The Emperor. Complete

Selene shook her head, sank into a seat, and began to cry softly.

“What is the matter?” asked her father.

“The pitcher is broken,” she said sadly.

“You should take better care of such expensive things,” scolded her father. “You are always complaining of want of money, and at the same time you break half our belongings.”

“I was thrown down,” answered Selene, drying her eyes.

“Thrown down! by whom?” asked the steward, slowly rising.

“By the architect’s big dog—the architect who came last night from Rome, and to whom we gave that meat and salt in the middle of the night. He slept here, at Lochias.”

“And he set his clog on my child!” shouted Keraunus, with an angry glare.

“The hound was alone in the passage when I went there.”

“Did it bite you?”

“No, but it pulled me down, and stood over me, and gnashed its teeth—oh! it was horrible.”

“The cursed, vagabond scoundrel!” growled the steward, “I will teach him how to behave in a strange house!”

“Let him be,” said Selene, as she saw her father about to don the saffron cloak.

“What is done cannot be undone, and if quarrels and dissentions come of it, it will make you ill.”

“Vagabonds! impudent rascals! who fill my palace with quarrelsome curs,” muttered Keraunus without listening to his daughter, and as he settled the folds of his pallium he growled “Arsinoe! why is it that girl never hears me.”

When she appeared he desired her to heat the irons to curl his hair.

“They are ready by the fire,” answered Arsinoe. “Come into the kitchen with me.”

Keraunus followed her, and had his locks curled and scented, while his younger children stood round him waiting for the porridge which Selene usually prepared for them at this hour.

Keraunus responded to their morning greetings with nods as friendly as Arsinoe’s tongs, which held his head tightly by the hair, would allow. It was only the blind Helios, a pretty boy of six, that he drew to his side and gave a kiss on his cheek. He loved this child, who, though deprived of the noblest of the senses, was always merry and contented, with peculiar tenderness. Once he even laughed aloud when the child clung to his sister, as she brandished the tongs, and said:

“Father, do you know why I am sorry I cannot see?”

“Well?” said his father.

“Because I should so like to see you for once with the beautiful curls which Arsinoe makes with the irons.” But the steward’s mirth was checked when his daughter, pausing in her labors, said half in jest, but half in earnest:

“Have you thought any more about the Emperor’s arrival, father? I smarten and dress you so fine every day—but to-day you ought to think of dressing me.”

“We will see about it,” said Keraunus evasively. “Do you know,” said Arsinoe, after a short pause, as she twisted the last lock in the freshly-heated tongs, “I thought it all over last night again. If we cannot succeed any way in scraping together the money for my dress, we can still—”

“Well?”

“Even Selene can say nothing against it.”

“Against what?”

“But, you will be angry!”

“Speak out.”

“You pay taxes like the rest of the citizens.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“Well then, we are justified in expecting something from the city.”

“What for?”

“To pay for my dress for the festival which is got up for the Emperor, not by an individual, but by the citizens as a body. We could not accept alone, but it is folly to refuse what a rich municipality offers. That is neither more nor less than making them a present.”

“You be silent,” cried Keraunus, really furious, and trying in vain to remember the argument with which, only yesterday, he had refused the same suggestion. “Be silent, and wait till I begin to talk about such matters.”

Arsinoe flung the tongs on the hearth with so much annoyance that they fell on the stone with a loud clatter; but her father quitted the kitchen and returned to the sitting-room. There he found Selene lying on a couch, and the old slave-woman, who had tied a wet handkerchief round the girl’s head, pressing another to her bare left foot.

“Wounded!” cried Keraunus, and his eyes rolled slowly from right to left and from left to right.

“Look at the swelling!” cried the old woman in broken Greek, raising Selene’s snow-white foot in her black hands for her father to see. “Thousands of fine ladies have hands that are not so small. Poor, poor little foot,” and as she spoke the old woman pressed it to her lips.

Selene pushed her aside, and said, turning to her father:

“The cut on my head is nothing to speak of, but the muscles and veins here at the ancle are swelled and my leg hurts me rather when I tread. When the dog threw me down I must have hit it against the stone step.”

