Dido was right. Heron’s eldest son had returned from his errand. Tired,
disappointed, and with fierce indignation in his eyes, he staggered
in like a drunken man who has been insulted in his cups; and, without
greeting her--as his mother had taught her children to greet even their
slaves--he merely asked in hoarse tones, “Is Melissa come in?”
“Yes, yes,” replied Dido, laying her finger to her lips. “You roused her
from a nap. And what a state you are in! You must not let her see you
so! It is very clear what news you bring. The prefect will not help us?”
“Help us!” echoed Philip, wrathfully. “In Alexandria a man may drown
rather than another will risk wetting his feet.”
“Nay, it is not so bad as that,” said the old woman. “Alexander himself
has burned his fingers for others many a time. Wait a minute. I will
fetch you a draught of wine. There is some still in the kitchen; for if
you appear before your sister in that plight--”
But Melissa had recognized her brother’s voice, and, although Philip had
smoothed his hair a little with his hands, one glance at his face showed
her that his efforts had been vain.
“Poor boy!” she said, when, in answer to her question as to what his
news was, he had answered gloomily, “As bad as possible.”
She took his hand and led him into the work-room. There she reminded him
that she was giving him a new brother in Diodoros; and he embraced her
fondly, and wished her and her betrothed every happiness. She thanked
him out of a full heart, while he swallowed his wine, and then she
begged him to tell her all he had done.
He began, and, as she gazed at him, it struck her how little he
resembled his father and brother, though he was no less tall, and his
head was shaped like theirs. But his frame, instead of showing their
stalwart build, was lean and weakly. His spine did not seem strong
enough for his long body, and he never held himself upright. His head
was always bent forward, as if he were watching or seeking something;
and even when he had seated himself in his father’s place at the
work-table to tell his tale, his hands and feet, even the muscles of his
well-formed but colorless face, were in constant movement. He would jump
up, or throw back his head to shake his long hair off his face, and his
fine, large, dark eyes glowed with wrathful fires.
“I received my first repulse from the prefect,” he began, and as he
spoke, his arms, on whose graceful use the Greeks so strongly insisted,
flew up in the air as though by their own impulse rather than by the
speaker’s will.
“Titianus affects the philosopher, because when he was young--long ago,
that is very certain--his feet trod the Stoa.”
“Your master, Xanthos, said that he was a very sound philosopher,”
Melissa put in.
“Such praise is to be had cheap,” said Philip, “by the most influential
man in the town. But his methods are old-fashioned. He crawls after
Zeno; he submits to authority, and requires more independent spirits to
do the same. To him the divinity is the Great First Cause. In this world
of ours he can discern the working of a purposeful will, and confuses
his mind with windy, worn-out ideals. Virtue, he says--but to what end
repeat such stale old stuff?”
“We have no time for it,” said Melissa, who saw that Philip was on the
point of losing himself in a philosophical dissertation, for he had
begun to enjoy the sound of his own voice, which was, in fact, unusually
musical.
“Why not?” he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, and with a bitter
smile. “When he has shot away all his arrows, the bowman may rest; and,
as you will soon hear, our quiver is empty--as empty as this cup which I
have drained.”
“No, no!” exclaimed Melissa, eagerly. “If this first attempt has failed,
that is the very reason for planning another. I, too, can use figures of
speech. The archer who is really eager to hit the object on which he has
spent his arrows, does not retire from the fight, but fetches more; and
if he can find none, he fights with his bow, or falls on the enemy with
stones, fists, and teeth.”
Philip looked at her in astonishment, and exclaimed in pleased surprise,
without any of the supercilious scorn which he commonly infused into his
tone when addressing his humble sister:
“Listen to our little girl! Where did those gentle eyes get that
determined flash? From misfortune--from misfortune! They rob the gentle
dove of her young--I mean her splendid Alexander--and lo, she becomes
a valiant falcon! I expected to find you a heart-broken lamb, over your
tear-stained stitching, and behold it is you who try to fire me. Well,
then, tell me what arrows we have left, when you have heard me out. But,
before I proceed, is Argutis at home again? No? He must go across again,
to take various things to Alexander--linen, garments, and the like. I
met Glaukias the sculptor, and he begged me not to forget it; for he
knows where the lad is hidden, and was on the point of going over to
see him. The man had made himself perfectly unrecognizable. He is a true
friend, if such a thing there be! And how grieved he was to hear of my
father’s ill fortune! I believe he is envious of Diodoros.”
