One of Cleopatra's Nights and Other Fantastic Romances Part 8

Gradually the city became peopled, like one of those panoramic pictures at first desolate, but which by a sudden change of light become animated with personages previously invisible.

Octavian's feelings had undergone a change. Only a short time before, amid the deceitful shadows of the night, he had fallen a prey to that uneasiness from which the bravest are not exempt amid such disquieting and fantastic surroundings as reason cannot explain. His vague terror had ultimately yielded to a profound stupefaction. The distinctness of his perceptions forbade him to doubt the testimony of his senses, yet what he beheld seemed altogether contrary to reason. Feeling still but half convinced, he sought by the authentication of minor actual details to a.s.sure himself that he was not the victim of hallucination. Those figures which pa.s.sed before his eyes could not be phantoms, for the living sun shone upon them with unmistakable reality, and their shadows, elongated in the morning light, fell upon the pavement and the walls.

Without the faintest understanding of what had befallen him, Octavian, ravished with delight to find one of his most cherished dreams realized, no longer attempted to resist the fate of his adventure. He abandoned himself to the mystery of these marvels without any further attempt to explain them; he averred to himself that since he had been permitted, by virtue of some mysterious power, to live for a few hours in a vanished age, he would not waste time in efforts to solve an incomprehensible problem, and he proceeded fearlessly gazing to right and left upon this scene at once so old and yet so new to him. But to what epoch of Pompeiian life had he been transported? An aedile inscription engraved upon a wall showed him by the names of public personages there recorded, that it was about the commencement of the reign of t.i.tus, or in the year 79 of our own era. A sudden thought flashed across Octavian's mind.

The woman whose mould he had seen in the museum at Naples must be living, inasmuch as the eruption of Vesuvius by which she had perished took place on the 24th of August in this very year: he might therefore discover her, behold her, speak to her!... The mad longing which had seized him at the sight of that ma.s.s of cinders moulded upon a divinely perfect form, was perhaps about to be fully satisfied, for surely naught could be impossible to a love which had had the strength to make Time itself recoil, and the same hour to pa.s.s twice through the sand-gla.s.s of Eternity!

While Octavian was abandoning himself to these reflections, beautiful young girls were pa.s.sing by on their way to the fountains, all balancing urns upon their heads with their white finger-tips, and patricians clad in white togas bordered with purple bands were proceeding toward the Forum, each followed by an escort of clients. The buyers commenced to throng about the booths, which were all designated by sculptured or pictured signs, and recalled by reason of their shape and small dimensions the moresque booths of Algiers. Over most of them a glorious phallus of baked and painted clay, together with the inscription, _Hic habitat Felicitas_, testified to superst.i.tious precautions against the evil eye. Octavian also noticed an amulet shop, whose shelves were stocked with horns, bifurcated branches of coral, and little figures of Priapus in gold, like those worn in Naples even at this day as a safeguard against the _jettatura_, and he thought to himself that a superst.i.tion often outlives a religion.

Following the sidewalk which borders each street in Pompeii (and deprives the English of all claim to this invention), Octavian suddenly found himself face to face with a beautiful young man of about his own age, clad in a saffron-colored tunic, and a mantle of snowy linen as supple as cashmere. The sight of Octavian in his frightful modern hat, girthed about with a scanty black frock-coat, his legs confined in pantaloons, and his feet cramped in well-polished boots, seemed to surprise the young Pompeiian in much the same way as one of us would feel astonished to meet on the Boulevard de Gand some Iowa Indian or native of Butocudo, bedecked with his feathers, necklace of bear's-claws, or whimsical tattooing. Nevertheless, being a well-bred young man, he did not burst out laughing in Octavian's face, and pitying the poor barbarian who had lost his way, no doubt, in that Graeco-Roman city, he said to him in a soft, clear voice: "_Advena, salve!_"

Nothing could be more natural than that an inhabitant of Pompeii, in the reign of the divine, most powerful, and most august Emperor t.i.tus, should speak Latin, yet Octavian started at hearing this dead tongue in a living mouth. It was then, indeed, that he congratulated himself on having been proficient in his college studies, and taken the honors at the annual examinations. The Latin taught him by the University served him in good stead on that unique occasion, and calling back to mind some souvenirs of his college course, he returned the salutation of the Pompeiian after the style of _De viris ill.u.s.tribus_ and _Selectae e profanis_, in a tolerably intelligible manner, but with a Parisian accent which forced the young man to smile despite himself.

