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

exercise justice, oh, sublime and virtuous hero, going forth to murder—a dagger hidden in your bosom! I thank you for that lesson!

“Pride of the Museum!—you lead me to the source whence all your corruption flows. It is that famous nursery of learning where you, too, were bred up. There, yes, there they cherish the heresy that makes the gods into puppets of straw, and the majesty of the throne into an owl for pert and insignificant birds to peck at. Thence comes the doctrine that teaches men and women to laugh at virtue and to break their word. There, where in other days noble minds, protected by the overshadowing favor of princes, followed out great ideas, they now teach nothing but words—empty, useless words. I saw and said that yesterday, and now I know it for certain—every poison shaft that your malice has aimed at me was forged in the Museum.”

He paused for breath, and then continued, with a contemptuous laugh:

“If the justice which you rate higher than logic were to take its course, nothing would be juster than to make an end this day of this hot-bed of corruption. But your unlearned fellow-citizens shall taste of my justice, too. You yourself will be prevented by the beasts in the Circus from looking on at the effect your warning words have produced. But as yet you are alive, and you shall hear what the experiences are which make the severest measures the highest justice.

“What did I hope to find, and what have I really found? I heard the Alexandrians praised for their hospitality—for the ardor with which they pursue learning—for the great proficiency of their astronomers—for the piety which has raised so many altars and invented so many doctrines; and, lastly, for the beauty and fine wit of their women.

“And this hospitality! All that I have known of it is a flood of malicious abuse and knavish scoffing, which penetrated even to the gates of this temple, my dwelling. I came here as emperor, and treason pursued me wherever I went—even into my own apartments; for there you stand, whom a barbarian had to hinder from stabbing me with the knife of the assassin. And your learning? You have heard my opinion of the Museum. And the astrologers of this renowned observatory? The very opposite of all they promised me has come to pass.

“Religion? The people, of whom you know as little from the musty volumes of the Museum as of ‘Ultima Thule’—the people indeed practice it. The old gods are necessary to them. They are the bread of life to them. But instead of those you have offered them sour, unripe fruit, with a glittering rind-from your own garden, of your own growing. The fruit of trees is a gift from Nature, and all that she brings forth has some good in it; but what you offer to the world is hollow and poisonous. Your rhetoric gives it an attractive exterior, and that, too, comes from the Museum. There they are shrewd enough to create new gods, which start up out of the earth like mushrooms. If it should only occur to them, they would raise murder to the dignity of god of gods, and you to be his high-priest.”

“That would be your office,” interposed the philosopher.

“You shall see,” returned the emperor, laughing shrilly, “and the witlings of the Museum with you! You use the knife; but hear the words of the master: The teeth of wild beasts and their claws are weapons not to be despised. Your father and brother, and she who taught me what to think of the virtue and faith of Alexandrian women, shall tell you this in Hades. Soon shall every one of those follow you thither who forgot, even by a glance of the eye, that I was Caesar and a guest of this city! After the next performance in the Circus the offenders shall tell you in the other world how I administer justice. No later than the day after to-morrow, I imagine, you may meet there with several companions from the Museum. There will be enough to clap applause at the disputations!” Caracalla ended his vehement speech with a jeering laugh, and looked round eagerly for applause from the “friends” for whose benefit his last words had been spoken; and it was offered so energetically as to drown the philosopher’s reply.

But Caracalla heard it, and when the noise subsided he asked his condemned victim:

“What did you mean by your exclamation, ‘And yet I would that death might spare me’?”

“In order, if that should come true,” returned the philosopher quickly, his voice trembling with indignation, “that I might be a witness of the grim mockery with which the all-requiting gods will destroy you, their defender.”

“The gods!” laughed the emperor. “My respect for your logic grows less and less. You, the skeptic, expect the deeds of a mortal man from the gods whose existence you deny!”

Then cried Philip, and his great eyes burning with hatred and indignation sought the emperor’s: “Till this hour I was sure of nothing, and therefore uncertain of the existence of a god; but now I believe firmly that Nature, by whom everything is carried out according to everlasting, immutable laws, and who casts out and destroys anything that threatens to bring discord into the harmonious workings of all her parts, would of her own accord bring forth a god, if there be not one already, who should crush you, the destroyer of life and peace, in his all-powerful hand!”

Here his wild outburst of indignation was brought to an abrupt close, for a furious blow from Caracalla’s fist sent his enfeebled enemy staggering back against the wall near the window.

Mad with rage, Caracalla shrieked hoarsely

“To the beasts with him! No, not to the beasts—to the torture! He and his sister! The punishment I have bethought me of—scum of the earth—”

But the wild despair of the other, in whose breast hatred and fever burned with equal strength, now reached the highest pitch. Like a hunted deer which stays its flight for a moment to find an outlet or to turn upon his pursuers, he gazed wildly round him, and before the emperor could finish his threat; leaning against the pillar of the window as if prepared to receive his death-blow, he interrupted Caracalla:

“If your dull wit can invent no death to satisfy your cruelty, the blood-hound Zminis can aid you. You are a worthy couple. Curses on you!...

“At him!” yelled the emperor to Macrinus and the legate, for no substitute had appeared for the centurion he had dismissed.

But while the nobles advanced warily upon the madman, and Macrinus called to the Germanic body-guard in the anteroom, Philip had turned like lightning and disappeared through the window.

The legates and Caesar came too late to hold him back, and from below came cries of: “Crushed!—dead!... What crime has he committed? They cast him down!... He can not have done it himself... Impossible! ... His arms are bound.... A new manner of death invented specially for the Alexandrians!”

Then another whistle sounded, and the shout, “Down with the tyrant!”

But no second cry followed. The place was too full of soldiers and lictors.

“Caracalla heard it all. He turned back into the room, wiped the perspiration from his brow, and said in a voice of studied