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 New York 
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 Publishers 
 
The edition of this volume is limited to 450 
 numbered and 26 special lettered copies, this one 
 
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PUBLISHERS’ NOTE. 
 
 THE publishers desire to call attention to the fact that 
 the illustrations of Pompeian ruins given in this edition 
 are from actual photographs taken on the spot. 
 
 The views in many cases were indicated by them in per- 
 son in Pompeii, and were photographed especially for them 
 by one of the leading photographers of Italy. They also 
 take this opportunity of acknowledging their indebtedness 
 to FRANKLIN W. Smita, Hsq., for his valuable assistance in 
 the illustrating of this edition. 
 
 The interiors of a Pompeian house herein given are re- 
 produced from photographs of the interior of the Pompeia, 
 a building erected in Saratoga, N. Y., by Mr. Smith, which 
 is as nearly as possible an exact fac-simile of the house of 
 Pansa as described by Bulwer. The interior is elaborately 
 decorated after careful study of Pompeian literature and 
 art by the well known French artist Pascal and others. 
 
 Boston, June, 1891. 
 
<a ple ee oe 
 
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TO SIR WILLIAM GELL, 
 
 ETC., ETO. 
 
 DeEAR Sir, — In publishing a work, of which Pompeii furnishes the 
 subject, I can think of no one to whom it can so fitly be dedicated as 
 yourself. Your charming volumes upon the antiquities of that city have 
 indissolubly connected your name with its earlier (as your residence in 
 the vicinity has identified you with its more recent) associations. 
 
 Ere you receive these volumes; I hope to be deep in the perusal of 
 your forthcoming work upon ‘‘ The Topography of Rome and its Vi- 
 cinity.” ‘The glance at its contents which you permitted me at Naples 
 sufficed to convince me of its interest and value; and as an Englishman, 
 and as one who has loitered under the Portico, I rejoice to think that, 
 in adding largely to your own reputation, you will also renovate our 
 country’s claim to eminence in those departments of learning in which 
 of late years we have but feebly supported our ancient reputation. 
 Venturing thus a prediction of the success of your work, it would be 
 a little superfluous to express a wish for the accomplishment of the 
 prophecy! But I may add a more general hope, that you will long have 
 leisure and inclination for those literary pursuits to which you bring an 
 erudition so extensive; and that they may continue, as now, some- 
 times to beguile you from yourself, and never to divert you from your 
 
 friends. 
 I have the honor to be, dear sir, very faithfully yours, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 LEAMINGTON, 
 September 21, 1834. 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1834. 
 
 ON visiting those disinterred remains of an ancient city 
 which, more perhaps than either the delicious breeze or the 
 cloudless sun, the violet valleys and orange-groves of the 
 South, attract the traveller to the neighborhood of Naples ; 
 on viewing, still fresh and vivid, the houses, the streets, the 
 temples, the theatres, of a place existing in the haughtiest 
 age of the Roman Empire, —it was not unnatural, perhaps, 
 that a writer who had before labored, however unworthily, 
 in the art to revive and to create, should feel a keen desire 
 to people once more those deserted streets, to repair those 
 graceful ruins, to reanimate the bones which were yet 
 spared to his survey, to traverse the gulf of eighteen cen- 
 turies, and to wake to a second existence —the City of the 
 Dead! 
 
 And the reader will easily imagine how sensibly this 
 desire grew upon one whose task was undertaken in the 
 immediate neighborhood of Pompeii, —the sea that once 
 bore her commerce, and received her fugitives, at his feet, 
 and the fatal mountain of Vesuvius, still breathing forth 
 smoke and fire, constantly before his eyes !4 
 
 I was aware from the first, however, of the great difficul- 
 ties with which I had to contend. To paint the manners 
 and exhibit the life of the Middle Ages required the hand 
 of a master genius; yet perhaps that task was slight and 
 
 1 Nearly the whole of this work was written at Naples last winter (1832-33). 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 easy in comparison with the attempt to portray a far earlier 
 and more unfamiliar period. With the men and customs of 
 the feudal time we have a natural sympathy and bond of 
 alliance: those men were our own ancestors; from those 
 customs we received our own; the creed of our chivalric 
 fathers is still ours, their tombs yet consecrate our churches, 
 the ruins of their castles yet frown over our valleys; we 
 trace in their struggles for liberty and for justice our present 
 institutions; and in the elements of their social state we 
 behold the origin of our own. 
 
 But with the classical age we have no household and 
 familiar associations. The creed of that departed religion, 
 the customs of that past civilization, present little that is 
 sacred or attractive to our northern imaginations; they are 
 rendered yet more trite to us by the scholastic pedantries 
 which first acquainted us with their natures, and are linked 
 with the recollection of studies which were imposed as a 
 labor, and not cultivated as a delight. 
 
 Yet the enterprise, though arduous, seemed to me worth 
 attempting ; and in the time and the scene I have chosen, 
 much may be found to arouse the curiosity of the reader, 
 and enlist his interest in the descriptions of the author. It 
 was the first century of our religion ; it was the most civil- 
 ized period of Rome; the conduct of the story lies amidst 
 places whose relics we yet trace; the catastrophe is among 
 the most awful which the tragedies of ancient history pre- 
 sent to our survey. 
 
 From the ample materials before me, my endeavor has 
 been to select those which would be most attractive to a 
 modern reader,— the customs and superstitions least un- 
 familiar to him; the shadows that, when reanimated, would 
 present to him such images as, while they represented the 
 past, might be least uninteresting to the speculations of the 
 present. It did indeed require a greater self-control than 
 the reader may at first imagine, to reject much that was 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 most inviting in itself, but which, while it might have 
 added attraction to parts of the work, would have been 
 injurious to the symmetry of the whole. Thus, for instance, 
 the date of my story is that of the short reign of Titus, 
 when Rome was at its proudest and most gigantic eminence 
 of luxury and power. It was therefore a most inviting 
 temptation to the Author to conduct the characters of his 
 tale, during the progress of its incidents, from Pompeii to 
 Rome. What could afford such materials for description, or 
 such field for the vanity of display, as that gorgeous city 
 of the world, whose grandeur could lend so bright an in- 
 spiration to fancy, so favorable and so solemn a dignity to 
 research ? But in choosing for my subject, my catastrophe, 
 the Destruction of Pompeii, it required but little insight 
 into the higher principles of art to perceive that to Pompeii 
 the story should be rigidly confined. 
 
 Placed in contrast with the mighty pomp of Rome, the 
 luxuries and gaud of the vivid Campanian city would have 
 sunk into insignificance. Her awful fate would have seemed 
 but a petty and isolated wreck in the vast seas of the im- 
 perial sway, and the auxiliary I should have summoned to 
 the interest of my story would only have destroyed and 
 overpowered the cause it was invoked to support. I was 
 therefore compelled to relinquish an episodical excursion so 
 alluring in itself, and confining my story strictly to Pom- 
 peii, to leave to others the honor of delineating the hollow 
 but majestic civilization of Rome. 
 
 The city whose fate supplied me with so superb and 
 awful a catastrophe, supplied easily from the first survey of 
 its remains the characters most suited to the subject and 
 the scene: the half-Grecian colony of Hercules, mingling 
 with the manners of Italy so much of the costumes of 
 Hellas, suggested of itself the characters of Glaucus and 
 Ione. The worship of Isis, its existent fane, with its false 
 oracles unveiled, the trade of Pompeii with Alexandria, 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 the associations of the Sarnus with the Nile, called forth 
 the Egyptian Arbaces, the base Calenus, and the fervent 
 Apecides. The early struggles of Christianity with the 
 heathen superstition suggested the creation of Olinthus; and 
 the burnt fields of Campania, long celebrated for the spells 
 of the sorceress, naturally produced the Saga of Vesuvius. 
 For the existence of the Blind Girl, I am indebted to a 
 casual conversation with a gentleman well known amongst 
 the English at Naples for his general knowledge of the 
 many paths of life. Speaking of the utter darkness which 
 accompanied the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius, and 
 the additional obstacle it presented to the escape of the 
 inhabitants, he observed that the blind would be the most 
 favored in such a moment, and find the easiest deliverance. 
 In this remark originated the creation of Nydia. 
 
 The characters, therefore, are the natural offspring of the 
 scene and time. The incidents of the tale are equally con- 
 sonant, perhaps, to the then existent society; for it is not 
 only the ordinary habits of life, the feasts and the forum, 
 the baths and the amphitheatre, the commonplace routine 
 of the classic luxury, which we recall the past to behold; 
 equally important, and more deeply interesting, are the 
 passions, the crimes, the misfortunes, and reverses that 
 might have chanced to the shades we thus summon to life! 
 We understand any epoch of the world but ill if we do not 
 examine its romance. There is as much truth in the poetry 
 of life as in its prose. 
 
 As the greatest difficulty in treating of an unfamiliar and 
 distant period is to make the characters troduced “ live and 
 move” before the eye of the reader, so such should doubtless 
 be the first object of a work of the present description ; and 
 all attempts at the display of learning should be considered 
 but as means subservient to this, the main requisite of fiction. 
 The first art of the Poet (the creator) is to breathe the breath 
 of life into his creatures ; the next is to make their words and 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 actions appropriate to the era in which they are to speak and 
 act. This last art is, perhaps, the better effected by not 
 bringing the art itself constantly before the reader; by not 
 crowding the page with quotations and the margin with notes. 
 The intuitive spirit which infuses antiquity into ancient 
 images is perhaps the true learning which a work of this 
 nature requires: without it, pedantry is offensive; with it, 
 useless. No man who is thoroughly aware of what Prose 
 Fiction has now become — of its dignity, of its influence, of 
 the manner in which it has gradually absorbed all similar 
 departments of literature, of its power in teaching as well as 
 amusing — can so far forget its connection with History, with 
 Philosophy, with Politics, its utter harmony with Poetry 
 and obedience to Truth, as to debase its nature to the level 
 of scholastic frivolities: he raises scholarship to the creative, 
 and does not bow the creative to the scholastic. 
 
 With respect to the language used by the characters intro- 
 duced, I have studied carefully to avoid what has always 
 seemed to me a fatal error in those who have attempted 
 in modern times to introduce the beings of a classical age. 
 
 1 What the strong common sense of Sir Walter Scott has expressed so 
 well in his preface to “ Ivanhoe ”’ (1st edition). appears to me at least as appli- 
 cable to a writer who draws from classical as to one who borrows from feudal 
 antiquity. Let me avail myself of the words I refer to, and humbly and rev- 
 erently appropriate them for the moment: “It is true that I neither can, 
 nor do pretend, to the observation [observance ?| of complete accuracy even 
 in matters of outward costume, much less in the more important points of 
 language and manners. But the same motive which prevents my writing the 
 dialogue of the piece in Anglo-Saxon, or in Norman-French [in Latin or in 
 Greek], and which prohibits my sending forth this essay printed with the types 
 of Caxton or Wynken de Worde [written with a reed upon five rolls of parchment, 
 fastened to a cylinder, and adorned with a boss], prevents my attempting to con- 
 fine myself within the limits of the period to which my story is laid. It is 
 necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should 
 
 be, as it were, translated into the manners as well as the language of the age 
 we live in. 
 
 “Tn point of justice, therefore, to the multitudes who will, I trust, devour 
 this book with avidity |hem!|, I have so far explained ancient manners in 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 Authors have mostly given to them the stilted sentences, the 
 cold and didactic solemnities of language which they find in 
 the more admired of the classical writers. It is an error as 
 absurd to make Romans in common life talk in the periods 
 of Cicero, as it would be in a novelist to endow his English 
 personages with the long-drawn sentences of Johnson or 
 Burke. The fault is the greater, because, while it pretends 
 to learning, it betrays in reality the ignorance of just criti- 
 cism ; it fatigues, it wearies, it revolts; and we have not 
 the satisfaction, in yawning, to think that we yawn eruditely. 
 To impart anything like fidelity to the dialogues of classic 
 actors, we must beware (to use a university phrase) how we 
 “cram” for the occasion! Nothing can give to a writer a 
 more stiff and uneasy gait than the sudden and hasty adop- 
 tion of the toga. We must bring to our task the familiarized 
 knowledge of many years; the allusions, the phraseology, 
 the language generally, must flow from a stream that has 
 long been full ; the flowers must be transplanted from a living 
 soul, and not bought secondhand at the nearest market-place. 
 This advantage — which is, in fact, only that of familiarity 
 with our subject —is one derived rather from accident than 
 merit, and depends upon the degree in which the classics 
 have entered into the education of our youth and the studies 
 of our maturity. Yet, even did a writer possess the utmost 
 advantage of this nature which education and study can 
 
 modern language, and so far detailed the characters and sentiments of my 
 persons, that the modern reader will not find himself, I should hope, much 
 trammelled by the repulsive dryness of mere antiquity. In this, I respect- 
 fully contend, I have in no respect exceeded the fair license due to the author 
 of a fictitious composition. 
 
 “Tt is true,” proceeds my authority, “that this license is confined within 
 legitimate bounds; the author must introduce nothing inconsistent with the 
 manners of the age.” — Preface to “ Ivanhoe.” 
 
 I can add nothing to these judicious and discriminating remarks; they 
 form the canons of true criticism, by which all fiction that portrays the 
 past should be judged. 
 
 SS ee 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 bestow, it might be scarcely possible so entirely to transport 
 himself to an age so different from his own, but that he 
 would incur some inaccuracies, some errors of inadvertence 
 or forgetfulness. And when, in works upon the manners of 
 the ancients — works even of the gravest character, composed 
 by the profoundest scholars — some such imperfections will 
 often be discovered, even by a critic in comparison but 
 superficially informed, it would be far too presumptuous in 
 me to hope that I have been more fortunate than men infi- 
 nitely more learned, in a work in which learning is infinitely 
 less required. It is for this reason that I venture to believe 
 that scholars themselves will be the most lenient of my 
 judges. Enough if this book, whatever its imperfections, 
 should be found a portrait — unskilful, perhaps, in coloring, 
 faulty in drawing, but. not altogether unfaithful to the fea- 
 tures and the costume of the age which I have attempted 
 to paint. May it be (what is far more important) a just 
 representation of the human passions and the human heart, 
 whose elements in all ages are the same! 
 
 PREFACE 
 TO THE EDITION OF 1850. 
 
 THis work has had the good fortune to be so general a 
 favorite with the Public, that the Author is spared the task 
 of obtruding any comments in its vindication from adverse 
 criticism. The profound scholarship of German criticism, 
 which has given so minute an attention to the domestic life 
 of the ancients, has sufficiently testified to the general fidelity 
 with which the manners, habits, and customs of the inhabi- 
 tants of Pompeii have been described in these pages. And 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 writing the work almost on the spot, and amidst a popula- 
 tion that still preserve a strong family likeness to their 
 classic forefathers, I could scarcely fail to catch something 
 of those living colors which mere book-study alone would 
 not have sufficed to bestow. It is, I suspect, to this acci- 
 dental advantage that this work is principally indebted for 
 a greater popularity than has hitherto attended the attempts 
 of scholars to create an interest, by fictitious narrative, in the 
 manners and persons of a classic age. Perhaps, too, the 
 writers I allude to, and of whose labors I would speak with 
 the highest respect, did not sufficiently remember that in 
 works of imagination the description of manners, however 
 important as an accessory, must still be subordinate to the 
 vital elements of interest ; namely, plot, character, and passion. 
 And in reviving the ancient shadows they have rather sought 
 occasion to display erudition than to show how the human 
 heart beats the same, whether under the Grecian tunic or 
 the Roman toga. It is this, indeed, which distinguishes 
 the imitators of classic learning from the classic literature 
 itself. For in classic literature there is no want of move- 
 ment and passion, —of all the more animated elements of 
 what we now call Romance. Indeed, romance itself, as 
 we take it from the Middle Ages, owes much to Grecian 
 fable. Many of the adventures of knight-errantry are bor- 
 rowed either from the trials of Ulysses or the achieve- 
 ments of Theseus. And while Homer, yet unrestored to 
 his throne among the poets, was only known to the litera- 
 ture of early chivalry in a spurious or grotesque form, the 
 genius of Gothic fiction was constructing many a tale for 
 Northern wonder from the mutilated fragments of the divine 
 old tale-teller. 
 
 Amongst these losses of the past which we have most to 
 deplore are the old novels or romances for which Miletus was 
 famous. But, judging from all else of Greek literature that 
 is left to us, there can be little doubt that they were well 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 fitted to sustain the attention of lively and impatient audi- 
 ences by the same arts which are necessary to the modern 
 tale-teller: that they could not have failed in variety of 
 incident and surprises of ingenious fancy; in the contrasts 
 of character; and least of all in the delineations of the 
 tender passion, which, however modified in its expression by 
 differences of national habits, forms the main subject of hu- 
 man interest in all the multiform varieties of fictitious narra- 
 tive, — from the Chinese to the Arab, from the Arab to the 
 Scandinavjian,— and which at this day animates the tale of 
 many an itinerant Boccaccio, gathering his spell-bound listen- 
 ers round him, on sunny evenings, by the Sicilian seas. 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 Wook I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Page 
 meoeyo Gentiomen of Pompeii .. 6 «s+ © © © 0 «8 06 « « 8 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Blind Flower-Girl and the Beauty of Fashion. — The Athenian’s 
 Confession. —The Reader’s Introduction to Arbaces of Egypt . . 6 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Parentage of Glaucus.— Description of the Houses of Pompeii. —A 
 
 eM RLCCVOMMMEREC TGS oo! 6 ipl es wee le eel ee 6 LO 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Temple of Isis. —Its Priest. —'The Character of Arbaces develops 
 itself ° e ° ° ° e ° ° e ° ° ® o A . ne os ‘ A ‘ 5 : . 36 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 More of the Flower-Girl. — The Progress of Love. . ...... 45 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Fowler snares again the Bird that had just escaped, and sets his 
 Nets for a new Victim . ., Pan sce Meith aifealitchlre abe ty suas Dip) OG 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Gay Life of the Pompeian ay — A Miniature Likeness of the 
 Roman Baths obs : Mhshiteanteke oer Ua Ra MC ReeN atin ets. | Go 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 Arbaces cogs his Dice with pleasure, and winstheGame ..... 75 
 
xvii CONTENTS. 
 
 Wook II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Page 
 
 “A Flash House” in Pompeii — and the Gentlemen of the Classic Ring 90 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Two Worthies e e e e e e ° e e e ° e . © . e a e e e e 98 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Glaucus makes a Purchase that afterwards costs him dear . .... 103 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Rival of Glaucus presses onward in the Race . . . « « « « ~ 109 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Poor Tortoise. — New changes for Nydia . . . « « « « e « I2i1 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 The Happy Beauty and the Blind Slave .. . . . « « 6 8 « + 127 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Ione entrapped. — The Mouse tries to gnaw the Net . . . - . . . 4183 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 The Solitude and Soliloquy of the Egyptian. — His Character analyzed 138 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 What becomes of Tone in the House of Arbaces. — The First Signal of 
 the Wrath ‘of the’ Dread Boe p20 00 4 re te ioe es veka 
 
 YBook III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Forum of the Pompeians. — The first rude Machinery by which the 
 New Era of the World was wrought . ..-... 4... +: + 160 
 
 CHAPTER IL. 
 The Noonday Excursion on the Campanian Seas . .....~. . 166 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 MDG CONnSTOPALION! ss) 6s si 8 io al is 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Stream of Love runs on, — whither? . . 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 _ Nydia encounters Julia.— Interview of the Heathen Sister and Con- 
 verted Brother. — An Athenian’s notion of Christianity 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Porter. — The Girl.— And the Gladiator. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Dressing-Room of a Pompeian Beauty. — Important Conversation 
 
 between Juliaand Nydia ..... . 
 
 Xix 
 
 185 
 
 196 
 
 203 
 
 210 
 
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 Bulwer Lytton. , Frontispiece 
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THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 Quid sit faturum cras, fuge querere; et 
 Quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro 
 _ Adpone; nec dulces amores 
 Sperne, puer, neque tu choreas. 
 Hor. lib. i. od. ix. 
 
 The future in the morrow shun to seek; 
 Each day that Fate shall give thee, count as gain; 
 Nor spurn, O youth, sweet loves, 
 Nor choral dance and song. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Ho, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to- 
 night?” said a young man of small stature, who wore his 
 tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to 
 be a gentleman and a coxcomb. 
 
 “ Alas, no! dear Clodius; he has not invited me,” replied 
 Diomed, a man of portly frame and of middle age. “By 
 Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they say his suppers are the best 
 in Pompeii.” 
 
 “Pretty well; though there is never enough of wine for me. 
 It is not the old Greek blood that flows in his veins, for he 
 pretends that wine makes him dull the next morning.” 
 
 “There may be another reason for that thrift,” said Diomed, 
 raising his brows. “ With all his conceit and extravagance he 
 is not so rich, I fancy, as he affects to be, and perhaps loves 
 to save his amphore better than his wit.” 
 
4 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ‘‘ An additional reason for supping with him while the ses- 
 terces last. Next year, Diomed, we must find another Glaucus.” 
 
 ‘He is fond of the dice, too, I hear.” 
 
 “He is fond of every pleasure; and while he likes the 
 pleasure of giving suppers, we are all fond of him.” 
 
 “Ha, ha, Clodius, that is well said! Have you ever seen 
 my wine-cellars, by the bye ? ” 
 
 “T think not, my good Diomed.” 
 
 “Well, you must sup with me some evening; I have tolera- 
 ble murenz ! in my reservoir, and I will ask Pansa the edile 
 to meet you.” 
 
 “Oh, no state with me! Persicos odi apparatus, I am easily 
 contented. Well, the day wanes; I am for the baths —and 
 you—” 
 
 “To the questor—business of state—afterwards to the 
 temple of Isis. Vale!” | 
 
 “ An ostentatious, bustling, ill-bred fellow,” muttered Clo- 
 dius to himself, as he sauntered slowly away. “He thinks 
 with his feasts and his wine-cellars to make us forget that he 
 is the son of a freedman; and so he will, when we do him 
 the honor of winning his money: these rich plebeians are a 
 harvest for us spendthrift nobles.” 
 
 Thus soliloquizing, Clodius arrived in the Via Domitiana, 
 which was crowded with passengers and chariots, and exhib- 
 ited all that gay and animated exuberance of life and motion 
 which we find at this day in the streets of Naples. 
 
 The bells of the cars, as they rapidly glided by each other, 
 jingled merrily on the ear, and Clodius, with smiles or nods, 
 claimed familiar acquaintance with whatever equipage was 
 most elegant or fantastic; in fact, no idler was better known 
 in Pompeii. 
 
 “What, Clodius! and how have you slept on your good for- 
 tune ?” cried, in a pleasant and musical voice, a young man 
 in a chariot of the most fastidious and graceful fashion. 
 Upon its surface of bronze were elaborately wrought, in the 
 still exquisite workmanship of Greece, reliefs of the Olympian 
 games; the two horses that drew the car were of the rarest 
 
 1 Murene,—lampreys. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 5 
 
 breed of Parthia; their slender limbs seemed to disdain the 
 ground and court the air, and yet at the slightest touch of 
 the charioteer, who stood behind the young owner of the equi- 
 page, they paused, motionless, as if suddenly transformed into 
 stone, — lifeless, but lifelike, as one of the breathing wonders 
 of Praxiteles. The owner himself was of that slender and 
 beautiful symmetry from which the sculptors of Athens drew 
 - their models; his Grecian origin betrayed itself in his hght 
 but clustering locks and the perfect harmony of his features. 
 He wore no toga, which in the time of the emperors had 
 indeed ceased to be the general distinction of the Romans 
 and was especially ridiculed by the pretenders to fashion, but 
 his tunic glowed in the richest hues of the Tyrian dye, and 
 the fibule, or buckles, by which it was fastened, sparkled with 
 emeralds; around his neck was a chain of gold, which in the 
 middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of a serpent’s 
 head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet 
 ring of elaborate and most exquisite workmanship; the sleeves 
 of the tunic were loose, and fringed at the hand with gold; 
 and across the waist a girdle wrought in arabesque designs, 
 and of the same material as the fringe, served in lieu of pock- 
 ets for the receptacle of the handkerchief and the purse, the 
 stilus and the tablets. 
 
 “My dear Glaucus,” said Clodius, “I rejoice to see that 
 your losses have so little affected your mien. Why, you seem 
 as if you had been inspired by Apollo, and your face shines 
 with happiness like a glory; any one might take you for the 
 winner, and me for the loser.” 
 
 “And what is there in the loss or gain of those dull pieces 
 of metal that should change our spirit, my Clodius? By 
 | Venus! while yet young, we can cover our full locks with 
 chaplets ; while yet the cithara sounds on unsated ears, while 
 yet the smile of Lydia or of Chloe flashes over our veins in 
 which the blood runs so swiftly, so long shall we find delight 
 in the sunny air, and make bald time itself but the treasurer 
 of our joys. You sup with me to-night, you know.” 
 
 “Who ever forgets the invitation of Glaucus!” 
 
 “But which way go you now?” 
 
6 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Why, I thought of visiting the baths; but it wants yet an 
 hour to the usual time.” 
 
 “Well, I will dismiss my chariot and go with you. So, so, 
 my Phylias,” stroking the horse nearest to him, which by a 
 low neigh and with backward ears playfully acknowledged 
 the courtesy; ‘a holiday for you to-day. Is he not handsome, 
 Clodius ? 
 
 “Worthy of Phoebus,” returned the noble parasite, — “or 
 of Glaucus.” 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL AND THE BEAUTY OF FASHION.— 
 THE ATHENIAN’S CONFESSION, — THE READER’S INTRODUC- 
 TION TO ARBACES OF EGYPT. 
 
 TALKING lightly on a thousand matters, the two young men 
 sauntered through the streets; they were now in that quarter 
 which was filled with the gayest shops, their open interiors 
 all and each radiant with the gaudy yet harmonious colors of 
 frescos inconceivably varied in fancy and design. The spark. 
 ling fountains that at every vista threw upwards their grate- 
 ful spray in the summer air; the crowd of passengers, or 
 rather loiterers, mostly clad in robes of the Tyrian dye; 
 the gay groups collected round each more attractive shop; the 
 slaves passing to and fro with buckets of bronze, cast in the 
 most graceful shapes, and borne upon their heads; the country 
 girls stationed at frequent intervals with baskets of blushing 
 fruit, and flowers more alluring to the ancient Italians than to 
 their descendants (with whom, indeed, “ late¢t anguis in herba,’ 
 a disease seems lurking in every violet and rose),! the numer- 
 ous haunts which fulfilled with that idle people the office of 
 cafés and clubs at this day; the shops, where on shelves of 
 marble were ranged the vases of wine and oil, and before 
 whose thresholds, seats, protected from the sun by a purple 
 awning, invited the weary to rest and the indolent to lounge, 
 
 1 See note (a) at the end. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. T 
 
 — made a scene of such glowing and vivacious excitement as 
 might well give the Athenian spirit of Glaucus an excuse for 
 its susceptibility to joy. 
 
 “Talk to me no more of Rome,” said he to Clodius. ‘ Pleas- 
 ure is too stately and ponderous in those mighty walls: even 
 in the precincts of the court, even in the Golden House of 
 _ Nero and the incipient glories of the palace of Titus, there is 
 a certain dulness of magnificence, the eye aches, the spirit 
 is wearied; besides, my Clodius, we are discontented when we 
 compare the enormous luxury and wealth of others with the 
 mediocrity of our own state. But here we surrender our- 
 selves easily to pleasure, and we have the brilliancy of luxury 
 without the lassitude of its pomp.” 
 
 “It was from that feeling that you chose your summer 
 retreat at Pompeii?” 
 
 “Tt was; I prefer it to Baie. I grant the charms of the 
 latter, but I love not the pedants who resort there, and who 
 seem to weigh out their pleasures by the drachm ” 
 
 “Yet you are fond of the learned, too; and as for poetry, 
 why, your house is literally eloquent with Auschylus and 
 Homer, the epic and the drama.” 
 
 “Yes, but those Romans who mimic my Athenian ancestors 
 do everything so heavily. Even in the chase they make their 
 slaves carry Plato with them; and whenever the boar is lost, 
 out they take their books and their papyrus, in order not to 
 ‘ose their time too. When the dancing-girls swim before them 
 
 n all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone of a 
 freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero 
 De Officiis. Unskilful pharmacists! pleasure and study are 
 not elements to be thus mixed together; they must be en- 
 joyed separately: the Romans lose both by this pragmatical 
 affectation of refinement, and prove that they have no souls 
 for either. Oh, my Clodius, how little your countrymen know 
 of the true versatility of a Pericles, of the true witcheries of 
 an Aspasia! It was but the other day that I paid a visit to 
 Pliny ; he was sitting in his summer-house writing, while an 
 unfortunate slave played on the tibia. His nephew (oh, whip 
 me such philosophical coxcombs!) was reading Thucydides’ 
 
8 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 description of the plague, and nodding his conceited little head 
 in time to the music, while his lips were repeating all the 
 loathsome details of that terrible delineation. The puppy 
 saw nothing incongruous in learning at the same time a ditty 
 of love and a description of the plague.” 
 
 “Why, they ave much the same thing,” said Clodius. 
 
 “So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry; but my 
 youth stared me rebukingly in the face, without taking the 
 jest, and answered that it was only the insensate ear that the 
 music pleased, whereas the book (the description of the plague, 
 mind you!) elevated the heart. ‘Ah!’ quoth the fat uncle, 
 wheezing, ‘my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the 
 utile with the dulce.’ O Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve! 
 While I was there, they came to tell the boy-sophist that 
 his favorite freedman was just dead of a fever. ‘Inexorable 
 death!’ cried he; ‘ get me my Horace. How beautifully the 
 sweet poet consoles us for these misfortunes!’ Oh, can these 
 men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with the senses. How 
 rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of 
 genius, — he wants its bones and flesh.” 
 
 Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks 
 on his countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, 
 partly because he was by nature a parasite, and partly because 
 it was the fashion among the dissolute young Romans to affect 
 a little contempt for the very birth which in reality made 
 them so arrogant; it was the mode to imitate the Greeks, and 
 yet to laugh at their own clumsy imitation. 
 
 Thus conversing, their steps were arrested by a crowd gath- 
 ered round an open space where three streets met; and, just 
 where the porticos of a light and graceful temple threw their 
 shade, there stood a young girl, with a flower-basket on her 
 right arm, and a small three-stringed instrument of music in 
 the left hand, to whose low and soft tones she was modulating 
 a wild and half-barbaric air. At every pause in the music she 
 gracefully waved her flower-basket round, inviting the loiterers 
 to buy; and many a sesterce was showered into the basket, 
 either in compliment to the music or in compassion to the 
 songstress, —for she was blind. 
 
 ee ee ee o ad 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 9 
 
 “Tt is my poor Thessalian,” said Glaucus, stopping; “TI 
 have not seen her since my return to Pompeii. Hush! her 
 voice is sweet; let us listen.” 
 
 THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL’S SONG. 
 
 I. 
 
 Buy my flowers —oh, buy, I pray! 
 The blind girl comes from afar ; 
 If the earth be as fair as I hear them say, 
 These flowers her children are! 
 Do they her beauty keep ? 
 They are fresh from her lap, I know; 
 For I caught them fast asleep 
 In her arms an hour ago. 
 With the air which is her breath — 
 Her soft and delicate breath — 
 Over them murmuring low! 
 
 On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet, 
 And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet. 
 For she weeps — that gentle mother weeps 
 (As morn and night her watch she keeps, 
 With a yearning heart and a passionate on 
 To see the young things grow so fair ; 
 
 She weeps — for love she weeps ; 
 
 And the dews are the tears she weeps 
 
 From the well of a mother’s love! 
 
 II. 
 
 Ye have a world of light, 
 Where love in the loved rejoices ; 
 
 But the blind girl’s home is the House of Night, 
 And its beings are empty voices. 
 
 As one in the realm below, 
 
 I stand by the streams of woe! 
 
 I hear the vain shadows glide, 
 
 I feel their soft breath at my side, 
 And I thirst the loved forms to see, 
 
 And I stretch my fond arms around, 
 
 And I catch but a shapeless sound, 
 For the living are ghosts to me. 
 
10 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Come buy — come buy! 
 Hark! how the sweet things sigh 
 (For they have a voice like ours), 
 “ The breath of the blind girl closes 
 The leaves of the saddeniag roses — 
 We are tender, we sons of light, 
 We shrink from this child of night, 
 From the grasp of the blind girl free us: 
 We yearn for the eyes that see us — 
 We are for night too gay, 
 In your eyes we behold the day — 
 Oh, buy — oh, buy the flowers! ” 
 
 ‘“T must have yon bunch of violets, sweet Nydia,” said 
 Glaucus, pressing through the crowd and dropping a handful 
 of small coins into the basket; ‘‘ your voice is more charming 
 than ever.” 
 
 The blind girl started forward as she heard the Athenian’s 
 voice, then as suddenly paused, while the blood rushed vio- 
 lently over neck, cheek, and temples. 
 
 “So you are returned!” said she in a low voice; and then 
 repeated half to herself, “ Glaucus is returned!” 
 
 “Yes, child, I have not been at Pompeii above a few days. 
 My garden wants your care, as before; you will visit it, I 
 trust, to-morrow. And mind, no garlands at my house shall 
 be woven by any hands but those of the pretty Nydia.” 
 
 Nydia smiled joyously, but did not answer; and Glaucus, 
 placing in his breast the violets he had selected, turned gayly 
 and carelessly from the crowd. 
 
 “So she is a sort of client of yours, this child?” said 
 Clodius. 
 
 “¢ Ay — does she not sing prettily ? She interests me, the 
 poor slave! Besides, she is from the land of the Gods’ hill; 
 Olympus frowned upon her cradle — she is of Thessaly.” 
 
 “The witches’ country.” 
 
 “True: but for my part I find every woman a witch; and 
 at Pompeii, by Venus! the very air seems to have taken a 
 love-philtre, so handsome does every face without a beard 
 seem in my eyes.” 
 
 “ And lo! one of the handsomest in Pompeii, old Diomed’s 
 
 7 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 11 
 
 daughter, the rich Julia!” said Clodius, as a young lady, her 
 
 face covered by her veil, and attended by two female slaves, 
 approached them, on her way to the baths. 
 
 _ Fair Julia, we salute thee!” said Clodius. 
 
 Julia partly raised her veil, so as with some coquetry to 
 display a bold Roman profile, a full dark bright eye, and a 
 cheek over whose natural olive art shed a fairer and softer 
 rose. 
 
 “And Glaucus, too, is returned!” said she, glancing mean- 
 ingly at the Athenian. “Has he forgotten,” she added, in a 
 half-whisper, “ his friends of the last year ?” 
 
 “ Beautiful Julia! even Lethe itself, if it disappear in one 
 part of the earth, rises again in another. Jupiter does not 
 allow us ever to forget for more than a moment; but Venus, 
 more harsh still, vouchsafes not even a moment’s oblivion.” 
 
 “‘Glaucus is never at a loss for fair words.” 
 
 “Who is, when the object of them is so fair?” 
 
 “We shall see you both at my father’s villa soon,” said 
 Julia, turning to Clodius. 
 
 “We will mark the day in which we visit you with a white 
 stone,” answered the gamester. 
 
 Julia dropped her veil, but slowly, so that her last glance 
 rested on the Athenian with affected timidity and real bold- 
 ness; the glance bespoke tenderness and reproach. 
 
 The friends passed on. 
 
 “ Julia is certainly handsome,” said Glaucus. 
 
 “ And last year you would have made that confession in a 
 warmer tone.” 
 
 “True; I was dazzled at the first sight, and mistook fora 
 gem that which was but an artful imitation.” 
 
 “ Nay,” returned Clodius, “all women are the same at heart. 
 Happy he who weds a handsome face and a largedower. What 
 more can he desire ?” 
 
 Glaucus sighed. 
 
 They were now in a street less crowded than the rest, at the 
 end of which they beheld that broad and most lovely sea, which 
 upon those delicious coasts seems to have renounced its pre- 
 rogative of terror, —so soft are the crisping winds that hover 
 
12 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 around its bosom, so glowing and so various are the hues which 
 it takes from the rosy clouds, so fragrant are the perfumes 
 which the breezes from the land scatter over its depths. From 
 such a sea might you well believe that Aphrodite rose to take 
 the empire of the earth. 
 
 “Tt is still early for the bath,” said the Greek, who was the 
 creature of every poetical impulse; “let us wander from the 
 crowded city, and look upon the sea while the noon yet laughs 
 along its billows.” 
 
 “With all my heart,” said Clodius; “and the bay, too, is 
 always the most animated part of the city.” 
 
 Pompeii was the miniature of the civilization of that age. 
 Within the narrow compass of its walls was contained, as it 
 were, a specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power. 
 In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its 
 forum, its theatre, its circus, —in the energy yet corruption, in 
 the refinement yet the vice, of its people, you beheld a model 
 of the whole empire. It was a toy, a plaything, a show-box, in 
 which the gods seemed pleased to keep the representation of 
 the great monarchy of earth, and which they afterwards hid 
 from time to the wonder of posterity; the moral of the maxim 
 that under the sun there is nothing new. 
 
 Crowded in the glassy bay were the vessels of commerce and 
 the gilded galleys for the pleasure of the rich citizens. The 
 boats of the fishermen glided rapidly to and fro; and afar off 
 you saw the tall masts of the fleet under the command of 
 Pliny. Upon the shore sat a Sicilian, who, with vehement 
 gestures and flexile features, was narrating to a group of fisher- 
 men and peasants a strange tale of shipwrecked mariners and 
 friendly dolphins, —just as at this day, in the modern neigh- 
 borhood, you may hear upon the Mole of Naples. 
 
 Drawing his comrade from the crowd, the Greek bent his 
 steps towards a solitary part of the beach, and the two friends, 
 seated on a small crag which rose amidst the smooth pebbles, 
 inhaled the voluptuous and cooling breeze, which, dancing over 
 the waters, kept music with its invisible feet. There was, per- 
 haps, something in the scene that invited them to silence and 
 reverie. Clodius, shading his eyes from the burning sky, was 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 18 
 
 calculating the’gains of the last week; and the Greek, leaning 
 upon his hand, and shrinking not from that sun, — his nation’s 
 tutelary deity, — with whose fluent light of poesy and joy and 
 love his own veins were filled, gazed upon the broad expanse, 
 and envied, perhaps, every wind that bent its pinions towards 
 the shores of Greece. 
 
 “Tell me, Clodius,” said the Greek at last, “hast thou ever 
 _ been in love?” 
 
 ‘Yes, very often.” 
 
 ‘He who has loved often,” answered Glaucus, “has loved 
 never. ‘There is but one Eros, though there are many counter- 
 feits of him.” 
 
 “The counterfeits are not bad little gods, upon the whore 
 answered Clodius. 
 
 “T agree with you,” returned the Greek. “I adore even the 
 shadow of Love; but I adore himself yet more.” 
 
 “ Art thou, then, soberly and earnestly in love? Hast thou 
 that feeling which the poets describe, —a feeling that makes us 
 neglect our suppers, forswear the theatre, and write elegies ? 
 I should never have thought it. You dissemble well.” 
 
 “T am not far gone enough for that,” returned Glaucus, 
 smiling, “or rather I say with Tibullus, — 
 
 ‘He whom Love rules, where’er his path may be, 
 Walks safe and sacred.’ 
 
 In fact, I am not in love; but I could be if there were but 
 occasion to see the object. Eros would light his torch, but the 
 priests have given him no oil.” 
 
 “Shall I guess the object? Is it not Diomed’s daughter ? 
 She adores you, and does not affect to conceal it; and, by 
 Hercules! I say again and again, she is both handsome and 
 rich. She will bind the door-posts of her husband with golden 
 fillets.” 
 
 “No, I do not desire to sell myself. Diomed’s daughter is 
 handsome, I grant; and at one time, had she not been the 
 grandchild of a freedman, I might have— Yet no—she car- 
 ries all her beauty in her face; her manners are not maiden-like, 
 and her mind knows no culture save that of pleasure.” 
 
 ist 
 
14 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “You are ungrateful. Tell me, then, who is the fortunate 
 virgin.” 
 
 “You shall hear, my Clodius. Several months ago I was 
 sojourning at Neapolis,’ a city utterly to my own heart, for it 
 still retains the manners and stamp of its Grecian origin, — 
 and it yet merits the name of Parthenope, from its delicious 
 air and its beautiful shores. One day I entered the temple of 
 Minerva, to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for 
 the city on which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was 
 empty and deserted. The recollections of Athens crowded 
 fast and meltingly upon me; imagining myself still alone in 
 the temple, and absorbed in the earnestness of my devotion, 
 my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, and I wept as I 
 prayed. I was startled in the midst of my devotions, how- 
 ever, bya deep sigh; I turned suddenly round, and just behind 
 me was a female. She had raised her veil also in prayer; and 
 when our eyes met, methought a celestial ray shot from those 
 dark and shining orbs at once into my soul. Never, my Clo- 
 dius, have I seen mortal face more exquisitely moulded: a 
 certain melancholy softened and yet elevated its expression ; 
 that unutterable something which springs from the soul, and 
 which our sculptors have imparted to the aspect of Psyche, 
 gave her beauty I know not what of divine and noble; tears 
 were rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was 
 also of Athenian lineage, and that in my prayer for Athens 
 her heart had responded to mine. I spoke to her, though with 
 a faltering voice. ‘Art thou not, too, Athenian,’ said I, ‘O 
 beautiful virgin?’ At the sound of my voice she blushed, and 
 half drew her veil across her face. ‘My forefathers’ ashes,’ 
 said she, ‘repose by the waters of Ilissus: my birth is of 
 Neapolis; but my heart, as my lineage, is Athenian.’ ‘Let us, 
 then,’ said I, ‘make our offerings together:’ and, as the priest 
 now appeared, we stood side by side while we followed the 
 priest in his ceremonial prayer; together we touched the 
 knees of the goddess; together we laid our olive garlands on 
 the altar. I felt a strange emotion of almost sacred tender- 
 ness at this companionship. We, strangers from a far and 
 
 1 Naples. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 15 
 
 fallen land, stood together and alone in that temple of our 
 country’s deity: was it not natural that my heart should yearn 
 to my countrywoman, for so I might surely call her? I felt 
 as if I had known her for years; and that simple rite seemed, 
 as by a miracle, to operate on the sympathies and ties of time. 
 Silently we left the temple, and I was about to ask her where 
 she dwelt, and if I might be permitted to visit her, when a 
 youth, in whose features there was some kindred resemblance 
 to her own, and who stood upon the steps of the fane, took 
 her by the hand. She turned round and bade me farewell. 
 The crowd separated us: I saw her no more. On reaching 
 my home I found: letters which obliged me to set out for 
 Athens, for my relations threatened me with litigation con- 
 cerning my inheritance. When that suit was happily over, 
 I repaired once more to Neapolis; I instituted inquiries 
 throughout the whole city. I could discover no clew of my 
 lost countrywoman, and, hoping to lose in gayety all remem- 
 brance of that beautiful apparition, I hastened to plunge my- 
 self amidst the luxuries of Pompeii. This is all my history. 
 I do not love, but I remember and regret.” 
 
 As Clodius was about to reply, a slow and stately step ap- 
 proached them, and at the sound it made amongst the pebbles 
 each turned, and each recognized the new-comer. 
 
