The Emperor — Complete

As he heard these words Hadrian struck his fist into the palm of his left hand, and while the feasters were hazarding guesses as to why he was so long in coming to Alexandria, he took out the folding tablet he was in the habit of carrying in his money-bag, and hastily wrote the following lines on the wax face of it:

Hardly had he ended the lines, muttering them to himself with much relish as he wrote, when the waiter showed in Pollux. The sculptor had failed to find Antinous, and suggested that the young man had probably gone home; he also begged that he might not be detained long at supper, for he had met his master Papias, who had been extremely annoyed by his long absence. Hadrian was no longer satisfied with the artist’s society, for the conversation in the next room was to him far more attractive than that of the worthy young fellow. He himself was anxious to quit the meal soon, for he felt restless and uneasy. Antinous could no doubt easily find his way to Lochias, but recollections of the evil omens he had observed in the heavens last night flitted across his soul like bats through a festal hall, marring the pleasure on which he again tried to concentrate it, in order to enjoy his hours of liberty.

Even Pollux was not so light-hearted as before. His long walk had made him hungry, and he addressed himself so vigorously to the excellent dishes which rapidly followed each other by his entertainer’s orders, and emptied the cup with such unfailing diligence, that the Emperor was astonished: but the more he had to think about, the less did he talk.

Pollux, to be sure, had had his answer ready for his master, and without considering how easy it would have been to part from him in kindness, he had shortly and roundly quitted his service. Now indeed he stood on his own feet, and he was longing to tell Arsinoe and his parents of what he had done.

During the course of the meal his mother’s advice recurred to his mind: to do his best to win the favor and good will of the architect whose guest he was; but he set it aside, for he was accustomed to owe all he gained to his own exertions, and though he still keenly felt in Hadrian the superiority of a powerful mind, their expedition through the city had not brought him any nearer to the Roman. Some insurmountable barrier stood fixed between himself and this restless, inquisitive man, who required so many answers that no one else had time to ask a question, and who when he was silent looked so absorbed and unapproachable that no one would have ventured to disturb him. The bold young artist had, however, tried now and again to break through the fence, but each time, he had at once been seized with a feeling, of which he could not rid himself, that he had done something awkward and unbecoming. He felt in his intercourse with the architect as a noble dog might feel that sported with a lion, and such sport could come to no good. Thus, for various reasons, host and guest were well content when the last dish was removed. Before Pollux left the room the Emperor gave him the tablets with the verses and begged him, with a meaning smile, to desire the gate-keeper at the Caesareum to give them to Annaeus Florus the Roman. He once more urgently charged the sculptor to look about for his young friend and, if he should find him at Lochias, to tell him that he, Claudius Venator, would return home ere long. Then the artist went his way.

Hadrian still sat a long time listening to the talk close by; but after waiting for above an hour to hear some fresh mention made of himself, he paid his reckoning and went out into the Canopic way, now brilliantly lighted. There he mingled with the revellers, and walked slowly onward, seeking suspiciously and anxiously for his vanished favorite.

CHAPTER III.

Antinous, searching for his master, had wandered about in the crowd. Whenever he saw any figures of exceptional stature he followed them, but each time only to discover that he had entered on a false track. Long and persistent effort was not in his nature, so as soon as he began to get tired, he gave up the search and sat down again on a stone bench in the garden of the Paneum.

Two cynic philosophers, with unkempt hair, tangled beards, and ragged cloaks flung over their shivering bodies, sat down by him and fell into loud and contemptuous abuse of the deference shown, ‘in these days,’ to external things and vulgar joys, and of the wretched sensualists who regarded pleasure and splendor, rather than virtue, as the aim and end of existence. In order to be heard by the by-standers they spoke in loud tones, and the elder of the two, flourished his knotted stick as viciously, as though he had to defend himself against an attack. Antinous felt much disgusted by the hideous appearance, the coarse manners, and shrill voices of these persons, and when he rose—as the cynics’ diatribe seemed especially directed against him—they scoffed at him as he went, mocking at his costume and his oiled and perfumed hair. The Bithynian made no reply to this abuse. It was odious to him, but he thought it might perhaps have amused Caesar.

He wandered on without thinking; the street in which he presently found himself must no doubt lead to the sea, and if he could once find himself on the shore he could not fail to make his way to Lochias. By the time it was growing dark he was once more standing outside the little gate-house, and there he learnt from Doris that the Roman and her son had not yet returned.

What was he to do alone in the vast empty palace? Were not the very slaves free to-day? Why should not he too for once enjoy life independently and in his own way? Full of the pleasant sense of being his own master and at liberty to walk in a road of his own choosing, he went onwards, and when he presently passed by the stall of a flower-seller, he began once more to think eagerly of Selene and the nosegay, which must long since have reached her hands.

He had heard from Pollux in the morning that the steward’s daughter was being tended by Christians in a little house not far from the sea-shore; indeed the sculptor himself had been quite excited as he told Antinous that he himself had peeped into the lighted room and had seen her. ‘A glorious creature’ he had called her, and had said that she had never looked more beautiful than in a recumbent attitude on her bed.

Antinous recalled all this and determined to venture on an attempt to see again the maiden whose image filled his heart and brain.

It was now dark and the same light which had allowed of the sculptor’s seeing Selene’s features might this evening reveal them to him also. Full of passion and excitement, he got into the first litter he met with. The swarthy bearers were far too slow for his longing, and more than once he flung to them as much money as they were wont to earn in a week, to urge them to a brisker pace. At last he reached his destination; but seeing that several men and women robed in white, were going into the garden, he desired the bearers to carry him farther. Close to a dark narrow lane which bounded the widow’s garden-plot on the east and led directly to the sea, he desired them to stop, got out of the litter and bid the slaves wait for him. At the garden door he still found two men dressed in white, and one of the cynic philosophers who had sat by him on the bench near the Paneum. He paced impatiently up and clown, waiting till these people should have disappeared, and thus passing again and again under the light of the torches that were stuck up by the gate.

