A Thorny Path — Complete by Georg Ebers (howl and other poems txt) 📖

calm, and finally requested the physician to grant him a few moments’ conversation.

Then there was quiet for a time in the room, only broken by Diodoros’s angry questions and the pacifying exclamations of the freedman. She felt as if she must return to her lover and tell him herself what she had been forced to do in these last days, but maidenly shyness restrained her, till at last Andreas came out. The freedman’s honest face expressed the deepest solicitude, and his voice sounded rough and hasty as he exclaimed, “You must fly—fly this day!”

“And my father and brother, and Diodoros?” she asked, anxiously.

But he answered, urgently: “Let them get away as they may. There is no hole or corner obscure enough to keep you hidden. Therefore take advantage of the ship that waits for you. Follow Argutis at once to the lady Berenike. I can not accompany you, for it lies with me to occupy for the next few hours the attention of the body-physician, from whom you have the most to fear. He has consented to go with me to my garden across the water. There I promised him a delicious, real Alexandrian feast, and you know how gladly Polybius will seize the opportunity to share it with him. No doubt, too, some golden means may be found to bind his tongue; for woe to you if Caracalla discovers prematurely that you are promised to another, and woe then to your betrothed! After sundown, when every one here has gone to the Circus, I will take Diodoros to a place of safety. Farewell, child, and may our heavenly Father defend you!”

He laid his right hand upon her head as if in blessing; but Melissa cried, wringing her hands: “Oh, let me go to him once more! How can I leave him and go far away without one word of farewell or of forgiveness?”

But Andreas interrupted her, saying: “You can not. His life is at stake as well as your own. I shall make it my business to look after his safety. The wife of Seleukus will assist you in your flight.”

“And you will persuade him to trust me?” urged Melissa, clinging convulsively to his arm.

“I will try,” answered the freedman, gloomily. Melissa, dropped his arm, for loud, manly voices were approaching down the stairs near which they stood.

It was Heron and Alexander, returning from their audience with the emperor. Instantly the Christian went to meet them, and dismissed the temple servant who accompanied them.

In the half-darkness of the corridor, Melissa threw herself weeping into her father’s arms. But he stroked her hair lovingly, and kissed her more tenderly on brow and eyes than he had ever clone before, whispering gayly to her: “Dry your tears, my darling. You have been a brave maiden, and now comes your reward. Fear and sorrow will now be changed into happiness and power, and all the glories of the world. I have not even told Alexander yet what promises to make our fortunes, for I know my duty.” Then, raising his voice, he said to the freedman, “If I have been rightly informed, we shall find the son of Polybius in one of the apartments close at hand.”

“Quite right,” answered the freedman, gravely, and then went on to explain to the gem-cutter that he could not see Diodoros just now, but must instantly leave the country with his son and daughter on Berenike’s ship. Not a moment was to be lost. Melissa would tell him all on the way.

But Heron laughed scornfully: “That would be a pretty business! We have plenty of time, and, with the greatness that lies before us, everything must be done openly and in the right way. My first thought, you see, was to come here, for I had promised the girl to Diodoros, and he must be informed before I can consent to her betrothal to another.”

“Father!” cried Melissa, scarcely able to command her voice. But Heron took no notice of her, and continued, composedly: “Diodoros would have been dear to me as a son-in-law. I shall certainly tell him so. But when Caesar, the ruler of the world, condescends to ask a plain man for his daughter, every other consideration must naturally be put aside. Diodoros is sensible, and is sure to see it in the right light. We all know how Caesar treats those who are in his way; but I wish the son of Polybius no ill, so I forbore to betray to Caesar what tie had once bound you, my child, to the gallant youth.”

Heron had never liked the freedman. The man’s firm character had always gone against the gemcutter’s surly, capricious nature; and it was no little satisfaction to him to let him feel his superiority, and boast before him of the apparent good luck that had befallen the artist’s family.

But Andreas had already heard from the physician that Caracalla had informed his mother’s envoys of his intended marriage with an Alexandrian, the daughter of an artist of Macedonian extraction. This could only refer to Melissa, and it was this news which had caused him to urge the maiden to instant flight.

Pale, incapable of uttering a word, Melissa stood before her father; but the freedman grasped her hand, looked Heron reproachfully in the face, and asked, quietly, “And you would really have the heart to join this dear child’s life to that of a bloody tyrant?”

“Certainly I have,” returned Heron with decision, and he drew his daughter’s hand out of that of Andreas, who turned his back upon the artist with a meaning shrug of the shoulders. But Melissa ran after him, and, clinging to him, cried as she turned first to him and then to her father:

“I am promised to Diodoros, and shall hold fast to him and my love; tell him that, Andreas! Come what may, I will be his and his alone! Caesar—”

“Swear not!” broke in Heron, angrily, “for by great Serapis—”

But Alexander interposed between them, and begged his father to consider what he was asking of the girl. Caesar’s proposals could scarcely have been very pleasing to him, or why had he concealed till now what Caracalla was whispering to him in the adjoining room? He might imagine for himself what fate awaited the helpless child at the side of a husband at whose name even men trembled. He should remember her mother, and what she would have said to such a union. There was little, time to escape from this terrible wooer.

Then Melissa turned to her brother and begged him earnestly: “Then you take me to the ship Alexander; take charge of me yourself!”

“And I?” asked Heron, his eye cast gloomily on the ground.

“You must come with us!” implored the girl, clasping her hands.—“O Andreas! say something! Tell him what I have to expect!”

“He knows that without my telling him,” replied the freedman. “I must go now, for two lives are at stake, Heron. If I can not keep the physician away from Caesar, your daughter, too, will be in danger. If you desire to see your daughter forever in fear of death, give her in marriage to Caracalla. If you have her happiness at heart, then escape with her into a far country.”

He nodded to the brother and sister, and returned to the sick-room.

“Fly!—escape!” repeated the old man, and he waived his hand angrily.