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

But what was he to her? Her heart was given to the infant son of her niece Mammaea;—[The third Caesar after Caracalla, Alexander Severus]—in him she discovered every gift and virtue. What joy there would be among the women of Julia’s train when it was known that Caesar’s chosen bride had disdained him, and, in him, the very purple. But that joy would not be of long duration, for the news of the punishment by death of a hundred thousand Alexandrians would, he knew, fall like a lash on the women. He fancied he could hear their howls and wailing, and see the horror of Philostratus, and how he would join the women in bemoaning the horrible deed! He, the philosopher, would perhaps be really grieved; aye, and if he had been at his side this morning everything might perhaps have been different. But the deed was done, and now he must take the consequences.

That the better sort would avoid him after such an act was self-evident—they had already refused to eat with him. On the other hand, it had brought nearer to him the favorites whom he had attracted to his person. Theocritus and Pandion, Antigonus and Epagathos, the priest of Alexander, who at Rome was overwhelmed with debt, and who in Egypt had become a rich man again, would cling to him more closely.

“Base wretches!” he muttered to himself.

If only Philostratus would come back to him! But he scarcely dared hope it. The evil took so much more care for their own well-being and multiplication than the good. If one of the righteous fell away, all the others forthwith turned their backs on him; and when the penitent desired to return to the fold, the immaculate repelled or avoided him. But the wicked could always find the fallen man at once, and would cling to him and hinder him from returning. Their ranks were always open to him, however closely he might formerly have been attached to the virtuous. To live in exclusive intercourse with these reprobates was an odious thought. He could compel whom he chose to live with him; but of what use were silent and reluctant companions? And whose fault was it that he had sent away Philostratus, the best of them all? Hers—the faithless traitoress, from whom he had looked for peace and joy, who had declared that she felt herself bound to him, the trickster in whom he had believed he saw Roxana—But she was no more. On the table by his bed, among his own jewels, lay the golden serpent he had given her—he fancied he could see it in the dark—and she had worn it even in death. He shuddered; he felt as though a woman’s arm, all black and charred, was stretched out to him in the night, and the golden snake uncurled from it and reached forth as though to bite him.

He shivered, and hid his head under the coverlet; but, ashamed and vexed at his own foolish weakness, he soon emerged from the stifling darkness, and an inward voice scornfully asked him whether he still believed that the soul of the great Macedonian inhabited his body. There was an end of this proud conviction. He had no more connection with Alexander than Melissa had with Roxana, whom she resembled.

The blood seethed hotly in his veins; to live on these terms seemed to him impossible.

As soon as it was day it must surely be seen that he was very seriously ill. The spirit of Tarautas would again appear to him—and not merely as a vaporous illusion—and put an end to his utter misery.

But he felt his own pulse; it beat no more quickly than usual. He had no fever, and yet he must be ill, very ill. And again he flushed so hotly that he felt as if he should choke. Breathing hard, he sat up to call his physician. Then he observed a light through the half-closed door of the adjoining room. He heard voices—those of Adventus and the Indian.

Arjuna was generally so silent that Philostratus had vainly endeavored to discover from him any particulars as to the doctrine of the Brahmans, among whom Apollonius of Tyana declared that he had found the highest wisdom, or concerning the manners of his people. And yet the Indian was a man of learning, and could even read the manuscripts of his country. The Parthian ambassador had expressly dwelt on this when he delivered Arjuna to Caesar as a gift from his king. But Arjuna had never favored any of these strangers with his confidence. Only with old Adventus did he ever hold conversation, for the chamberlain took care that he should be supplied with the vegetables and fruit on which he was accustomed to live—for meat never passed his lips; and now he was talking with the old man, and Caracalla sat up and laid his hand to his ear.

The Indian was absorbed in the study of a bookroll in his own tongue, which he carried about him. “What are you reading?” asked Adventus.

“A book,” replied Arjuna, “from which a man may learn what will become of you and me, and all these slaughtered victims, after death.”

“Who can know that?” said the old man with a sigh; and Arjuna replied very positively:

“It is written here, and there is no doubt about it. Will you hear it?”

“Certainly,” said Adventus eagerly, and the Indian began translating out of his book:

“When a man dies his various parts go whither they belong. His voice goes to the fire, his breath to the winds, his eyes to the sun, his spirit to the moon, his hearing becomes one with space, his body goes to the earth, his soul is absorbed into ether, his hairs become plants, the hair of his head goes to crown the trees, his blood returns to water. Thus, every portion of a man is restored to that portion of the universe to which it belongs; and of himself, his own essence, nothing remains but one part what that is called is a great secret.”

Caracalla was listening intently. This discourse attracted him.

He, like the other Caesars, must after his death be deified by the senate; but he felt convinced, for his part, that the Olympians would never count him as one of themselves. At the same time he was philosopher enough to understand that no existing thing could ever cease to exist. The restoration of each part of his body to that portion of the universe to which it was akin, pleased his fancy. There was no place in the Indian’s creed for the responsibility of the soul at the judgment of the dead. Caesar was already on the point of asking the slave to reveal his secret, when Adventus prevented him by exclaiming:

“You may confide to me what will be left of me—unless, indeed, you mean the worms which shall eat me and so proceed from me. It can not be good for much, at any rate, and I will tell no one.”

To this Arjuna solemnly replied: “There is one thing which persists to all eternity and can never be lost in all the ages of the universe, and that is—the deed.”

“I know that,” replied the old man with an indifferent shrug; but the word struck Caesar like a thunder-bolt. He listened breathlessly to hear what more the Indian might say; but Arjuna, who regarded it as sacrilege to waste the highest lore on one unworthy of it, went on reading to himself, and Adventus stretched himself out to sleep.

All was silent in and about the sleeping-room, and the fearful words, “the