Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (detective books to read .TXT) 📖
- Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
- Performer: -
Book online «Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (detective books to read .TXT) 📖». Author Henryk Sienkiewicz
the garden cistern, with a freshly plucked reed in her hand, the top of
which she dipped in the water and sprinkled the irises growing around.
Look at my knees. By the shield of Hercules, I tell thee that they did
not tremble when clouds of Parthians advanced on our maniples with
howls, but they trembled before the cistern. And, confused as a youth
who still wears a bulla on his neck, I merely begged pity with my eyes,
not being able to utter a word for a long time.”
Petronius looked at him, as if with a certain envy. “Happy man,” said
he, “though the world and life were the worst possible, one thing in
them will remain eternally good,—youth!”
After a while he inquired: “And hast thou not spoken to her?”
“When I had recovered somewhat, I told her that I was returning from
Asia, that I had disjointed my arm near the city, and had suffered
severely, but at the moment of leaving that hospitable house I saw that
suffering in it was more to be wished for than delight in another place,
that sickness there was better than health somewhere else. Confused too
on her part, she listened to my words with bent head while drawing
something with the reed on the saffron-colored sand. Afterward she
raised her eyes, then looked down at the marks drawn already; once more
she looked at me, as if to ask about something, and then fled on a
sudden like a hamadryad before a dull faun.”
“She must have beautiful eyes.”
“As the sea—and I was drowned in them, as in the sea. Believe me that
the archipelago is less blue. After a while a little son of Plautius
ran up with a question. But I did not understand what he wanted.”
“O Athene!” exclaimed Petronius, “remove from the eyes of this youth the
bandage with which Eros has bound them; if not, he will break his head
against the columns of Venus’s temple.
“O thou spring bud on the tree of life,” said he, turning to Vinicius,
“thou first green shoot of the vine! Instead of taking thee to the
Plautiuses, I ought to give command to bear thee to the house of
Gelocius, where there is a school for youths unacquainted with life.”
“What dost thou wish in particular?”
“But what did she write on the sand? Was it not the name of Amor, or a
heart pierced with his dart, or something of such sort, that one might
know from it that the satyrs had whispered to the ear of that nymph
various secrets of life? How couldst thou help looking on those marks?”
“It is longer since I have put on the toga than seems to thee,” said
Vinicius, “and before little Aulus ran up, I looked carefully at those
marks, for I know that frequently maidens in Greece and in Rome draw on
the sand a confession which their lips will not utter. But guess what
she drew!”
“If it is other than I supposed, I shall not guess.”
“A fish.”
“What dost thou say?”
“I say, a fish. What did that mean,—that cold blood is flowing in her
veins? So far I do not know; but thou, who hast called me a spring bud
on the tree of life, wilt be able to understand the sign certainly.”
“Carissime! ask such a thing of Pliny. He knows fish. If old Apicius
were alive, he could tell thee something, for in the course of his life
he ate more fish than could find place at one time in the bay of
Naples.”
Further conversation was interrupted, since they were borne into crowded
streets where the noise of people hindered them.
From the Vicus Apollinis they turned to the Boarium, and then entered
the Forum Romanum, where on clear days, before sunset, crowds of idle
people assembled to stroll among the columns, to tell and hear news, to
see noted people borne past in litters, and finally to look in at the
jewellery-shops, the book-shops, the arches where coin was changed,
shops for silk, bronze, and all other articles with which the buildings
covering that part of the market placed opposite the Capitol were
filled.
One-half of the Forum, immediately under the rock of the Capitol, was
buried already in shade; but the columns of the temples, placed higher,
seemed golden in the sunshine and the blue. Those lying lower cast
lengthened shadows on marble slabs. The place was so filled with
columns everywhere that the eye was lost in them as in a forest.
Those buildings and columns seemed huddled together. They towered some
above others, they stretched toward the right and the left, they climbed
toward the height, and they clung to the wall of the Capitol, or some of
them clung to others, like greater and smaller, thicker and thinner,
white or gold colored tree-trunks, now blooming under architraves,
flowers of the acanthus, now surrounded with Ionic corners, now finished
with a simple Doric quadrangle. Above that forest gleamed colored
triglyphs; from tympans stood forth the sculptured forms of gods; from
the summits winged golden quadrigæ seemed ready to fly away through
space into the blue dome, fixed serenely above that crowded place of
temples. Through the middle of the market and along the edges of it
flowed a river of people; crowds passed under the arches of the basilica
of Julius Cæsar; crowds were sitting on the steps of Castor and Pollux,
or walking around the temple of Vesta, resembling on that great marble
background many-colored swarms of butterflies or beetles. Down immense
steps, from the side of the temple on the Capitol dedicated to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, came new waves; at the rostra people listened to chance
orators; in one place and another rose the shouts of hawkers selling
fruit, wine, or water mixed with fig-juice; of tricksters; of venders of
marvellous medicines; of soothsayers; of discoverers of hidden
treasures; of interpreters of dreams. Here and there, in the tumult of
conversations and cries, were mingled sounds of the Egyptian sistra, of
the sambuké, or of Grecian flutes. Here and there the sick, the pious,
or the afflicted were bearing offerings to the temples. In the midst of
the people, on the stone flags, gathered flocks of doves, eager for the
grain given them, and like movable many-colored and dark spots, now
rising for a moment with a loud sound of wings, now dropping down again
to places left vacant by people. From time to time the crowds opened
before litters in which were visible the affected faces of women, or the
heads of senators and knights, with features, as it were, rigid and
exhausted from living. The many-tongued population repeated aloud their
names, with the addition of some term of praise or ridicule. Among the
unordered groups pushed from time to time, advancing with measured
tread, parties of soldiers, or watchers, preserving order on the
streets. Around about, the Greek language was heard as often as Latin.