“It is outrageous!” cried Keraunus, the blood again mounting to his head, “only wait and I will show them what I think of their goings on.”

“No, no,” entreated Selene, “only beg them politely to shut up the dog, or to chain it, so that it may not hurt the children.”

Her voice trembled with anxiety as she spoke the words, for the dread, which, she knew not why, had so long been tormenting her lest her father should lose his place, seemed to affect her more than ever to-day.

“What! civil words after what has now happened?” cried Keraunus indignantly, and as if something quite unheard of had been suggested to him.

“Nay, nay, say what you mean,” shrieked the old woman. “If such a thing had occurred to your father he would have fallen on the strange builder with a good thrashing.”

“And his son Keraunus will not let him off,” declared the steward, quitting the room without heeding Selene’s entreaty not to let himself be provoked.

In the ante-chamber he found his old slave whom he ordered to take a stick and go before him to announce him to Pontius’ guest, the architect, who was lodging in the rooms in the wing near the fountain. This was the elegant thing to do, and by this means the black slave would meet the big dog before his master who held him and all dogs in the utmost abhorrence. As he approached his destination he found himself quite in the humor to speak his mind to the stranger who had come here with a ferocious hound to tear the members of his family.

CHAPTER XIV

Hadrian had slept most comfortably; only a few hours it is true, but they had sufficed to refresh his spirit. He was now in his sitting-room and had gone to the window, which took up more than half the extent of the long west wall of the room, and opened on the sea. The wide opening, which extended downwards to within a few spans of the floor, was finished at either side by a tall pillar of fine reddish-brown porphyry, flecked with white, and crowned with gilt Corinthian capitals.

Against one of these the Emperor was leaning stroking the blood-hound, whose prompt and vigorous watchfulness had pleased him greatly. What did he care for the terrors the dog might have caused a mere girl?

By the other pillar stood Antinous; he had placed his right foot on the low window-sill, and with his chin resting on his hand and his elbow on his knee, his figure was well within the room.

“This, Pontius, is really a first-rate man,” said Hadrian, pointing to a tapestry hanging across the narrow end of the room. “This hanging was copied from a fruit-piece that I painted some time since, and had executed here in mosaic. Yesterday this room was not even intended for my use, thus the hanging must have been put up between our arrival and this morning. And how many other beautiful things I see around me! The whole place looks habitable, and the eye finds an abundance of objects on which it can rest with pleasure.”

“Have you examined that magnificent cushion?” asked Antinous; “and the bronze figures, there in the corner, look to me far from bad.”

“They are admirable works,” said Hadrian. “Still, I would do without them with pleasure rather than miss this window. Which is the bluer, the sky or the sea? And what a delicious spring breeze fans us here, in the middle of December. Which are the more delightful to contemplate, the innumerable ships in the harbor, which communicate between this flowery land and other countries, and bless it with wealth, or the buildings which attract the eye in whichever direction it turns. It is difficult to know whether most to admire their stately dimensions or the beauty of their forms.”

“And what is that long, huge dyke, which connects the island with the mainland? Only look! There is a huge trireme passing under one of the wide arches, on which it is supported—and there comes another.”

“That is the great viaduct, called by the Alexandrians the Heptastadion, because it is said to be seven stadia in length; and in the upper portion it carries a stone water-course—as an elder tree has in it a vein of pith-which supplies water to the island of Pharos.”

“What a pity it is,” said Antinous, “that we cannot overlook from here the whole of the structure with the men and the vehicles that swarm upon it like busy ants. That little island and the narrow tongue of land that runs out into the harbor with the tall slender building at the end of it, half hide it.”

“But they serve to vary the picture,” replied the Emperor. “Cleopatra often dwelt in the little castle on the island with its harbor, and in that tall tower on the northern side of the peninsula, round which, just now, the blue waves are playing, while the gulls and pigeons fly happily over it—there Antony retreated after the fight of Actium.”

“To forget his disgrace!” exclaimed Antinous.

“He named it his Timonareum, because he hoped there to remain unmolested by other human beings, like the wise misanthrope of Athens. How would it be if I called Lochias my Timonareum?”

