A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. by - (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

his best to retain his outward calm, "I cannot understand of what fault I have become guilty. Is it wrong in Rome to accept a kindly invitation from an old family friend to a dinner? Am I responsible for the persons the host summoned to meet me there?"

Drusus had been simply sparring to ward off the real point at issue; like many persons he would not assert his convictions and motives till fairly brought to bay. But that moment came almost instantly.

"Don't equivocate! Mehercle!" cried Lentulus, getting thoroughly angry. "Can't you speak, except to lie and quibble before my face? Have you joined the gang Curio is rallying for Cæsar?"

Drusus was losing his own patience now.

"Yes! And we shall shortly see whether the Republic is to be longer ruined by incompetence and corruption!"

"Uncle! Quintus!" implored Cornelia, forcing herself between them, and casting out of her wide-open eyes on each a look full of distress. "Don't contend! For my sake be friends!"

"For your sake!" raged Lentulus, his florid face growing redder and redder. "I will take care to keep you out of the clutches of a man who deliberately chooses to associate with all that is base and villanous. Until your handsome lover throws over connections with Cæsar and his fellow-conspirators, let him never ask for your hand!"

"Sir," burst in Drusus, flushing with passion, "do you dare to set at naught the will of your brother and its express commands? Dare you withhold from me what is legally my own?"

"Legally?" replied Lentulus, with sharp scorn. "Don't use that word to a consul-elect, who has the whole Senate and Pompeius behind him. Laws are very dangerous tools for a young man to meddle with in a case like this. You will be wise not to resort to the courts."

"You defy the law!" thundered Drusus, all the blood of his fighting ancestors tingling in his veins. "Do you say that to a Livian; to the heir of eight consuls, two censors, a master of the horse, a dictator, and three triumphators? Shall not he obtain justice?"

"And perhaps," said Lentulus, sinking into an attitude of irritating coldness, "you will further press your claim on the ground that your mother was a Fabian, and the Fabii claim the sole right to sacrifice to Hercules on the Great Altar[82] in the Cattle-market by the Flaminian Circus, because they are descended from Hercules and Evander. I think the Cornelian gens can show quite as many death-masks in its atria, and your mock heroics will only stamp you as a very bad tragedian."

"Uncle! Quintus!" implored Cornelia again, the tears beginning to start from her eyes. "Cease this dreadful quarrel. Go away until you can talk calmly."

"Quintus Livius," shouted Lentulus, dropping the "Drusus," a part of the name which was omitted in formal address, "you can choose here and now. Forswear your Cæsarian connections, or consider my niece's betrothal at an end!"

Drusus stood looking in blank dismay from one to the other of the little company. Claudia had started to speak, but closed, her lips without uttering a word. Lentulus faced him, hot, flushed, and with a cynical smile of delight, at the infliction of mental torture, playing over his face. Cornelia had dropped down upon a chair, buried her pretty face in her hands, and was sobbing as if her heart would break. It was a moment Drusus would not soon forget. The whole scene in the atrium was stamped upon his memory; the drops of the fountain seemed frozen in mid-air; the rioting satyr on the fresco appeared to be struggling against the limitations of paint and plaster to complete his bound; he saw Cornelia lift her head and begin to address him, but what she said was drowned by the buzzing and swirl which unsteadied the young man's entire faculties. Drusus felt himself turning hot and cold, and in semi-faintness he caught at a pillar, and leaned upon it. He felt numbed mentally and physically. Then, by a mental reaction, his strong, well-balanced nature reasserted itself. His head cleared, his muscles relaxed their feverish tension, he straightened himself and met the cool leer of Lentulus with a glance stern and high; such a glance as many a Livian before him had darted on foe in Senate or field of battle.

"Lucius Cornelius," said he, his voice perfectly under command, "do you propose to defy law and right and refuse me the hand of your niece, unless I do your will?"

Lentulus thought that in this unimpassioned speech he detected the premonitions of a capitulation on the part of Drusus, and with a voice of ill-timed persuasion, replied, "Be reasonable, Drusus; you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by not thwarting my wishes."

"Your wishes!" retorted Drusus, with a menacing step forward. "Your wishes! You are consul-designate. You have the Senate, you have your tool, Pompeius, you have the gangs of gladiators and street ruffians and all the machinery of your political clubs to invoke to defy the law! I grant it; but though you deny me Cornelia, though by your machinations you bring me any other loss or shame, the grandson of the murdered Marcus Drusus will do that which is right in his own eyes, and accept no mandate from you or any man, against his will!"

"Cornelia," cried Claudia, infinitely distressed, "speak to Quintus, reason with him, implore him, pray him not to resist the requests of your uncle."

"Yes, girl!" said Lentulus, savagely, turning livid with sheer rage, "use all your arts on that graceless would-be conspirator now, or see his face no more!"

But Cornelia interposed in a most summary and unexpected manner. Her face was very white; her nails pressed into her smooth arms, her breath came thick and spasmodically, and her eyes flamed with the intense passion of a strong spirit thoroughly aroused.

"Go, Quintus," she cried, with a strained, loud voice, "go, and never see my face again, until my uncle repents of his cruel madness! He is master here; only woe will come from defying him. Do not anger him further; depart."

"Depart?" burst from Drusus.

"Depart!" replied Cornelia, desperately; "if you stay I shall go mad. I shall beg you to yield,—which would be base of me; and if you heard my prayers, it would be more base in you."

"Fool," shouted Lentulus, "don't you know you will be the first I'll mark for slaughter in the next proscription? You, mistress, go to your room, if you cannot keep a civil tongue! And you, sir, get you gone, unless you wish the slaves to cast you out."