Vinicius, who had not been in the city for a long time, looked with a
certain curiosity on that swarm of people and on that Forum Romanum,
which both dominated the sea of the world and was flooded by it, so that
Petronius, who divined the thoughts of his companion, called it “the
nest of the Quirites—without the Quirites.” In truth, the local
element was well-nigh lost in that crowd, composed of all races and
nations. There appeared Ethiopians, gigantic light-haired people from
the distant north, Britons, Gauls, Germans, sloping-eyed dwellers of
Lericum; people from the Euphrates and from the Indus, with beards dyed
brick color; Syrians from the banks of the Orontes, with black and mild
eyes; dwellers in the deserts of Arabia, dried up as a bone; Jews, with
their flat breasts; Egyptians, with the eternal, indifferent smile on
their faces; Numidians and Africans; Greeks from Hellas, who equally
with the Romans commanded the city, but commanded through science, art,
wisdom, and deceit; Greeks from the islands, from Asia Minor, from
Egypt, from Italy, from Narbonic Gaul. In the throng of slaves, with
pierced ears, were not lacking also freemen,—an idle population, which
Cæsar amused, supported, even clothed,—and free visitors, whom the ease
of life and the prospects of fortune enticed to the gigantic city; there
was no lack of venal persons. There were priests of Serapis, with palm
branches in their hands; priests of Isis, to whose altar more offerings
were brought than to the temple of the Capitoline Jove; priests of
Cybele, bearing in their hands golden ears of rice; and priests of nomad
divinities; and dancers of the East with bright head-dresses, and
dealers in amulets, and snake-tamers, and Chaldean seers; and, finally,
people without any occupation whatever, who applied for grain every week
at the storehouses on the Tiber, who fought for lottery-tickets to the
Circus, who spent their nights in rickety houses of districts beyond the
Tiber, and sunny and warm days under covered porticos, and in foul
eating-houses of the Subura, on the Milvian bridge, or before the
“insulæ” of the great, where from time to time remnants from the tables
of slaves were thrown out to them.
Petronius was well known to those crowds. Vinicius’s ears were struck
continually by “Hic est!” (Here he is). They loved him for his
munificence; and his peculiar popularity increased from the time when
they learned that he had spoken before Cæsar in opposition to the
sentence of death issued against the whole “familia,” that is, against
all the slaves of the prefect Pedanius Secundus, without distinction of
sex or age, because one of them had killed that monster in a moment of
despair. Petronius repeated in public, it is true, that it was all one
to him, and that he had spoken to Cæsar only privately, as the arbiter
elegantiarum whose æsthetic taste was offended by a barbarous slaughter
befitting Scythians and not Romans. Nevertheless, people who were
indignant because of the slaughter loved Petronius from that moment
forth. But he did not care for their love. He remembered that that
crowd of people had loved also Britannicus, poisoned by Nero; and
Agrippina, killed at his command; and Octavia, smothered in hot steam at
the Pandataria, after her veins had been opened previously; and Rubelius
Plautus, who had been banished; and Thrasea, to whom any morning might
bring a death sentence. The love of the mob might be considered rather
of ill omen; and the sceptical Petronius was superstitious also. He had
a twofold contempt for the multitude,—as an aristocrat and an æsthetic
person. Men with the odor of roast beans, which they carried in their
bosoms, and who besides were eternally hoarse and sweating from playing
mora on the street-corners and peristyles, did not in his eyes deserve
the term “human.” Hence he gave no answer whatever to the applause, or
the kisses sent from lips here and there to him. He was relating to
Marcus the case of Pedanius, reviling meanwhile the fickleness of that
rabble which, next morning after the terrible butchery, applauded Nero
on his way to the temple of Jupiter Stator. But he gave command to halt
before the book-shop of Avirnus, and, descending from the litter,
purchased an ornamented manuscript, which he gave to Vinicius.
“Here is a gift for thee,” said he.
“Thanks!” answered Vinicius. Then, looking at the title, he inquired,
“‘Satyricon’? Is this something new? Whose is it?”
“Mine. But I do not wish to go in the road of Rufinus, whose history I
was to tell thee, nor of Fabricius Veiento; hence no one knows of this,
and do thou mention it to no man.”
“Thou hast said that thou art no writer of verses,” said Vinicius,
looking
Comments (0)