“No man need try to hide fame and greatness.”

“Who told you that it was shame that led Antony to hide himself in that place?” asked the imperial sophist; “he proved often enough, at the head of his cavalry, that he was a brave soldier; and though at Actium, when all was still going well, he let his ship be turned, it was out of no fear of swords and spears, but because Fate compelled him to subjugate his strong will to the wishes of a woman with whose destiny his was linked.”

“Then do you excuse his conduct?”

“I only seek to account for it, and never, for a moment, could allow myself to believe that shame ever prompted a single act in Antony. I—do you suppose I could ever blush? Nay, we cease to feel shame when we have lived to feel such profound contempt for the world.”

“But why then should Marc Antony have shut himself up, in yonder sea-washed prison?”

“Because, to every true man, who has dissipated whole years of his life with women, jesters and flatterers, a moment comes of satiety and loathing. In such an hour he feels that of all the men under the lights of heaven, he, himself, is the only one with whom it is worth his while to commune. After Actium, this was what Antony felt, and he quitted the society of men in order to find himself for once in good company.”

“It is that, no doubt, which drives you now and again into solitude.”

“No doubt-but you are always allowed to follow me.”

“Then you regard me as better than others,” exclaimed Antinous joyfully.

“As more beautiful at any rate,” replied Hadrian kindly. “Ask me some more questions.”

But Antinous needed a few minutes pause before he could comply with this desire. At last he recollected himself and proceeded to inquire why most of the vessels were moored in the harbor beyond the Heptastadion, known as Eunostus. The entrance there was less dangerous than that between the Pharos and the point of Lochias which led into the eastern landing-places. And then Hadrian could give him information as to every building in the city about which his companion evinced any curiosity. But when the Emperor had pointed out the Soma, under which rested the remains of Alexander the Great, he became thoughtful, and said, as if to himself:

“The Great—We may well envy the young Macedonian; not the mere name of Great, for many of small worth have had it bestowed on them, but because he really earned it!”

There was not a question put by the handsome Bithynian that Hadrian could not answer; Antinous followed all his explanations with growing astonishment, exclaiming at last:

“How perfectly well you know this place—and yet you never were here before.”

“It is one of the greatest pleasures of travelling,” replied Hadrian, “that on our journeys we come to know many things in their actuality of which we have formed an idea from books and narratives. This requires us to compare the reality with the pictures in our own minds, seen with the inward eye, before we saw the reality. It is to me a far smaller pleasure to be surprised by something new and unexpected than to make myself more closely acquainted with something I know already sufficiently to deem it worthy to be known better. Do you understand what I mean?”

“To be sure I do. We hear of a thing, and when we afterwards see it we ask ourselves whether we have conceived of it rightly. But I always picture people or places which I hear much praised, as much more beautiful than I ever find the reality.”

“The balance of difference, which is to the disadvantage of reality,” answered Hadrian, “stands not so much to its discredit, as to the credit of the eager and beautifying power of your youthful imagination. I—I—” and the Emperor stroked his beard and gazed out into the distance. “I learn by experience that the older I grow, the more often I find it possible so to imagine men, places, and things that I have not seen as that when I meet them in real life for the first time, I feel justified in fancying that I have known them long since, visited them, and beheld them with my bodily eyes. Here, for instance, I feel as if I saw nothing new, but only gazed once more at what has long been familiar. But that is no wonder, for I know my Strabo, and have heard and read a hundred accounts of this city. Still there are many things which are quite strange to me, and yet as they come before me make me feel as if I had seen or known them long ago.”

“I have felt something like that,” said Antinous. “Can our souls have ever lived in other bodies, and sometimes recall the impressions made in that former existence?

“Favorinus once told me that some great philosopher, Plato, I think, asserts that before we are born our souls are wafted about in the firmament that they may contemplate the earth on which they are destined subsequently to dwell. Favorinus says too—”

“Favorinus!” cried Hadrian, evasively. “That graceful elocutionist has plenty of skill in giving new and captivating forms to the thoughts of the great philosophers; but he has not been able to surprise the secret of his own soul—besides, he talks too much, and he cannot dispense with the excitement of life.”

