not he for whom you take me. I will tell you the whole truth. Agapit is
not my real name. I am a Goth, and my name is really Theodat. But I am
obliged to conceal my origin, for I should be put to death if it were
known. Haven’t you heard, by my pronunciation, that I am not a Roman.
When my fellow-countrymen left your city, I did not follow them. I love
Rome, I love its history and its tradition. I want to live and die in
the Eternal City, which once belonged to us. So now, under the name of
Agapit, I am in the service of an armourer; I work by day, and in the
evenings I wander about the city and admire its memorials which have
escaped destruction. As I knew that Nero’s Golden House had been built
on this spot, I got in to this underground palace so that I could admire
the remains of its former beauty. That is all. I have told you the whole
truth, and I do not think you will betray me, for one word from you
would be enough to have me put to death.”
Maria listened to the words of Theodat with incredulity and
dissatisfaction. After a little thought she said: “Why are you deceiving
me? Why do you wish to take the form of a Goth? Can I not see the nimbus
round your head? Mars Gradivus, for others thou art a god, for me thou
art my beloved. Do not mock thy poor bride, Rhea Silvia!”
Theodat looked again for a long while at the young girl who spoke such
foolish words, and he began to guess that Maria was not in her right
mind. And when this thought came into his head he said to himself, “Poor
girl! I will never take advantage of your unprotected state! This would
be unworthy of a Goth.” Then he gently put his arms around Maria and
began to talk to her as to a little child, not contradicting her strange
fancies but acknowledging himself to be the god Mars. And for a long
while they sat side by side in the semi-darkness, not exchanging one
kiss, talking and dreaming together of the future Rome which would be
founded by their twin sons Romulus and Remus. At last the torches began
to burn low, and Theodat said to Maria:
“Dear Rhea Silvia, it is already late. We must go away from here.”
“But you will come again to-morrow?” asked Maria.
Theodat looked at the young girl. She seemed to him strangely
attractive, with her thin, half-childish figure, the hectic flush on her
cheeks and her deep black eyes. There was an incomprehensible attraction
in this meeting of theirs in the dim hall of the buried palace, before
the marvellous bas-relief of an unknown artist. Theodat desired to
repeat these minutes of strange intercourse with the poor crazy girl,
and he answered:
“Yes, maiden, to-morrow at this hour, after my day’s work, I will come
again to you here.”
Hand in hand they went in the direction of the way out. Theodat had a
rope ladder with him. He helped Maria to climb up to the hole which
served as an entrance to the palace. Evening had already fallen when
they reached the streets.
Before they separated Theodat said once more, looking into Maria’s eyes:
“Remember, maiden, you must not tell anyone that you have met me. It
might cost me my life. Good-bye until to-morrow.”
He got out first into the open-air and was soon out of sight round a
bend of the road. Maria went slowly home. If it happened that evening
that she had a talk with her father, she would not tell him that at last
Mars Gradivus had come to her.
V
Theodat did not deceive Maria. Next day, towards evening he really came
again to the Golden House and to the bas-relief representing Mars and
Rhea Silvia, where Maria was already awaiting him. The young man had
brought with him some bread and cheese and some wine, and they had their
supper together in the magnificent hall of Nero’s palace. Maria mused
aloud again about the beauty of life in the past, about gods, heroes,
and emperors, mixing up stories of her own experiences with the
wanderings of her fancy; but Theodat, with his arm around the girl,
gently stroked her hand or her shoulder, and admired the black depth of
her eyes. Then they walked together through the empty underground rooms,
shedding the light of their torches on the great creations of Greek and
Roman genius. When they parted they again exchanged a promise to meet on
the following day.
From that time, every day, when Theodat had finished his dull labour at
the armourer’s workshop, where they made and repaired helmets, pikes,
and armour for the company of Byzantines who were garrisoning Rome, he
went to meet the strange young girl who thought herself to be the vestal
virgin Ilia, alive once more. There was an unconquerable attraction for
the young man in the lissom body of the girl and in her half-foolish
words, to which he was ready to listen for whole hours together. They
explored together all the halls, corridors, and rooms of the palace, as
far as they could get; they rejoiced together over each newly-found
statue, each newly-noticed bas-relief, and there was never a day but
some unexpected discovery filled their souls with a new rapture. Day
after day they lived in an unchanging happiness--enjoying the creations
of Art, and in moments of emotion before a new-found marble sculpture,
the work perhaps of Praxiteles, young man and maiden would lean towards
one another and embrace in a pure and blessed kiss.