 It was a man who had scarcely reached his fortieth year, of 
 tall stature, and of a thin but nervous and sinewy frame. His 
 skin, dark and bronzed, betrayed his Eastern origin; and his 
 features had something Greek in their outline (especially in 
 the chin, the lip, and the brow), save that the nose was some- 
 what raised and aquiline, and the bones, hard and visible, 
 forbade that fleshy and waving contour which on the Grecian 
 physiognomy preserved even in manhood the round and beau- 
 tiful curves of youth. His eyes, large and black as the deep- 
 est night, shone with no varying and uncertain lustre; a deep, 
 thoughtful, and half-melancholy calm seemed unalterably fixed 
 in their majestic and commanding gaze. His step and mien 
 were peculiarly sedate and lofty, and something foreign in the 
 fashion and the sober hues of his sweeping garments added to 
 the impressive effect of his quiet countenance and stately 
 
16 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 form. Each of the young men, in saluting the new-comer, 
 made mechanically, and with care to conceal it from him, a 
 slight gesture or sign with their fingers; for Arbaces, the 
 Egyptian, was supposed to possess the fatal gift of the evil eye. 
 
 “The scene must, indeed, be beautiful,” said Arbaces, with 
 a cold though courteous smile, “ which draws the gay Clodius, 
 and Glaucus the all-admired, from the crowded thoroughfares 
 of the city.” 
 
 “Ts nature ordinarily so unattractive ?” asked the Greek. 
 
 “To the dissipated — yes.” 
 
 “An austere reply, but scarcely a wise one. Pleasure 
 delights in contrasts; it is from dissipation that we learn to 
 enjoy solitude, and from solitude dissipation.” 
 
 “So think the young philosophers of the Garden,” replied 
 the Egyptian; “they mistake lassitude for meditation, and 
 imagine that, because they are sated with others, they know 
 the delight of loneliness. But not in such jaded bosoms can 
 Nature awaken that enthusiasm which alone draws from her 
 chaste reserve all her unspeakable beauty: she demands from 
 you, not the exhaustion of passion, but all that fervor from 
 which you only seek, in adoring her, a release. When, young 
 Athenian, the moon revealed herself in visions of light to 
 Endymion it was after a day passed, not amongst the feverish 
 haunts of men, but on the still mountains and in the solitary 
 valleys of the hunter.” 
 
 “ Beautiful simile!” cried Glaucus; “most unjust applica- 
 tion! Exhaustion! that word is for age, not youth. By me, 
 at least, one moment of satiety has never been known.” 
 
 Again the Egyptian smiled, but his smile was cold and 
 blighting, and even the unimaginative Clodius froze beneath 
 its light. He did not, however, reply to the passionate ex- 
 clamation of Glaucus; but after a pause he said, in a soft 
 and melancholy voice, — 
 
 “ After all, you do right to enjoy the hour while it smiles 
 for you; the rose soon withers, the perfume soon exhales. 
 And we, O Glaucus! strangers in the land, and far from our 
 fathers’ ashes, what is there left for us but pleasure or regret, 
 — for you the first, perhaps for me the last!” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 17 
 
 The bright eyes of the Greek were suddenly suffused with 
 tears. “Ah, speak not, Arbaces,” he cried, — “speak not of 
 our ancestors. Let us forget that there were ever other 
 liberties than those of Rome! And Glory! — oh, vainly 
 would we call her ghost from the fields of Marathon and 
 Thermopyle !” 
 
 Thy heart rebukes thee while thou speakest,” said the 
 Keyptian; “and in thy gayeties this night thou wilt be more 
 mindful of Leena! than of Lais. Vale!” 
 
 Thus saying, he gathered his robe around him and slowly 
 Swept away. 
 
 “T breathe more freely,” said Clodius. “Imitating the 
 Egyptians, we sometimes introduce a skeleton at our feasts. 
 In truth, the presence of such an Egyptian as yon gliding 
 shadow were spectre enough to sour the richest grape of 
 the Falernian.” 
 
 “Strange man!” said Glaucus, musingly; “yet dead though 
 he seem to pleasure, and cold to the objects of the world, 
 scandal belies him, or his house and his heart could tell a 
 different tale.” 
 
 *‘ Ah! there are whispers of other orgies than those of Osiris 
 in his gloomy mansion. He is rich, too, they say. Can we 
 not get him amongst us, and teach him the charms of dice ? 
 Pleasure of pleasures! hot fever of hope and fear! inexpres- 
 sible, unjaded passion! how fiercely beautiful thou art, O 
 Gaming!” 
 
 “Inspired — inspired!” cried Glaucus, laughing; “the ora- 
 cle speaks poetry in Clodius. What miracle next!” 
 
 1 Lezna, the heroic mistress of Aristogiton, when put to the torture, bit 
 out her tongue, that the pain might not induce her to betray the conspiracy 
 
 against the sons of Pisistratus. The statue of a lioness, erected in her honor, 
 was to be seen at Athens in the time of Pausanias, = 
 
 VOL. 1.— 2 
 
18 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PARENTAGE OF GLAUCUS.— DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSES OF 
 POMPEII.— A CLASSIC REVEL. 
 
 HEAVEN had given to Glaucus every blessing but one: it 
 had given him beauty, health, fortune, genius, illustrious de- 
 scent, a heart of fire, a mind of poetry; but it had denied him 
 the heritage of freedom. He was born in Athens, the subject 
 of Rome. Succeeding early to an ample inheritance, he had 
 indulged that inclination for travel so natural to the young, 
 and had drunk deep of the intoxicating draught of pleasure 
 amidst the gorgeous luxuries of the imperial court. 
 
 He was an Alcibiades without ambition. He was what a 
 man of imagination, youth, fortune, and talents readily be- 
 comes when you deprive him of the inspiration of glory. His 
 house at Rome was the theme of the debauchees, but also of 
 the lovers of art; and the sculptors of Greece delighted to task 
 their skill in adorning the porticos and exedrew of an Athe- 
 nian. His retreat at Pompeii, —alas! the colors are faded 
 now, the walls stripped of their paintings! — its main beauty, 
 its elaborate finish of grace and ornament, is gone; yet when 
 first given once more to the day, what eulogies, what wonder, 
 did its minute and glowing decorations create, —its paint- 
 ings, its mosaics! Passionately enamoured of poetry and the 
 drama, which recalled to Glaucus the wit and the heroism of 
 his race, that fairy mansion was adorned with representations 
 of Aischylus and Homer. And antiquaries, who resolve taste 
 to a trade, have turned the patron to the professor, and still 
 (though the error is now acknowledged) they style in custom, 
 as they first named in mistake, the disburied house of the 
 Athenian Glaucus “THE HOUSE OF THE DRAMATIC POET.” 
 
 Previous to our description of this house, it may be as well 
 to convey to the reader a general notion of the houses of 
 Pompeii, which he will find to resemble strongly the plans of 
 Vitruvius; but with all those differences in detail, of caprice 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 19 
 
 and taste, which being natural to mankind have always puz- 
 zled antiquaries. We shall endeavor to make this description 
 as clear and unpedantic as possible. 
 
 You enter, then, usually by a small entrance-passage (called 
 vestibulum), into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently 
 without) the ornament of columns; around three sides of 
 this hall are doors communicating with several bedchambers 
 (among which is the porter’s), the best of these being usually 
 appropriated to country visitors. At the extremity of the 
 hall, on either side to the right and left, if the house is large, 
 there are two small recesses, rather than chambers, generally 
 devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the 
 tessellated pavement of the hall is invariably a square, shallow 
 reservoir for rain-water (classically termed impluviwm), which 
 was admitted by an aperture in the roof above; the said aper- 
 ture being covered at will byanawning. Near this impluvium, 
 which had a peculiar sanctity in the eyes ef the ancients, were 
 sometimes (but at Pompeii more rarely than at Rome) placed 
 images of the household gods. ‘The hospitable hearth, often 
 mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated to the Lares, 
 was at Pompeii almost invariably formed by a movable brazier ; 
 while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was 
 deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened 
 by bands of bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon 
 a stone pedestal so firmly as to defy the attempts of any 
 robber to detach it from its position. It is supposed that this 
 chest was the money-box, or coffer, of the master of the house; 
 though as no money has been found in any of the chests 
 discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes 
 rather designed for ornament than use. 
 
 In this hall (or atriwm, to speak classically) the clients and 
 visitors of inferior rank were usually received. In the houses 
 of the more “respectable,” an atriensis, or slave peculiarly 
 devoted to the service of the hall, was invariably retained, 
 and his rank among his fellow-slaves was high and important. 
 The reservoir in the centre must have been rather a dangerous 
 ornament; but the centre of the hall was like the grass-plot of 
 a college, and interdicted to the passers to and fro, who found 
 
20 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 ample space in the margin. Right opposite the entrance, at 
 the other end of the hall, was an apartment (¢adlinwm), in 
 which the pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, 
 and the walls covered with elaborate paintings. Here were 
 usually kept the records of the family, or those of any public 
 office that had been filled by the owner: on one side of this 
 saloon, if we may so call it, was often a dining-room, or ¢77- 
 clinium ; on the other side, perhaps, what we should now term 
 a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were deemed 
 most rare and costly; and invariably a small passage for the 
 slaves to cross to the farther parts of the house, without pass- 
 ing the apartments thus mentioned. These rooms all opened 
 on a square or oblong colonnade, technically termed peristyle. 
 If the house was small, its boundary ceased with this colon- 
 nade; and in that case its centre, however diminutive, was 
 ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a garden, and 
 adorned with vases of flowers placed upon pedestals: while 
 under the colonnade, to the right and left, were doors admit- 
 ting to bedrooms,' to a second ¢riclinium, or eating-room (for 
 the ancients generally appropriated two rooms at least to that 
 purpose, one for summer, and one for winter —or, perhaps, 
 one for ordinary, the other for festive, occasions); and if the 
 owner affected letters, a cabinet, dignified by the name of 
 library, — for a very small room was sufficient to contain the 
 few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable 
 collection of books. 
 
 At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Sup- 
 posing the house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, 
 and the centre thereof was not in that case a garden, but 
 might be perhaps adorned with a fountain, or basin for fish; 
 and at its end, exactly opposite to the tablinum, was generally 
 another eating-room, on either side of which were bedrooms, 
 and perhaps a picture-saloon, or pinacotheca.*, These apart- 
 ments communicated again with a square or oblong space, 
 
 1 The Romans had bedrooms appropriated not only to the sleep of night, 
 but also to the day siesta (cubicula diurna). 
 
 2 In the stately palaces of Rome, this picture-room generally communi- 
 cated with the atrium. . 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETL. 21 
 
 usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peri- 
 style, and very much resembling the peristyle, only usually 
 longer. This was the proper viridarium, or garden, being 
 commonly adorned with a fountain, or statues, and a profusion 
 of gay flowers; at its extreme end was the gardener’s house; 
 on either side, beneath the colonnade, were sometimes, if the 
 size of the family required it, additional rooms. 
 
 At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of impor- 
 tance, being built only above a small part of the house, and 
 containing rooms for the slaves; differing in this respect from 
 the more magnificent edifices of Rome, which generally con- 
 tained the principal eating-room (or cenaculum) on the second 
 floor. The apartments themselves were ordinarily of small 
 size; for in those delightful climes they received any extraor- 
 dinary number of visitors in the peristyle (or portico), the hall, 
 or the garden; and even their banquet-rooms, however elabo- 
 rately adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were 
 of diminutive proportions; for the intellectual ancients, being 
 fond of society, not of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine 
 at a time, so that large dinner-rooms were not so necessary 
 with them as with us.!_ But the suite of rooms, seen at once 
 from the entrance, must have had a very imposing effect: you 
 beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted —the tabli- 
 num — the graceful peristyle, and (if the house extended far- 
 ther) the opposite banquet-room and the garden, which closed 
 the view with some gushing fount or marble statue. 
 
 The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pom- 
 peian houses, which resembled in some respects the Grecian, 
 but mostly the Roman fashion of domestic architecture. In 
 almost every house there is some difference in detail from the 
 rest, but the principal outline is the same in all. In all you 
 find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle, communicating 
 with each other; in all you find the walls richly painted; and 
 in all the evidence of a people fond of the refining elegances 
 of life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in decora- 
 tion is, however, questionable: they were fond of the gaudiest 
 
 1 When they entertained very large parties, the feast was usually served 
 in the hall. 
 
22 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 colors, of fantastic designs ; they often painted the lower half 
 of their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncolored; 
 and where the garden was small, its wall was frequently 
 tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating trees, birds, 
 temples, etc., in perspective—a meretricious delusion which 
 the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted, with a com- 
 placent pride in its ingenuity. 
 
 But the house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest, 
 and yet one of the most adorned and finished of all the pri- 
 vate mansions of Pompeii: it would be a model at this day 
 for the house of “a single man in Mayfair,” —the envy and 
 despair of the ccelibian purchasers of buhl and marquetry. 
 
 You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of 
 which is the image of a dog in mosaic, with the well-known 
 “ Cave canem,” or, “ Beware the dog.” On either side is a 
 chamber of some size; for the interior part of the house not 
 being large enough to contain the two great divisions of pri- 
 vate and public apartments, these two rooms were set apart 
 for the reception of visitors who neither by rank nor famil- 
 iarity were entitled to admission into the penetralia of the 
 mansion. 
 
 Advancing up the vestibule you enter an atrium, that 
 when first discovered was rich in paintings, which in point of 
 expression would scarcely disgrace a Raphael. You may 
 see them now transplanted to the Neapolitan Museum ; 
 they are still the admiration of connoisseurs, — they depict 
 the parting of Achilles and Briseis. Who does not ac- 
 knowledge the force, the vigor, the beauty employed in 
 delineating the forms and faces of Achilles and the im- 
 mortal slave ? 
 
 On one side the atrium, a small staircase admitted to the 
 apartments for the slaves on the second floor; there also were 
 two or three small bedrooms, the walls of which portrayed the 
 rape of Europa, the battle of the Amazons, etc. 
 
 You now enter the tablinum, across which, at either end, 
 hung rich draperies of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn. On 
 the walls was depicted a poet reading his verses to his 
 
 1 The tablinum was also secured at pleasure by sliding-doors. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 23 
 
 friends; and in the pavement was inserted a small and most 
 exquisite mosaic, typical of the instructions given by the 
 director of the stage to his comedians. 
 
 You passed through this saloon and entered the peristyle; 
 and here (as I have said before was usually the case with the 
 smaller houses of Pompeii) the mansion ended. From each 
 of the seven columns that adorned this court hung festoons 
 of garlands: the centre, supplying the place of a garden, 
 bloomed with the rarest flowers placed in vases of white mar- 
 ble, that were supported on pedestals. At the left hand of 
 this small garden was a diminutive fane, resembling one of 
 those small chapels placed at the side of roads in Catholic 
 countries, and dedicated to the Penates; before it stood a 
 bronzed tripod: to the left of the colonnade were two small 
 cubicula, or bedrooms; to the right was the trichnium, in 
 which the guests were now assembled. 
 
 This room is usually termed by the antiquaries of Naples 
 “The Chamber of Leda;” and in the beautiful work of Sit 
 William Gell, the reader will find an engraving from that 
 most delicate and graceful painting of Leda presenting her 
 new-born to her husband, from which the room derives its 
 name. This charming apartment opened upon the fragrant 
 garden. Round the table of citrean! wood, highly polished 
 and delicately wrought with silver arabesques, were placed 
 the three couches, which were yet more common at Pompeii 
 than the semicircular seat that had grown lately into fashion 
 at Rome; and on these couches of bronze, studded with 
 richer metals, were laid thick quiltings covered with elaborate 
 broidery, and yielding luxuriously to the pressure. 
 
 “Well, I must own,” said the edile Pansa, “that your 
 house, though scarcely larger than a case for one’s fibule, is 
 a gem of its kind. How beautifully painted is that parting 
 of Achilles and Briseis! —what a style!—what heads !— 
 what a—hem!” 
 
 “Praise from Pansa is indeed valuable on such subjects,” 
 
 1 The most valued wood,—not the modern citron-tree. My learned 
 
 friend, Mr. W. S. Landor, conjectures it with much plausibility to have 
 been mahogany. . 
 
24 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 said Clodius, gravely. ‘“ Why, the paintings on dis walls!— 
 Ah, there is, indeed, the hand of a Zeuxis!” | 
 
 “You flatter me, my Clodius, indeed you do,” quoth the 
 eedile, who was celebrated through Pompeii for having the 
 worst paintings in the world; for he was patriotic, and pat- 
 ronized none but Pompeians. “You flatter me; but there is 
 something pretty — Aidepol! yes —in the colors, to say noth- 
 ing of the design; and then for the kitchen, my friends — 
 ah! that was all my fancy.” 
 
 “What is the design?” said Glaucus. “I have not yet 
 seen your kitchen, though I have often witnessed the excel- 
 lence of its cheer.” 
 
 “A cook, my Athenian, —a cook sacrificing the trophies of 
 his skill on the altar of Vesta, with a beautiful murena (taken 
 from the life) on a spit at a distance; there is some inven- 
 tion there !” 
 
 At that instant the slaves appeared, bearing a tray covered 
 with the first preparative initia of the feast. Amidst delicious 
 figs, fresh herbs strewed with snow, anchovies, and eggs, were 
 ranged small cups of diluted wine sparingly mixed with honey. 
 As these were placed on the table, young slaves bore round to 
 each of the five guests (for there were no more) the silver 
 basin of perfumed water, and napkins edged with a purple 
 fringe. But the eedile ostentatiously drew forth his own nap- 
 kin, which was not, indeed, of so fine a linen, but in which 
 the fringe was twice as broad, and wiped his hands with the 
 parade of a man who felt he was calling for admiration. 
 
 “ A splendid mappa that of yours,” said Clodius; “why, the 
 fringe is as broad as a girdle!” 
 
 “ A trifle, my Clodius, a trifle! They tell me this stripe is 
 the latest fashion at Rome; but Glaucus attends to these 
 things more than I.” 
 
 ‘Be propitious, O Bacchus!” said Glaucus, inclining rever- 
 entially to a beautiful image of the god placed in the centre 
 of the table, at the corners of which stood the Lares and 
 the salt-holders. The guests followed the prayer, and then, 
 sprinkling the wine on the table, they performed the wonted 
 libation. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETIL. 25 
 
 This over, the convivialists reclined themselves on the 
 couches, and the business of the hour commenced. 
 
 “May this cup be my last,” said the young Sallust, as the 
 table, cleared of its first stimulants, was now loaded with the 
 substantial part of the entertainment, and the ministering 
 slave poured forth to him a brimming cyathus, — “May this 
 
 cup be my last, but it is the best wine I have drunk at 
 Pompeii !” 
 
 “Bring hither the amphora,” said Glaucus, “and read its 
 date and its character.” 
 
 The slave hastened to inform the party that the scroll fas- 
 tened to the cork betokened its birth from Chios, and its age 
 a ripe fifty years. 
 
 ‘How deliciously the snow has cooled it!” said Pansa. 
 “Tt is just enough.” 
 
 ‘Tt is like the experience of a man who has cooled his pleas- 
 ures sufficiently to give them a double zest,” exclaimed Sallust. 
 
 “Tt is like a woman’s ‘No,’” added Glaucus: “it cools but 
 to inflame the more.” 
 
 “When is our next wild-beast fight?” said Clodius to 
 Pansa. 
 
 “Tt stands fixed for the ninth ide of August,” answered 
 Pansa: “on the day after the Vulcanalia; we have a most 
 lovely young lion for the occasion.” 
 
 “Whom shall we get for him to eat?” asked Clodius. 
 “ Alas! there is a great scarcity of criminals. You must 
 positively find some innocent or other to condemn to the lion, 
 Pansa.” 
 
 “Indeed, I have thought very seriously about it of late,” 
 replied the edile, gravely. “It was a most infamous law, that 
 which forbade us to send our own slaves to the wild beasts. 
 Not to let us do what we hke with our own, that’s what I call 
 an infringement on property itself.” 
 
 “Not so in the good old days of the Republic,” sighed 
 Sallust. 
 
 “ And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a dis- 
 appointment to the poor people. How they do love to see a 
 good tough battle between a man and a lion; and all this inno- 
 
26 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 cent pleasure they may lose (if the gods don’t send us a good 
 criminal soon) from this cursed law!” 
 
 “What can be worse policy,” said Clodius, sententiously, 
 “than to interfere with the manly amusements of the people?” 
 
 “ Well, thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at 
 present,” said Sallust. 
 
 “He was indeed a tyrant; he shut up our amphitheatre for 
 ten years.” 
 
 “T wonder it did not create a rebellion,” said Sallust. 
 
 “Tt very nearly did,” returned Pansa, with his mouth full of 
 wild boar. 
 
 Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a 
 flourish of flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish. 
 
 “Ah, what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my 
 Glaucus ?” cried the young Sallust, with sparkling eyes. 
 
 Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life 
 like eating; perhaps he had exhausted all the others: yet 
 had he some talent, and an excellent heart —as far as it went. 
 
 “T know its face, by Pollux!” cried Pansa. “It is an Am- 
 bracian kid! Ho! [snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the 
 slaves] we must prepare a new libation in honor to the new- 
 comer.” 
 
 “T had hoped,” said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, “to 
 have procured you some oysters from Britain; but the winds 
 that were so cruel to Cesar have forbid us the oysters.” 
 
 “ Are they in truth so delicious ?” asked Lepidus, loosening 
 to a yet more luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic. 
 
 “Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the 
 flavor; they want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. 
 But at Rome no supper is complete without them.” 
 
 “'The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all,” 
 said Sallust. “They produce an oyster.” 
 
 “T wish they would produce us a gladiator,” said the edile, 
 whose provident mind was musing over the wants of the am- 
 phitheatre. 
 
 “By Pallas!” cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned 
 his streaming locks with a new chaplet, “I love these wild 
 spectacles well enough when beast fights beast; but when a 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 27 
 
 man, one with bones and blood like ours, is coldly put on the 
 arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too horrid. I 
 sicken; I gasp for breath; I long to rush and defend him. 
 The yells of the populace seem to me more dire than the 
 voices of the Furies chasing Orestes. I rejoice that there is so 
 little chance of that bloody exhibition for our next show.” 
 
 The edile shrugged his shoulders. The young Sallust, who 
 was thought the best-natured man in Pompeii, stared in sur- 
 prise. The graceful Lepidus, who rarely spoke for fear of 
 disturbing his features, ejaculated “Hercle!” The parasite 
 Clodius muttered “ Aidepol!” and the sixth banqueter, who 
 was the umbra of Clodius,! and whose duty it was to echo his 
 richer friend, when he could not praise him, — the parasite of 
 @ parasite, — muttered also “ Aldepol !” 
 
 “Well, you Italians are used to these spectacles; we Greeks 
 are more merciful. Ah, shade of Pindar! the rapture of a _ 
 true Grecian game, the emulation of man against man, the 
 generous strife, the half-mournful triumph, so proud to con- 
 tend with a noble foe, so sad to see him overcome! But ye 
 understand me not.” 
 
 “The kid is excellent,” said Sallust. The slave, whose duty 
 it was to carve, and who valued himself on his science, had 
 just performed that office on the kid to the sound of music, his 
 knife keeping time, beginning with a low tenor, and accom- 
 plishing the arduous feat amidst a magnificent diapason. 
 
 “Your cook is, of course, from Sicily ?” said Pansa. 
 
 “Yes, of Syracuse.” 
 
 “T will play you for ae ” said Clodius. “ We will have a 
 game between the courses.’ 
 
 “ Better that sort of game, certainly, than a beast-fight; but 
 I cannot stake my Sicilian: you have nothing so precious to 
 stake me in return.” 
 
 “My Phillida, —my beautiful dancing-girl!” 
 
 “T never buy women,” said the Greek, carelessly rearranging 
 his chaplet. 
 
 The musicians, who were stationed in the portico without, 
 had commenced their office with the kid; they now directed 
 
 1 See note (d) at the end. : 
 
28 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 the melody into a more soft, a more gay, yet it may be a more 
 intellectual strain; and they chanted that song of Horace 
 beginning “ Persicos odi,” etc., so impossible to translate, and 
 which they imagined applcable to a feast that, effeminate as 
 it seems to us, was simple enough for the gorgeous revelry of 
 the time. We are witnessing the domestic, and not the princely 
 feast, — the entertainment of a gentleman, not an emperor ora 
 senator. 
 
 “Ah, good old Horace!” said Sallust, compassionately ; 
 “he sang well of feasts and girls, but not like our modern 
 poets.” 
 
 “The immortal Fulvius, for instance,” said Clodius. 
 
 “Ah, Fulvius, the immortal!” said the umbra. 
 
 “And Spurena; and Caius Mutius, who wrote three epics 
 in a year—could Horace do that, or Virgil either?” said 
 Lepidus. “Those old poets all fell into the mistake of copy- 
 ing sculpture instead of painting. Simplicity and repose, — 
 that was their notion; but we moderns have fire, and passion, 
 and energy: we never sleep, we imitate the colors of paint- 
 ing, its life, and its action. Immortal Fulvius!” 
 
 “ By the way,” said Sallust, “have you seen the new ode by 
 Spurena, in honor of our Egyptian Isis? It is magnificent, — 
 the true religious fervor.” 
 
 ‘“‘Tsis seems a favorite divinity at Pompeii,” said Glaucus. 
 
 “Yes,” said Pansa, “she is exceedingly in repute just at 
 this moment; her statue has been uttering the most remark- 
 able oracles. I am not superstitious, but I must confess that 
 she has more than once assisted me materially in my magis- 
 tracy with her advice. Her priests are so pious too; none of 
 your gay, none of your proud ministers of Jupiter and For- 
 tune: they walk barefoot, eat no meat, and pass the greater 
 part of the night in solitary devotion!” 
 
 “An example to our other priesthoods, indeed! Jupiter’s 
 temple wants reforming sadly,” said Lepidus, who was a great 
 reformer for all but himself. 
 
 “They say that Arbaces the Egyptian has imparted some 
 most solemn mysteries to the priests of Isis,’’ observed Sallust. 
 “He boasts his descent from the race of Rameses, and de- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 29 
 
 clares that in his family the secrets of remotest antiquity are 
 treasured.” 
 
 “He certainly possesses the gift of the evil eye,” said 
 Clodius. “If I ever come upon that Medusa front without 
 the previous charm, I am sure to lose a favorite horse, or throw 
 the canes} nine times running.” 
 
 “The last would indeed be a miracle!” said Sallust, gravely. 
 
 ‘Flow mean you, Sallust?” returned the gamester, with a 
 flushed brow. : 
 
 “JT mean, what you would leave me if I played often with 
 you; and that is — nothing.” 
 
 Clodius answered only by a smile of disdain. 
 
 “If Arbaces were not so rich,” said Pansa, with a stately 
 air, “I should stretch my authority a little, and inquire into 
 the truth of the report which calls him an astrologer and a 
 sorcerer. Agrippa, when edile of Rome, banished all such 
 terrible citizens. But a rich man— it is the duty of an edile 
 to protect the rich!” 
 
 “ What think you of this new sect, which I am told has even 
 a few proselytes in Pompeii, these followers of the Hebrew 
 God — Christus ?” 
 
 “Oh, mere speculative visionaries,” said Clodius; “they 
 have not a single gentleman amongst them; their proselytes 
 are poor, insignificant, ignorant people !” 
 
 “ Who ought, however, to be crucified for their blasphemy,” 
 said Pansa, with vehemence; “they deny Venus and Jove: 
 Nazarene is but another name for atheist. Let me catch them, 
 that’s all!” 
 
 The second course was gone; the feasters fell back on their 
 couches ; there was a pause while they listened to the soft voices 
 of the South, and the music of the Arcadian reed. Glaucus 
 was the most rapt and the least inclined to break the silence, 
 but Clodius began already to think that they wasted time. 
 
 ““ Bene vobis / (your health!) my Glaucus,” said he, quaffing 
 a cup to each letter of the Greek’s name, with the ease of a 
 practised drinker. “Will you not be avenged on your ill 
 fortune of yesterday? See, the dice court us.” 
 
 1 Canes, or Canicule, the lowest throw at dice. 
 
30 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETL. 
 
 “ As you will,” said Glaucus. 
 
 “The dice in summer, and I an edile!”? said Pansa, magis- 
 terially ; “it is against all law.” 
 
 “ Not in your presence, grave Pansa,” returned Clodius, rat- 
 tling the dice in a long box; “your presence restrains all 
 license; it is not the thing, but the excess of the thing, that 
 hurts.” 
 
 «What wisdom!” muttered the umbra. 
 
 ‘Well, I will look another way,” said the eedile. 
 
 “Not yet, good Pansa; let us wait till we have supped,” 
 said Glaucus. 
 
 Clodius reluctantly yielded, concealing his vexation with a 
 yawn. 
 
 “He gapes to devour the gold,” whispered Lepidus to Sallust, 
 in a quotation from the Aulularia of Plautus. 
 
 “Ah! how well I know these polypi, who hold all they 
 touch,” answered Sallust, in the same tone and out of the same 
 play. 
 
 The third course, consisting of a variety of fruits, pistachio 
 nuts, sweetmeats, tarts, and confectionery tortured into a 
 thousand fantastic and airy shapes, was now placed upon the 
 table ; and the ministri, or attendants, also set there the wine 
 (which had hitherto been handed round to the guests) in large 
 jugs of glass, each bearing upon it the schedule of its age and 
 quality. 
 
 “ Taste this Lesbian, my Pansa,” said Sallust; “it is 
 excellent.” 
 
 “Tt is not very old,” said Glaucus, “but it has been made 
 precocious, like ourselves, by being put to the fire: the wine 
 to the flames of Vulcan; we to those of his wife, to whose 
 honor I pour this cup.” 
 
 “Tt is delicate,” said Pansa, “but there is perhaps the least 
 particle too much of rosin in its flavor.” 
 
 “What a beautiful cup!” cried Clodius, taking up one of 
 transparent crystal, the handles of which were wrought with 
 gems and twisted in the shape of serpents, the favorite fashion 
 at Pompeii. 
 
 1 See note (c) at the end. 
 
THE. LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 31 
 
 “This ring,” said Glaucus, taking a costly jewel from the 
 first joint of his finger and hanging it on the handle, “ gives it 
 a richer show, and renders it less unworthy of thy acceptance, 
 my Clodius, on whom may the gods bestow health and fortune, 
 long and oft, to crown it to the brim!” 
 
 “ You are too generous, Glaucus,” said the gamester, hand- 
 ing the cup to his slave; “but your love gives it a double 
 value.” 
 
 “This cup to the Graces!” said Pansa, and he thrice emp- 
 tied his calyx. The guests followed his example. 
 
 “We have appointed no director to the feast,” cried Sallust. 
 
 “Let us throw for him, then,” said Clodius, rattling the 
 dice-box. 
 
 “Nay,” cried Glaucus, “no cold and trite director for us; 
 no dictator of the banquet; no rex convivii. Have not the 
 Romans sworn never to obey a king? Shall we be less free 
 than your ancestors? Ho, musicians! let us have the song I 
 composed the other night: it has a verse on this subject, ‘ The 
 Bacchie Hymn of the Hours.’ ” 
 
 The musicians struck their instruments to a wild Ionie air, 
 whilst the youngest voices in the band chanted forth, in Greek 
 words, as numbers, the following strain : — 
 
 THE EVENING HYMN OF THE HOURS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Through the summer day, through the weary day, 
 We have glided long ; 
 Ere we speed to the Night through her portals gray, 
 Hail us with song! 
 With song, with song, 
 With a bright and joyous song ; 
 Such as the Cretan maid, 
 While the twilight made her bolder, 
 Woke, high through the ivy shade, 
 When the wine-god first consoled her. 
 From the hush’d, low-breathing skies, 
 Half-shut look’d their starry eyes, 
 And all around, 
 With a loving sound, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 The Agean waves were creeping: 
 On her lap lay the lynx’s head ; 
 Wild thyme was her bridal bed; 
 And aye through each tiny space, 
 
 In the green vine’s green embrace, 
 The Fauns were slyly peeping : 
 The Fauns, the prying Fauns, 
 The arch, the laughing Fauns, — 
 The Fauns were slyly peeping! 
 
 ats 
 
 Flagging and faint are we 
 With our ceaseless flight, 
 And dull shall our journey be 
 Through the realm of night. 
 Bathe us, oh, bathe our weary wings, 
 In the purple wave, as it freshly springs 
 To your cups from the fount of light — 
 From the fount of light —from the fount of light; 
 For there, when the sun has gone down in night, 
 There in the bowl we find him. 
 The grape is the well of that summer sun, 
 Or rather the stream that he gazed upon, 
 ‘Till he left in truth, like the Thespian youth,! 
 His soul, as he gazed, behind him. 
 
 III. 
 
 A cup to Jove, and a cup to Love, 
 And a cup to the son of Maia ; 
 And honor with three, the band-zone free, 
 The band of the bright Aglaia. 
 But since every bud in the wreath of pleasure 
 Ye owe to the sister Hours, 
 No stinted cups, in a formal measure, 
 The Bromian law makes ours. 
 He honors us most who gives us most, 
 And boasts, with a Bacchanal’s honest boast, 
 He never will count the treasure. 
 Fastly we fleet, then seize our wings, 
 And plunge us deep in the sparkling springs ; 
 And aye, as we rise with a dripping plume, 
 ‘We'll scatter the spray round the garland’s bloom. 
 We glow — we glow. 
 
 1 Narcissus. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 33 
 
 Behold, as the girls of the Eastern wave 
 Bore once with a shout to their crystal cave 
 
 The prize of the Mysian Hylas, 
 
 Even so — even so, 
 
 We have caught the young god in our warm embrace, 
 We hurry him on in our laughing race ; 
 We hurry him on, with a whoop and song, 
 The cloudy rivers of night along — 
 
 Ho, ho! — we have caught thee, Psilas! 
 
 The guests applauded loudly. When the poet is your host, 
 “his verses are sure to charm. 
 
 “Thoroughly Greek,” said Lepidus; “the wildness, force, 
 and energy of that tongue it is impossible to imitate in the 
 Roman poetry.” 
 
 “Tt is, indeed, a great contrast,” said Clodius, ironically at 
 heart, though not in appearance, “to the old-fashioned and 
 tame simplicity of that ode of Horace which we heard before. 
 The air is beautifully Ionic; the word puts me in mind of a 
 toast, — Companions, I give you the beautiful Jone.” 
 
 «Tone !—the name is Greek,” said Glaucus, in a soft voice. 
 ‘T drink the health with delight. But who is Ione ?” 
 
 “Ah! you have but just come to Pompeii, or you would de- 
 serve ostracism for your ignorance,” said Lepidus, conceitedly ; 
 ‘not to know Ione, is not to know the chief charm of our 
 city.” 
 
 “‘ She is of the most rare beauty,” said Pansa; “and what a 
 voice!” 
 
 “ She can feed only on nightingales’ tongues,” said Clodius. 
 
 “ Nightingales’ tongues! beautiful thought!” sighed the 
 umbra. 
 
 “Enlighten me, I beseech you,” said Glaucus. 
 
 “ Know then—” began Lepidus. 
 
 “ Let me speak,” cried Clodius; “you drawl out your words 
 as if you spoke tortoises.” 
 
 “ And you speak stones,” muttered the coxcomb to himself, 
 as he fell back disdainfully on his couch. 
 
 “Know then, my Glaucus,” said Clodius, “that Ione is a 
 stranger who has but lately come to Pompeii. She sings like 
 
 VOL. I.—3 
 
o4 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Sappho, and her songs are her own composing ; and as for the 
 tibia and the cithara and the lyre, 1 know not in which she 
 most outdoes the Muses. Her beauty is most dazzling. Her 
 house is perfect; such taste, such gems, such bronzes! She 
 is rich, and generous as she is rich.” 
 
 “ Her lovers, of course,” said Glaucus, “take care that she 
 does not starve; and money lightly won is always lavishly 
 spent.” 
 
 ‘Her lovers —ah, there is the enigma! Ione has but one 
 vice —she is chaste. She has all Pompeii at her feet, and she 
 has no lovers; she will not even marry.” 
 
 “No lovers!” echoed Glaucus. 
 
 “No; she has the soul of Vesta, with the girdle of Venus.” 
 
 “ What refined expressions!” said the umbra. 
 
 “A miracle!” cried Glaucus. “Can we not see her?” 
 
 “ T will take you there this evening,” said Clodius; ‘ mean- 
 while —” added he, once more rattling the dice. 
 
 “JT am yours!” said the complaisant Glaucus. “ Pansa, 
 turn your face !” 
 
 Lepidus and Sallust played at odd and even, and the umbra 
 looked on, while Glaucus and Clodius became gradually ab- 
 sorbed in the chances of the dice. 
 
 “By Pollux!” cried Glaucus, “this is the second time I 
 have thrown the canicule ” (the lowest throw). 
 
 “Now Venus befriend me!” said Clodius, rattling the box 
 for several moments. “QO Alma Venus — itis Venus herself!” 
 as he threw the highest cast, named from that goddess, — 
 whom he who wins money, indeed, usually propitiates. 
 
 “Venus is ungrateful to me,” said Glaucus, gayly; “I have 
 always sacrificed on her altar.” 
 
 “He who plays with Clodius,” whispered Lepidus, “ will 
 soon, like Plautus’s Curculio, put his pallium for the stakes.” 
 
 “Poor Glaucus! he is as blind as Fortune herself,” replied 
 Sallust, in the same tone. 
 
 “J will play no more,” said Glaucus; “I have lost thirty 
 sestertia.”’ 
 
 “JT am sorry —” began Clodius. 
 
 * Amiable man!” groaned the umbra. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 39 
 
 “Not at all!” exclaimed Glaucus; “the pleasure I take in 
 your gain compensates the pain of my loss.” 
 
 The conversation now grew general and animated, the wine 
 circulated more freely, and Ione once more became the subject 
 of eulogy to the guests of Glaucus. 
 
 “ Instead of outwatching the stars, let us visit one at whose 
 beauty the stars grow pale,” said Lepidus. 
 
 Clodius, who saw no chance of renewing the dice, seconded 
 the proposal; and Glaucus, though he civilly pressed his 
 guests to continue the banquet, could not but let them see that 
 his curiosity had been excited by the praises of Ione: they 
 therefore resolved to adjourn (all, at least, but Pansa and the 
 umbra) to the house of the fair Greek. They drank, therefore, 
 to the health of Glaucus and of Titus, they performed their 
 last libation, they resumed their slippers, they descended the 
 stairs, passed the illumined atrium, and walking unbitten 
 over the fierce dog painted on the threshold, found themselves 
 beneath the light of the moon just risen, in the lively and still 
 crowded streets of Pompeii. 
 
 They passed the jewellers’ quarters, ean with lights, 
 caught and reflected by the gems displayed in the shops, and 
 arrived at last at the door of Ione. The vestibule blazed with 
 rows of lamps; curtains of embroidered purple hung on either 
 aperture of the tablinum, whose walls and mosaic pavement 
 glowed with the richest colors of the artist; and under the 
 portico which surrounded the odorous viridarium they found 
 Jone, already surrounded by adoring and applauding guests. 
 
 “Did you say she was Athenian?” whispered Glaucus, ere 
 he passed into the peristyle. 
 
 “No, she is from Neapolis.” 
 
 “Neapolis!” echoed Glaucus; and at that moment the 
 group, dividing on either side of Ione, gave to his view that 
 bright, that nymph-like beauty which for months had shone 
 down upon the waters of his memory. 
 
36 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF ISIS.—ITS PRIEST. —-THE CHARACTER OF 
 ARBACES DEVELOPS ITSELF. 
 
 Tue story returns to the Egyptian. We left Arbaces upon 
 the shores of the noonday sea, after he had parted from Glau- 
 cus and his companion. As he approached to the more 
 crowded part of the bay, he paused and gazed upon that ani- 
 mated scene with folded arms, and a bitter smile upon his 
 dark features. 
 
 “ Gulls, dupes, fools, that ye are!” muttered he to himself; 
 ‘whether business or pleasure, trade or religion, be your pur- 
 suit, you are equally cheated by the passions that ye should 
 rule! How I could loathe you, if I did not hate — yes, hate! 
 Greek or Roman, it is from us, from the dark lore of Egypt, 
 that ye have stolen the fire that gives you souls. Your 
 knowledge, your poesy, your laws, your arts, your barbarous 
 mastery of war (all how tame and mutilated when compared 
 with the vast original!) ye have filched, as a slave filches the 
 fragments of the feast, from us! And now, ye mimics of a 
 mimic !— Romans, forsooth ! the mushroom herd of robbers ! — 
 ye are our masters! The pyramids look down no more on the 
 race of Rameses; the eagle cowers over the serpent of the 
 Nile. Our masters — not mine. My soul, by the power of its 
 wisdom, controls and chains you, though the fetters are un- 
 seen. So long as craft can master force, so long as religion 
 has a cave from which oracles can dupe mankind, the wise 
 hold an empire over earth. Even from your vices Arbaces 
 distils his pleasures; pleasures unprofaned by vulgar eyes; 
 pleasures vast, wealthy, inexhaustible, of which your enervate 
 minds, in their unimaginative sensuality, cannot conceive or 
 dream! Plod on, plod on, fools of ambition and of avarice! 
 your petty thirst for fasces and queestorships, and all the mum- 
 mery of servile power, provokes my laughter and my scorn. 
 My power can extend wherever man believes. I ride over the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 3T 
 
 souls that the purple veils. Thebes may fall, Egypt be a 
 name; the world itself furnishes the subjects of Arbaces.” 
 
 Thus saying, the Egyptian moved slowly on; and, entering 
 the town, his tall figure towered above the crowded throng of 
 the forum, and swept towards the small but graceful temple 
 consecrated to Isis.? 
 
 That edifice was then but of recent erection; the ancient 
 temple had been thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years 
 before, and the new building had become as much in vogue 
 - with the versatile Pompeians as a new church or a new 
 preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess at Pom- 
 peli were indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious lan- 
 guage in which they were clothed, than for the credit which 
 was attached to their mandates and predictions. If they were 
 not dictated by a divinity, they were framed at least by a 
 profound knowledge of mankind; they applied themselves ex- 
 actly to the circumstances of individuals, and made a nota- 
 ble contrast to the vague and loose generalities of their rival 
 temples. As Arbaces now arrived at the rails which separated 
 the profane from the sacred place, a crowd, composed of all 
 classes, but especially of the commercial, collected, breathless 
 and reverential, before the many altars which rose in the open 
 court. In the walls of the cella, elevated on seven steps of 
 Parian marble, various statues stood in niches, and those walls 
 were ornamented with the pomegranate consecrated to Isis. 
 An oblong pedestal occupied the interior building, on which 
 stood two statues, one of Isis, and its companion represented 
 the silent and mystic Orus. But the building contained many 
 other deities to grace the court of the Egyptian deity: her 
 kindred and many-titled Bacchus, and the Cyprian Venus, a 
 Grecian disguise for herself, rising from her bath, and the dog- 
 headed Anubis, and the ox Apis, and various Egyptian idols 
 of uncouth form and unknown appellations. 
 
 But we must not suppose that, among the cities of Magna 
 Grecia, Isis was worshipped with those forms and ceremonies 
 which were of right her own. The mongrel and modern na- 
 tions of the South, with a mingled arrogance and ignorance, 
 
 1 See note (d) at the end. | 
 
88 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 confounded the worships of all climes and ages; and the pro- 
 found mysteries of the Nile were degraded by a hundred mere- 
 tricious and frivolous admixtures from the creeds ef Cephisus 
 and of Tiber. The temple of Isis in Pompeii was served by 
 Roman and Greek priests, ignorant alike of the language and 
 the customs of her ancient votaries; and the descendant of 
 the dread Egyptian kings, beneath the appearance of reveren- 
 tial awe, secretly laughed to scorn the puny mummeries which 
 imitated the solemn and typical worship of his burning clime. 
 
