As Glyceria had learned through her spies, Manlius was summoned by the
lictors to Carinus' presence that very day. But instead of waiting for
the command, he went to the palace before he received it.
Instead of his plain military costume he had donned the ample flowered
silk toga worn by the fashionable dandies of the time, rubbed his hair
with perfumed ointments, loaded his fingers with gems, adorned his
ankles with circlets, and even ornamented his toes with rings which
glittered between the thongs of his sandals, while he had scattered
little red spots over his face till it looked as freckled as the
Caesar's. So, with an indolent, loitering step and a coquettish
carriage of the head, he entered the vestibule of the imperial
palace, which was already swarming with courtiers similarly attired,
who gazed enviously at the youth's unusually magnificent costume--only
they could not understand why he had painted freckles on his face.
Manlius bowed to the floor before Carinus--a form of salutation which
had been transplanted to Rome from the Persian court. Even Aevius was
forced to admit that no one understood how to bow with so much
humility as Manlius. Then, seizing a corner of the imperial mantle, he
kissed it with the devout fervour which only the most pious Jews show
in kissing the thora.
Carinus wished to appear stern.
"You have already been in Rome four days, and this is the first time
you have come to me," he said reproachfully.
"O glorious Augustus," replied Manlius in an inimitably sweet tone; "I
have already been ten times in your atrium to deliver the news I
bring from Asia, but I learned as often that you were enjoying the
delights envied by the gods, and I am not one of those rude soldiers
who recklessly force their way in with their messages of supposed
importance, and rob you of hours of bliss which can never be
regained."
"Good. You are a man of worth; but what tidings do you bring from
Persia?"
"There is no life anywhere in the world, O Augustus, except where you
are. All the lands of the earth exist only to make the contrast
between them and Rome the sharper. I will not weary you with tiresome
tales of war and battles. Wars merely serve to lessen the number of
dissatisfied people, so why should I disturb your repose with my
descriptions?"
"You are right, Manlius. Speak of other things."
"My experiences are at your command. I saw the marvels of Barbarian
lands, and always thought of you. In Africa I saw horses whose shining
skins were streaked with stripes, animals whose like no Imperator has
ever shown in our circus games. I left orders with the commandant of
Alexandria to send several of them to you. In the Indian seas a kind
of snail was discovered, which fastened itself to the rocks by means
of threads as fine as a cobweb. From these threads the people there
manufacture a fabric even more brilliant than _sericum_, and I brought
a _velamen_ of it for you, such as only the princes of that country
wear."
As he spoke, Manlius gave the Imperator a superb textile which he had
brought with him from India in the hope that it would be Sophronia's
bridal veil.
The Caesar was filled with admiration at the sight of the unusually
brilliant, delicate texture.
"Manlius, I appoint you Senator."
The courtiers began to stare enviously at Manlius. As the barber, who
was the most jealous of any sign of favour from the Caesar, could find
no fault with the _velamen_, he vented his anger upon Manlius' face.
"Where did you get those freckles, Manlius? You look as if the flies
had played an evil trick with your features."
"You are a barber, Marcius. I painted these freckles. It is a very
aristocratic fashion which I learned at the court of Persia."
"Is it the fashion there to wear freckles?" asked Carinus, whose
cheeks Marcius was in the habit of painting white and pink.
"Only among the aristocrats. It is the distinguishing mark between the
dignitaries of the kingdom and the common people. True, it requires a
more refined taste than yours, Marcius, to appreciate this; one must
understand, too, why and in what degree these freckles embellish the
face. The empty, smooth face, like yours, for instance, which, when
one looks at it, shows only white and pink, is the beauty of the
plebeian; Apollo's countenance is freckled."
Manlius knew that Carinus liked to be called Apollo.
The courtiers were horrified at this bold assertion.
"I repeat that Apollo's face is adorned with freckles. For Apollo's
image is the sun, and is not the sun itself full of spots? Is not the
sky strewn with stars, and are not the stars the freckles of the sky,
as freckles are the stars of the human face? Therefore, O Marcius, do
not censure this magnificent taste of mine."
Carinus motioned to his barber to remove the paint from his face.
"Divine countenance!" cried Manlius rapturously. "O you profaners of
the sanctuary, who conceal the freckles which the graces have
scattered with lavish generosity over these features. Come, friends,
let this face be the model of ours."
And the courtiers instantly sat down in turn before Marcius and had
freckles painted on their faces that they might resemble Carinus.
From that moment it was the fashion in Rome to have freckles painted
on the face.
"Manlius," said the Caesar, "I appoint you Prefect of Rome."
All the imperial favourites were supplanted by the young Tribune.
Aevius was in despair.
"To what shall I henceforth compare the Caesar in my poems, since roses
and lilies are no longer beautiful?" he wailed.
"Compare him to the royal panther," Manlius advised. And the poet was
content.
At this moment Mesembrius arrived, and hearing in the atrium that
Manlius had already entered, hastened after him.