"Perhaps it will be easier for you to converse in Greek," said the Pompeiian. "I am also acquainted with that language, for I studied at Athens."

"I am even less familiar with Greek than with Latin," replied Octavian.

"I am from the land of Gaul--from Paris--from Lutetia."

"I know that country. My grandfather served under the great Julius Caesar in the Gallic wars. But what a strange dress you wear! The Gauls whom I saw at Rome were not thus attired."

Octavian attempted to explain to the young Pompeiian that twenty centuries had rolled by since the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, and that the fashions had changed; but he forgot his Latin, and indeed, to tell the truth, he had but little to forget.

"My name is Rufus Holconius, and my house is at your service," said the young man, "unless, indeed, you prefer the freedom of the tavern. It is hard by the public-house of Albinus, near the gate of the suburb of Augustus Felix and the Inn of Sarinus, son of Publius, just at the second turn; but if you wish, I will be your guide through this city, in which you do not seem to be acquainted. Young barbarian, I like you, although you endeavored to impose upon my credulity by pretending that the Emperor t.i.tus, who now reigns, died two thousand years ago, and that the Nazarean (whose infamous followers were plastered with pitch and burned to illuminate Nero's gardens) rules sole master of the deserted heavens whence the great G.o.ds have fallen! By Pollux!" he continued as his eyes fell upon a rubric inscription at a street-corner, "you have just come in good time. The _Casina_ of Plautus, which has quite recently been put upon the stage, will be played to-day. It is a curious and laughable comedy which will amuse you, even if you only comprehend the pantomime of it. Come with me. It is nearly time for the play already. I will find you a place in the seat set apart for guests and strangers." And Rufus Holconius led the way toward the little comic theatre which the three friends had visited during the day.

The Frenchman and the citizen of Pompeii proceeded along the Street of the Fountains of Abundance and the Street of the Theatres, pa.s.sing by the College, the Temple of Isis, and the Studio of the Sculptor, and entered the Odeon or Comic Theatre by a lateral vomitory. Through the recommendations of Holconius, Octavian obtained a seat near the proscenium in a part of the theatre corresponding to our private boxes which front upon the stage. All eyes were immediately turned upon him with good-natured curiosity, and a low whispering arose all through the amphitheatre.

The play had not yet commenced, and Octavian profited by the interval to examine the building. The semicircular seats, terminated at either end by a magnificent lion's paw sculptured in Vesuvian lava, receded, broadening as they rose, from an empty s.p.a.ce corresponding to our _parterre_, but much narrower and paved in mosaic with Greek marble.

The rows of seats widened above one another in regular gradation according to distance, and four stairways, corresponding with the vomitories, and sloping from the base to the summit of the amphitheatre, divided it into five _cunei_ or wedge-shaped compartments, with the broad end uppermost. The spectators, all furnished with tickets consisting of little slips of ivory, upon which were indicated in numerical order the row, division, and seat, together with the name of the play and its author, took their places without confusion. The magistrates, n.o.bility, married men, young folks, and the soldiers--who attracted attention by the gleaming of their bronze helmets--all occupied different rows of seats.

It was an admirable spectacle. Those beautiful togas and great white mantles displayed in the first row of seats, contrasting with the vari-colored garments of the women seated in the circle above, and the gray capes of the populace who were a.s.signed to the upper benches near the columns which supported the roof, and between which were visible glimpses of a sky intensely blue as the azure background of the Panathenaea.

A fine spray aromatized with saffron fell from the friezes above in imperceptible mist, at once cooling and purifying the air. Octavian thought of the fetid emanations which vitiate the atmosphere of our modern theatres--theatres so uncomfortable that they may justly be considered places of torture rather than places of amus.e.m.e.nt, and he found that modern civilization had not, after all, made much progress.

The curtain, sustained by a transverse beam, sank into the depths of the orchestra; the musicians took their seats, and the Prologue appeared in grotesque attire, his face concealed by a frightful mask which fitted the head like a helmet.

Having saluted the audience and demanded applause, the Prologue commenced a merry argumentation. Old plays, he said, were like old wine which improves with age; and _Casina_, so dear to the old, should not be less so to the young: all could take pleasure in it, some because they were familiar with it, others because they were not. Moreover, the play had been carefully remounted, and should be heard with a cheerful mind, without thinking about one's debts or one's creditors, for people were not liable to be arrested at the theatre. It was a happy day, the weather was fair, and the halcyons hovered over the Forum.