 Ranged now on either side the steps was the sacrificial 
 crowd, arrayed in white garments, while at the summit stood 
 two of the inferior priests, the one holding a palm-branch, the 
 other a slender sheaf of corn. In the narrow passage in front 
 thronged the bystanders. 
 
 “ And what,” whispered Arbaces to one of the bystanders, 
 who was a merchant engaged in the Alexandrian trade, which 
 trade had probably first introduced into Pompeii the worship 
 of the Egyptian goddess, — “ what occasion now assembles you 
 before the altars of the venerable Isis? It seems, by the 
 white robes of the group before me, that a sacrifice is to be 
 rendered; and by the assembly of the priests, that ye are pre- 
 pared for some oracle. To what question is it to vouchsafe a 
 reply ?” 
 
 “We are merchants,” replied the bystander (who was no 
 other than Diomed) in the same voice, “ who seek to know the 
 fate of our vessels, which sail for Alexandria to-morrow. We 
 are about to offer up a sacrifice and implore an answer from 
 the goddess. I am not one of those who have petitioned the 
 priest to sacrifice, as you may see by my dress, but I have 
 some interest in the success of the fleet; by Jupiter! yes. 
 I have a pretty trade, else how could I live in these hard 
 times ?” 
 
 ‘The Egyptian replied gravely, that though Isis was prop- 
 erly the goddess of agriculture, she was no less the patron of 
 commerce. Then turning his head towards the east, Arbaces 
 seemed absorbed in silent prayer. 
 
 And now in the centre of the steps appeared a priest robed 
 in white from head to foot, the veil parting over the crown; 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 39 
 
 two new priests relieved those hitherto stationed at either 
 corner, being naked half-way down to the breast, and covered, 
 for the rest, in white and loose robes. At the same time, 
 seated at the bottom of the steps, a priest commenced a sol- 
 emn air upon a long wind-instrument of music. Half-way 
 down the steps stood another flamen, holding in one hand the 
 votive wreath, in the other a white wand; while, adding to 
 the picturesque scene of that Eastern ceremony, the stately 
 ibis (bird sacred to the Egyptian worship) looked mutely 
 . down from the wall upon the rite, or stalked beside the altar 
 at the base of the steps. 
 
 At that altar now stood the sacrificial flamen.? 
 
 The countenance of Arbaces seemed to lose all its rigid 
 calm while the aruspices inspected the entrails, and to be 
 intent in pious anxiety; to rejoice and brighten as the signs 
 were declared favorable, and the fire began bright and clearly 
 to consume the sacred portion of the victim amidst odors of 
 myrrh and frankincense. It was then that a dead silence fell 
 over the whispering crowd, and the priests gathering round 
 the cella, another priest, naked save by a cincture round the 
 middle, rushed forward, and dancing with wild gestures, im- 
 plored an answer from the goddess. He ceased at last in 
 exhaustion, and a low murmuring noise was heard within 
 the body of the statue: thrice the head moved, and the 
 lips parted, and then a hollow voice uttered these mystic 
 words : — 
 
 “ There are waves like chargers that meet and glow, 
 There are graves ready wrought in the rocks below: 
 
 On the brow of the future the dangers lour, 
 But blest are your barks in the fearful hour.” 
 
 The voice ceased; the crowd breathed more freely; the 
 merchants looked at each other. “Nothing can be more 
 plain,” murmured Diomed; “there is to be a storm at sea, 
 as there very often is at the beginning of autumn, but our 
 vessels are to be saved. O beneficent Isis!” 
 
 “Lauded eternally be the goddess!” said the merchants; 
 ‘what can be less equivocal than her prediction ?” 
 
 1 See a singular picture, in the Museum of Naples, of an Egyptian sacrifice. 
 
40 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Raising one hand in sign of silence to the people, — for the 
 rites of Isis enjoined what to the lively Pompeians was an 
 impossible suspense from the use of the vocal organs, — the 
 chief priest poured his libation on the altar, and after a short 
 concluding prayer the ceremony was over, and the congrega- 
 tion dismissed. Still, however, as the crowd dispersed them- 
 selves here and there, the Egyptian lingered by the railing, 
 and when the space became tolerably cleared, one of the 
 priests, approaching it, saluted him with great appearance 
 of friendly familiarity. 
 
 The countenance of the priest was remarkably unprepos- 
 sessing. His shaven skull was so low and narrow in the front 
 as nearly to approach to the conformation of that of an Afri- 
 can savage, save only towards the temples, where, in that 
 organ styled acquisitiveness by the pupils of a science mod- 
 ern in name, but best practically known (as their sculpture 
 teaches us) amongst the ancients, two huge and almost preter- 
 natural protuberances yet more distorted the unshapely head. 
 Around the brows the skin was puckered into a web of deep 
 and intricate wrinkles; the eyes, dark and small, rolled in a 
 muddy and yellow orbit; the nose, short yet coarse, was dis- 
 tended at the nostrils like a satyr’s; and the thick but pallid 
 lips, the high cheek-bones, the livid and motley hues that 
 struggled through the parchment skin, completed a counte- 
 nance which none could behold without repugnance, and few 
 without terror and distrust. Whatever the wishes of the 
 mind, the animal frame was well fitted to execute them; the 
 wiry muscles of the throat, the broad chest, the nervous hands 
 and lean gaunt arms, which were bared above the elbow, be- 
 tokened a form capable alike of great active exertion and 
 passive endurance. 
 
 “Calenus,” said the Egyptian to this fascinating flamen, 
 “you have improved the voice of the statue much by attend- 
 ing to my suggestion; and your verses are excellent. Always 
 prophesy good fortune, unless there is an absolute impossibility 
 of its fulfilment.” 
 
 “ Besides,” added Calenus, “if the storm does come, and if 
 it does overwhelm the accursed ships, have we not prophesied 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 4t 
 
 it, and are the barks not blest to be at rest? For rest prays 
 the mariner in the Avgean sea, or at least so says Horace; can 
 the mariner be more at rest in the sea than when he is at the 
 bottom of it?” 
 
 “Right, my Calenus; I wish Apecides would take a lesson 
 from your wisdom. But I desire to confer with you relative to 
 him and to other matters: you can admit me into one of your 
 less sacred apartments ? ” 
 
 “ Assuredly,” replied the priest, leading the way to one of 
 - the small chambers which surrounded the open gate. Here 
 they seated themselves before a small table spread with dishes 
 containing fruit and eggs, and various cold meats, with vases 
 of excellent wine, of which while the companions partook, a 
 curtain, drawn across the entrance opening to the court, con- 
 cealed them from view, but admonished them by the thinness 
 of the partition to speak low, or to speak no secrets; they 
 chose the former alternative. 
 
 “Thou knowest,” said Arbaces, in a voice that. scarcely 
 stirred the air, so soft and inward was its sound, “that. it has 
 ever been my maxim to attach myself to the young. From 
 their flexile and unformed minds I can carve out. my fittest 
 tools. Iweave, I warp, 1 mould them at my will. Of the men 
 I make merely followers or servants; of the women —” 
 
 “‘ Mistresses,” said Calenus, as a livid grin distorted his un- 
 gainly features. 
 
 “ Yes, Ido not disguise it; woman is the main object, the 
 great appetite of my soul. As you feed the victim for the 
 slaughter, Zlove to rear the votaries of my pleasure. I love 
 to train, to ripen their minds, to unfold the sweet blossom of 
 their hidden passions, in order to prepare the fruit to my taste. 
 I loathe your ready-made and ripened courtesans; it is in the 
 soft and unconscious progress of innocence to desire that I find 
 the true charm of love; it is thus that I defy satiety; and by 
 contemplating the freshness of others, I sustain the freshness 
 of my own sensations. From the young hearts of my victims: 
 I draw the ingredients of the caldron in which I re-youth 
 myself. But enough of this: to the subject before us. You 
 know, then, that in Neapolis some time since: I encountered 
 
42 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 Ione and Apecides, brother and sister, the children of Athe- 
 nians who had settled at Neapolis. The death of their parents, 
 who knew and esteemed me, constituted me their guardian. I 
 was not unmindful of the trust. The youth, docile and mild, 
 yielded readily to the impression I sought to stamp upon him. 
 Next to woman, I love the old recollections of my ancestral 
 land; I love to keep alive, to propagate on distant shores 
 {which her colonies perchance yet people) her dark and mystic 
 ereeds. It may be that it pleases me to delude mankind while 
 I thus serve the deities. To Apecides I taught the solemn 
 faith of Isis. I unfolded to him something of those sublime 
 allegories which are couched beneath her worship. I excited 
 in a soul peculiarly alive to religious fervor that enthusiasm 
 which imagination begets on faith. I have placed him amongst 
 you; he is one of you.” 
 
 “He is so,” said Calenus; “but in thus stimulating his faith, 
 you have robbed him of wisdom. He is horror-struck that he 
 is no longer duped: our sage delusions, our speaking statues 
 and secret staircases dismay and revolt him; he pines; he 
 wastes away; he mutters to himself; he refuses to share our 
 eeremonies. He has been known to frequent the company of 
 men suspected of adherence to that new and atheistical creed 
 which denies all our gods, and terms our oracles the inspi- 
 rations of that malevolent spirit of which Eastern tradition 
 speaks. Our oracles — alas! we know well whose inspirations 
 they are!” 
 
 “This is what I feared,” said Arbaces, musingly, “from vari- 
 ous reproaches he made me when I last saw him. Of late he 
 hath shunned my steps; I must find him; I must continue my 
 Jessons; I must lead him into the adytum of Wisdom; I must 
 teach him that there are two stages of sanctity, —the first, 
 FAITH, the next, DELUSION: the one for the vulgar, the second 
 for the sage.” 
 
 “T never passed through the first,” said Calenus; “nor you 
 either, I think, my Arbaces.” 
 
 “ You err,” replied the Egyptian, gravely. “TI believe at this 
 day (not indeed that which I teach, but that which I teach 
 not), Nature has.a.sanctity against which I cannot (nor would I) ° 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 43 
 
 steel conviction. I believe in mine own knowledge, and that 
 has revealed to me— But no matter. Now to earthlier and 
 more inviting themes, If I thus fulfilled my object with Ape- 
 cides, what was my design for Jone? Thou knowest already 
 I intend her for my queen, my bride, my heart’s Isis, Never 
 till I saw her knew I all the love of which my nature is 
 capable.” 
 
 “T hear from a thousand lips that she is a second Helen,” 
 said Calenus ; and he smacked his own lips, but whether at the 
 * wine or at the notion it is not easy to decide. 
 
 “Yes, she has a beauty that Greece itself never excelled,” 
 resumed Arbaces. “But that is not all; she has a soul wor- 
 thy to match with mine. She has a genius beyond that of 
 woman,— keen, dazzling, bold. Poetry flows spontaneous to her 
 lips; utter but a truth, and, however intricate and profound, 
 her mind seizes and commands it. Her imagination and her 
 reason are not at war with each other; they harmonize and 
 direct her course as the winds and the waves direct some lofty 
 bark. With this she unites a daring independence of thought; 
 she can stand alone in the world; she can be brave as she is 
 gentle; this is the nature I have sought all my life in woman, 
 and never found till now. Jone must be mine! In her I have 
 a double passion; I wish to enjoy a beauty of spirit as of 
 form.” 
 
 «‘She is not yours yet, then?” said the priest. 
 
 “No; she loves me, but as afriend: she loves me with 
 her mind only. She fancies in me the paltry virtues which I 
 have only the profounder virtue to disdain. But you must 
 pursue with me her history. The brother and sister were 
 young and rich; Ione is proud and ambitious, — proud of her 
 genius, the magic of her poetry, the charm of her conversa- 
 tion. When her brother left me, and entered your temple, in 
 order to be near him she removed also to Pompeii. She has 
 suffered her talents to be known. She summons crowds to her 
 feasts; her voice enchants them, her poetry subdues. She 
 delights in being thought the successor of Hrinna.” 
 
 “Or of Sappho ? ” 
 
 “ But Sappho without love! I encouraged her in this bold- 
 
44. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ness of career, —in this indulgence of vanity and of pleasure. 
 I loved to steep her amidst the dissipations and luxury of this 
 abandoned city. Mark me, Calenus, I desired to enervate her 
 mind; it has been too pure to receive yet the breath which 
 I wish not to pass, but burningly to eat into, the mirror. I 
 wished her to be surrounded by lovers, hollow, vain, and frivo- 
 lous (lovers that her nature must despise), in order to feel the 
 want of love. Then, in those soft intervals of lassitude that 
 succeed to excitement, I can weave my spells, — excite her in- 
 terest, attract her passions, possess myself of her heart. For 
 it is not the young, nor the beautiful, nor the gay, that should 
 fascinate Ione; her imagination must be won, and the hfe of 
 Arbaces has been one scene of triumph over the imaginations 
 of his kind.” 
 
 “And hast thou no fear, then, of thy rivals? The gallants 
 of Italy are skilled in the art to please.” 
 
 “None! Her Greek soul despises the barbarian Romans, 
 and would scorn itself if it admitted a thought of love for one 
 of that upstart race.” 
 
 “ But thou art an Egyptian, not a Greek!” 
 
 “ Heypt,” replied Arbaces, “is the mother of Athens. Her 
 tutelary Minerva is our deity, and her founder, Cecrops, was 
 the fugitive of Egyptian Sais. This have I already taught to 
 her, and in my blood she venerates the eldest dynasties of 
 earth. But yet I will own that of late some uneasy suspicions 
 have crossed my mind. She is more silent than she used to 
 be; she loves melancholy and subduing music; she sighs with- 
 out an outward cause. This may be the beginning of love; it 
 may be the want of love. In either case it is time for me to 
 begin my operations on her fancies and her heart: in the one 
 case, to divert the source of love to me; in the other, in me to 
 awaken it. It is for this that I have sought you.” 
 
 ¢ And how can I assist you?” 
 
 “Tam about to invite her to a feast in my house; I wish 
 to dazzle, to bewilder, to inflame her senses. Our arts — the 
 arts by which Egypt trained her young novitiates — must be 
 employed; and under veil of the mysteries of religion I will 
 open to her the secrets of love.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. © 45 
 
 « Ah! now I understand: one of those voluptuous banquets 
 that, despite our dull vows of mortified coldness, we, thy 
 priests of Isis, have shared at thy house.” 
 
 “No, no! Thinkest thou her chaste eyes are ripe for such 
 scenes? No; but first we must ensnare the brother, —an 
 easier task. Listen to me while I give you my instructions.” 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 MORE OF THE FLOWER-GIRL. — THE PROGRESS OF LOVE. 
 
 THE sun shone gayly into that beautiful chamber in the 
 house of Glaucus, which I have before said is now called 
 “the Room of Leda.” The morning rays entered through 
 rows of small casements at the higher part of the room, and 
 through the door which opened on the garden, that answered 
 to the inhabitants of the southern cities the same purpose 
 that a greenhouse or conservatory does to us. The size of the 
 garden did not adapt it for exercise, but the various and fra- 
 grant plants with which it was filled gave a luxury to that 
 indolence so dear to the dwellers in a sunny clime. And now 
 the odors, fanned by a gentle wind creeping from the adjacent 
 sea, scattered themselves over that chamber, whose walls vied 
 with the richest colors of the most glowing flowers. Besides 
 the gem of the room — the painting of Leda and Tyndarus — 
 in the centre of each compartment of the walls were set other 
 pictures of exquisite beauty. In one you saw Cupid leaning 
 on the knees of Venus; in another Ariadne sleeping on the 
 beach, unconscious of the perfidy of Theseus. Merrily the 
 sunbeams played to and fro on the tessellated floor and 
 the brilliant walls; far more happily came the. rays of joy to 
 the heart of the young Glaucus. 
 
 ‘“‘T have seen her, then,” said he as he paced that narrow 
 chamber, — “I have heard her, nay, I have spoken to her again ; 
 I have listened to the music of her song, and she sung of glory 
 and of Greece. I have discovered the long-sought idol of my 
 
46 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 dreams, and like the Cyprian sculptor, I have breathed life 
 into my own imaginings.” 
 
 Longer, perhaps, had been the enamoured soliloquy of Glau: 
 cus, but at that moment a shadow darkened the threshold of 
 the chamber, and a young female, still half a child in years, 
 broke upon his solitude. She was dressed simply in a white 
 tunic, which reached from the neck to the ankles; under her 
 arm she bore a basket of flowers, and in the other hand she 
 held a bronze water-vase; her features were more formed than 
 exactly became her years, yet they were soft and feminine in 
 their outline, and, without being beautiful in themselves, they 
 were almost made so by their beauty of expression; there 
 was something ineffably gentle, and you would say patient, in 
 her aspect. A look of resigned sorrow, of tranquil endurance, 
 had banished the smile, but not the sweetness, from her lips; 
 something timid and cautious in her step, something wander- 
 ing in her eyes, led you to suspect the affliction which she 
 had suffered from her birth: she was blind, but in the orbs 
 themselves there was no visible defect; their melancholy and 
 subdued light was clear, cloudless, and serene. “They tell 
 me that Glaucus is here,” said she; “‘may I come in?” 
 
 “Ah, my Nydia,” said the Greek, “is that you? I knew 
 you would not neglect my invitation.” 
 
 “Glaucus did but justice to himself,” answered Nydia, 
 with a blush; “for he has always been kind to the poor blind 
 girl.” 
 
 “Who could be otherwise ?” said Glaucus, tenderly, and in 
 the voice of a compassionate brother. 
 
 Nydia sighed and paused before she resumed, without re- 
 plying to his remark. “You have but lately returned ? ” 
 
 “This is the sixth sun that hath shone upon me at 
 Pompeii.” 
 
 “ And you are well? Ah, I need notask; for who that sees 
 the earth, which they tell me is so beautiful, can be ill ? ” 
 
 “Tam well. And you, Nydia, how you have grown! Next 
 year you will be thinking what answer to make your lovers.” 
 
 A second blush passed over the cheek of Nydia, but this 
 time she frowned as she blushed. “I have brought you some 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. AT 
 
 flowers,” satd she, without replying to a remark that she 
 seemed to resent; and feeling about the room till she found 
 the table that stood by Glaucus, she laid the basket upon it; 
 “they are poor, but they are fresh-gathered.” 
 
 “They might come from Flora herself,” said he, kindly ; 
 “and I renew again my vow to the Graces, that I will wear 
 no other garlands while thy hands can weave me such ag 
 these.” 
 
 “And how find you the flowers in your viridarium? Are 
 
 they thriving ?” 
 
 ' Wonderfully so. The Lares themselves must have tended 
 them.” 
 
 “ Ah, now you give me pleasure; for I came, as often as I 
 could steal the leisure, to water and tend them in your 
 absence.” 
 
 “How shall I thank thee, fair Nydia?” said the Greek. 
 “ Glaucus little dreamed that he left one memory so watch- 
 ful over his favorites at Pompeii.” 
 
 The hand of the child trembled, and her breast heaved 
 beneath her tunic. She turned round in embarrassment. 
 “The sun is hot for the poor flowers,” said she, “to-day, and 
 they will miss me; for I have been ill lately, and it is nine 
 days since I visited them.” 
 
 “Til, Nydia! yet your cheek has more color than it had 
 last year.” 
 
 “T am often ailing,” said the blind girl, touchingly; “and 
 as I grow up I grieve more that Iam blind. But now to the 
 flowers!” So saying, she made a slight reverence with her 
 head, and passing into the viridarium, busied herself with 
 watering the flowers. 
 
 “Poor Nydia,” thought Glaucus, gazing on her; “thine is 
 a hard doom! ‘Thou seest not the earth, nor the sun, nor the 
 ocean, nor the stars; above all, thou canst not behold Ione.” 
 
 At that last thought his mind flew back to the past even- 
 ing, and was a second time disturbed in its reveries by the 
 entrance of Clodius. It was a proof how much a single even- 
 ing had sufficed to increase and to refine the love of the 
 Athenian for Ione, that whereas he had confided to Clodius 
 
48 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 the secret of his first interview with her, and the effect it 
 had produced on him, he now felt an invincible aversion even 
 to mention to him her name. He had seen Ione, bright, pure, 
 unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most profligate 
 gallants of Pompeii, charming rather than awing the boldest 
 into respect, and changing the very nature of the most sensual 
 and the least ideal, —as by her intellectual and refining spells 
 she reversed the fable of Circe, and converted the animals 
 into men. They who could not understand her soul were 
 made spiritual, as it were, by the magic of her beauty; they 
 who had no heart for poetry had ears, at least, for the melody 
 of her voice. Seeing her thus surrounded, purifying and 
 brightening all things with her presence, Glaucus almost for 
 the first time felt the nobleness of his own nature. He felt 
 how unworthy of the goddess of his dreams had been his 
 companions and his pursuits. A veil seemed lifted from his 
 eyes; he saw that immeasurable distance between himself 
 and his associates which the deceiving mists of pleasure had 
 hitherto concealed; he was refined by a sense of his courage 
 in aspiring to Ione. He felt that henceforth it was his 
 destiny to look upward and to soar. He could no longer 
 breathe that name, which sounded to the sense of his ardent 
 fancy as something sacred and divine, to lewd and vulgar ears. 
 She was no longer the beautiful girl once seen and _ passion- 
 ately remembered ; she was already the mistress, the divinity 
 of his soul. This feeling who has not experienced? If thou 
 hast not, then thou hast never loved. 
 
 When Clodius therefore spoke to him in affected transports 
 of the beauty of Ione, Glaucus felt only resentment and dis- 
 cust that such lips should dare to praise her; he answered 
 coldly, and the Roman imagined that his passion was cured 
 instead of heightened. Clodius scarcely regretted it, for he 
 was anxious that Glaucus should marry an heiress yet more 
 richly endowed, — Julia, the daughter of the wealthy Diomed, 
 whose gold the gamester imagined he could readily divert into 
 his own coffers. Their conversation did not flow with its 
 usual ease; and no sooner had Clodius left him than Glaucus 
 bent his way to the house of Ione. In passing by the thresh- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 49 
 
 old he again encountered Nydia, who had finished her grace- 
 ful task. She knew his step on the instant. 
 
 ‘You are early abroad ? ” said she. 
 
 “Yes; for the skies of Campania rebuke the sluggard who 
 negleets them.” 
 
 ‘Ah, would I could see them!” murmured the blind girl, 
 but so low that Glaucus did not overhear the complaint. 
 
 The Thessalian lingered on the threshold a few moments, 
 and then guiding her steps by a long staff, which she used 
 _with great dexterity, she took her way homeward. She soon 
 turned from the more gaudy streets, and entered a quarter of 
 the town but little loved by the decorous and the sober; but 
 from the low and rude evidences of vice around her she was 
 saved by her misfortune; and at that hour the streets were 
 quiet and silent, nor was her youthful ear shocked by the 
 sounds which too often broke along the ooscene and obscure 
 haunts she patiently and sadly traversed. 
 
 She knocked at the back door of a sort of tavern; it 
 opened, and a rude voice bade her give an account of the 
 sesterces. Ere she could reply, another voice, less vulgarly 
 accented, said, — 
 
 “Never mind those petty profits, my Burbo. The girl’s 
 voice will be wanted again soon at our rich friend’s revels; 
 and he pays, as thou knowest, pretty high for his nightingales’ 
 tongues.” 
 
 “Oh, I hope not, I trust not,” cried Nydia trembling; “TI 
 will beg from sunrise to sunset, but send me not there.” 
 
 “ And why ?” asked the same voice. 
 
 “Because — because I am young and delicately born, and 
 the female companions I meet there are not fit associates for 
 one who — who —” 
 
 “Ts a slave in the house of Burbo,” returned the voice, 
 ironically, and with a coarse laugh. 
 
 The Thessalian put down the flowers, and, leaning her face 
 on her hands, wept silently. 
 
 Meanwhile Glaucus sought the house of the beautiful Nea- 
 politan. He found Ione sitting amidst her attendants, who 
 were at work around her. Her harp stood at her side, for 
 
 VOL. I. —4 
 
50) THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Tone herself was unusually idle, perhaps unusually thought- 
 ful, that day. He thought her even more beautiful by the 
 morning light, and in her simple robe, than amidst the blaz- 
 ing lamps, and decorated with the costly jewels of the pre- 
 vious night,—not the less so from a certain paleness that 
 overspread her transparent hues; not the less so from the 
 blush that mounted over them when he approached. Accus- 
 tomed to flatter, flattery died upon his lips when he addressed 
 Tone. He felt it beneath her to utter the homage which every 
 look conveyed. They spoke of Greece; this was a theme on 
 which Ione loved rather to listen than to converse: it was a 
 theme on which the Greek could have been eloquent forever. 
 He described to her the silver olive-groves that yet clad the 
 banks of Ilissus, and the temples, already despoiled of half 
 their glories, but how beautiful in decay! He looked back 
 on the melancholy city of Harmodius the free, and Pericles 
 the magnificent, from the height of that distant memory 
 which mellowed into one hazy light all the ruder and darker 
 shades. He had seen the land of poetry chiefly in the poet- 
 ical age of early youth; and the associations of patriotism 
 were blended with those of the flush and spring of hfe. And 
 Tone listened to him, absorbed and mute; dearer were those 
 accents and those descriptions than all the prodigal adula- 
 tion of her numberless adorers. Was it a sin to love her 
 countrymen ? She loved Athens in him: the gods of her race, 
 the land of her dreams, spoke to her in his voice. From that 
 time they daily saw each other. At the cool of the evening 
 they made excursions on the placid sea; by night they met 
 again in Jone’s porticos and halls. Their love was sudden, 
 but it was strong; it filled all the sources of their life. 
 Heart, brain, sense, imagination, all were its ministers and 
 priests. As you take some obstacle from two objects that 
 have a mutual attraction, they met, and united at once; their 
 wonder was, that they had lived separate so long. And it 
 was natural that they should so love. Young, beautiful, and 
 gifted, — of the same birth and the same souls, —there was 
 poetry in their very union. They imagined the heavens 
 smiled upon their affection. As the persecuted seek refuge 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 51 
 
 at the shrine, so they recognized in the altar of their love an 
 asylum from tne sorrows of earth; they covered it with flow- 
 ers, — they knew not of the serpents that lay coiled behind. 
 
 One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, 
 Glaucus and Ione, with a small party of chosen friends, were 
 returning from an excursion round the bay; their vessel 
 skimmed lightly over the twilight waters, whose lucid mirror 
 was only broken by the dripping oars. As the rest of the 
 party conversed gayly with each other, Glaucus lay at the 
 feet of Ione, and he would have looked up in her face, but 
 he did not dare. Ione broke the pause between them. 
 
 “My poor brother,” said she, sighing, “ how once he would 
 have enjoyed this hour !” 
 
 ‘Your brother,” said Glaucus; “I have not seen him. Oc- 
 cupied with you, I have thought of nothing else, or I should 
 have asked if that was not your brother for whose companion- 
 ship you left me at the Temple of Minerva, in Neapolis.” 
 
 “Tt was.” 
 
 “And is he'here ? ” 
 
 bie 18." 
 
 “ At Pompeii, and not constantly with you! Impossible!” 
 
 “He has other duties,” answered Ione, sadly; “he is a 
 priest of Isis.” 
 
 “So young, too; and that priesthood, in its laws at least, so 
 severe!” said the warm and bright-hearted Greek, in surprise 
 and pity. “ What could have been his inducement ? ” 
 
 “He was always enthusiastic and fervent in religious de- 
 votion, and the eloquence of an Egyptian — our friend and 
 guardian— kindled in him the pious desire to consecrate his 
 life to the most mystic of our deities. Perhaps in the in- 
 tenseness of his zeal he found in the severity of that peculiar 
 priesthood its peculiar attraction.” 
 
 « And he does not repent his choice? I trust he is happy.” 
 
 Tone sighed deeply, and lowered her veil over her eyes. 
 
 “1 wish,” said she, after a pause, “that he had not been so 
 hasty. Perhaps, like all who expect too much, he is revolted 
 too easily.” 
 
 “Then he is not happy in his new condition. And this 
 
52 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Egyptian, — was he a priest himself? Was he interested in 
 recruits to the sacred band ? ” 
 
 “No. His main interest was in our happiness. He thought 
 he promoted that of my brother. We were left orphans.” 
 
 “Like myself,” said Glaucus, with a deep meaning in his 
 voice. 
 
 Jone cast down her eyes as she resumed, — 
 
 “ And Arbaces sought to supply the place of our parent. 
 You must know him. He loves genius.” 
 
 “ Arbaces! I know him already; at least, we speak when 
 we meet. But for your praise I would not seek to know more 
 of him. My heart inclines readily to most of my kind. But 
 that dark Egyptian, with his gloomy brow and icy smiles, 
 seems to me to sadden the very sun. One would think that, 
 like Epimenides the Cretan, he had spent forty years in a 
 cave, and had found something unnatural in the daylight ever 
 afterwards.” 
 
 “Yet, like Epimenides, he is kind, and wise, and gentle,” 
 answered Ione. 
 
 “Oh, happy that he has thy praise! He needs no other 
 virtues to make him dear to me.” 
 
 « His calm, his coldness,” said Ione, evasively pursuing the 
 subject, “are perhaps but the exhaustion of past sufferings ; 
 as yonder mountain [and she pointed to Vesuvius], which we 
 see dark and tranquil in the distance, once nursed the fires 
 forever quenched.” 
 
 They both gazed on the mountain as Ione said these words; 
 the rest of the sky was bathed in rosy and tender hues, but 
 over that gray summit, rising amidst the woods and vineyards 
 that then clomb half-way up the ascent, there hung a black 
 and ominous cloud, the single frown of the landscape. A 
 sudden and unaccountable gloom came over each as they thus 
 gazed; and in that sympathy which love had already taught 
 them, and which bade them, in the slightest shadows of emo- 
 tion, the faintest presentiment of evil, turn for refuge to each 
 other, their gaze at the same moment left the mountain, and, 
 full of unimaginable tenderness, met. What need had they 
 of words to say they loved ? 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL O8 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FOWLER SNARES AGAIN THE BIRD THAT HAD JUST ES- 
 CAPED, AND SETS HIS NETS FOR A NEW VICTIM. 
 
 In the history I relate, the events are crowded and rapid as 
 those of the drama. I write of an epoch in which days sufficed 
 to ripen the ordinary fruits of years. 
 
 Meanwhile, Arbaces had not of late much frequented the 
 house of Ione; and when he had visited her he had not en- 
 countered Glaucus, nor knew he, as yet, of that love which had 
 so suddenly sprung up between himself and his designs. In 
 his interest for the brother of Ione, he had been forced, too, 
 a little while to suspend his interest in Ione herself. His 
 pride and his selfishness were aroused and alarmed at the 
 sudden change which had come over the spirit of the youth. 
 He trembled lest he himself should lose a docile pupil, and 
 Isis an enthusiastic servant. Apacides had ceased to seek or 
 to consult him. He was rarely to be found; he turned sul- 
 lenly from the Egyptian,—nay, he fled when he perceived 
 him in the distance. Arbaces was one of those haughty and 
 powerful spirits accustomed to master others; he chafed at 
 the notion that one once his own should ever elude his grasp. 
 He swore inly that Apzcides should not escape him. 
 
 It was with this resolution that he passed through a thick 
 grove in the city, which lay between his house and that of 
 Ione, in his way to the latter; and there, leaning against a 
 tree, and gazing on the ground, he came unawares on the 
 young priest of Isis. 
 
 “ Apecides!” said he, —and he laid his hand affectionately 
 on the young man’s shoulder. 
 
 The priest started, and his first instinct seemed to be that 
 of flight. “My son,” said the Egyptian, “what has chanced 
 that you desire to shun me?” 
 
 Apecides remained silent and sullen, looking down on the 
 earth, as his lips quivered and his breast heaved with emotion. 
 
iy: Ae THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 “Speak to me, my friend,” continued the Egyptian. “Speak. 
 Something burdens thy spirit. What hast thou to reveal ?” 
 
 ‘To thee — nothing.” 
 
 ¢ And why is it to me thou art thus unconfidential ?” 
 
 “Because thou hast been my enemy.” 
 
 “ Let us confer,” said Arbaces, in a low voice; and drawing 
 the reluctant arm of the priest in his own, he led him to one 
 of the seats which were scattered within the grove. They sat 
 down, —and in those gloomy forms there was something con- 
 genial to the shade and solitude of the place. 
 
 Apeecides was in the spring of his years, yet he seemed to 
 have exhausted even more of life than the Egyptian; his deli- 
 cate and regular features were worn and colorless; his eyes 
 were hollow, and shone with a brilliant and feverish glare; 
 his frame bowed prematurely, and in his hands, which were 
 small to effeminacy, the blue and swollen veins indicated the 
 lassitude and weakness of the relaxed fibres. You saw in his 
 face a strong resemblance to lone, but the expression was 
 altogether different from that majestic and spiritual calm 
 which breathed so divine and classical a repose over his sis- 
 ter’s beauty. In her, enthusiasm was visible, but it seemed 
 always suppressed and restrained; this made the charm and 
 sentiment of her countenance: you longed to awaken a spirit 
 which reposed, but evidently did not sleep. In Apzcides the 
 whole aspect betokened the fervor and passion of his tempera- 
 ment, and the intellectual portion of his nature seemed, by the 
 wild fire of the eyes, the great breadth of the temples when 
 compared with the height of the brow, the trembling restless- 
 ness of the lips, to be swayed and tyrannized over by the 
 imaginative and ideal. Fancy, with the sister, had stopped 
 short at the golden goal of poetry: with the brother, less 
 happy and less restrained, it had wandered into visions more 
 intangible and unembodied; and the faculties which gave 
 zenius to the one threatened madness to the other. 
 
 “You say I have been your enemy,” said Arbaces, “I 
 know the cause of that unjust accusation: I have placed you 
 amidst the priests of Isis; you are revolted at their trickeries 
 and imposture; you think that I too have deceived you; the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 5d 
 
 purity of your mind is offended ; you imagine that I am one 
 of the deceitful —” 
 
 “You knew the jugglings of that impious craft,” answered 
 Apecides; “why did you disguise them from me? When 
 you excited my desire to devote myself to the office whose 
 garb I bear, you spoke to me of the holy life of men resigning 
 themselves to knowledge — you have given me for companions 
 
 - an ignorant and sensual herd, who have no knowledge but that 
 
 of the grossest frauds; you spoke to me of men sacrificing 
 the earthlier pleasures to the sublime cultivation of virtue — 
 you place me amongst men reeking with all the filthiness of 
 vice; you spoke to me of the friends, the enlighteners of 
 our common kind —lI see but their cheats and deluders! Oh, 
 it was basely done! You have robbed me of the glory of 
 youth, of the convictions of virtue, of the sanctifying thirst 
 after wisdom. Young as I was, rich, fervent, the sunny 
 pleasures of earth before me, I resigned all without a sigh, 
 nay, with happiness and exultation, in the thought that I 
 resigned them for the abstruse mysteries of diviner wisdom, 
 for the companionship of gods, for the revelations of Heaven; 
 and now — now —” 
 
 Convulsive sobs checked the priest’s voice; he covered his 
 face with his hands, and large tears forced themselves through 
 the wasted fingers and ran profusely down his vest. 
 
 “What I promised to thee, that will I give, my friend, 
 my pupil: these have been but trials to thy virtue; it comes 
 forth the brighter for thy novitiate. Think no more of those 
 dull cheats, assort no more with those menials of the god- 
 dess, the atrienses! of her hall; you are worthy to enter into 
 the penetralia. I henceforth will be your priest, your guide, 
 and you who now curse my friendship shall live to bless it.” 
 
 The young man lifted up his head, and gazed with a vacant 
 and wondering stare upon the Egyptian. 
 
 “ Listen to me,” continued Arbaces, in an earnest and sol- 
 enn voice, casting first bis searching eyes around to see that 
 they were still alone. “From Egypt came all the knowledge 
 of the world; from Egypt came the lore of Athens, and the 
 
 1 The slaves who had the care of the atrium. 
 
D6 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPET. 
 
 profound policy of Crete; from Egypt came those early and 
 mysterious tribes which (long before the hordes of Romulus 
 swept over the plains of Italy, and in the eternal cycle of 
 events drove back civilization into barbarism and darkness) 
 possessed all the arts of wisdom and the graces of intellectual 
 life. From Egypt came the rites and the grandeur of that 
 solemn Cere, whose inhabitants taught their iron vanquishers 
 of Rome all that they yet know of elevated in religion and 
 sublime in worship. And how deemest thou, young man, that 
 that dread Egypt, the mother of countless nations, achieved 
 her greatness, and soared to her cloud-capt eminence of wis- 
 dom? It was the result of a profound and holy policy. 
 Your modern nations owe their greatness to Egypt — Egypt 
 her greatness to her priests. Rapt in themselves, coveting a 
 sway over the nobler part of man, his soul and his belief, those 
 ancient ministers of God were inspired with the grandest 
 thought that ever exalted mortals. From the revolutions of 
 the stars, from the seasons of the earth, from the round and 
 unvarying circle of human destinies, they devised an august 
 allegory; they made it gross and palpable to the vulgar by 
 the signs of gods and goddesses, and that which in reality was 
 Government they named Religion. Isis is a fable — start not! 
 That for which Isis is a type is a reality, an immortal being; 
 Isis is nothing. Nature, which she represents, is the mother 
 of all things, — dark, ancient, inscrutable, save to the gifted 
 few. ‘None among mortals hath ever lifted up my veil,’ so 
 saith the Isis that you adore; but to the wise that veil hath 
 been removed, and we have stood face to face with the solemn 
 loveliness of Nature. ‘The priests then were the benefactors, 
 the civilizers of mankind; true, they were also cheats, impos- 
 tors if you will. But think you, young man, that if they had 
 not deceived their kind they could have served them? ‘The 
 ignorant and servile vulgar must be blinded to attain to their 
 proper good; they would not believe a maxim — they revere 
 an oracle. The Emperor of Rome sways the vast and various 
 tribes of earth, and harmonizes the conflicting and disunited 
 elements ; thence come peace, order, law, the blessings of life. 
 Think you it is the man, the emperor, that thus sways? No, it 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 57 
 
 is the pomp, the awe, the majesty that surround him, — these are 
 his impostures, his delusions ; our oracles and our divinations, 
 our rites and our ceremonies, are the means of our sovereignty 
 and the engines of owr power. They are the same means to the 
 same end, — the welfare and harmony of mankind. You listen 
 to me rapt and intent; the light begins to dawn upon you.” 
 
 Apeecides remained silent, but the changes rapidly passing 
 over his speaking countenance betrayed the effect produced 
 upon him by the words of the Egyptian, — words made tenfold 
 more eloquent by the voice, the aspect, and the manner of the 
 man. 
 
 “While, then,” resumed Arbaces, “our fathers of the Nile 
 thus achieved the first elements by whose life chaos is de. 
 stroyed, namely, the obedience and reverence of the multitude 
 for the few, they drew from their majestic and starred medi- 
 tations that wisdom which was no delusion: they invented 
 the codes and regularities of law, the arts and glories of exist- 
 ence. They asked belief; they returned the gift by civili- 
 zation. Were not their very cheats a virtue? Trust me, 
 whosoever in yon far heavens of a diviner and more beneficent 
 nature look down upon our world, smile approvingly on the 
 wisdom which has worked such ends. But you wish me to 
 apply these generalities to yourself; I hasten to obey the 
 wish. The altars of the goddess of our ancient faith must be 
 served, and served too by others than the stolid and soulless 
 things that are but as pegs and hooks whereon to hang the fil- 
 let and the robe. Remember two sayings of Sextus the Pytha- 
 gorean, — sayings borrowed from the lore of Egypt. The first 
 is, ‘Speak not of God to the multitude;’ the second is, ‘The 
 man worthy of God is a god among men.’ As genius gave to 
 the ministers of Egypt worship, that empire in late ages so 
 fearfully decayed, thus by Genius only can the dominion be 
 restored. I saw in you, Apecides, a pupil worthy of my les- 
 sons, a minister worthy of the great ends which may yet be 
 wrought. Your energy, your talents, your purity of faith, your 
 earnestness of enthusiasm, all fitted yon for that calling which 
 demands so imperiously high and ardent qualities: I fanned, 
 therefore, your sacred desires; I stimulated you to the step 
 
58 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 you have taken. But you blame me that I did not reveal to 
 you the little souls and the juggling tricks of your companions. 
 Had I done so, Apzxcides, I had defeated my own object; your 
 noble nature would have at once revolted, and Isis would have 
 lost her priest.” 
 
 Apecides groaned aloud. The Egyptian continued, without 
 heeding the interruption. 
 
 “‘T placed you, therefore, without preparation, in the temple; : 
 I left you suddenly to discover and to be sickened by all those 
 mummeries which dazzle the herd. I desired that you should 
 perceive how those engines are moved by which the fountain 
 that refreshes the world casts its waters in the air. It was the 
 trial ordained of old to all our priests. They who accustom 
 themselves to the impostures of the vulgar, are left to prac- 
 tise them, for those, like you, whose higher natures demand 
 higher pursuit, religion opens more godlike secrets. I am 
 pleased to find in you the character I had expected. You have 
 taken the vows; you cannot recede. Advance: I will be your 
 guide.” : 
 
 “¢ And what wilt thou teach me, O singular and fearful man ? 
 New cheats — new —” 
 
 ‘No; I have thrown thee into the abyss of disbelief: I will 
 lead thee now to the eminence of faith. Thou hast seen the 
 false types: thou shalt learn now the realities they represent. 
 There is no shadow, Apecides, without its substance. Come to 
 me this night. Your hand.” 
 
 Impressed, excited, bewildered by the language of the Egyp- 
 tian, Apzcides gave him his hand, and master and pupil 
 parted. 
 
 It was true that for Apecides there was no retreat. He had 
 taken the vows of celibacy; he had devoted himself to a life 
 that at present seemed to possess all the austerities of fanati- 
 cism, without any of the consolations of belief. It was natural 
 that he should yet cling to a yearning desire to reconcile him- 
 self to an irrevocable career. The powerful and profound 
 mind of the Egyptian yet claimed an empire over his young 
 imagination, excited him with vague conjecture, and kept him 
 alternately vibrating between hope and fear. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. o9 
 
 Meanwhile Arbaces pursued his slow and stately way to the 
 house of Ione. As he entered the tablinum, he héard a voice 
 from the porticos of the peristyle beyond, which, musical as it 
 was, sounded displeasingly on his ear: it was the voice of the 
 young and beautiful Glaucus, and for the first time an involun- 
 tary thrill of jealousy shot through the breast of the Ngyptian. 
 On entering the peristyle he found Glaucus seated by the side 
 of Ione. The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver 
 spray in the air, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of 
 the sultry noon. The handmaids, almost invariably attendant 
 on Jone, who with her freedom of life preserved the most deli- 
 cate modesty, sat at a little distance; by the feet of Glaucus 
 lay the lyre on which he had been playing to Ione one of the 
 Lesbian airs. The scene—the group before Arbaces — was 
 stamped by that peculiar and refined ideality of poesy which 
 we yet, not erroneously, imagine to be the distinction of the 
 ancients, — the marble columns, the vases of flowers, the statue, 
 white and tranquil, closing every vista; and, above all, the two 
 living forms, from which a sculptor might have caught either 
 inspiration or despair. 
 
 Arbaces, pausing for a moment, gazed on the pair with a 
 brow from which all the usual stern serenity had fled; he re- 
 covered himself by an effort, and slowly approached them, but 
 with a step so soft and echoless that even the attendants heard 
 him not, — much less Jone and her lover. 
 