The dry cynic’s prominent eyes were everywhere at once, and as soon as he perceived the peripatetic Bithynian he flung up his arm, exclaiming, as he pointed to him with a long, lean, stiff forefinger—half to the Christians with whom he had been talking and half to the lad himself:

“What does he want. That fop! that over-dressed minion! I know the fellow; with his smooth face and the silver quiver on his shoulder he believes he is Eros in person. Be off with you, you house-rat. The women and girls in here know how to protect themselves against the sort who parade the streets in rose-colored draperies. Take yourself off, or you will make acquaintance with the noble Paulina’s slaves and clogs. Hi! gate-keeper, here! keep an eye on this fellow.”

Antinous made no answer, but slowly went back to his litter.

“To-morrow perhaps, if I cannot manage it tonight,” he thought to himself as he went; and he never thought of any other means of attaining his end, much as he longed for it. A hindrance that came in his way ceased to be a hindrance as soon as he had left it behind him, and after this reflection he acted on this occasion as on many former ones. The litter was no longer standing where he had left it; the bearers had carried it into the lane leading to the sea, for the only little abode which stood on the eastern side of it belonged to a fisherman whose wife sold thin potations of Pelusium beer.

Antinous went down the green alley overarched with boughs of fig, to call the negroes who were sitting in the dull light of a smoky oil-lamp. Here it was dark, but at the end of the alley the sea shone and sparkled in the moonlight; the splashing of the waves tempted him onwards and he loitered clown to the stone-bound shore. There he spied a boat dancing on the water between two piles and it came into his head that it might be possible to see the house where Selene was sleeping, from the sea.

He undid the rope which secured the boat without any difficulty; he seated himself in it, laid aside the quiver and bow, pushed off with one of the oars that lay at the bottom of the boat and pulled with steady strokes towards the long path of light where the moon touched the crest of each dancing wavelet with unresting tremulous flecks of silver.

There lay the widow’s garden. In that small white house must the fair pale Selene be sleeping, but though he rowed hither and thither, backwards and forwards, he could not succeed in discovering the window of which Pollux had spoken. Might it not be possible to find a spot where he could disembark and then make his way into the garden? He could see two little boats, but they lay in a narrow walled canal and this was closed by an iron railing. Beyond, was a terrace projecting into the sea, and surrounded by an elegant balustrade of little columns, but it rose straight out of the sea on smooth high walls. But there—what was that gleaming under the two palm-trees which, springing from the same root, had grown together tall and slender—was not that a flight of marble steps leading down to the sea?

Antinous dipped his right oar in the waves with a practised hand to alter the head of the boat and was in the act of pulling his hand up to make his stroke against the pressure of the waves—but he did not complete the movement, nay he counteracted the stroke by a dexterous reverse action; a strange vision arrested his attention. On the terrace, which lay full in the bright moonlight, there appeared a white-robed figure with long floating hair.

How strangely it moved! It went now to one side and now to the other, then again it stood still and clasped its head in its hands. Antinous shuddered, he could not help thinking of the Daimons of which Hadrian so often spoke. They were said to be of half-divine and half-human nature, and sometimes appeared in the guise of mortals.

Or was Selene dead and was the white figure her wandering shade? Antinous clutched the handles of the oars, now merely floating on the water, and bending forward gazed fixedly and with bated breath at the mysterious being which had now reached the balustrade of the terrace, now—he saw quite plainly—covered its face with both hands, leaned far over the parapet, and now as a star falls through the sky on a clear night, as a fruit drops from the tree in autumn, the white form of the girl dropped from the terrace. A loud cry of anguish broke the silence of the night which veiled the world, and almost at the same instant the water splashed and gurgled up, and the moonbeams, cold and bright as ever, were mirrored in the thousand drops that flew up from its surface.

Was this Antinous, the indolent dreamer, who so promptly plunged his oars in the water, pulled a powerful stroke, and then, when in a few seconds after her fall, the form of the drowning girl came to the surface again quite close to the boat, flung aside the oar that was in his way? Leaning far over the edge of the boat he seized the floating garment of the drowning creature—it was a woman, no Daimon nor shade—and drew her towards him. He succeeded in raising her high out of the waves, but when he tried to pull her fairly out of her watery bed, the weight, all on one side of the boat, was too great; it turned over and Antinous was in the sea.

The Bithyman was a good swimmer. Before the white form could sink a second time he had caught at it once more with his right hand and taking care that her head should not again touch the surface of the water, he swam with his left arm and legs towards the spot where he remembered he had seen the flight of steps. As soon as his feet felt the ground he lifted the girl in both arms and a groan of relief broke from his lips as he saw the marble steps close below him. He went up them without hesitation, and then, with a swift elastic step, carried his dripping and senseless burden to the terrace where he had observed that there were benches. The wide floor of the sea-terrace, paved with smooth flags of marble, was brightly lighted by the broad moonshine, and the whiteness of the stone reflected and seemed to increase the light. There stood the benches which Antinous had seen from afar.

He laid his burden on the first he came to, and a thrill of thankful joy warmed his shivering body when the rescued woman uttered a low cry of pain which told him that he had not toiled in vain. He gently slipped his arm between the hard elbow of the marble seat and her head, to give it a somewhat softer resting-place. Her abundant hair fell in clammy tresses, covering her face like a thick but fine veil; he parted it to the right and left and then—then he sank on his knees by her side as if a sudden bolt had fallen from the blue sky above them; for the features were hers, Selene’s, and the pale girl before whom he was kneeling was she herself, the woman he loved.

Almost beside himself and trembling in every limb, he drew her closer to him and put his ear against her mouth to listen whether he had not deceived himself, whether she had not indeed fallen a victim to the waves or whether some warm breath were passing the portals of her lips.

Yes she breathed! she was alive! Full of thankful ecstasy he pressed his cheek to hers. Oh! how cold she was, icy, cold as death!

