Palestine had ceased to exist. Civilisation had passed Eastward, for
Constantinople was the metropolis of Europe; and from the East, Rome,
Spain, Gaul, and Germany were governed by satraps with various titles.
It seemed as though the vitality of Europe had been quenched, and as
though Rome had been buried, but it was only apparently so. History did
not proceed in a straight line, but took circuitous paths, and therefore
development seemed to be in disorder and astray. But it was not really
so.
Christianity, which was about to penetrate the West, had sprung from the
East, and so ancient Byzantium formed a transition stage. In Rome, which
had been left to itself, for its governors dwelt in Milan and Ravenna, a
new spiritual world-power was springing up, which was silently forging
a new imperial crown, in order to give it to the worthiest when the time
was fulfilled. The advent of this heir had already been announced by
Tacitus--a new race from the North, healthy, honest, good-humoured.
These were the Germans, who were to hold the Empire for a thousand years
from 800 to 1815. Already, at the commencement of the fifth century, the
West Goths had captured Rome, but again withdrawn; other German races
had overrun Spain, Gaul, and Britain, but none of them had taken firm
root in Italy. Then an entirely new race appeared upon the scene, whose
origin was unknown, and the promise of possessing the land which had
been given to the Germans seemed to have been revoked, for the Huns
finally settled in Hungary, and exacted tribute from all the nations in
the world. Round a wooden castle and a few barracks on the river Theiss,
there collected a crowd of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Germans
of all kinds to do homage before a throne on which sat a savage who
resembled a lump of flesh.
In the year 453 A.D. this King, after many adventures, wished to
celebrate one of his numerous marriages. He had summoned the chief men
of all Europe--summoned--for a King does not invite. So they came riding
from North, South, East, and West.
From the west, along the bank of the Danube, just below the place where
the river makes a curve at the modern Gran, came two men riding at the
head of a caravan. For several days they had followed the picturesque
banks of the green river, with its bulrushes and willows, and its swarms
of wild duck and herons. Now they were about to leave the cool shades
of the forest region, and turn eastward towards the salt desert, which
stretched to the banks of the yellow Theiss.
One leader of the caravan was a well-known Roman, called Orestes; the
other was Rugier, also called Edeko. He was a chief from the shores of
the Baltic Sea, and had been compelled to follow Attila.
The two leaders had hitherto spoken little together, for they mistrusted
each other. But as they emerged on the wide plain, which opened out as
clear and bright as the surface of the sea, they seemed themselves to
grow cheerful, and to lay aside all mistrust.
“Why are you going to the marriage?” asked Orestes.
“Because I cannot remain away,” answered Edeko.
“Just like myself.”
“And the Bride--the Burgundian did not dare to say ‘no’ either?”
“She? Yes, she would have dared to.”
“Then she loved this savage?”
“I did not say that.”
“Perhaps she hates him, then? A new Judith for this Holofernes?”
“Who knows? The Burgundians do not love the Huns since they pillaged
Worms in their last raid.”
“Still it is incomprehensible how he recovered from his defeat on the
Catalaunian Plain.”
“Everything is incomprehensible that has to do with this man, if he is a
man at all.”
“You are right. He is said to have succeeded his father’s brother, Rua,
of whom we know nothing; he has murdered his brother Bleda. For twenty
years we have had him held over us like an iron rod, and yet lately,
when he was before Rome, he turned back.”
“But he has promised his soldiers to give them Rome some day.”
“Why did he spare Rome?”
“No one knows. No one knows anything about this man, and he himself
seems to be ignorant about himself. He comes from the East, he says;
that is all. People say the Huns are the offspring of witches and demons
in the wilderness. If anyone asks Attila what he wants, and who he is,
he answers, ‘The Scourge of God.’ He founds no kingdom, builds no city,
but rules over all kingdoms and destroys all cities.”
“To return to his bride: she is called Ildico; is she then a Christian?”
“What does Attila care? He has no religion.”
“He must have one if he calls himself ‘the Scourge of God,’ and declares
that he has found the War-God’s sword.”
“But he is indifferent as regards forms of religion. His chief minister,
Onegesius, is a Greek and a Christian.”
“What an extraordinary man he is to settle down here in a salt-plain
instead of taking up his abode in Byzantium or in Rome.”
“That is because it resembles his far Eastern plains--the same soil, the
same plants and birds; he feels at home here.”