 “ And yet,” said Glaucus, “it is only before we love that we 
 imagine that our poets have truly described the passion; the 
 instant the sun rises, all the stars that had shone in his absence 
 vanish into air. The poets exist only in the night of the heart; 
 they are nothing to us when we feel the full glory of the god.” 
 
 “ A gentle and most glowing image, noble Glaucus.” 
 
 Both started, and recognized behind the seat of Ione the cold 
 and sarcastic face of the Egyptian. 
 
 “ You are a sudden guest,” said Glaucus, rising, and with a 
 forced smile. 
 
 “So ought all to be who know they are welcome,” returned 
 Arbaces, seating himself, and motioning to Glaucus to do the 
 same. 3 
 
60 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “T am glad,” said Ione, “to see you at length together ; 
 for you are suited to each other, and you are formed to be 
 friends.” 
 
 “Give me back some fifteen years of life,” replied the 
 Egyptian, “before you can place me on an equality with 
 Glaucus. Happy should I be to receive his friendship; but 
 what can I give him in return? Can I make to him the same 
 confidences that he would repose in me,—of banquets and 
 garlands, of Parthian steeds and the chances of the dice? 
 these pleasures suit his age, his nature, his career: they are 
 not for mine.” 
 
 So saying, the artful Egyptian looked down and sighed; but 
 from the corner of his eye he stole a glance towards Ione, to 
 see how she received these insinuations of the pursuits of her 
 visitor. Her countenance did not satisfy him. Glaucus, 
 slightly coloring, hastened gayly to reply. Nor was he, per- 
 haps, without the wish in his turn to disconcert and abash the 
 Egyptian. 
 
 ‘You are right, wise Arbaces,” said he; “we can esteem each 
 other, but we cannot be friends. My banquets lack the secret 
 salt, which, according to rumor, gives such zest to your own. 
 And, by Hercules! when I have reached your age, if I, like 
 you, may think it wise to pursue the pleasures of manhood, 
 like you I shall be doubtless sarcastic on the gallantries of 
 youth.” 
 
 The Egyptian raised his eyes to Glaucus with a sudden and 
 piercing glance, 
 
 “JT do not understand you,” said he, coldly; “but it is the 
 custom to consider that wit lies in obscurity.” He turned from 
 Glaucus as he spoke, with a scarcely perceptible sneer of con- 
 tempt, and after a moment’s pause addressed himself to Ione. 
 “JT have not, beautiful Ione,” said he, “been fortunate enough 
 to find you within doors the last two or three times that I have 
 visited your vestibule.” 
 
 “The smoothness of the sea has tempted me much from 
 home,” replied Ione, with a little embarrassment. 
 
 The embarrassment did not escape Arbaces; but without 
 seeming to heed it, he replied with a smile: “ You know that 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 61 
 
 the old poet says, ‘Women should keep within doors, and there 
 converse.’ ’”’} 
 
 “The poet was a cynic,” said Glaucus, “and hated women.” 
 
 “Fle spake according to the customs of his country, and that 
 country is your boasted Greece.” 
 
 “lo different periods different customs. Had our fore- 
 fathers known Ione, they had made a different law.” 
 
 “Did you learn these pretty gallantries at Rome?” said 
 Arbaces, with ill-suppressed emotion. 
 
 “One certainly would not go for gallantries to Egypt,” 
 retorted Glaucus, playing carelessly with his chain. 
 
 “Come, come,” said Ione, hastening to interrupt a conver- 
 sation which she saw, to her great distress, was so little likely 
 to cement the intimacy she had desired to effect between 
 Glaucus and’ her friend, “ Arbaces must not be so hard upon 
 his poor pupil. An orphan, and without a mother’s care, I 
 may be to blame for the independent and almost masculine 
 liberty of life that I have chosen: yet it is not greater than 
 the Roman women are accustomed to; it is not greater than 
 the Grecian ought to be. Alas! is it only to be among men 
 that freedom and virtue are to be deemed united? Why should 
 the slavery that destroys you be considered the only method 
 to preserve us? Ah! believe me, it has been the great error 
 of men —and one that has worked bitterly on their destinies 
 —to imagine that the nature of women is (I will not say 
 inferior, that may be so, but) so different from their own, in 
 making laws unfavorable to the intellectual advancement of 
 women. Have they not, in so doing, made laws against their 
 children, whom women are to rear, —against the husbands, 
 of whom women are to be the friends, nay, sometimes the 
 advisers?” Ione stopped short suddenly, and her face was 
 suffused with the most enchanting blushes. She feared lest 
 her enthusiasm had led her too far; yet she feared the austere 
 Arbaces less than the courteous Glaucus, for she loved the 
 last, and it was not the custom of the Greeks to allow their 
 women (at least such of their women as they most honored) 
 the same liberty and the same station as those of Italy enjoyed. 
 
 1 Kuripides. 
 
62 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 She felt, therefore, a thrill of delight as Glaucus earnestly 
 replied, — 
 
 “Ever mayst thou think thus, Ione; ever be your pure 
 heart your unerring guide. Happy it had been for Greece 
 if she had given to the chaste the same intellectual charms 
 that are so celebrated amongst the less worthy of her women. 
 No State falls from freedom — from knowledge — while your 
 sex smile only on the free, and by appreciating, encourage 
 the wise.” 
 
 Arbaces was silent, for it was neither his part to sanction 
 the sentiment of Glaucus, nor to condemn that of Ione; and, 
 after a short and embarrassed conversation, Glaucus took his 
 leave of Ione. 
 
 When he was gone, Arbaces, drawing his seat nearer to the 
 fair Neapolitan’s, said in those bland and subdued tones in 
 which he knew so well how to veil the mingled art and fierce- 
 ness of his character, — 
 
 “Think not, my sweet pupil, if so I may call you, that I 
 wish to shackle that liberty you adorn while you assume; but 
 which, if not greater, as you rightly observe, than that pos- 
 sessed by the Roman women, must at least be accompanied 
 by great circumspection when arrogated by one unmarried. 
 Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise 
 themselves, to your feet; continue to charm them with the 
 conversation of an Aspasia, the music of an Erinna; but 
 reflect, at least, on those censorious tongues which can so 
 easily blight the tender reputation of a maiden; and while 
 you provoke admiration, give, I beseech you, no victory to 
 envy.” 
 
 “ What mean you, Arbaces?” said Ione, in an alarmed and 
 trembling voice; “I know you are my friend, that you de- 
 sire only my honor and my welfare. What is it you would 
 say?” 
 
 “Your friend —ah, how sincerely! May I speak then as a 
 friend, without reserve and without offence ?” 
 
 “T beseech you do so.” 
 
 “This young profligate, this Glaucus, how didst thou know 
 him? Hast thou seen him often?” And as Arbaces spoke, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, 63 
 
 he fixed his gaze steadfastly upon Ione, as if he sought to 
 penetrate into her soul. 
 
 Recoiling before that gaze, with a strange fear which she 
 could not explain, the Neapolitan answered with confusion and 
 hesitation: “ He was brought to my house as a countryman of 
 my father’s, and I may say of mine. I have known him only 
 within this last week or so; but why these questions ?” 
 
 “Forgive me,” said Arbaces; “I thought you might have 
 known him longer, — base insinuator that he is!” 
 
 “How! what mean you? Why that term ?” 
 
 “Jt matters not; let me not rouse your indignation against 
 one who does not deserve so grave an honor.” 
 
 “JT implore you speak. What has Glaucus insinuated; or. 
 rather, in what do you suppose he has offended ? ” 
 Smothering his resentment at the last part of Ione’s ques- 
 tion, Arbaces continued: “You know his pursuits, his com- 
 panions, his habits: the comissatio and the alea (the revel and 
 the dice) make his occupation; and amongst the associates of 
 vice how can he dream of virtue ?” 
 
 “Still you speak riddles. By the gods! I entreat you, say 
 the worst at once.” 
 
 “Well, then, it must be so. Know, my Ione, that it was 
 but yesterday that Glaucus boasted openly, yes, in the public 
 baths, of your love to him. He said it amused him to take 
 advantage of it. Nay, I will do him justice, he praised your 
 beauty; who could deny it? But he laughed scornfully when 
 his Clodius or his Lepidus asked him if he loved you enough 
 for marriage, and when he purposed to adorn his door-posts 
 with flowers.” 
 
 “Tmpossible! How heard you this base slander ?” 
 
 “Nay, would you have me relate to you all the comments 
 of the insolent coxcombs with which the story has circled 
 through the town? Be assured that I myself disbelieved at 
 first, and that I have now painfully been convinced by sev- 
 eral ear-witnesses of the truth of what I have reluctantly told 
 thee.” 
 
 Ione sank back, and her face was whiter than the pillar 
 against which she leaned for support. 
 
64 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “T own it vexed, it irritated me, to hear your name thus 
 lightly pitched from lip to lip, like some mere dancing-girl’s 
 fame. JI hastened this morning to seek and to warn you. I 
 found Glaucus here. I was stung from my self-possession. 
 I could not conceal my feelings; nay, I was uncourteous in 
 thy presence. Canst thou forgive thy friend, Ione?” 
 
 Tone placed her hand in his, but replied not. 
 
 “Think no more of this,” said he; “but let it be a warning 
 voice to tell thee how much prudence thy lot requires. It 
 cannot hurt thee, Ione, for a moment; for a gay thing like 
 this could never have been honored by even a serious thought 
 from Ione. These insults only wound when they come from 
 one we love; far different indeed is he whom the lofty Ione 
 shall stoop to love.” 
 
 “Love!” muttered Ione, with an hysterical laugh. “Ay, 
 indeed.” 
 
 It is not without interest to observe in those remote times, 
 and under a social system so widely different from the modern, 
 the same small causes that ruffle and interrupt the “course 
 of love,” which operate so commonly at this day; the same 
 inventive jealousy, the same cunning slander, the same crafty 
 and fabricated retailings of petty gossip, which so often now 
 suffice to break the ties of the truest love, and counteract the 
 tenor of circumstances most apparently propitious. When the 
 bark sails on over the smocthest wave, the fable tells us of 
 the diminutive fish that can cling to the keel and arrest its 
 progress: so is it ever with the great passions of mankind; 
 and we should paint life but ill if, even in times the most 
 prodigal of romance, and of the romance of which we most 
 largely avail ourselves, we did not also describe the mechanism 
 of those trivial and household springs of mischief which we 
 see every day at work in our chambers and at our hearths. It 
 is in these, the lesser intrigues of hfe, that we mostly find 
 ourselves at home with the past. 
 
 Most cunningly had the Egyptian appealed to Ione’s ruling 
 foible; most dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to 
 her pride. He fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from 
 the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was, at most, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 65 
 
 but an incipient fancy; and hastening to change the subject, 
 he now led her to talk of her brother. Their conversation did 
 not last long. He left her, resolved not again to trust so much 
 to absence, but to visit, to watch her, every day. 
 
 No sooner had his shadow glided from her presence than 
 woman’s pride, her sex’s dissimulation, deserted his intended 
 victim, and the haughty Ione burst into passionate tears. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE GAY LIFE OF THE POMPEIAN LOUNGER. — A MINIATURE 
 LIKENESS OF THE ROMAN BATHS. 
 
 WueEn Glaucus left Ione, he felt as if he trod upon air. In 
 the interview with which he had just been blessed, he had for 
 the first time gathered from her distinctly that his love was not 
 unwelcome to, and would not be unrewarded by her. This hope 
 filled him with a rapture for which earth and heaven seemed 
 too narrow to afford a vent. Unconscious of the sudden en- 
 emy he had left behind, and forgetting not only his taunts but 
 his very existence, Glaucus passed through the gay streets, re- 
 peating to himself, in the wantonness of joy, the music of the 
 soft air to which Ione had listened with such intentness; and 
 now he entered the Street of Fortune, with its raised footpath, 
 —its houses painted without, and the open doors admitting 
 the view of the glowing frescos within. Each end of the 
 street was adorned with a triumphal arch; and as Glaucus 
 now came before the Temple of Fortune, the jutting portico 
 of that beautiful fane (which is supposed to have been built 
 by one of the family of Cicero, perhaps by the orator himself) 
 imparted a dignified and venerable feature to a scene other- 
 wise more brilliant than lofty in its character. That temple 
 was one of the most graceful specimens of Roman architecture. 
 It was raised on a somewhat lofty podium; and between two 
 flights of steps ascending to a platform, stood the altar of the 
 
 VoL. 1.— 5 
 
~ 
 
 66 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 goddess. From this platform another flight of broad stairs 
 led to the portico, from the height of whose fluted columns 
 hung festoons of the richest flowers. On either side the ex- 
 tremities of the temple were placed statues of Grecian work- 
 manship; and at a little distance from the temple rose the 
 triumphal arch crowned with an equestrian statue of Caligula, 
 which was flanked by trophies of bronze. In the space before 
 the temple a lively throng was assembled, —some seated on 
 benches and discussing the politics of the empire, some con- 
 versing on the approaching spectacle of the amphitheatre. 
 One knot of young men were lauding a new beauty, another 
 digcussing the merits of the last play; a third group, more 
 stricken in age, were speculating on the chance of the trade 
 with Alexandria, and amidst these were many merchants in 
 the Eastern costume, whose loose and peculiar robes, painted 
 and gemmed slippers, and composed and serious countenances, 
 formed a striking contrast to the tunicked forms and animated 
 gestures of the Itahans. For that impatient and lively people 
 had, as now, a language distinct from speech, —a language of 
 signs and motions, inexpressibly significant and vivacious ; 
 their descendants retain it, and the learned Jorio hath written 
 a most entertaining work upon that species of hieroglyphical 
 gesticulation. 
 
 Sauntering through the crowd, Glaucus soon found himself 
 amidst a group of his merry and dissipated friends. 
 
 “Ah!” said Sallust, “it is a lustrum since I saw you.” 
 
 “And how have you spent the lustrum? What new dishes 
 have you discovered ?” 
 
 “JT have been scientific,” returned Sallust, “and have made 
 some experiments in the feeding of lampreys; I confess I 
 despair of bringing them to the perfection which our Roman 
 ancestors attained.” 
 
 “ Miserable man! and why?” 
 
 “ Because,” returned Sallust, with a sigh, “it is no longer 
 lawful to give them a slave to eat. I am very often tempted 
 to make away with a very fat carptor [butler] whom I possess, 
 and pop him slyly into the reservoir. He would give the fish 
 a most oleaginous flavor! But slaves are not slaves nowa- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 67 
 
 days, and have no sympathy with their masters’ interest, or 
 Davus would destroy himself to oblige me!” 
 
 “What news from Rome?” said Lepidus as he languidly 
 joined the group. 
 
 “The emperor has been giving a splendid supper to the 
 senators,” answered Sallust. 
 
 “He is a good creature,” quoth Lepidus; “they say he 
 never sends a man away without granting his request.” 
 
 “Perhaps he would let me kill a slave for my reservoir,” 
 returned Sallust, eagerly. 
 
 “Not unlikely,” said Glaucus; “for he who grants a favor 
 to one Roman, must always do it at the expense of another. 
 Be sure, that for every smile Titus has caused, a hundred eyes 
 have wept.” 
 
 “Long live Titus!” cried Pansa, overhearing the emperor’s 
 name, as he swept patronizingly through the crowd; “he 
 has promised my brother a questorship because he had run 
 through his fortune.” 
 
 “‘ And wishes now to enrich himself among the people, my 
 Pansa,” said Glaucus. 
 
 “Exactly so,” said Pansa, 
 
 ‘That is putting the people to some use,” said Glaucus. 
 
 “To be sure,” returned Pansa. “Well, I must go and look 
 after the erarium; it is a little out of repair.” And followed 
 by a long train of clients, distinguished from the rest of the 
 throng by the togas they wore (for togas, once the sign of 
 freedom in a citizen, were now the badge of servility to a 
 patron), the eedile fidgeted fussily away. 
 
 ‘Poor Pansa;” said Lepidus: “he never has time for 
 pleasure. Thank Heaven, I am not an edile!” 
 
 “Ah, Glaucus, how are you, — gay as ever?” said Clodius, 
 joining the group. 
 
 «¢ Are you come to sacrifice to Fortune ?” said Sallust. 
 
 “T sacrifice to her every night,” returned the gamester. 
 
 “T do not doubt it. No man has made more victims!” 
 
 “ By Hercules, a biting speech!” cried Glaucus, laughing. 
 
 “The dog’s letter is never out of your mouth, Sallust,” said 
 Clodius, angrily; “ you are always snarling.” 
 
68 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “T may well have the dog’s letter in my mouth, since, 
 whenever I play with you, I have the dog’s throw in my 
 hand,” returned Sallust. 
 
 “Hist!” said Glaucus, taking a rose from a flower-girl who 
 stood beside. 
 
 “The rose is the token of silence,” replied Sallust; “but I 
 love only to see it at the supper-table.” 
 
 “Talking of that, Diomed gives a grand feast next week,” 
 said Sallust; “are you invited, Glaucus ?” 
 
 “Yes, I received an invitation this morning.” 
 
 “And I too,” said Sallust, drawing a square piece of 
 papyrus from his girdle; “I see that he asks us an hour 
 earlier than usual: an earnest of something sumptuous.” } 
 
 “Oh, he is rich as Croesus,” said Clodius; “and his bill 
 of fare is as long as an epic.” 
 
 ‘Well, let us to the baths,” said Glaucus: “this is the time 
 when all the world is there; and Fulvius, whom you admire 
 so much, is going to read us his last ode.” 
 
 The young men assented readily to the proposal, and they 
 strolled to the baths. 
 
 Although the public therme, or baths, were instituted 
 rather for the poorer citizens than the wealthy (for the last 
 had baths in their own houses), yet to the crowds of all ranks 
 who resorted to them it was a favorite place for conversation, 
 and for that indolent lounging so dear to a gay and thought- 
 less people. The baths at Pompeii differed, of course, in plan 
 and construction from the vast and complicated therme of 
 Rome; and indeed it seems that in each city of the empire 
 there was always some slight modification of arrangement in 
 the general architecture of the public baths. This mightily 
 puzzles the learned, —as if architects and fashion were not 
 capricious before the nineteenth century! Our party entered 
 by the principal porch in the Street of Fortune. At the wing 
 of the portico sat the keeper of the baths, with his two boxes 
 before him, one for the money he received, one for the tickets 
 
 1 The Romans sent tickets of invitation, like the moderns, specifying the 
 
 hour of the repast; which, if the intended feast was to be sumptuous, was 
 earlier than usual. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 69 
 
 he dispensed: Round the walls of the portico were seats 
 crowded with persons of all ranks; while others, as the regi- 
 men of the physicians prescribed, were walking briskly to and 
 fro in the portico, stopping every now and then to gaze on the 
 innumerable notices of shows, games, sales, exhibitions, which 
 were painted or inscribed upon the walls. The general sub- 
 ject of conversation was, however, the spectacle announced in 
 the amphitheatre; and each new-comer was fastened upon by 
 a group eager to know if Pompeii had been so fortunate as to 
 produce some monstrous criminal, some happy case of sac- 
 rilege or of murder, which would allow the ediles to provide 
 aman for the jaws of the hon: all other more common ex- 
 hibitions seemed dull and tame when compared with the 
 possibility of this fortunate occurrence. 
 
 “For my part,” said one jolly-looking man, who was a gold- 
 smith, “I think the emperor, if he is as good as they say, 
 might have sent us a Jew.” 
 
 “ Why not take one of the new sect of Nazarenes?” said a 
 philosopher. “Iam not cruel; but an atheist, one who denies 
 Jupiter himself, deserves no mercy.” 
 
 “T care not how many gods a man likes to believe in,” said 
 the goldsmith; “but to deny all gods is something monstrous.” 
 
 “ Yet I fancy,” said Glaucus, “that these people are not 
 absolutely atheists. I am told that they believe in a God,— 
 nay, in a future state.” 
 
 “Quite a mistake, my dear Glaucus,” said the philosopher. 
 “‘T have conferred with them: they laughed in my face when 
 I talked of Pluto and Hades.” 
 
 “Q ye gods!” exclaimed the goldsmith in horror; “are 
 there any of these wretches in Pompeii ? ” 
 
 “1 know there are a few; but they meet so privately that it 
 is impossible to discover ip they are.” 
 
 As Glaucus turned away, a sculptor, who was a great enthu- 
 siast in his art, looked after him admiringly. 
 
 “ Ah!” said he, “if we could get him on the arena, there 
 would be a model for you! What limbs! what a head! he 
 ought to have been a gladiator! A subject, a subject wor- 
 thy of our art! Why don’t they give him to the lion?” 
 
70 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Meanwhile Fulvius, the Roman poet, whom his contempo- 
 raries declared immortal, and who, but for this history, would 
 never have been heard of in our neglectful age, came eagerly 
 up to Glaucus. “Oh, my Athenian, my Glaucus, you have 
 come to hear my ode! That is indeed an honor; you, a 
 Greek, to whom the very language of common life is poetry. 
 How I thank you. It is but a trifle; but if I secure your 
 approbation, perhaps I may get an introduction to Titus. Oh, 
 Glaucus, a poet without a patron is an amphora without a 
 label! the wine may be good, but nobody will laud it. And 
 what says Pythagoras ? ‘ Frankincense to the gods, but praise 
 to man.’ <A patron, then, is the poet’s priest: he procures 
 him the incense and obtains him his believers.” 
 
 ‘But all Pompeii is your patron, and every portico an altar 
 in your praise.” 
 
 “ Ah! the poor Pompeians are very civil; they love to honor 
 merit. But they are only the inhabitants of a petty town, — 
 spero meliora / Shall we within ? ” 
 
 “Certainly ; we lose time till we hear your poem.” 
 
 At this instant there was a rush of some twenty persons 
 from the baths into the portico; and a slave stationed at the 
 door of a small corridor now admitted the poet, Glaucus, 
 Clodius, and a troop of the bard’s other friends, into the 
 passage. 
 
 “A poor place this, compared with the Roman therme!” 
 said Lepidus, disdainfully. 
 
 “Yet is there some taste in the ceiling,” said Glaucus, who 
 was in a mood to be pleased with everything, pointing to the 
 stars which studded the roof. 
 
 Lepidus shrugged his shoulders, but was too languid to 
 reply. 
 
 They now entered a somewhat spacious chamber, which 
 served for the purposes of the apodyterium (that is, a place 
 where the bathers prepared themselves for their luxurious 
 ablutions). The vaulted ceiling was raised from a cornice, 
 glowingly colored with motley and grotesque paintings; the 
 ceiling itself was panelled in white compartments bordered 
 with rich crimson; the unsullied and shining floor was paved 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, T1 
 
 with white mosaics, and along the walls were ranged benches 
 for the accommodation of the loiterers. This chamber did not 
 possess the numerous and spacious windows which Vitruvius 
 attributes to his more magnificent frigidarium. The Pom- 
 peians, as all the southern Italians, were fond of banishing the 
 light of their sultry skies, and combined in their voluptuous 
 associations the idea of luxury with darkness. Two windows 
 of glass! alone admitted the soft and shaded ray; and the 
 compartment in which one of these casements was placed was 
 adorned with a large relief of the destruction of the Titans. 
 
 In this apartment Fulvius seated himself with a magisterial 
 air, and his audience gathering round him, encouraged him to 
 commence his recital. 
 
 The poet did not require much pressing. He drew forth 
 from his vest a roll of papyrus, and after hemming three times, 
 as much to command silence as to clear his voice, he began 
 that wonderful ode, of which, to the great mortification of the 
 author of this history, no single verse can be discovered. 
 
 By the plaudits he received, it was doubtless worthy of his 
 fame; and Glaucus was the only listener who did not find it 
 excel the best odes of Horace. 
 
 The poem concluded, those who took only the cold bath be- 
 gan to undress; they suspended their garments on hooks fas- 
 tened in the wail, and receiving, according to their condition, 
 either from their own slaves or those of the therme, loose 
 robes in exchange, withdrew into that graceful and circular 
 building which yet exists, to shame the unlaving posterity of 
 the south. The more luxurious departed by another door to 
 the tepidarium, a place which was heated to a voluptuous 
 warmth, partly by a movable fireplace, principally by a sus- 
 pended pavement, beneath which was conducted the caloric 
 of the laconicum. 
 
 Here this portion of the intended bathers, after unrobing 
 themselves, remained for some time enjoying the artificial 
 
 1 The discoveries at Pompeii have controverted the long-established error 
 of the antiquaries, that glass windows were unknown to the Romans. The 
 use of them was not, however, common among the middle and inferior classes 
 in their private dwellings. 
 
12 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 warmth of the luxurious air. And this room, as befitted its 
 important rank in the long process of ablution, was more 
 richly and elaborately decorated than the rest. The arched 
 roof was beautifully carved and painted; the windows above, 
 of ground glass, admitted but wandering and uncertain rays; 
 below the massive cornices were rows of figures in massive 
 and bold relief; the walls glowed with crimson, the pavement 
 was skilfully tessellated in white mosaics. Here the habitu- 
 ated bathers, men who bathed seven times a day, would remain 
 in a state of enervate and speechless lassitude, either before 
 or (mostly) after the water-bath; and many of these victims of 
 the pursuit of health turned their listless eyes on the new- 
 comers, recognizing their friends with a nod, but dreading the 
 fatigue of conversation. 
 
 From this place the party again diverged, according to their 
 several fancies, some to the sudatorium, which answered the 
 purpose of our vapor-baths, and thence to the warm-bath itself; 
 those more accustomed to exercise, and capable of dispensing 
 with so cheap a purchase of fatigue, resorted at once to the 
 calidarium or water-bath. 
 
 In order to complete this sketch, and give to the reader an 
 adequate notion of this, the main luxury of the ancients, we 
 will accompany Lepidus, who regularly underwent the whole 
 process, save only the cold-bath which had gone lately out of 
 fashion. Being then gradually warmed in the tepidarium, 
 which has just been described, the delicate steps of the Pom- 
 pelan élégant were conducted to the sudatorium. Here let 
 the reader depict to himself the gradual process of the vapor- 
 bath, accompanied by an exhalation of spicy perfumes. After 
 our bather had undergone this operation, he was seized by his 
 slaves, who always awaited him at the baths, and the dews of 
 heat were removed by a kind of scraper, which (by the way) 
 a modern traveller has gravely declared to be used only to 
 remove the dirt, not one particle of which could ever settle on 
 the polished skin of the practised bather. Thence, somewhat 
 cooled, he passed into the water-bath, over which fresh per- 
 fumes were profusely scattered, and on emerging from the 
 opposite part of the room, a cooling shower played over his 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 13 
 
 head and form. Then wrapping himself in a light robe, he 
 returned once more to the tepidarium, where he found Glaucus, 
 who had not encountered the sudatorium; and now the main 
 delight and extravagance of the bath commenced. Their 
 slaves anointed the bathers from vials of gold, of alabaster, 
 or of crystal, studded with profusest gems, and containing the 
 rarest unguents gathered from all quarters of the world (the 
 number of these smegmata used by the wealthy would filla 
 modern volume, especially if the volume were printed by 
 a fashionable publisher: Amoracinum, Megalium, Nardum, — 
 omne quod exit in wm), while soft music played in an adja- 
 cent chamber, and such as used the bath in moderation, re- 
 freshed and restored by the grateful ceremony, conversed with — 
 all the zest and freshness of rejuvenated life. 
 
 “Blessed be he who invented baths!” said Glaucus, stretch- 
 ing himself along one of those bronze seats (then covered with 
 soft cushions) which the visitor to Pompeii sees at this day 
 in that same tepidarium. ‘Whether he were Hercules or 
 Bacchus, he deserved deification.” 
 
 “But tell me,” said a corpulent citizen, who was groaning 
 and wheezing under the operation of being rubbed down, — 
 “tell me, O Glaucus ! — evil chance to thy hands, O slave! why 
 so rough ? —tell me,— ugh! ugh!—are the baths at Rome 
 really so magnificent ?”’ Glaucus turned and recognized Diomed, 
 though not without some difficulty, so red and so inflamed 
 were the good man’s cheeks by the sudatory and the scraping 
 he had so lately undergone. “I fancy they must be a great 
 deal finer than these, eh ?” 
 
 Suppressing a smile, Glaucus replied, — 
 
 “Tmagine all Pompeii converted into baths, and you will 
 then form a notion of the size of the imperial therme of 
 Rome; but a notion of the seze only. Imagine every enter- 
 tainment for mind and body; enumerate all the gymnastic 
 games our fathers invented; repeat all the books Italy and 
 Greece have produced; suppose places for all these games, 
 admirers for all these works; add to this baths of the vastest 
 size, the most complicated construction; intersperse the whole 
 with gardens, with theatres, with porticos, with schools, — 
 
74 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 suppose, in one word, a city of the gods composed but of 
 palaces and public edifices, and you may form some faint 
 idea of the glories of the great baths of Rome.” 
 
 “By Hercules!” said Diomed, opening his eyes; “why, it 
 would take a man’s whole life to bathe!” 
 
 “At Rome it often does so,” replied Glaucus, gravely. 
 “There are many who live only at the baths. They repair 
 there the first hour in which the doors are opened, and re- 
 main till that in which the doors are closed. They seem as 
 if they knew nothing of the rest of Rome, as if they despised 
 all other existence.” 
 
 “By Pollux! you amaze me.” 
 
 “ven those who bathe only thrice a day contrive to con- 
 sume their lives in this occupation. They take their exercise 
 in the tennis-court or the porticos to prepare them for the 
 first bath ; they lounge into the theatre, to refresh themselves 
 after it. They take their prandium under the trees, and 
 think over their second bath. By the time it is prepared, 
 the prandium is digested. From the second bath they stroll 
 into one of the peristyles to hear some new poet recite, or 
 into the library to sleep over an old one. Then comes the 
 supper, which they still consider but a part of the bath; and 
 then a third time they bathe again, as the best place to con- 
 verse with their friends.” 
 
 “Per Hercle! but we have their imitators at Pompeii.” 
 
 “Yes, and without their excuse. The magnificent voluptu- 
 aries of the Roman baths are happy; they see nothing but 
 gorgeousness and splendor; they visit not the squalid parts 
 of the city; they know not that there is poverty in the 
 world. All Nature smiles for them, and her only frown is 
 the last one, which sends them to bathe in Cocytus. Believe 
 me, they are your only true philosophers.” 
 
 While Glaucus was thus conversing, Lepidus, with closed 
 eyes and scarce perceptible breath, was undergoing all the 
 mystic operations, not one of which he ever suffered his at- 
 tendants to omit. After the perfumes and the unguents, they 
 scattered over him the luxurious powder, which prevented 
 apy farther accession of heat; and this being rubbed away by 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. T5 
 
 the smooth surface of the pumice, he began to indue, not the 
 garments he had put off, but those more festive ones termed 
 “the synthesis,” with which the Romans marked their respect 
 for the coming ceremony of supper, if rather, from its hour 
 (three o’clock in our measurement of time), it might not be 
 more fitly denominated dinner. This done, he at length 
 opened his eyes and gave signs of returning life. 
 
 At the same time, too, Sallust betokened by a long yawn 
 the evidence of existence. 
 
 “Tt is supper-time,” said the epicure; “you, Glaucus and 
 Lepidus, come and sup with me.” 
 
 “ Recollect you are all three engaged to my house next 
 week,” cried Diomed, who was mightily proud of the ac- 
 quaintance of men of fashion. 
 
 “Ah, ah! we recollect,” said Sallust; “the seat of memory, 
 my Diomed, is certainly in the stomach.” 
 
 Passing now once again into the cooler air, and so into the 
 street, our gallants of that day concluded the ceremony of a 
 Pompeian bath. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ARBACES COGS HIS DICE WITH PLEASURE, AND WINS THE 
 GAME. 
 
 THE evening darkened over the restless city as Apzecides 
 took his way to the house of the Egyptian. He avoided the 
 more lighted and populous streets; and as he strode onward 
 with his head buried in his bosom, and his arms folded within 
 his robe, there was something startling in the contrast, which 
 his solemn mien and wasted form presented to the thoughtless 
 brows and animated air of those who occasionally crossed his 
 path. | 
 
 At length, however, a man of a more sober and staid de- 
 meanor, and who had twice passed him with a curious but 
 doubting look, touched him on the shoulder. 
 
76 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 “ Apecides!” said he, and he made a rapid sign with his 
 hands: it was the sign of the cross. 
 
 “Well, Nazarene,” replied the priest, and his pale face grew 
 paler, “ what wouldst thou ? ” 
 
 “Nay,” returned the stranger, “I would not interrupt thy 
 meditations ; but the last time we met I seemed not to be so 
 unwelcome.” | 
 
 “You are not unwelcome, Olinthus; but I am sad and 
 weary: nor am | able this evening to discuss with you those 
 themes which are most acceptable to you.” 
 
 “QO backward of heart!” said Olinthus, with bitter fervor; 
 “and art thou sad and weary, and wilt thou turn from the 
 very springs that refresh and heal ?” 
 
 “QO earth!” cried the young priest, striking his breast pas- 
 sionately, “from what regions shall my eyes open to the true 
 Olympus, where thy gods really dwell? Am I to believe with 
 this man that none whom for so many centuries my fathers 
 worshipped have a being ora name? Am I to break down, 
 as something blasphemous and profane, the very altars which 
 I have deemed most sacred, or am I to think with Arbaces 
 — what?” 
 
 He paused, and strode rapidly away in the impatience of 
 a man who strives to get rid of himself. But the Nazarene 
 was one of those hardy, vigorous, and enthusiastic men by 
 whom God in all times has worked the revolutions of earth, 
 and those, above all, in the establishment and in the reforma- 
 tion of His own religion; men who were formed to convert, 
 because formed to endure. It is men of this mould whom 
 nothing discourages, nothing dismays; in the fervor of belief 
 they are inspired and they inspire. Their reason first kindles 
 their passion, but the passion is the instrument they use; they 
 force themselves into men’s hearts, while they appear only to 
 appeal to their judgment. Nothing is so contagious as enthu- 
 siasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus: it moves 
 stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sin- 
 cerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it. 
 
 Olinthus did not then suffer Apzecides thus easily to escape 
 him. He overtook and addressed him thus : — 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 17 
 
 “IT do not wonder, Apecides, that I distress you; that I 
 shake all the elements of your mind; that you are lost in 
 doubt; that you drift here and there in the vast ocean of 
 uncertain and benighted thought. I wonder not at this; but 
 bear with me a little: watch and pray,—the darkness shall 
 vanish, the storm sleep, and God Himself, as He came of 
 yore on the sea of Galilee, shall walk over the lulled billows, 
 to the delivery of your soul. Ours is a religion jealous in 
 its demands, but how infinitely prodigal in its gifts! It 
 troubles you for an hour, it repays you by immortality.” 
 
 “Such promises,” said Apeecides, sullenly, “are the tricks 
 by which man is ever gulled. Oh, glorious were the promises 
 which led me to the shrine of Isis!” 
 
 “ But,” answered the Nazarene, “ask thy reason, can that 
 religion be sound which outrages all morality ? You are told 
 to worship your gods. What are those gods, even according 
 to yourselves, —what their actions, what their attributes ? 
 Are they not all represented to you as the blackest of crimi- 
 nals? Yet you are asked to serve them as the holiest of 
 divinities. Jupiter himself is a parricide and an adulterer. 
 What are the meaner deities but imitators of his vices? You 
 are told not to murder, but you worship murderers; you are 
 told not to commit adultery, and you make your prayers to 
 an adulterer. Oh, what is this but a mockery of the holiest 
 part of man’s nature, which is faith? Turn now to the God, 
 the one, the true God, to whose shrine I would lead you. If 
 He seem to you too sublime, too shadowy, for those human 
 associations, those touching connections between Creator and 
 creature, to which the weak heart clings, contemplate Him in 
 his Son, who put on mortality like ourselves. His mortality 
 is not indeed declared, like that of your fabled gods, by the 
 vices of our nature, but by the practice of all its virtues. In 
 Him are united the austerest morals with the tenderest affec- 
 tions. If He were but a mere man, He had been worthy to 
 become a god. You honor Socrates; he has his sect, his dis- 
 ciples, his schools. But what are the doubtful virtues of the 
 Athenian, to the bright, the undisputed, the active, the un- 
 ceasing, the devoted holiness of Christ? I speak to you now 
 
78 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 only of His human character. He came in that, as the pattern 
 of future ages, to show us the form of virtue which Plato 
 thirsted to see embodied. This was the true sacrifice that He 
 made for man; but the halo that encircled His dying hour not 
 only brightened earth but opened to us the sight of heaven! 
 You are touched, you are moved. God works in your heart; 
 His spirit is with you. Come, resist not the holy impulse; 
 come at once, unhesitatingly. A few of us are now assem- 
 bled to expound the Word of God. Come, let me guide you 
 to them. You are sad, you are weary. Listen, then, to the 
 words of God. ‘Come to me,’ saith He, ‘all ye that are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest!’” 
 
 “T cannot now,” said Apzecides; “ another time.” 
 
 “Now — now!” exclaimed Olinthus, earnestly, and clasping 
 him by the arm. 
 
 But Apezcides, yet unprepared for the renunciation of that 
 faith, that life, for which he had sacrificed so much, and still 
 haunted by the promises of the Egyptian, extricated himself 
 forcibly from the grasp; and feeling an effort necessary to 
 conquer the irresolution which the eloquence of the Christian 
 had begun to effect in his heated and feverish mind, he 
 gathered up his robes and fled away with a speed that defied 
 pursuit. 
 
 Breathless and exhausted, he arrived at last in a remote and 
 sequestered part of the city, and the lone house of the Egyp- 
 tian stood before him. As he paused to recover himself, the 
 moon emerged from a silver cloud and shone full upon the 
 walls of that mysterious habitation. 
 
 No other house was near. The darksome vines clustered far 
 and wide in front of the building, and behind it rose a copse 
 of lofty forest-trees sleeping in the melancholy moonlight ; 
 beyond stretched the dim outline of the distant hills, and 
 amongst them the quiet crest of Vesuvius, not then so lofty as 
 the traveller beholds it now. 
 
 Apecides passed through the arching vines, and arrived at 
 the broad and spacious portico. Before it, on either side of 
 the steps, reposed the image of the Egyptian sphinx, and the 
 moonlight gave an additional and yet more solemn calm to 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 19 
 
 those large and harmonious and passionless features in which 
 the sculptors of that type of wisdom united so much of loveli- 
 ness with awe; half-way up the extremities of the steps dark- 
 ened the green and massive foliage of the aloe, and the shadow 
 of the Eastern palm cast its long and unwaving boughs par- 
 tially over the marble surface of the stairs. 
 
 Something there was in the stillness of the place, and the 
 strange aspect of the sculptured sphinxes, which thrilled the 
 blood of the priest with a nameless and ghostly fear, and he 
 longed even for an echo to his noiseless steps as he ascended 
 to the threshoid. 
 
 He knocked at the door, over which was wrought an inscrip- 
 tion in characters unfamiliar to his eyes; it opened without a 
 sound, and a tall Ethiopian slave, without question or saluta- 
 tion, motioned to him to proceed. 
 
 The wide hall was lighted by lofty candelabra of elaborate 
 
 bronze, and round the walls were wrought vast hieroglyphics, 
 in dark and solemn colors, which contrasted strangely with 
 the bright hues and graceful shapes with which the inhabi- 
 tants of Italy decorated their abodes. At the extremity of 
 the hall, a slave, whose countenance, though not African, was 
 darker by many shades than the usual color of the south, 
 advanced to meet him. 
 _ JT seek Arbaces,” said the priest; but his voice trembled 
 even in his own ear. The slave bowed his head in silence, and 
 leading Apecides to a wing without the hall, conducted him 
 up a narrow staircase, and then traversing several rooms, in 
 which the stern and thoughtful beauty of the sphinx still made 
 the chief and most impressive object of the priest’s notice, 
 Apzcides found himself in a dim and half-lighted chamber, 
 in the presence of the Egyptian. 
 
 Arbaces was seated before a small table, on which lay un- 
 folded several scrolls of papyrus, impressed with the same 
 character as that on the threshold of the mansion. A small 
 tripod stood at a little distance, from the incense in which the 
 smoke slowly rose. Near this was a vast globe, depicting the 
 signs of heaven; and upon another table lay several instru- 
 ments, of curious and quaint shape, whose uses were unknown 
 
80 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 to Apecides. The farther extremity of the room was concealed 
 by a curtain, and the oblong window in the roof admitted the 
 rays of the moon, mingling sadly with the single lamp which 
 burned in the apartment. 
 
 “Seat yourself, Apzecides,” said the Egyptian, without rising. 
 
 The young man obeyed. 
 
 “You ask me,” resumed Arbaces, after a short pause, in 
 which he seemed absorbed in thought, —‘“ You ask me, or 
 would do so, the mightiest secrets which the soul of man is 
 fitted to receive ; it is the enigma of life itself that you desire 
 me to solve. Placed like children in the dark, and but for a 
 little while, in this dim and confined existence, we shape out 
 spectres in the obscurity; our thoughts now sink back into 
 ourselves in terror, now wildly plunge themselves into the 
 guideless gloom, guessing what it may contain; stretching 
 our helpless hands here and there, lest, blindly, we stumble 
 upon some hidden danger; not knowing the limits of our 
 boundary, now feeling them suffocate us with compressiun, 
 now seeing them extend far away till they vanish into eternity. 
 In this state all wisdom consists necessarily in the solution of 
 two questions, —‘ What are we to believe, and what are we to 
 reject?’ These questions you desire to decide ?” 
 
 Apzcides bowed his head in assent. 
 
 “Man must have some belief,” continued the Egyptian, in a 
 tone of sadness. ‘He must fasten his hope to something: it 
 is our common nature that you inherit when, aghast and terri- 
 fied to see that in which you have been taught to place your 
 faith swept away, you float over a dreary and shoreless sea of 
 incertitude, you cry for help, you ask for some plank to cling 
 to, some land, however dim and distant, to attain. Well, 
 then, listen. You have not forgotten our conversation of 
 to-day ? ” 
 
 “ Forgotten !” 
 
 “T confessed to you that those deities for whom smoke so 
 many altars were but inventions. I confessed to you that our 
 rites and ceremonies were but mummeries, to delude and lure 
 the herd to their proper good. I explained to you that from 
 those delusions came the bonds of society, the harmony of the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 81 
 
 world, the power of the wise; that power is in the obedience 
 of the vulgar. Continue we then these salutary delusions; 
 if man must have some belief, continue to him that which his 
 fathers have made dear to him, and which custom sanctifies 
 and strengthens. In seeking a subtler faith for us, whose 
 senses are too spiritual for the gross one, let us leave others 
 that support which crumbles from ourselves. This is wise; it 
 is benevolent.” 
 
 “Proceed.” 
 