Melissa shook a finger at him; but she turned pale, and curiously
inquired whether her brother had remembered to warn Glaukias on no
account to tell Alexander that it was in his power to release his
father.
Philip struck his brow, and, with a helpless fall of the mouth, which
was usually so firmly set and ready to sneer, he exclaimed, like a boy
caught in mischief: “That, that--I can not imagine how I forgot it, but
I did not mention it. What strange absence of mind! But I can remedy it
at once on the spot. Argutis--nay, I will go myself.”
He sprang up, and was on the point of carrying out his sudden purpose,
but Melissa detained him. With a decisiveness which again amazed him,
she desired him to remain; and while he paced the workroom with rapid
strides, heaping abuse on himself, now striking his breast, and now
pushing his fingers through his disordered hair, she made it clear to
him that he could not reach Alexander in time to prevent his knowing
all, and that the only result of his visit would be to put the watch on
the track. Instead of raving and lamenting, he would do better to tell
her whither he had been.
First, he hastily began, he had gone to the prefect Titianus, who was
an elderly man of a noble family, many of whose members had ere now
occupied the official residence of the prefect in Alexandria, and in
other towns of Egypt. He had often met Philip at the disputations he
was wont to attend in the Museum, and had a great regard for him. But
of late Titianus had been out of health, and had kept his house. He
had undergone some serious operation shortly before Caesar’s arrival at
Alexandria had been announced, and this had made it impossible for him
to be present at the grand reception, or even to pay his respects to
Caracalla.
When Philip had sent in his name, Titianus had been very ready to
receive him; but while the philosopher was still waiting in the
anteroom, wondering to find it so empty--for it was usually crowded with
the clients, petitioners, and friends of the most important man in
the province--a bustle had arisen behind him, and a tall man had been
ushered in past him, whom he recognized as the senator on whose arm
Caracalla had leaned in the morning. This was the actor, whom the priest
of Serapis had pointed out to Melissa as one of Caesar’s most powerful
favorites. From being a mere dancer he had risen in the course of a few
years to the highest dignities. His name was Theocritus, and although he
was distinguished by great personal beauty and exceptional cleverness,
his unbridled greed had made him hated, and he had proved equally
incompetent as a statesman and a general.
As this man marched through the anteroom, he had glanced haughtily about
him, and the look of contempt which fell on the philosopher probably
reflected on the small number of persons present, for at that hour the
anterooms of Romans of rank were commonly thronged. Most visitors had
been dismissed, by reason of the prefect’s illness, and many of the
acquaintances and supplicants who were generally to be found here were
assembled in the imperial quarters, or in the rooms of the praetorian
prefect and other powerful dignitaries in Caracalla’s train. Titianus
had failed to be present at the emperor’s arrival, and keen courtier
noses smelled a fall, and judged it wise to keep out of the way of a
tottering power.
Besides all this, the prefect’s honesty was well known, and it was
strongly suspected that he, as steward of all the taxes of this wealthy
province, had been bold enough to reject a proposal made by Theocritus
to embezzle the whole freight of a fleet loaded with corn for Rome, and
charge it to the account of army munitions. It was a fact that this base
proposal had been made and rejected only the evening before, and the
scene of which Philip became the witness was the result of this refusal.
Theocritus, to whom an audience was always indispensable, carefully
left the curtains apart which divided the prefect’s sick-room from
the antechamber, and thus Philip was witness of the proceedings he now
described to his sister.
Titianus received his visitor, lying down, and yet his demeanor revealed
the self-possessed dignity of a high-born Roman, and the calm of a Stoic
philosopher. He listened unmoved to the courtier, who, after the usual
formal greetings, took upon himself to overwhelm the older man with the
bitterest accusations and reproaches. People allowed themselves to
take strange liberties with Caesar in this town, Theocritus burst out;
insolent jests passed from lip to lip. An epigram against his sacred
person had found its way into the Serapeum, his present residence--an
insult worthy of any punishment, even of death and crucifixion.