Then he gave an a.n.a.lysis of the comedy about to be performed by the actors, with that minuteness of detail which shows how little the element of surprise entered into the theatrical pleasures of the ancient. He told how the aged Stalino, being enamored of his beautiful slave Casina, desired to marry her to his farmer Olympio, a complaisant spouse whose place he himself would fill on the nuptial night; and how Lycostrata, wife of Stalino, in order to thwart the luxury of her vicious husband, sought to unite Casina in marriage to the groom Chalinus with the further idea of favoring the amours of her son--in fine, how the deceived Stalino mistook a young slave in disguise for Casina, who, being discovered to be free, and of free birth, espouses the young master whom she loves and by whom she is beloved.

As in a reverie, the young Frenchman watched the actors with their bronze-mouthed masks, exerting themselves upon the stage; the slaves ran hither and thither, feigning great haste; the old man wagged his head and extended his trembling hand; the matron with high words and scornful mien strutted in her importance and quarrelled with her husband, to the great delight of the audience. All these personages made their entrances and exits through three doors contrived in the foundation-wall and communicating with the green-room of the actors. The house of Stalino occupied one corner of the stage, and that of his old friend Alcesimus faced it on the opposite side. These decorations, although very well painted, represented the idea of a place rather than the place itself, like most of the vague scenery of the cla.s.sic theatres.

When the nuptial procession, pompously escorting the false Casina, entered upon the stage, a mighty burst of laughter, such as Homer attributes to the G.o.ds, rang through all the amphitheatre, and thunders of applause evoked the vibrating echoes of the enclosure, but Octavian heard no more and saw no more of the play.

In the circle of seats occupied by the women, he had just beheld a creature of marvellous beauty. From that moment all the other charming faces which had attracted his attention became eclipsed as the stars before the face of Phbus--all vanished, all disappeared as in a dream; a mist clouded the circles of seats with their swarming mult.i.tudes, and the high-pitched voices of the actors seemed lost in infinite distance.

His heart received a sudden shock as of electricity, and it seemed to him that sparks flew from his breast when the eyes of that woman turned upon him.

She was dark and pale. Her locks, crisp-flowing and black as the tresses of Night, streamed backward over her temples after the fashion of the Greeks, and in her pallid face beamed soft, melancholy eyes, heavy with an indefinable expression of voluptuous sadness and pa.s.sionate _ennui_.

Her mouth, with its disdainful curves, protested by the living warmth of its burning crimson against the tranquil pallor of her cheeks, and the curves of her neck presented those pure and beautiful outlines now to be found only in statues. Her arms were naked to the shoulder, and from the peaks of her splendid bosom, which betrayed its superb curves beneath a mauve-rose tunic, fell two graceful folds of drapery that seemed to have been sculptured in marble by Phidias or Cleomenes.

The sight of that bosom, so faultless in contour, so pure in its outlines, magnetically affected Octavian. It seemed to him that those rich curves corresponded perfectly to that hollow mould in the museum at Naples which had thrown him into so ardent a reverie, and from the depths of his heart a voice cried out to him that this woman was indeed the same who had been suffocated in the villa of Arrius Diomedes by the cinders of Vesuvius. What prodigy, then, enabled him to behold her living, and witnessing the performance of the _Casina_ of Plautus? But he forbore to seek an explanation of the problem. For that matter, how did he himself happen to be there? He accepted the fact of his presence as in dreams we never question the intervention of persons actually long dead, but who seem to act nevertheless like living people; besides, his emotion forbade him to reason. For him the Wheel of Time had left its track, and his all-conquering love had chosen its place among the ages pa.s.sed away. He found himself face to face with his chimera, one of the most unattainable of all, a retrospective chimera. The cup of his whole life had in a single instant been filled to overflowing.

While gazing upon that face, at once so calm and pa.s.sionate, so cold and yet so replete with warmth, so dead, yet so radiant with life, he felt that he beheld before him his first and last love, his cup of supreme intoxication; he felt all the memories of all the women whom he ever believed that he had loved, vanish like impalpable shadows, and his heart became once more virginally pure of all anterior pa.s.sion. The past was dead within him.

Meanwhile the fair Pompeiian, resting her chin upon the palm of her hand, turned upon Octavian, though feigning the while to be absorbed in the performance, the velvet gaze of her nocturnal eyes, and that look fell upon him heavy and burning as a jet of molten lead. Then she turned to whisper some words in the ear of a maid seated at her side.