Imperceptibly Theodat began to consider the Golden House of Nero as his
own home, and Maria became to him the nearest and dearest being in the
world. How this happened Theodat himself did not know. But all the rest
of the time which he spent on the earth seemed to him a burdensome and
distasteful obligation, and only the time that he spent with Rhea
Silvia underground, in the palace of the ancient emperor, seemed to him
to be real life. The whole day the young man awaited in a torture of
impatience the moment when he could at last leave the brass helmets and
hammers and pincers, and with the rope ladder hidden under his garments
run off to the slope of the Esquiline for his secret meeting. Only by
these meetings did Theodat reckon his days. If he had been asked what
attracted him in Maria he would have found it difficult to answer. But
without her, without her simple talk, without her strange eyes--all his
life would have seemed empty and void.
On the earth, in the armourer’s workshop, or in his own pitiful little
room which he rented from a priest, Theodat could reason sanely. He
would say to himself that this Rhea Silvia was a poor crazy girl, and
that he himself perhaps was doing wrong in corroborating her pernicious
fancies. But when he went down into the cool damp obscurity of the
Golden House, Theodat, as it were, changed everything--his thoughts and
his soul. He became something different, not what he was in the sultry
heat of the Roman day or in the stifling atmosphere of the forge. He
felt himself in another world there, where in reality could be met both
the vestal virgin Ilia, daughter of King Numitor, and the god Mars, who
had taken upon himself the form of a young Goth. In this world
everything was possible and all miracles were natural. In this world
the past was still living, and the fables of the poets were clearly
realised at every step.
Not that Theodat fully believed in Maria’s delusions. But when, before
some statue of an ancient emperor she would begin to speak of meeting
him on the Forum and talking with him, it seemed to Theodat that
something of the sort had actually taken place. When Maria told him
about the riches of her father, King Numitor, Theodat was ready to think
that she was speaking the truth. And when she had visions of the glories
of the future Rome, which would be founded by the new Romulus and Remus,
Theodat himself was led to develop these visions, and to speak about the
new victories of the Eternal City, its new conquests of territory, its
new world-wide fame.... And together they would imagine the names of the
coming emperors who would rule in their children’s city.... Maria always
spoke of herself as Rhea Silvia and of Theodat as Mars, and he became so
accustomed to these names that there were times when he deliberately
called himself by the name of the ancient Roman god of war. And when
both of them, young man and maiden, were intoxicated by the darkness and
by the marvellous creations of Art, by their nearness to one another and
by their strange half-crazy dreams, Theodat almost began to feel in his
veins the divine ichor of an Olympian god.
And again the days went by. At the very beginning of his acquaintance
with Maria, Theodat had promised himself to spare the crazy girl and not
to take advantage of her weak intellect and her unprotected state. But
with each new meeting it became in every way more and more difficult for
him to keep his word. Meeting every day the girl he already loved with
all the passion of youthful love, spending long hours with her alone in
this isolated place, in the half-darkness, touching her hands and
shoulders, feeling her breathing close beside him, and exchanging kisses
with her;--Theodat was obliged to use greater and greater effort not to
press the girl to himself in a strong embrace, not to draw her to him
with those caresses with which the god Mars had once drawn to himself
the first vestal. And Maria not only did not avoid such caresses, but
she even, as it were, sought them, leaning towards him, attracting him
to her with all her being. She lingered in Theodat’s arms when he kissed
her, she herself pressed him to her bosom when they were admiring the
statues and pictures, she seemed every moment to be questioning the
youth with her large black eyes, as if she were asking him, “When?”
“Will it be soon?” “I am tired of waiting.” Theodat would ask himself
“---- And can it be true that she is crazy? Then I must be crazy too!
And is not our craziness better than the reasonable life of other
people. Why should we deny ourselves the full joy of love?”
