In the capital a dull winter was being prophesied. Only one gleam
was discoverable in the social twilight. The Progressives had
shipped Cato off to Cyprus and society was rid for one season of a
man with a tongue, who believed in economy when money was plentiful,
in sobriety when pleasure was multiform and in domestic fidelities
when escape was easy. But they had done irreparable mischief in
disposing more summarily of Cicero. With the Conservative leader
exiled to Greece and the Progressive leader himself taking the eagles
into Gaul the winter's brilliance was threatened with eclipse.
Pompey was left in Rome, but the waning of his political star, it
could not be denied, had dimmed his social lustre. Clodius, of course,
was in full swing, triumphant in Caesar's friendship and Cicero's
defeat, but if society was able to stomach him, he himself had the
audacious honesty to foregather in grosser companionship. Even
Lucullus, whose food and wine had come to seem a permanent refuge
amid political changes and social shifts, must now be counted out.
His mind was failing, and the beautiful Apollo dining room and
terraced gardens would probably never be opened again.
In view of the impending handicaps Clodia was especially anxious that
a dinner she was to give immediately on her return from Baiae in
mid-October should be a conspicuous success. During her husband's
consulship two years ago she had won great repute for inducing men
of all parties, officials, artists and writers, to meet in her house.
Last year, owing to Metellus's sickness and death, she had not done
anything on a large scale. This autumn she had come back determined
to reassume her position. She was unaffected by the old-fashioned
prejudice against widows entertaining and she had nothing to fear
from the social skill of this year's consuls.
Her invitations had been hurried out, and now in her private sitting
room, known as the Venus Room from its choicest ornament, a
life-sized statue of Venus the Plunderer, she was looking over the
answers which had been sorted for her by her secretary. The Greek,
waiting for further orders, looked at her with admiring, if
disillusioned, eyes. Large and robust, her magnificent figure could
display no ungraceful lines as she sat on the low carved chair in
front of a curtain of golden Chinese silk. Her dress was of a strange
sea-green and emeralds shone in her ears and her heavy, black hair.
An orange-coloured cat with gleaming, yellow eyes curved its tail
across her feet. Above her right shoulder hung a silver cage
containing a little bird which chirped and twittered in silly
ignorance of its mistress's mood. Anger disfigured her beautiful
mouth and eyes. The list of regrets stretched out to sinister length
and included such pillars of society as Brutus and Sempronia, Bibulus
and Portia. A cynical smile relieved Clodia's sullen lips. Did these
braggarts imagine her blind to the fact that if lively Sempronia and
stupid Bibulus could conveniently die, Brutus and Portia, who were
wiping her off their visiting lists because her feet had strayed
beyond the marriage paddock, would make short work of their mourning?
Aurelia's declination she had expected. Her inordinate pride in
being Caesar's mother had not modified her arrogant, old-time
severity toward the freedom of modern life. But that Calpurnia should
plead her husband's absence as an excuse was ominous. Everyone knew
that he dictated her social relations. Terentia had been implacable
since that amusing winter when Clodia had spread a net for Cicero.
For her own sex Clodia had the hawk's contempt for sparrows, but if
Caesar as well as Cicero were to withdraw from her arena, she might
as well prepare herself for the inverted thumbs of Rome.
On her list of acceptances, outside of her own sisters, who had won
intellectual freedom in the divorce courts, she found the names of
only two women--virtuous Hortensia, who was proud of her emancipated
ideas, and Marcia, who was enjoying her husband's Cyprian business
as much as the rest of the world. Men, on the other hand, bachelors
and divorces, abounded. Catullus, luckily, was still in Verona,
nursing his dull grief for that impossible brother. But she was glad
to be assured that his friend, Rufus Caelius, would come. If Terentia
and Tullia had tried to poison the mind of Cicero's protege against
her, obviously they had not succeeded. He was worth cultivating. His
years in Asia Minor had made a man of the world out of a charming
Veronese boy and he was already becoming known for brilliant work
at the bar. The house he had just bought faced the southern end of
her own garden and gave evidence alike of his money and his taste.
And yet, in spite of Caelius's connections, he was still too young
to wield social power, and it was with intense chagrin that Clodia
realised that his was the most distinguished name upon her dinner
list. Indifferent to the opinion of the world as long as she could
keep her shapely foot upon its neck, she dreaded more than anything
else a loss of the social prestige which enabled her to seek pleasure
where she chose. Was this fear at last overtaking her swiftest pace?
Her secretary, watching her, prepared himself for one of the violent
storms with which all her servants were familiar. But at this moment
a house slave came in to ask if she would see Lucretius. "Him and
no one else," she answered curtly, and the Greekling slipped
thankfully out as the curtains were drawn aside to admit a man, about
thirty-five years old, whose face and bearing brought suddenly into
the fretful room a consciousness of a larger world, a more difficult
arena. Clodia smiled, and her beauty emerged like the argent moon
from sullen clouds. An extraordinary friendship existed between this
woman who was the bawd of every tongue in Rome, from Palatine to
Subura, and this man whose very name was unknown to nine-tenths of
his fellow-citizens and who could have passed unrecognised among
most of the aristocrats who knew his family or of the literary men
who had it from Cicero that he was at work on a _magnum opus_. Cicero
was Lucretius's only close friend, and supposed he had also read
every page of Clodia's life, but not even he guessed that a chance
conversation had originated a friendship which Clodia found unique
because it was sexless, and Lucretius because, within its barriers,
he dared display some of his vacillations of purpose. The woman who
was a prey of moods seemed to understand that when he chose science
as his mistress he had strangled a passion for poetry; and that when
he had determined to withdraw from the life of his day and generation
and to pursue, for humanity's sake, that Truth which alone is
immortal beyond the waxing and waning of nations, he had violated
a craving to consecrate his time to the immediate service of Rome.