They became silent, as the sun rose and the heat increased. The
low-growing tamarisk, wormwood, and soda-bushes afforded no shade. Wild
fowl and larks were the only creatures that inhabited the waste. The
herds of cattle, goats, and swine had disappeared, for Attila’s army of
half a million had eaten them up, and his horses had not left a single
edible blade of grass.
At noon the caravan came suddenly to a halt, for on the eastern horizon
there was visible a town with towers and pinnacles, on the other side
of a blue lake. “Are we there?” asked Edeko. “Impossible; it is still
twenty miles, or three days’ journey.”
But the city was in sight, and the caravan quickened its pace. After
half an hour the town appeared no nearer, but seemed, on the contrary,
to grow more distant, to dwindle in size, and to sink out of sight.
After another half hour, it had disappeared, and the blue lake also.
“They can practise enchantment,” said the Roman, “but that goes beyond
everything.”
“It is the Fata Morgana, or the mirage,” explained the guide.
As the evening came on, the caravan halted in order to rest for the
night.
* * * * *
On the stretch of land between Bodrog and Theiss, Attila had his
standing camp, for it could not be called a town. The palace was of
wood, painted in glaring colours, and resembled an enormous tent, whose
style was probably borrowed from China, the land of silk. The women’s
house, which was set up near it, had a somewhat different form, which
might have been brought by the Goths from the North, or even from
Byzantium, for the house was ornamented with round wooden arches. The
fittings seemed to have been stolen from all nations and lands; there
were quantities of gold and silver, silk and satin curtains, Roman
furniture and Grecian vessels, weapons from Gaul, and Gothic textile
fabrics. It resembled a robber’s abode, and such in fact it was.
Behind the palace enclosure began the camp, with its smoke-grimed tents.
A vast number of horse-dealers and horse-thieves swarmed in the streets,
and there were as many horses as men there. Without the camp there
grazed herds of swine, sheep, goats, and cattle--living provision for
this enormous horde of men, who could only devour and destroy, but could
not produce anything.
Now, on the morning of Attila’s wedding day, there were moving about in
this camp thousands of little men with crooked legs and broad shoulders,
clothed in rat-skins and with rags tied round their calves. They looked
out of their tents with curiosity, when strangers who had been invited
to the marriage feast came riding up from the plain.
In the first street of tents, Attila’s son and successor, Ellak, met the
principal guests; he bade them welcome through an interpreter, and led
them into the guest-house.
“Is that a prince, and are those men?” said Orestes to Edeko.
“That is a horse-dealer, and the rest are rats,” answered Edeko. “They
are monsters and demons, vampires, created from dreams of intoxication.
They have no faces; their eyes are holes; their voice is a rattle; their
nose is that of a death’s-head; and their ears are pot-handles.”
“You speak truly, and it is from these half-naked savages, who have
no armour and no shield, that the Roman legions have fled. They are
goblins, who have been able to ‘materialise’ themselves.”
“They will not conquer the world.”
“At any rate not in this year.”
Then they followed Prince Ellak, who had heard and understood every
word, although he pretended not to know their language.
* * * * *
In the women’s house sat Attila’s favourite, Cercas, and sewed the
bridal veil. Ildico, the beautiful Burgundian, stood at the window lost
in thought and absent-minded. She had seen in Worms the hero before whom
the world trembled, and she had really been captivated by the little
man’s majestic bearing. Herself fond of power, and self-willed, she had
been enticed by the prospect of sharing power with the man before whom
all and everything bowed; therefore she had given him her hand.
But she had had no correct comprehension of the manners and customs of
the Huns, and had therefore imagined that her position as wife and Queen
would be quite otherwise than it proved to be. Only this morning she had
learnt that she could not appear at all at the marriage feast, nor share
the throne, but would simply remain shut up with the other women in the
women’s house.
Cercas, the favourite, had explained all this with malicious joy to her
rival, and the haughty Ildico was on the point of forming a resolution.
She had no friends in the palace, and could not approach the foreign
princes.
Cercas was sewing, and accompanied her work with a melancholy song from
her home in the far East. Ildico seemed to have collected her thoughts:
“Can you lend me a needle?” she said, “I want to sew.”
Cercas gave her a needle, but it was too small; she asked for a larger
one, and chose the largest of all. She hid it in her bosom, and did not
sew.