The torch of life was flickering, but he would not—could not—must not let it die out: and with all the care, rapidity and decision of the most capable man, he once more raised her, lifted her in both arms as if she were a child, and carried her straight to the house whose white walls he could see gleaming among the shrubs behind the terrace. The little lamp was still burning in dame Hannah’s room, which Selene had so lately quitted; in front of the window through which the dim light came to mingle with the moonbeams, lay the flowers whose perfume had so troubled the suffering girl, and with them Hannah’s clay jar, all still strewn on the ground.

Was this nosegay his gift? Very likely.

But the lamp-lighted room into which he now looked could be none other than the sick-room, which he recognized from the sculptor’s account. The housedoor was open and even that of the room in which he had seen the bed was unfastened; he pushed it open with his foot, entered the room, and laid Selene on the vacant couch.

There she lay as if dead; and as he looked at her immovable features, hallowed to solemnity by sorrow and suffering, his heart was touched with an ineffable solicitude, sympathy and pity; and, as a brother might bend over a sleeping sister, he bent over Selene and kissed her forehead. She moved, opened her eyes, gazed into his face—but her glance was so full of horror, so vague, glassy and bewildered, that he drew back with a shudder, and with hands uplifted could only stammer out: “Oh! Selene, Selene! do you not know me?” and as he spoke he looked anxiously in the face of the rescued girl; but she seemed not to hear him and nothing moved but her eyes which slowly followed his every movement.

“Selene!” he cried again, and seizing her inanimate hand which hung down, he pressed it passionately to his lips.

Then she gave a loud cry, a violent shiver shook her in every limb, she turned aside with sighs and groans, and at the same instant the door was opened, the little deformed girl entered the room and gave a shrill scream of terror as she saw Antinous standing by the side of her friend.

The lad himself started and, like a thief who has been caught in the act, he fled out into the night, through the garden, and as far as the gate which led into the street without being stopped by any one. Here the gate-keeper met him, but he threw him aside with a powerful fling, and while the old man—who had grown gray in his office—caught hold of his wet chiton he tore the door open and ran on, dragging his pursuer with him for some paces. Then he flew down the street with long steps as if he were racing in the Gymnasium, and soon he felt that his pursuer, in whose hand he had left a piece of his garment, had given up the chase.

The gate-keeper’s outcry had mingled with the pious hymns of the assembled Christians in Paulina’s villa, and some of them had hurried out to help capture the disturber of the peace. But the young Bithynian was swifter than they and might consider himself perfectly safe when once he had succeeded in mixing with a festal procession. Half-willingly and half-perforce, he followed the drunken throng which was making its way from the heart of the city towards the lake, where, on a lonely spot on the shore to the east of Nikropolis, they were to celebrate certain nocturnal mysteries. The goal of the singing, shouting, howling mob with whom Antinous was carried along, was between Alexandria and Canopus and far enough from Lochias; thus it fell out that it was long past midnight when Hadrian’s favorite, dirty, out of breath, and his clothes torn, at last appeared in the presence of his master.

CHAPTER IV.

Hadrian had expected Antinous many hours since, and the impatience and vexation which had been long seething in him were reflected plainly enough in his sternly-bent brow and the threatening fire of his eye.

“Where have you been?” he imperiously asked.

“I could not find you, so I took a boat and went out on the lake.”

“That is false.”

Antinous did not answer, but merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Alone?” asked the Emperor more gently. “Alone.”

“And for what purpose?”

“I was gazing at the stars.”

“You!”

“And may I not, for once, tread in your footsteps?”

“Why not indeed? The lights of heaven shine for the foolish as well as for the wise. Even asses must be born under a good or an evil star. One donkey serves a hungry grammarian and feeds on used-up papyrus, while another enters the service of Caesar and is fattened up, and finds time to go star-gazing at night. What a state you are in.”

“The boat upset and I fell into the water.” Hadrian was startled, and observing his favorite’s tangled hair in which the night wind had dried the salt water, and his torn chiton, he anxiously exclaimed:

“Go this instant and let Mastor dry you and anoint you. He too came back with a bruised hand and red eyes. Everything is upside clown this accursed evening. You look like a slave that has been hunted by clogs. Drink a few cups of wine and then lie down.”

“I obey your orders, great Caesar.”

“So formal? The donkey simile vexed you.”

“You used always to have a kind word for me.”

“Yes, yes, and I shall have them again, I shall have them again. Only not to-night—go to bed.”

Antinous left him, but the Emperor paced his room, up and down with long steps, his arms crossed over his breast and his eyes fixed on the ground. His superstitious soul had been deeply disturbed by a series of evil signs which he had not only seen the previous night in the sky, but had also met on his way to Lochias, and which seemed to be beginning to be fulfilled already.

He had left the eating house in an evil humor, the bad omens made him anxious, and though on his arrival at home he had done one or two things which he already regretted, this had certainly not been due to any adverse Daimons but to the brooding gloom of his clouded mind. Eternal circumstances, it is true, had led to his being witness to an attack made by the mob on the house of a wealthy Israelite, and it was attributable to a vexatious accident that at this juncture, he should have met Verus, who had observed and recognized him. Yes, the Spirits of evil were abroad this day, but his subsequent experiences and deeds upon reaching Lochias, would certainly not have taken place on any more fortunate day, or, to be more exact, if he had been in a calmer frame of mind; he himself alone was in fault, he alone, and no spiteful accident, nor malicious and tricky Daimon. Hadrian, to be sure, attributed to these sprites all that he had done, and so considered it irremediable; an excellent way, no doubt, of exonerating oneself from a burdensome duty, or from repairing some injustice, but conscience is a register in which a mysterious hand inexorably enters every one of our deeds, and in which all that we do is ruthlessly called by its true name. We often succeed, it is true, in effacing the record for a longer or a shorter period, but often, again, the letters on the page shine with an uncanny light, and force the inward eye to see them and to heed them.

On this particular night Hadrian felt himself compelled to read the catalogue of his actions and among them he found many a sanguinary crime, many a petty action unworthy of a far meaner soul than he; still the record commemorated many duties strictly fulfilled, much honest work, an unceasing struggle towards high aims, and an unwearied effort to feel his way intellectually, to the most remote and exalted limits possible to the human mind and comprehension.