 “This being settled,” resumed the Egyptian, “the old land- 
 marks being left uninjured for those whom we are about to 
 desert, we gird up our loins and depart to new climes of faith. 
 Dismiss at once from your recollection, from your thought, 
 all that you have believed before. Suppose the mind a blank, 
 an unwritten scroll, fit to receive impressions for the first time. 
 Look round the world; observe its order, its regularity, its 
 design. Something must have created it; the design speaks a 
 designer: in that certainty we first touch land. But what is 
 that something ?— A god, you cry. Stay! no confused and 
 confusing names. Of that which created the world, we know, 
 we can know, nothing, save these attributes, — power and un- 
 varying regularity ; stern, crushing, relentless regularity, heed- 
 ing no individual cases, rolling, sweeping, burning on, no 
 matter what scattered hearts, severed from the general mass, 
 fall ground and scorched beneath its wheels. The mixture of 
 evil with good —the existence of suffering and of crime —in 
 all times have perplexed the wise. They created a god; they 
 supposed him benevolent. How then came this evil? Why 
 did he permit—nay, why invent, why perpetuate—it? To 
 account ‘for this, the Persian creates a second spirit, whose 
 nature is evil, and supposes a continual war between that 
 and the god of good. In our own shadowy and tremendous 
 Typhon, the Egyptians image a similar demon. Perplexing 
 blunder that yet more bewilders us! folly that arose from the 
 vain delusion that makes a palpable, a corporeal, a human 
 being, of this unknown power; that clothes the Invisible with 
 attributes and a nature similar to the Seen. No: to this de- 
 signer let us give a name that does not command our bewil- 
 
 VOL. L —~ 6 
 
82 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 dering associations, and the mystery becomes more clear; that 
 name is Nrcrssity. Necessity, say the Greeks, compels the 
 gods. Then why the gods? their agency becomes unneces- 
 sary; dismiss them at once. Necessity is the ruler of all we 
 see; power, regularity, — these two qualities make its nature. 
 Would you ask more? You can learn nothing: whether it be 
 eternal, whether it compel us, its creatures, to new careers 
 after that darkness which we call death, we cannot tell. There 
 leave we this ancient, unseen, unfathomable power, and come 
 to that which, to our eyes, is the great minister of its func- 
 tions. This we can task more, from this we can learn more: 
 its evidence is around us; its name is Nature. The error of 
 the sages has been to direct their researches to the attributes 
 of necessity, where all is gloom and blindness. Had they 
 confined their researches to Nature, what of knowledge might 
 we not already have achieved ? Here patience, examination, 
 are never directed in vain. We see what we explore; our 
 minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes and effects. Nature 
 is the great agent of the external universe, and Necessity im- 
 poses upon it the laws by which it acts, and imparts to us the 
 powers by which we examine; those powers are curiosity and 
 memory: their union is reason, their perfection is wisdom. 
 Well, then, I examine by the help of these powers this in- 
 exhaustible Nature. I examine the earth, the air, the ocean, 
 the heaven: I find that all have a mystic sympathy with each 
 other; that the moon sways the tides; that the air maintains 
 the earth, and is the medium of the life and sense of things ; 
 that by the knowledge of the stars we measure the limits of 
 the earth; that we portion out the epochs of time; that by 
 their pale light we are guided into the abyss of the past; that 
 in their solemn lore we discern the destinies of the future. 
 And thus, while we know not that which Necessity is, we 
 learn, at least, her decrees. And now, what morality do we 
 glean from this religion ?— for religion it is. I believe in two 
 deities, Nature and Necessity ; I worship the last by reverence, 
 the first by investigation. What is the morality my religion 
 teaches? This: all things are subject but to general rules; 
 the sun shines for the joy of the many —it may bring sorrow 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 83 
 
 to the few; the night sheds sleep on the multitude, but it 
 harbors murder as well as rest; the forests adorn the earth, 
 but shelter the serpent and the lion; the ocean supports a 
 thousand barks, but it engulfs the one. It is only thus for 
 the general, and not for the universal benefit that Nature acts, 
 and Necessity speeds on her awful course. This is the moral- 
 ity of the dread agents of the world; it is mine, who am their 
 creature. J would preserve the delusions of priestcraft, for 
 they are serviceable to the multitude; I would impart to man 
 the arts I discover, the sciences I perfect; I would speed the 
 vast career of civilizing lore: in this I serve the mass, I fulfil 
 the general law, I execute the great moral that Nature preaches. 
 For myself I claim the individual exception; I claim it for the 
 wise: satisfied that my individual actions are nothing in the 
 great balance of good and evil, satisfied that the product of 
 my knowledge can give greater blessings to the mass than my 
 desires can operate evil on the few (for the first can extend to 
 remotest regions and humanize nations yet unborn), I give to 
 the world wisdom, to myself freedom. I enlighten the lives 
 of others, and I enjoy my own. Yes; our wisdom is eternal, 
 but our life is short: make the most of it while it lasts. Sur- 
 render thy youth to pleasure, and thy senses to delight. Soon 
 comes the hour when the wine-cup is shattered, and the gar- 
 lands shall cease to bloom. Enjoy while you may. Be still, 
 O Apeecides, my pupil and my follower! I will teach thee 
 the mechanism of Nature, — her darkest and her wildest se- 
 crets, the lore which fools call magic, and the mighty mys- 
 teries of the stars. By this shalt thou discharge thy duty to 
 the mass; by this shalt thou enlighten thy race. But I will 
 lead thee also to pleasures of which the vulgar do not dream ; 
 and the day which thou givest to men shall be followed by the 
 sweet night which thou surrenderest to thyself.” 
 
 As the Egyptian ceased there rose about, around, beneath, 
 the softest music that Lydia ever taught, or Ionia ever per- 
 fected. It came like a stream of sound, bathing the senses 
 unawares; enervating, subduing with delight. It seemed the 
 melodies of invisible spirits, such as the shepherd might have 
 heard in the golden age, floating through the vales of Thessaly, 
 
84 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 or in the noontide glades of Paphos. The words which had 
 rushed to the lip of Apscides, in answer to the sophistries of 
 the Egyptian, died tremblingly away. He felt it as a profana- 
 tion to break upon that enchanted strain: the susceptibility 
 of his excited nature, the Greek softness and ardor of his 
 secret soul, were swayed and captured by surprise. He sank 
 on the seat with parted lips and thirsting ear; while in a 
 chorus of voices, bland and melting as those which waked 
 Psyche in the halls of love, rose the following song; — 
 
 THE HYMN OF EROS. 
 
 By the cool banks where soft Cephisus flows, 
 
 A voice sail’d trembling down the waves of air; 
 The leaves blushed brighter in the Teian’s rose, 
 
 The doves couch’d breathless in their summer lair ; 
 
 While from their hands the purple flowerets fell, 
 The laughing hours stood listening in the sky ; 
 
 From Pan’s green cave to Aigle’s! haunted cell, 
 Heaved the charm’d earth in one delicious sigh. 
 
 “Love, sons of earth! Iam the power of love! 
 Eldest of all the gods, with Chaos? born; 
 
 My smile sheds light along the courts above, 
 My kisses wake the eyelids of the Morn. 
 
 ‘Mine are the stars — there, ever as ye gaze, 
 Ye meet the deep spell of my haunting eyes ; 
 
 Mine is the moon — and, mournful if her rays, 
 ”*T is that she lingers where her Carian lies. 
 
 “The flowers are mine, — the blushes of the rose, 
 The violet-charming Zephyr to the shade ; 
 
 Mine the quick light that in the Maybeam glows, 
 And mine the day-dream in the lonely glade. 
 
 “Love, sons of earth, for love is earth’s soft lore, 
 Look where ye will — earth overflows with ME; 
 
 Learn from the waves that ever kiss the shore, 
 And the winds nestling on the heaving sea. 
 
 “ All teaches love !”” — The sweet voice, like a dream, 
 Melted in light; yet still the airs above, 
 
 The waving sedges, and the whispering stream, 
 And the green forest rustling, murmur’d, “ Love |” 
 
 1 The fairest of the Naiads. 2 Hesiod. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 85 
 
 As the voices died away, the Egyptian seized the hand 
 of Apecides, and led him, wandering, intoxicated, yet half- 
 reluctant, across the chamber towards the curtain at the far 
 end; and now, from behind that curtain, there seemed to burst 
 a thousand sparkling stars; the veil itself, hitherto dark, was 
 now lighted by these fires behind into the tenderest blue of 
 heaven. It represented heaven itself, — such a heaven as in 
 the nights of June might have shone down over the streams 
 of Castaly. Here and there were painted rosy and aerial 
 clouds, from which smiled, by the limnev’s art, faces of divin- 
 est beauty, and on which reposed the shapes of which Phidias 
 and Apelles dreamed. And the stars which studded the trans- 
 parent azure rolled rapidly as they shone, while the music, 
 that again woke with a livelier and lighter sound, seemed to 
 imitate the melody of the joyous spheres. 
 
 “Oh! what miracle is this, Arbaces?” said Apecides in 
 faltering accents. “ After having denied the gods, art thou 
 about to reveal to me—”’ 
 
 “Their pleasures!’ interrupted Arbaces, in a tone so differ- 
 ent from its usual cold and tranquil harmony that Apeecides 
 started, and thought the Egyptian himself transformed; and 
 now, as they neared the curtain, a wild, a loud, an exulting 
 melody burst from behind its concealment. With that sound 
 the veil was rent in twain, it parted, it seemed to vanish 
 into air; and a scene, which no Sybarite ever more than 
 rivalled, broke upon the dazzled gaze of the youthful priest. 
 A vast banquet-room stretched beyond, blazing with countless 
 lights, which filled the warm air with the scents of frankin- 
 cense, of jasmine, of violets, of myrrh; all that the most odor- 
 ous flowers, all that the most costly spices could distil, seemed 
 vathered into one ineffable and ambrosial essence: from the 
 light columns that sprang upwards to the airy roof, hung 
 draperies of white, studded with golden stars. At the ex- 
 tremities of the room two fountains cast up a spray, which, 
 catching the rays of the roseate lhght, glittered lke countless 
 diamonds. In the centre of the room as they entered there 
 rose slowly from the floor, to the sound of unseen minstrelsy, 
 a table spread with all the viands which sense ever devoted to 
 
86 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 fancy, and vases of that lost Myrrhine fabric,! so glowing in 
 its colors, so transparent in its material, were crowned with the 
 exotics of the East. The couches, to which this table was the 
 centre, were covered with tapestries of azure and gold; and 
 from invisible tubes in the vaulted roof descended showers 
 of fragrant waters, that cooled the delicious air, and contended 
 with the lamps, as if the spirits of wave and fire disputed 
 which element could furnish forth the most delicious odors. 
 And now, from behind the snowy draperies, trooped such 
 forms as Adonis beheld when he lay on the lap of Venus. 
 They came, some with garlands, others with lyres; they sur- 
 rounded the youth; they led his steps to the banquet; they 
 flung the chaplets round him in rosy chains. The earth, 
 the thought of earth, vanished from his soul. He imagined 
 himself in a dream, and suppressed his breath lest he should 
 wake too soon; the senses, to which he had never yielded as 
 yet, beat in his burning pulse, and confused his dizzy and reel- 
 ing sight. And while thus amazed and lost, once again, bu% 
 in brisk and Bacchiec measures, rose the magic strain :— 
 
 ANACREONTIC. 
 
 In the veins of the calyx foams and glows 
 The blood of the mantling vine, 
 But oh, in the bowl of Youth there glows 
 A Lesbian, more divine! 
 Bright, bright, 
 As the liquid light, 
 Its waves through thine eyelids shine ! 
 
 Fill up, fill up, to the sparkling brim, 
 The juice of the young Lyeus ; 2 
 The grape is the key that we owe to him 
 From the jail of the world to free us. 
 Drink, drink! 
 What need to shrink, 
 When the lamps alone can see us ? 
 
 1 Which, however, was possibly the porcelain of China, though this is 4 
 matter which admits of considerable dispute. 
 2 Name of Bacchus, from Av, to unbind, to release. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 87 
 
 Drink, drink, as I quaff from thine eyes 
 The wine of a softer tree ; 
 Give the smiles to the god of the grape, — thy sighs, 
 Beloved one, give to me. 
 Turn, turn, 
 My glances burn, 
 And thirst for a look from thee! 
 
 As the song ended, a group of three maidens, entwined with 
 a chain of starred flowers, and who, while they imitated, might 
 have shamed the Graces, advanced towards him in the gliding 
 measures of the Ionian dance, such as the Nereids wreathed 
 in moonlight on the yellow sands of the Algean wave; such as 
 Cytherea taught her handmaids in the marriage-feast of Psyche 
 and her son. 
 
 Now approaching, they wreathed their chaplet round his 
 head; now kneeling, the youngest of the three proffered him 
 the bowl, from which the wine of Lesbos foamed and sparkled. 
 The youth resisted no more; he grasped the intoxicating cup ; 
 the blood mantled fiercely through his veins. He sank upon 
 the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and turning with 
 swimming eyes to seek for Arbaces, whom he had lost in the 
 whirl of his emotions, he beheld him seated beneath a canopy 
 at the upper end of the table, and gazing upon him with a 
 smile that encouraged him to pleasure. He beheld him, but 
 not as he had hitherto seen, with dark and sable garments, 
 with a brooding and solemn brow: a robe that dazzled the 
 sight, so studded was its whitest surface with gold and gems, 
 blazed upon his majestic form; white roses, alternated with 
 the emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like, crowned his 
 raven locks. He appeared, like Ulysses, to have gained the 
 glory of a second youth; his features seemed to have ex- 
 changed thought for beauty, and he towered amidst the loveli- 
 ness that surrounded him, in all the beaming and relaxing 
 benignity of the Olympian god. | 
 
 “‘ Drink, feast, love, my pupil!” said he; “blush not that 
 thou art passionate and young. That which thou art, thou 
 feelest in thy veins; that which thou shalt be, survey!” 
 
 With this he pointed to a recess, and the eyes of Apzcides, 
 
88 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 following the gesture, beheld on a pedestal, placed between the 
 statues of Bacchus and Idalia, the form of a skeleton. 
 
 “Start not,” resumed the Egyptian; “that friendly guest 
 admonishes us but of the shortness of life. From its jaws I 
 hear a voice that summons us to ENJOY.” 
 
 As he spoke, a group of nymphs surrounded the statue; they 
 laid chaplets on its pedestal, and while the cups were emptied 
 and refilled at that glowing board, they sang the following 
 strain : — 
 
 BACCHIC HYMNS TO THE IMAGE OF DEATH. 
 
 I. 
 
 Thou art in the land of the shadowy Host, 
 Thou that didst drink and love : 
 By the Solemn River, a gliding ghost, 
 But thy thought is ours above! 
 If memory yet can fly 
 Back to the golden sky, 
 And mourn the pleasures lost ! 
 By the ruin’d hall these flowers we lay, 
 Where thy soul once held its palace ; 
 When the rose to thy scent and sight was gay, 
 And the smile was in the chalice, 
 And the cithara’s silver voice 
 Could bid thy heart rejoice 
 When night eclipsed the day. 
 
 Here a new group, advancing, turned the tide of the music 
 into a quicker and more joyous strain : — 
 
 II. 
 
 Death, death is the gloomy shore 
 Where we all sail : 
 
 Soft, soft, thou gliding oar ; 
 Blow soft, sweet gale ! 
 
 Chain with bright wreaths the Hours; 
 Victims if all, 
 
 Ever, ’mid song and flowers, 
 Victims should fall! 
 
 Pausing for a moment, yet quicker and quicker danced the 
 silver-footed music: — 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETDL. 89 
 
 Since Life ’s so short, we ’Il live to laugh, 
 Ah, wherefore waste a minute ! 
 
 If youth ’s the cup we yet can quaff, 
 Be love the pearl within it! 
 
 A third band now approached with brimming cups, which 
 they poured in libation upon that strange altar; and once 
 more, slow and solemn, rose the changeful melody :— 
 
 III. 
 
 Thou art welcome, Guest of gloom, 
 From the far and fearful sea ! 
 When the last rose sheds its bloom, 
 Our board shall be spread with thee! 
 All hail, dark Guest! 
 Who hath so fair a plea 
 Our weicome guest to be, 
 As thou, whose solemn hall 
 At last shall feast us all 
 In the dim and dismal coast ? 
 Long yet be we the Host ? 
 And thou, Dead Shadow, thou, 
 All joyless though thy brow, 
 Thou — but our passing Guest! 
 
 At this moment, she who sat beside Apzcides suddenly took 
 up the song: — 
 
 IV. 
 
 Happy is yet our doom, 
 The earth and the sun are ours! 
 And far from the dreary tomb 
 Speed the wings of the rosy Hours: 
 Sweet is for thee the bow], 
 Sweet are thy looks, my love; 
 I fly to thy tender soul, 
 As the bird to its mated dove ! 
 Take me, ah, take ! 
 Clasp’d to thy guardian breast, 
 Soft let me sink to rest: 
 But wake me — ah, wake! 
 And tell me with words and sighs, 
 But more with thy melting eyes, 
 That my sun is not set ; 
 That the Torch is not quench’d at the Urn, 
 That we love, and we breathe, and burn, 
 Tell me — thou loy’st me yet! 
 
BOR RRS DE 
 
 Lucus tremiscit. Tota succusso solo 
 Nutavit aula, dubia quo pondus daret, 
 Ac fluctuanti similis. —Smneca: Zhyestes, v. 696. 
 
 Trembled the grove. Earth quivered ; with the shock 
 Quaked all the nodding hall, as doubtful where 
 Ponderous to fall, — and heaving like a wave. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ‘A FLASH HOUSE ” IN POMPEII — AND THE GENTLEMEN OF 
 THE CLASSIC RING. 
 
 To one of those parts of Pompeii, which were tenanted not 
 by the lords of pleasure, but by its minions and its victims; 
 the haunt of gladiators and prize-fighters; of the vicious and 
 the penniless; of the savage and obscene; the Alsatia of an 
 ancient city — we are now transported. 
 
 It was a large room that opened at once on the confined and 
 crowded lane. Before the threshold was a group of men, 
 whose iron and well-strung muscles, whose short and Hercu- 
 lean necks, whose hardy and reckless countenances, indicated 
 the champions of the arena. On a shelf, without the shop, 
 were ranged jars of wine and oil; and right over this was in- 
 serted in the wall a coarse painting which exhibited gladiators 
 drinking, — so ancient and so venerable is the custom of signs! 
 Within the room were placed several small tables, arranged 
 somewhat in the modern fashion of “ boxes,” and round these 
 were seated several knots of men, some drinking, some play- 
 ing at dice, some at that more skilful game called “ duodecim 
 seripte,’ which certain of the blundering learned have mis- 
 taken for chess, though it rather, perhaps, resembled back- 
 gammon of the two, and was usually, though not always, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 91 
 
 played by the assistance of dice. The hour was in the early 
 forenoon, and nothing better, perhaps, than that unseasonable 
 time itself denoted the habitual indolence of these tavern 
 loungers. Yet, despite the situation of the house and the 
 character of its inmates, it indicated none of that sordid 
 squalor which would have characterized a similar haunt in a 
 modern city. The gay disposition of all the Pompeians, who 
 sought, at least, to gratify the sense even where they neg- 
 lected the mind, was typified by the gaudy colors which deco- 
 rated the walls, and the shapes, fantastic but not inelegant, 
 in which the lamps, the drinking-cups, the commonest house- 
 hold utensils, were wrought. 
 
 “By Pollux!” said one of the gladiators, as he leaned 
 against the wall of the threshold, “the wine thou sellest us, 
 old Silenus,” —and as he spoke he slapped a portly personage 
 on the back, ——“is enough to thin the best blood in one’s 
 veins.” 
 
 The man thus caressingly saluted, and whose bared arms, 
 white apron, and keys and napkin tucked carelessly within his 
 girdle, indicated him to be the host of the tavern, was already 
 passed into the autumn. of his years; but his form was still 
 so robust and athletic, that he might have shamed even the 
 sinewy shapes beside him, save that the muscles had seeded, — 
 as it were, into flesh, that the cheeks were swelled and 
 bloated, and the increasing stomach threw into shade the vast 
 and massive chest which rose above it. 
 
 “None of thy scurrilous blusterings with me,” growled the 
 gigantic landlord, in the gentle semi-roar of an insulted tiger ; 
 “my wine is good enough for a carcass which shall so soon 
 soak the dust of the spoliarium.” } 
 
 “Croakest thou thus, old raven!” returned the gladiator, 
 laughing scornfully ; “thou shalt lve to hang thyself with 
 despite when thou seest me win the palm crown; and when I 
 get the purse at the amphitheatre, as I certainly shall, my 
 first vow to Hercules shall be to forswear thee and thy vile 
 potations evermore.” 
 
 1 The place to which the killed or mortally wounded were dragged from 
 the arena. 
 
92 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Hear to him; hear to this modest Pyrgopolinices! He 
 has certainly served under Bombochides Cluninstaridysar- 
 chides,” cried the host. “Sporus, Niger, Tetraides, he de- 
 clares he shall win the purse from you. Why, by the gods! 
 each of your muscles is strong enough to stifle all his body, or 
 I know nothing of the arena!” 
 
 “Ha!” said the gladiator, coloring with rising fury, “our 
 lanista would tell-a different story.” 
 
 “What story could he tell against me, vain Lydon?” said 
 Tetraides, frowning. 
 
 ‘Or me, who have conquered in fifteen fights ?” said the 
 gigantic Niger, stalking up to the gladiator. 
 
 “Or me?” grunted Sporus, with eyes of fire. 
 
 “Tush!” said Lydon, folding his arms, and regarding his 
 rivals with a reckless air of defiance. “The time of trial will 
 soon come; keep your valor till then.” 
 
 “Ay, do,” said the surly host; “and if I press down my 
 thumb to save you, may the Fates cut my thread!” 
 
 “Your rope, you mean,” said Lydon, sneeringly : “here is a 
 sesterce to buy one.” 
 
 The Titan wine-vender seized the hand extended to him, and 
 eriped it in so stern a vice that the blood spirted from the 
 fingers’ ends over the garments of the bystanders. 
 
 They set up a savage laugh. 
 
 “JT will teach thee, young braggart, to play the Macedonian 
 with me! I am no puny Persian, I warrant thee! What, 
 man, have I not fought twenty years in the ring, and never 
 lowered my arms once? And have I not received the rod from 
 the editor’s own hand as a sign of victory, and as a grace to 
 retirement on my laurels? And am I now to be lectured by 
 a boy?” So saying, he flung the hand from him in scorn. 
 
 Without changing a muscle, but with the same smiling face 
 with which he had previously taunted mine host, did the 
 gladiator brave the painful grasp he had undergone. But no 
 sooner was his hand released, than, crouching for one moment 
 as a wild-cat crouches, you might see his hair bristle on his 
 
 1 “Miles Gloriosus,” Act I.; as much as to say, in modern phrase, “He 
 has served under Bombastes Furioso.” 
 
-_ 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 93 
 
 head and beard, and with a fierce and shrill yell he sprang on 
 the throat of the giant, with an impetus that threw him, vast 
 and sturdy as he was, from his balance; and down, with the 
 crash’ of a falling rock, he fell, while over him fell also his 
 ferocious foe. 
 
 Our host, perhaps, had had no need of the rope so kindly 
 recommended to him by Lydon, had he remained three minutes 
 longer in that position. But, summoned to his assistance by 
 the noise of his fall, a woman, who had hitherto kept in an 
 inner apartment, rushed to the scene of battle. This new ally 
 was in herself a match for the gladiator; she was tall, lean, 
 and with arms that could give other than soft embraces. In 
 fact, the gentle helpmate of Burbo the wine-seller had, like 
 himself, fought in the lists,’ nay, under the emperor’s eye. 
 
 And Burbo himself —Burbo, the unconquered in the field, 
 
 according to report — now and then yielded the palm to his 
 soft Stratonice. This sweet creature no sooner saw the immi- 
 nent peril that awaited her worse half, than without other 
 weapons than those with which Nature had provided her, she 
 darted upon the incumbent gladiator, and, clasping him round 
 the waist with her long and snake-like arms, hfted him by a 
 sudden wrench from the body of her husband, leaving only his 
 hands still clinging to the throat of his foe. So have we seen 
 a dog snatched by the hind legs from the strife with a fallen 
 rival in the arms of some envious groom; so have we seen one 
 half of him high in air, passive and offenceless, while the 
 other half — head, teeth, eyes, claws — seemed buried and en- 
 eulfed in the mangled and prostrate enemy. Meanwhile, the 
 gladiators, lapped, and pampered, and glutted upon blood, 
 crowded delightedly round the combatants, their nostrils dis- 
 tended, their lips grinning, their eyes gloatingly fixed on the 
 bloody throat of the one and the indented talons of the other. 
 
 “ Habet! habet/ [he has got it!] ” cried they, with a sort of 
 yell, rubbing their nervous hands. 
 
 “Non habeo, ye liars ! [I have not got it!]” shouted the host, 
 as with a mighty effort he wrenched himself from those deadly 
 
 1 Not only did women sometimes fight in the amphitheatres, but even 
 those of noble birth participated in that meek ambition. 
 
94 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 hands, and rose to his feet, breathless, panting, lacerated, 
 bloody ; and fronting, with reeling eyes, the glaring look and 
 grinning teeth of his baffled foe, now struggling (but struggling 
 with disdain) in the gripe of the sturdy amazon. , 
 
 “Fair play!” cried the gladiators: “one to one;” and 
 crowding round Lydon and the woman, they separated our 
 pleasing host from his courteous guest. 
 
 But Lydon, feeling ashamed at his present position, and 
 endeavoring in vain to shake off the grasp of the virago, 
 slipped his hand into his girdle and drew forth a short knife. 
 So menacing was his look, so brightly gleamed the blade, that 
 Stratonice, who was used only to that fashion of battle which 
 we moderns call the pugilistic, started back in alarm, 
 
 “OQ gods!” cried she, “ the ruffian; he has concealed weap- 
 ons! Isthat fair? Is that like a gentleman and a gladiator? 
 No, indeed, I scorn such fellows.” With that she contemp- 
 tuously turned her back on the gladiator, and hastened to 
 examine the condition of her husband. 
 
 But he, as much inured to the constitutional exercises as an 
 English bull-dog is to a contest with a more gentle antagonist, 
 had already recovered himself. The purple hues receded from 
 the crimson surface of his cheek, the veins of the forehead 
 retired into their wonted size. He shook himself with a com- 
 placent grunt, satisfied that he was still alive, and then looking 
 at his foe from head to foot with an air of more approbation 
 than he had ever bestowed upon him before, — 
 
 “ By Castor!” said he, “thou art a stronger fellow than I 
 took thee for. I see thou art a man of merit and virtue; give 
 me thy hand, my hero.” 
 
 “ Jolly old Burbo!” cried the gladiators, applauding; “stanch 
 to the backbone. Give him thy hand, Lydon.” 
 
 “‘ Qh, to be sure,” said the gladiator; “ but now I have tasted 
 his blood, I long to lap the whole.” 
 
 “By Hercules!” returned the host, quite ahrdegeat “that is 
 the true gladiator feeling. Pollux! to think what good train- 
 ing may make a man; why, a beast could not be fiercer !” 
 
 “A beast! Oh, dullard! we beat the beasts hollow!” cried 
 Tetraides. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 95 
 
 “Well, well,” said Stratonice, who was now employed in 
 smoothing her hair and adjusting her dress, “if ye are all good 
 _ friends again, I recommend you to be quiet and orderly; for 
 some young noblemen, your patrons and backers, have sent to 
 say they will come here to pay you a visit: they wish to see 
 you more at their ease than at the schools, before they make 
 up their bets on the great fight at the amphitheatre. So they 
 always come to my house for that purpose: they know we 
 only receive the best gladiators in Pompeii; our society is 
 very select, praised be the gods!” 
 
 “ Yes,” continued Burbo, drinking off a bowl, or rather a pail 
 of wine, “aman who has won my laurels can only encourage 
 the brave. liydon, drink, my boy; may you have an honor- 
 able old age like mine.” 
 
 “Come here,” said Stratonice, drawing her husband to her 
 affectionately by the ears, in that caress which Tibullus has 
 so prettily described, — “ come here.” 
 
 “ Not so hard, she-wolf! thou art worse than the gladiator,” 
 murmured the huge jaws of Burbo. 
 
 “ Hist!” said she, whispering him; “Calenus has just stole 
 in, disguised, by the back way. I hope he has brought the 
 sesterces.” 
 
 “Ho! ho! I will join him,” said Burbo; “ meanwhile, I say, 
 keep a sharp eye on the cups: attend to the score. Let them 
 not cheat thee, wife ; they are heroes, to be sure, but then they 
 are arrant rogues: Cacus was nothing to them.” 
 
 “‘ Never fear me, fool!” was the conjugal reply ; and Burbo, 
 satisfied with the dear assurance, strode through the apart- 
 ment and sought the penetralia of his house. 
 
 “So those soft patrons are coming to look at our mus- 
 cles,” said Niger. “Who sent to previse thee of it, my 
 mistress ? ” 
 
 “Lepidus. He brings with him Clodius, the surest better in 
 Pompeii, and the young Greek Glaucus.” 
 
 “ A wager on a wager,” cried Tetraides; “Clodius bets on 
 me, for twenty sesterces! What say you, Lydon?” 
 
 “ He bets on me/” said Lydon. 
 
 “No, on me/” grunted Sporus. 
 
96 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ¢ Dolts! do you think he would prefer any of you to Niger ? ” 
 said the athletic, thus modestly naming himself. 
 
 “Well, well,” said Stratonice, as she pierced a huge am- 
 phora for her guests, who had now seated themselves before 
 one of the tables, “ great men and brave, as ye all think your- 
 selves, which of you will fight the Numidian lion in case no 
 malefactor should be found to deprive you of the option ?” 
 
 ‘“T who have escaped your arms, stout Stratonice,” said 
 Lydon, “might safely, I think, encounter the lion.” 
 
 “But tell me,” said Tetraides, “where is that pretty young 
 slave of yours, —the blind girl, with bright eyes? I have not 
 seen her for a long time.” 
 
 “Oh, she is too delicate for you, my son of Neptune,’ ? said 
 the hostess, “and too nice even for us, I think. We send 
 her into the town to sell flowers and sing to the ladies; she 
 makes us more money so than she would by waiting on you. 
 Besides, she has often other employments which lie under the 
 rose.” 
 
 “Other employments!” said Niger; “why, she is too young 
 for them.” 
 
 “Silence, beast!” said Stratonice; “you think there is no 
 play but the Corinthian. If Nydia were twice the age she is 
 at present, she would be equally fit for Vesta, poor girl!” 
 
 “But, hark ye, Stratonice,” said Lydon; “how didst thou 
 come by so gentle and delicate a slave? She were more meet 
 for the handmaid of some rich matron of Rome than for 
 thee.” 
 
 “That is true,” returned Stratonice; “and some day or 
 other I shall make my fortune by selling her. How came I by 
 Nydia, thou askest ?” 
 
 “Ay!” 
 
 “ Why, thou seest, my slave Staphyla—thou rememberest 
 Staphyla, Niger?” 
 
 “¢ Ay, a large-handed wench, with a face like a comic mask. 
 How should I forget her, by Pluto, whose handmaid she doubt- 
 less is at this moment!” 
 
 ‘Tush, brute! Well, Staphyla died one day, and a great 
 
 1 Son of Neptune, —a Latin phrase for a boisterous, ferocious fellow. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. . 97 
 
 loss she was to me, and I went into the market to buy me 
 another slave. But, by the gods! they were all grown so dear 
 since I had bought poor Staphyla, and money was so scarce, 
 that I was about to leave the place in despair, when a mer- 
 chant plucked me by the robe. ‘ Mistress,’ said he, ‘dost thou 
 want a slave cheap? I have a child to sell, —abargain. She 
 is but little, and almost an infant, it is true; but she is quick 
 and quiet, docile and clever, sings well, and is of good blood, 
 J assure you.’ ‘Of what country ?’ said I. ‘Thessalian.? Now 
 I knew the Thessalians were acute and gentle; so I said I 
 would see the girl. I found her just as you see her now, 
 searcely smaller and scarcely younger in appearance. She 
 looked patient and resigned enough, with her hands crossed 
 on her bosom, and her eyes downcast. I asked the merchant 
 his price. It was moderate, and I bought her at once. The 
 merchant brought her to my house, and disappeared in an 
 instant. Well, my friends, guess my astonishment when I 
 found she was blind! Ha! ha! a clever fellow that mer- 
 chant! JI ran at once to the magistrates, but the rogue was 
 already gone from Pompeii. So I was forced to go home in 
 a very ill humor, I assure you; and the poor girl felt the 
 effects of it too. But it was not her fault that she was blind, 
 for she had been so from her birth. By degrees we got recon- 
 ciled to our purchase. True, she had not the strength of 
 Staphyla, and was of very little use in the house, but she could 
 soon find her way about the town as well as if she had the 
 eyes of Argus; and when one morning she brought us home 
 a handful of sesterces, which she said she had got from selling 
 some flowers she had gathered in our poor little garden, we 
 thought the gods had sent her to us. So from that time we 
 let her go out as she likes, filing her basket with flowers, 
 which she wreathes into garlands after the Thessalian fashion, 
 which pleases the gallants ; and the great people seem to take 
 a fancy to her, for they always pay her more than they do any 
 other flower-girl, and she brings all of it home to us, which 
 is more than any other slave would do. So I work for my- 
 self, but I shall soon afford from her earnings to buy me a 
 second Staphyla; doubtless the Thessalian kidnapper had 
 VOL. I.—7 
 
98 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 stolen the blind girl from gentle parents.1 Besides her skill 
 in the garlands, she sings and plays on the-cithara, which also 
 brings money, and lately — but that is a secret.” 
 
 “ That is a secret! What!” cried Lydon, “art thou turned 
 sphinx ?” 
 
 “Sphinx, no! Why sphinx ?” 
 
 “Cease thy gabble, good mistress, and bring us our meat; I 
 am hungry,” said Sporus, impatiently. 
 
 “ And I, too,” echoed the grim Niger, whetting his knife on 
 the palm of his hand. 
 
 The amazon stalked away to the kitchen, and soon returned 
 with a tray laden with large pieces of meat half-raw: for so, 
 as now, did the heroes of the prize-fight imagine they best 
 sustained their hardihood and ferocity; they drew round the 
 table with the eyes of famished wolves; the meat vanished, 
 the wine flowed. So leave we those important personages of 
 elassic life to follow the steps of Burbo. 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 TWO WORTHIES. 
 
 In the earlier times of Rome the priesthood was a pro- 
 fession, not of lucre but of honor. It was embraced by the 
 noblest citizens; it was forbidden to the plebians. After- 
 wards, and long previous to the present date, it was equally 
 open to all ranks; at least, that part of the profession which 
 embraced the flamens, or priests, — not of religion generally, 
 but of peculiar gods. Even the priest of Jupiter (the Flamen 
 Dialis), preceded by a lictor, and entitled by his office to the 
 entrance of the senate, at first the especial dignitary of the 
 patricians, was subsequently the choice of the people. The 
 
 1 The Thessalian slave-merchants were celebrated for purloining persons 
 of birth and education: they did not always spare those of their own country. 
 Aristophanes sneers bitterly at that people (proverbially treacherous) for 
 their unquenchable desire of gain by this barter of flesh. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL he 
 
 less national and less honored deities were usually served by ~ 
 plebeian ministers ; and many embraced the profession, as now 
 the Roman Catholic Christians enter the monastic fraternity, 
 less from the impulse of devotion than the suggestions of a 
 calculating poverty. Thus Calenus, the priest of Isis, was of 
 the lowest origin. His relations, though not his parents, were 
 freedmen. He had received from them a liberal education, 
 and from his father a small patrimony, which he had soon ex- 
 hausted. He embraced the priesthood as a last resource from 
 distress. Whatever the State emoluments of the sacred pro- 
 fession, which at that time were probably small, the officers 
 of a popular temple could never complain of the profits of 
 their calling. There is no profession so lucrative as that 
 which practises on the superstition of the multitude. 
 
 Calenus had but one surviving relative at Pompeii, and that 
 was Burbo. Various dark and disreputable ties, stronger than 
 those of blood, united together their hearts and interests; and 
 often the minister of Isis stole disguised and furtively from 
 the supposed austerity of his devotions, and gliding through 
 the back door of the retired gladiator, —a man infamous alike 
 by vices and by profession, — rejoiced to throw off the last 
 rag of an hypocrisy which but for the dictates of avarice, his 
 ruling passion, would at all times have sat clumsily upon a 
 nature too brutal for even the mimicry of virtue. 
 
 Wrapped in one of those large mantles which came in use 
 among the Romans in proportion as they dismissed the toga, 
 whose ample folds well concealed the form, and in which a 
 sort of hood (attached to it) afforded no less a security to the 
 features, Calenus now sat in the small and private chamber of 
 the wine-cellar, whence a small passage ran at once to that 
 back entrance with which nearly all the houses of Pompeii 
 were furnished. 
 
 Opposite to him sat the sturdy Burbo, carefully counting on 
 a table between them a little pile of coins which the priest 
 had just poured from his purse; for purses were as common 
 then as now, with this difference, — they were usually better 
 furnished. 
 
 “You see,” said Calenus, “that we pay you handsomely, 
 
100 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 and you ought to thank me for recommending you to so 
 advantageous a market.” 
 
 “T do, my cousin, I do,” replied Burbo, affectionately, as he 
 swept the coins into a leathern receptacle, which he then de- 
 posited in his girdle, drawing the buckle round his capacious 
 waist more closely than he was wont to do in the lax hours of 
 his domestic avocations. “And by Isis, Pisis, and Nisis, or 
 whatever other gods there may be in Egypt, my little Nydia is 
 a very Hesperides, —a garden of gold to me.” 
 
 “She sings well, and plays like a muse,” returned Calenus ; 
 “those are virtues that he who employs me always pays 
 liberally.” 
 
 “ He is a god,” cried Burbo, enthusiastically; “every rich 
 man who is generous deserves to be worshipped. But come, a 
 cup of wine, old friend; tell me more about it. What does she 
 do? She is frightened, talks of her oath, and reveals nothing.” 
 
 “Nor will I, by my right hand! I, too, have taken that 
 terrible oath of secrecy.” 
 
 “Oath! what are oaths to men like us?” 
 
 “True, oaths of a common fashion; but this!” and the 
 stalwart priest shuddered as he spoke. “ Yet,” he continued, 
 in emptying a huge cup of unmixed wine, “I will own to thee 
 that it is not so much the oath that I dread as the vengeance 
 of him who proposed it. By the gods! he is a mighty sorcerer, 
 and could draw my confession from the moon, did I dare to 
 make it to her. Talk no more of this. By Pollux! wild as 
 those banquets are which I enjoy with him, I am never quite 
 at my ease there. I love, my boy, one jolly hour with thee, 
 and one of the plain, unsophisticated, laughing girls that I 
 meet in this chamber, all smoke-dried though it be, better than 
 whole nights of those magnificent debauches.” 
 
 “Fo! sayest thou so? ‘To-morrow night, please the gods, 
 we will have then a snug carousal.” 
 
 ‘With all my heart,” said the priest, rubbing his hands ana 
 drawing himself nearer to the table. 
 
 At this moment they heard a slight noise at the door, as of 
 one feeling the handle. The priest lowered the hood over his 
 head. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 101 
 
 “Tush!” whispered the host, “it is but the blind girl,” as 
 Nydia opened the door and entered the apartment. 
 
 “io! girl, and how durst thou? Thou lookest pale, — thou 
 hast kept late revels. No matter, the young must be always 
 the young,” said Burbo, encouragingly. 
 
 The girl made no answer, but she dropped on one of the seats 
 with an air of lassitude. Her color went and came rapidly: 
 she beat the floor impatiently with her small feet, then she 
 suddenly raised her face, and said with a determined voice, — 
 
 “Master, you may starve me if you will, you may beat me, 
 you may threaten me with death; but I will go no more to 
 that unholy place!” 
 
 “‘ How, fool!” said Burbo, in a savage voice, and his heavy 
 brows met darkly over his fierce and bloodshot eyes; “how, 
 rebellious! Take care!” 
 
 “T have said it,” said the poor girl, crossing her hands on 
 her breast. 
 
 ‘What! my modest one, sweet vestal, thou wilt go no more! 
 Very well; thou shalt be carried.” 
 
 “J will raise the city with my cries,” said she, passionately ; 
 and the color mounted to her brow. 
 
 ‘We will take care of that, too; thou shalt go gagged.” 
 
 “Then may the gods help me!” said Nydia, rising; “I will 
 appeal to the magistrates.” 
 
 “ Thine oath remember /” said a hollow voice, as for the first 
 time Calenus joined in the dialogue. 
 
 At those words a trembling shook the frame of the unfortu- 
 nate girl; she clasped her hands imploringly. “ Wretch that 
 Iam!” she cried, and burst violently into sobs. 
 
 Whether or not it was the sound of that vehement sorrow 
 which brought the gentle Stratonice to the spot, her grisly 
 form at this moment appeared in the chamber. 
 
 “How now? what hast thou been doing with my bs 
 brute ?” said she, angrily, to Burbo. 
 
 “Be quiet, wife,” said he, in a tone half sullen, half timid; 
 “vou want new girdles and fine clothes, do you? Well, then, 
 take care of your slave, or you may want them long. Ve 
 capiti two, — vengeance on thy head, wretched one!” 
 
102 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ‘What is this?” said the hag, looking from one to the 
 other. 
 
 Nydia started as by a sudden impulse from the wall against 
 which she had leaned; she threw herself at the feet of Strato- 
 nice; she embraced her knees, and looking up at her with 
 those sightless but touching eyes, — 
 
 “Oh, my mistress,” sobbed she, “you are a woman; you 
 have had sisters; you have been young like me: feel for me, 
 save me! I will go to those horrible feasts no more!” 
 
 “Stuff!” said the hag, dragging her up rudely by one of 
 those delicate hands, fit for no harsher labor than that of weav- 
 ing the flowers which made her pleasure or her trade; “stuff! 
 these fine scruples are not for slaves.” 
 
 “ Hark ye,” said Burbo, drawing forth his purse and chink- 
 ing its contents; “you hear this music, wife; by Pollux! if 
 you do not break in yon colt with a tight rein, you will hear it 
 no more.” 
 
 “The girl is tired,” said Stratonice, nodding to Calenus; 
 “she will be more docile when you next want her.” 
 
 “ You! you! who is here?” cried Nydia, casting her eyes 
 round the apartment with so fearful and straining a survey, 
 that Calenus rose in alarm from his seat. 
 
 “She must see with those eyes!” muttered he. 
 
 “Who is here? Speak, in Heaven’s name! Ah, if you were 
 blind like me, you would be less cruel,” said she; and she again 
 burst into tears. 
 
 “Take her away,” said Burbo, impatiently; “I hate these 
 whimperings.” 
 
 “Come!” said Stratonice, pushing the poor child by the 
 shoulders. 
 
 Nydia drew herself aside, with an air to which resolution 
 gave dignity. 
 
 “Hear me,” she said; “I have served you faithfully, —I, 
 who was brought up— Ah, my mother, my poor mother! 
 didst thou dream I should come to this?” She dashed the 
 tears from her eyes, and proceeded: “Command me in aught 
 else, and I will obey; but I tell you now, hard, stern, inexora- 
 ble as you are, —I tell you that I will go there no more; or, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 108 
 
 if I am forced there, that I will implore the mercy of the pra. 
 tor himself: I have said it. Hear me, ye gods: I swear!” 
 
 The hag’s eyes glowed with fire; she seized the child by the 
 hair with one hand, and raised on high the other, —that for- 
 midable right hand, the least blow of which seemed capable to 
 crush the frail and delicate form that trembled in her grasp. 
 That thought itself appeared to strike her, for she suspended 
 the blow, changed her purpose, and dragging Nydia to the wall, 
 seized from a hook a rope, often, alas! applied to a similar 
 purpose, and the next moment the shrill, the agonized shrieks 
 of the blind girl rang piercingly through the house. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GLAUCUS MAKES A PURCHASE THAT AFTERWARDS COSTS HIM 
 DEAR. 
 
