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

race-horses from the circus and several other things came by, he continued to explain them. I only remember it now because it made me so happy. The old man spoke to me alone; he regarded me alone as the future sovereign. He left Geta to eat the sweets which his aunts had given him, and when I too wanted some my brother refused to let me have any. Then Cilo stroked my hair, and said: ‘leave him his toys. When you are a man you shall have the whole Roman Empire for your own, and all the nations I told you of.’ Geta meanwhile had thought better of it, and pushed some of the sweetmeats toward me. I would not have them, and, when he tried to make me take them, I threw them into the road.”

“And you remember all that?” said Melissa.

“More things than these are indelibly stamped on my mind from that day,” said Caesar. “I can see before me now the pile on which Pertinax was to be burned. It was splendidly decorated, and on the top stood the gilt chariot in which he had loved to ride. Before the consuls fired the logs of Indian wood, my father led us to the image of Pertinax, that we might kiss it. He held me by the hand. Wherever we went, the senate and people hailed us with acclamations. My mother carried Geta in her arms. This delighted the populace. They shouted for her and my brother as enthusiastically as for us, and I recollect to this day how that went to my heart. He might have the sweets and welcome, but what the people had to offer was due only to my father and me, not to my brother. At that moment I first fully understood that Severus was the present and I the future Caesar. Geta had only to obey, like every one else.

“After kissing the image, I stood, still holding my father’s hand, to watch the flames. I can see them now, crackling and writhing as they gained on the wood, licking it and fawning, as it were, till it caught and sent up a rush of sparks and fire. At last the whole pile was one huge blaze. Then, suddenly, out of the heart of the flames an eagle rose. The creature flapped its broad wings in the air, which was golden with sunshine and quivering with heat, soaring above the smoke and fire, this way and that. But it soon took flight, away from the furnace beneath. I shouted with delight, and cried to my father: ‘Look at the bird! Where is he flying?’ And he eagerly answered: ‘Well done! If you desire to preserve the power I have conquered for you always undiminished, you must keep your eyes open. Let no sign pass unnoticed, no opportunity neglected.’

“He himself acted on this rule. To him obstacles existed only to be removed, and he taught me, too, to give myself neither peace nor rest, and not to spare the life of a foe.—That festival secured my father the suffrages of the Romans. Meanwhile Pescennius Niger rose up in the East with a large army and took the field against Severus. But my father was not the man to hesitate. Within a few months of the obsequies of Pertinax his opponent was a headless corpse.

“There was yet another obstacle to be removed. You have heard of Clodius Albinus. My father had adopted him and raised him to share his throne. But Severus could not divide the rule with any man.

“When I was nine years old I saw, after the battle of Lugdunum, the dead face of Albinus’s head; it was set up in front of the Curia on a lance.

“I now was the second personage in the empire, next to my father; the first among the youth of the whole world, and the future emperor. When I was eleven the soldiers hailed me as Augustus; that was in the war against the Parthians, before Ktesiphon. But they did the same to Geta. This was like wormwood in the sweet draught; and if then—But what can a girl care about the state, and the fate of rulers and nations?”

“Yes, go on,” said Melissa. “I see already what you are coming to. You disliked the idea of sharing your power with another.”

“Nay,” cried Caracalla, vehemently, “I not only disliked it, it was intolerable, impossible! What I want you to see is that I did not grudge my brother his share of my father’s inheritance, like any petty trader. The world—that is the point—the world itself was too small for two of us. It was not I, but Fate, which had doomed Geta to die. I am certain of this, and so must you be. Yes, it was Fate. Fate prompted the child’s little hand to attempt its brother’s life. And that was long before my brain could form a thought or my baby-lips could stammer his hated name.”

“Then you tried to kill your brother even in infancy?” asked Melissa, and her large eyes dilated with horror as she gazed at the terrible narrator. But Caracalla went on, in an apologetic tone:

“I was then but two years old. It was at Mediolanum, soon after Geta’s birth. An egg was found in the court of the palace; a hen had laid it close to a pillar. It was of a purple hue-red all over like the imperial mantle, and this indicated that the newly born infant was destined to sovereignty. Great was the rejoicing. The purple marvel was shown even to me who could but just walk. I, like a naughty boy, flung it down; the shell cracked, and the contents poured out on the pavement. My mother saw it, and her exclamation, ‘Wicked child, you have murdered your brother!’ was often repeated to me in after-years. It never struck me as particularly motherly.”

Here he paused, gazing meditatively into vacancy, and then asked the girl, who had listened intently:

“Were you never haunted by a word so that you could not be rid of it?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Melissa; “a striking rhythm in a song, or a line of poetry—”

Caracalla nodded agreement, and went on more vehemently: “That is what I experienced at the words, ‘You have murdered your brother!’ I not only heard them now and then with my inward ear, but incessantly, like the dreary hum of the flies in my camp-tent, for hours at a time, by day and by night. No fanning could drive these away. The diabolical voice whispered loudest when Geta had done anything to vex me; or if things had been given him which I did not wish him to have. And how often that happened! For I—I was only Bassianus to my mother; but her youngest was her dear little Geta.

“So the years passed. We had, while still quite young, our own teams in the circus. One day, when we were driving for a wager-we were still boys, and I was ahead of the other lads—the horses of my chariot shied to one side. I was thrown some distance on the course. Geta saw this. He turned his horses to the right where I lay. He drove over his brother as he would over straw and apple-parings in the dust; and his wheel broke my thigh. Who knows what else it crushed in me? One thing is certain—from that date the most painful of my sufferings originated. And he, the mean scoundrel, had done it intentionally. He had sharp eyes. He knew how to guide his steeds. He had never driven his wheel over a hazel-nut in the sand of the arena against his will; and I was lying some distance from the driving course.”

Caesar’s eyelids blinked spasmodically as he uttered this accusation, and his very glance revealed the raging fire that was burning