Zenobia or the Fall of Palmyra Part 22

'I know not,' I replied. 'It may be so. To-day has, I confess it, destroyed the last hope in my mind that there might come a happy termination to this unwise and unnecessary contest. It can end now only in the utter defeat and ruin of one of the parties--and which that shall be I cannot doubt. Listen, Fausta, to the confused murmur that comes from the camp of the Roman army, bearing witness to its numbers; and to those sounds of the hammer, the axe, and the saw, plied by ten thousand arms, bearing witness to the activity and exhaustless resources of the enemy, and you cannot but feel, that at last--it may be long first--but that at last, Palmyra must give way. From what has been observed to-day, there is not a doubt that Aurelian has provided, by means of regular caravans to Antioch, for a constant supply of whatever his army requires. Reinforcements too, both of horse and foot, are seen daily arriving, in such numbers as more than to make good those who have been lost under the walls, or by the excessive heats of the climate.'

'I hear so,' said Fausta, 'but I will not despair. If I have one absorbing love, it is for Palmyra. It is the land of my birth, of my affections. I cannot tell you with what pride I have watched its growth, and its daily advancement in arts and letters, and have dwelt in fancy upon that future, when it should rival Rome, and surpa.s.s the traditionary glories of Babylon and Nineveh. O Lucius! to see now a black pall descending--these swollen clouds are an emblem of it--and settling upon the prospect and veiling it forever in death and ruin--I cannot believe it. It cannot have come to this. It is treason to give way to such fears. Where Zen.o.bia is, final ruin cannot come.'

'It ought not, I wish it could not,' I replied, 'but my fears are that it will, and my fears now are convictions. Where now, my dear Fausta, are the so certainly expected reliefs from Armenia, from Persia?--Fausta, Palmyra must fall.'

'Lucius Piso, Palmyra shall not fall--I say it--and every Palmyrene says it--and what all say, is decreed. If we are true in our loyalty and zeal, the Romans will be wearied out. Lucius, could I but reach the tent of Aurelian, my single arm should rid Palmyra of her foe, and achieve her freedom.'

'No, Fausta, you could not do it.'

'Indeed I would and could. I would consent to draw infamy upon my head as a woman, if by putting off my s.e.x and my nature too, I could by such an act give life to a dying nation, and what is as much, preserve Zen.o.bia her throne.'

'Think not in that vein, Fausta. I would not that your mind should be injured even by the thought.'

'I do not feel it to be an injury,' she rejoined; 'it would be a sacrifice for my country, and the dearer, in that I should lose my good name in making it. I should be sure of one thing, that I should do it in no respect for my own glory. But let us talk no more of it. I often end, Lucius, when thinking of our calamities, and of a fatal termination of these contests to us, with dwelling upon one bright vision. Misfortune to us will bring you nearer to Julia.'

'The G.o.ds forbid that my happiness should be bought at such a price!'

'It will only come as an accidental consequence, and cannot disturb you. If Palmyra falls, the pride of Zen.o.bia will no longer separate you.'

'But,' I replied, 'the prospect is not all so bright. Captive princes are by the usages of Rome often sacrificed, and Aurelian, if sometimes generous, is often cruel. Fears would possess me in the event of a capitulation or conquest, which I cannot endure to entertain.'

'O Lucius, you rate Aurelian too low, if you believe he could revenge himself upon a woman--and such a woman as Zen.o.bia. I cannot believe it possible. No. If Palmyra falls it will give you Julia, and it will be some consolation even in the fall of a kingdom, that it brings happiness to two, whom friendship binds closer to me than any others.'

As Fausta said these words, we became conscious of the presence of a person at no great distance from us, leaning against the parapet of the wall, the upper part of the form just discernible.

'Who stands yonder?' said Fausta. 'It has not the form of a sentinel; besides, the sentinel paces by us to and fro without pausing. It may be Calpurnius, His legion is in this quarter. Let us move toward him.'

'No. He moves himself and comes toward us. How dark the night! I can make nothing of the form.'

The figure pa.s.sed us, and unchallenged by the sentinel whom it met. After a brief absence it returned, and stopping as it came before us--

'Fausta!' said a voice--once heard, not to be mistaken.

'Zen.o.bia!' said Fausta, and forgetting dignity, embraced her as a friend.

'What makes you here?' inquired Fausta;--'are there none in Palmyra to do your bidding, but you must be abroad at such an hour and such a place?'

"Tis not so fearful quite,' replied the Queen, 'as a battle-field, and there you trust me.'

'Never, willingly.'

'Then you do not love my honor?' said the Queen, taking Fausta's hand as she spoke.

'I love your safety better--no--no--what have I said--not better than your honor--and yet to what end is honor, if we lose the life in which it resides? I sometimes think we purchase human glory too dearly, at the sacrifice of quiet, peace, and security.'