At that moment there appeared in the doorway a creature so abominably
ugly and of such a malicious aspect, that Ildico thought he was a demon.
He was as jet-black as a negro from tropical Africa, and his head
seemed to rest on his stomach, for he had no chest. He was a dwarf and
humpback; his name was Hamilcar, and he was Attila’s court-fool.
In those days the court-fool was generally not a wit, but a naive
blockhead, who believed all that was said, and was therefore a butt for
jests. He only placed a letter in Cercas’ hand, and disappeared. When
Cercas had read the letter, she changed colour and seemed to become a
different being. Overcome with rage, she could not speak, but sang,
“The tiger follows the lion’s trail.”
“Ildico, you have found a friend,” she said at last. “You have a friend
here in the room, here at the window, here on your breast.” And she
threw herself on the Burgundian maiden’s breast, weeping and laughing
alternately. “Give me your needle--your fine beautiful needle; I will
thread it. No! I will sharpen it on steel; no, I will dip it in my
perfume-flask, my own special little perfume flask, and then together we
will sew up the Tiger’s mouth, so that he can bite no more!”
“Let me read your letter,” Ildico interrupted.
“You cannot. I will tell you what it says. He, our master, woos again
for the hand of the daughter of the Emperor Valens--Honoria, and this
time he has vowed to burn us all;--that he calls giving us an honourable
burial.”
Ildico reached out her hand as an answer, “Very well, to-night. A single
needle-prick will deprive the world of its ruler!”
* * * * *
Edeko and Orestes had thoroughly rested from their journey in the
guest-house. At noon, when they wished to go out, they found the door
bolted.
“Are we prisoners? Have we fallen into a trap?” asked the Roman.
“We have not had any food either,” answered Edeko.
Then two voices were heard without: “We will strangle them; that is the
simplest way.”
“I think we had better set the house on fire; the tall one is strong.”
“And they thought we did not understand their language.”
The two prisoners, whose consciences were uneasy, were alarmed, and
believed that their end was near. Then a small trap-door opened in the
wall, and the fool Hamilcar showed his hideous head.
“Whether you are the devil or not,” exclaimed the Roman, “answer us some
questions.”
“Speak, sirs,” said the negro.
“Are we prisoners, or why cannot we see your King?”
Prince Ellak’s head appeared at the trap-door.
“You will first see the King this evening at the feast,” said the
Prince, with a malicious grimace.
“Are we to fast till then?”
“We call it so, and do it always when we have a feast before us, in
order to be able to eat more.”
“Cannot we at any rate go out?”
“No,” answered the Prince with the horse-dealerlike face. “One must
conform to the custom of the country.” So saying, he closed the
trap-door.
“Do you think we shall get away alive?” asked Edeko.
“Who knows? Attila is composed of treachery. You do not know that once
he wrote two letters, one to Dieterich, King of the West Goths, asking
for an alliance against the Romans as the common enemy; and on the same
day he wrote a similar letter to the Romans, in which he proposed an
alliance against the West Goths. The deceit was discovered, and Attila
fell between two stools.”
“He seems to be immortal, otherwise he would have been killed in battle,
as he always goes at the head of his army.”
Until evening the travelling companions remained incarcerated. At last
the door was opened, and a master of the ceremonies led them into the
hall where the great feast was to take place. Here there were countless
seats and tables covered with the most costly cloths and drinking
vessels of gold and silver. The guests were assembled, but the two
travellers saw no faces that they knew; they looked in vain for the
bridegroom and the bride. As they were conducted to their places, a low
murmur broke out among the guests, who talked in an undertone, and asked
where the great King would show himself.
Orestes and Edeko cast their eyes over the walls and ceiling without
being able to see where the wonder would happen, for the childish and
cunning Huns used to amuse their guests with surprises and practical
jokes.
Suddenly the whole assembly stood up. The curtain which covered the
wall in the background was drawn aside, and on a platform sat a little
insignificant-looking man, with a table before him and a sofa beside
him. On the table stood a wooden goblet. He sat quite motionless,
without even moving his eyelids. Somewhat lower than he stood his chief
Minister, the Greek Onegesius. He kept his eyes unwaveringly fixed on
his master, who seemed to be able to converse with him through his eyes.
Attila remained in the same attitude, his legs crossed, and his right
hand on the table. He gave no greeting, neither did he answer any.
