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Book online «The Last Days of Pompeii by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (interesting books to read txt) 📖». Author Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
'Beware!' said Arbaces, in a low and hissing tone; 'there is but one choice—thy confession and thy signature, or the amphitheatre and the lion's maw!'
As the Egyptian fixed his eyes upon the sufferer, he hailed with joy the signs of evident emotion that seized the latter at these words. A slight shudder passed over the Athenian's frame—his lip fell—an expression of sudden fear and wonder betrayed itself in his brow and eye.
'Great gods!' he said, in a low voice, 'what reverse is this? It seems but a little day since life laughed out from amidst roses—Ione mine—youth, health, love, lavishing on me their treasures; and now—pain, madness, shame, death! And for what? What have I done? Oh, I am mad still?'
'Sign, and be saved!' said the soft, sweet voice of the Egyptian.
'Tempter, never!' cried Glaucus, in the reaction of rage. 'Thou knowest me not: thou knowest not the haughty soul of an Athenian! The sudden face of death might appal me for a moment, but the fear is over. Dishonour appals for ever! Who will debase his name to save his life? who exchange clear thoughts for sullen days? who will belie himself to shame, and stand blackened in the eyes of love? If to earn a few years of polluted life there be so base a coward, dream not, dull barbarian of Egypt! to find him in one who has trod the same sod as Harmodius, and breathed the same air as Socrates. Go! leave me to live without self-reproach—or to perish without fear!'
'Bethink thee well! the lion's fangs: the hoots of the brutal mob: the vulgar gaze on thy dying agony and mutilated limbs: thy name degraded; thy corpse unburied; the shame thou wouldst avoid clinging to thee for aye and ever!'
'Thou ravest; thou art the madman! shame is not in the loss of other men's esteem—it is in the loss of our own. Wilt thou go?—my eyes loathe the sight of thee! hating ever, I despise thee now!'
'I go,' said Arbaces, stung and exasperated, but not without some pitying admiration of his victim, 'I go; we meet twice again—once at the Trial, once at the Death! Farewell!'
The Egyptian rose slowly, gathered his robes about him, and left the chamber. He sought Sallust for a moment, whose eyes began to reel with the vigils of the cup: 'He is still unconscious, or still obstinate; there is no hope for him.'
'Say not so,' replied Sallust, who felt but little resentment against the Athenian's accuser, for he possessed no great austerity of virtue, and was rather moved by his friend's reverses than persuaded of his innocence—'say not so, my Egyptian! so good a drinker shall be saved if possible. Bacchus against Isis!'
'We shall see,' said the Egyptian.
Suddenly the bolts were again withdrawn—the door unclosed; Arbaces was in the open street; and poor Nydia once more started from her long watch.
'Wilt thou save him?' she cried, clasping her hands.
'Child, follow me home; I would speak to thee—it is for his sake I ask it.'
'And thou wilt save him?'
No answer came forth to the thirsting ear of the blind girl: Arbaces had already proceeded far up the street; she hesitated a moment, and then followed his steps in silence.
'I must secure this girl,' said he, musingly, 'lest she give evidence of the philtre; as to the vain Julia, she will not betray herself.'
Chapter VIII A CLASSIC FUNERAL.
WHILE Arbaces had been thus employed, Sorrow and Death were in the house of Ione. It was the night preceding the morn in which the solemn funeral rites were to be decreed to the remains of the murdered Apaecides. The corpse had been removed from the temple of Isis to the house of the nearest surviving relative, and Ione had heard, in the same breath, the death of her brother and the accusation against her betrothed. That first violent anguish which blunts the sense to all but itself, and the forbearing silence of her slaves, had prevented her learning minutely the circumstances attendant on the fate of her lover. His illness, his frenzy, and his approaching trial, were unknown to her. She learned only the accusation against him, and at once indignantly rejected it; nay, on hearing that Arbaces was the accuser, she required no more to induce her firmly and solemnly to believe that the Egyptian himself was the criminal. But the vast and absorbing importance attached by the ancients to the performance of every ceremonial connected with the death of a relation, had, as yet, confined her woe and her convictions to the chamber of the deceased. Alas! it was not for her to perform that tender and touching office, which obliged the nearest relative to endeavor to catch the last breath—the parting soul—of the beloved one: but it was hers to close the straining eyes, the distorted lips: to watch by the consecrated clay, as, fresh bathed and anointed, it lay in festive robes upon the ivory bed; to strew the couch with leaves and flowers, and to renew the solemn cypress-branch at the threshold of the door. And in these sad offices, in lamentation and in prayer, Ione forgot herself. It was among the loveliest customs of the ancients to bury the young at the morning twilight; for, as they strove to give the softest interpretation to death, so they poetically imagined that Aurora, who loved the young, had stolen them to her embrace; and though in the instance of the murdered priest this fable could not appropriately cheat the fancy, the general custom was still preserved.
The stars were fading one by one from the grey heavens, and night slowly receding before the approach of morn, when a dark group stood motionless before Ione's door. High and slender torches, made paler by the unmellowed dawn, cast their light over various countenances, hushed for the moment in one solemn and intent expression. And now there arose a slow and dismal music, which accorded sadly with the rite, and floated far along the desolate and breathless streets; while a chorus of female voices (the Praeficae so often cited by the Roman poets), accompanying the Tibicen and the Mysian flute, woke the following strain:
THE FUNERAL DIRGE O'er the sad threshold, where the cypress bough Supplants the rose that should adorn thy home, On the last pilgrimage on earth that now Awaits thee, wanderer to Cocytus, come! Darkly we woo, and weeping we invite— Death is thy host—his banquet asks thy soul, Thy garlands hang within the House of Night, And the black stream alone shall fill thy bowl. No more for thee the laughter and the song, The jocund night—the glory of the day! The Argive daughters' at their labours long; The hell-bird swooping on its Titan prey— The false AEolides upheaving slow, O'er the eternal
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