Galen's house was one he rented from a freedman of the emperor--a wise
means of retaining favor at the palace. Landlords having influence were
careful to protect good tenants. Furthermore, whoever rented, rather
than possessed, escaped more easily from persecution. Galen, like
Tyanan Apollonius, reduced his private needs, maintaining that
philosophy went hand in hand with medicine, but wealth with neither.
It was a pleasant little house, not far away from Cornificia's, within a
precinct that was rebuilt after all that part of Rome burned under
Nero's fascinated gaze. The street was crescent-shaped, not often
crowded, though a score of passages like wheel-spokes led to it; and to
the rear of Galen's house was a veritable maze of alleys. There were
two gates to the house: one wide, with decorated posts, that faced the
crescent street, where Galen's oldest slave sat on a stool and blinked
at passers-by; the other narrow, leading from a little high-walled
courtyard at the rear into an alley between stables in which milch-asses
were kept. That alley led into another where a dozen midwives had their
names and claims to excellency painted on the doors--an alley carefully
to be avoided, because women of that trade, like barbers, vied for
custom by disseminating gossip.
So Sextus used a passage running parallel to that one, leading between
workshops where the burial-urn makers' slaves engraved untruthful
epitaphs in baked clay or inlaid them on the marble tomb-slabs--to be
gilded presently with gold-leaf (since a gilded lie, though costlier, is
no worse than the same lie unadorned.)
He drummed a signal with his knuckles on the panel of a narrow door of
olive-wood, set deep into the wall under a projecting arch. An
overleaning tree increased the shadow, and a visitor could wait without
attracting notice. A slave nearly as old as Galen presently admitted
him into a paved yard in which a fish-pond had been built around an
ancient well. A few old fruit-trees grew against the wall, and there
were potted shrubs, but little evidence of gardening, most of Galen's
slaves being too old for that kind of work. There were a dozen of them
loafing in the yard; some were so fat that they wheezed, and some so
thin with age that they resembled skeletons. There was a rumor that the
fatness and the thinness were accounted for by Galen's fondness for
experiments. Old Galen had a hundred jealous rivals and they even said
he fed the dead slaves to the fish; but it was Roman custom to give no
man credit for humaneness if an unclean accusation could be made to
stick.
Another fat old slave led Sextus to a porch behind the house and through
that to a library extremely bare of furniture but lined with shelves on
which rolled manuscripts were stacked in tagged and numbered order;
they were dusty, as if Galen used them very little nowadays. There were
two doors in addition to the one that opened on the porch; the old
slave pointed to the smaller one and Sextus, stooping and turning
sidewise because of the narrowness between the posts, went down a step
and entered without knocking.
For a moment he could not see Galen, there was such confusion of shadow
and light. High shelves around the walls of a long, shed-like room were
crowded with retorts and phials. An enormous, dusty human skeleton,
articulated on concealed wire, moved as if annoyed by the intrusion.
There were many kinds of skulls of animals and men on brackets fastened
to the wall, and there were jars containing dead things soaked in
spirit. Some of the jars were enormous, having once held olive oil. On
a table down the midst were instruments, a scale for weighing chemicals,
some measures and a charcoal furnace with a blow-pipe; and across the
whole of one end of the room was a system of wooden pigeon-holes,
stacked with chemicals and herbs, for the most part wrapped in
parchment.
Sunlight streaming through narrow windows amid dust of drugs and spices
made a moving mystery; the room seemed under water. Galen, stooping
over a crucible with an unrolled parchment on the table within reach,
was not distinguishable until he moved; when he ceased moving he faded
out again, and Sextus had to go and stand where he could touch him, to
believe that he was really there.
"You told me you had ceased experiments."
"I lied. The universe is an experiment," said Galen. "Such gods as
there are perhaps are looking to evolve a decent man, or possibly a
woman, from the mess we see around us. Let us hope they fail."
"Why?"
"There appears to be hope in failure. Should the gods fail, they will
still be gods and go on trying. If they ever made a decent man or woman
all the rest of us would turn on their creation and destroy it. Then
the gods would turn into devils and destroy us."
