tired out by walking and exhausted by hunger, Maria would return home.
There her mother, who had become bad-tempered from the misfortunes she
had endured, would meet her gloomily, roughly push towards her a piece
of bread and a morsel of cheese, or a head of garlic if there happened
to be one in the kitchen, adding occasionally some scolding words to
the meagre supper. Maria, unsociable as a captive bird, would eat what
was given her and then hasten away to her little room and its hard bed
to dream again until she slept and then dream again in her sleep about
the blessed, dazzling times of antiquity. On especially happy days, when
her father happened to be at home and in a good temper, he would
sometimes have a chat with Maria. And their talk would quickly turn to
the ancient times, so dear to them both. Maria would question her father
about bygone Rome, and then hold her breath while the old scribe, led
away by his theme, would begin to talk of the great empire in the time
of Theodosius, or recite verses from the ancient poets, Virgil, Ausonias
and Claudian. And the chaos in her poor little head would fall into
still greater confusion, and at times it would begin to seem to her that
her actual life was only a dream, and that in reality she was living in
the blessed times of Ennius Augustus or Gratian.
II
After the occupation of Rome by Narses, life in the city began to take
more or less its ordinary course. The ruler established himself on the
Palatine, some of the desolated rooms of the Imperial palace were
renovated for him, and in the evenings they were lit up with lamps. The
Byzantines had brought money with them, and trade in Rome began to
revive. The main streets became comparatively safe and the impoverished
inhabitants of the empty Campagna brought provisions into Rome to sell.
Here and there wine taverns were reopened. There was even a demand for
articles of luxury, which were purchased mainly by the frivolous women
who, like a flock of ravens, followed the mongrel armies of the great
eunuch. Monks went to and fro along all the streets, and from them also
it was possible to make some sort of profit. The thirty or forty
thousand inhabitants now gathered together in Rome, including the
troops, gave to the city, especially in the central districts, the
appearance of a populous and even of a lively place.
There was found at length some real work for Rufus. Narses, and
afterwards his successor, the Byzantine general, received various
complaints and petitions for the copying of which the art of a scribe
was in request. The edicts of Justinian, acknowledging some of the acts
of the Gothic kings and repudiating others, afforded pretext for endless
chicanery and processes of law. Rufus sometimes had to copy papers
addressed directly to His Holiness the Emperor in Byzantium, and for
these he was comparatively well paid. And more important orders came to
him. A new monastery wanted to have a written list of its service-books.
A whimsical person ordered a copy of the poems of the famous Rutilius.
In the house of Rufus there was once more a certain sufficiency. The
family could have dinner every day and need no longer feel anxious about
the morrow.
Everything might have been well in Rufus’ home if the scribe, who had
aged greatly in consequence of years of deprivation, had not taken to
drink. Oftentimes he left all his earnings in some tavern or other. This
was a heavy blow for Florentia. She struggled in every way to combat the
unhappy passion of her husband and tried to take from him all the money
he earned, but Rufus descended to every sort of artifice and always
found means of getting drunk. Maria, on the contrary, loved the days of
her father’s drunken bouts. Then he would come home in a gay mood and
pay no attention to the tears and reproaches of Florentia, but would
eagerly call Maria to him, if she were at home, talk to her again
endlessly about the old greatness of the Eternal City, and read to her
verses from the old poets and those of his own composition. The
half-witted girl and her drunken father somehow understood one another,
and they often sat together till late in the night, after the angry
Florentia had left them and gone to bed alone.
Maria herself did not change her way of life. In vain her father when
sober forced her to help him in his work. In vain her mother was angry
with her daughter for not sharing with her the cares of housekeeping.
When Maria was obliged she would against her will sullenly transcribe a
few lines or peel a few onions, but at the first opportunity she would
run out of the house to wander all day again in her favourite corners of
the city. She was scolded on her return, but she listened silently to
all reproaches and made no reply. What mattered scoldings to her when in
her vision there still glistened all the sumptuous pictures with which
her imagination had been soothed while she had been hidden near a
porphyry basin in the baths of Caracullus or had lain secreted in the
thick grass on the banks of old Tiber. For the sake of not having her
visions taken from her she would willingly have endured blows and every
kind of torture. In these visions were all her life.