 “Hotta, my brave fellows!” said Lepidus, stooping his 
 head, as he entered the low doorway of the house of Burbo. 
 “We have come to see which of you most honors your lanista.” 
 The gladiators rose from the table in respect to three gallants 
 known to be among the gayest and richest youths of Pompei, 
 and whose voices were therefore the dispensers of amphi- 
 theatrical reputation. | 
 
 “What fine animals!” said Clodius to Glaucus: “worthy to 
 be gladiators.” 
 
 “Tt is a pity they are not warriors,” returned Glaucus. 
 
 A singular thing it was to see the dainty and fastidious 
 Lepidus, whom in a banquet a ray of daylight seemed to blind, 
 whom in the bath a breeze of air seemed to blast, in whom 
 Nature seemed twisted and perverted from every natural im- 
 pulse, and curdled into one dubious thing of effeminacy and 
 art, —a singular thing was it to see this Lepidus, now all eager- 
 ness, and energy, and life, patting the vast shoulders of the 
 gladiators with a blanched and girlish hand, feeling with a 
 mincing gripe their great brawn and iron muscles, all lost in 
 
104 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 calculating admiration at that manhood which he had spent his 
 life in carefully banishing from himself. 
 
 So have we seen at this day the beardless flutterers of the 
 saloons of London thronging round the heroes of the Fives- 
 court; so have we seen them admire, and gaze, and calculate a 
 bet; so have we seen them meet together, in ludicrous yet in 
 melancholy assemblage, — the two extremes of civilized society, 
 the patrons of pleasure and its slaves; vilest of all slaves, at 
 once ferocious and mercenary; male prostitutes, who sell their 
 strength as women their beauty; beasts in act, but baser than 
 beasts in motive: for the last, at least, do not mangle themselves 
 for money. 
 
 “Ha, Niger, how will you fight?” said Lepidus; “and with 
 whom ?” 
 
 ““Sporus challenges me,” said the grim giant; “we shall 
 fight to the death, I hope.” 
 
 “Ah, to be sure!” grunted Sporus, with a twinkle of his 
 small eye. 
 
 “He takes the sword, I the net and the trident: it will be 
 rare sport. J hope the survivor will have enough to keep up 
 the dignity of the crown.” 
 
 “Never fear, we’ll fill the purse, my Hector,” said Clodius : 
 “let me see, you fight against Niger? Glaucus, a bet; I 
 back Niger.” 
 
 “T told you so,” cried Niger, exultingly. “The noble 
 Clodius knows me; count yourself dead already, my Sporus.” 
 
 Clodius took out his tablet. “A bet, —ten sestertia.! What 
 Say you?” 
 
 “So be it,” said Glaucus. “But whom have we here? I 
 never saw this hero before; ” and he glanced at Lydon, whose 
 limbs were slighter than those of his companions, and who 
 had something of grace, and something even of nobleness, in 
 his face, which his profession had not yet wholly destroyed. 
 
 “Tt is Lydon, a youngster practised only with the wooden 
 sword as yet,” answered Niger, condescendingly. “But he 
 has the true blood in him, and has challenged Tetraides.” 
 
 “ He challenged me,” said Lydon: “I accept the offer.” 
 
 1 A little more than £80. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 105 
 
 ¢ And how do you fight?” asked Lepidus. “Chut, my boy, 
 wait a while before you contend with Tetraides.” Lydon 
 smiled disdainfully. 
 
 “Ts he a citizen or a slave?” said Clodius. 
 
 “ A citizen; we are all citizens here,” quoth Niger. 
 
 “Stretch out your arm, my Lydon,” said Lepidus, with the 
 air of a connoisseur. 
 
 The gladiator, with a significant glance at his companions, 
 extended an arm which, if not so huge in its girth as those of 
 his comrades, was so firm in its muscles, so beautifully sym- 
 metrical in its proportions, that the three visitors uttered 
 simultaneously an admiring exclamation. 
 
 “ Well, man, what is your weapon?” said Clodius, tablet 
 in hand. 
 
 “We are to fight first with the cestus; afterwards, if both 
 survive, with swords,” returned Tetraides, sharply, and with 
 an envious scowl. 
 
 “With the cestus!” cried Glaucus; “there you are wrong, 
 Lydon; the cestus is the Greek fashion: I know it well. 
 You should have encouraged flesh for that contest; you are 
 far too thin for it: avoid the cestus.” 
 
 “T cannot,” said Lydon. 
 
 ¢ And why ?” 
 
 “‘T have said: because he has challenged me.” 
 
 “But he will not hold you to the precise weapon.” 
 
 “ My honor holds me!” returned Lydon, proudly. 
 
 “T bet on Tetraides, two to one, at the cestus,” said Clo- 
 dius; “shall it be, Lepidus, — even betting, with swords ? ” 
 
 “Tf you give me three to one, I will not take the odds,” 
 said Lepidus: “Lydon will never come to the swords. You 
 are mighty courteous.” 
 
 “What say you, Glaucus ?” said Clodius. 
 
 “TJ will take the odds three to one.” 
 
 “Ten sestertia to thirty.” 
 
 Eves. 
 
 1 The reader will not confound the sestertii with the sestertia. A sester- 
 
 tium, which was a sum, not a coin, was a thousand times the value of a sestertius ; 
 the first was equivalent to £8 1s. 54d., the last to ld 32 farthings of our money. 
 
106 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Clodius wrote the bet in his book. 
 
 ‘Pardon me, noble sponsor mine,” said Lydon, in a low voice 
 to Glaucus: “but how much think you the victor will gain ?” 
 
 “How much? Why, perhaps seven sestertia.” 
 
 “You are sure it will be as much ?” 
 
 “ At least. But out on you! A Greek would have thought 
 of the honor, and not the money. O Italians! everywhere ye 
 are Italians !”° 
 
 A blush mantled over the bronzed cheek of the gladiator. 
 
 “Do not wrong me, noble Glaucus; I think of both, but I 
 should never have been a gladiator but for the money.” 
 
 ‘‘Base! mayest thou fall! A miser never was a hero.” 
 
 “JT am not a miser,” said Lydon, haughtily; and he with- 
 drew to the other end of the room. 
 
 ‘But I don’t see Burbo; where is Burbo? I must talk 
 with Burbo,” cried Clodius. 
 
 “He is within,” said Niger, pointing to the door at the 
 extremity of the room. 
 
 “ And Stratonice, the brave old lass, where is she ?” quoth 
 Lepidus. 
 
 “Why she was here just before you entered; but she heard 
 something that displeased her yonder, and vanished. Pollux! 
 old Burbo had perhaps caught hold of some girl in the back 
 room. I heard a female’s voice crying out; the old dame is 
 as jealous as Juno.” 
 
 “Ho! excellent!” cried Lepidus, laughing. “Come, Clo- 
 dius, let us go shares with Jupiter; perhaps he has caught a 
 Leda.” 
 
 At this moment aloud cry of pain and terror startled the 
 group. 
 
 “Oh, spare me! spare me! Iam but achild; I am blind; 
 is not that punishment enough ?” 
 
 “© Pallas! I know that voice, itis my poor flower-girl!” 
 exclaimed Glaucus; and he darted at once into the quarter 
 whence the cry arose. 
 
 He burst the door: he beheld Nydia writhing in the grasp 
 of the infuriate hag; the cord, already dabbled with blood, 
 was raised in the air: it was suddenly arrested. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, 107 
 
 “Fury!” said Glaucus, and with his left hand he caught 
 Nydia from her grasp; “ how dare you use thus a girl, — one 
 of your own sex, achild! My Nydia, my poor infant!” 
 
 “Oh, is that you, —4is that Glaucus ?” exclaimed the 
 flower-girl, in a tone almost of transport; the tears stood 
 arrested on her cheek; she smiled, she clung to his breast, 
 she kissed his robe as she clung. 
 
 “¢ And how dare you, pert stranger! interfere between a free 
 woman and her slave? By the gods! despite your fine tunic 
 and your filthy perfumes, I doubt whether you are even a 
 Roman citizen, my manikin.” 
 
 “Fair words, mistress, fair words!” said Clodius, now 
 entering with Lepidus. “This is my friend and sworn 
 brother: he must be put under shelter of your tongue, sweet 
 one; it rains stones!” 
 
 “Give me my slave!” shrieked the virago, placing her 
 mighty grasp on the breast of the Greek. 
 
 “ Not if all your sister Furies could help you,” answered 
 Glaucus. “Fear not, sweet Nydia; an Athenian never for- 
 sook distress ! ” 
 
 “Holla!” said Burbo, rising reluctantly, “what turmoil is 
 allthis about a slave? Let go the young gentleman, wife, — 
 let him go: for his sake the pert thing shall be spared this 
 once.” So saying he drew, or rather dragged off his ferocious 
 helpmate. 
 
 ‘“Methought when we entered,” said Clodius, “there was 
 another man present ?” 
 
 “He is gone.” 
 
 For the priest of Isis had indeed thought it high time to 
 vanish. | 
 
 “Oh, a friend of mine, a brother cupman, a quiet dog, who 
 does not love these snarlings,” said Burbo, carelessly. But 
 go, child; you will tear the gentleman’s tunic if you cling to 
 him so tight: go, you are pardoned.” 
 
 “Oh, do not, —do not forsake me!” cried Nydia, clinging 
 yet closer to the Athenian. 
 
 Moved by her forlorn situation, her appeal to him, her own 
 innumerable and touching graces, the Greek seated himself on 
 
108 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 one of the rude chairs. He held her on his knees, he wiped 
 the blood from her shoulders with his long hair, he kissed the 
 tears from her cheeks, he whispered to her a thousand of 
 those soothing words with which we calm the grief of a child; 
 and so beautiful did he seem in his gentle and consoling task, 
 that even the fierce heart of Stratonice was touched. His 
 presence seemed to shed light over that base and obscene 
 haunt; young, beautiful, glorious, he was the emblem of all 
 that earth made most happy, comforting one that the earth 
 had abandoned! 
 
 “Well, who could have thought our blind Nydia had been 
 so honored!” said the virago, wiping her heated brow. 
 
 Glaucus looked up at Burbo. 
 
 “My good man,” said he, “this is your slave; she sings 
 well, she is accustomed to the care of flowers; I wish to make 
 a present of such a slave to a lady. Will you sell her to 
 me?” As he spoke he felt the whole frame of the poor girl 
 tremble with delight; she started up, she put her dishevelled 
 hair from her eyes, she looked around, as if, alas! she had the 
 power to see. 
 
 “Sell our Nydia! No indeed,” said Stratonice, grufily. 
 
 Nydia sank back with a long sigh, and again clasped the 
 robe of her protector. 
 
 “‘ Nonsense!” said Clodius, imperiously; “you must oblige 
 me. What, man! what, old dame! offend me, and your trade 
 is ruined. Is not Burbo my kinsman Pansa’s client? Am I 
 not the oracle of the amphitheatre and its heroes? IfI say 
 the word, Break up your wine-jars, you sell no more. Glaucus, 
 the slave is yours.” 
 
 Burbo scratched his huge head, in evident embarrassment. 
 
 “The girl is worth her weight in gold to me.” 
 
 “ Name your price; I am rich,” said Glaucus. 
 
 The ancient Italians were like the modern, —there was 
 nothing they would not sell, much less a poor blind girl. 
 
 “T paid six sestertia for her ; she is worth twelve now,” mut- 
 tered Stratonice. 
 
 “You shall have twenty; come to the magistrates at once, 
 and then to my house for your money.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 109 
 
 “YT would not have sold the dear girl for a hundred but to 
 oblige noble Clodius,” said Burbo, whiningly. “And you will 
 speak to Pansa about the place of designator at the amphi- 
 theatre, noble Clodius ? It would just suit me.” 
 
 “Thou shalt have it,” said Clodius; adding in a whisper to 
 Burbo, “Yon Greek can make your fortune; money runs 
 through him lke a sieve: mark to-day with white chalk, my 
 Priam.” 
 
 “ An dabis?” said Glaucus, in the formal question of sale 
 and barter. 
 
 “ Dabitur,” answered Burbo. 
 
 “Then, then I am to go with you — with you? Oh, happi. 
 ness!” murmured Nydia. 
 
 “ Pretty one, yes; and thy hardest task henceforth shall be 
 to sing thy Grecian hymns to the loveliest lady in Pompeii.” 
 
 The girl sprang from his clasp; a change came over her 
 whole face, so bright the instant before; she sighed heavily, 
 and then once more taking his hand, she said, — 
 
 ‘‘T thought I was to go to your house ? ” 
 
 “¢ And so thou shalt for the present ; come, we lose time.” 
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 THE RIVAL OF GLAUCUS PRESSES ONWARD IN THE RACE. 
 
 Tone was one of those brilliant characters which but once or 
 twice flash across our career. She united in the highest per- 
 fection the rarest of earthly gifts, —Genius and Beauty. No 
 one ever possessed superior intellectual qualities without 
 knowing them. The alliteration of modesty and merit is 
 pretty enough, but where merit is great, the veil of that mod- 
 esty you admire never disguises its extent from its possessor. 
 It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that it cannot 
 reveal to the every-day world, that gives to genius that shy 
 and reserved and troubled air which puzzles and flatters you 
 when you encounter it. 
 
110 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL. 
 
 Tone, then, knew her genius; but with that charming versa- 
 tility that belongs of right to women, she had the faculty so 
 few of a kindred genius in the less malleable sex can claim, — 
 the faculty to bend and model her graceful intellect to all 
 whom it encountered. The sparkling fountain threw its 
 waters alike upon the strand, the cavern, and the flowers; it 
 refreshed, it smiled, it dazzled everywhere. That pride which 
 is the necessary result of superiority she wore easily ; in her 
 breast it concentrated itself in independence. She pursued 
 thus her own bright and solitary path. She asked no aged 
 matron to direct and guide her; she walked alone by the torch 
 of her own unflickering purity. She obeyed no tyrannical and 
 ~ absolute custom: she moulded custom to her own will; but 
 this so delicately and with so feminine a grace, so perfect an 
 exemption from error, that you could not say she outraged 
 custom but commanded it. The wealth of her graces was in- 
 exhaustible: she beautified the commonest action; a word, a 
 look from her, seemed magic. Love her, and you entered into 
 a new world; you passed from this trite and commonplace 
 earth ; you were in a land in which your eyes saw everything 
 through an enchanted medium. In her presence you felt as if 
 listening to exquisite music; you were steeped in that senti- 
 ment which has so httle of earth in it, and which music so 
 well inspires, — that intoxication which refines and exalts, 
 which seizes, it is true, the senses, but gives them the character 
 of the soul. 
 
 She was peculiarly formed, then, to command and fascinate 
 the less ordinary and the bolder natures of men; to love her 
 was to unite two passions, — that of love and of ambition: you 
 aspired when you adored her. It was no wonder that she had 
 completely chained and subdued the mysterious but burning 
 soul of the Egyptian, a man in whom dwelt the fiercest pas- 
 sions. Her beauty and her soul alike enthralled him. 
 
 Set apart himself from the common world, he loved that 
 daringness of character which also made itself, among common 
 things, aloof and alone. He did not, or he would not, see that 
 that very isolation put her yet more from him than from the 
 vulgar. Far as the poles, far as the night from day, his soli- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL pie cs 
 
 tude was divided from hers. He was solitary from his dark 
 and solemn vices: she from her beautiful fancies and her purity 
 of virtue. 
 
 If it was not strange that Ione thus enthralled the Egyp- 
 tian, far less strange was it that she had captured, as suddenly 
 as irrevocably, the bright and sunny heart of the Athenian. 
 The gladness of a temperament which seemed woven from the 
 beams of light had led Glaucus into pleasure. He obeyed no 
 _ more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations 
 of his time than the exhilarating voices of youth and health. 
 He threw the brightness of his nature over every abyss and 
 cavern through which he strayed. His imagination dazzled 
 him, but his heart never was corrupted. Of far more penetra- 
 tion than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought to 
 prey upon his riches and his youth; but he despised wealth 
 save as the means of enjoyment, and youth was the great 
 sympathy that united him to them. He felt, it is true, the 
 impulse of nobler thoughts and higher aims than in pleasure 
 could be indulged: but the world was one vast prison, to 
 which the Sovereign of Rome was the Imperial jailer; and 
 the very virtues, which in the free days of Athens would have 
 made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive 
 and supine. Yor in that unnatural and bloated civilization all 
 that was noble in emulation was forbidden. Ambition in the 
 regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the contest 
 of flattery and craft. Avarice had become the sole ambition ; 
 men desired pretorships and provinces only as the license to 
 pillage, and government was but the excuse of rapine. It is 
 in small States that glory is most active and pure: the more 
 confined the limits of the circle, the more ardent the patriot- 
 ism. In small States opinion is concentrated and strong: 
 every eye reads your actions; your public motives are blended 
 with your private ties; every spot in your narrow sphere is 
 crowded with forms familiar since your childhood; the ap- 
 plause of your citizens is lke the caresses of your friends. 
 But in large States the city is but the court; the provinces — 
 unknown to you, unfamiliar in customs, perhaps in language 
 —have no claim on your patriotism; the ancestry of their 
 
112 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 inhabitants is not yours. In the court you desire favor instead 
 of glory; at a distance from the court public opinion has van- 
 ished from you, and self-interest has no counterpoise. 
 
 Italy, Italy, while I write, your skies are over me, your seas 
 flow beneath my feet. Listen not to the blind policy which 
 would unite all your crested cities, mourning for their repub- 
 lics, into one empire ; false, pernicious delusion! your only hope 
 of regeneration isin division. Florence, Milan, Venice, Genoa, 
 may be free once more, if each is free. But dream not of free- 
 dom for the whole while you enslave the parts; the heart must 
 be the centre of the system, the blood must circulate freely 
 everywhere; and in vast communities you behold but a bloated 
 and feeble giant, whose brain is imbecile, whose limbs are dead, 
 and who pays in disease and weakness the penalty of tran- 
 scending the natural proportions of health and vigor. 
 
 Thus thrown back upon themselves, the more ardent quali- 
 ties of Glaucus found no vent, save in that overflowing im- 
 agination which gave grace to pleasure, and poetry to thought. 
 Ease was less despicable than contention with parasites and 
 slaves and luxury could yet be refined; though ambition could 
 not be ennobled. But all that was best and brightest in his 
 soul woke at once when he knew Jone. Here was an empire 
 worthy of demigods to attain; here was a glory which the 
 reeking smoke of a foul society could not soil or dim. Love, 
 in every time, in every State, can thus find space for its golden 
 altars. And tell me if there ever, even in the ages most fav- 
 orable to glory, could be a triumph more exalted and elating 
 than the conquest of one noble heart ? 
 
 And whether it was that this sentiment inspired him, his 
 ideas glowed more brightly, his soul seemed more awake and 
 more visible, in Ione’s presence. If natural to love her, it was 
 natural that she should return the passion. Young, brilliant, 
 eloquent, enamoured, and Athenian, he was to her as the in- 
 carnation of the poetry of her father’s land. They were not 
 like creatures of a world in which strife and sorrow are the 
 elements; they were like things to be seen only in the holli- 
 day of nature, so glorious and so fresh were their youth, their 
 beauty, and their love. They seemed out of place in the: 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 113 
 
 harsh and every-day earth; they belonged of right to the 
 Saturnian age, and the dreams of demigod and nymph. It 
 was as if the poetry of life gathered and fed itself in them, 
 and in their hearts were concentrated the last rays of the sun 
 of Delos and of Greece. 
 
 But if Ione was independent in her choice of life, so was 
 her modest pride proportionably vigilant and easily alarmed. 
 The falsehood of the Egyptian was invented by a deep know]l- 
 edge of her nature. The story of coarseness, of indelicacy, 
 in Glaucus, stung her to the quick. She felt it a reproach 
 upon her character and her career, a punishment above all to 
 her love; she felt, for the first time, how suddenly she had 
 yielded to that love; she blushed with shame at a weakness, 
 the extent of which she was startled to perceive: she im- 
 agined it was that weakness which had incurred the contempt 
 of Glaucus; she endured the bitterest curse of noble natures, 
 — humiliation! Yet her love, perhaps, was no less alarmed 
 than her pride. If one moment she murmured reproaches 
 upon Glaucus,—if one moment she renounced, she almost 
 hated him, —at the next she burst into passionate tears, her 
 heart yielded to its softness, and she said in the bitterness of 
 anguish, ‘“ He despises me; he does not love me.” 
 
 From the hour the Egyptian had left her she had retired to 
 her most secluded chamber, she had shut out her handmaids, 
 she had denied herself to the crowds that besieged her door. 
 Glaucus was excluded with the rest; he wondered, but he 
 guessed not why. He never attributed to his Ione, his queen, 
 his goddess, that woman-like caprice of which the love-poets 
 of Italy so unceasingly complain. He imagined her, in the 
 majesty of her candor, above all the arts that, torture. He 
 was troubled, but his hopes were not dimmed, for he knew 
 already that he loved and was beloved; what more could he 
 desire as an amulet against fear ? Yi 
 
 At deepest night, then, when the streets were hushed, and 
 the high moon only beheld his devotions, he stole to that tem- 
 ple of his heart, — her home,!— and wooed her after the beau- 
 tiful fashion of his country. He covered her threshold with 
 
 1 Athensxus: “The true temple of Cupid is the house of the beloved one.” 
 VOL. I. — 8 
 
114 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 the richest garlands, in which every flower was a volume of 
 sweet passion; and he charmed the long summer night with 
 the sound of the Lycian lute, and verses which the inspira- 
 tion of the moment sufficed to weave. 
 
 But the window above opened not; no smile made yet more 
 holy the shining air of night. All was still and dark. He 
 knew not if his verse was welcome and his suit was heard. 
 
 Yet Ione slept not, nor disdained to hear. Those soft 
 strains ascended to her chamber; they soothed, they subdued 
 her. While she listened, she believed nothing against her 
 lover; but when they were stilled at last, and his step de- 
 parted, the spell ceased, and in the bitterness of her soul she 
 almost conceived in that delicate flattery a new affront. 
 
 I said she was denied to all; but there was one exception ; 
 ‘there was one person who would not be denied, assuming over 
 her actions and her house something like the authority of a 
 parent: Arbaces, for himself, claimed an exemption from all 
 the ceremonies observed by others. He entered the threshold 
 with the license of one who feels that he is privileged and at 
 home. He made his way to her solitude, and with that sort 
 of quiet and unapologetic air which seemed to consider the 
 right as a thing of course. With all the independence of 
 Tone’s character, his heart had enabled him to obtain a secret 
 and powerful control over her mind. She could not shake it 
 off; sometimes she desired to do so, but she never actively 
 struggled against it. She was fascinated by his serpent eye. 
 He arrested, he commanded her by the magic of a mind long 
 accustomed to awe and to subdue. Utterly unaware of his 
 real character or his hidden love, she felt for him the rever- 
 ence which genius feels for wisdom, and virtue for sanctity. 
 She regarded him as one of those mighty sages of old who 
 attained to the mysteries of knowledge by an exemption from 
 the passions of their kind. She scarcely considered him as a 
 being, like herself, of the earth, but as an oracle at once dark 
 and sacred. She did not love him, but she feared. His pres- 
 ence was unwelcome to her; it dimmed her spirit even in its 
 brightest mood ; he seemed, with his chilling and lofty aspect, 
 like some eminence which casts a shadow over the sun. But 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 115 
 
 she never thought of forbidding his visits. She was passive 
 under the influence which created in her breast, not the repug- 
 nance, but something of the stillness of terror. 
 
 Arbaces himself now resolved to exert all his arts to pos- 
 sess himself of that treasure he so burningly coveted. He 
 was cheered and elated by his conquests over her brother. 
 From the hour in which Apecides fell beneath the volup- 
 tuous sorcery of that féte which we have described, he felt his 
 empire over the young priest triumphant and insured. He 
 knew that there is no victim so thoroughly subdued as a 
 young and fervent man for the first time delivered to the thral- 
 dom of the senses. 
 
 When Apezecides recovered, with the morning light, from 
 the profound sleep which succeeded to the delirium of wonder 
 and of pleasure, he was, it is true, ashamed, terrified, ap- 
 palled. His vows of austerity and celibacy echoed in his ear; 
 his thirst after holiness, — had it been quenched at so unhal- 
 lowed a stream? But Arbaces knew well the means by which 
 to confirm his conquest. From the arts of pleasure he led 
 the young priest at once to those of his mysterious wisdom. 
 He bared to his amazed eyes the initiatory secrets of the 
 sombre philosophy of the Nile, — those secrets plucked from 
 the stars, and the wild chemistry, which, in those days, when 
 Reason herself was but the creature of Imagination, might 
 well pass for the lore of a diviner magic. He seemed to the 
 young eyes of the priest as a being above mortality, and 
 endowed with supernatural gifts. That yearning and intense 
 desire for the knowledge which is not of earth, which had 
 burned from his boyhood in the heart of the priest, was daz- 
 zled until it confused and mastered his clearer sense. He 
 gave himself to the art which thus addressed at once the two 
 strongest of human passions, — that of pleasure and that of 
 knowledge. He was loth to believe that one so wise could 
 err, that one so lofty could stoop to deceive. Entangled in 
 the dark web of metaphysical moralities, he caught at the 
 excuse by which the Egyptian converted vice into a virtue. 
 His pride was insensibly flattered that Arbaces had deigned 
 to rank him with himself, to set him apart from the laws 
 
116 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 which bound the vulgar, to make him an august participator, 
 both in the mystic studies and the magic fascinations of the 
 Egyptian’s solitude. The pure and stern lessons of that 
 ereed to which Olinthus had sought to make him convert 
 were swept away from his memory by the deluge of new 
 passions; and the Egyptian, who was versed in the articles 
 of that true faith, and who soon learned from his pupil the 
 effect which had been produced upon him by his believers, 
 sought, not unskilfully, to undo that effect by a tone of 
 reasoning half sarcastic and half earnest. 
 
 “This faith,” said he, “is but a borrowed plagiarism from 
 one of the many allegories invented by our priests of old. 
 Observe,” he added, pointing to a hieroglyphical scroll, — “ ob. 
 serve in these ancient figures the origin of the Christian’s 
 Trinity. Here are also three gods,—the Deity, the Spirit, 
 and the Son. Observe, that the epithet of the Son is ‘Say- 
 iour ;’ observe that the sign by which his human qualities are 
 denoted is the cross.1 Note here, too, the mystic history of 
 Osiris: how he put on death; how he lay in the grave; and 
 how, thus fulfilling a solemn atonement, he rose again from 
 the dead! In these stories we but design to paint an allegory 
 from the operations of nature and the evolutions of the eter- 
 nal heavens. But the allegory unknown, the types them- 
 selves have furnished to credulous nations the materials of 
 many creeds. They have travelled to the vast plains of India; 
 they have mixed themselves up in the visionary speculations 
 of the Greek: becoming more and more gross and embodied, 
 as they emerge farther from the shadows of their antique 
 origin, they have assumed a human and palpable form in 
 this novel faith; and the believers of Galilee are but the un- 
 conscious repeaters of one of the superstitions of the Nile.” 
 
 This was the last argument, which completely subdued the 
 priest. It was necessary to him, as to all, to believe in some- 
 thing; and undivided, and at last unreluctant, he surrendered 
 himself to that belief which Arbaces inculcated, and which all 
 that was human in passion, all that was flattering in vanity, 
 
 1 The believer will draw from this vague coincidence a very different 
 corollary from that of the Egyptian. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. Lia by 
 
 all that was alluring in pleasure, served to invite to, and con- 
 tributed to confirm. 
 
 This conquest thus easily made, the Egyptian could now 
 give himself wholly up to the pursuit of a far dearer and 
 mightier object; and he hailed, in his success with the brother, 
 an omen of his triumph over the sister. 
 
 He had seen Ione on the day following the revel we have 
 witnessed, and which was also the day after he had poisoned 
 her mind against his rival. The next day, and the next, he 
 saw her also; and each time he laid himself out with consum. 
 mate art, partly to confirm her impression against Glaucus, 
 and principally to prepare her for the impressions he desired 
 her to receive. The proud Ione took care to conceal the an- 
 cuish she endured, and the pride of woman has an hypocrisy 
 which can deceive the most penetrating and shame the most 
 astute; but Arbaces was no less cautious not to recur to a 
 subject which he felt it was most politic to treat as of the 
 lightest importance. He knew that by dwelling much upon 
 the fault of a rival, you only give him dignity in the eyes of 
 your mistress; the wisest plan is, neither loudly to hate, nor 
 bitterly to contemn; the wisest plan is to lower him by an 
 indifference of tone, as 1f you could not dream that he could 
 be loved. Your safety is in concealing the wound to your 
 own pride, and imperceptibly alarming that of the umpire, 
 whose voice is fate! Such, in all times, will be the policy 
 of one who knows the science of the sex: it was now the 
 Egyptian’s. 
 
 He recurred no more, then, to the presumption of Glaucus; 
 he mentioned his name, but not more often than that of Clo- 
 dius or of Lepidus. He affected to class them. together as 
 things of a low and ephemeral species; as things wanting noth- 
 ing of the butterfly save its innocence and its grace. Some- 
 times he slightly alluded to some invented debauch, in which 
 he declared them companions; sometimes he adverted to 
 them as the antipodes of those lofty and spiritual natures to 
 whose order that of Ione belonged. Blinded alike by the 
 pride of Ione, and, perhaps, by his own, he dreamed not that 
 she already loved; but he dreaded lest she might have formed 
 
118 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 for Glaucus the first fluttering prepossessions that Zead to love. 
 And secretly he ground his teeth in rage and jealousy when 
 he reflected on the youth, the fascinations, and the brilliancy 
 of that formidable rival whom he pretended to undervalue. 
 
 It was on the fourth day from the date of the close of the 
 previous book that Arbaces and Ione sat together. 
 
 ‘You wear your veil at home,” said the Egyptian; “that is 
 not fair to those whom you honor with your friendship.” 
 
 “But to Arbaces,” answered Ione, who, indeed, had cast the 
 veil over her features to conceal eyes red with weeping, — “to 
 Arbaces, who looks only to the mind, what matters it that the 
 face is concealed ? ” 
 
 “T do look only to the mind,” replied the Egyptian: “show 
 me then your face, for there I shall see it!” 
 
 “You grow gallant in the air of Pompeii,” said Ione, with 
 a forced tone of gayety. 
 
 “Do you think, fair Ione, that it is only at Pompeii that I 
 have learned to value you?” The Egyptian’s voice trembled ; 
 he paused for a moment, and then resumed. 
 
 “There is a love, beautiful Greek, which is not the love 
 only of the thoughtless and the young, —there is a love which 
 sees not with the eyes, which hears not with the ears, but in 
 which soul is enamoured of soul. The countryman of thy 
 ancestors, the cave-nursed Plato, dreamed of such a love: his 
 followers have sought to imitate it; but it 1s a love that is not 
 for the herd to echo; it is a love that only high and noble 
 natures can conceive; it hath nothing in common with the 
 sympathies and ties of coarse affection; wrinkles do not revolt 
 it, homeliness of feature does not deter; it asks youth, it is 
 true, but it asks it only in the freshness of the emotions; it 
 asks beauty, it is true, but it is the beauty of the thought and 
 of the spirit. Such is the love, O Ione, which is a worthy 
 offering to thee from the cold and the austere. Austere and 
 cold thou deemest me: such is the love that I venture to lay 
 upon thy shrine; thou canst receive it without a blush.” 
 
 “ And its name is Friendship,” replied Ione. Her answer 
 was innocent, yet it sounded like the reproof of one conscious 
 of the design of the speaker. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 119 
 
 “Friendship!” said Arbaces, vehemently. “No; that isa 
 word too often profaned to apply to a sentiment so sacred. 
 Friendship! it is a tie that binds fools and profligates! 
 Friendship! it is the bond that unites the frivolous hearts of 
 a Glaucus and a Clodius! Friendship! no, that is an affection 
 of earth, of vulgar habits and sordid sympathies. The feeling 
 of which I speak is borrowed from the stars ;1 it partakes of 
 that mystic and ineffable yearning which we feel when we 
 gaze on them; it burns, yet it purifies; it is the lamp of 
 naphtha in the alabaster vase, glowing with fragrant odors, 
 but shining only through the purest vessels. No; it is not 
 love, and it is not friendship, that Arbaces feels for Ione. 
 Give it no name,—earth has no name for it; it is not of 
 earth: why debase it with earthly epithets and earthly asso- 
 ciations ?” 
 
 Never before had Arbaces ventured so far, yet he felt his 
 ground step by step: he knew that he uttered a language 
 which, if at this day of affected platonisms it would speak 
 unequivocally to the ears of beauty, was at that time strange 
 and unfamiliar, to which no precise idea could be attached, 
 from which he could imperceptibly advance or recede, as occa- 
 sion suited, as hope encouraged or fear deterred. Jone trem- 
 bled, though she knew not why; her veil hid her features, and 
 masked an expression, which, if seen by the Egyptian, would 
 have at once damped and enraged him; in fact, he never was 
 more displeasing to her: the harmonious modulation of the 
 most suasive voice that ever disguised unhallowed thought 
 fell discordantly on her ear. Her whole soul was still filled 
 with the image of Glaucus, and the accent of tenderness from 
 another only revolted and dismayed; yet she did not conceive 
 that any passion more ardent than that platonism which Ar- 
 baces expressed lurked beneath his words. She thought that 
 he, in truth, spoke only of the affection and sympathy of the 
 soul; but was it not precisely that affection and that sym- 
 pathy which had made a part of those emotions she felt for 
 Glaucus ; and could any other footstey than his approach the 
 haunted adytum of her heart ? 
 
 1 Plato. 
 
120 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 Anxious at once to change the conversation, she replied, 
 therefore, with a cold and indifferent voice: “ Whomsoever 
 Arbaces honors with the sentiment of esteem, it is natural 
 that his elevated wisdom should color that sentiment with its 
 own hues; it is natural that his friendship should be purer 
 than that of others, whose pursuits and errors he does not 
 deign to share. But tell me, Arbaces, hast thou seen my 
 brother of late? He has not visited me for several days; 
 and when I last saw him his manner disturbed and alarmed 
 me much. I fear lest he was too precipitate in the severe 
 choice that he has adopted, and that he repents an irrevocable 
 step.” 
 
 ‘Be cheered, Ione,” replied the Egyptian. “It is true 
 that some little time since he was troubled and sad of spirit; 
 those doubts beset him which were likely to haunt one of that 
 fervent temperament, which ever ebbs and flows, and vibrates 
 between excitement and exhaustion. But he, Ione, he came to 
 me in his anxieties and his distress; he sought one who pitied © 
 and loved him. I have calmed his mind, I have removed his 
 doubts, I have taken him from the threshold of Wisdom into 
 its temple; and before the majesty of the goddess his soul 
 is hushed and soothed. Fear not, he will repent no more; 
 they who trust themselves to Arbaces never repent but for a 
 moment.” 
 
 “ You rejoice me,” answered Ione. “My dear brother! in 
 his contentment I am happy.” 
 
 The conversation then turned upon lighter subjects; the 
 Egyptian exerted himself to please, he condescended even to 
 entertain; the vast variety of his knowledge enabled him to 
 adorn and light up every subject on which he touched; and 
 Tone, forgetting the displeasing effect of his former words, was 
 carried away, despite her sadness, by the magic of his intel- 
 lect. Her manner became unrestrained and her language 
 fluent; and Arbaces, who had waited his opportunity, now 
 hastened to seize it. 
 
 “You have never seen,” said he, “the interior of my home; 
 it may amuse you to do so: it contains some rooms that may 
 explain to you what you have often asked me to describe, — 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 121 
 
 the fashion of an Egyptian house; not, indeed, that you will 
 perceive in the poor and minute proportions of Roman archi. 
 tecture the massive strength, the vast space, the gigantic 
 magnificence, or even the domestic construction of the palaces 
 of ‘Thebes and Memphis; but something there is, here and 
 there, that may serve to express to you some notion of that 
 antique civilization which has humanized the world. Devote, 
 then, to the austere friend of your youth, one of these 
 bright summer evenings, and let me boast that my gloomy 
 mansion has been honored with the presence of the admired 
 Tone.” 
 
 Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger 
 that awaited her, Ione readily assented to the proposal. ‘The 
 next evening was fixed for the visit; and the Egyptian, with 
 a serene countenance, and a heart beating with fierce and 
 unholy joy, departed. Scarce had he gone, when another 
 visitor claimed admission. — But now we return to Glaucus. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE POOR TORTOISE. NEW CHANGES FOR NYDIA. 
 
 THE morning sun shone over the small and odorous garden 
 enclosed within the peristyle of the house of the Athenian. 
 He lay reclined, sad and listlessly, on the smooth grass which 
 intersected the viridarium, and a slight canopy stretched 
 above broke the fierce rays of the summer sun. 
 
 When that fairy manison was first disinterred from the earth 
 they found in the garden the shell of a tortoise that had been 
 its inmate.t That animal, so strange a link in the creation, to 
 which Nature seems to have denied all the pleasures of life, 
 save life’s passive and dreamlike perception, had been the 
 guest of the place for years before Glaucus purchased it, — for 
 years, indeed, which went beyond the memory of man, and to 
 
 1 I do not know whether it be still preserved (I hope so), but the shell of 
 a tortoise was found in the house appropriated, in this work, to Glaucus. 
 
122 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 which tradition assigned an almost incredible date. ‘The house 
 had been built and rebuilt, its possessors had changed and 
 fluctuated, generations had flourished and decayed, and still 
 the tortoise dragged on its slow and unsympathizing existence. 
 In the earthquake, which sixteen years before had overthrown 
 many of the public buildings of the city, and scared away the 
 amazed inhabitants, the house now inhabited by Glaucus had 
 been terribly shattered. The possessors deserted it for many 
 days; on their return they cleared away the ruins which en- 
 cumbered the viridarium, and found still the tortoise, un- 
 harmed, and unconscious of the surrounding destruction. It 
 seemed to bear a charmed life in its languid blood and imper- 
 ceptible motions; yet was it not so inactive as it seemed: 
 it held a regular and monotonous course; inch by inch it 
 traversed the little orbit of its domain, taking months to ac- 
 complish the whole gyration. It was a restless voyager, that 
 tortoise! patiently, and with pain, did it perform its self- 
 appointed journeys, evincing no interest in the things around 
 it, — a philosopher concentred in itself. There was some- 
 thing grand in its solitary selfishness: the sun in which it 
 basked, the waters poured daily over it, the air, which it insen- 
 sibly inhaled, were its sole and unfailing luxuries. The mild 
 changes of the season in that lovely clime affected it not. It 
 covered itself with its shell, as the saint in his piety, as the 
 sage in his wisdom, as the lover in his hope. 
 
 It was impervious to the shocks and mutations of time, it 
 was anemblem of time itself, —slow, regular, perpetual, un- 
 witting of the passions that fret themselves around, of the 
 wear and tear of mortality. The poor tortoise! nothing less 
 than the bursting of volcanoes, the convulsions of the riven 
 world, could have quenched its sluggish spark! The inexo- 
 rable Death, that spared not pomp or beauty, passed unheed- 
 ingly by a thing to which death could bring so insignificant 
 a change. 
 
 For this animal the mercurial and vivid Greek felt all the 
 wonder and affection of contrast. He could spend hours in 
 surveying its creeping progress, in moralizing over its mechan- 
 ism. He despised it in joy; he envied it in sorrow. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 123 
 
 Regarding it now ashe lay along the sward, its dull mass 
 moving while it seemed motionless, the Athenian murmured 
 to himself : — 
 
 “The eagle dropped a stone from his talons, thinking to 
 break thy shell: the stone crushed the head of a poet. This 
 is the allegory of Fate! Dull thing! thou hadst a father 
 and a mother; perhaps, ages ago, thou thyself hadst a mate. 
 Did thy parents love, or didst thou? Did thy slow blood cir- 
 culate more gladly when thou didst creep to the side of thy 
 wedded one? Wert thou capable of affection? Could it dis- 
 tress thee if she were away from thy side? Couldst thou 
 feel when she was present? What would I not give to know 
 _ the history of thy mailed breast, to gaze upon the mechanism 
 of thy faint desires, to mark what hairbreadth difference sepa- 
 rates thy sorrow from thy joy! Yet, methinks, thou wouldst 
 know if Ione were present! Thou wouldst feel her com- 
 ing like a happier air, like a gladder sun. I envy thee 
 now, for thou knowest not that she is absent; and I[— 
 would I could be like thee between the intervals of seeing 
 her! What doubt, what presentiment, haunts me! Why will 
 she not admit me? Days have passed since I heard her 
 voice. For the first time, life grows flat tome. I am as one 
 who is left alone at a banquet, the hghts dead and the 
 flowers faded. Ah, Ione, couldst thou dream how I adore 
 thee!” 
 
 From these enamoured reveries Glaucus was interrupted by 
 the entrance of Nydia. She came with her light though cau- 
 tious step along the marble tablinum. She passed the portico, 
 and paused at the flowers which bordered the garden. She 
 had her water-vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the thirsting 
 plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She bent 
 to inhale their odor; she touched them timidly and caress- 
 ingly; she felt along their stems, if any withered leaf or 
 creeping insect marred their beauty. And as she hovered 
 from flower to flower, with her earnest and youthful counte- 
 nance and graceful motions, you could not have imagined a 
 fitter handmaid for the goddess of the garden. 
 
 “ Nydia, my child!” said Glaucus. 
 
124 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 At the sound of his voice she paused at once, — listening, 
 blushing, breathless ; with her lips parted, her face upturned 
 to catch the direction of the sound, she laid down the vase, 
 she hastened to him; and wonderful it was to see how un- 
 erringly she threaded her dark way through the flowers, and 
 came by the shortest path to the side of her new lord. 
 
 “ Nydia,” said Glaucus, tenderly stroking back her long and 
 beautiful hair, “it is now three days since thou hast been 
 under the protection of my household gods. Have they smiled 
 on thee? Art thou happy?” 
 
 “ Ah, so happy!” sighed the slave. 
 
 “ And now,” continued Glaucus, “that thou hast recovered 
 somewhat from the hateful recollections of thy former state, 
 and now that they have fitted thee [touching her broidered . 
 tunic | with garments more meet for thy delicate shape, and 
 now, sweet child, that thou hast accustomed thyself to a 
 happiness which may the gods grant thee ever, I am about to 
 pray at thy hands a boon.” 
 
 “Oh, what can I do for thee?” said Nydia, clasping her 
 hands. 
 
 “ Listen,” said Glaucus, “and, young as thou art, thou shalt 
 be my confidante. Hast thou ever heard the name of Ione?” 
 
 The blind girl gasped for breath, and turning pale as one 
 of the statues which shone upon them from the peristyle, she 
 answered with an effort, and after a moment’s pause, — 
 
 “Yes; I have heard that she is of Neapolis, and beautiful.” 
 
 “Beautiful! Her beauty is a thing to dazzle the day! 
 Neapolis! nay, she is Greek by origin; Greece only could 
 furnish forth such shapes. Nydia, I love her!” 
 
 “7 thought so,” replied Nydia, calmly. 
 
 “T love, and thou shalt tell her so. I am about to send thee 
 to her. Happy Nydia, thou wilt be in her chamber, thou 
 wilt drink the music of her voice, thou wilt bask in the 
 sunny air of her presence! ” 
 
 “What! what! wilt thou send me from thee ?” 
 
 “Thou wilt go to Ione,” answered Glaucus, in a tone that 
 said, “ What more canst thou desire ? ” 
 
 Nydia burst into tears. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 125 
 
 Glaucus, raising himself, drew her towards him with the 
 soothing caresses of a brother. 
 
