Propertius made his way past the slave at his own door, who was
surprised only by his young master's arrival before daybreak, and
stumbled to his bedroom, where the night-lamp was burning. The
drinking at Cynthia's--he always thought of her by that name--had
been fast and furious. She had been more beautiful than he had ever
seen her. Her eyes had shone like stars, and the garlands had hung
down over her face and trailed in her cup of yellow wine. And she
had told him that he was the only true poet in Rome, and had read
his poems aloud in a voice so sweet and clear that he had been nearly
crazed with pride and delight. Capriciously she had driven him away
early with the other guests, but to-morrow he would see her again,
or, perhaps, he could get through her door again to-night--to-night--
His feverish reverie was broken in upon by the frightened and
apologetic porter, bringing a letter which his mistress had told him
to deliver as soon as the master came home. Propertius dismissed him
angrily, and held the letter in an unwilling and shaking hand.
Perhaps he would not have read it at all if it had been written on
an ordinary wax tablet. But the little parchment roll had an unusual
and insistent look about it, and he finally unrolled it and, holding
it out as steadily as he could under the small wick of his lamp, read
what was written:--
"P. Virgilius Maro to his Propertius, greeting.
I hope you will allow me to congratulate you on your recent volume
of verse. Your management of the elegiac metre, which my friend
Gallus, before his tragic death, taught me to understand, seems to
me ennobling and enriching, and in both the fire and the pathos of
many of your lines I recognise the true poet. Perhaps you will
recognise the rustic in me when I add that I also welcomed a note
of love for your Umbrian groves of beeches and pines and for
water-meadows which you must have seen, perhaps by the banks of your
Clitumnus, filled with white lilies and scarlet poppies. Most of all
have I been moved by the candour of your idealism. It is rare indeed
in this age to hear any scorn of the golden streams of Pactolus and
the jewels of the Red Sea, of pictured tapestries and thresholds of
Arabian onyx. The knowledge that things like these are as nothing
to you, compared with love, stirs me to gratitude.
"It was in these ways that I was thinking of you yesterday, when I
put my own work aside and walked by the shore of the great bay here,
looking toward Capri. And will you let a man who has lived nearly
a quarter of a century longer than you have add that I wondered also
whether before long you will not seek another mistress for your
worship, one whose service shall transcend not only riches but all
personal passions?
"Like you, I have lain by the Tiber, and watched the skiffs hurrying
by, and the slow barges towed along the yellow waves. And my thoughts
also have been of the meanness of wealth and of the glory of love.
But it was to Rome herself that I made my vows, and in whose service
I enlisted. Was there ever a time when she needed more the loyalty
of us all? While she is fashioning that Empire which shall be without
limit or end and raise us to the lordship of the earth, she runs the
risks of attack from impalpable enemies who shall defile her highways
and debauch her sons. Arrogance, luxury, violent ambition, false
desires, are more to be dreaded than a Parthian victory. The subtle
wickedness of the Orient may conquer us when the spears of Britain
are of no avail. Antony and Gallus are not the only Romans from whom
Egypt has sucked life and honour.
"Like you, again, I am no soldier. Your friends and my friends go
lustily to Ionia and Lydia and Gaul and Spain, co-workers, as you
say, in a beloved government. Is not Rome, then, all the more left
to our defence? You pleased me once by saying that you 'knew every
line' of my _Georgics_. You know, then, that I have believed that
the sickened minds of to-day could be healed, if men would but return
to the intimacies of the soil and farm. Our great master, Lucretius,
preached salvation through knowledge of the physical world. I have
ventured to say that it could be found through the kindly help of
the country gods. But now I am beginning to see deeper. In Rome
herself lie the seeds of a new birth. When men see her as she is in
her ancient greatness and her immortal future, will not greed and
lust depart from their hearts? I think it must have been at dawn,
when the sea was first reddening under the early sun, that AEneas
sailed up to the mouth of the Tiber, and found at last the heart of
that Hesperia whose shores had seemed ever to recede as he drew near
them. Now that our sky is blazing with the midday sun, shall we betray
and make void those early hopes? Shall the sistrum of Isis drown our
prayers to the gods of our country, native-born, who guard the Tiber
and our Roman Palatine?
"I am seeking to write a poem which shall make men reverence their
past and build for their future. Will you not help me to work for
Rome's need? You have sincerity, passion, talent. You have commended
a beautiful woman to me. Will you not let me commend my Mistress to
you? Farewell."
The letter slipped from the boy's fingers to the floor. The wonderful
voice of Virgil, which made men forget his slight frame and awkward
manners, seemed to echo in his ears. In that voice he had heard
stately hexameters read until, shutting his eyes, he could have
believed Apollo spoke from cloudy Olympus. And this voice
condescended now to plead with him and to offer him a new love.
Cynthia's voice or his--or his. He tried to distinguish each in his
clouded memory--Virgil's praising Rome, Cynthia's praising himself.
His head ached violently, and his ears rang. A blind rage seized him
because he could not distinguish either voice clearly. The letter
was to blame. He would destroy that, and one voice at least would
cease its torment. He gathered up the loose roll, twisted it in his
trembling fingers, and held it to the flame of the little lamp.
"To Venus--a hecatomb!" he shouted wildly.
As the parchment caught fire, the blaze of light illumined his
flushed cheeks and burning eyes, and the boyish curve of his sullen
lips.
* * * * *
It was in the spring, when the little marble Pan looked rosy in the
warmer sunlight, and the white oxen must have been climbing the
steeps of Assisi, that the boy's mother let go her slight hold on
life. In Rome the roses were in bloom, and Soracte was veiled in a
soft, blue haze.
Tullus came to Maecenas to excuse Propertius from a dinner, and a
slave led him into the famous garden where the prime minister often
received his guests. Virgil was with him now, and they both cordially
greeted the young official. As he gave his message, his face, moulded
into firm, strong lines by his habits of thought, was softened as
if by a personal regret. The three men stood in silence for a moment,
and then Tullus turned impulsively to Maecenas.
"He chose between his mother and his mistress," he said. "When I
talked with you in the winter you said that perhaps his mother would
have to face death again to give birth to a poet, as she had already
to give birth to a child. I have never understood what you meant."
"Ah, Tullus," Maecenas answered, laying his hand affectionately upon
the shoulder of the younger man, "I spoke of a law not inscribed on
the Twelve Tables, but cut deep in the bedrock of life--is it not,
my Virgil?"
But the poet, toward whom he had quickly turned, did not hear him.
He stood withdrawn into his own thoughts. A shaft of sun, piercing
through the ilex trees, laid upon his white toga a sudden sheen of
gold, and Maecenas heard him say softly to himself, in a voice whose
harmonies he felt he had never wholly gauged before,--
Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.