'But you do not think so long. What is a life of indulgence and sloth? Life is worthy only in what it achieves. Should I have done better to have sat over my embroidery, in the midst of my slaves, all my days, than to have spent them in building up a kingdom?'

'O no--no--you have done right. Slaves can embroider: Zen.o.bia cannot. This hand was made for other weapon than the needle.'

'I am weary,' said the Queen; 'let us sit;'--and saying so, she placed herself upon the low stone block, upon which we had been sitting, and drawing Fausta near her, she threw her left arm round her, retaining the hand she held clasped in her own.

'I am weary,' she continued, 'for I have walked nearly the circuit of the walls. You asked what makes me here. No night pa.s.ses but I visit these towers and battlements. If the governor of the ship sleeps, the men at the watch sleep. Besides, I love Palmyra too well to sleep while others wait and watch. I would do my share. How beautiful is this!--the city girded by these strange fires! its ears filled with this busy music! Piso, it seems hard to believe an enemy, and such an enemy, is there, and that these sights and sounds are all of death!'

'Would it were not so, n.o.ble Queen! Would it were not yet too late to move in the cause of peace. If even at the risk of life I--'

'Forbear, Piso,' quickly rejoined the Queen; 'it is to no purpose. You have my thanks, but your Emperor has closed the door of peace forever. It is now war unto death. He may prove victor: it is quite possible: but I draw not back--no word of supplication goes from me. And every citizen of Palmyra, save a few sottish souls, is with me. It were worth my throne and my life, the bare suggestion of an emba.s.sy now to Aurelian. But let us not speak of this, but of things more agreeable. The day for trouble, the night for rest. Fausta, where is the quarter of Calpurnius? methinks it is hereabouts.'

'It is,' replied Fausta, 'just beyond the towers of the gate next to us; were it not for this thick night, we could see where at this time he is usually to be found, doing, like yourself, an unnecessary task.'

'He is a good soldier and a faithful--may he prove as true to you, my n.o.ble girl, as he has to me. Albeit I am myself a sceptic in love, I cannot but be made happier when I see hearts worthy of each other united by that bond. I trust that bright days are coming, when I may do you the honor I would. Piso, I am largely a debtor to your brother--and Palmyra as much. Singular fortune! that while Rome thus oppresses me, to Romans I should owe so much; to one twice my life, to another my army. But where, Lucius Piso, was your heart, that it fell not into the snare that caught Calpurnius?'

'My heart,' I replied, 'has always been Fausta's, from childhood--'

'Our attachment,' said Fausta, interrupting me, 'is not less than love, but greater. It is the sacred tie of nature, if I may say so, of brother to sister; it is friendship.'

'You say well,' replied the Queen. 'I like the sentiment. It is not less than love, but greater. Love is a delirium, a dream, a disease. It is full of disturbance. It is unequal, capricious, unjust; its felicity, when at the highest, is then nearest to deepest misery; a step, and it is into unfathomable gulfs of woe. While the object loved is as yet unattained, life is darker than darkest night. When it is attained, it is then oftener like the ocean heaving and tossing from its foundations, than the calm, peaceful lake, which mirrors friendship. And when lost, all is lost, the universe is nothing. Who will deny it the name of madness? Will love find entrance into Elysium? Will heaven know more than friendship? I trust not. It were an element of discord there, where harmony should reign perpetual.' After a pause, in which she seemed buried in thought, she added musingly--'What darkness rests upon the future! Life, like love, is itself but a dream; often a brief or a prolonged madness. Its light burns sometimes brightly, oftener obscurely, and with a flickering ray, and then goes out in smoke and darkness. How strange that creatures so exquisitely wrought as we are, capable of such thoughts and acts, rising by science, and art, and letters, almost to the level of G.o.ds, should be fixed here for so short a time, running our race with the unintelligent brute; living not so long as some, dying like all. Could I have ever looked out of this life into the possession of any other beyond it, I believe my aims would have been different. I should not so easily have been satisfied with glory and power: at least I think so; for who knows himself? I should then, I think, have reached after higher kinds of excellence, such for example as, existing more in the mind itself, could be of avail after death--could be carried out of the world--which power, riches, glory, cannot. The greatest service which any philosopher could perform for the human race, would be to demonstrate the certainty of a future existence, in the same satisfactory manner that Euclid demonstrates the truths of geometry. We cannot help believing Euclid if we would, and the truths he has established concerning lines and angles, influence us whether we will or not. Whenever the immortality of the soul shall be proved in like manner, so that men cannot help believing it, so that they shall draw it in with the first elements of all knowledge, then will mankind become a quite different race of beings. Men will be more virtuous and more happy. How is it possible to be either in a very exalted degree, dwelling as we do in this deep obscure, uncertain whether we are mere earth and water, or parts of the divinity; whether we are worms or immortals; men or G.o.ds; spending all our days in, at best, miserable perplexity and doubt? Do you remember, Fausta and Piso, the discourse of Longinus in the garden, concerning the probability of a future life?

