A Christian But a Roman Part 7

CHAPTER VI.

Sophronia, sobbing, threw her arms around her sister's neck. In rapid alternations of feeling the shining vision of a happy life pa.s.sed before her mind. She saw her loving old father who guarded her so anxiously from every breath of air; she saw the youth whose pure love promised her long years of joy in the future. The girl's strength of mind vanished before this alluring picture, and she sank on the bosom of her sister, who, with a brave though sad face, clasped her in her arms as a mythological G.o.ddess of war would embrace an angel that belonged to the realms of another deity.

"Hasten hence," she said, throwing her ample _himation_ around her sister's shoulders, and fastening the golden _balteus_ about her hips.

"You can follow my slave safely. No one will notice the exchange, especially amid the noisy tumult of the circus."

"No, I cannot accept this sacrifice," cried Sophronia, struggling with her own heart. "G.o.d forbids it."

"Your G.o.d is the G.o.d of Love," said Glyceria. "If on account of this G.o.d of Love you will not save yourself, I swear that this day shall long be mentioned by the world as a day of horrors. I know all the formulas, before which the beings of darkness tremble, at whose utterance the solid earth is shaken and blazing comets dash across the sky, sending down pestilences upon the living. If you sacrifice yourself to your G.o.d, I will sacrifice Rome to mine, and will destroy it so utterly that the centuries will find only fragments of its royal purple."

The pallid girl trembled in her frowning sister's arms.

The latter now quietly fastened the anadem she had taken from her head in her sister's hair, and drew her veil over her face.

"There, now you are safe. If you are asked who rescued you, say that it was a stranger. I wish to cause no one sorrow. Never mention my name."

The weeping girl embraced her sister, from whom she could not bear to part. Glyceria herself urged her away:

"Go, hasten. Do not kiss me; it is not well to kiss me. Destruction is on my lips."

Yet Sophronia did kiss her, and at the same instant aevius entered with the guards who accompanied him.

"We are betrayed!" shrieked Glyceria, placing herself before her sister to protect her. Then, with savage fury, she cried: "Who sent you to this place, miserable sycophant? You have made a mistake; this is a prison, not a baccha.n.a.lian revel."

"It is a golden cage, in which I find two doves instead of one."

"Put your insipid jests into rhyme, but spare me their tasteless folly. And now, go!"

"Very willingly if you will come with me; but the Augustus sent me here."

Glyceria hastily whispered to Sophronia: "Do not betray that you are my sister, or our father is lost, too."

Then she turned to the soldiers.

"Insolent knaves! Do you know me? I am the terrible Glyceria who sends down a rain of fire upon you when you are in camp, who makes the rivers overflow their banks before you, and in the midst of summer brings winter upon your bands so that you are swept away like flies?

Do you no longer remember Trivius, whom in my wrath I transformed into a stag, and did not restore his human form until the hounds had torn him? Did you see before my palace the flesh-colored caryatides, who keep guard before my door and seem to follow every pa.s.ser-by with their eyes? They were slaves who disobeyed me, and whom with a single breath I transformed to stone. Do you wish to be fixed to these walls as statues, or changed into wild beasts to rend one another to-morrow in the amphitheatre? Which of you dares to raise his hand; which of you will bar my way?"

The soldiers shrank back in superst.i.tious terror. aevius alone stepped before her.

"Divinely beautiful woman, it would be useless trouble to transform these fellows to brutes. You ought rather to change my heart into stone, that it may have no feeling for you. But now permit me to conduct this Christian maiden to the Caesar, who will gladly see you the next time, but now desires to behold her. Though you should vouchsafe to wreak your utmost wrath upon my innocent head, I can do nothing else. My head and my heart are at your service, but Carinus has commanded my hands to bring this maiden before him."

Glyceria whispered impetuously to her pale-faced sister:

"Now a greater horror than death awaits you. But be strong. Under the _balteus_ which I fastened around you is a sharp dagger. You are a Roman; I need say no more."

She pressed Sophronia's hand as she spoke, and without vouchsafing aevius another glance, hastened through the ranks of the soldiers, who swiftly made way for her.

CHAPTER VII.