"What has happened to you, Galen? Why the bitter mood?"
"I discover I am like the rest of you--like all Rome. At my age such a
discovery makes for bitterness." For a minute or two Galen went on
scraping powder from the crucible, then suddenly he looked up at Sextus,
stepping backward so as to see the young man's face more clearly in a
shaft of sunlight.
"Did you send that Christian into the tunnel to kill Commodus?" he
asked.
"I? You know me better than that, Galen! When the time comes to slay
Commodus--but is Commodus dead? Speak, don't stand there looking at me!
Speak, man!"
Galen appeared satisfied.
"No, not Commodus. The blow miscarried. Somebody slew Nasor. A
mistake. A coward's blow. If you had been responsible--"
"When--if--I slay, it shall be openly with my own hand," said Sextus.
"Not I alone, but Rome herself must vomit out that monster. Why are you
vexed?"
"That wanton blow that missed its mark has stripped some friends of mine
too naked. It has also stripped me and revealed me to myself. Last
night I saw a falling star--a meteor that blazed out of the night and
vanished."
"I, too," said Sextus. "All Rome saw it. The cheap sorcerers are doing
a fine trade. They declare it portends evil."
"Evil--but for whom?" Old Galen poured the powder he had scraped into a
dish and blinked at him. "Affiliations in the realm of substance are
confined to like ingredients. That law is universal. Like seeks like,
begetting its own like. As for instance, sickness flows in channels of
unwholesomeness, like water seeping through a marsh. Evil? What is
evil but the likeness of a deed--its echo--its result--its aftermath?
You see this powder? Marcia has ordered me to poison Commodus! What
kind of aftermath should that deed have?"
Sextus stared at him astonished. Galen went on mixing.
"Colorless it must be--flavorless--without smell--indetectible. These
saviors of Rome prepare too much to save themselves! And I take trouble
to save myself. Why?"
He stopped and blinked again at Sextus, waiting for an answer.
"You are worth preserving, Galen."
"I dispute that. I am sentimental, which is idiocy in a man of my age.
But I will not kill him who is superior to any man in Rome."
"Idiocy? You? And you admire that monster?"
"As a monster, yes. He is at least wholehearted. As a monster he lacks
neither strength of will nor sinew nor good looks; he is magnificent;
he has the fear, the frenzy and the resolution of a splendid animal. We
have only cowardice, the unenthusiasm and the indecision of base men.
If we had the virtue of Commodus, no Commodus could ever have ruled Rome
for half a day. But I am senile. I am sentimental. Rather than betray
Marcia--and Pertinax--who would betray me for their own sakes; rather
than submit my own old carcass to the slave whom Marcia would send to
kill me, I am doing what you see."
"Poison for Commodus?"
"No."
"Not for yourself, Galen?"
"No."
"For whom then?"
"For Pertinax."
Sextus seized the plate on which the several ingredients were being
mixed.
"Put that down," said Galen. "I will poison part of him--the mean
part."
"Speak in plain words, Galen!"
"I will slay his indecision. He and Marcia propose; that I shall kill
their monster. I shall mix a draught for Marcia to take to him--in case
this, and in case that, and perhaps. In plain words, Commodus has sent
for Livius and none knows how much Livius has told. Their monster
writes and scratches out and rewrites long proscription lists, and
Marcia trembles for her Christians. For herself she does not tremble.
She has ten times Pertinax' ability to rule. If Marcia were a man she
should be emperor! Our Pertinax is hesitating between inertia and doubt
and dread of Cornificia's ambition for him; between admiration of his
own wife and contempt for her; between the subtleties of auguries and
common sense; between trust and mistrust of us all, including Marcia
and you and me; between the easy dignity of being governor of Rome and
the uneasy palace--slavery of being Caesar; between doubt of his own
ability to rule and the will to restore the republic."
"We all know Pertinax," said Sextus. "He is diffident, that is all. He
is modest. Once he has made his decision--"