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

the Parthians!” cried Caracalla, and his eyes flashed. “My breast-plated favorites will rejoice.”

But then he looked grave, and inquired: “They are leaving the town, you say? But are they birds? The gates and harbor are closed.”

“A small Phoenician vessel stole out just before sundown between our guard-ships,” was the reply. “Curse it!” broke from Caesar’s lips in a loud voice, and, after a brief dialogue in an undertone with the prefect, he desired to have papyrus and writing materials brought to him. He himself must inform the senate of what had occurred, and he did so in a few words.

He did not know the number of the slain, and he did not think it worth while to make a rough estimate. All the Alexandrians, he said, had in fact merited death. A swift trireme was to carry the letter to Ostia at daybreak.

He did not, indeed, ask the opinion of the senate, and yet he felt that it would be better that news of the day’s events should reach the curia under his own hand than through the distorting medium of rumor.

Nor did Macrinus impress on him, as usual, that he should give his dispatch a respectful form. This crime, if anything, might help him to the fulfillment of the Magian’s prophecy.

As Caesar was rolling up his missive, the long-expected Zminis came into the room. He had attired himself splendidly, and bore the insignia of his new office. He humbly begged to be pardoned for his long delay. He had had to make his outer man fit to appear among Caesar’s guests, for—as he boastfully explained—he himself had waded in blood, and in the court-yard of the Museum the red life-juice of the Alexandrians had reached above his horse’s knees. The number of the dead, he declared with sickening pride, was above a hundred thousand, as estimated by the prefect.

“Then we will call it eleven myriad,” Caracalla broke in. “Now, we have had enough of the dead. Bring in the living.”

“Whom?” asked the Egyptian, in surprise. Hereupon Caesar’s eyelids began to quiver, and in a threatening tone he reminded his bloody-handed tool of those whom he had ordered him to take alive. Still Zminis was silent, and Caesar furiously shrieked his demand as to whether by his blundering Heron’s daughter had escaped; whether he could not produce the gem-cutter and his son. The blood-stained butcher then perceived that Caesar’s murderous sword might be turned against him also. Still, he was prepared to defend himself by every means in his power. His brain was inventive, and, seeing that the fault for which he would least easily be forgiven was the failure to capture Melissa, he tried to screen himself by a lie. Relying on an incident which he himself had witnessed, he began: “I felt certain of securing the gem-cutter’s pretty daughter, for my men had surrounded his house. But it had come to the ears of these Alexandrian scoundrels that a son of Heron’s, a painter, and his sister, had betrayed their fellow-citizens and excited your wrath. It was to them that they ascribed the punishment which I executed upon them in your name. This rabble have no notion of reflection; before we could hinder them they had rushed on the innocent dwelling. They flung fire-brands into it, burned it, and tore it down. Any one who was within perished, and thus the daughter of Heron died. That is, unfortunately, proved. I can take the old man and his son tomorrow. To-day I have had so much to do that there has not been time to bind the sheaves. It is said that they had escaped before the mob rushed on the house.”

“And the gem-cutter’s daughter?” asked Caracalla, in a trembling voice. “You are sure she was burned in the building?”

“As sure as that I have zealously endeavored to let the Alexandrians feel your avenging hand,” replied the Egyptian resolutely, and with a bold face he confirmed his he. “I have here the jewel she wore on her arm. It was found on the charred body in the cellar. Adventus, your chamberlain, says that Melissa received it yesterday as a gift from you. Here it is.”

And he handed Caracalla the serpent-shaped bracelet which Caesar had sent to his sweetheart before setting out for the Circus. The fire had damaged it, but there was no mistaking it. It had been found beneath the ruins on a human arm, and Zminis had only learned from the chamberlain, to whom he had shown it, that it had belonged to the daughter of Heron.

“Even the features of the corpse,” Zminis added, “were still recognizable.”

“The corpse!” Caesar echoed gloomily. “And it was the Alexandrians, you say, who destroyed the house?”

“Yes, my lord; a raging mob, and mingled with them men of every race-Jews, Greeks, Syrians, what not. Most of them had lost a father, a son, or a brother, sent to Hades by your vengeance. Their wildest curses were for Alexander, the painter, who in fact had played the spy for you. But the Macedonian phalanx arrived at the right moment. They killed most of them and took some prisoners. You can see them yourself in the morning. As regards the wife of Seleukus—”

“Well,” exclaimed Caesar, and his eye brightened again.

“She fell a victim to the clumsiness of the praetorians.”

“Indeed!” interrupted the legate Quintus Flavius Nobilior, who had granted Alexander’s life to the prayer of the twins Aurelius; and Macrinus also forbade any insulting observations as to the blameless troops whom he had the honor to command.

But the Egyptian was not to be checked; he went on eagerly: “Pardon, my lords. It is perfectly certain, nevertheless, that it was a praetorian—his name is Rufus, and he belongs to the second cohort—who pierced the lady Berenike with his spear.”

Flavius here begged to be allowed to speak, and reported how Berenike had sought and found her end. And he did so as though he were narrating the death of a heroine, but he added, in a tone of disapproval: “Unhappily, the misguided woman died with a curse on you, great Caesar, on her treasonable lips.”

“And this female hero finds her Homer in you!” cried Caesar. “We will speak together again, my Quintus.”

He raised a brimming cup to his lips and emptied it at a draught; then, setting it on the table with such violence that it rang, he exclaimed “Then you have brought me none of those whom I commanded you to capture? Even the feeble girl who had not quitted her father’s house you allowed to be murdered by those coarse monsters! And you think I shall look on you with favor? By this time to-morrow the gem-cutter and his son Alexander are here before me, or by the head of my divine father you go to the wild beasts in the Circus.”

“They will not eat such as he,” observed old Julius Paulinus, and Caesar nodded approvingly. The Egyptian shuddered, for this imperial nod showed him by how slender a thread his life hung.

In a flash he reflected whither he might fly if he should fail to find this hated couple. If, after all, he should discover Melissa alive, so much the better. Then, he might have been mistaken in identifying the body; some slave girl might have stolen the bracelet and put it on before the house was burned down. He knew for a fact that the charred corpse