“Still you have recognized the phenomenon, but you disapprove of Favorinus’ explanation of it?”

“Yes, for I have met men and things as old acquaintances which never saw the light till long after I was born. Possibly my own interpretation may not adapt itself to the consciousness of all—but in myself, I know for certain, there dwells a mysterious something which stirs and works in me independently of myself, which enters into me, and takes its departure at its will. Call it as you will, my Daimon, or even my Genius—the name matters not. Nor will this ‘something’ always come at my bidding, while it often possesses me when I least expect it. In those moments when it stirs within me, I am master of much which is peculiar to the experience and potentiality of that hour. What is known to that Daimon always appears to me the very same when I actually meet it. Thus Alexandria is not unknown to me, because my Genius has seen it in his flights. It has learnt and done much, both in me and for me; a hundred times, face to face with my own finished works I have asked myself: ‘Is it possible that you—Hadrian—your mother’s son-can have achieved this? What then is the mysterious power that aided you to do it?’ Now I also recognize it, and can see it work in others. The man in whom it dwells soon excels his fellows, and it is most manifest in artists. Or is it that mere common men become great artists simply because the Genius selects them as his temple to dwell in? Do you follow me, boy?”

“Not altogether,” replied Antinous, and his large eyes which had sparkled brightly so long as he gazed with the Emperor on the city, were now cast down and fixed wearily on the ground. “Do not be angry with me, my Lord, but I shall never understand such things as these, for there is no man with whom your Genius, as you term it, has less concern than with me. Thoughts of my own have I none, and it is difficult to me to follow the thoughts of others; indeed I should like to know how I am ever to do anything right. When I want to work, to work something out, no Daimon helps my soul; no—it feels quite helpless, and drifts into dreaminess. And if I ever do complete anything, I am obliged to own to myself that I certainly might have been able to do it better.”

“Self-knowledge,” laughed Hadrian, “is the climax of wisdom. A man has done something if he has only added a ‘thing of beauty’ to the joys of a friend’s imagination; what others do by hard work you do by mere existence. Be quiet, Argus!” For, while he was speaking, the hound had risen, and had gone snarling to the door. In spite of his master’s orders he broke into a loud bark when he heard a steady knock at the door. Hadrian looked round in bewilderment, and asked: “Where is Mastor?”

Antinous shouted the slave’s name into the Emperor’s bedroom, which was next to the living-room, but in vain. “He generally is always at hand, and as brisk as a lark, but to-day he looked as if in a dream, and while he was dressing me he first let my shoe fall out of his hand and then my brooch.”

“I read him yesterday a letter from Rome. His young wife has gone away with a ship’s captain.”

“We may wish him joy of being free again.”

“It does not seem to afford him any satisfaction.”

“Oh! a handsome lad like my body-slave can find as many substitutes as he likes.”

“But he has not done so. For the present he is still smarting under his loss.”

“How wise! There, some one is knocking again. Just see who ventures—but to be sure any one has a right to knock, for at Lochias I am not the Emperor, but a simple private gentleman. Lie down Argus, are you crazy, old fellow? Why the dog maintains my dignity better than I do, and he does not seem altogether to like the architect’s part I am playing.”

Antinous had already raised his hand to lift the handle, when the door was gently opened from outside, and the steward’s slave stood on the threshold. The old negro presented a lamentable spectacle. The Emperor’s dignified and awe-compelling figure, and his favorite’s rich garments made him feel embarrassed, and the hound’s threatening growl filled him with such terror that he huddled his lean negro-legs together, and, as far as its length would allow, tried to cover them for protection with his threadbare tunic.

Hadrian gazed in astonishment at this image of fear, and then asked:

“Well! what do you want, fellow?”

The slave attempted to advance a step or two, but at a loud command from Hadrian he stood still, and as he looked down at his flat feet, he ruefully scratched his short-cropped grey hair, some of which had fallen off and left a bald patch.