When the prefect, with evident annoyance, but still quite calmly,
desired to know what this extraordinary insult might be, Theocritus
showed that even in his high position he had preserved the accurate
memory of the mime, and, half angry, but yet anxious to give full effect
to the lines by voice and gesture, he explained that “some wretch had
fastened a rope to one of the doors of the sanctuary, and had written
below it the blasphemous words:
‘Hail! For so welcome a guest never came to the sovereign of Hades.
Who ever peopled his realm, Caesar, more freely than thou?
Laurels refuse to grow green in the darksome abode of Serapis;
Take, then, this rope for a gift, never more richly deserved.’”
“It is disgraceful!” exclaimed the prefect.
“Your indignation is well founded. But the biting tongue of the
frivolous mixed races dwelling in this city is well known. They have
tried it on me; and if, in this instance, any one is to blame, it is not
I, the imprisoned prefect, but the chief and captain of the night-watch,
whose business it is to guard Caesar’s residence more strictly.”
At this Theocritus was furious, and poured out a flood of words,
expatiating on the duties of a prefect as Caesar’s representative in
the provinces. “His eye must be as omniscient as that of the all-seeing
Deity. The better he knew the uproarious rabble over whom he ruled,
the more evidently was it his duty to watch over Caesar’s person as
anxiously as a mother over her child, as a miser over his treasure.”
The high-sounding words flowed with dramatic emphasis, the sentimental
speaker adding to their impressiveness by the action of his hands, till
it was more than the invalid could bear. With a pinched smile, he raised
himself with difficulty, and interrupted Theocritus with the impatient
exclamation, “Still the actor!”
“Yes, still!” retorted the favorite, in a hard voice. “You, however,
have been even longer--what you have, indeed, been too long--Prefect
of Egypt!” With an angry fling he threw the corner of his toga over his
shoulder, and, though his hand shook with rage, the pliant drapery fell
in graceful folds over his athletic limbs. He turned his back on the
prefect, and, with the air of a general who has just been crowned with
laurels, he stalked through the anteroom and past Philip once more.
The philosopher had told his sister all this in a few sentences. He now
paused in his walk to and fro to answer Melissa’s question as to whether
this upstart’s influence were really great enough to turn so noble and
worthy a man out of his office.
“Can you ask?” said Philip. “Titianus had no doubts from the first;
and what I heard in the Serapeum--but all in good time. The prefect was
sorry for my father and Alexander, but ended by saying that he
himself needed an intercessor; for, if it were not to-day, at any
rate to-morrow, the actor would inveigle Caesar into signing his
death-warrant.”
“Impossible!” cried the girl, spreading out her hands in horror; but
Philip dropped into a seat, saying:
“Listen to the end. There was evidently nothing to be hoped for from
Titianus. He is, no doubt, a brave man, but there is a touch of the
actor in him too. He is a Stoic; and where would be the point of that,
if a man could not appear to look on approaching death as calmly as on
taking a bath?
“Titianus plays his part well. However, I next went to the Serapeum--it
is a long way, and it was very hot in the sun--to ask for help from my
old patron, the high-priest. Caesar is now his guest; and the prefect,
too, had advised me to place my father’s cause in his hands.”
Here Philip sprang up again, and rushed up and down, sometimes stopping
for a moment in front of his sister while he went on with his story.
Theocritus had long since reached the Serapeum in his swift chariot when
the philosopher at last arrived there on foot. He was well known as a
frequent visitor, and was shown at once into the hall of that part of
his abode which Timotheus had reserved for himself when he had given up
all the best rooms to his imperial visitor.
The anteroom was crowded, and before he got any farther he heard that
the favorite’s accusations had already led to serious results, and
rumors were rife concerning the luckless witticisms of some heedless
youth, which would bring grief upon the peaceable citizens. But before
he could ask what was meant, he was admitted to the high-priest’s room.
This was a marked favor on such a day as this, and the benevolence with
which he was received by the head of the priesthood of the whole city
filled him with good hopes of a successful issue. But hardly had Philip
begun to speak of his brother’s misdemeanor, than Timotheus laid his
hand on his bearded lips, as a hint to be cautious, and whispered in his
ear, “Speak quickly and low, if you love your life!”
