Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (ebook reader macos TXT) 📕
"By the cloud-scattering Zeus!" said Marcus Vinicius, "what a choice thou hast!"
"I prefer choice to numbers," answered Petronius. "My whole 'familia' [household servants] in Rome does not exceed four hundred, and I judge that for personal attendance only upstarts need a greater number of people."
"More beautiful bodies even Bronzebeard does not possess," said Vinicius, distending his nostrils.
"Thou art my relative," answered Petronius, with a certain friend
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He arrayed himself in ivy too, repeating, in a voice of deep conviction,
“I am not a man at all, but a faun.”
Petronius was not drunk; but Nero, who drank little at first, out of
regard for his “heavenly” voice, emptied goblet after goblet toward the
end, and was drunk. He wanted even to sing more of his verses,—this
time in Greek,—but he had forgotten them, and by mistake sang an ode of
Anacreon. Pythagoras, Diodorus, and Terpnos accompanied him; but
failing to keep time, they stopped. Nero as a judge and an æsthete was
enchanted with the beauty of Pythagoras, and fell to kissing his hands
in ecstasy. “Such beautiful hands I have seen only once, and whose were
they?” Then placing his palm on his moist forehead, he tried to
remember. After a while terror was reflected on his face.
Ah! His mother’s—Agrippina’s!
And a gloomy vision seized him forthwith.
“They say,” said he, “that she wanders by moonlight on the sea around
Baiæ and Bauli. She merely walks,—walks as if seeking for something.
When she comes near a boat, she looks at it and goes away; but the
fisherman on whom she has fixed her eye dies.”
“Not a bad theme,” said Petronius.
But Vestinius, stretching his neck like a stork, whispered
mysteriously,—“I do not believe in the gods; but I believe in spirits
—Oi!”
Nero paid no attention to their words, and continued,—“I celebrated the
Lemuria, and have no wish to see her. This is the fifth year—I had to
condemn her, for she sent assassins against me; and, had I not been
quicker than she, ye would not be listening to-night to my song.”
“Thanks be to Cæsar, in the name of the city and the world!” cried
Domitius Afer.
“Wine! and let them strike the tympans!”
The uproar began anew. Lucan, all in ivy, wishing to outshout him, rose
and cried,—“I am not a man, but a faun; and I dwell in the forest.
Eho-o-o-oo!” Cæsar drank himself drunk at last; men were drunk, and
women were drunk. Vinicius was not less drunk than others; and in
addition there was roused in him, besides desire, a wish to quarrel,
which happened always when he passed the measure. His dark face became
paler, and his tongue stuttered when he spoke, in a voice now loud and
commanding,—“Give me thy lips! To-day, tomorrow, it is all one!
Enough of this!
“Cæsar took thee from Aulus to give thee to me, dost understand?
Tomorrow, about dusk, I will send for thee, dost understand? Cæsar
promised thee to me before he took thee. Thou must be mine! Give me
thy lips! I will not wait for tomorrow,—give thy lips quickly.”
And he moved to embrace her; but Acte began to defend her, and she
defended herself with the remnant of her strength, for she felt that she
was perishing. But in vain did she struggle with both hands to remove
his hairless arm; in vain, with a voice in which terror and grief were
quivering, did she implore him not to be what he was, and to have pity
on her. Sated with wine, his breath blew around her nearer and nearer,
and his face was there near her face. He was no longer the former kind
Vinicius, almost dear to her soul; he was a drunken, wicked satyr, who
filled her with repulsion and terror. But her strength deserted her
more and more. In vain did she bend and turn away her face to escape
his kisses. He rose to his feet, caught her in both arms, and drawing
her head to his breast, began, panting, to press her pale lips with his.
But at this instant a tremendous power removed his arms from her neck
with as much ease as if they had been the arms of a child, and pushed
him aside, like a dried limb or a withered leaf. What had happened?
Vinicius rubbed his astonished eyes, and saw before him the gigantic
figure of the Lygian, called Ursus, whom he had seen at the house of
Aulus.
Ursus stood calmly, but looked at Vinicius so strangely with his blue
eyes that the blood stiffened in the veins of the young man; then the
giant took his queen on his arm, and walked out of the triclinium with
an even, quiet step.
Acte in that moment went after him.
Vinicius sat for the twinkle of an eye as if petrified; then he sprang
up and ran toward the entrance crying,—“Lygia! Lygia!”
But desire, astonishment, rage, and wine cut the legs from under him.
He staggered once and a second time, seized the naked arm of one of the
bacchanals, and began to inquire, with blinking eyes, what had happened.
She, taking a goblet of wine, gave it to him with a smile in her
mist-covered eyes.
“Drink!” said she.
Vinicius drank, and fell to the floor.
The greater number of the guests were lying under the table; others were
walking with tottering tread through the triclinium, while others were
sleeping on couches at the table, snoring, or giving forth the excess of
wine. Meanwhile, from the golden network, roses were dropping and
dropping on those drunken consuls and senators, on those drunken
knights, philosophers, and poets, on those drunken dancing damsels and
patrician ladies, on that society all dominant as yet but with the soul
gone from it, on that society garlanded and ungirdled but perishing.
