The countenance of Dion blazed for one instant, as if the light of a

passing torch had been shed upon a mirror, and then resumed the less

vivid effulgence of that permanent intellectual beauty which was its

ordinary characteristic. He replied,

"All the philosophy that ever was taught or thought could not lead

you to truer conclusions."

"Then," returned Paulus, "come back with me to the other end of the

room."

"Benigna," said Paulus, "your kindness to my sister and mother, and

your natural probity, had something, I think, to do with beginning

this trouble in which you and your intended find yourselves. As you

were not unmindful of us, it is but right that we should not be

unmindful of you. Tiberius permits any friend of Claudius the slave

to be a substitute in breaking the horse Sejanus; and Claudius is

to have his freedom and fifty thousand sesterces, and to marry you,

whom I see to be a good, honorable-hearted girl, all the same as if

he had complied with the terms in person. This was thoughtful and, I

suppose, generous of Tiberius Cæsar."