The performance closed. The crowd poured out of the theatre through the vomitories, and Octavian, disdaining the kindly offices of his friend Holconius, rushed to the nearest door-way. He had scarcely reached the entrance when a hand was lightly laid upon his arm, and a feminine voice exclaimed in tones at once low yet so distinct that not a syllable escaped him:

"I am Tyche Novaleia, entrusted with the pleasures of Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes. My mistress loves you. Follow me."

Arria Marcella had just entered her litter, borne by four strong Syrian slaves, naked to the waist, whose bronze torsos shone under the sunlight. The curtain of the litter was drawn aside, and a pale hand, starred with brilliant rings, waved a friendly signal to Octavian, as though in confirmation of the attendant's words. Then the purple folds of the curtain fell again, and the litter was borne away to the rhythmical sound of the footsteps of the slaves.

Tyche conducted Octavian along winding byways, tripping lightly across the streets over the stepping-stones which connected the foot-paths, and between which the wheels of the chariots rolled, wending her way through the labyrinth with that certainty which bears witness to thorough familiarity with a city. Octavian noticed that he was traversing portions of Pompeii which had never been excavated, and which were in consequence totally unknown to him. Among so many other equally strange circ.u.mstances, this caused him no astonishment. He had made up his mind to be astonished at nothing. Amid all this archaic phantasmagory, which would have driven an antiquarian mad with joy, he no longer saw anything save the dark, deep eyes of Arria Marcella, and that superb bosom which had vanquished even Time, and which Destruction itself had sought to preserve.

They arrived at last before a private gate which opened to admit them, and closed again as soon as they had entered, and Octavian found himself in a court surrounded by Ionic columns of Greek marble, painted bright yellow for half their height and crowned with capitals relieved with blue and red ornaments. A wreath of aristolochia suspended its great green heart-shaped leaves from the projections of the architecture like a natural arabesque, and near a marble basin framed in plants one flaming rose towered on a single stalk--a plume-flower in the midst of natural flowers. The walls were adorned with panelled fresco-work, representing fanciful architecture or imaginary landscape views.

Octavian obtained only a hurried glance at all these details, for Tyche immediately placed him in the hands of the slaves who had charge of the bath, and who subjected him, notwithstanding his impatience, to all the refinements of the antique _thermae._ After having submitted to the several necessary degrees of vapor-heat, endured the sc.r.a.per of the _strigillarius_, and felt cosmetics and perfumed oils poured over him in streams, he was reclothed with a white tunic, and again met Tyche at the opposite door, who took him by the hand and conducted him into another apartment gorgeously decorated.

Upon the ceiling were painted, with a purity of design, brilliancy of color, and freedom of touch which bespoke the hand of a great master rather than of the mere ordinary decorator, Mars, Venus, and Love. A frieze composed of deer, hares, and birds, disporting themselves amid rich foliage, ran around the apartment above a wainscoting of cipollino marble; the mosaic pavement, a marvellous work from the hand, perhaps, of Sosimus of Pergamos, represented banquet-scenes in relief, with a perfection of art which deluded the eye.

At the further end of the hall, upon a biclinium, or double couch, reclined Arria Marcella in an att.i.tude which recalled the reclining woman of Phidias, upon the pediment of the Parthenon. Her pearl-embroidered shoes lay at the foot of the couch, and her beautiful bare foot, purer and whiter than marble, extended from beneath the light covering of byssus which had been thrown over her.

Two earrings, fashioned in the form of balance-scales, and bearing pearls in either scale, trembled in the light against her pale cheeks. A necklace of golden b.a.l.l.s, with pear-shaped pendants attached, hung down upon her bosom, which the negligent folds of a straw-colored peplum, with a Greek border in black lines, had left half uncovered; a gold and black fillet pa.s.sed and glittered here and there through her ebon tresses, for she had changed her dress upon returning from the theatre, and around her arm, like the asp about the arm of Cleopatra, a golden serpent with jewelled eyes entwined itself in many folds and sought to bite its own tail.

Close by the double couch had been placed a little table, supported upon griffins' paws, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and freighted with different viands served upon dishes of silver and gold, or of earthenware enamelled with costly paintings. A Phasian bird, cooked in its plumage, was visible, and also various fruits which are seldom seen together in any one season.