In the autumn of 554 Maria saw in the streets of Rome the triumphal
procession of Narses--the last triumph celebrated in the Eternal City.
The eunuch’s troops of many different races--among whom were Greeks,
Huns, Heruli, Gepidæ, Persians--passed in an inharmonious crowd along
the Sacred Way, bearing rich booty taken from the Goths. The soldiers
sang gay songs in the most diverse languages and their voices mingled in
wild and deafening cries. The general, crowned with laurel, drove in a
chariot drawn by white horses. At the gates of Rome he was met by men
dressed in white togas making themselves out to be senators. Narses went
through half-demolished Rome, along streets in which the grass had grown
up between the mighty paving-stones, in the direction of the Capitol.
There he laid down his crown before a statue of Justinian, obtained from
somewhere or other for this occasion. Then he went on foot through the
town once more, going back to the Basilica of St. Peter, where he was
met by the Pope and clergy in festival robes. The Roman people crowded
into the streets and gazed at the spectacle without any special
enthusiasm, though the chief actors had done their utmost to make it
magnificent. The Byzantine triumph was for Romans something foreign,
almost like a triumph of the enemies of their native land.
And on Maria the triumphal procession made no impression whatever. She
looked with indifferent eyes upon the medley of colours in the soldiers’
garments, on the triumphal toga of the eunuch--a small, beardless old
man with shifty eyes--and on the festal robes of the priests. The songs
and martial cries of the soldiers only aroused her horror. It all seemed
to her so different from the triumphs she had so often imagined in her
lonely visions--the triumphs of Augustus Vespasian, Valentian! Here
everything appeared to her to be strange and ugly; there, all had been
magnificence and beauty! And without waiting to see the whole of the
procession, Maria ran away from the basilica of St. Peter on to the
Appian Way, to the ruined baths of Caracullus, which she loved, so that
in the quietness of the marble hall she might weep freely over the
irrevocable past and see it anew in her dreams, living and beautiful as
it alone could be. Maria went home late that day and did not wish to
answer any questions as to whether she had seen the procession.
At this time Maria was nearly eighteen. She was not beautiful. She was
thin, her figure was undeveloped and with her wild black eyes and the
hectic colour in her cheeks she rather affrighted than attracted
attention. She had no friend. When the young girls of the neighbourhood
spoke to her she answered abruptly and in monosyllables, and hastened to
bring the conversation to an end. How could they--these other
girls--understand her secret dreams, her sacred visions? Of what could
she speak with them? She was thought not so much to be stupid as
imbecile. And then, she never went to church. Sometimes, on the deserted
streets a drunken passer-by would come up to her and try to take her arm
or embrace her. Then Maria would turn on him like a wild cat,
scratching, biting, hitting out with her fists, and she would be left in
peace. One young man, however, the son of a neighbouring coppersmith,
had wanted to pay attentions to her. When her mother spoke to her about
him Maria heard the news with unfeigned horror. When her mother became
insistent, saying that she could not now find a better husband anywhere
Maria began to sob in such desperation that Florentia left her alone,
making up her mind that her daughter was either too young to be married
or that she was indeed not quite in her right mind. So Maria was allowed
to live in freedom and to fill up her endless leisure time as she
pleased.
So passed days and weeks and months. Rufus worked and drank. Florentia
busied herself over her housekeeping and scolded. Both thought
themselves unhappy, and cursed their wretched fate. Maria alone was
happy in the world of her fancies. She began to pay less and less
attention to the hateful actuality of her surroundings. She went deeper
and deeper into the kingdom of her visions. She already held
conversations with the forms which her imagination created as with
living people. She used to return home with the conviction that to-day
she had met the goddess Vesta or the dictator Sulla. She would remember
the things she had imagined as if they had actually taken place. When
she talked with her father at nights she would tell him all her
remembrances, and the old Rufus would not be amazed. Every story of hers
gave him a pretext for being ready with some lines of poetry--he would
complete and develop the insane fancies of his daughter, and as she
listened sleepily to their strange conversations Florentia would
sometimes spit and pronounce a curse, sometimes cross herself and
whisper a prayer to the Holy Virgin.