Dawn had begun out of doors.
No one stopped Ursus, no one inquired even what he was doing. Those
guests who were not under the table had not kept their own places; hence
the servants, seeing a giant carrying a guest on his arm, thought him
some slave bearing out his intoxicated mistress. Moreover, Acte was with
them, and her presence removed all suspicion.
In this way they went from the triclinium to the adjoining chamber, and
thence to the gallery leading to Acte’s apartments. To such a degree had
her strength deserted Lygia, that she hung as if dead on the arm of
Ursus. But when the cool, pure breeze of morning beat around her, she
opened her eyes. It was growing clearer and clearer in the open air.
After they had passed along the colonnade awhile, they turned to a side
portico, coming out, not in the courtyard, but the palace gardens, where
the tops of the pines and cypresses were growing ruddy from the light of
morning. That part of the building was empty, so that echoes of music
and sounds of the feast came with decreasing distinctness. It seemed to
Lygia that she had been rescued from hell, and borne into God’s bright
world outside. There was something, then, besides that disgusting
triclinium. There was the sky, the dawn, light, and peace. Sudden
weeping seized the maiden, and, taking shelter on the arm of the giant,
she repeated, with sobbing,—“Let us go home, Ursus! home, to the house
of Aulus.”
“Let us go!” answered Ursus.
They found themselves now in the small atrium of Acte’s apartments.
Ursus placed Lygia on a marble bench at a distance from the fountain.
Acte strove to pacify her; she urged her to sleep, and declared that for
the moment there was no danger,—after the feast the drunken guests
would sleep till evening. For a long time Lygia could not calm herself,
and, pressing her temples with both hands, she repeated like a child,—
“Let us go home, to the house of Aulus!”
Ursus was ready. At the gates stood pretorians, it is true, but he
would pass them. The soldiers would not stop out-going people. The
space before the arch was crowded with litters. Guests were beginning
to go forth in throngs. No one would detain them. They would pass with
the crowd and go home directly. For that matter, what does he care? As
the queen commands, so must it be. He is there to carry out her orders.
“Yes, Ursus,” said Lygia, “let us go.”
Acte was forced to find reason for both. They would pass out, true; no
one would stop them. But it is not permitted to flee from the house of
Cæsar; whoso does that offends Cæsar’s majesty. They may go; but in the
evening a centurion at the head of soldiers will take a death sentence
to Aulus and Pomponia Græcina; they will bring Lygia to the palace
again, and then there will be no rescue for her. Should Aulus and his
wife receive her under their roof, death awaits them to a certainty.
Lygia’s arms dropped. There was no other outcome. She must choose her
own ruin or that of Plautius. In going to the feast, she had hoped that
Vinicius and Petronius would win her from Cæsar, and return her to
Pomponia; now she knew that it was they who had brought Cæsar to remove
her from the house of Aulus. There was no help. Only a miracle could
save her from the abyss,—a miracle and the might of God.
“Acte,” said she, in despair, “didst thou hear Vinicius say that Cæsar
had given me to him, and that he will send slaves here this evening to
take me to his house?”
“I did,” answered Acte; and, raising her arms from her side, she was
silent. The despair with which Lygia spoke found in her no echo. She
herself had been Nero’s favorite. Her heart, though good, could not
feel clearly the shame of such a relation. A former slave, she had
grown too much inured to the law of slavery; and, besides, she loved
Nero yet. If he returned to her, she would stretch her arms to him, as
to happiness. Comprehending clearly that Lygia must become the mistress
of the youthful and stately Vinicius, or expose Aulus and Pomponia to
ruin, she failed to understand how the girl could hesitate.
“In Cæsar’s house,” said she, after a while, “it would not be safer for
thee than in that of Vinicius.”
And it did not occur to her that, though she told the truth, her words
meant, “Be resigned to fate and become the concubine of Vinicius.”
As to Lygia, who felt on her lips yet his kisses, burning as coals and
full of beastly desire, the blood rushed to her face with shame at the
mere thought of them.
“Never,” cried she, with an outburst, “will I remain here, or at the
house of Vinicius,—never!”
“But,” inquired Acte, “is Vinicius hateful to thee?”
Lygia was unable to answer, for weeping seized her anew. Acte gathered
the maiden to her bosom, and strove to calm her excitement. Ursus
breathed heavily, and balled his giant fists; for, loving his queen with
the devotion of a dog, he could not bear the sight of her tears. In his
half-wild Lygian heart was the wish to return to the triclinium, choke
Vinicius, and, should the need come, Cæsar himself; but he feared to
sacrifice thereby his mistress, and was not certain that such an act,
which to him seemed very simple, would befit a confessor of the
Crucified Lamb.
But Acte, while caressing Lygia, asked again, “Is he so hateful to
thee?”
“No,” said Lygia; “it is not permitted me to hate, for I am a
Christian.”
“I know, Lygia. I know also from the letters of Paul of Tarsus, that it
is not permitted to defile one’s self, nor to fear death more than sin;
but tell me if thy teaching permits one person to cause the death of
others?”
“No.”
“Then how canst thou bring Cæsar’s vengeance on the house of Aulus?” A
moment of silence followed. A bottomless abyss yawned
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