And so that which was inevitable came to its fulfilment. The marriage
chamber of Maria and Theodat was one of the magnificent halls of the
Golden House of Nero. The resin twists, lighted and placed in ancient
bronze candlesticks in the form of Cupids, were their bridal torches.
The union of the young couple was blessed by the marble gods, sculptured
by Praxiteles, who looked down with unearthly smiles from their niches
of porphyry. The great silence of the buried palace hid in itself the
first passionate sighs of the newly-wedded pair and their pale faces
were overshadowed by the mysterious obscurity of the underground palace.
There was no solemn banquet, no marriage songs, but long ages of glory
and power overshadowed the bridal couch, and its earth and ashes seemed
to the lovers softer and more desirable than the down of Pontine swans
in the sleeping apartments of Byzantium.
From that evening Maria and Theodat began to meet as lovers. Their long
talks were mingled with long caresses. They exchanged passionate
confessions and passionate vows--in almost senseless speeches. They
wandered again through the empty rooms of the Golden House, not so much
attracted now by the pictures and statues, the marble walls and the
mosaics, as by the possibility in the new room to fall again and again
into each other’s embraces. They still dreamed of the future Rome which
would be founded by their children, but this happy vision was already
eclipsed by the happiness of their unrestrained kisses in whose burning
atmosphere vanished not only actuality but also dreams. They still
called themselves Rhea Silvia and the god Mars, but they had already
become poor earthly lovers, a happy couple, like thousands and thousands
of others living on the earth after thousands and thousands of
centuries.
VI
Never, outside the hall of the subterranean palace, did Theodat try to
meet Maria nor she him. They only existed for one another in the Golden
House of Nero. Perhaps they might even not have recognised one another
on the earth. Theodat might have ceased to be for Maria the god Mars,
and Maria would not have seemed to Theodat beautiful and wonderful.
Truly, after their union, the honourable young Goth had said to himself
that he ought to find out the real relatives of the young girl, to marry
her and openly acknowledge her as his wife before all people. But day
after day he put off the fulfilment of this resolve; it would have been
terrible for him to destroy the fairy-like enchantment in which he was
living, terrible to exchange the unheard of ways of the underground hall
for the ordinary realities. Perhaps Theodat did not thus explain his
delay to himself, but, all the same, he did not hasten to bring to an
end the burning happiness of these secret meetings, and every time he
parted with Maria he renewed his vow to her that on the morrow he would
come again. And she expected him and asked for nothing more; for her
this visionary blessedness was sufficient--to be the beloved of a god.
“Thou wilt always love me?” Theodat would ask, pressing the lissom body
of Maria in his strong arms.
But she would shake her head and say:
“I will love thee until death. But thou art an immortal, and soon I must
die. They will drown me in the waters of the Tiber.”
“No, no,” Theodat would say, “that will not happen. We shall live
together and die together. Without thee I do not wish to be immortal.
And after death we shall love each other just the same there in our
Olympus.”
But Maria would look at him distrustfully. She expected death and was
prepared for it. She only wished one thing--to prolong her happiness as
long as it was possible.
The young man told himself that he ought secretly to follow Maria and
find out where she lived--go to her real home and to her true father
and tell him that he, Agapit, loved this young girl and wanted to make
her his wife. But when the hour of parting drew near, when Maria having
heard Theodat vow that he would come again to-morrow to the Golden
House, glided away like a thin shadow into the evening distance--the
youth would once more postpone his action. “Let this be put off another
day! Let us meet once more as Rhea Silvia and the god Mars! Let this
fairy tale still continue.” And he would go home, to the little room he
rented from the priest, to dream all night of his beloved and solace
himself with the new happiness of remembrance. And Theodat never asked
anyone about the strange black-eyed girl, though almost everyone in Rome
knew Maria. But in reality he did not wish to know anything about her
except this--that she was the vestal Ilia, and that every evening she
lovingly awaited him in the subterranean hall of Nero’s underground
palace.