When Philip had hastily explained that Zminis had imprisoned his father,
the old man started to his feet with a promptitude to which his majestic
person was unaccustomed, and pointed to a curtained doorway on one side
of the room.
“Through that door,” he whispered, “you will reach the western steps,
and the passage leading out of the precincts to the stadium. You are
known to the Romans in the anteroom. It is not the god to whom this
building is dedicated who now rules within these walls. Your brother’s
rash words are repeated everywhere, and have even come to Caesar’s
knowledge; and he has been told that it was the same traitor--who has
for the moment escaped Zminis and his men--who nailed a rope on one of
our doors, and with it an audacious inscription. To speak a single word
in behalf of Alexander or your father would be to fling myself into the
fire without putting it out. You do not know how fiercely it is burning.
Theocritus is feeding the flame, for he needs it to destroy the prefect.
Now, not another word; and, come what may, so long as the Roman visitors
dwell under this roof, beware of it!”
And the high-priest opened the door with his own hand.
“I hurried home,” Philip added, “and if I forgot, in my dismay at this
fresh disaster, to warn Glaukias to be careful--But, no, no! It is
unpardonable!--Alexander is by this time crossing the lake, perhaps. I
am like Caracalla--my brother’s murderer!”
But Melissa laid her arm on his shoulder and besought the poor fellow
to be comforted; and her loving words of excuse seemed to have some good
effect. But why was he always so reserved? Why could not Philip be as
frank with her as Alexander was? She had never been very near to him;
and now he was concealing from her something which moved him deeply.
She turned away sadly, for she could not even comfort him. But then
again Philip sighed from the bottom of his heart, and she could contain
her self no longer. More tenderly than she had ever addressed him
before, she besought her brother to open his heart to her. She would
gladly help him to endure what oppressed him; and she could understand,
for she herself had learned what the joys and sorrows of love were.
She had found the right clew. Philip nodded, and answered gloomily:
“Well, then, listen. It may do me good to speak.” And thereupon he began
to tell her what she had already heard from Alexander; and, covering her
tingling cheeks with her hands, she listened with breathless attention,
not missing a word, though the question rose to her mind again and again
whether she should tell him the whole truth, which he as yet could not
know, or whether it would be better to spare his already burdened soul.
He described his love in glowing colors. Korinna’s heart, he said, must
have gone forth to him; for, at their last meeting on the northern shore
of the lake, her hand had rested in his while he helped her out of the
boat; he could still feel the touch of her fingers. Nor had the meeting
been pure accident, for he had since seen and recognized the presence on
earth of her departed soul in her apparently living form. And she, too,
with the subtle senses of a disembodied spirit, must have had a yearning
towards him, for she had perceived all the depth and fervor of his
passion. Alexander had given him this certainty; for when he had seen
Korinna by the lake, her soul had long since abandoned its earthly
tenement. Before that, her mortal part was already beyond his reach; and
yet he was happy, for the spirit was not lost to him. Only last night
magic forces had brought her before him--his father, too, had been
present, and no deception was possible. He had gone to bed in rapturous
excitement, full of delicious hopes, and Korinna had at once appeared
to him in a dream, so lovely, so kind, and at the same time so subtle a
vision, ready to follow him in his thoughts and strivings. But just as
he had heard a full assurance of her love from her own lips, and was
asking her by what name he should call her when the craving to see her
again should wax strong in him, old Dido had waked him, to cast him out
of elysium into the deepest earthly woes.
But, he added--and he drew himself up proudly--he should soon possess
the Magian’s art, for there was no kind of learning he could not master;
even as a boy he had proved that to his teachers. He, whose knowledge
had but yesterday culminated in the assurance that it was impossible to
know anything, could now assert with positive conviction, that the human
soul could exist apart from the matter it had animated. He had thus
gained that fixed footing outside the earth which Archimedes had
demanded to enable him to move it; and he should soon be able to exert
his power over departed souls, whose nature he now understood as well
as--ay, and better than--Serapion. Korinna’s obedient spirit would help
him, and when once he should succeed in commanding the souls of the
dead, as their master, and in keeping them at hand among the living, a
new era of happiness would begin, not only for him and his father, but
for every one who had lost one dear to him by death.