“He does not see us! He only shows himself!” whispered Orestes. “He sees
well!”
Onegesius received a command from the despot’s eye, and lifted his
staff. A poet stepped forward with an instrument that resembled a harp
and a drum combined. After he had struck the strings, and beaten the
drum, he began to recite. It was a song celebrating all Attila’s feats
in terms of strong exaggeration, and it would have been endless, if the
assembly had not taken up the refrain and struck with their short swords
on the table. The poet represented Attila’s defeat on the Catalaunian
Plain as an honourable but indecisive battle. After the guests had for
some time contemplated the insignificant-looking hero in his simple
brown leather dress, they both felt the same irresistible reverence that
all did who saw him.
There was something more than vanity in this self-conscious calm; this
visible contempt for all and everything. He kept his side-face turned to
the guests, and only his Minister could catch his eye.
When the panegyric was at an end, Attila raised his goblet, and, without
drinking to anyone, sipped it. That was, however, the signal for a
drinking orgy, and the wine was poured into gold and silver goblets,
which had to be emptied at a draught, for Attila liked to see those
around him intoxicated, while he remained sober.
After they had drunk for a while, the negro Hamilcar came forward and
performed feats of jugglery. Then the great King rose, turned his back
to the assembly, and laid down on the sofa. But in each of his movements
there was majesty, and as he lay there thinking, his knees drawn up, his
hands under his neck, and his eyes directed towards the ceiling, he was
still imposing.
“But what about the bride and the marriage?” Orestes asked one of the
Huns.
“We do not even mention our wives,” he answered, “how, then, should we
show them?”
The drinking continued, but no food was placed before the guests. At
intervals the whole assembly sang, and beat upon the tables.
While the noise and excitement were at their height, the hall suddenly
filled with smoke, and the building was in flames. All started up,
shouted and sought to flee, but Attila’s Minister struck with his staff
on the table, and the assembly broke into laughter. It was a jest
for the occasion, and only some waggon-loads of hay had been kindled
outside. When quiet had been restored, Attila was no more to be seen,
for he had left the hall by a secret door. And now began the feast,
which lasted till morning.
* * * * *
When the sun rose, Orestes was still sitting and drinking with an Avar
chief. The condition of the hall was indescribable, and most of the
guests were dancing outside round the fire.
“This is a wedding-feast indeed!” said Orestes. “We shall not quickly
forget it. But I would gladly have spoken with the wonderful man. Can
one not do that?”
“No,” answered the Avar; “he only speaks in case of need. ‘What is the
use of standing,’ he asks, ‘and deceiving one another?’ He is a wise
man, and not without traces of kindness and humanity. He allows no
unnecessary bloodshed, does not avenge himself on a defeated foe, and is
ready to forgive.”
“Has he any religion? Does he fear death?”
“He believes on his sword and his mission, and death is for him only the
door to his real home. Therefore he lives here below, as though he were
a guest or traveller.”
“Quite like the Christians, then?”
“It is remarkable that in Rome he received respect from Pope Leo--What’s
the matter now?”
Outside there was a shouting which at first seemed to issue from the
palace, but soon spread itself over the camp. Half a million of men were
howling, and it sounded like weeping.
The guests hurried out, and saw all the Huns dancing, cutting their
faces with knives, and shouting unintelligible words. Edeko came up
and pulled Orestes away through the crowds. “Attila is dead! May Jesus
Christ be praised!”
“Dead? That is Ildico’s doing!”
“No! she sat by the corpse, veiled and weeping.”
“Yes, it is she.”
“Yes, but these savages are too proud to believe that Attila could be
killed by a human being!”
“How fortunate for us!”
“Quick to Rome with the news. The fortune of the man who first brings it
is made.”
Orestes and Edeko departed the same morning. They never forgot this
wedding which had brought them together.
Later on they renewed their acquaintance, under other and still more
striking circumstances. For the son of Edeko was Odovacer, who defeated
the son of Orestes, who was no other than the last Emperor Romulus
Augustus. Strangely enough his name was Romulus, as was that of Rome’s
first King, and Augustus, as was that of the first Emperor. After his
deposition, he closed his life with a pension of six thousand gold
pieces, in a Campanian villa, which had formerly belonged to Lucullus.
