_THE HALL OF APOLLO._
[Illustration: Initial]
I was awakened from my delicious dream by Demetrius, who importuned me to
accompany him to Rome, whither he had been despatched by his father on
business of extreme importance. This reminded me that a visit to Rome was
an essential part of my uncle’s educational programme. I had abandoned
philosophy for love, and love cares nothing for thought, except as one
mode of expressing the sentiments. My education, therefore, was at a
stand-still. I hesitated and shuddered at the idea of leaving the charmed
circle in which I stood entranced. I would, perhaps, have neither
gratified my friend nor obeyed my uncle, had not Helena carelessly dropped
the remark, that no student could truly regard his course of instruction
completed until he had visited Rome. To acquire this title to perfection
in the eyes of Helena, I endured the pangs of parting and the miseries of
absence; became a compliant friend and an obedient nephew. I went to Rome.
Rome did not impress me so favorably as Athens. I was fond of art, but
cared little for glory. The efforts of man to reproduce the beauties of
Nature excited my admiration; his labors to immortalize himself and his
deeds excited my contempt. The art of Rome was imported; her glory was
self-acquired. I had soon seen all that I cared to see of the imperial
city, which Augustus had found of brick and left of marble.
Demetrius had letters to some of the most powerful and influential men in
Rome, so that we were soon introduced into the best society there. It was
not long before we received an invitation to one of the splendid suppers
of Hortensius, the richest man and the greatest epicure in the world. I
remembered the conversation of the slave-dealer at Alexandria. I mentally
resolved, as we drove through the magnificent arch of his palace gate,
that, although I might taste of the nightingales of Hortensius, I
certainly would take none of his fish.
“Beware of the fish-ponds,” said I, laughingly, to Anthony, who
accompanied us as footman.
This palace of Hortensius was an affair of Babylonian magnificence.
Everything about it was of colossal proportions. It was said to have as
many chambers as there were days in the year. Hortensius had twelve
bed-rooms for himself, each named after one of the months, and gorgeously
furnished in a manner to represent the month after which it was named.
There were seven banqueting-halls named after gods and goddesses—the
dreams rather than the creations of art. This grand structure was burned
during the fire in the reign of Nero, and its splendors, no longer to be
found anywhere on earth, are already regarded as fabulous.
We supped in the Hall of Apollo.
The company was altogether male, which I did not regret; for I did not
wish to see or speak to a woman in the world but Helena or my sisters. It
was composed of the magnates, the great stars of Roman society—soldiers,
statesmen, senators, governors, etc.—the least of them immeasurably above
the two young plebeian students, who, dumbfounded at all they saw, could
not but experience a painful sense of their own insignificance.
On my right hand, however, at the table, was a noble and sedate Roman,
Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea. He had visited Rome to consult the
emperor and the senate about the affairs of his province, and was on the
eve of returning. He seemed pleased when he learned that my home was in
the neighborhood of Jerusalem; and with great tact and urbanity drew me
out of my abstracted mood, dissipated my bashfulness, and engaged me in an
animated conversation.
The Hall of Apollo was a miracle of beauty. Its area was immense; its
shape, circular. Supported by twenty-four golden columns, the ceiling rose
to a vast height, as a blue dome painted to represent the visible heavens.
The sun blazing up through masses of dense and crimson clouds; the
intensely clear cerulean ether above; the horizon all around pierced by
mountain peaks, overhung by rolling vapors of purple and gold, produced an
illusion of astonishing power and magnificence.
Every object in the room, the pictures, the statuary, the bass-reliefs
upon the columns, the carvings upon the couches and the gorgeous table,
and even the engravings and embossings upon the splendid vases and vessels
which adorned it, were all descriptive or symbolical of Apollo, his
attributes and achievements. The wonder of the hall, however, was a golden
chandelier of incredible size, containing a thousand rose-colored tapers,
which lighted the scene with a brilliancy rivaling the day.
I will not attempt to describe the feast, having no particular fondness
for epicurism. The bill of fare exceeded anything I had ever imagined.
There was service after service, dessert after dessert, wine after wine,
seemingly without end. The meat-courses, lasting about three hours, were
presented by handsome boys of every nationality, clad in beautiful livery.
The after-courses, of sweets and luxuries, were brought on by female
servants, lovely in person and graceful in manner, revealing by their
dress or otherwise every charm of the human body.
When the company was well filled and duly flushed by the delicious wines,
the whole western wall of the apartment, by some hidden and admirable
mechanism, suddenly opened or changed like a dissolving view, and revealed
an interior apartment a little above the level of ours, which looked like
a beautiful garden adorned and lighted in a style of Oriental
magnificence.