But here Melissa interrupted his eager and confident speech. She had
listened with increasing uneasiness to the youth who, as she knew, had
been cheated. At first she thought it would be cruel to destroy his
bright illusions. He should at least in this be happy, till the anguish
of having thoughtlessly betrayed his brother to ruin should be a thing
of the past! But when she perceived that he purposed involving his
father in the Magian’s snares by calling up his mother’s Manes, she
could no longer be silent, and she broke out with indignant warning:
“Leave my father alone, Philip! For all you saw at the Magian’s was mere
trickery.”
“Gently, child,” said the philosopher, in a superior tone. “I was of
exactly the same opinion till after sundown yesterday. You know that the
tendency of the school of philosophy to which I belong insists, above
all, on a suspension of judgment; but if there is one thing which may be
asserted with any dogmatic certainty--”
But Melissa would hear no more. She briefly but clearly explained to him
who the maiden was whose hand he had held by the lake, and whom he had
seen again at Serapion’s house; and as she went on his interruptions
became fewer. She did her utmost, with growing zeal, to destroy his
luckless dream; but when the blood faded altogether from his colorless
cheeks, and he clasped his hand over his brow as if to control some
physical suffering, she recovered her self-command; the beautiful fear
of a woman’s heart of ever giving useless pain, made her withhold from
Philip what remained to be told of Agatha’s meeting with Alexander.
But, without this further revelation, Philip sat staring at the ground
as if he were overwhelmed; and what hurt him so deeply was less the
painful sense of having been cheated by such coarse cunning, than
the annihilation of the treasured hopes which he had founded on the
experiences of the past night. He felt as though a brutal foot had
trampled down the promise of future joys on which he had counted; his
sister’s revelations had spoiled not merely his life on earth, but all
eternity beyond the grave. Where hope ends despair steps in; and Philip,
with reckless vehemence, flung himself, as it were, into its arms. His
was an excitable nature; he had never thought of any one but himself,
but labored with egotistical zeal to cultivate his own mind and outdo
his fellows in the competition for learning. The sullen words in which
he called himself the most wretched man on earth, and the victim of the
blackest ill-fortune, fell from his lips like stones. He rudely repelled
his sister’s encouraging words, like a sick child whose pain is the
greater for being pitied, till at last she appealed to his sense of
duty, reminding him that something must be done to rescue her father and
Alexander.
“They also! They also!” he cried. “It falls on us all. Blind Fate drives
us all, innocent as we are, to death and despair, like the Tantalides.
What sin have you committed, gentle, patient child; or our father, or
our happy-hearted and gifted brother; or I--I myself? Have those whom
we call the rulers of the universe the right to punish me because I make
use of the inquiring spirit they have bestowed on me? Ah, and how well
they know how to torture us! They hate me for my learning, and so they
turn my little errors to account to allow me to be cheated like a fool!
They are said to be just, and they behave like a father who disinherits
his son because, as a man, he notes his parent’s weakness. With tears
and anguish have I striven for truth and knowledge. There is not a
province of thought whose deepest depths I have not tried to fathom;
and when I recognized that it is not given to mortals to apprehend the
essence of the divinity because the organs bestowed on us are too small
and feeble; when I refused to pronounce whether that which I can not
apprehend exists or not, was that my fault, or theirs? There may be
divine forces which created and govern the universe; but never talk to
me of their goodness, and reasonableness, and care for human creatures!
Can a reasonable being, who cares for the happiness of another, strew
the place assigned to him to dwell in with snares and traps, or implant
in his breast a hundred impulses of which the gratification only drags
him into an abyss? Is that Being my friend, who suffers me to be born
and to grow up, and leaves me tied to the martyr’s stake, with very few
real joys, and finally kills me, innocent or guilty, as surely as I am
born? If the divinity which is supposed to bestow on us a portion of the
divine essence in the form of reason were constituted as the crowd
are taught to believe, there could be nothing on earth but wisdom and
goodness; but the majority are fools or wicked, and the good are like
tall trees, which the lightning blasts rather than the creeping weed.
Titianus falls before the dancer Theocritus, the noble Papinian before
the murderer Caracalla, our splendid Alexander before such a wretch as
Zminis; and divine reason lets it all happen, and allows human reason
to proclaim the law. Happiness is for fools and knaves; for those
who cherish and uphold reason--ay, reason, which is a part of the
divinity--persecution, misery, and despair.”
