Zenobia; or, the Fall of Palmyra by William Ware (latest ebook reader TXT) 📖

not a captive, so much was known; but where he now was, or what had befallen him, was not known. I had reason to believe that he would find his way back through the guidance of Isaac to the city.'

'Alas! I read in your words his fate. But I will not urge you farther. I will live upon all the hope I can keep alive. Yet it is not the death of Calpurnius--nor yet of Zenobia--nor Julia--that wrings the soul and saps its life, like this bitter, bitter disappointment, this base treason of Antiochus. To be so near the summit of our best hopes, only to be cast down into this deep abyss--that is the sting in our calamity that shoots deepest, and for which there is no cure. Is there no other way, father, in which we can explain the capture of the Queen? Accident--could it not be accident that threw the troop of Aurelian in their way?'

'I fear not,' said Gracchus. 'When we add what rumor has heretofore reported of the aims of Antiochus, but which we have all too much contemned him to believe him capable of, to what has now occurred, I think we cannot doubt that he is the author of the evil, seducing into his plot the Queen's slave, through whom he received intelligence of every plan and movement.'

'Ah, cruel treachery! How can one join together the sweet innocent face of Sindarina and such deep hypocrisy! Antiochus surely must have perverted her by magic arts. Of that I am sure. But what fruit can Antiochus hope his treason shall bear for him? Can he think that Palmyra will endure his rule?'

'That,' replied Gracchus, 'must be his hope. The party of the discontented we well know to be large; upon them he thinks he may rely. Then his treason recommending him to Aurelian, he builds upon his power to establish him on the throne, and sustain him there till his own strength shall have grown, so that he can stand alone. That the city will surrender upon the news of the Queen's captivity, he doubtless calculates upon as certain.'

'May his every hope,' cried Fausta, 'be blasted, and a little of the misery he has poured without stint into our hearts wring his own, and when he cries for mercy, may he find none!'

'One hope,' I said here, 'if I know aught of the nature of Aurelian, and upon which he must chiefly found his project, will sink under him to his shame and ruin.'

'What mean you?' said Fausta eagerly.

'His belief that Aurelian will reward baseness though to an enemy. He never did it yet, and he cannot do it. Were there within the thick skull of Antiochus the brains of a foolish ostrich, he would have read in the fate of Heraclammon, the rich traitor of Tyana, his own. If I err not, he has indiscreetly enough thrust himself into a lion's den. If Aurelian is fierce, his is the grand and terrific ferocity of the king of beasts.'

'May it be so!' said Fausta. 'There were no providence in the gods did such villany escape punishment, still less, did it grow great. But if Aurelian is such as you describe him, O then is there not reason in the belief that he will do gently by her? Were it compatible with greatness or generosity--and these, you say, belong to the Emperor--to take revenge upon an enemy, thrown by such means into his power? and such an enemy? and that too a woman? Julia too! O immortal gods, how bitter past drinking is this cup!'

'Yet must you, must we, not lean too confidently upon the dispositions of Aurelian. He is subject, though supreme, to the state, nay, and in some sense to the army; and what he might gladly do of his own free and generous nature, policy and the contrary wishes and sometimes requisitions of his troops, or of the people, compel him to forbear. The usage of Rome toward captive princes has been, and is, cruel. Yet the Emperor does much to modify it, giving it, according to his own temper, a more or less savage character. And Aurelian has displayed great independence in his acts, both of people and soldiers. There is much ground for hope--but it must not pass into confident expectation.'

'You, Lucius, in former days have known Aurelian well, before fortune raised him to this high eminence. You say you were his friend. Could you not--'

'No, I fear with scarce any hope of doing good. My residence here during all these troubles will, I doubt not, raise suspicions in the mind of Aurelian which it will not be easy to allay. But whenever I shall have it in my power to present myself before him, I shall not fail to press upon him arguments which, if he shall act freely, cannot I think but weigh with him.'

'Ought not the city now,' said Fausta, addressing Gracchus, 'to surrender, and, if it can do no better, throw itself upon the mercy of Aurelian? I see not now what can be gained by longer resistance, and would not a still protracted refusal to capitulate, and when it must be without the faintest expectation of ultimate success, tend merely and with certainty to exasperate Aurelian, and perhaps embitter him toward the Queen?'

'I can scarcely doubt that it would,' replied Gracchus. 'The city ought to surrender. Soon as the first flood of grief has spent itself, must we hasten to accomplish it if possible. Longinus, to whom will now be entrusted the chief power, will advocate it I am sure--so will Otho, Seleucus, Gabrayas; but the army will, I fear, be opposed to it, and will, more through a certain pride of their order than from any principle, incline to hold out.--It is time I sought Longinus.'

He departed in search of the Greek. I went forth into the streets to learn the opinions and observe the behavior of the people.