III
In the spring following the triumphal procession of Narses Maria was one
day wandering near the ruined walls of the baths of Trajan, when she
noticed that in one place, where evidently the Esquiline Hill took its
rise, there was a strange opening in the ground, like an entrance
somewhere. The district was a deserted one; all around there were only
deserted and uninhabited houses; the pavements were broken and the steep
slope of the hill was overgrown with tall grass. After some effort Maria
succeeded in getting to the opening. Beyond it was a dark and narrow
passage. Without hesitation she crawled into it. She had to crawl for a
long way in utter darkness and in a stifling atmosphere. At the end of
the passage there was a sudden drop. When Maria’s eyes grew accustomed
to the darkness she could distinguish by the faint light which came from
the opening by which she had entered that in front of her was a spacious
hall of some unknown palace. After a little reflection the girl
considered that she would not be able to see it without a light. She
went back cautiously, and all that day she wandered about, pondering on
the matter. Rome seemed to her to be her own property, and she could
not endure the idea that there was anything in the city about which she
knew nothing.
The next day, having secured a home-made torch, Maria returned to the
place. Not without some danger to herself she got down into the hall she
had discovered and there lighted the torch. A stately chamber presented
itself to her gaze. The lower half of the walls was of marble, and above
it were painted marvellous pictures. Bronze statues stood in niches,
amazing work, for the statues seemed to be living people. It was
possible to distinguish that the floor, now covered with earth and
rubbish, was of mosaic. After admiring this new spectacle, Maria was
emboldened to go further. Through an immense door she passed into a
whole labyrinth of passages and cross-passages leading her into a new
hall, still more magnificent than the first. Further on was a long suite
of rooms, decorated with marble and gold, with wall paintings and
statuary; in many places there still remained valuable furniture and
various domestic articles of fine workmanship. Spiders, lizards,
sow-bugs ran all around; bats fluttered here and there; but Maria,
enthralled by the unique spectacle, saw nothing of them. Before her was
the life of ancient Rome, living, in all its fulness, discovered by her
at last.
How long she enjoyed herself there on that first day of her discovery
she did not know. She was overcome, either by her strong agitation or by
the foul atmosphere. When she came to her senses again she was on the
damp stone floor, and her torch was extinguished, having burnt itself
out. In utter darkness she began gropingly to seek a way out. She
wandered for a long time, for many hours, but only became confused in
the countless passages and rooms. In the misty consciousness of the girl
there was a glimmer of a notion that she was fated to die in this
unknown palace, which was itself buried under the ground. Such an idea
did not alarm Maria; on the contrary, it seemed to her both beautiful
and desirable to end her life among the splendid remains of ancient
life, in a marble hall, at the foot of a beautiful statue somewhere or
other. She was only sorry for one thing--that darkness lay around her,
and that she was not fated to see the beauty in the midst of which she
was to die.... Suddenly a ray of light shone before her. Gathering up
her strength, Maria went towards it. It was the light of the moon
shining through an opening like that by which she had entered the
palace. But this opening was in an entirely different hall. By great
efforts, scrambling up by the projections of the walls Maria got out
into the open air in an hour when the whole city was already asleep and
the moon reigned in her full glory over the heaps of the half-ruined
buildings. Keeping close by the walls, in order to attract no attention,
Maria reached home almost dead from exhaustion. Her father was absent,
he did not come home all that night, and her mother only uttered a few
coarse outcries.