“Have done!” Melissa exclaimed. “Have the judgments of the immortals not
fallen hardly enough on us? Would you provoke them to discharge their
fury in some more dreadful manner?”
At this the skeptic struck his breast with defiant pride, exclaiming:
“I do not fear them, and dare to proclaim openly the conclusions of
my thoughts. There are no gods! There is no rational guidance of the
universe. It has arisen self-evolved, by chance; and if a god created
it, he laid down eternal laws and has left them to govern its course
without mercy or grace, and without troubling himself about the puling
of men who creep about on the face of the earth like the ants on that of
a pumpkin. And well for us that it should be so! Better a thousand times
is it to be the servant of an iron law, than the slave of a capricious
master who takes a malignant and envious pleasure in destroying the
best!”
“And this, you say, is the final outcome of your thoughts?” asked
Melissa, shaking her head sadly. “Do you not perceive that such an
outbreak of mad despair is simply unworthy of your own wisdom, of
which the end and aim should be a passionless, calm, and immovable
moderation?”
“And do they show such moderation,” Philip gasped out, “who pour the
poison of misfortune in floods on one tortured heart?”
“Then you can accuse those whose existence you disbelieve in?” retorted
Melissa with angry zeal. “Is this your much-belauded logic? What becomes
of your dogmas, in the face of the first misfortune--dogmas which enjoin
a reserve of decisive judgment, that you may preserve your equanimity,
and not overburden your soul, in addition to the misfortune itself, with
the conviction that something monstrous has befallen you? I remember how
much that pleased me the first time I heard it. For your own sake--for
the sake of us all--cease this foolish raving, and do not merely call
yourself a skeptic--be one; control the passion that is rending you. For
love of me--for love of us all--”
And as she spoke she laid her hand on his shoulder, for he had sat down
again; and although he pushed her away with some petulance, she went on
in a tone of gentle entreaty: “If we are not to be altogether too late
in the field, let us consider the situation calmly. I am but a girl, and
this fresh disaster will fall more hardly on me than on you; for what
would become of me without my father?”
“Life with him has at any rate taught you patient endurance,” her
brother broke in with a sullen shrug.
“Yes, life,” she replied, firmly: “life, which shows us the right way
better than all your books. Who can tell what may have detained Argutis?
I wilt wait no longer. The sun will have set before long, and this
evening Caesar is to sup with Seleukus, the father of Korinna. I happen
to know it from Samonicus, who is one of the guests. Seleukus and his
wife have a great regard for Alexander, and will do for him all that
lies in their power. The lady Berenike, he told me, is a noble dame. It
should be your part to entreat her help for our father and brother; but
you must not venture where Caesar is. So I will go, and I shall have no
rest till Korinna’s mother listens to me and promises to aid us.”
At this Philip exclaimed, in horror: “What! you will dare to enter the
house where Caracalla is feasting with the rabble he calls his friends?
You, an inexperienced girl, young, beautiful, whose mere appearance
is enough to stir their evil passions? Sooner than allow that, I will
myself find my way into the house of Seleukus, and among the spies who
surround the tyrant.”
“That my father may lose another son, and I my only remaining brother?”
Melissa observed, with grave composure. “Say no more, Philip. I am
going, and you must wait for me here.”
The philosopher broke out at this in despotic wrath:
“What has come over you, that you have suddenly forgotten how to obey?
But I insist; and rather than allow you to bring on us not trouble
merely, but shame and disgrace, I will lock you into your room!”
He seized her hand to drag her into the adjoining room. She struggled
with all her might; but he was the stronger, and he had got her as far
as the door, when the Gaul Argutis rushed, panting and breathless,
into the work-room through the anteroom, calling out to the struggling
couple:
“What are you doing? By all the gods, you have chosen the wrong time for
a quarrel! Zminis is on the way hither to take you both prisoners; he
will be here in a minute! Fly into the kitchen, girl! Dido will hide you
in the wood-store behind the hearth.-You, Philip, must squeeze into the
henhouse. Only be quick, or it will be too late!”
“Go!” cried Melissa to her brother. “Out through the kitchen window you
can get into the poultry-yard!”
