The Last Days of Pompeii by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (interesting books to read txt) 📖

given, a small party of the fashionable youth at Pompeii were assembled round the fastidious board of Lepidus.

'So Glaucus denies his crime to the last?' said Clodius.

'Yes; but the testimony of Arbaces was convincing; he saw the blow given,' answered Lepidus.

'What could have been the cause?'

'Why, the priest was a gloomy and sullen fellow. He probably rated Glaucus soundly about his gay life and gaming habits, and ultimately swore he would not consent to his marriage with Ione. High words arose; Glaucus seems to have been full of the passionate god, and struck in sudden exasperation. The excitement of wine, the desperation of abrupt remorse, brought on the delirium under which he suffered for some days; and I can readily imagine, poor fellow! that, yet confused by that delirium, he is even now unconscious of the crime he committed! Such, at least, is the shrewd conjecture of Arbaces, who seems to have been most kind and forbearing in his testimony.'

'Yes; he has made himself generally popular by it. But, in consideration of these extenuating circumstances, the senate should have relaxed the sentence.'

'And they would have done so, but for the people; but they were outrageous. The priest had spared no pains to excite them; and they imagined—the ferocious brutes!—because Glaucus was a rich man and a gentleman, that he was likely to escape; and therefore they were inveterate against him, and doubly resolved upon his sentence. It seems, by some accident or other, that he was never formally enrolled as a Roman citizen; and thus the senate is deprived of the power to resist the people, though, after all, there was but a majority of three against him. Ho! the Chian!'

'He looks sadly altered; but how composed and fearless!'

'Ay, we shall see if his firmness will last over to-morrow.' But what merit in courage, when that atheistical hound, Olinthus, manifested the same?'

'The blasphemer! Yes,' said Lepidus, with pious wrath, 'no wonder that one of the decurions was, but two days ago, struck dead by lightning in a serene sky.' The gods feel vengeance against Pompeii while the vile desecrator is alive within its walls.'

'Yet so lenient was the senate, that had he but expressed his penitence, and scattered a few grains of incense on the altar of Cybele, he would have been let off. I doubt whether these Nazarenes, had they the state religion, would be as tolerant to us, supposing we had kicked down the image of their Deity, blasphemed their rites, and denied their faith.'

'They give Glaucus one chance, in consideration of the circumstances; they allow him, against the lion, the use of the same stilus wherewith he smote the priest.'

'Hast thou seen the lion? hast thou looked at his teeth and fangs, and wilt thou call that a chance? Why, sword and buckler would be mere reed and papyrus against the rush of the mighty beast! No, I think the true mercy has been, not to leave him long in suspense; and it was therefore fortunate for him that our benign laws are slow to pronounce, but swift to execute; and that the games of the amphitheatre had been, by a sort of providence, so long since fixed for to-morrow. He who awaits death, dies twice.'

'As for the Atheist, said Clodius, 'he is to cope the grim tiger naked-handed. Well, these combats are past betting on. Who will take the odds?' A peal of laughter announced the ridicule of the question.

'Poor Clodius!' said the host; I to lose a friend is something; but to find no one to bet on the chance of his escape is a worse misfortune to thee.'

'Why, it is provoking; it would have been some consolation to him and to me to think he was useful to the last.'

'The people,' said the grave Pansa, 'are all delighted with the result. They were so much afraid the sports at the amphitheatre would go off without a criminal for the beasts; and now, to get two such criminals is indeed a joy for the poor fellows! They work hard; they ought to have some amusement.'

'There speaks the popular Pansa, who never moves without a string of clients as long as an Indian triumph. He is always prating about the people. Gods! he will end by being a Gracchus!'

'Certainly I am no insolent patrician,' said Pansa, with a generous air.

'Well,' observed Lepidus, it would have been assuredly dangerous to have been merciful at the eve of a beast-fight. If ever I, though a Roman bred and born, come to be tried, pray Jupiter there may be either no beasts in the vivaria, or plenty of criminals in the gaol.'

'And pray,' said one of the party, 'what has become of the poor girl whom Glaucus was to have married? A widow without being a bride—that is hard!'

'Oh,' returned Clodius, 'she is safe under the protection of her guardian, Arbaces. It was natural she should go to him when she had lost both lover and brother.'

'By sweet Venus, Glaucus was fortunate among the women. They say the rich Julia was in love with him.'

'A mere fable, my friend,' said Clodius, coxcombically; 'I was with her to-day. If any feeling of the sort she ever conceived, I flatter myself that I have consoled her.'

'Hush, gentlemen!' said Pansa; 'do you not know that Clodius is employed at the house of Diomed in blowing hard at the torch? It begins to burn, and will soon shine bright on the shrine of Hymen.'

'Is it so?' said Lepidus. 'What! Clodius become a married man?—Fie!'

'Never fear,' answered Clodius; 'old Diomed is delighted at the notion of marrying his daughter to a nobleman, and will come down largely with the sesterces. You will see that I shall not lock them up in the atrium. It will be a white day for his jolly friends, when Clodius marries an heiress.'

'Say you so?' cried Lepidus; 'come, then, a full cup to the health of the fair Julia!'

While such was the conversation—one not discordant to the tone of mind common among the dissipated of that day, and which might perhaps, a century ago, have found an echo in the looser circles of Paris—while such, I say, was the conversation in the gaudy triclinium of Lepidus, far different the scene which scowled before the young Athenian.

After his condemnation, Glaucus was admitted no more to the gentle guardianship of Sallust, the only friend of his distress. He was led along the forum till the guards stopped at a small door by the side of the temple of Jupiter. You may see the place still. The door opened in the centre in a somewhat singular fashion, revolving round on its hinges, as it were, like a modern turnstile, so as only to leave half the threshold open at the same time. Through this narrow aperture they thrust the prisoner, placed before him a loaf and a pitcher of water, and left him to darkness, and, as he thought, to solitude. So sudden had been that revolution of fortune which had prostrated him from the palmy height of youthful pleasure and successful love to the lowest abyss of ignominy,