In this hour Hadrian thought of none but his evil deeds, and vowed to the gods—whom he mocked at with his philosophical friends, and to whom he nevertheless addressed himself whenever he felt the insufficiency of his own strength and means—to build a temple here, to offer a sacrifice there, in order to expiate old crimes and divert their malice. He felt like a great man must who is threatened with the disfavor of his superiors, and who hopes to propitiate them with gifts. The haughty Roman quailed at the thought of unknown dangers, but he was far from feeling the wholesome pangs of repentance.

Hardly an hour since he had forgotten himself and had disgracefully abused his power over a weaker creature, and now he was vexed at having behaved so and not otherwise; but it never entered his head to humiliate his pride or, by offering some compensation to the offended party, tacitly to confess the injustice he had committed. Often he deeply felt his human weakness, but he was quite capable of believing in the sacredness of his imperial person, and this he always found most easy when he had trodden under foot some one who had been rash enough to insult him, or not to acknowledge his superiority. And was it not on the contemners of the gods that their heaviest punishments fell?

To-day the terrestrial Jupiter had again crushed into the earth with his thunderbolts, an overbold mortal, and this time the son of the worthy gate-keeper was his victim. The sculptor certainly had been so unlucky as to touch Hadrian in his most sensitive spot, but a cordially benevolent feeling is not easily converted into a relentless opposition if we are not ourselves—as was the case with the Emperor—accustomed to jump from one mood to the other, are not conscious—as he was—of having it in our power directly to express our good-will or our aversion in action.

The sculptor’s capacities had commanded the Emperor’s esteem, his fresh and independent nature had at first suited and attracted him, but even during the walk together through the streets, the young man’s uncompromising manner of treating him as an equal had become unpleasing to him. In his workshop he saw in Pollux only the artist, and delighted in his original and dashing powers; but out of it, and among men of a commoner stamp, from whom he was accustomed to meet with deference, the young man’s speech and demeanor seemed unbecoming, bold, and hard to be endured. In the eating-house the huge eater and drinker, who laughingly pressed him to do his part, so as not to make a present to the landlord, had filled Hadrian with repulsion. And after this, when Hadrian had returned to Lochias, out of humor and rendered apprehensive by evil omens, and even then had not found his favorite, he impatiently paced up and down the hall of the Muses and would not deign to offer a greeting to the sculptor, who was noisily occupied behind his screens.

Pollux had passed quite as bad an evening as the Emperor. When, in his desire to see Arsinoe once more, he penetrated to the door of the steward’s apartment, Keraunus had stopped his way, and sent him about his business with insulting words. In the hall of the Muses he had met his master, and had had a quarrel with him, for Papias, to whom he repeated his notice to quit, had grown angry, and had desired him then and there to sort out his own tools, and to return those that belonged to him, his master, and for the future to keep himself as far as possible from Papias’ house, and from the works in progress at Locluas. On this, hard words had passed on both sides, and when Papias had left the palace and Pollux went to seek Pontius the architect, in order to discuss his future plans with him, he learnt that he too had quitted Lochias a short time before, and would not return till the following morning.

After brief reflection he determined to obey the orders of Papias and to pack his own tools together. Without paying any heed to Hadrian’s presence he began to toss some of the hammers, chisels, and wooden modelling tools into one box, and others into another, doing it as recklessly as though he were minded to punish the unconscious tools as adverse creatures who had turned against him.

At last his eye fell on Hadrian’s bust of Balbilla. The hideous caricature at which he had laughed only yesterday, made him angry now, and after gazing at it thoughtfully for a few minutes his blood boiled up furiously, he hastily pulled a lath out of the partition and struck at the monstrosity with such fury that the dry clay flew in pieces, and the fragments were strewed far and wide about the workshop. The wild noise behind the sculptor’s screen made the Emperor pause in his walk to see what the artist was doing; he looked on at the work of destruction, unobserved by Pollux, and as he looked the blood mounted to his head; he knit his brows in anger, a blue vein in his forehead swelled and stood out, and ominous lines appeared above his brow. The great master of state-craft could more easily have borne to hear himself condemned as a ruler than to see his work of art despised. A man who is sure of having done some thing great can smile at blame, but he, who is not confident in himself has reason to dread it, and is easily drawn into hating the critic who utters it. Hadrian was trembling with fury, he doubled his first as he lifted it in Pollux’s face, and going close up to him asked in a threatening tone:

“What do you mean by that?”

The sculptor glanced round at the Emperor and answered, raising his stick for another blow:

“I am demolishing this caricature for it enrages me.”

“Come here,” shouted Hadrian, and clutching the girdle which confined the artist’s chiton, in his strong sinewy hand, he dragged the startled sculptor in front of his Urania wrenched the lath out of his hand, struck the bust of the scarcely-finished statue off the body, exclaiming as he did so, in a voice that mimicked Pollux:

“I am demolishing this bungler’s work for it enrages me!”

The artist’s arms fell by his side; astonished and infuriated he stared at the destroyer of his handiwork, and cried out:

“Madman! this is enough. One blow more and you will feel the weight of my fists.”

Hadrian laughed aloud, a cold hard laugh, flung the lath at Pollux’s feet and said:

“Judgment against judgment—it is only fair.”

“Fair?” shrieked Pollux, beside himself.

“Your wretched rubbish, which my squinting apprentice could have done as well as you, and this figure born in a moment of inspiration! Shame upon you! Once more, if you touch the Urania again I warn you, you shall learn—”

“Well, what?”

“That in Alexandria grey hairs are only respected so long as they deserve it.”

Hadrian folded his arms, stepped quite close up to Pollux, and said:

“Gently, fellow, if you value your life.”

Pollux stepped back before the imposing personage that stood before him, and, as it were scales, fell from his eyes. The marble statue of the Emperor in the Caesareum represented the sovereign in this same attitude. The architect, Claudius Venator, was none other than Hadrian.

The young artist turned pale and said with bowed head, and in low voice as he turned to go:

“Right is always on the side of the strongest. Let me go. I am nothing but a poor artist—you are some thing very different. I know you now; you are Caesar.”