On the threshold he caught a glimpse of the young soldier and started
back.
"Is that actor Manlius?" he asked himself, gazing at his silk toga and
freckled face. "Have you seen Glyceria?" he whispered.
"Yes," replied Manlius.
"Have you killed her?"
"No."
"Then I understand the change. Hitherto only caterpillars became
butterflies; in you a lion has undergone the change. I pity you."
The old Senator, as he spoke, moved forward with dignified bearing
and, leaning on his crutches, stood before the Augustus.
"Augustus Carinus, I have come to bring a charge, or, if it pleases
you better, to beseech a favour. I had an only daughter----"
"You have another," interrupted Aevius.
"I say I had an only daughter. She was the joy of my life, the prop of
my old age. Allured by a new religion, this girl and her companions
were captured at the meeting place of the Christians. I will not argue
with you over matters of belief, Carinus, but I entreat you to listen
to the petition of a man who has grown grey in the service of Rome,
and restore my only child."
Carinus raised himself indolently from his _lectisternium_ and
whispered a few words to his eunuch. Then he turned to Mesembrius.
"Senator, we do not know whether your daughter is among the captured
Christians; had we been aware of it we should have delivered her up to
you long ago. She was beautiful, you said?"
"I did not say so, O Lord."
"I have so understood. But unfortunately I must inform you that a
beautiful girl in this band of Christians killed herself last night
in prison."
"That was not my daughter. Sophronia could not forget her grey-haired
father, whom her loss would drive to despair."
"Look at the corpse, Senator, and if it is not your daughter, which
from my heart I hope, I will have her brought here at once and she can
then return with you."
Mesembrius was so startled by this unexpected favour that he forgot to
express his thanks for it.
The eunuch returned, followed by two slaves, who bore on a bier a
corpse covered with a large pall.
Aevius drew it from the body.
Mesembrius pressed his hand upon his heart; the blood rushed to his
temples; his breath failed; he could not move; he stood motionless for
a time, then, with a wild cry of anguish, flung himself upon the
lifeless form.
"My child! My dear, dear child!"
"So I have him to fear, too," murmured Carinus.
Sobbing aloud, Mesembrius embraced the beautiful, beloved body. Death
had restored to the face the repose, the supernatural loveliness which
had been peculiar to it in life. It seemed as though she were sleeping
and at a call would wake.
"Oh, my dear, sweet child," sobbed the old man; "why must you leave me
here? If you were resolved to die, why did you not appear to me in a
dream, that I might have followed you? What have I to love in this
world now that you are no more? What is to become of me, an old
withered tree, whose only blossoming branch has been cut off? Have you
no longer one word, one smile for me? Once you were so gay, so full of
cheerful converse--oh, why must I endure this?"
The father turned neither to the Caesar nor to the courtiers; he gave
free course to his tears, burying his face in his dead daughter's
winding-sheet.
But gradually he seemed to realise that he was weeping alone, and his
dim eyes wandered around the apartment with a vague consciousness that
there must be some one else here who owed to Sophronia's manes the
tribute of tears.
There stood Manlius, with a cold, unsympathising face, talking to
Carinus. Not a feature betrayed the slightest sorrow.
Mesembrius indignantly grasped the youth's arm.
"And have _your_ eyes no tears, when your bride lies murdered before
you?"
Seized with suspicion Carinus suddenly looked at Manlius; the
courtiers, with malicious pleasure, turned toward him.
"My bride?" asked Manlius, in a tone of astonishment. "Your mind is
wandering, old Mesembrius."
"Have the Furies robbed you of your reason that you no longer remember
that, but three days ago, you asked for my daughter's hand and I gave
it to you?"
"Your daughter's hand, certainly," replied Manlius, with unshaken
calmness. "Not this daughter's here, however, but Glyceria's."
"May you be accursed!" shouted Mesembrius, with savage fury, and
without heeding the Caesar, his dead daughter, or the danger
threatening him, he rushed out of the hall like a madman.
This very thing saved him.
"Follow him, Galga!" shouted Carinus. "Seize him. This man's head must
be laid at my feet."
Meanwhile Mesembrius rushed through the palace. The throng of slaves
shrank back in terror at the sight of his agitated face, and allowed
him to reach the open air. His frantic words instantly gathered a
crowd around him, and by the time Galga, at the head of a troop of
mounted praetorians, went in pursuit of him, the mob had attained
threatening proportions. But the Thracian giant dashed recklessly
through the masses of people. As he stretched his arm from the saddle
to seize the old man's head and sever it from the trunk with a single
stroke of his sword, the Roman, with strength wholly unexpected in a
man of his age, dealt the brown-skinned colossus such a blow with his
heavy crutch that he fell from his horse with a shattered skull.
Mesembrius swung himself into the saddle at a bound, and led the
infuriated populace against the armed cohort, which was scattered in a
moment, and before reinforcements arrived to quell the tumult, the old
patrician had disappeared and was never found.