After this Maria began daily to visit the subterranean palace she had
discovered. Little by little she learnt all its corridors and halls, so
that she could wander about them in utter darkness without fear of
losing her way again. She always carried with her, however, a little
lamp or a resin torch, so that she could adequately enjoy the sumptuous
decorations of the rooms. She learnt to know all about them. She knew
the rooms which were covered with paintings and decorations in crimson,
others where a yellow colour predominated, others which by the green of
the paintings reminded her of fresh meadows or of a garden, others which
were all white with ornamentations of black ebony: she knew all the wall
paintings, some of which depicted scenes from the lives of gods and
heroes, some showed the great battles of antiquity, some showed the
portraits of great men, others the ridiculous adventures of fauns and
cupids; she knew all the statues that were preserved in the palace, both
bronze and marble, the small busts in the niches, the glorious piece of
sculpture of entire figures of enormous size which represented three
people, a man and two youths, who were encircled in the coils of a
gigantic serpent and were vainly striving to free themselves from its
fatal embrace.
But of all the decorations in the underground palace Maria specially
loved one bas-relief. It represented a young girl, slim and graceful,
resting in a deep sleep in a kind of cave; near her stood a youth in
warlike armour, with a noble face of marvellous beauty; above them, and
as it were in the clouds, was depicted a woven basket containing two
young children, floating on a river. It seemed to Maria that the
features of the young girl in the picture were like her own. She
recognised herself in this slim sleeping princess, and for whole hours
she would untiringly admire her, imagining herself in her place. At
times Maria was ready to believe that some ancient artist had
marvellously divined that at some time a young girl Maria would appear
in the world, and that he had by anticipation, created her portrait in
the bas-relief of the mysterious enchanted palace, which must have been
preserved untouched under the earth for hundreds of years. The
significance of the other figures in the bas-relief was not realised by
her for a long while.
But one evening Maria happened once more to have a talk with her father,
who had come home drunk and in a gay mood. They were alone, for
Florentia, as usual, had left them to their foolish chattering and had
gone to bed. Maria told her father of the underground palace she had
discovered and of its treasures. The old Rufus listened to this story in
the same way as he heard all the other fancies of his daughter. When she
used to tell him that she had that day met Constantine the Great in the
street and that he had graciously conversed with her, Rufus would not be
surprised, but he would begin to talk about Constantine. And now, when
Maria spoke to him of the treasures of the underground palace the old
scribe at once talked about this palace.
“Yes, yes, little daughter,” said he. “Between the Palatine and the
Esquiline, it really is there. It is the Golden House of the emperor
Nero, the most beautiful palace ever built in Rome. Nero had not
sufficient space for it and he set fire to Rome. Rome was burnt, and the
emperor recited verses about the burning of Troy. And afterwards, on the
space that had been cleared, he built his Golden House. Yes, yes, it was
between the Palatine and the Esquiline; you’re right. There was nothing
more beautiful in the city. But after Nero’s death other emperors
destroyed the palace out of envy, and heaped earth upon it; it existed
no longer. They built houses and baths on its site. But it was the most
beautiful of all the palaces.”
Then, having become bolder, Maria told her father about her beloved
bas-relief. And again the old scribe was not surprised. He at once
explained to his daughter what the artist had wished to express--
“That, my daughter, is Rhea Silvia, the vestal virgin, daughter of King
Numitor. But a youth--this god Mars, fell in love with the maiden and
sought her out in the sacred cave. Twin sons were born to them, Romulus
and Remus. Rhea Silvia was drowned in the Tiber, the infants were
suckled by a wolf and they became the founders of the City. Yes, that is
how it all was, my daughter.”
Rufus told Maria in detail the touching story of the guilty vestal Ilia,
or Rhea Silvia, and he at once began to recite some lines from the
“Metamorphoses” of the ancient Naso:
_Proximus Ausonias iniusti miles Amuli_
_Rexit opes ..._
But Maria was not listening to her father, she was repeating quietly to
herself:
“It is--Rhea Silvia! Rhea Silvia!”