“I am Caesar,” snarled Hadrian, “and if you think more of yourself as an artist than of me, I will show you which of us two is the sparrow, and which the eagle.”

“You have the power to destroy, and I only desire—”

“The only person here who has a right to desire is myself,” cried the Emperor, “and I desire that you shall never enter this palace again, nor ever come within sight of me so long as I remain here. What to do with your kith and kin I will consider. Not another word! Away with you, I say, and thank the gods that I judge the misdeed of a miserable boy more mercifully than you dared to do in judging the work of a greater man than yourself, though you knew that he had done it in an idle hour with a few hasty touches. Be off, fellow; my slaves will finish destroying your image there, for it deserves no better fate, and because—what was it you said just now? I remember—and because it enrages me.”

A bitter laugh rang after the lad as he quitted the hall. At the entrance, which was perfectly dark, he found his master, Papias, who had not missed a word of what had passed between him and the Emperor. As Pollux went into his mother’s house he cried out:

“Oh mother, mother, what a morning, and what an evening. Happiness is only the threshold to misery.”

CHAPTER V.

While Pollux and his mother, who was much grieved, waited for Euphorion’s return, and while Papias was ingratiating himself with the Emperor by pretending still to believe that Hadrian was nothing more than Claudius Venator, the architect, Aurelius Verus, nicknamed by the Alexandrians, “the sham Eros” had lived through strange experiences.

In the afternoon he had visited the Empress, in the hope of persuading her to look on at the gay doings of the people, even if incognito; but Sabina was out of spirits, declared herself unwell, and was quite sure that the noise of the rabble would be the death of her. Having, as she said, so vivacious a reporter as Verus, she might spare herself from exposing her own person to the dust and smell of the town, and the uproar of men. As soon as Lucilla begged her husband to remember his rank and not to mingle with the excited multitude, at any rate after dark, the Empress strictly enjoined him to see with his own eyes everything that could be worth notice in the festival, and more particularly to give attention to everything that was peculiar to Alexandria and not to be seen in Rome.

After sunset Verus had first gone to visit the veterans of the Twelfth Legion who had been in the field with him against the Numidians, and to whom he gave a dinner at an eating-house, as being his old fellow-soldiers. For above an hour he sat drinking with the brave old fellows; then, quitting them, he went to look at the Canopic way by night, as it was but a few paces thither from the scene of his hospitality. It was brilliantly lighted with tapers, torches, and lamps, and the large houses behind the colonnades were gaudy with rich hangings; only the handsomest and stateliest of them all had no kind of decoration. This was the abode of the Jew Apollodorus.

In former years the finest hangings had decorated his windows, which had been as gay with flowers and lamps as those of the other Israelites who dwelt in the Canopic way, and who were wont to keep the festival in common with their heathen fellow-citizens as jovially as though they were no less zealous to do homage to Dionysus. Apollodorus had his own reasons for keeping aloof on this occasion from all that was connected with the holiday doings of the heathen. Without dreaming that his withdrawal could involve him in any danger, he was quietly sitting in his house, which was so splendidly furnished as to seem fitted for some princely Greek rather than for a Hebrew. This was especially the case with the men’s living-room, in which Apollodorus sat, for the pictures on the walls and pavement of this beautiful hall—of which the roof, which was half open, was supported on columns of the finest porphyry—represented the loves of Eros and Psyche; while between the pillars stood busts of the greatest heathen philosophers, and in the background a fine statue of Plato was conspicuous. Among all the Greeks and Romans there was the portrait of only one Jew, and this was that of Philo, whose intellectual and delicate features greatly resembled those of the most illustrious of his Greek companions.

In this splendid room, lighted by silver lamps, there was no lack of easy couches, and on one of these Apollodorus was reclining; a fine-looking man of fifty, with his mild but shrewd eyes fixed on a tall and aged fellow-Israelite who was pacing up and down in front of him and talking eagerly; the old man’s hands too were never still, now he used them in eager gesture, and again stroked his long white beard. On an easy seat opposite to the master of the house sat a lean young man with pale and very regular finely-cut features, black hair and a black beard; he sat with his dark glowing eyes fixed on the ground, tracing lines and circles on the pavement with the stick he held in his hand, while the excited old man, his uncle, urgently addressed Apollodorus in a vehement but fluent torrent of words. Apollodorus, however, shook his head from time to time at his speech and frequently met him with a brief contradiction.

It was easy to see that what he was listening to touched him painfully, and that the two diametrically different men were fighting a battle which could never lead to any satisfactory issue. For, though they both used the Greek tongue and confessed the same religion, all they felt and thought was grounded on views, as widely dissimilar as though the two men had been born in different spheres. When two opponents of such different calibre meet, there is a great clatter of arms but no bloody wounds are dealt and neither rout nor victory can result.

It was on account of this old man and his nephew that Apollodorus had forborne to-day to decorate his house, for the Rabbi Gamaliel, who had arrived only the day before from Palestine, and had been welcomed by his Alexandrian relatives, condemned every form of communion with the gentiles, and would undoubtedly have quitted the residence of his host if he had ventured to adorn it in honor of the feast-day of the false gods. Gamaliel’s nephew, Rabbi Ben Jochai, enjoyed a reputation little inferior to that of his father, Ben Akiba. The elder was the greatest sage and expounder of the law—the son the most illustrious astronomer and the most skilled interpreter of the mystical significance of the position of the heavenly bodies, among the Hebrews.

It redounded greatly to the honor of Apollodorus that he should be privileged to shelter under his roof the sage Gamaliel and the famous son of so great a father, and in his hours of leisure he loved to occupy himself with learned subjects, so he had done his utmost to make their stay in his house in every way agreeable to them. He had bought, on purpose for them, a kitchen slave, himself a strict Jew and familiar with the requirements of the Levitical law as to food, who during their stay was to preside over the mysteries of the hearth, instead of the Greek cook who usually served him, so that none but clean meat should be prepared according to the Jewish ritual. He had forbidden his grown-up sons to invite any of their Greek friends into the house during the visit of the illustrious couple or to discuss the festival; they were also enjoined to avoid using the names of the gods of the heathen in their conversation—but he himself was the first to sin against this prohibition.