But one day Maria having waited till the evening, awaited Theodat in
vain; the youth did not come. Grieved and disturbed, Maria went home
again. Her mind had in a way become somewhat clearer since she had given
herself to Theodat and she was able to console herself with the thought
that something must have prevented him from coming. But the youth did
not come the next day, nor the next. He suddenly disappeared completely
and it was in vain that Maria waited for him at the appointed place hour
after hour, day after day--waited in anguish, in despair, sobbing,
praying to the ancient gods, and using the words which her mother had
once taught her: there came no answer to her tears and prayers. As
before, an unearthly smile played over the faces of the gods in their
niches in the walls; as before, the superb rooms of the ancient palace
gleamed with paintings and mosaics, but the Golden House suddenly became
empty and terrible for Maria. From a blessed paradise, from the land of
the Elysian fields, it had suddenly been changed into a hall of cruel
torture, into a black Tartarus where was only horror and solitude,
unendurable grief and unbearable pain. With an insane hope Maria went
every day as before to the underground dwelling, but now she went there
as to a place of torture. There awaited her the hours of disappointed
expectation, the terrible reminders of her late happiness and her
long-renewed inconsolable tears.
It was most terrible of all, most distressing of all, near the
bas-relief which represented Rhea Silvia sleeping in the sacred cave
with the god Mars coming towards her. All her remembrances drew Maria to
this bas-relief, yet near it the most unconquerable grief would
overwhelm her soul. She would fall on the floor and beat her head
against the stone mosaic pavement, closing her eyes that she might not
behold the radiant face of the god. “Come back, come back!” she would
repeat in her frenzy. “Come just once again! Divine, immortal; have pity
on my sufferings. Let me see thee once again. I have not yet told thee
all, have not given thee all my kisses; I must, I must see thee once
again in life. And after that let me die, let them cast me into the
waters of the Tiber, and I will not resist. Have pity on me, Divine
One!” And Maria would open her eyes again, and by the faint light of the
torch she would see the unmoved face of the sculptured god and then once
more the remembrance of the blessedness which had suddenly been taken
away from her would overwhelm her and she would burst into new tears and
sobs and wails. And she herself would hardly know if the god Mars had
come to her, if in her life there had been those days of perfect
happiness or if she had dreamed them amongst thousands of other dreams.
With every day her expectations grew more hopeless. Every day she would
return to her home more anguished and more shaken. In those hours when
there were glimmerings of consciousness in her soul she remembered dimly
all that Theodat had once told her about himself. Then she would wander
through the streets of Rome, and under various pretexts she would look
into all the armourer’s workshops, but nowhere did she meet with him she
sought. To speak to anyone of her grief and of her vanished happiness
was impossible for her and no one would have believed the stories of the
poor crazy girl--everyone would have considered them to be new
wanderings of her disordered imagination. So Maria lived alone with her
grief and her despair, and her mother only shook her head dejectedly as
she saw her becoming thinner and more wasted, her cheeks more sunken and
her eyes burning more feverishly and with more strange and fiery
reflections.
But the days passed by inconsolably--for the poor crazy girl, for the
despoiled Eternal City, and for the whole world in which a new life was
slowly coming to birth. The days went by; Justinian celebrated his final
victories over the remaining Goths, the Lombards thought out their
Italian campaign, the popes secretly forged the links of that chain
which in the future would connect Rome with all the world, the Romans
continued to live their poor and oppressed lives, and one day Maria
understood at last that she would become a mother. The vestal Rhea
Silvia to whom the god Mars had condescended from his Olympus, began to
feel within herself the pulsations of a new life--were they not the
twins, the new Romulus and Remus who must found the new Rome?
To no one, neither to father nor to mother, did Maria speak of what she
felt. It was her secret. But she was strangely quieted by her discovery.
Her dreams were being completely fulfilled. She must give birth to the
founders of Rome and afterwards await death in the muddy waters of the
Tiber.
VII
Sometimes guests would gather together in the house of old Rufus, a
neighbouring merchant who sold cheap women’s finery on the Forum, the
coppersmith’s son who at one time had wished to court Maria, an infirm
orator who could no longer find a use for his learning, and a few other
poverty stricken people who were dejectedly living out their days, only
meeting one another to complain of their unhappy lot. They would drink
poor wine and eat a little garlic, and among their customary complaints
they would cautiously interpolate bitter words about the Byzantine rule
and the inhuman demands of the new general who lived on the Palatine in
place of the departed eunuch Narses. Florentia would serve the guests,
and pour out wine for them, and at the speeches of the old orator she
would quietly cross herself at the mention of the accursed gods.