 “My child, my Nydia, thou weepest in ignorance of the 
 happiness I bestow on thee. She is gentle and kind, and soft 
 as the breeze of spring. She will be a sister to thy youth, she 
 will appreciate thy winning talents, she will love thy simple 
 graces aS none other could, for they are like her own. Weep- 
 est thou still, fond fool? Iwill not force thee, sweet. Wilt 
 thou not do for me this kindness ?” 
 
 ‘Well, if I can serve thee,command. See, I weep no longer; 
 I am calm.” 
 
 “That is my own Nydia,” continued Glaucus, kissing her 
 hand. “Go, then, to her: if thou art disappointed in her 
 kindness, — if I have deceived thee, — return when thou wilt. I 
 do not give thee to another; I but lend. My home ever be thy 
 refuge, sweet one. Ah, would it could shelter all the friend- 
 less and distressed! But if my heart whispers truly, I shall 
 claim thee again soon, my child. My home and Ione’s will 
 become the same, and thou shalt dwell with both.” 
 
 A shiver passed through the slight frame of the blind girl, 
 but she wept no more; she was resigned. 
 
 “Go, then, my Nydia, to Ione’s house; they shall show thee 
 the way. ‘Take her the fairest flowers thou canst pluck; the 
 vase which contains them I will give thee: thou must excuse 
 its unworthiness. Thou shalt take, too, with thee the lute 
 that I gave thee yesterday, and from which thou knowest so 
 well to awaken the charming spirit. Thou shalt give her also 
 this letter, in which, after a hundred efforts, I have embodied 
 something of my thoughts. Let thy ear catch every accent, 
 every modulation of her voice, and tell me, wnen we meet 
 again, if its music should flatter me or discourage. It is now, 
 Nydia, some days since I have been admitted to Ione; there is 
 something mysterious in this exclusion. I am distracted with 
 doubts and fears ; learn, —for thou art quick, and thy care for 
 me will sharpen tenfold thy acuteness,—Jlearn the cause of 
 this unkindness; speak of me as often as thou canst; let my 
 name come ever to thy lips; insinwate how I love rather than 
 proclaim it; watch if she sighs whilst thou speakest; if she 
 
126 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 answer thee; or, if she reproves, in what accents she reproves. 
 Be my friend, plead for me; and ah, how vastly wilt thou over- 
 pay the little I have done for thee! Thou comprehendest, 
 Nydia; thou art yet a child,—have I said more than thou 
 canst understand ?” 
 
 Les Fi 
 
 “ And thou wilt serve me?” 
 
 ‘YY es,” 
 
 “Come to me when thou hast gathered the flowers, and I 
 will give thee the vase I spake of; seek me in the chamber of 
 Leda. Pretty one, thou dost not grieve now ?” 
 
 “ Glaucus, I am a slave; what business have I with grief 
 or joy ?” 
 
 “‘Sayest thou so? No, Nydia, be free. I give thee freedom ; 
 enjoy it as thou wilt, and pardon me that I reckoned on thy 
 desire to serve me.” 
 
 “You are offended. Oh, I would not, for that which no 
 freedom can give, offend you, Glaucus! My guardian, my 
 saviour, my protector, forgive the poor blind girl! She does 
 not grieve, even in leaving thee, if she can contribute to thy 
 happiness.” 
 
 “May the gods bless this grateful heart!” said Glaucus, 
 greatly moved; and, unconscious of the fires he excited, he 
 repeatedly eee her forehead. 
 
 “Thou forgivest me,” said she, “and thou wilt tallk no more 
 of freedom; my happiness is to be thy slave: thou hast prom- 
 ised thou male not give me to another.” 
 
 “‘T have promised.” 
 
 “ And now, then, I will gather the flowers.” 
 
 Silently Nydia took from the hand of Glaucus the costly and 
 jewelled vase, in which the flowers vied with each other in hue 
 and fragrance; tearlessly she received his parting admonition. 
 She paused for a moment when his voice ceased; she did not 
 trust herself to reply; she sought his hand; she raised it to 
 her lips, dropped her veil over her face, and passed at once from 
 his presence. She paused again as she reached the threshold; 
 she stretched her hands towards it, and murmured, — 
 
 “Three happy days — days of unspeakable delight — have I 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 127 
 
 known since I passed thee, blessed threshold! May peace 
 dwell ever with thee when I am gone! And now, my heart 
 tears itself from thee, and the only sound it utters bids me — 
 die!” 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE HAPPY BEAUTY AND THE BLIND SLAVE. 
 
 A sLAvs entered the chamber of Ione. A messenger from 
 Glaucus desired to be admitted. 
 
 Tone hesitated an instant. 
 
 “She is blind, that messenger,” said the slave; “she will 
 do her commission to none but thee.” 
 
 Base is that heart which does not respect affliction! The 
 moment she heard the messenger was blind, Ione felt the im- 
 possibility of returning a chilling reply. Glaucus had chosen 
 a herald that was indeed sacred, —a herald that could not be 
 denied. | 
 
 “ What can he want with me? what message can he send ?” 
 and the heart of Ione beat quick. The curtain across the door 
 was withdrawn; a soft and echoless step fell upon the marble ; 
 and Nydia, led by one of the attendants, entered with her 
 precious gift. 
 
 She stood still a moment, as if hstening for some sound that 
 might direct her. 
 
 ‘Will the noble Ione,” said she, in a soft and low voice, 
 “deigon to speak, that I may know whither to steer these be- 
 nighted steps, and that I may lay my offerings at her feet ?” 
 
 “ Fair child,” said Ione, touched and soothingly, “ give not 
 thyself the pain to cross these slippery floors; my attendant 
 will bring to me what thou hast to present;” and she mo- 
 tioned to the handmaid to take the vase. 
 
 “T may give these flowers to none but thee,” answered 
 Nydia; and, guided by her ear, she walked slowly to the place 
 where Ione sat, and kneeling when she came before her, prof- 
 fered the vase. 
 
128 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETD. 
 
 Tone took it from her hand, and placed it on the table at 
 her side. She then raised her gently, and would have seated 
 her on the couch, but the girl modestly resisted. 
 
 “T have not yet discharged my office,” said she; and she 
 drew the letter of Glaucus from her vest. “This will, per- 
 haps, explain why he who sent me chose so unworthy a mes- 
 senger to Ione.” 
 
 The Neapolitan took the letter with a hand, the trembling 
 of which Nydia at once felt and sighed to feel. With folded 
 arms and downcast looks, she stood before the proud and 
 stately form of Ione; no less proud, perhaps, in her attitude 
 of submission. Ione waved her hand, and the attendants 
 withdrew; she gazed again upon the form of the young slave 
 in surprise and beautiful compassion; then, retiring a little 
 from her, she opened and read the following letter: — 
 
 “Glaucus to Ione sends more than he dares to utter. Is Ione ill? 
 Thy slaves tell me ‘ No,’ and that assurance comforts me. Has Glaucus 
 offended Ione? Ah! that question I may not ask from them. For 
 five days I have been banished from thy presence. Has the sun shone ? 
 I know it not. Has the sky smiled? It has had no smile forme. My 
 sun and my sky are Ione. Do I offend thee? AmTItoo bold? Did I 
 say that on the tablet which my tongue has hesitated to breathe? 
 Alas! it is in thine absence that I feel most the spells by which thou 
 hast subdued me. And absence, that deprives me of joy, brings me 
 courage. Thou wilt not see me; thou hast banished also the common 
 flatterers that flock around thee. Canst thou confound me with them ? 
 It is not possible! Thou knowest too well that I am not of them, — 
 that their clay is not mine. For even were I of the humblest mould, 
 the fragrance of the rose has penetrated me, and the spirit of thy nature 
 hath passed within me, to embalm, to sanctify, to inspire. Have they 
 slandered me to thee, Ione? Thou wilt not believe them. Did the 
 Delphic oracle itself tell me thou wert unworthy, I would not believe it ; 
 and am I less incredulous than thou? I think of the last time we met, 
 of the song which I sang to thee, of the look that thou gavest me in 
 return. Disguise it as thou wilt, Ione, there is something kindred be- 
 tween us, and our eyes acknowledged it, though our lips were silent. 
 Deign to see me, to listen to me, and after that exclude me if thou wilt. 
 I meant not so soon to say I loved. But those words rush to my heart; 
 they will have way. Accept, then, my homage and my vows. We 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 129 
 
 met first at the shrine of Pallas; shall we not meet before a softer and 
 a more ancient altar? 
 
 ‘¢ Beautiful, adored Ione! If my hot youth and my Athenian blood 
 have misguided and allured me, they have but taught my wanderings 
 to appreciate the rest, the haven they have attained. I hang up my 
 dripping robes on the Sea-god’s shrine. I have escaped shipwreck. 
 I have found THEE. Ione, deign to see me; thou art gentle to stran- 
 . gers, wilt thou be less merciful to those of thine own land? I await thy 
 reply. Accept the flowers which I send; their sweet breath has a lan- 
 guage more eloquent than words. ‘They take from the sun the odors 
 they return; they are the emblem of the love that receives and repays 
 tenfold, —the emblem of the heart that drunk thy rays, and owes to thee 
 the germ of the treasures that it proffers to thy smile. I send these by 
 one whom thou wilt receive for her own sake, if not for mine. She, like 
 us, is a stranger; her father’s ashes lie under brighter skies; but, less 
 happy than we, she is blind and a slave. Poor Nydia! I seek as much 
 as possible to repair to her the cruelties of Nature and of Fate, in ask- 
 ing permission to place her with thee. She is gentle, quick, and docile. 
 She is skilled in music and the song; and she is a very Chloris! to the 
 flowers. She thinks, Ione, that thou wilt love her: if thou dost not, 
 send her back to me. 
 
 ‘‘One word more: let me be bold, Ione. Why thinkest thou so 
 highly of yon dark Egyptian? he hath not about him the air of honest 
 men. We Greeks learn mankind from our cradle: we are not the less 
 profound, in that we affect no sombre mien: our lips smile, but our 
 eyes are grave, — they observe, they note, they study. Arbaces is not 
 one to be credulously trusted: can it be that he hath wronged me tc 
 thee? I think it, for I left him with thee; thou sawest how my pres- 
 ence stung him; since then thou hast not admitted me. Believe nothing 
 that he can say to my disfavor ; if thou dost, tell me so at once; for this 
 Tone owes to Glaucus. Farewell! this letter touches thy hand; these 
 characters meet thine eyes: shall they be more blessed than he who is 
 their author? Once more farewell!” 
 
 It seemed to Ione, as she read this letter, as if a mist had 
 fallen from her eyes. What had been the supposed offence of 
 Glaucus? That he had not really loved! And now, plainly, 
 and in no dubious terms, he confessed that love. From that 
 moment his power was fully restored. At every tender word 
 in that letter, so full of romantic and trustful passion, her 
 
 1 The Greek Flora. 
 VOL. 1.—9 
 
130 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 heart smote her. And had she doubted his faith, and had she 
 believed another; and had she not, at least, allowed to him 
 the culprit’s right to know his crime, to plead in his defence ? 
 The tears rolled down her cheeks, she kissed the letter, she 
 placed it in her bosom; and turning to Nydia, who stood in 
 the same place and in the same posture, — 
 
 ‘Wilt thou sit, my child,” said she, “while I write an an- 
 swer to this letter?” ; 
 
 “You will answer it, then!” said Nydia, coldly. “ Well, 
 the slave that accompanied me will take back your answer.” 
 
 “For you,” said Ione, “stay with me; trust me, your service 
 shall be hight.” 
 
 Nydia bowed her head. 
 
 “What is your name, fair girl?” 
 
 “They call me Nydia.” 
 
 “Your country ?” 
 
 “The land of Olympus, — Thessaly.” 
 
 ‘Thou shalt be to me a friend,” said Ione, caressingly, “as 
 thou art already half a countrywoman. Meanwhile, I beseech 
 thee, stand not on these cold and glassy marbles. There! now 
 that thou art seated, I can leave thee for an instant.” 
 
 ‘Tone to Glaucus greeting: Come to me, Glaucus [wrote Ione], — 
 come to me to-morrow. I may have been unjust to thee, but I will tell 
 thee, at least, the fault that has been imputed to thy charge. Fear not 
 henceforth the Egyptian ; fear none. Thou sayest thou hast expressed 
 too much: alas! in these hasty words I have already done so. Fare- 
 well!” 
 
 As Jone reappeared with the letter, which she did not dare 
 to read after she had written (ah, common rashness, common 
 timidity of love!), Nydia started from her seat. 
 
 “You have written to Glaucus ?”’ 
 
 “ T have.” 
 
 “And will he thank the messenger who gives to him thy 
 letter ?” 
 
 Tone forgot her companion was blind; she blushed from the 
 brow to the neck, and remained silent. 
 
 “T mean this,” added Nydia in a calmer tone; “the lightest 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 131 
 
 word of coldness from thee will sadden him, the lightest kind- 
 ness will rejoice. If it be the first, let the slave take back 
 thine answer; if it be the last, let me. I will return this 
 evening.” 
 
 “¢ And why, Nydia,” asked Ione, evasively, “‘ wouldst thou be 
 the bearer of my letter ?” 
 
 ‘Tt is so, then!” said Nydia. “Ah! how could it be other- 
 - wise; who could be unkind to Glaucus ? ” 
 
 “My child,” said Ione, a little more reservedly than before, 
 “thou speakest warmly. Glaucus, then, is amiable in thine 
 eyes.” 
 
 “Noble Ione, Glaucus has been that to me which neither 
 fortune nor the gods have been, — a friend /” 
 
 The sadness, mingled with dignity, with which Nydia uttered 
 these simple words affected the beautiful Ione; she bent down 
 and kissed her. “Thou art grateful, and deservedly so; why 
 should I blush to say that Glaucus is worthy of thy gratitude ? 
 Go, my Nydia; take to him thyself this letter, but return 
 again. If I am from home when thou returnest,—as this 
 evening, perhaps, I shall be, — thy chamber shall be prepared 
 next my own. Nydia, I have no sister: wilt thou be one to 
 me ?” 
 
 The Thessalian kissed the hand of Ione, and then said, with 
 some embarrassment, — 
 
 ‘One favor, fair Ione; may I dare to ask it?” 
 
 “Thou canst not ask what I will not grant,” replied the 
 Neapolitan. 
 
 “They tell me,” said Nydia, “that thou art beautiful beyond 
 the loveliness of earth. Alas! I cannot see that which glad- 
 dens the world. Wiult thou suffer me, then, to pass my hand 
 over thy face? That is my sole criterion of beauty, and I 
 usually guess aright.” 
 
 She did not wait for the answer of Tone, but, as she spoke, 
 gently and slowly passed her hand over the bending and half- 
 averted features of the Greek, — features which but one image 
 in the world can yet depicture and recall: that image is the 
 mutilated but all-wondrous statue in her native city, her own 
 Neapolis; that Parian face, before which all the beauty of the 
 
132 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Florentine Venus is poor and earthly; that aspect so full of 
 harmony, of youth, of genius, of the soul, which modern critics 
 have supposed the representation of Psyche.? 
 
 Her touch lingered over the braided hair and polished brow, 
 over the downy and damask cheek, over the dimpled lip, the 
 swan-like and whitish neck. “I know now that thou art 
 beautiful,” she said, “and I can picture thee to my darkness 
 henceforth and forever.” 
 
 When Nydia left her, Ione sank into a deep but delicious 
 reverie. Glaucus, then, loved her; he owned it,— yes, he 
 loved her. She drew forth again that dear confession; she 
 paused over every word, she kissed every line; she did not 
 ask why he had been maligned, she only felt assured that he 
 had been so. She wondered how she had ever believed a 
 syllable against him; she wondered how the Egyptian had 
 been enabled to exercise a power against Glaucus; she felt a 
 chill creep over her as she again turned to his warning against 
 Arbaces, and her secret fear of that gloomy being darkened 
 into awe. She was awakened from these thoughts by her 
 maidens, who came to announce to her that the hour appointed 
 to visit Arbaces was arrived; she started: she had forgotten 
 the promise. Her first impression was to renounce it; her 
 second was to laugh at her own fears of her eldest surviving 
 friend. She hastened to add the usual ornaments to her dress, 
 and, doubtful whether she should yet question the Egyptian 
 more closely with respect to his accusation of Glaucus, or 
 whether she should wait till, without citing the authority, she 
 should insinuate to Glaucus the accusation itself, she took her 
 way to the gloomy mansion of Arbaces. 
 
 1 The wonderful remains of the statue so called in the Museo Borbonico. 
 The face, for sentiment and for feature, is the most beautiful of all which 
 ancient sculpture has bequeathed to us. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 133 
 
 CHAPTER VIL. 
 IONE ENTRAPPED. — THE MOUSE TRIES TO GNAW THE NET. 
 
 “Q pEAREST Nydia!” exclaimed Glaucus as he read the 
 letter of Ione, “whitest-robed messenger that ever passed 
 between earth and heaven, how, how shall I thank thee ? ” 
 
 “JT am rewarded,” said the poor Thessalian. 
 
 “To-morrow, — to-morrow! How shall I while the hours till 
 then ?” 
 
 The enamoured Greek would not let Nydia escape him, 
 though she sought several times to leave the chamber. He 
 made her recite to him over and over again every syllable of 
 the brief conversation that had taken place between her and 
 Ione; a thousand times, forgetting her misfortune, he ques- 
 tioned her of the looks, of the countenance of his beloved; 
 and then quickly again excusing his fault, he bade her recom- 
 mence the whole recital which he had thus interrupted. The 
 hours thus painful to Nydia passed rapidly and delightfully 
 to him, and the twilight had already darkened ere he once 
 more dismissed her to Ione with a fresh letter and with new 
 flowers. Scarcely had she gone, than Clodius and several of 
 his gay companions broke in upon him: they rallied him on 
 his seclusion during the whole day, and his absence from his 
 customary haunts; they invited him to accompany them to 
 the various resorts in that lively city, which night and day 
 proffered diversity to pleasure. Then, as now, in the south 
 (for no land, perhaps, losing more of greatness has retained 
 more of custom), it was the delight of the Italians to assemble 
 in the evening; and, under the porticos of temples, or the 
 shade of the groves that interspersed the streets, listening to 
 music or the recitals of some inventive tale-teller, they hailed 
 the rising moon with lbations of wine and the melodies of 
 song. Glaucus was too happy to be unsocial; he longed to 
 cast off the exuberance of joy that oppressed him. He will- 
 ingly accepted the proposal of his comrades, and laugh- 
 
134 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ingly they sallied out together down the populous and glitter- 
 ing streets. 
 
 In the mean time Nydia once more gained the house of 
 Ione, who had long left it; she inquired indifferently whither 
 Ione had gone. 
 
 The answer arrested and appalled her. 
 
 “To the house of Arbaces, — of the Egyptian ? Impossible!” 
 
 “Tt is true, my little one,” said the slave, who had rephed 
 to her question. ‘She has known the Egyptian long.” 
 
 “Long! ye gods, yet Glaucus loves her!” murmured 
 Nydia to herself. “And has,” asked she aloud, — “has she 
 often visited him before ?” 
 
 “‘ Never till now,” answered the slave. “If all the rumored 
 scandal of Pompeii be true, it would be better, perhaps, if she 
 had not ventured there at present. But she, poor mistress 
 mine, hears nothing of that which reaches us; the talk of the 
 vestibulum reaches not to the peristyle.” ? 
 
 “ Never till now!” repeated Nydia. “ Art thou sure?” 
 
 “Sure, pretty one; but what is that to thee or to us?” 
 
 Nydia hesitated a moment, and then, putting down the 
 flowers with which she had been charged, she called to the 
 slave who had accompanied her, and left the house without 
 saying another word. 
 
 Not till she had got half-way back to the house of Glaucus 
 did she break silence, and even then she only murmured 
 inly : — 
 
 “She does not dream, she cannot, of the dangers into 
 which she has plunged. Fool that I am, shall I save her? 
 Yes, for I love Glaucus better than myself.” 
 
 When she arrived at the house of the Athenian, she learnt 
 that he had gone out with a party of his friends, and none 
 knew whither. He probably would not be home before 
 midnight. , 
 
 The Thessalian groaned; she sank upon a seat in the hall, 
 and covered her face with her hands as if to collect her 
 thoughts. ‘There is no time to be lost,” thought she, start- 
 ing up. She turned to the slave who had accompanied her. 
 
 1 Terence. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 185 
 
 “Knowest thou,” said she, “if Ione has any relative, any 
 intimate friend at Pompeii ? ” 
 
 “Why, by Jupiter!” answered the slave, “art thou silly 
 enough to ask the question? Jivery one in Pompeii knows 
 that Ione has a brother who, young and rich, has been — under 
 the rose I speak —so foolish as to become a priest of Isis.” 
 
 “ A priest of Isis! O Gods! his name?” 
 
 “ A peecides.” 
 
 “‘T know it all,” muttered Nydia: “ brother and sister, then, 
 are to be both victims! Apzcides! Yes, that was the name I 
 heard in Ha! he well, then, knows the peril that sur- 
 rounds his sister; I will go to him.” 
 
 She sprang up at that thought, and taking the staff which 
 always guided her steps, she hastened to the neighboring 
 shrine of Isis. Till she had been under the guardianship of 
 the kindly Greek, that staff had sufficed to conduct the poor 
 blind girl from corner to corner of Pompeii. Every street, 
 every turning in the more frequented parts, was familiar to 
 her; and as the inhabitants entertained a tender and half- 
 superstitious veneration for those subject to her infirmity, the 
 passengers had always given way to her timid steps. Poor 
 girl, she little dreamed that she should, ere very many days 
 were passed, find her blindness her protection, and a guide far 
 safer than the keenest eyes ! 
 
 But since she had been under the roof of Glaucus, he had 
 ordered a slave to accompany her always; and the poor devil 
 thus appointed, who was somewhat of the fattest, and who, 
 after having twice performed the journey to Ione’s house, now 
 saw himself condemned to a third excursion (whither, the 
 gods only knew), hastened after her, deploring his fate, and 
 solemnly assuring Castor and Pollux that he believed the blind 
 girl had the talaria of Mercury as well as the infirmity of 
 Cupid. 
 
 Nydia, however, required but little of his assistance to find 
 her way to the popular temple of Isis: the space before it 
 was now deserted, and she won without obstacle to the sacred 
 rails. 
 
 ‘‘There is no one here,” said the fat slave. “ What dost 
 
136 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 thou want, or whom? Knowest thou not that the priests do 
 not live in the temple ? ” 
 
 “Call out,’ said she, impatiently ; “night and day there is 
 always one flamen, at least, watching in the shrines of Isis.” 
 
 The slave called: no one appeared. 
 
 “Seest thou no one?” 
 
 “No one.” 
 
 “Thou mistakest; I hear a sigh: look again.” 
 
 The slave, wondering and grumbling, cast round his heavy 
 eyes, and before one of the altars, whose remains still crowd 
 the narrow space, he beheld a form bending as in meditation. 
 
 “‘T see a figure,” said he, “and by the white garments it is a 
 priest.” 
 
 “© flamen of Isis!” cried Nydia, “servant of the Most 
 Ancient, hear me!” 
 
 “ Who calls ?” said a low and melancholy voice. 
 
 “One who has no common tidings to impart to a member of 
 your body: I come to declare and not to ask oracles.” 
 
 “With whom wouldst thou confer? ‘This is no hour for 
 thy conference; depart, disturb me not: the night is sacred to 
 the gods, the day to men.” 
 
 “Methinks I know thy voice: thou art he whom I seek; 
 yet I have heard thee speak but once before. Art thou not 
 the priest Apzecides ? ” 
 
 “Tam that man,” repled the priest, emerging from the 
 altar and approaching the rail. 
 
 “Thou art! the gods be praised!” Waving her hand to the 
 slave, she bade him withdraw to a distance; and he, who 
 naturally imagined some superstition connected, perhaps, with 
 the safety of Ione, could alone lead her to the temple, obeyed, 
 and seated himself on the ground at a little distance. 
 “Hush!” said she, speaking quick and low; “art thou 
 indeed Apezecides ?” 
 
 “Tf thou knowest me, canst thou not recall my features ?” 
 
 “JT am blind,” answered Nydia; “my eyes are in my ear, 
 and that recognizes thee : yet swear that thou art he.” 
 
 “By the gods I swear it, by my right hand, and by the 
 moon!” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 137% 
 
 “Hush; speak low; bend near; give me thy hand: know- 
 est thou Arbaces? Hast thou laid flowers at the feet of the 
 dead? Ah! thy hand is cold; hark yet! Hast thou taken 
 the awful vow ?” 3 
 
 ‘Who art thou, whence comest thou, pale maiden ?” said 
 Apecides, fearfully. “I know thee not. Thine is not the 
 breast on which this head hath lain. I have never seen thee 
 before.” 
 
 “But thou hast heard my voice: no matter, those recollec- 
 tions it should shame us both to recall. Listen; thou hast a 
 sister.” 
 
 “Speak, speak! What of her ?” 
 
 “Thou knowest the banquets of the dead, stranger. It 
 pleases thee, perhaps, to share them. Would it please thee 
 to have thy sister a partaker? Would it please thee that 
 Arbaces was her host?” : 
 
 “OQ Gods, he dare not! Girl, if thou mockest me, tremble. 
 I will tear thee limb from hmb!” 
 
 “‘T speak the truth ; and while I speak, Ione is in the halls 
 of Arbaces, —for the first time his guest. Thou knowest if 
 there be peril in that first time! Farewell; I have fulfilled 
 my charge.” 
 
 “Stay! stay!” cried the priest, passing his wan hand over 
 his brow. “If this be true, what — what can be done to save 
 her? They may not admit me. I know not all the mazes of 
 that intricate mansion. O Nemesis! justly am I punished.” 
 
 “JT will dismiss yon slave: be thou my guide and com- 
 rade; I will lead thee to the private door of the house; I will 
 whisper to thee the word which admits. Take some weapon: 
 it may be needful.” 
 
 “ Wait an instant,” said Apecides, retiring into one of the 
 cells that flank the temple, and reappearing in a few moments 
 wrapped in a large cloak, which was then much worn by all 
 classes, and which concealed his sacred dress. ‘“ Now,” he 
 said, grinding his teeth, “if Arbaces hath dared to— but he 
 dare not! he dare not! Why should I suspect him? Is he so 
 base a villain? I will not think it; yet sophist, dark bewil- 
 derer that he is! O Gods, protect! Hush! are there gods? 
 
138 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Yes, there is one goddess, at least, whose voice I can com: 
 mand; and that is —— Vengeance!” 
 
 Muttering these disconnected thoughts, Apzcides, followed 
 by his silent and sightless companion, hastened through the 
 most solitary paths to the house of the Egyptian. 
 
 The slave, abruptly dismissed by Nydia, shrugged his shoul- 
 ders, muttered an adjuration, and, nothing loth, rolled off to 
 his cubiculum. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE SOLITUDE AND SOLILOQUY OF THE EGYPTIAN. — HIS 
 CHARACTER ANALYZED. 
 
 WE must go back a few hours in the progress of our story. 
 At the first gray dawn of the day, which Glaucus had already 
 marked with white, the Egyptian was seated, sleepless and 
 alone, on the summit of the lofty and pyramidal tower which 
 flanked his house. A tall parapet around it served as a wall, 
 and conspired, with the height of the edifice and the gloomy 
 trees that girded the mansion, to defy the prying eyes of curi- 
 osity or observation. A table, on which lay a scroll filled with 
 mystic figures, was before him. On high, the stars waxed dim 
 and faint, and the shades of night melted from the sterile 
 mountain-tops; only above Vesuvius there rested a deep and 
 massy cloud, which for several days past had gathered darker 
 and more solid over its summit. The struggle of night and 
 day was more visible over the broad ocean, which stretched 
 calm, like a gigantic lake, bounded by the circling shores that, 
 covered with vines and foliage, and gleaming here and there 
 with the white walls of sleeping cities, sloped to the scarce 
 rippling waves. 
 
 It was the hour above all others most sacred to the daring 
 science of the Egyptian, —the science which would read our 
 changeful destinies in the stars. 
 
 He had filled his scroll, he had noted the moment and the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 139 
 
 sign; and, leaning upon his hand, he had surrendered himself 
 to the thoughts which his calculation excited. 
 
 “ Again do the stars forewarn me! Some danger, then, 
 assuredly awaits me!” said he, slowly; ‘some danger, violent 
 and sudden in its nature. The stars wear for me the same 
 mocking menace which, if our chronicles do not err, they once 
 _ wore for Pyrrhus, — for him, doomed to strive for all things, 
 to enjoy none, —all attacking, nothing gaining, — battles with- 
 out fruit, laurels without triumph, fame without success; at 
 last made craven by his own superstitions, and slain like a dog 
 by a tile from the hand of an old woman! Verily, the stars 
 flatter when they give me a type in this fool of war, when 
 they promise to the ardor of my wisdom the same results as to 
 the madness of his ambition, — perpetual exercise, no certain 
 goal; the Sisyphus task, the mountain and the stone, — the 
 stone, a gloomy image, — it reminds me that I am threatened 
 with somewhat of the same death as the Epirote. Let me 
 look again. ‘Beware,’ say the shining prophets, ‘how thou 
 passest under ancient roofs, or besieged walls, or overhanging 
 cliffs; a stone, hurled from above, is charged by the curses 
 of destiny against thee.’ And at no distant date from this 
 comes the peril; but I cannot, of a certainty, read the day and 
 hour. Well! if my glass runs low, the sands shall sparkle to 
 the last. Yet,if I escape this peril, —ay, if I escape, — bright 
 and clear as the moonlight track along the waters glows the 
 rest of my existence. I see honors, happiness, success, shining 
 upon every billow of the dark gulf beneath which I must sink 
 at last. What, then! with such destinies deyond the peril, shall 
 I succumb Zo the peril? My soul whispers hope, it sweeps 
 exultingly beyond the boding hour, it revels in the future, 
 its own courage is its fittest omen. If I were to perish so 
 suddenly and so soon, the shadow of death would darken over 
 me, and I should feel the icy presentiment of my doom. My 
 soul would express, in sadness and in gloom, its forecast of the 
 dreary Orcus. But it smiles; it assures me of deliverance.” 
 
 As he thus concluded his soliloquy, the Egyptian involun- 
 tarily rose. He paced rapidly the narrow space of that star- 
 roofed floor, and, pausing at the parapet, looked again upon 
 
140 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 the gray and melancholy heavens. The chills of the faint 
 dawn came refreshingly upon his brow, and gradually his 
 mind resumed its natural and collected calm. He withdrew 
 his gaze from the stars, as, one after one, they receded into 
 the depths of heaven; and his eyes fell over the broad expanse 
 below. Dim in the silenced port of the city rose the masts of 
 the galleys; along that mart of luxury and of labor was stilled 
 the mighty hum. No lights, save here and there from be- 
 fore the columns of a temple, or in the porticos of the voiceless 
 forum, broke the wan and fluctuating light of the struggling 
 morn. From the heart of the torpid city, so soon to vibrate 
 with a thousand passions, there came no sound; the streams 
 of life circulated not: they lay locked under the ice of sleep. 
 From the huge space of the amphitheatre, with its stony seats 
 rising one above the other, — coiled and round as some slum- 
 bering monster, — rose a thin and ghastly mist, which gathered 
 darker, and more dark, over the scattered foliage that gloomed 
 in its vicinity. The city seemed as, after the awful change of 
 seventeen ages, it seems now to the traveller, —a City of the 
 Dead.} 
 
 The ocean itself, that serene and tideless sea, lay scarce 
 less hushed, save that from its deep bosom came, softened by 
 the distance, a faint and regular murmur, like the breathing of 
 its sleep; and curving far, as with outstretched arms, into the 
 green and beautiful land, it seemed unconsciously to clasp to 
 its breast the cities sloping to its margin, Stabie,? and Her- 
 culaneum, and Pompeii, —those children and darlings of the 
 ‘ deep. ‘Ye slumber,” said the Egyptian, as he scowled over 
 the cities, the boast and flower of Campania; “ye slumber! 
 would it were the eternal repose of death! As ye now, jewels 
 in the crown of empire, so once were the cities of the Nile. 
 Their greatness hath perished from them, they sleep amidst 
 ruins, their palaces and their shrines are tombs, the serpent 
 
 1 When Sir Walter Scott visited Pompeii with Sir William Gell, almost his 
 only remark was the exclamation, “'The City of the Dead, —the City of the 
 Dead!” 
 
 2 Stabize was indeed no longer a city, vut it was still a favorite site for the 
 villas of the rich. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 141 
 
 coils in the grass of their streets, the lizard basks in their 
 solitary halls. By that mysterious law of nature, which hum- 
 bles one to exalt the other, ye have thriven upon their ruins; 
 thou, haughty Rome, hast usurped the glories of Sesostris 
 and Semiramis; thou art a robber, clothing thyself with their 
 spoils! And these, slaves in thy triumph, that I (the last 
 son of forgotten monarchs) survey below, reservoirs of thine 
 all-pervading power and luxury, I curse as I behold. The 
 time shall come when Egypt shall be avenged; when the 
 barbarian’s steed shall make his manger in the Golden House 
 of Nero; and thou that hast sown the wind with conquest 
 shalt reap the harvest in the whirlwind of desolation!” 
 
 As the Egyptian uttered a prediction which fate so fearfully 
 fulfilled, a more solemn and boding image of ill omen never 
 occurred to the dreams of painter or of poet. The morning 
 light which can pale so wanly even the young cheek of beauty, 
 gave his majestic and stately features almost the colors of the 
 grave, with the dark hair falling massively around them, and 
 the dark robes flowing long and loose, and the arm outstretched 
 from that lofty eminence, and the glittering eyes, fierce with 
 a savage gladness, half prophet and half fiend ! 
 
 He turned his gaze from the city and the ocean; before him 
 lay the vineyards and the meadows of the rich Campania. 
 The gate and walls — ancient, half Pelasgic—of the city, 
 seemed not to bound its extent. Villas and villages stretched 
 on every side up the ascent of Vesuvius, not nearly then so 
 steep or so lofty as at present. For as Rome itself is built on 
 an exhausted volcano, so in similar security the inhabitants of 
 the South tenanted the green and vine-clad places around a 
 voleano whose fires they believed at rest forever. From the 
 gate stretched the long street of tombs, various in size and 
 architecture, by which, on that side, the city is yet approached. 
 Above all rose the cloud-capped summit of the Dread Moun- 
 tain, with the shadows, now dark, now light, betraying the 
 mossy caverns and ashy rocks, which testified the past con- 
 flagrations, and might have prophesied — but man is blind — 
 that which was to come! 
 
 Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the 
 
142 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 tradition of the place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, 
 in those smiling plains, for miles around —to Baize and Mise- 
 num—the poets had imagined the entrance and thresholds 
 of their hell, — their Acheron, and their fabled Styx; why, in 
 those Phlegre,! now laughing with the vine, they placed the 
 battles of the gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have 
 sought the victory of heaven, — save, indeed, that yet, in yon 
 seared and blasted summit, fancy might think to read the 
 characters of the Olympian thunderbolt. 
 
 But it was neither the rugged height of the still veleane, 
 nor the fertility of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy 
 avenue of tombs, nor the glittering villas of a polished and 
 luxurious people, that now arrested the eye of the Egyptian. 
 On one part of the landscape the mountain of Vesuvius de- 
 scended to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated ridge, 
 broken here and there by jagged crags and copses of wild 
 foliage. At the base of this lay a marshy and unwholesome 
 pool; and the intent gaze of Arbaces caught the outline of 
 some living form moving by the marshes, and stooping ever 
 and anon as if to pluck its rank produce. 
 
 “Ho!” said he, aloud, “I have, then, another companion 
 in these unworldly night-watches. The witch of Vesuvius is 
 abroad. What! doth she, too, as the credulous imagine, — 
 doth she, too, learn the lore of the great stars? Hath she 
 been uttering foul magic to the moon, or culling (as her pauses 
 betoken) foul herbs from the venomous marsh? Well, I must 
 see this fellow-laborer. Whoever strives to know, learns that 
 no human lore is despicable. Despicable only you, ye fat and 
 bloated things, slaves of luxury, sluggards in thought, who, 
 cultivating nothing but the barren sense, dream that its poor 
 soul can produce alike the myrtle and the laurel. No, the 
 wise only can enjoy; to us only ¢rwe luxury is given, when 
 mind, brain, invention, experience, thought, learning, imagina- 
 tion, all contribute like rivers to swell the seas of sENsE! — 
 Ione!” 
 
 As Arbaces uttered that last and charmed word, his thoughts 
 sank at once into a more deep and profound channel. His . 
 
 1 Or, Phlegrai Campi; viz., scorched or burned fields. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 143 
 
 steps paused; he took not his eyes from the ground; once or 
 twice he smiled joyously, and then, as he turned from his 
 place of vigil, and sought his couch, he muttered, “If death 
 frowns so near, I will say at least that I have lived, — Ione 
 shall be mine!” 
 
 The character of Arbaces was one of those intricate and 
 varied webs, in which even the mind that sat within it was 
 sometimes confused and perplexed. In him, the son of a 
 fallen dynasty, the outcast of a sunken people, was that spirit 
 of discontented pride which ever rankles in one of a sterner 
 mould, who feels himself inexorably shut from the sphere in 
 which his fathers shone, and to which nature as well as birth 
 no less entitles himself. This sentiment hath no benevolence; 
 it wars with society, it sees enemies in mankind. But with 
 this sentiment did not go its common companion, poverty. 
 Arbaces possessed wealth which equalled that of most of the 
 Roman nobles; and this enabled him to gratify to the utmost 
 the passions which had no outlet in business or ambition. 
 Travelling from clime to clime, and beholding still Rome 
 everywhere, he increased both his hatred of society and his 
 passion for pleasure. He was in a vast prison, which, how- 
 ever, he could fill with the ministers of luxury. He could not 
 escape from the prison, and his only object, therefore, was to 
 give it the character of the palace. The Egyptians, from — 
 the earliest time, were devoted to the joys of sense; Arbaces 
 inherited both their appetite for sensuality and the glow of 
 imagination which struck light from its rottenness. But still, 
 unsocial in his pleasures as in his graver pursuits, and brook- 
 ing neither superior nor equal, he admitted few to his com- 
 panionship save the willing slaves of his profligacy. He was 
 the solitary lord of a crowded harem; but, with all, he felt 
 condemned to that satiety which is the constant curse of men 
 whose intellect is above their pursuits, and that which once 
 had been the impulse of passion froze down to the ordinance 
 of custom. From the disappointments of sense he sought to 
 raise himself by the cultivation of knowledge; but ‘as it was 
 not his object to serve mankind, so he despised that knowl- 
 edge which is practical and useful. His dark imagination 
 
144 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 loved to exercise itself in those more visionary and obscure 
 researches which are ever the most delightful to a wayward 
 and solitary mind, and to which he himself was invited by the 
 daring pride of his disposition and the mysterious traditions 
 of his clime. Dismissing faith in the confused creeds of the 
 heathen world, he reposed the greatest faith in the power of 
 human wisdom. He did not know (perhaps no one in that 
 age distinctly did) the limits which Nature imposes upon our 
 discoveries. Seeing that the higher we mount in knowledge 
 the more wonders we behold, he imagined that Nature not 
 only worked miracles in her ordinary course, but that she 
 might, by the cabala of some master soul, be diverted from 
 that course itself. Thus he pursued science, across her ap- 
 pointed boundaries, into the land of perplexity and shadow. 
 From the truths of astronomy he wandered into astrological 
 fallacy ; from the secrets of chemistry he passed into the spec- 
 tral labyrinth of magic; and he who could be sceptical as to 
 the power of the gods, was credulously superstitious as to the 
 power of man. 
 
 The cultivation of magic, carried at that day to a singular 
 height among the would-be wise, was especially Eastern in its 
 origin; it was alien to the early philosophy of the Greeks, 
 nor had it been received by them with favor until Ostanes, 
 who accompanied the army of Xerxes, introduced, amongst the 
 simple credulities of Hellas, the solemn superstitions of Zo- 
 roaster. Under the Roman emperors it had become, however, 
 naturalized at Rome (a meet subject for Juvenal’s fiery wit). 
 Intimately connected with magic was the worship of Isis, and 
 the Egyptian religion was the means by which was extended 
 the devotion to Egyptian sorcery. The theurgic, or benevo- 
 lent magic, the goetic, or dark and evil necromancy, were 
 alike in pre-eminent repute during the first century of the 
 Christian era; and the marvels of Faustus are not comparable 
 to those of Apollonius. Kings, courtiers, and sages, all trem- 
 bled before the professors of the dread science. And not the 
 least remarkable of his tribe was the formidable and profound 
 Arbaces. His fame and his discoveries were known to all the 
 
 1 See note (a) at the end. 
 
Be toe, eet 
 ee 
 
bsg) 
 APEe 
 4 wie 4 af 
 
 tye 
 
 aN RR tat 
 rs a 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 145 
 
 cultivators of magic; they even survived himself. But it was 
 not by his real name that he was honored by the sorcerer and 
 the sage: his real name, indeed, was unknown in Italy, for 
 “ Arbaces” was not a genuinely Egyptian but a Median appel- 
 lation, which, in the admixture and unsettlement of the ancient 
 races, had become common in the country of the Nile; and 
 there were various reasons, not only of pride, but of policy 
 (for in youth he had conspired against the majesty of Rome), 
 which induced him to conceal his true name and rank. But 
 neither by the name he had borrowed from the Mede, nor by 
 that which in the colleges of Egypt would have attested his 
 origin from kings, did the cultivators of magic acknowledge 
 the potent master. He received from their homage a more 
 mystic appellation, and was long remembered in Magna Greecia 
 and the Eastern plains by the name of “ Hermes, the Lord 
 of the Flaming Belt.” His subtle speculations and boasted 
 attributes of wisdom, recorded in various volumes, were 
 among those tokens “of the curious arts” which the Chris- 
 tian converts most joyfully, yet most fearfully, burned at 
 Ephesus, depriving posterity of the proofs of the cunning of 
 the fiend. 
 
 The conscience of Arbaces was solely of the intellect; it was 
 awed by no moral laws. If man imposed these checks upon 
 the herd, so he believed that man, by superior wisdom, could 
 raise himself above them. “If [he reasoned] I have the 
 genius to impose laws, have I not the right to command my 
 own creations? Still more, have I not the right to control, to 
 evade, to scorn, the fabrications of yet meaner intellects than 
 my own?” ‘Thus, if he were a villain, he justified his villany 
 by what ought to have made him virtuous; namely, the eleva- 
 tion of his capacities. 
 