'We do, very distinctly.'

'And how did it impress you?'

'It seemed to possess much likelihood,' replied Fausta, 'but that was all.'

'Yes,' responded the Queen, sighing deeply, 'that was indeed all. Philosophy, in this part of it, is a mere guess. Even Longinus can but conjecture. And what to his great and piercing intellect stands but in the strength of probability, to ours will, of necessity, address itself in the very weakness of fiction. As it is, I value life only for the brightest and best it can give now, and these to my mind are power and a throne. When these are lost I would fall unregarded into darkness and death.'

'But,' I ventured to suggest, 'you derive great pleasure and large profit from study; from the researches of philosophy, from the knowledge of history, from contemplation of the beauties of art, and the magnificence of nature. Are not these things that give worth to life? If you reasoned aright, and probed the soul well, would you not find that from these, as from hidden springs, a great deal of all the best felicity you have tasted, has welled up? Then, still more, from acts of good and just government; from promoting and witnessing the happiness of your subjects; from private friendship; from affections resting upon objects worthy to be loved--from these has no happiness come worth living for? And beside all this, from an inward consciousness of rect.i.tude? Most of all this may still be yours, though you no longer sat upon a throne, and men held their lives but in your breath.

'From such sources,' replied Zen.o.bia, 'some streams have issued it may be, that have added to what I have enjoyed; but, of themselves, they would have been nothing. The lot of earth, being of the low and common herd, is a lot too low and sordid to be taken if proffered. I thank the G.o.ds mine has been better. It has been a throne, glory, renown, pomp, and power; and I have been happy. Stripped of these, and without the prospect of immortality, and I would not live.'

With these words she rose quickly from her seat, saying that she had a further duty to perform. Fausta intreated to be used as an agent or messenger, but could not prevail. Zen.o.bia darting from our side was in a moment lost in the surrounding darkness. We returned to the house of Gracchus.

In a few days, the vast preparations of the Romans being complete, a general a.s.sault was made by the whole army upon every part of the walls. Every engine, known to our modern methods of attacking walled cities, was brought to bear. Towers constructed in the former manner were wheeled up to the walls. Battering rams of enormous size, those who worked them being protected by sheds of hide, thundered on all sides at the gates and walls. Language fails to convey an idea of the energy, the fury, the madness of the onset. The Roman army seemed as if but one being, with such equal courage and contempt of danger and death was the dreadful work performed. But the Queen's defences have again proved superior to all the power of Aurelian. Her engines have dealt death and ruin in awful measure among the a.s.sailants. The moat and the surrounding plain are filled and covered with the bodies of the slain. As night came on after a long day of uninterrupted conflict, the troops of Aurelian, baffled and defeated at every point, withdrew to their tents, and left the city to repose.

The temples of the G.o.ds have resounded with songs of thanksgiving for this new deliverance, garlands have been hung around their images, and gifts laid upon their altars. Jews and Christians, Persians and Egyptians, after the manner of their worship, have added their voices to the general chorus.

Again there has been a pause. The Romans have rested after the late fierce a.s.sault to recover strength, and the city has breathed free. Many are filled with new courage and hope, and the discontented spirits are silenced. The praises of Zen.o.bia, next to those of the G.o.ds, fill every mouth. The streets ring with songs composed in her honor.

Another day of excited expectations and bitter disappointment.

It was early reported that forces were seen approaching from the east, on the very skirts of the plain, and that they could be no other than the long-looked-for Persian army. Before its approach was indicated to those upon the highest towers of the gates, by the clouds of dust hovering over it, it was evident from the extraordinary commotion in the Roman intrenchments, that somewhat unusual had taken place. Their scouts must have brought in early intelligence of the advancing foe. Soon as the news spread through the city the most extravagant demonstrations of joy broke forth on all sides. Even the most moderate and sedate could not but give way to expressions of heartfelt satisfaction. The mult.i.tudes poured to the walls to witness a combat upon which the existence of the city seemed suspended.

'Father,' said Fausta, after Gracchus had communicated the happy tidings, 'I cannot sit here--let us hasten to the towers of the Persian gate, whence we may behold the encounter.'

'I will not oppose you,' replied Gracchus, 'but the sight may cost you naught but tears and pain. Persia's good will, I fear, will not be much, nor manifested by large contributions to our cause. If it be what I suspect--but a paltry subdivision of her army, sent here rather to be cut in pieces than aught else--it will but needlessly afflict and irritate.'

'Father, I would turn away from no evil that threatens Palmyra. Besides, I should suffer more from imagined, than from real disaster. Let us hasten to the walls.'