The shrubbery and flowers of this garden were the concentrated beauties of
the floral world in all regions, cultivated here by art, and offering an
incense of perfume to these Roman rulers, who aspired to conquer not only
man but nature. Ivory statues of gods and goddesses, of nymphs and fawns
and satyrs, added greatly to the beauty of the scene. But when a dozen
dancing-girls alighted as it were from heaven upon this miraculous stage,
and whirled among these statues and flowers, less perfect and beautiful
than themselves, the fascination, to those who regarded such enchantments,
was complete.
“More music! more wine!” cried Hortensius from his purple couch a little
elevated above the rest—“the feast of thought ends always in the feast of
love.”
The banquet progressed with continued variations of stimulus and
entertainment. The guests were regaled by invisible music, repeatedly
changed, and representing the airs and styles of every nation which had
bowed its head to the Roman conqueror. The wine fell fast into golden
goblets from vases composed of precious gems. The day dawned. The noise
and excitement increased: the conversation degenerated into a babble, and
the feast into a debauch; when a most extraordinary incident occurred,
changing my uncle’s programme and perhaps my whole fate in the twinkling
of an eye.
A great clamor was heard outside of the door nearest Hortensius. Loud and
angry voices, the rapid tread of many feet, curses, groans, shrieks,
indicated the approach of some dreadful storm. It was a thunderbolt in a
clear sky. All sprang to their feet and advanced toward the sounds, when
the door was burst open with violence, and my servant Anthony rushed in,
foaming at the mouth, bleeding profusely from several wounds and
flourishing an immense knife over his head.
“I will kill him if I die for it!” he shouted, glaring fiercely on the
brilliant crowd before him, and endeavoring to single out the object of
his hate.
“What does all this mean, Anthony?” I exclaimed, leaping forward and
seizing him by the throat.
“I have saved him from the fish-pond,” he answered sternly, pointing to
the naked form of a poor negro, whom the domestics had at last succeeded
in hurling to the floor, and who had followed Anthony, defending him from
his pursuers.
“And why did you not fly? madman!” I exclaimed, “why did you come here?”
“Oh! death was inevitable,” he answered, in a tone of desperation, “and I
determined first to kill the vile despot, the author of these cruelties.”
“Slave! barbarian!” echoed from all parts of the hall.
“Slave I am: barbarian I may be!” shouted Anthony defiantly; “but in my
country they do not feed fishes with men.”
The crowd had stood back a little while we were speaking: but now there
was a sudden rush upon us in front and rear. I was pushed forcibly aside,
and Anthony was borne down, disarmed and bound with his fellow-prisoner,
whose rescue had caused this great excitement.
“Throw the old one to the fishes immediately,” cried Hortensius in a loud
and cruel tone. “Bind this young villain by the pond and guard him till I
come. I will cut him up, strip by strip, with my own hands.”
A murmur of approbation ran through the assembly. Thrusting the bystanders
away, I confronted Hortensius face to face.
“O most noble Roman,” I exclaimed, “pardon something in this poor man to
the spirit of liberty. He was born free, a prince in his little realm; and
like you, he has been a brave soldier. Misfortune in war, not crime, has
enslaved him. He is honest, faithful and noble. It was a fierce and
glorious love of his own race which has fired him to this rash deed. His
sublime self-sacrifice, his desperate courage surely deserve a better fate
at the hands of a Roman and a soldier. Spare him and forgive him!”
It would be difficult to describe the fierce and haughty stare which
Hortensius and his noble guests fixed upon me during this little speech.
They wondered at my folly, my stupidity, my audacity. To plead for a black
slave who had drawn his knife against a Roman senator! To accord the
spirit of liberty to such vermin of the earth! To speak of them as brave,
faithful, noble, glorious, sublime! They were stupefied at the novelty and
heresy of such ideas. I was certainly either a fool or a madman.
Hortensius, lowering his voice and infusing into it a little suavity,—for
he suddenly remembered that I was his guest,—exclaimed:
“The proper discipline of my palace, young man, demands the immediate
death of this would-be assassin. I will replace your servant with a
better.”
“That is beyond your power,” I replied impetuously; “your whole household
would not replace him. I am indebted to his brother for my sister’s life
and honor. I am bound to this man’s flesh and blood as if they were my
own. I cannot, I will not desert him in his extremity.”
There were loud exclamations of surprise, contempt and disapproval. Many,
however, were silent, touched perhaps by a latent magnanimity.
“What will you do?” exclaimed a haughty old Roman in a most provoking
tone.
“Do?” said I rashly, striking my hand upon the hilt of my dagger, “do?—I
will defend him: I will die with him.”