* * * * *

The shades of night are around me--the palace is still--the city sleeps. I resume my pen to add a few words to this epistle, already long, but they are words that convey so much that I cannot but add them for my own pleasure not less than yours. They are in brief these,--Calpurnius is alive and once again returned to us. The conjecture of Isaac was a description of the truth. My brother, knowing well that if apprehended his death were certain, had in the outset resolved, if attacked, rather to provoke his death, and insure it in the violence of a conflict, than be reserved for the axe of the Roman executioner. But in the short moment in which he fell headlong into the river, it flashed across his mind--'The darkness favors my escape--I can reach the shore;' so swimming a short distance below the surface, falling down with the stream and softly rising, concealed himself among the reeds upon the margin of the stream. Finding the field in a short time wholly in possession of Isaac, he revealed himself and joined him, returning to the city as soon as the darkness of the night permitted. Here is a little gleam of light breaking through Fausta's almost solid gloom. A smile has once more played over her features.

In the evening after Calpurnius's return, she tried her harp, but the sounds it gave out only seemed to increase her sorrow, and she threw it from her.

'Music,' said Gracchus, 'is in its nature melancholy, and how, my child, can you think to forget or stifle grief by waking the strings of your harp, whose tones, of all other instruments, are the most melancholy? And yet sometimes sadness seeks sadness, and finds in it its best relief. But now, Fausta? rather let sleep be your minister and nurse.'

So we parted. Farewell.

Letter XV.

It were a vain endeavor, my Curtius, to attempt to describe the fever of indignation, and rage, and grief, that burned in the bosoms of this unhappy people, as soon as it was known that their Queen was a captive in the hands of the Romans. Those imprisoned upon suspicion of having been concerned in her betrayal would have been torn from their confinement, and sacrificed to the wrath of the citizens, in the first hours of their excitement, but for the formidable guard by which the prisons were defended. The whole population seemed to be in the streets and public places, giving and receiving with eagerness such intelligence as could be obtained. Their affliction is such as it would be had each one lost a parent or a friend. The men rave, or sit, or wander about listless and sad; the women weep; children catch the infection, and lament as for the greatest misfortune that could have overtaken them. The soldiers, at first dumb with amazement at so unlooked-for and unaccountable a catastrophe, afterward, upon learning that it fell out through the treason of Antiochus, bound themselves by oaths never to acknowledge or submit to his authority, though Aurelian himself should impose him upon them, nay, to sacrifice him to the violated honor of the empire, if ever he should fall into their power.

Yet all are not such. The numbers are not contemptible of those who, openly or secretly, favor the cause and approve the act of Antiochus. He has not committed so great a crime without some prospect of advantage from it, nor without the assurance that a large party of the citizens, though not the largest, is with him, and will adhere to his fortunes. These are they, who think, and justly think, that the Queen has sacrificed the country to her insane ambition and pride. They cleave to Antiochus, not from personal regard toward him, but because he seems more available for their present purposes than any other, principally through his fool-hardy ambition; and, on the other hand, they abandon the Queen, not for want of personal affection, equal perhaps to what exists in any others, but because they conceive that the power of Rome is too mighty to contend with, and that their best interests rather than any extravagant notions of national honor, ought to prompt their measures.

The city will now give itself up, it is probable, upon the first summons of Aurelian. The council and the senate have determined that to hold out longer than a few days more is impossible. The provisions of the public granaries are exhausted, and the people are already beginning to be pinched with hunger. The rich, and all who have been enabled to subsist upon their own stores, are now engaged in distributing what remains among the poorer sort, who are now thrown upon their compassion. May it not be, that I am to be a witness of a people dying of hunger! Gracchus and Fausta are busily employed in relieving the wants of the suffering.

We have waited impatiently to hear the fate of the Queen. Many reports have prevailed, founded upon what has been observed from the walls. At one time, it has been said that she had perished under the hands of the executioner--at another, that the whole Roman camp had been seen to be thrown into wild tumult, and that she had doubtless fallen a sacrifice to the ungovernable fury of the licentious soldiery, I cannot think either report probable. Aurelian, if he revenged himself by her death, would reserve her for execution on the day of his triumph. But he would never tarnish his glory by such an act. And for the soldiers--I am sure of nothing more than that they are under too rigid a discipline, and hold Aurelian in too great terror, to dare to commit a violence like that which has been imputed to them.

At length--for hours are months in such suspense--we are relieved. Letters have come from Nichomachus to both Longinus and Livia,

First, their sum is, the Queen lives!

I shall give you what I gather from them.

'When we had parted,' writes the secretary, 'from the river's edge, we were led at a rapid pace over the same path we had just come, to the neighborhood of the Roman camp. I learned from what I overheard of the conversation of the Centurion with his companion at his side, that the flight of the Queen had been betrayed. But beyond that, nothing.

'We were taken not at once to the presence of Aurelian, but lodged in one of the abandoned palaces in the outskirts of the city--that of Seleucus, if I err not--where? the Queen being assigned the apartments needful for her and her effects, a guard was set around the building.

'Here we had remained not long, yet long enough for the Queen to exchange her disguise for