And he, in his turn, who could penetrate beyond the flaming ramparts
of the world in his search for causes, had somehow discovered beyond
this woman's deadly fires a cold retreat of thought, where all things
were stripped naked of pretence.
Their intercourse was fitful and unconventional. Clodia was
accustomed to Lucretius's coming at unexpected hours with unexpected
demands upon her understanding. He even came, now and then, in those
strange moods which Cicero said made him wonder whether the gods had
confused neighbouring brews and ladled out madness when they meant
to dip from the vat of genius. At such times he might go as abruptly
as he came, leaving some wild sentence reechoing behind him. But at
all times they were amazingly frank with each other. So now Clodia's
eyes met his calmly enough as he said without any preface: "I have
come to answer your note. I prefer that my wife should keep out of
your circle. You used to have doves about you, who could protect a
wren, but they are fluttering away now and your own plumage is
appalling." With the phrase his eyes became conscious of her emeralds
and her shimmering Cean silks and then travelled to the nude grace
of Venus the Plunderer. He faced her violently. "Clodia," he said,
slaying a sentence on her lips, "Clodia, do you know that hell is
here on this earth and that such as you help to people it? There is
no Tityus, his heart eaten out by vultures, save the victim of passion.
And what passion is more devouring than that frenzy of the lover which
is never satisfied? Venus's garlanded hours are followed by misery.
She plunders men of their money, of their liberty, of their character.
Duties give way to cups and perfumes and garlands. And yet, amid the
very flowers pain dwells. The lover fails to understand and sickness
creeps upon him, as men sicken of hidden poison. Tell me," he added
brutally, leaning toward her, "for who should know better than you?
does not the sweetest hour of love hold a drop of bitter? Why do you
not restore your lovers to their reason, to the service of the state,
to a knowledge of nature?"
His eyes were hot with pity for the world's pain. Hers grew cold.
"Jove," she sneered, "rules the world and kisses Juno between the
thunderbolts. Men have been known to conquer the Helvetii with their
right hands and bring roses to Venus with their left. Your 'poison'
is but the spicy sauce for a strong man's meat, your 'plundering'
but the stealing of a napkin from a loaded table. Look for your
denizens of hell not among lovers of women, but among lovers of money
and of power and of fame. Their dreams are the futile frenzies."
"Dreams!" Lucretius interrupted. Clodia shrank a little from the
strange look in his eyes. "Do you, too, dream at night? I worked late
last night, struggling to fit into Latin words ideas no Latin mind
ever had. Toward morning I fell asleep and then I seemed to be borne
over strange seas and rivers and mountains and to be crossing plains
on foot and to hear strange noises. These waked me at last and I sprang
up and walked out into the Campagna where the dawn was fresh and cool.
But all day I have scarcely felt at home. And I may dream again
to-night. This time my dead may appear to me. They often do." He
walked toward her suddenly and his eyes seemed to bore into hers.
"Do you ever dream of your dead?" A horrible fright took possession
of her. She fell back against the Venus, her sea-green dress rippling
upon the white marble, and covered her eyes with her hands. When she
looked again, Lucretius was gone.
How terrible he had been to-day! Dream of the dead, he had said, the
dead! And why had he talked of _a hidden poison of which men might
sicken and die_? She felt a silly desire to shriek, to strike her
head against the painted wall, to tear the jewels from her ears. The
orange cat arched its back and rubbed its head against her. She kicked
it fiercely, and its snarl of pain seemed to bring her to her senses.
She picked the creature up and stroked it. The bird in the cage broke
into a mad little melody. How morbid she was growing! She had been
depressed by her ridiculous dinner and Lucretius had been most
unpleasant. He was such a fool, too, in his idea of love. The brevity
of the heated hours was the flame's best fuel. Venus the Plunderer
seemed to smile, and there quickened within her the desire for
excitement, for the exercise of power, for the obliterating
ecstasies of a fresh amour. She had not had a lover since she accepted
Catullus. How the thought of that boy sickened her! He had been so
absurd that first day when she went to him at Allius's. After writing
her that his heart was an AEtna of imprisoned fire, in the first
moment he had reminded her of ice-cold Alps. He had knelt and kissed
her foot and then had kissed her lips--_her lips!_--as coolly as a
father might kiss a child. The unleashed passion, the lordly
love-making which followed had won her. But that first caress and
its fellow at later meetings was like crystal water in strong
wine--she preferred hers unmixed. Of a poet she had had enough for
one while; if she ever wanted him back she need only say so.
In the mean time it would be a relief to play the game with a man
who understood it. Youth she enjoyed, if it were not too
inexperienced. Caelius's smile, for instance, boyish and inviting,
had seemed to her full of promise. He was worth the winning and was
close at hand. Catullus had introduced him, which would add piquancy
to her letting the din of the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian
streams. Suddenly she laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought
struck her. How furious and how impotent Cicero would be! If she could
play with this disciple of his, and then divest him of every shred
of reputation, she might feel that at last she was avenged on the
man whom she had meant to marry (after they had sloughed off Metellus
and Terentia) and who had escaped her. Calling back her secretary
she ordered writing materials and with her own hand wrote the
following note:
"Does Caelius know that Clodia's roses are loveliest at dusk, when
the first stars alone keep watch?"