He, like all the Hebrews of good position in Alexandria, had acquired Greek culture, felt and thought in Greek modes, and had remained a Jew only in name; for though they still believed in the one God of their fathers instead of in a crowd of Olympian deities, the One whom they worshipped was no longer the almighty and jealous God of their nation, but the all-pervading plasmic and life-giving Spirit with whom the Greeks had become familiar through Plato.

Every hour that they had spent in each other’s company had widened the gulf between Apollodorus and Gamaliel, and the relations of the Alexandrian to the sage had become almost intolerable, when he learnt that the old man—who was related to himself—had come to Egypt with his nephew, in order to demand the daughter of Apollodorus in marriage. But the fair Ismene was not in the least disposed to listen to this grave and bigoted suitor. The home of her people was to her a barbarous land, the young astronomer filled her with alarm, and besides all this her heart was already engaged; she had given it to the son of Alabarchos, who was the Superior of all the Israelites in Egypt, and this young man possessed the finest horse in the whole city, with which he had won several races in the Hippodrome, and he also had distinguished her above all the maidens. To him, if to any one, would she give her hand, and she had explained herself to this effect to her father when he informed her of Ben Jochai’s suit, and Apollodorus, who had lost his wife several years before, had neither the wish nor the power to put any pressure on his pretty darling.

To be sure the temporizing nature of the man rendered it very difficult to him to give a decided no to his venerable old friend; but it had to be done sooner or later, and the present evening seemed to him an appropriate moment for this unpleasant task.

He was alone with his guests. His daughter had gone to the house of a friend to look on at the gay doings in the street, his three sons were out, all the slaves had leave to enjoy their holiday till midnight; nothing was likely to disturb them, and so, after many warm expressions of his deep respect, he found courage to confess to them that he could not support Ben Jochai’s pretensions. His child, he said, clung too fondly to Alexandria to wish to quit it, and his learned young friend would be but ill suited with a wife who was accustomed to freer manners and habits, and could hardly feel herself at ease in a home where the laws of her fathers were strictly observed, and in which therefore no kind of freedom of life would be tolerated.

Gamaliel let the Alexandrian speak to the end, but then, as his nephew was beginning to argue against their host’s hesitancy, the old man abruptly interrupted him. Drawing up his figure, which was a little bent, to its full height, and passing his hand among the blue veins and fine wrinkles that marked his high forehead, he began:

“Our house was decimated in our wars against the Romans, and among the daughters of our race Ben Akiba found not one in Palestine who seemed to him worthy to marry his son. But the report of the good fortune of the Alexandrian branch of our family had reached Judea, and Ben Akiba thought that he would do like our father Abraham, and he sent me, his Eliezer, into a strange land to win the daughter of a kinsman to wife for his Isaac. Now, who and what the young man is, and the esteem in which he and his father are held by men—”

“I know well,” interrupted Apollodorus, “and my house has never been so highly honored as in your visit.”

“And notwithstanding,” continued the Rabbi, “we must return home as we came; and indeed this will not only suit you best, but us too, and my brother, whose ambassador I am, for after what I have learnt from you within this last hour we must in any case withdraw our suit. Do not interrupt me! Your Ismene scorns to veil her face, and no doubt it is a very pretty one to look upon—you have trained her mind like that of a man, and so she seeks to go her own way. That may be all very well for a Greek woman, but in the house of Ben Akiba the woman must obey her husband’s will, as the ship obeys the helm, and have no will of her own; her husband’s will always coincides with what the law commands, which you yourself learnt to obey.”

“We recognize its excellence,” replied Apolloderus, “but even if all the laws which Moses received on Sinai were binding on all mortals alike, the various ordinances which were wisely laid down for the regulation of the social life of our fathers, are not universally applicable for the children of our day. And least of all can we observe them here, where, though true to our ancient faith, we live as Greeks among Greeks.”

“That I perceive,” retorted Gamaliel, “for even the language—that clothing of our thoughts—the language of our fathers and of the scriptures, you have abandoned for another, sacrificed to another.”

“You and your nephew also speak Greek.”

“We do it here, because the heathen, because you and yours, no longer understand the tongue of Moses and the prophets.”

“But wherever the Great Alexander bore his arms Greek is spoken; and does not the Greek version of the scriptures, translated by the seventy interpreters under the direct guidance of our God, exactly reproduce the Hebrew text?”

“And would you exchange the stone engraved by Bryasis that you wear on your finger, and showed me yesterday with so much pride, for a wax impression of the gem?”

“The language of Plato is not an inferior thing; it is as noble as the costliest sapphire.”

“But ours came to us from the lips of the Most High. What would you think of a child that, disdaining the tongue Of its father listened only to that of its neighbors and made use of an interpreter to be able to understand its parents’ commands?”

“You are speaking of parents who have long since left their native land. The ancestor need not be indignant with his descendants when they use the language of their new home, so long as they continue to act in accordance with his spirit.”

“We must live not merely in accordance with the spirit, but by the words of the Most High, for not a syllable proceeds from His lips in vain. The more exalted the spirit of a discourse is, the more important is every word and syllable. One single letter often changes the meaning of whole sentences.—What a noise the people outside are making! The wild tumult penetrates even into this room which is so far from the street, and your sons take delight in the disorders of the heathen! You do not even withhold them by force from adding to the number of those mad devotees of pleasure!”

“I was young once myself, and I think it no sin to share in the universal rejoicing.”

“Say rather the disgraceful idolatry of the worshippers of Dionysus. It is in name alone that you and your children belong to the elect people of God, in your hearts you are heathens!”

“No, Father,” exclaimed Apollodorus eagerly. “The reverse is the case. In our hearts we are Jews but we wear the garments of Greeks.”

“Why your name is Apollodorus—the gift of Apollo.”