"Farewell, Cornelia!" gasped the young man; and he turned his back, and started out into the colonnade.

"Oh, Quintus, return!" shrieked Claudia, wringing her hands. "All the gods blast you!" muttered Lentulus, quivering with fury; then he shouted at the top of his shrill, harsh voice: "My enemies are my enemies. You are warned. Take care!"

"And do you take warning! A Livian never forgets! Mars regat! Let War rule!" cried Drusus, turning at the vestibule, and brandishing a knotted fist. Lentulus stared after him, half furious, half intimidated. But Claudia glanced back into the room from the just emptied doorway, and gave a scream.

"The servants! Help! Water! Cornelia has fainted!"

III

Drusus strode down the long avenue of shade trees. The gardener stared after him, as the young man went by, his face knitted with a scowl of combined pain and fury, with never a word in reply to the rustic's kindly salutation.

"Papæ!"[83] muttered the man, "what has befallen Master Quintus? Has he fallen out with her ladyship?"

Drusus kept on, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, until he found himself past the boundary stone between his own estate and that of the Lentuli. Then he stopped and passed his hand over his forehead. It was damp with an unhealthy sweat. His hands and frame were quivering as if in an ague. He seated himself on a stone bench by the roadway, and tried to collect his faculties.

"Bear up, Drusus; be a Livian, as you boast yourself," he declaimed frantically to himself. "Cornelia shall still be yours! All things are possible to one who is young and strong, with a clear conscience!"

If this self-debate did not actually stimulate cheerfulness, it at least revived the embers of hope; and Drusus found himself trying to look the situation fairly in the face.

"You have thrown away your right to marry the dearest, loveliest, and noblest girl in the world," he reflected bitterly. "You have made an implacable enemy of one of the most powerful men of the state. In short, your happiness is gone, and perhaps your life is in danger—and for what? A dream of reform which can never be realized? A mad conspiracy to overthrow the commonwealth? Is Cæsar to be saviour or despot? For what have you sacrificed yourself?"

Lentulus, he knew perfectly well, was really above law. No jury would ever convict the leader of the Senate party. Drusus could never contract lawful marriage with Cornelia, so long as her guardian withheld consent. And for one moment he regretted of his determination, of his defiance. Then came reaction. Drusus called up all his innate pride, all the strength of his nobler inspirations.

"I have set my face toward that which is honourable and right," cried Drusus to his own soul; "I will not doubt. Whether there be gods, I cannot tell. But this I know, the wise and good have counted naught dear but virtues; and toward this end I will strive."

And by a strong effort at self-command, he forced himself to arise from the bench and walk back to his own estate, and soon he was pouring the whole story into the sympathetic ears of Mamercus, Pausanias, and other worthy retainers.

The scene that had taken place at the villa of the Lentuli, soon was reported through all the adjacent farms; for several slaves had been the mute witnesses of the angry colloquy, and had not been slow to publish the report. The familia of Drusus was in a tumult of indignation. All the brawny Germans and Africans whom the young master had released from the slave-prison, and had since treated with kindness, listened with no unfavourable ear to the proposal which Titus Mamercus—more valorous than discreet—was laying before them: to arm and attack Lentulus in his own villa, and so avenge their lord in a summary fashion.

But the elder Mamercus dashed the martial ambitions of his son.

"Fool," cried the veteran, emphatically, when the project came to his ears, "do you wish to undo yourself and Quintus too? No power short of Jove could protect you and him, if aught were to befall Lentulus, in the way you propose."

"But what can we do, father?" replied Titus, sorry to see his scheme for vengeance blocked; "shall that despicable tyrant defy law and justice, and refuse to give Mistress Cornelia to Quintus?"

"Silence your folly!" thundered the other, who was himself quite nonplussed over the situation, and felt Titus's bold chatter would goad him into something desperate.

The truth was, neither Pausanias nor any other of Quintus's friends could see any means of coercing the consul-elect into receding from his position. He was practically above law, and could not with safety be attacked in any way. Pausanias could only counsel moderation and patience; perhaps some fortunate chance would alter matters. Drusus spent the evening in a pathetically forced attempt to read his Callimachus. He was weary physically, and intended to retire early. Æmilia, who felt sorry enough for the plight of her rather distant cousin, had tried to console him and divert him with guitar[84] music, and had called in an itinerant piper,[85] but these well-meant efforts at amusement had been dreary failures. Drusus had just bidden his body-servants undress him, when he was informed that Agias had come from the Lentulan villa, and wished to see him.

Agias was full of protestations of delight at beholding his intercessor and ransomer. Drusus could hardly recognize in the supple-limbed, fair-complexioned, vivacious lad before him, the wretched creature whom Alfidius had driven through the streets. Agias's message was short, but quite long enough to make Drusus's pale cheeks flush with new life, his sunken eyes rekindle, and his languor vanish into energy. Cornelia would be waiting for him by the great cypress in the gardens of the Lentulan villa, as soon as the moon rose.

Drusus prepared himself hurriedly, and refused all the entreaties of Titus to take him along as a body-guard. Time coursed on winged feet, as the young man hastened out into the night, and half ran down the familiar pathway. The day had been only moderately warm for the season, and the night was cool, though not cold. A soft east wind was blowing down from the distant Apennines, and all the trees were rustling gently. Up to the giant arm of a gnarled oak, fluttered an owl, which hooted noisily as the young man hurried beneath. The crickets were chirping. A little way off was a small stream plunging over a dam; from it came a liquid roar; and the little wall of white spray was just