Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero by Henryk Sienkiewicz (nonfiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

NEXT morning he woke up weak, but with a cool head and free of fever. It seemed to him that a whispered conversation had roused him; but when he opened his eyes, Lygia was not there. Ursus, stooping before the chimney, was raking apart the gray ashes, and seeking live coals beneath them. When he found some, he began to blow, not with his mouth, but as it were with the bellows of a blacksmith. Vinicius, remembering how that man had crushed Croton the day before, examined with attention befitting a lover of the arena his gigantic back, which resembled the back of a Cyclops, and his limbs strong as columns.

“Thanks to Mercury that my neck was not broken by him,” thought Vinicius. “By Pollux! if the other Lygians are like this one, the Danubian legions will have heavy work some time!”

But aloud he said, “Hei, slave!”

Ursus drew his head out of the chimney, and, smiling in a manner almost friendly, said,—“God give thee a good day, lord, and good health; but I am a free man, not a slave.”

On Vinicius who wished to question Ursus touching Lygia’s birthplace, these words produced a certain pleasant impression; for discourse with a free though a common man was less disagreeable to his Roman and patrician pride, than with a slave, in whom neither law nor custom recognized human nature.

“Then thou dost not belong to Aulus?” asked he.

“No, lord, I serve Callina, as I served her mother, of my own will.”

Here he hid his head again in the chimney, to blow the coals, on which he had placed some wood. When he had finished, he took it out and said,—“With us there are no slaves.”

“Where is Lygia?” inquired Vinicius.

“She has gone out, and I am to cook food for thee. She watched over thee the whole night.”

“Why didst thou not relieve her?”

“Because she wished to watch, and it is for me to obey.” Here his eyes grew gloomy, and after a while he added:

“If I had disobeyed her, thou wouldst not be living.”

“Art thou sorry for not having killed me?”

“No, lord. Christ has not commanded us to kill.”

“But Atacinus and Croton?”

“I could not do otherwise,” muttered Ursus. And he looked with regret on his hands, which had remained pagan evidently, though his soul had accepted the cross. Then he put a pot on the crane, and fixed his thoughtful eyes on the fire.

“That was thy fault, lord,” said he at last. “Why didst thou raise thy hand against her, a king’s daughter?”

Pride boiled up, at the first moment, in Vinicius, because a common man and a barbarian had not merely dared to speak to him thus familiarly, but to blame him in addition. To those uncommon and improbable things which had met him since yesterday, was added another. But being weak and without his slaves, he restrained himself, especially since a wish to learn some details of Lygia’s life gained the upper hand in him.

When he had calmed himself, therefore, he inquired about the war of the Lygians against Vannius and the Suevi. Ursus was glad to converse, but could not add much that was new to what in his time Aulus Plautius had told. Ursus had not been in battle, for he had attended the hostages to the camp of Atelius Hister. He knew only that the Lygians had beaten the Suevi and the Yazygi, but that their leader and king had fallen from the arrows of the Yazygi. Immediately after they received news that the Semnones had set fire to forests on their boundaries, they returned in haste to avenge the wrong, and the hostages remained with Atelius, who ordered at first to give them kingly honors. Afterward Lygia’s mother died. The Roman commander knew not what to do with the child. Ursus wished to return with her to their own country, but the road was unsafe because of wild beasts and