Trembling with horror, Sophronia stood on the threshold of Carinus'

apartment.

The spectacle before her seemed to her eyes more terrible than the torture chambers of the prison and the dens of the wild beasts.

Drunken slaves lay on the floor, singing and touching goblets with drunken senators; men, rouged and clad in women's garments, were singing to the accompaniment of harps indecent dithyrambics, while they had twined the feminine anadem upon their heads with oak leaves, the simple ornament of civic virtue. The most prominent magistrates, consuls, prefects, tribunes, disguised as fauns and satyrs, were dancing with girls robed in transparent tissues, whose cheeks and eyes were glowing with the unholy fires of sensual pa.s.sion; and in the midst of this diabolical revel lay Carinus, himself the greatest disgrace of his own imperial purple. The effect of the wine and the emotions roused by the scenes of this orgy were visible on his face; his hair was dripping with the perfumed salves that had been rubbed into it.

Sophronia shuddered at this scene, which, wherever she turned her eyes, showed the same figures; and for the first time in her life she forgot to call upon the name of G.o.d, who is always nearest when the danger is greatest. But who could think of G.o.d's presence where the devil's altars are erected?

In trembling terror the Christian maiden seized her gold _balteus_, as it were from instinct, without remembering her sister's hint. But no sooner did she feel the hilt of the dagger in her hand than she regained her strength of soul. In an instant she was once more the brave, resolute Roman, and without waiting to be led, she pa.s.sed boldly through the circling dancers, and with her tall figure drawn up to its full height, stood proudly before Carinus.

"Is it you whom they call in Rome the Augustus?" she asked with infinite contempt.

Carinus, smiling, raised himself on his couch, and motioned to the noisy revellers to be quiet.

"Since when has the word 'Augustus' in the Roman tongue meant shame and loathsomeness?" Sophronia boldly continued, gazing defiantly at Carinus. "What accursed destiny sent you to Rome to gather around you everything that is abominable, everything that is accursed, and bring to sovereignty the sins transmitted to you from the temples of your G.o.ds? Do you not feel the trembling of the earthquake under your feet; do you not hear the muttering of heaven's thunder? Does not the roar of millions of approaching barbarians rouse you from your slumber, that you may learn that you are not the lord, but only dust upon the earth, which at a single breath of G.o.d will pa.s.s away and become the dust which buries you?"

Carinus turned to aevius, saying:

"By Paphia, you did not deceive me. This is a wonderful creature.

There, there, beautiful maiden, rage on, be wrathful; upbraiding only heightens your beauty, and the more you reproach me the more ardent my love becomes."

"You will repent some day amid eternal flames! Above you is throned an invisible G.o.d, who reads the thoughts of your heart; and as you now see laughing faces around you, you will behold on the Day of Judgment features tortured and distorted by pain, and you yourself will not be otherwise."

"By the Pantheon! This figure is still lacking in the ranks of the G.o.ds. aevius, bring a sculptor. Build a temple, place the statue of this G.o.ddess in it, and call her _Venus bellatrix_."

An artist belonging to the court instantly pressed forward, seized a stylus and waxed paper, and Sophronia, with chaste indignation, perceived that while aevius was turning her indignant words into rhyme, the sculptor was trying to catch the movements of her superb figure.

The young girl instantly stopped speaking; not another word did she utter, not a feature of her face moved.

"Hasten your work, s.e.xtus, if you wish to sketch the _Venus bellatrix_," said Carinus. "In an hour this figure will be _Venus victa_."

As he spoke, he glided nearer to the girl like a hungry serpent, and fixed his eyes greedily upon her face.

Sophronia stood cold and motionless as a statue.

"Well, why do you not continue to rage? Be furious! It increases the rapture that fills my heart a hundredfold; rave, curse, blaspheme. I will kiss and embrace you, and be frantic with bliss."

The patrician's daughter made no reply; not a feature stirred.

"Ah, do you seek to chill me by the coldness of your face? You doubtless perceived that the flush of shame which crimsoned it, the flames of your wrath were joy to me, and now, merely to rob me of my sweetest pleasure, you choose to behave as if shame and anger had vanished from your cheeks? Slaves, tear the garments from her limbs!"