At one of these gatherings Maria was sitting in a corner of the room,
having come home that day earlier than usual from her wanderings. Nobody
paid any attention to her. They were all accustomed to see among them
the silent girl whom they had long ago considered to be insane. She
never joined in the conversation and no one ever addressed a remark to
her. She sat with her head bent in a melancholy fashion and never moved,
apparently hearing nothing of the speeches made by the drinking party.
On this day they were talking especially about the severity of the new
general. But the coppersmith’s son took upon himself to defend him.
“We must take into account,” said he, “that at the present time it is
necessary to act rigorously. There are many spies going about the city.
The barbarians may fall on us again. Then we should have to endure
another siege. These accursed Goths, when they took themselves out of
the town for good, had hidden their treasures in various places. And now
first one and then another of them comes back to Rome secretly and in
disguise, digs up the hidden treasure and carries it away. Such people
must be caught, and it would never do to be easy with them; the Romans
will have all their riches stolen.”
The words of the coppersmith’s son aroused curiosity. They began to ask
him questions. He readily told all that he knew about the treasures
hidden by the Goths in various parts of Rome, and how those of them who
had escaped destruction strove to seek out these stores and carry them
off. Then he added:
“And it’s only lately they caught one of them. He was clambering up the
Esquiline, where there is an opening in the ground. He had a
rope-ladder. They caught him and took him to the general. The general
promised to spare him if the accursed one would show exactly where the
treasure was hidden. But he was obstinate and would say nothing. They
tortured him and tortured him, but got nothing out of him. So they
tortured him to death.”
“And is he dead?” asked someone.
“Of course he’s dead,” said the coppersmith’s son.
Suddenly an unexpected illumination lit up the confused mind of Maria.
She stood up to her full height. Her large eyes grew still larger.
Pressing both hands to her bosom, she asked in a breaking voice:
“And what was his name, what was the name ... of this Goth?”
The coppersmith’s son knew all about it. So he answered at once:
“He called himself Agapit; he was working quite near here, in an
armourer’s workshop.”
And with a shriek, Maria fell face downwards on the floor.
* * * * *
Maria was ill for a long while, for many weeks. On the first day of her
illness a child was born prematurely, a pitiful lump of flesh which it
was impossible to call either a boy or a girl. Florentia, with all her
harshness, loved her daughter. While Maria lay unconscious for many days
her mother tended her and never left her side. She called in a midwife
and a priest. When at length Maria came to her senses Florentia had no
reproachful tears for her, she only wept inconsolably and pressed her
daughter to her bosom. Her mother-soul had divined everything. Later on,
when Maria was a little better her mother told her all that had happened
and did not reproach her.
But Maria listened to her mother with a strange distrust. How could Rhea
Silvia believe it, when she was destined, by the will of the gods, to
bring forth the twins Romulus and Remus? Either the girl’s mind was
entirely overclouded or she believed her former dreams more than
actuality--at the words of her mother she merely shook her head in
weakness. She thought her mother was deceiving her, that during her
illness she had borne twins which had been taken from her, put into a
wicker-basket and thrown into the Tiber. But Maria knew that a wolf
would find and nourish them, for they must be the founders of the new
Rome.
As long as Maria was so weak that she could not raise her head no one
wondered that she would answer no questions and would be silent whole
days, neither asking for food nor drink nor wishing to pronounce a
monosyllable. But when she recovered a little and found strength to go
about the house Maria continued to be silent, hiding in her soul some
treasured thought. She did not even want to talk to her father any more
and she was not pleased when he began to declaim verses from the ancient
poets.
At length, one morning when her father had gone out on business and her
mother was at market Maria unexpectedly disappeared from home. No one
noticed her departure. And no one saw her again alive. But after some
days the muddy waters of the Tiber cast her lifeless body on the shore.