IV
After that day Maria spent still more of her time looking at the
wonderful bas-relief. She would take a scanty luncheon with her, as well
as a torch, so that she might stay some hours longer in the underground
palace, which she considered to be more her own home than her father’s
house. She would lie on the cold and slippery floor in front of the
sculptured daughter of Numitor, and by the faint light of her resinous
torch she would gaze for long hours at the features of the slender
maiden sleeping in the sacred cave. With every day it became more
apparent to Maria that she was strangely like this ancient vestal, and
little by little in her dreams, she became less able to distinguish
which was poor Maria, the daughter of Rufus the Scribe, and which the
unhappy Ilia, daughter of the King of Alba Longa. She always called
herself Rhea Silvia. Lying in front of the picture she would dream that
to her, in this new sacred cave, the god Mars would appear, and that
from their divine embraces there would be born of her the twins Romulus
and Remus, who would become the founders of the Eternal City. True, she
would have to pay for this by her death--and be drowned in the muddy
waters of the Tiber--but could death terrify Maria? She often fell
asleep while musing thus before the bas-relief, and dreamed of this same
god Mars with his noble face of marvellous beauty and his divine,
consuming embrace. And when she awoke she would not know whether it had
been dream or reality.
It was already scorching July, when the streets of Rome at midday were
as empty as after the terrible command of King Totila. But in the
underground palace it was damp and cool. Maria, as before, went there
every day to muse, in her habitual sweet reveries, before the pictured
Ilia, who lay dreaming of the god destined for her. And one day, when
in a slight doze, she was once again giving herself up to the ardent
caresses of the god Mars, suddenly a noise of some kind forced her to
awake. She opened her eyes, not understanding anything as yet, and
glanced around. By the light of the little torch which she had placed in
a cranny between the stones, she saw before her a young man. He was not
in warlike armour, but wore the dress usually worn at that time by poor
Romans; his face, however, was full of nobility, and to Maria it
appeared radiant with a marvellous beauty. For some moments she looked
with amazement on the unexpected apparition, on the man who had found
his way into this enchanted palace which she had thought unknown to
anyone save herself. Then, sitting upright on the floor, the girl asked
simply:
“You have come to me?”
The young man smiled a quiet and attractive smile, and answered by
another question.
“But who are you, maiden? The genius of this place?”
Maria answered:
“I--am Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin, daughter of King Numitor. And are
you not the god Mars, come in search of me?”
“No, I am no god,” objected the young man. “I am a mortal, my name is
Agapit, and I was not searching here for you. But all the same, I am
glad to find you. Greeting to you, daughter of King Numitor!”
Maria invited the young man to sit down beside her, and he at once
consented. So they sat together, youth and maiden, on the damp floor, in
the magnificent hall of Nero’s Golden House, buried under ground, and
they looked into each other’s eyes and knew not at first what to talk
about. Then Maria pointed out the bas-relief to the young man and began
to tell him all the legend of the unhappy vestal. But the youth
interrupted her story.
“I know this, Rhea,” said he, “but how strange! The face of the girl in
the bas-relief is actually like yours.”
“It is I,” answered Maria.
So much conviction was in her words that the youth was perplexed and
knew not what to think. But Maria gently placed her hand on his shoulder
and began to speak ingratiatingly, almost timidly.
“Do not deny it:--you are the god Mars in the form of a mortal. But I
recognise you. I have expected you for a long while. I knew that you
would come. I am not afraid of death. Let them drown me in the Tiber.”
For a long while the young man listened to Maria’s incoherent speech.
All around was strange. This underground palace, known to no one, with
its magnificent apartments where only lizards and bats were living. And
the obscurity of this immense hall, barely lighted by the faint light of
the two torches. And this obscure maiden, like the Rhea Silvia of the
ancient bas-relief, with her unintelligible speeches, who in some
marvellous fashion had lighted upon the buried Golden House of Nero. The
young man felt that the rude actuality of the life he had lived just
before his entrance into the underground dwelling had vanished into thin
air as a dream disappears in the morning. In another moment he might
have believed that he himself was the god Mars, and that he had met here
his beloved, Ilia the vestal, the daughter of Numitor. Putting the
greatest restraint upon himself, he broke in upon Maria’s speech.