“Well,” repeated Hadrian, in a tone which was anything rather than encouraging, as he relaxed his hold on the hound’s collar in a somewhat suspicious manner. The slave’s bent knees began to quake, and holding out his broad palm to the grey-bearded gentleman, who seemed to him hardly less alarming than the dog, he began to stammer out in fearfully-mutilated Greek the speech which his master had repeated to him several times, and which set forth that he had come “into the presence of the architect, Claudius Venator, of Rome, to announce the visit of his master, a member of the town-council, a Macedonian, and a Roman citizen, Keraunus, the son of Ptolemy, steward of the once royal but now imperial palace at Lochias.”

Hadrian unrelentingly allowed the poor wretch to finish his speech, rubbing his hands with amusement, while the sweat of anguish stood on the old slave’s face, and to prolong the delightful joke, he took good care not to help the miserable old man when his unaccustomed tongue came to some insuperable difficulty. When, at length, the negro had finished the pompous announcement, Hadrian said, kindly:

“Tell your master he may come in.”

Scarcely had the slave left the room, when the sovereign, turning to his favorite, exclaimed:

“This is a delicious joke! What will the Jupiter be like, when the eagle is such a bird as this!”

Keraunus was not long to wait for. While pacing up and down the passage outside the Emperor’s room, his bad humor had risen considerably, for he took it as a slight on the part of the architect, that he should allow him—whose birth and dignities he would have learnt from his slave—to wait several minutes, each of which seemed to him a quarter of an hour. His expectation too, that the Roman would come to conduct him in person into his apartment was by no means fulfilled, for the slave’s message was briefly—“He may come in.”

“Did he say may? Did he not say ‘please to come in, or have the goodness to come in?’” asked the steward.

“He may come in—was what he said,” replied the slave.

Keraunus grunted out, “Well!” set his gold circlet straight on his head which he held very upright, crossed his arms over his broad chest with a sigh, and ordered the black man:

“Open the door.”

The steward crossed the threshold with much dignity: then, not to commit any breach of courtesy, he bowed low, and was about to begin to utter his reprimand in cutting terms, when a glance at the Emperor and at the splendid decoration which the room had undergone since the day previous, not to mention the very unpleasant growling of the big dog, prompted him to strike a milder string. His slave had followed him and had sought a safe corner near the door, between the wall of the room and a couch, but he himself, conquering his alarm at the dog, went forward some distance into the room. The Emperor had seated himself on the window-sill; he pressed his foot lightly on the head of the dog, and gazed at Keraunus as at some remarkable curiosity. His eye thus met that of the steward and made him clearly understand that he had to do with a greater personage than he had expected. There was something imposing in the person of the man who sat before him; for this very reason, however, his pride stood on tiptoe, and he asked in a tone of swaggering dignity, though not so sharply and abruptly as he had intended.

“Am I standing before the new visitor to Lochias, the architect Claudius Venator of Rome?”

“You are—standing—” replied the Emperor, with a roguish side glance at Antinous.

“You have met with a friendly reception to this palace. Like my fathers, who have enjoyed the stewardship of it for centuries, I know how to exercise the sacred duties of hospitality.”

“I am surprised to hear of the high antiquity of your family and bow to your pious sentiments,” answered Hadrian, in the same tone as the steward. “What farther may I learn from you?”

“I did not come here to relate history,” said Keraunus, whose gall rose as he thought he detected a mocking smile on the stranger’s lips. “I did not come here to tell stories, but to complain that you, as a warmly-welcomed guest, show so little anxiety to protect your host from injury.”

“How is that?” asked Hadrian, rising from his seat and signing to Antinous to hold back the hound, which manifested a peculiar aversion to the steward. It no doubt detected that he had come to show no special friendliness to his owner.

“Is that dangerous dog, gnashing its teeth there, your property?” asked Keraunus.

“Yes.”

“This morning it threw down my daughter and smashed a costly pitcher, which she is fond of carrying to fetch water in the dawn.”

“I heard of that misadventure,” said Hadrian, “and I would give much if I could undo it. The vessel shall be amply made good to you.”

“I beg you not to add insult to the injury, we have suffered by your fault. A father whose daughter has been knocked down and hurt—”

“Then, Argus actually bit her?” cried Antinous, horrified.