“A name chosen only to distinguish me from others. Who would ever enquire into the meaning of a name if it sounds well.”

“You, everybody who is not devoid of sense,” cried the Rabbi. “You think to yourself ‘need Zenodotus or Hermogenes, some Greek you meet at the bath or else where, know at once that the wealthy personage, with whom he discussed the latest interpretation of the Hellenic myths, is a Jew?’ And how charming is the man who asks you whether you are not an Athenian, for your Greek has such a pure Attic accent! And what we ourselves like, we favor in our children, so we choose names for them too which flatter our own vanity.”

“By Heracles!”

A faint mocking smile crossed Gamaliel’s lips and interrupting the Alexandrian he said:

“Is there any particularly worthy man among our Alexandrian fellow-believers whose name is Heracles?”

“No one” cried the Alexandrian “ever thinks of the son of Alcmene when he asseverates—it only means ‘really,—truly—‘”

“To be sure you are not fastidiously accurate in the choice of your words and names, and where there is so much to be seen and enjoyed as there is here one’s thoughts are not always connected. That is intelligible—quite, peculiarly intelligible! And in this city folks are so polite that they are fain to wrap truth in some graceful disguise. May I, a barbarian from Judea, be allowed to set it before you, bare of clothing, naked and unadorned.”

“Speak, I beg you, speak.”

“You are Jews; but you had rather not be Jews, and you endure your origin as an inevitable evil. It is only when you feel the mighty hand of the Most High that you recognize it and claim your right to be one of His chosen people. In the smooth current of daily life you proudly number yourselves with his enemies. Do not interrupt me, and answer honestly what I shall ask you. In what hour of your life did you feel yourself that you owed the deepest gratitude to the God of your fathers?”

“Why should I deny it?—In the hour when my lost wife presented me with my first-born son.”

“And you called him?”

“You know his name is Benjamin.”

“Like the favorite son of our forefather Jacob, for in the hour when you thus named him you were honestly yourself, you felt thankful that it had been vouchsafed to you to add another link to the chain of your race—you were a Jew—you were confident in our God—in your own God. The birth of your second son touched your soul less deeply and you gave him the name of Theophilus, and when your third male child was born you had altogether ceased to remember the God of your fathers, for he is named after one of the heathen gods, Hephaestion. To put it shortly: You are Jews when the Lord is most gracious to you, or threatens to try you most severely but you are heathen whenever your way does not lead you over the high hills or through the dark abysses of life. I cannot change your hearts—but the wife of my brother’s son, the daughter of Ben Akiba, must be a daughter of our people, morning, noon, and night. I seek a Rebecca for my daughter and not an Ismene.”

“I did not ask you here,” retorted Apollodorus. “But if you quit us to-morrow, you as will be followed by our reverent regard. Think no worse of us because we adapt ourselves, more, perhaps, than is fitting, to the ways and ideas of the people among whom we have grown up, and in whose midst we have been prosperous, and whose interests are ours. We know how high our faith is beyond theirs. In our hearts we still are Jews; but are we not bound to try to open and to cultivate and to elevate our spirits, which God certainly made of stuff no coarser than that of other nations, whenever and wherever we may? And in what school may our minds be trained better or on sounder principles than in ours—I mean that of the Greek sages? The knowledge of the Most High—”

“That knowledge,” cried the old man, gesticulating vehemently with his arms. “The knowledge of God Most High and all that the most refined philosophy can prove, all the sublimest and purest of the thinkers of whom you speak can only apprehend by the gravest meditation and heart-searching—all this I say has been bestowed as a free gift of God on every child of our people. The treasures which your sages painfully seek out we already possess in our scriptures, our law and our moral ordinances. We are the chosen people, the first-born of the Lord, and when Messiah shall rise up in our midst—”

“Then,” interrupted Apollodorus, “that shall be fulfilled which, like Philo, I hope for, we shall be the priests and prophets for all nations. Then we shall in truth be a race of priests whose vocation it shall be to call down the blessing of the Most High on all mankind.”

“For us—for us alone shall the messenger of God appear, to make us the kings, and not the slaves of the nations.”

Apollodorus looked with surprise into the face of the excited old man, and asked with an incredulous smile: “The crucified Nazarene was a false Messiah; but when will the true Messiah appear?”

“When will He appear?” cried the Rabbi. “When? Can I tell when? Only one thing I do know; the serpent is already sharpening its fangs to sting the heel of Him who shall tread upon it. Have you heard the name of Bar Kochba?”

“Uncle,” said Ben Jochai, interrupting the old Rabbi’s speech, and rising from his seat: “Say nothing you might regret.”

“Nay, nay,” answered Gamaliel earnestly. “Our friends here prefer the human above the divine, but they are not traitors.” Then turning again to Apollodorus he continued:

“The oppressors in Israel have set up idols in our holy places, and strive again to force the people to bow down to them; but rather shall our back be broken than we will bend the knee or submit!”

“You are meditating another revolt?” asked the Alexandrian anxiously.

“Answer me—have you heard the name of Bar Kochba?”

“Yes, as that of the foolhardy leader of an armed troup.”

“He is a hero—perhaps the Redeemer.”

“And it was for him that you charged me to load my next corn vessel to Joppa with swords, shields and lance-heads?”

“And are none but the Romans to be permitted to use iron?”

“Nay—but I should hesitate to supply a friend with arms if he proposed to use them against an irresistible antagonist, who will inevitably annihilate him!”

“The Lord of Hosts is stronger than a thousand legions!”

“Be cautious uncle,” said Ben Jochai again in a warning voice.

Gamaliel turned wrathfully upon his nephew, but before he could retort on the young man’s protest, he started in alarm, for a wild howling and the resounding clatter of violent blows on the brazen door of the house rang through the hall and shook its walls of marble.

“They are attacking my house,” shouted Apollodorus.

“This is the gratitude of those for whom you have broken faith with the God of your fathers,” said the old man gloomily. Then throwing up his hands and eyes he cried aloud: “Hear me Adonai! My years are many and I am ripe for the grave; but spare these, have mercy upon them.”