She threw herself weeping into his arms, kissed him, and added,
hastily: “Whatever happens to us, I shall risk all to save my father and
Alexander. Farewell! The gods preserve us!”
She now seized Philip’s wrist, as he had before grasped hers, to drag
him away; but he freed himself, saying, with an indifference which
terrified her: “Then let the worst come. Ruin may take its course. Death
rather than dishonor!”
“Madman!” the slave could not help exclaiming; and the faithful fellow,
though wont to obey, threw his arms round his master’s son to drag him
away into the kitchen, while Philip pushed him off, saying:
“I will not hide, like a frightened woman!”
But the Gaul heard the approach of marching men, so, paying no further
heed to the brother, he dragged Melissa into the kitchen, where old Dido
undertook to hide her.
Philip stood panting in the studio. Through the open window he could see
the pursuers coming nearer, and the instinct of self-preservation, which
asserts itself even in the strongest, prompted him to follow the slave’s
advice. But before he could reach the door, in fancy he saw himself
joining the party of philosophers airing themselves under the arcades in
the great court of the Museum; he heard their laughter and their bitter
jests at the skeptic, the independent thinker, who had sought refuge
among the fowls, who had been hauled out of the hen-house; and this
picture confirmed his determination to yield to force rather than bring
on himself the curse of ridicule. But at the same time other reasons
for submitting to his fate suggested themselves unbidden--reasons more
worthy of his position, of the whole course and aim of his thoughts, and
of the sorrow which weighed upon his soul. It beseemed him as a skeptic
to endure the worst with equanimity; under all circumstances he liked
to be in the right, and he would fain have called out to his sister that
the cruel powers whose enmity he had incurred still persisted in driving
him on to despair and death, worthy as he was of a better fate.
A few minutes later Zminis came in, and put out his long lean arms to
apprehend him in Caesar’s name. Philip submitted, and not a muscle of
his face moved. Once, indeed, a smile lighted it up, as he reflected
that they would hardly have carried him off to prison if Alexander were
already in their power; but the smile gave way only too soon to gloomy
gravity when Zminis informed him that his brother, the traitor, had just
given himself up to the chief of the night-watch, and was now safe under
lock and ward. But his crime was so great that, according to the law of
Egypt, his nearest relations were to be seized and punished with him.
Only his sister was now missing, but they would know how to find her.
“Possibly,” Philip replied, coldly. “As justice is blind, Injustice has
no doubt all the sharper eyes.”
“Well said,” laughed the Egyptian. “A pinch of the salt which they give
you at the Museum with your porridge--for nothing.”
Argutis had witnessed this scene; and when, half an hour later,
the men-at-arms had left the house without discovering Melissa’s
hiding-place, he informed her that Alexander had, as they feared, given
himself up of his own free-will to procure Heron’s release; but the
villains had kept the son, without liberating the father. Both were
now in prison, loaded with chains. The slave had ended his tale some
minutes, and Melissa still stood, pale and tearless, gazing on the
ground as though she were turned to stone; but suddenly she shivered, as
if with the chill of fever, and looked up, out through the windows into
the garden, now dim in the twilight. The sun had set, night was falling,
and again the words of the Christian preacher recurred to her mind: “The
fullness of the time is come.”
To her and hers a portion of life had come to an end, and a new one must
grow out of it. Should the free-born race of Heron perish in captivity
and death?
The evening star blazed out on the distant horizon, seeming to her as
a sign from the gods; and she told herself that it must be her part,
as the last of the family who remained free, to guard the others from
destruction in this new life.
The heavens were soon blazing with stars. The banquet in Seleukus’s
house, at which Caesar was to appear, would begin in an hour.
Irresolution and delay would ruin all; so she drew herself up resolutely
and called to Argutis, who had watched her with faithful sympathy:
“Take my father’s blue cloak, Argutis, to make you more dignified; and
disguise yourself, for you must escort me, and we may be followed. You,
Dido, come and help me. Take my new dress, that I wore at the Feast
of Adonis, out of my trunk; and with it you will see my mother’s blue
fillet with the gems. My father used to say I should first wear it at my
wedding, but--Well, you must bind my hair with it to-night. I am going
to a grand house, where no one will be admitted who does not look worthy
of people of mark. But take off the jewel; a supplicant should make no
display.”