Everything seemed to indicate that a guest was expected. The floor had been strewn with fresh flowers, and the amphorae of wine were plunged into urns filled with snow.

Arria Marcella made a sign to Octavian to lie down upon the biclinium beside her and share her repast. Half-maddened with astonishment and love, the young man took at random a few mouthfuls from the plates extended to him by little curly-haired Asiatic slaves, who wore short tunics. Arria did not eat, but she frequently raised to her lips an opal-tinted myrrhine vase filled with a wine darkly purple like thickened blood. As she drank an imperceptible rosy vapor mounted to her cheeks from her heart, the heart that had never throbbed for so many centuries; nevertheless, her bare arm, which Octavian lightly touched in the act of raising his cup, was cold as the skin of a serpent or the marble of a tomb.

"Ah, when you paused in the Studii Museum to contemplate the ma.s.s of hardened clay which still preserves my form," exclaimed Arria Marcella, turning her long, liquid eyes upon Octavian, "and your thoughts were ardently directed to me, my spirit felt it in that world where I float, invisible to vulgar eyes. Faith makes G.o.d, and love makes woman. One is truly dead only when one is no longer loved. Your desire has restored life to me. The mighty invocation of your heart overcame the dim distances that separated us."

The idea of amorous invocation which the young woman spoke of entered into the philosophic beliefs of Octavian, beliefs which we ourselves are not far from sharing.

In effect, nothing dies; all things are eternal. No power can annihilate that which once had being. Every action, every word, every thought which has fallen into the universal ocean of being, therein creates circles which travel, and increase in travelling, even to the confines of eternity. To vulgar eyes only do natural forms disappear, and the spectres which have thence detached themselves people Infinity. Paris, in some unknown region of s.p.a.ce, continues to carry off Helen. The galley of Cleopatra still floats down with swelling sails of silk upon the azure current of an ideal Cydnus. A few pa.s.sionate and powerful minds have been able to recall before them ages apparently long pa.s.sed away, and to restore to life personages dead to all the world beside.

Faust has had for his mistress the daughter of Tyndarus, and conducted her to his Gothic castle in the depths of the mysterious abysses of Hades. Octavian had been able to live a day under the reign of t.i.tus, and to make himself beloved of Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes, she who was at that moment lying upon an antique couch beside him in a city destroyed for all the rest of the world.

"From my disgust with other women," replied Octavian, "from the unconquerable reverie which attracted me toward its radiant shapes as to stars that lure on, I knew that I could never love save beyond the confines of Time and s.p.a.ce. It was you that I awaited; and that frail vestige of your being, preserved by the curiosity of men, has by its secret magnetism placed me in communication with your spirit. I know not if you be a dream or a reality, a phantom or a woman; if, like Ixion, I press but a cloud to my cheated breast; if I am only the victim of some vile spell of sorcery--but what I do truly know is that you will be my first and my last love."

"May Eros, son of Aphrodite, hear your promise," returned Arria Marcella, dropping her head upon the shoulder of her lover, who lifted her in a pa.s.sionate embrace. "Oh, press me to your young breast! Envelop me with your warm breath. I am cold through having remained so long without love." And against his heart Octavian felt that beautiful bosom rise and fall, whose mould he had that very morning admired through the gla.s.s of a cabinet in the museum. The coolness of that beautiful flesh penetrated him through his tunic and made him burn. The gold and black fillet had become detached from Arria's head, pa.s.sionately thrown back, and her hair streamed like a black river over the purple pillow.

The slaves had removed the table. A confused sound of sighs and kisses was alone audible. The pet quails, indifferent to this amorous scene, plundered the crumbs of the banquet upon the mosaic pavement, uttering sharp little cries.

Suddenly the brazen rings of the curtain which closed the entrance to the apartment slided back upon the curtain-rod, and an aged man of stern demeanor and wrapped in a great brown mantle appeared upon the threshold. His gray beard was divided into two points after the manner of the Nazareans. His face seemed furrowed by the suffering of ascetic mortifications, and a little cross of black wood was suspended from his neck, leaving no doubt as to his faith. He belonged to the sect, then new, of the Disciples of Christ.

On perceiving him, Arria Marcella, overwhelmed with confusion, hid her face in the folds of her mantle, like a bird which puts its head under its wing at the approach of an enemy from whom it cannot escape, to save itself at least from the horror of seeing him, while Octavian, rising on his elbow, stared fixedly at the provoking being who had thus abruptly interrupted his happiness.