THE SERVANT OF SERVANTS
Rome had become a provincial town and a dependency of Byzantium. It was
governed by an Exarch in Ravenna, but often abandoned to its fate when
the barbarians from the north amused themselves from time to time by
raiding and pillaging it. For three hundred years no Emperor had visited
Rome, and the former queen of the world lay despised in rubbish and
ruin. But presently people began to collect and piece together the ruins
of temples and palaces, and build churches out of them. Five hundred
years after the death of Nero, an already ancient church of St. Peter
stood in the middle of the tyrant’s circus, where the martyrs had
suffered death. There were at least seven other churches in different
parts of the town, and the Bishop of Rome dwelt in the Lateran Palace,
near the church of the same name. There were also convents, and on the
Appian Way stood the St. Andrew’s Convent, close to the Church of the
Cross, which was built at the entrance to the catacombs.
About two o’clock one summer morning, all the fathers and brothers had
risen, and read or sung early mass in the chancel. Afterwards the Abbot
had gone into the garden in order to reflect. It was still dark, but the
stars shone between the olive and orange trees, and the flowers swayed
in the gentle breeze of the dawn.
The Abbot, a man of about fifty, strolled up and down in a covered
arbour-walk, and every time he reached the south end he remained
standing, in order to contemplate a marble tablet, erected by the side
of other tablets. It stood over his future grave, which was by the side
of the abbots who had already been buried. His name and the year of his
birth were engraved upon the marble, while a space was left for the date
of his death.
“O Lord, how long wilt Thou forget me?” he sighed, as he turned round
again. After he had thus continued walking till daybreak, he sat down
in an arbour, in order to write something in a book which he took out
of his pocket. The noise of awaking life in the city did not disturb
him--nothing disturbed the white-haired man of fifty who had already
been two hours on his legs without eating anything. Church bells rang,
carts rattled, and the rushing of the Tiber could be heard through all
other noises. But the old man continued to write, while his wrinkled
face was faintly lit up by the red of dawn. At last steps were heard on
the gravel-path; a novice entered the arbour, and placed a bowl of
bread and milk by the Abbot. The latter started, as though he had been
recalled from far away, and exclaimed, “Leave me in peace!” The novice
remained standing, frightened and troubled. Then a little bird, which
had been sitting in the arbour, struck up its song. The Abbot looked up,
his countenance cleared, he cast a glance on the bowl of milk which he
eagerly seized, and was in the act of raising it to his mouth, but, as
he noticed the youth’s troubled aspect, he stopped. “Forgive my anger,”
he said, “but I was far away. As a penance, I do this!”
He was about to pour the milk on the ground, but in order that it might
not be wasted, he poured it on the roots of a reddish-yellow lily that
stood in one of the border-beds. As the novice gave no sign of going,
the Abbot asked, “You wish to speak with me? Speak!”
“Holy Father.”
“I am not holy; One is holy, the Lord your God in heaven! If you have a
complaint, make it.”
“I was a rich youth, who went and sold all that he had.”
“I also did that when I was young, and then built seven convents, but
have not regretted it. What have you against it? Why do you complain?”
The youth was silent.
“Is it about the food? There is a famine round us, and we must share
with the poor.”
“Not only that, venerable father, but the whole way of living here does
not accomplish what it is intended to do.”
“Say on.”
“The scanty food does not subdue the flesh, for as I go about hungry the
whole day, I involuntarily think only about eating--in church, during
prayer, in solitude. The small amount of sleep makes me sleepy the whole
day, and I go to sleep in the chancel. Desires, which I had not known
before, are aroused by suppression; when I see wine, I feel a real
longing to get vital warmth into my body.”
“Then go and ask a brother to scourge you till you swim in your blood,
then you will feel the vital warmth return.”
“I have done that, but the blows only waken new desires.”
“Read St. Augustine.”
“I have done that. But the worst of all is the dirt. If I could bathe.
“Are you dirty? That betokens inward defilement. I never bathe, but my
body is always clean. But I have noticed, as soon as my thoughts become
impure, the body becomes impure! What do you think, then, will do you
good? You do not wish to marry. Tertullian says marriage and fornication
are the same. And St. Jerome is of opinion that it is better to burn
than to marry.”
“But St. Paul.”
“Let St. Paul alone! But what do you want to do?”
“I cannot remain here, for I think that desires can only be extinguished
by being satisfied.”