Ben Jochai followed his uncle’s example and raised his arms in supplication, while his black eyes sparkled with a lowering glow in his pale face.

But their prayers were brief, for the tumult came nearer and nearer; Apollodorus wrung his hands, and struck his fist against his forehead; his movements were violent—spasmodic. Terror had entirely robbed him of the elegant, measured demeanor which he had acquired among his Greek fellow-citizens, and mingling heathen oaths and adjurations with appeals to the God of his fathers, he flew first one way and then another. He searched for the key of the subterranean rooms of the house, but he could not find it, for it was in the charge of his steward, who, with all the other servants, was taking his pleasure in the streets, or over a brimming cup in some tavern.

Now the newly-purchased kitchen-slave—the Jew to whom the keeping of the Dionysian feast was an abomination—rushed into the room shrieking out, as he plucked at his hair and beard:

“The Philistines are upon us! save us Rabbi, great Rabbi! Cry for us to the Lord, oh! man of God! They are coming with staves and spears and they will tread us down as grass and burn us in this house like the locusts cast into the oven.”

In deadly terror he threw himself at Gamaliel’s feet and clasped them in his hands, but Apollodorus exclaimed: “Follow me, follow me up on to the roof.”

“No, no,” howled the slave, “Amalek is making ready the firebrand to fling among our tents. The heathen leap and rage, the flames they are flinging will consume us. Rabbi, Rabbi, call upon the Hosts of the Lord! God of the just! The gate has given way. Lord! Lord! Lord!”

The terrified wretch’s teeth chattered and he covered his eyes with his hands, groaning and howling.

Ben Jochai had remained perfectly calm, but he was quivering with rage. His prayer was ended, and turning to Gamaliel he said in deep tones:

“I knew that this would happen, I warned you. Our evil star rose when we set forth on our wanderings.

“Now we must abide patiently what the Lord hath determined. He will be our Avenger.”

“Vengeance is His!” echoed the old man, and he covered his head with his white mantle.

“In the sleeping-room—follow me! we can hide under the beds!” shrieked Apollodorus; he kicked away the slave who was embracing the Rabbi’s feet, and seized the old man by the shoulder to drag him away with him. But it was too late, for the door of the antechamber had burst open and they could hear the clatter of weapons. “Lost, lost, all is lost!” cried Apollodorus.

“Adonai! help us Adonai!” murmured the old man and he clung more closely to his nephew, who overtopped him by a head and who held him clasped in his right arm as if to protect him.

The danger which threatened Apollodorus and his guests was indeed imminent, and it had been provoked solely by the indignation of the excited mob at seeing the wealthy Israelite’s house unadorned for the feast.

A thousand times had it occurred that a single word had proved sufficient to inflame the hot blood of the Alexandrians to prompt them to break the laws and seize the sword. Bloody frays between the heathen inhabitants and the Jews, who were equally numerous in the city, were quite the order of the day, and one party was as often to blame as the other for disturbing the peace and having recourse to the sword. Since the Israelites had risen in several provinces—particularly in Cyrenaica and Cyprus—and had fallen with cruel fury on their fellow-inhabitants who were their oppressors, the suspicion and aversion of the Alexandrians of other beliefs had grown more intense than in former times. Besides this, the prosperous circumstances of many Jews, and the enormous riches of a few, had filled the less wealthy heathen with envy and roused the wish to snatch the possessions of those who, it cannot be denied, had not unfrequently treated their gods with open contumely.

It happened that just within a few days the disputes regarding the festival that was to be held in honor of the Imperial visit had added bitterness to the old grudge, and thus it came to pass that Apollodorus’ unlighted house in the Canopic way had excited the populace to attack this palatial residence. And here again one single speech had sufficed to excite their fury.

In the first instance Melampus, the tanner, a drunken swaggerer, who had failed in business, had marched up the street at the head of a tipsy crew, and pointing with his thyrsus to the dark, undecorated house, had shouted:

“Look at that dismal barrack! All that the Jew used to spend on decorating the street, he is saving up now in his money chest!” The words were like a spark among tinder and others followed.

“The niggard is robbing our father Dionysus,” cried a second citizen, and a third, flourishing his torch on high, croaked out:

“Let us get at the drachmae he grudges the god; we can find a use for them.” Graukus, the sausage maker, snatched from his neighbor’s hand the bunch of tow soaked in pitch, and bellowed out, “I advise that we should burn the house over their heads!”

“Stay, stay,” cried a cobbler who worked for Apollodorus’ slaves, as he placed himself in the butcher’s way. “Perhaps they are mourning for some one in there. The Jew has always decorated his house on former occasions.”

“Not they,” replied a flute-player in a loud hoarse voice. “We met the old miser’s son on the Bruchiom with some riotous comrades and misconducted hussies, with his purple mantle fluttering far behind him.”

“Let us see which is reddest, the Tyrian stuff or the blaze we shall make if we set the old wretch’s house on fire,” shouted a hungry-looking tailor, looking round to see the effects of his wit.

“Ay! let us try!” rose from one man, and then, from a number of others:

“Let us get into the house!”

“The mean churl shall remember this day!”

“Fetch him out!”

“Drag him into the street!”

Such shouts as these rose here and there from the crowd, which grew denser every instant as it was increased by fresh tributaries attracted by the riot.

“Drag him out!” again shrieked an Egyptian slavedriver, and a woman shrieked an echo of his words. She snatched the deer-skin from her shoulders, flourished it round and round in the air above her tangled black hair, and bellowed furiously:

“Tear him in pieces!”

“In pieces, with your teeth!” roared a drunken Maenad who, like most of the mob that had collected, knew nothing whatever of the popular grudge against Apollodorus and his house.

But words had already begun to be followed by deeds. Feet, fists, and cudgels stamped, drubbed, and thumped against the firmly-bolted brazen door of the darkened house, and a ship’s boy of fourteen sprang on the shoulders of a tall black slave and tried to climb the roof of the colonnade, and to fling the torch which the sausage-maker handed up to him into the open forecourt of the imperilled house.