 Most men have more or less the passion for power; in 
 Arbaces that passion corresponded exactly to his character. 
 Tt was not the passion for an external and brute authority. 
 He desired not the purple and the fasces, the insignia of vul- 
 gar command. His youthful ambition once foiled and de- 
 feated, scorn had supplied its place. His pride, his contempt 
 for: Rome, — Rome, which had become the synonym of the 
 
 vou. 1. —10 
 
| 146 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 world (Rome, whose haughty name he regarded with the same 
 disdain as that which Rome herself lavished upon the bar- 
 barian), did not permit him to aspire to sway over others, 
 for that would render him at once the tool or creature of the 
 emperor. He, the Son of the Great Race of Rameses, — he 
 execute the orders of, and receive his power from another ! — 
 the mere notion filled him with rage. But in rejecting an 
 ambition that coveted nominal distinctions, he but indulged 
 the more in the ambition to rule the heart. Honoring mental 
 power as the greatest of earthly gifts, he loved to feel that 
 power palpably in himself, by extending it over all whom he 
 encountered. Thus had he ever sought the young, — thus had 
 he ever fascinated and controlled them. He loved to find sub- 
 jects in men’s souls, —to rule over an invisible and immaterial 
 empire! Had he been less sensual and less wealthy, he might 
 have sought to become the founder of a new religion. As it 
 was, his energies were checked by his pleasures. Besides, 
 however, the vague love of this moral sway, (vanity so dear to 
 sages !) he was influenced by a singular and dreamlike devotion 
 to all that belonged to the mystic Land his ancestors had 
 swayed. Although he disbelieved in her deities, he believed 
 in the allegories they represented (or rather he interpreted 
 those allegories anew). He loved to keep alive the worship 
 of Egypt, because he thus maintained the shadow and the 
 recollection of her power. He loaded, therefore, the altars of 
 Osiris and of Isis with regal donations, and was ever anxious 
 to dignify their priesthood by new and wealthy converts. 
 The vow taken, the priesthood embraced, he usually chose the 
 comrades of his pleasures from those whom he had made his 
 victims, — partly because he thus secured to himself their 
 secrecy, partly because he thus yet more confirmed to him- 
 self his peculiar power. Hence the motives of his conduct to 
 Apecides, strengthened as these were, in that instance, by his 
 passion for Ione. 
 
 - He had seldom lived long in one place; but as he grew older, 
 he grew more wearied of the excitement of new scenes, and 
 he had sojourned among the delightful cities of Campania 
 for a period which surprised even himself. In fact, his pride 
 
-THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 147 | 
 
 somewhat crippled his choice of residence. His unsuccessful 
 conspiracy excluded him from those burning climes which he 
 deemed of right his own hereditary possession, and which now 
 cowered, supine and sunken, under the wings of the Roman 
 eagle. Rome herself was hateful to his indignant soul; nor 
 did he love to find his riches rivalled by the minions of the 
 court, and cast into comparative poverty by the mighty mag- 
 nificence of the court itself. The Campanian cities proffered 
 to him all that his nature craved, —the luxuries of an un- 
 equalled climate, the imaginative refinements of a voluptuous 
 civilization. He was removed from the sight of a superior 
 wealth ; he was without rivals to his riches; he was free from 
 the spies of a jealous court. As long as he was rich, none 
 pried into his conduct. He pursued the dark tenor of his way 
 undisturbed and secure. 
 
 It is the curse of sensualists never to love till the pleasures 
 of sense begin to pall; their ardent youth is frittered away in 
 countless desires: their hearts are exhausted. So, ever chas- 
 ing love, and taught by a restless imagination to exaggerate, 
 perhaps, its charms, the Egyptian had spent all the glory of 
 his years without attaining the object of his desires. The 
 beauty of to-morrow succeeded the beauty of to-day, and the 
 shadows bewildered him in his pursuit of the substance. 
 When, two years before the present date, he beheld Ione, he 
 saw for the first time one whom he imagined he could Jove. 
 He stood then upon that bridge of life from which man sees 
 before him distinctly a wasted youth on the one side and the 
 darkness of approaching age upon the other, —a time in which 
 we are more than ever anxious, perhaps, to secure to ourselves, 
 ere it be yet too late, whatever we have been taught to con- 
 sider necessary to the enjoyment of a life of which the brighter 
 half is gone. 
 
 With an earnestness and a patience which he had never 
 before commanded for his pleasures, Arbaces had devoted 
 himself to win the heart of Ione. It did not content him 
 ‘to love, he desired to be loved. In this hope he had watched 
 the expanding youth of the beautiful Neapolitan ; and know- 
 ing the influence that the mind possesses over those who are 
 
148 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 taught to cultivate the mind, he had contributed willingly to 
 form the genius and enlighten the intellect of Ione, in the 
 hope that she would be thus able to appreciate what he felt 
 would be his best claim to her affection; namely, a character 
 which, however criminal and perverted, was rich in its origi- 
 nal elements of strength and grandeur. When he felt that 
 character to be acknowledged, he willingly allowed, nay, 
 encouraged her, to mix among the idle votaries of pleasure, 
 in the belief that her soul, fitted for higher commune, would 
 miss the companionship of his own, and that in comparison 
 with others she would learn to love herself. He had forgot 
 that as the sunflower to the sun, so youth turns to youth, 
 until his jealousy of Glaucus suddenly apprised him of his 
 error. From that moment, though, as we have seen, he knew 
 not the extent of his danger, a fiercer and more tumultuous 
 direction was given to a passion long controlled. Nothing 
 kindles the fire of love like a sprinkling of the anxieties of 
 jealousy ; it takes then a wilder, a more resistless flame; it 
 forgets its softness ; 1t ceases to be tender; it assumes some- 
 thing of the intensity, of the ferocity, of hate. 
 
 Arbaces resolved to lose no further time upon cautious and 
 perilous preparations; he resolved to place an irrevocable bar- 
 rier between himself and his rivals; he resolved to possess 
 himself of the person of Ione; not that in his present love, 
 so long nursed and fed by hopes purer than those of passion 
 alone, he would have been contented with that mere posses- 
 sion. He desired the heart, the soul, no less than the beauty 
 of Ione; but he imagined that once separated by a daring 
 crime from the rest of mankind, once bound to Ione by a tie 
 that memory could not break, she would be driven to con- 
 centrate her thoughts in him, that his arts would complete 
 his conquest, and that, according to the true moral of the 
 Roman and the Sabine, the empire obtained by force would 
 be cemented by gentler means. This resolution was yet more 
 confirmed in him by his belief in the prophecies of the stars ; 
 they had long foretold to him this year, and even the present 
 month, as the epoch of some dread disaster menacing life 
 itself. He was driven to a certain and limited date. He 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 149 
 
 resolved to crowd, monarch-like, on his funeral pyre all that 
 his soul held most dear. In his own words, if he were to 
 die, he resolved to feel that he had lived, and that Ione should 
 be his own. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHAT BECOMES OF IONE IN THE HOUSE OF ARBACES, — THE 
 FIRST SIGNAL OF THE WRATH OF THE DREAD FOE. 
 
 WHEN Ione entered the spacious hall of the Egyptian, the 
 same awe which had crept over her brother impressed itself 
 also upon her; there seemed to her as to him something omi- 
 nous and warning in the still and mournful faces of those 
 dread Theban monsters, whose majestic and passionless fea- 
 tures the marble so well portrayed : — 
 
 “Their look with the reach of past ages was wise, 
 And the soul of eternity thought in their eyes.” 
 
 The tall Ethiopian slave grinned as he admitted her, and 
 motioned to her to proceed. Half-way up the hall she was 
 met by Arbaces himself, in festive robes, which glittered with 
 jewels. Although it was broad day without, the mansion, 
 according to the practice of the luxurious, was artificially 
 darkened, and the lamps cast their still and odor-giving light 
 over the rich floors and ivory roofs. 
 
 “ Beautiful Ione!” said Arbaces, as he bent to touch her 
 hand, “it is you that have eclipsed the day; it is your eyes 
 that light up the halls; it is your breath which fills them with 
 perfumes.” 
 
 “You must not talk to me thus,” said Ione, smiling; “ you 
 forget that your lore has sufficiently instructed my mind to 
 render these graceful flatteries to my person unwelcome. It 
 was you who taught me to disdain adulation: will you unteach 
 your pupil ? ” 
 
 There was something so frank and charming in the manner of 
 Ione, as she thus spoke, that the Egyptian was more than ever 
 
150 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 enamoured, and more than ever disposed to renew the offence 
 he had committed; he, however, answered quickly and gayly, 
 and hastened to renew the conversation. 
 
 He led her through the various chambers of a house which 
 seemed to contain to her eyes, inexperienced to other splendor 
 than the minute elegance of Campanian cities, the treasures of 
 the world. 
 
 In the walls were set pictures of inestimable art; the lights 
 shone over statues of the noblest age of Greece. Cabinets of 
 gems, each cabinet itself a gem, filled up the interstices of the 
 columns; the most precious woods lined the thresholds and 
 composed the doors; gold and jewels seemed lavished all 
 around. Sometimes they were alone in these rooms; some- 
 times they passed through silent rows of slaves, who, kneeling 
 as she passed, proffered to her offerings of bracelets, of chains, 
 of gems, which the Egyptian vainly entreated her to receive. 
 
 “TT have often heard,” said she, wonderingly, “that you 
 were rich; but I never dreamed of the amount of your 
 wealth.” | 
 
 “Would I could coin it all,” replied the Egyptian, “into 
 one crown, which I might place upon that snowy brow!” 
 
 “ Alas! the weight would crush me; I should be a second 
 Tarpeia,”’ answered Ione, laughingly. . 
 
 “But thou dost not disdain riches, O Ione! they know not 
 what life is capable of who are not wealthy. Gold is the great 
 magician of earth: it realizes our dreams, it gives them the 
 power of a god; there is a grandeur, a sublimity, in its pos- 
 session; it is the mightiest, yet the most obedient of our 
 slaves.” 
 
 The artful Arbaces sought to dazzle the young Neapolitan 
 by his treasures and his eloquence; he sought to awaken in 
 her the desire to be mistress of what she surveyed; he hoped 
 that she would confound the owner with the possessions, and 
 that the charms of his wealth would be reflected on himself. 
 Meanwhile Ione was secretly somewhat uneasy at the gallan- 
 tries which escaped from those lips, which, till lately, had 
 seemed to disdain the common homage we pay to beauty ; and 
 with that delicate subtlety which woman alone possesses, she 
 
- THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL. 151 
 
 sought to ward off shafts deliberately aimed, and to laugh or 
 to talk away the meaning from his warming language. Noth- 
 ing in the world is more pretty than that same species of 
 defence; it is the charm of the African necromancer who 
 professed with a feather to turn aside the winds. 
 
 The Egyptian was intoxicated and subdued by her grace 
 even more than by her beauty. It was with difficulty that 
 he suppressed his emotions; alas! the feather was only power- 
 ful against the summer breezes it would be the sport of the 
 storm. ' 
 
 Suddenly, as they stood in one hall, which was surrounded 
 by draperies of silver and white, the Egyptian clapped his 
 hands, and, as if by enchantment, a banquet rose from the 
 floor; a couch, or throne, with a crimson canopy, ascended 
 simultaneously at the feet of Ione, and at the same instant 
 from behind the curtains swelled invisible and softest music. 
 
 Arbaces placed himself at the feet of Ione; and children, 
 young and beautiful as Loves, ministered to the feast. 
 
 The feast was over, the music sank into a low and subdued 
 strain, and Arbaces thus addressed his beautiful guest : — 
 
 ‘Hast thou never, in this dark and uncertain world — hast 
 thou never aspired, my pupil, to look beyond; hast thou never 
 wished to put aside the veil of futurity, and to behold on the 
 shores of Fate the shadowy images of things to be? For it is 
 not the past alone that has its ghosts: each event to come has 
 also its spectrum, its shade; when the hour arrives, life enters 
 it, the shadow becomes corporeal and walks the world. Thus, 
 in the land beyond the grave are ever two impalpable and 
 spiritual hosts, — the things to be, the things that have been! 
 If by our wisdom we can penetrate that land, we see the one 
 as the other, and learn, as J have learned, not alone the 
 mysteries of the dead, but also the destiny of the living.” 
 
 “ As thou hast learned! Can wisdom attain so far ?” 
 
 “ Wilt thou prove my knowledge, Ione, and behold the 
 representation of thine own fate? Itis adrama more strik- 
 ing than those of Aischylus: it is one I have prepared for 
 thee, if thou wilt see the shadows perform their part.” 
 
 The Neapolitan trembled; she thought of Glaucus, and 
 
152 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 sighed as well as trembled; were their destinies to be united? 
 Half incredulous, half believing, half awed, half alarmed by 
 the words of her strange host, she remained for some mo- 
 ments silent, and then answered, — 
 
 “Tt may revolt, it may terrify; the knowledge of the future 
 will perhaps only embitter the present!” 
 
 “Not so, Ione. I have myself looked upon thy future lot, 
 and the ghosts of thy Future bask in the garden of Elysium : 
 amidst the asphodel and the rose they prepare the garlands of 
 thy sweet destiny, and the Fates, so harsh to others, weave 
 only for thee the web of happiness and love. Wilt thou then 
 come and behold thy doom, so that thou mayest enjoy it 
 beforehand ? ” 
 
 Again the heart of Ione murmured “ Glaucus ;” she uttered 
 a half-audible assent; the Egyptian rose, and taking her by 
 the hand, he led her across the banquet-room; the curtains 
 withdrew, as by magic hands, and the music broke forth in a 
 louder and gladder strain; they passed a row of columns, on 
 either side of which fountains cast aloft their fragrant waters ; 
 they descended by broad and easy steps into a garden. The 
 eve had. commenced; the moon was already high in heaven, 
 and those sweet flowers that sleep by day, and fill with in- 
 effable odors the airs of night, were thickly scattered amidst 
 alleys cut through the starlit foliage; or, gathered in bas- 
 kets, lay like offerings at the feet of the frequent statues that 
 gleamed along their path. 
 
 “ Whither wouldst thou lead me, Arbaces?” said Ione, 
 wonderingly. 
 
 “But yonder,” said he, pointing to a small building which 
 stood at the end of the vista. ‘It is a temple consecrated to 
 the Fates ; our rites require such holy ground.” 
 
 They passed into a narrow hall, at the end of which hung 
 a sable curtain. Arbaces lifted it; Ione entered, and found 
 herself in total darkness. 
 
 “Be not alarmed,” said the Egyptian, “the light will rise 
 instantly.” While he so spoke, a soft and warm and gradual 
 light diffused itself around; as it spread over each object, 
 Tone perceived that she was in an apartment of moderate 
 
* THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 153 
 
 size, hung everywhere with black; a couch with draperies of 
 the same hue was beside her. In the centre of the room was 
 a small altar, on which stood a tripod of bronze. At one side, 
 upon a lofty column of granite, was a colossal head of the 
 blackest marble, which, she perceived, by the crown of wheat- 
 ears that encircled the brow, represented the great Egyptian 
 goddess. Arbaces stood before the altar: he had laid his gar- 
 land on the shrine, and seemed occupied with pouring into the 
 tripod the contents of a brazen vase. Suddenly from that 
 tripod leaped into life a blue, quick, darting, irregular flame ; 
 the Egyptian drew back to the side of Ione, and muttered 
 some words in a language unfamiliar to her ear; the curtain 
 at the back of the altar waved tremulously to and fro: it 
 parted slowly, and in the aperture which was thus made, 
 Ione beheld an indistinct and pale landscape, which gradually 
 erew brighter and clearer as she gazed; at length she dis- 
 covered plainly trees and rivers and meadows, and all the 
 beautiful diversity of the richest earth. At length, before 
 the landscape a dim shadow glided; it rested opposite to 
 Ione; slowly the same charm seemed to operate upon it as 
 over the rest of the scene; it took form and shape, and lo, 
 in its feature and in its form Ione beheld herself ! 
 
 Then the scene behind the spectre faded away, and was suc- 
 ceeded by the representation of a gorgeous palace; a throne 
 was raised in the centre of its hall, the dim forms of slaves 
 and guards were ranged around it, and a pale hand held over 
 the throne the lkeness of a diadem. 
 
 A new actor now appeared; he was clothed from head to 
 foot ina dark robe, his face was concealed, he knelt at the 
 feet of the shadowy Ione, he clasped her hand, he pointed to 
 the throne, as if to invite her to ascend it. 
 
 The Neapolitan’s heart beat violently. “Shall the shadow 
 disclose itself?” whispered a voice beside her, the voice of 
 Arbaces. 
 
 “¢ Ah, yes!” answered Ione, softly. 
 
 Arbaces raised his hand; the spectre seemed to drop the 
 mantle that concealed its form, and Ione shrieked: it was 
 Arbaces himself that thus knelt before her. 
 
154 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “This is, indeed, thy fate!” whispered again the Egyptian’s 
 voice in her ear; “and thou art destined to be the bride of 
 Arbaces.” 
 
 Jone started; the black curtain closed over the phantasma- 
 goria, and Arbaces himself — the [real, the living Arbaces — 
 was at her feet. 
 
 “Qh, Ione!” said he, passionately gazing upon her, “listen 
 to one who has long struggled vainly with his love. I adore 
 thee! The Fates do not lie; thou art destined to be mine. I 
 have sought the world around, and found none lke thee. 
 From my youth upward I have sighed for such as thou art. 
 I have dreamed till I saw thee: I wake, and I behold thee. 
 Turn not away from me, Ione; think not of me as thou hast 
 thought; I am not that being, cold, insensate, and morose, 
 which I have seemed to thee. Never woman had lover so 
 devoted, so passionate as I will be to Ione. Do not struggle in 
 my clasp: see, I release thy hand. Take it from me if thou 
 wilt; well, beit so! But do not reject me, Ione; do not rashly 
 reject: judge of thy power over him whom thou canst thus 
 transform. I, who never knelt to mortal being, kneel to thee. 
 I, who have commanded fate, receive from thee my own. 
 Tone, tremble not; thou art my queen, my goddess: be my 
 bride! All the wishes thou canst form shall be fulfilled. The 
 ends of the earth shall minister to thee: pomp, power, lux- 
 ury shall be thy slaves. Arbaces shall have no ambition 
 save the pride of obeying thee. Ione, turn upon me those 
 eyes; shed upon me thy smile. Dark is my soul when thy 
 face is hid from it: shine over me, my sun, my heaven, my 
 daylight! Ione, Ione, do not reject my love!”: 
 
 Alone, and in the power of this singular and fearful man, 
 Ione was yet not terrified; the respect of his language, the 
 softness of his voice, reassured her, and in her own purity 
 she felt protection. But she was confused, astonished; it was 
 some moments before she could recover the power of reply. 
 
 “Rise, Arbaces!” said she at length; andshe resigned to 
 him once more her hand, which she as quickly withdrew again 
 when she felt upon it the burning pressure of his lips. “Rise! 
 and if thou art serious, if thy language be in earnest —” 
 
-THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 155 
 
 “Tf /” said he, tenderly. 
 
 “ Well, then, listen to me; you have been my guardian, my 
 friend, my monitor; for this new character I was not prepared. 
 Think not,” she added quickly, as she saw his dark’eyes glitter 
 with the fierceness of his passion, —“ think not that I scorn, 
 that I am not touched, that I am not honored by this homage ; 
 but say, canst thou hear me calmly ? ” 
 
 “Ay, though thy words were lightning, and could blast 
 me!” 
 
 “T love another!” said Ione, blushingly, but in a firm 
 VECO Si he: 
 
 “‘By the gods! by hell!” shouted Arbaces, rising to his full- 
 est height; “dare not tell me that, dare not mock me: it is 
 impossible! Whom hast thouseen, whom known ? Oh, Ione! 
 it is thy woman’s invention, thy woman’s art that speaks ; thou 
 wouldst gain time. I have surprised, I have terrified thee. 
 Do with me as thou wilt; say that thou lovest not me, but say 
 not that thou lovest another!” 
 
 “ Alas!” began Ione; and then, appalled before his sudden 
 and unlooked-for violence, she burst into tears. 
 
 Arbaces came nearer to her; his breath glowed fiercely on 
 her cheek; he wound his arms round her: she sprang from his 
 embrace. In the struggle a tablet fell from her bosom on the 
 eround; Arbaces perceived, and seized it; it was the letter 
 that morning received from Glaucus. Jone sank upon the 
 couch, half dead with terror. 
 
 Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing; the Nea- 
 politan did not dare to gaze upon him. She did not see the 
 deadly paleness that came over his countenance; she marked 
 not his withering frown, nor the quivering of his lip, nor the 
 convulsions that heaved his breast. He read it to the end; 
 and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said in a voice of 
 deceitful calmness, — 
 
 “Ts the writer of this the man thou lovest ? ” 
 
 Ione sobbed, but answered not. 
 
 “Speak!” he rather shrieked than said. 
 
 “It is—it is!” 
 
 “ And his name —it is written here — his name is Glaucus!” 
 
156 ‘ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Tone, clasping her hands, looked round as for succor or 
 escape. 
 
 “Then hear me,” said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a 
 whisper; “thou shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arms! 
 What! thinkest thou Arbaces will brook a rival such as this 
 puny Greek? What! thinkest thou that he has. watched the 
 fruit ripen to yield it to another? Pretty fool—no! Thou 
 art mine —all— only mine: and thus, thus I seize and claim 
 thee!” As he spoke, he caught Ione in his arms; and in that 
 ferocious grasp was all the energy—less of love than of 
 revenge. 
 
 But to Ione despair gave supernatural strength; she again 
 tore herself from him; she rushed to that part of the room 
 by which she had entered; she half withdrew the curtain; he 
 seized her; again she broke away from him and fell, ex- 
 hausted, and with a loud shriek, at the base of the column 
 which supported the head of the Egyptian goddess. Arbaces 
 paused for a moment, as if to regain his breath, and then once 
 more darted upon his prey. 
 
 At that instant the curtain was rudely torn aside; the Egyp- 
 tian felt a fierce and strong grasp upon his shoulder. He 
 turned; he beheld before him the flashing eyes of Glaucus, 
 and the pale, worn, but menacing countenance of Apecides. 
 “ Ah,” he muttered, as he glared from one to the other, “ what 
 Fury hath sent ye hither ?” 
 
 “ Ate,” answered Glaucus; and he closed at once with the 
 Egyptian. Meanwhile Apecides raised his sister, now lifeless, 
 from the ground; his strength, exhausted by a mind long over- 
 wrought, did not suffice to bear her away, ight and delicate 
 though her shape: he placed her, therefore, on the couch, and 
 stood over her with a brandishing knife, watching the contest 
 between Glaucus and the Egyptian, and ready to plunge his 
 weapon in the bosom of Arbaces should he be victorious in the 
 struggle. There is, perhaps, nothing on earth so terrible as the 
 naked and unarmed contest of animal strength, no weapon but 
 those which Nature supplies to rage. Both the antagonists 
 were now locked in each other’s grasp, the hand of each seeking 
 the throat of the other, the face drawn back, the fierce eyes 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 157 
 
 flashing, the muscles strained, the veins swelled, the lips apart, 
 the teeth set; both were strong beyond the ordinary power of 
 men, both animated by relentless wrath; they coiled, they 
 wound around each other; they rocked to and fro, they swayed 
 from end to end of their confined arena, they uttered cries of 
 ire and revenge; they were now before the altar, now at the 
 base of the column where the struggle had commenced : they 
 drew back for breath,— Arbaces leaning against the column, 
 Glaucus a few paces apart. 
 
 “QO ancient goddess!” exclaimed Arbaces, clasping the col- 
 umn, and raising his eyes toward the sacred image it supported, 
 “protect thy chosen; proclaim thy vengeance against this 
 thing of an upstart creed, who with sacrilegious violence pro- 
 fanes thy resting-place and assails thy servant.” 
 
 As he spoke, the still and vast features of the goddess 
 seemed suddenly to glow with life; through the black marble, 
 as through a transparent veil, flushed luminously a crimson 
 and burning hue; around the head played and darted corus- 
 cations of vivid lightning; the eyes became hke balls of lurid 
 fire, and seemed fixed in withering and intolerable wrath upon 
 the countenance of the Greek. Awed and appalled by this 
 sudden and mystic answer to the prayer of his foe, and not 
 free from the hereditary superstitions of his race, the cheeks 
 of Glaucus paled before that strange and ghastly animation of 
 the marble. His knees knocked together; he stood seized with 
 a divine panic, dismayed, aghast, half unmanned before his 
 foe. Arbaces gave him not breathing-time to recover his 
 stupor. “Die, wretch!” he shouted, in a voice of thunder, as 
 he sprang upon the Greek; “the Mighty Mother claims thee 
 as a living sacrifice!” Taken thus by surprise in the first 
 consternation of his superstitious fears, the Greek lost his 
 footing. The marble floor was as smooth as glass; he slid, he 
 fell. Arbaces planted his foot on the breast of his fallen foe. 
 Apecides, taught by his sacred profession as well as by his 
 knowledge of Arbaces, to distrust all miraculous interpositions, 
 had not shared the dismay of his companion. He rushed for- 
 ward; his knife gleamed in the air; the watchful Egyptian 
 caught his arm as it descended: one wrench of his powerful 
 
158 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 hand tore the weapon from the weak grasp of the priest, one 
 sweeping blow stretched him to the earth; with a loud and 
 exultant yell Arbaces brandished the knife on high. Glaucus 
 gazed upon his impending fate with unwinking eyes, and in 
 the stern and scornful resignation of a fallen gladiator: when, 
 at that awful instant, the floor shook under them with a rapid 
 and convulsive throe, a mightier spirit than that of the Egyp- 
 tian was abroad, —a giant and crushing power, before which 
 sunk into sudden impotence his passion and his arts. Iv woke, 
 it stirred, — that Dread Demon of the Earthquake, laughing to 
 scorn alike the magic of human guile and the malice of human 
 wrath. Asa Titan, on whom the mountains are piled, it roused 
 itself from the sleep of years ; it moved on its tortured couch: 
 the caverns below groaned and trembled beneath the motion of 
 its limbs. In the moment of his vengeance and his power the | 
 self-prized demigod was humbled to his real clay. Far and 
 wide along the soil went a hoarse and rumbling sound: the 
 curtains of the chamber shook as at the blast of a storm, the 
 altar rocked, the tripod reeled, and, high over the place of con- 
 test, the column trembled and waved from side to side, the 
 sable head of the goddess tottered and fell from its pedestal; 
 and as the Egyptian stooped above his intended victim, right 
 upon his bended form, right between the shoulder and the 
 neck, struck the marble mass! The shock stretched him like 
 the blow of death at once, suddenly, without sound or motion, 
 or semblance of life, upon the floor, apparently crushed by the 
 very divinity he had impiously animated and invoked! 
 
 “The Earth has preserved her children,” said Glaucus, stag- 
 gering to his feet. “Blessed be the dread convulsion! Let 
 us worship the providence of the gods!” He assisted Apzecides 
 to rise, and then turned upward the face of Arbaces: it seemed 
 locked as in death; blood gushed from the Egyptian’s lips over 
 his glittering robes; he fell heavily from the arms of Glaucus, 
 and the red stream trickled slowly along the marble. Again 
 the earth shook beneath their feet; they were forced to cling 
 to each other; the convulsion ceased as suddenly as it came ; 
 they tarried no longer; Glaucus bore Ione lightly in his arms, 
 and they fled from the unhallowed spot. But scarce had they 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 159 
 
 entered the garden than they were met on all sides by flying 
 and disordered groups of women and slaves, whose festive and 
 glittering garments contrasted in mockery the solemn terror 
 of the hour. They did not appear to heed the strangers; they 
 were occupied only with their own fears. After the tranquil- 
 lity of sixteen years, that burning and treacherous soil again 
 menaced destruction; they uttered but one cry, “THE EARTH- 
 QUAKE! THE EARTHQUAKE!” and passing unmolested from the 
 midst of them, Apzecides and his companions, without entering 
 the house, hastened down one of the alleys, passed a small 
 open gate, and there, sitting on a little mound over which 
 spread the gloom of the dark-green aloes, the moonlight fell 
 on the bended figure of the blind girl; she was weeping 
 bitterly. 
 
BOOK IIL 
 
 "AAA, SeAdva, 
 Saive addy: tly yap wotaclcouat aovxa, Satuoy, 
 TG x0dvia, @ “Exdra, Tay Kad oxvAakes TpouéorTt, 
 "Epxouevay vexvay ava 7” jpla, kal wéAay aiua. 
 Xaip’, ‘Exdra SacmaAjri, rat és TéAos Sup dmdder, 
 Sdpuara Tav Epdoica Xepelova unre Tt Kipxas, 
 Mare Tt Mndetas, unre tavOas Mepyuhdas. 
 
 THEOCRITUS. 
 
 Now sacred moon, the mysteries of my song 
 
 To thee and hell-born Hecaté belong, — 
 
 Pale Hecate, who stalks o’er many a tomb, 
 
 And adds fresh horror to sepulchral gloom ; 
 
 Whilst reeking gore distains the paths of death, 
 
 And bloodhounds fly the blasting of her breath. 
 
 Hail, Hecate! and give my rising spell 
 
 Ev’n Perimeda’s sorceries to excel : 
 
 Bid the strong witchery match ev’n Circe’s skill, 
 
 And with Medea’s venom’d fury fill. 
 PoLtwuHELeE’s Translation. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FORUM OF THE POMPEIANS.— THE FIRST RUDE MACHINERY 
 BY WHICH THE NEW ERA OF THE WORLD WAS WROUGHT. 
 
 Ir was early noon, and the forum was crowded alike with 
 the busy and the idle. As at Paris at this day, so at that time 
 in the cities of Italy, men lived almost wholly out of doors: 
 the public buildings, the forum, the porticos, the baths, the 
 temples themselves might be considered their real homes; it 
 was no wonder that they decorated so gorgeously these favorite 
 places of resort; they felt for them a sort of domestic affection 
 as well as a public pride. And animated was, indeed, the as- 
 pect of the forum of Pompeii at that time! Along its broad 
 pavement, composed of large flags of marble, were assembled 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 161 
 
 various groups, conversing in that energetic fashion which 
 appropriates a gesture to every word, and which is still the 
 characteristic of the people of the south. Here, in seven stalls 
 on one side the colonnade, sat the money-changers, with their 
 glittering heaps before them, and merchants and seamen in 
 various costumes crowding round their stalls. On one side, 
 several men in long togas ! were seen bustling up to a stately 
 edifice, where the magistrates administered justice; these were 
 the lawyers, active, chattering, joking, and punning, as you 
 may find them at this day in Westminster. In the centre of 
 the space pedestals supported various statues, of which the 
 most remarkable was the stately form of Cicero. Around the 
 court ran a regular and symmetrical colonnade of Doric archi- 
 tecture ; and there several, whose business drew them early to 
 the place, were taking the slight morning repast which made 
 an Italian breakfast, talking vehemently on the earthquake of 
 the preceding night as they dipped pieces of bread in their 
 cups of diluted wine. In the open space, too, you might per- 
 ceive various petty traders exercising the arts of their calling. 
 Here one man was holding out ribbons to a fair dame from 
 the country; another man was vaunting to a stout farmer the 
 excellence of his shoes; a third, a kind of stall-restaurateur, 
 still so common in the Italian cities, was supplying many a 
 hungry mouth with hot messes from his small and itinerant 
 stove, while — contrast strongly typical of the mingled bustle 
 and intellect of the time — close by, a schoolmaster was ex- 
 pounding to his puzzled pupils the elements of the Latin 
 grammar.? <A gallery above the portico, which was ascended 
 by small wooden staircases, had also its throng; though, as 
 here the immediate business of the place was mainly carried 
 on, its groups wore a more quiet and serious air. 
 
 1 For the lawyers and the clients, when attending on their patrons, retained 
 the toga after it had fallen into disuse among the rest of the citizens. 
 
 2 In the Museum at Naples is a picture little known, but representing one 
 side of the forum at Pompeii as then existing, to which I am much indebted 
 in the present description. It may afford a learned consolation to my younger 
 readers to know that the ceremony of hoisting (more honored in the breach 
 than the observance) is of high antiquity, and seems to have been performed 
 with all legitimate and public vigor in the forum of Pompeii. 
 
 vou. 1,—11 
 
162 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Every now and then the crowd below respectfully gave way 
 as some senator swept along to the Temple of Jupiter (which 
 filled up one side of the forum, and was the senator’s hall of 
 meeting), nodding with ostentatious condescension to such of 
 his friends or clients as he distinguished amongst the throng. 
 Mingling amidst the gay dresses of the better orders you saw 
 the hardy forms of the neighboring farmers, as they made 
 their way to the public granaries. Hard by the temple you 
 caught a view of the triumphal arch, and the long street be- 
 yond swarming with inhabitants; in one of the niches of the 
 arch a fountain played, cheerily sparkling in the sunbeams ; 
 and above its cornice rose the bronzed and equestrian statue 
 of Caligula, strongly contrasting the gay summer skies. Be- 
 hind the stalls of the money-changers was that building now 
 called the Pantheon; and a crowd of the poorer Pompeians 
 passed through the small vestibule which admitted to the in- 
 terior, with panniers under their arms, pressing on towards 
 a platform, placed between two columns, where such pro- 
 visions as the priests had rescued from sacrifice were exposed 
 for sale. 
 
 At one of the public edifices appropriated to the business of 
 the city, workmen were employed upon the columns, and you 
 heard the noise of their labor every now and then rising above 
 the hum of the multitude: the columns are unfinished to this 
 day ! 
 
 All, then, united, nothing could exceed in variety the cos- 
 tumes, the ranks, the manners, the occupations of the crowd; 
 nothing could exceed the bustle, the gayety, the animation, 
 the flow and flush of life all around. ‘You saw there all the 
 myriad signs of a heated and feverish civilization, where pleas- 
 ure and commerce, idleness and labor, avarice and ambition, 
 mingled in one gulf their motley, rushing, yet harmonious 
 streams. 
 
 Facing the steps of the Temple of Jupiter, with folded arms, 
 and a knit and contemptuous brow, stood a man of about fifty 
 years of age. His dress was remarkably plain, — not so much 
 from its material, as from the absence of all those ornaments 
 which were worn by the Pompeians of every rank, partly from 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 163 
 
 the love of show, partly, also, because they were chiefly 
 wrought into those shapes deemed most efficacious in resisting 
 the assaults of magic and the influence of the evil eye.1 His 
 forehead was high and bald; the few locks that remained at 
 the back of the head were concealed by a sort of cowl, which 
 made a part of his cloak, to be raised or lowered at pleasure, 
 and was now drawn half-way over the head, as a protection 
 from the rays of the sun. The color of his garments was 
 brown, no popular hue with the Pompeians; all the usual ad- 
 mixtures of scarlet or purple seemed carefully excluded. His 
 belt, or girdle, contained a small receptacle for ink, which 
 hooked on to the girdle, a stilus (or implement of writing), and 
 tablets of no ordinary size. What was rather remarkable, the 
 cincture held no purse, which was the almost indispensable 
 appurtenance of the girdle, even when that purse had the mis- 
 fortune to be empty! 
 
 It was not often that the gay and egotistical Pompeians 
 busied themselves with observing the countenances and actions 
 of their neighbors; but there was that in the lip and eye of 
 this bystander so remarkably bitter and disdainful, as he sur- 
 veyed the religious procession sweeping up the stairs of the 
 temple, that it could not fail to arrest the notice of many. 
 
 “¢ Who is yon cynic ?” asked a merchant of his companion, 
 a jeweller. 
 
 “Tt is Olinthus,” replied the jeweller; “‘a reputed Nazarene.” 
 
 The merchant shuddered. “A dread sect!” said he, ina 
 whispered and fearful voice. “It is said that when they meet 
 at nights they always commence their ceremonies by the mur- 
 der of a new-born babe: they profess a community of goods, 
 too, the wretches! A community of goods! What would be- 
 come of merchants, or jewellers either, if such notions were in 
 fashion ? ” 
 
 “That is very true,” said the jeweller; “besides, they wear 
 no jewels; they mutter imprecations when they see a serpent ; 
 and at Pompeii all our ornaments are serpentine.” 
 
 ‘Do but observe,” said a third, who was a fabricant of 
 bronze, “ how yon Nazarene scowls at the piety of the sacri- 
 
 1 See note (a) at the end. 
 
164 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ficial procession. He is murmuring curses on the temple, be 
 sure. Do you know, Celcinus, that this fellow, passing by my 
 shop the other day, and seeing me employed on a statue of 
 Minerva, told me with a frown that, had it been marble, he 
 would have broken it; but the bronze was too strong for him. 
 ‘Break a goddess!’ said I. ‘A goddess!’ answered the atheist ; 
 ‘it is a demon, an evil spirit!’ Then he passed on his way 
 
 cursing. Are such things to be borne? What marvel that the - 
 
 earth heaved so fearfully last night, anxious to reject the athe- 
 ist from her bosom? An atheist do I say? worse still, a 
 scorner of the Fine Arts! Woe to us fabricants of bronze, if 
 such fellows as this give the law to society!” 
 
 “ These are the incendiaries that burnt Rome under Nero,” 
 groaned the jeweller. 
 
 While such were the friendly remarks provoked by the air 
 and faith of the Nazarene, Olinthus himself became sensible 
 of the effect he was producing; he turned his eyes round, and 
 observed the intent faces of the accumulating throng, whisper- 
 ing as they gazed; and surveying them for a moment with an 
 expression, first of defiance and afterwards of compassion, he 
 gathered his cloak round him and passed on, muttering audi- 
 bly, “ Deluded idolaters! did not last night’s convulsion warn 
 ye? Alas! how will ye meet the last day ? ” 
 
 The crowd that heard these boding words gave them dif- 
 ferent interpretations, according to their different shades of 
 ignorance and of fear; all, however, concurred in imagining 
 them to convey some awful imprecation. They regarded the 
 Christian as the enemy of mankind; the epithets they lavished 
 upon him, of which “ Atheist” was the most favored and fre- 
 quent, may serve, perhaps, to warn us, believers of that same 
 creed now triumphant, how we indulge the persecution of 
 opinion Olinthus then underwent, and how we apply to those 
 whose notions differ from our own the terms at that day lav- 
 ished on the fathers of our faith. 
 
 As Olinthus stalked through the crowd, and gained one of 
 the more private places of egress from the forum, he perceived 
 gazing upon him a pale and earnest countenance, which he was 
 not slow to recognize. 
 
 a 
 
“THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 165 
 
 Wrapped in a pallium that partially concealed his sacred 
 robes, the young Apecides surveyed the disciple of that new 
 and mysterious creed, to which at one time he had been half a 
 convert. 
 
 “Is he, too, an impostor ? Does this man, so plain and sim- 
 ple in life, in garb, in mien, — does he too, like Arbaces, make 
 austerity the robe of the sensualist ? Does the veil of Vesta 
 hide the vices of the prostitute ? ” 
 
 Olinthus, accustomed to men of all classes, and combining 
 with the enthusiasm of his faith a profound experience of his 
 kind, guessed, perhaps, by the index of the countenance, some- 
 thing of what passed within the breast of the priest. He 
 met the survey of Apecides with a steady eye, and a brow of 
 serene and open candor. 
 
 “ Peace be with thee!” said he, saluting Apecides. 
 
 “Peace!” echoed the priest, in so hollow a tone that it 
 went at once to the heart of the Nazarene. 
 
 “In that wish,” continued Olinthus, “all good things are 
 combined: without virtue thou canst not have peace. Like 
 the rainbow, Peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in 
 heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light; it springs up 
 amidst tears and clouds; it is a reflection of the Eternal Sun; 
 it is an assurance of calm; it is the sign of a great convenant 
 between Man and God. Such peace, O young man, is the 
 smile of the soul; it is an emanation from the distant orb of 
 immortal light. Pracr be with you!” 
 
 “ Alas!” began Apecides, when he caught the gaze of the 
 curious loiterers, inquisitive to know what could possibly be 
 the theme of conversation between a reputed Nazarene and a 
 priest of Isis. He stopped short, and then added in a low 
 tone: “We cannot converse here; I will follow thee to the 
 banks of the river: there is a walk which at this time is usu- 
 ally deserted and solitary.” 
 
 Olinthus bowed assent. He passed through the streets with 
 a hasty step, but a quick and observant eye. Every now and 
 then he exchanged a significant glance, a slight sign, with some 
 passenger, whose garb usually betokened the wearer to belong to 
 the humbler classes ; for Christianity was in this the type of all 
 
166 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 other and less mighty revolutions; the grain of mustard-seed 
 was in the hearts of the lowly. Amidst the huts of poverty 
 and labor, the vast stream which afterwards poured its broad 
 waters beside the cities and palaces of earth took its neglected 
 source. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE NOONDAY EXCURSION ON THE CAMPANIAN SEAS. 
 
 “Burt tell me, Glaucus,” said Ione, as they glided down the 
 rippling Sarnus in their boat of pleasure, “how camest thou 
 with Apecides to my rescue from that bad man?” 
 
 “ Ask Nydia yonder,” answered the Athenian, pointing to 
 the blind girl, who sat at a little distance from them, leaning 
 pensively over her lyre; “she must have thy thanks, not we. 
 It seems that she came to my house, and, finding me from 
 home, sought thy brother in his temple; he accompanied her 
 to Arbaces; on their way they encountered me, with a com- 
 pany of friends, whom thy kind letter had given me a spirit 
 cheerful enough to join. Nydia’s quick ear detected my voice; 
 a few words sufficed to make me the companion of Apecides. 
 I told not my associates why I left them. Could I trust thy 
 name to their hght tongues and gossiping opinion? Nydia 
 led us to the garden gate, by which we afterwards bore thee; 
 we entered, and were about to plunge into the mysteries of 
 that evil house, when we heard thy cry in another direction. 
 Thou knowest the rest.” 
 
 Ione blushed deeply. She then raised her eyes to those of 
 Glaucus, and he felt all the thanks she could not utter. 
 “Come hither, my Nydia,” said she tenderly to the Thessalian. 
 “Did I not tell thee that thou shouldst be my sister and 
 friend? Hast thou not already been more,—my guardian, 
 my preserver ?” | 
 
 “Jt is nothing,” answered Nydia, coldly, and without stirring. 
 
 “ Ah, I forgot,” continued lone: “I should come to thee; ” 
 
’ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 167 
 
 and she moved along the benches till she reached the place 
 where Nydia sat, and flinging her arms caressingly round her, 
 covered her cheeks with kisses. 
 
 Nydia was that morning paler than her wont, and her coun- 
 tenance grew even more wan and colorless as she submitted to 
 the embrace of the beautiful Neapolitan. “But how camest 
 thou, Nydia,” whispered Ione, “to surmise so faithfully the 
 danger I was exposed to? Didst thou know aught of the 
 Egyptian ?” 
 
 “Yes, I knew of his vices.” 
 
 “ And how ?” 
 
 “Noble Ione, I have been a slave to the vicious; those 
 whom I served were his minions.” 
 
 “And thou hast entered his house, since thou knewest so 
 well that private entrance ?” 
 
 “T have played on my lyre to Arbaces,” answered the Thes- 
 salian, with embarrassment. 
 
 «¢ And thou hast escaped the contagion from which thou hast 
 saved Ione ?” returned the Neapolitan, in a voice too low for 
 the ear of Glaucus. 
 
 “Noble Ione, I have neither beauty nor station; I am a 
 child, and a slave, and blind. The despicable are ever safe.” 
 
 It was with a pained and proud and indignant tone that 
 Nydia made this humble reply; and Ione felt that she only 
 wounded Nydia by pursuing the subject. She remained silent, 
 and the bark now floated into the sea. 
 
 “Confess that I was right, Ione,” said Glaucus, “in prevail- 
 ing on thee not to waste this beautiful noon in thy chamber; 
 confess that I was right.” 
 
 “Thou wert right, Glaucus,” said Nydia, abruptly. 
 
 “The dear child speaks for thee,” returned the Athenian. 
 “But permit me to move opposite to thee, or our light boat 
 will be overbalanced.” 
 
 So saying, he took his seat exactly opposite to Ione, and 
 leaning forward, he fancied that it was her breath, and not the 
 winds of summer, that flung fragrance over the sea. 
 
 “™@hou wert to tell me,” said Glaucus, “why for so many 
 day: thy door was closed to me ?” 
 
168 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Oh, think of it no more,” answered Ione, quickly; “I gave 
 my ear to what I now know was the malice of slander.” 
 
 “And my slanderer was the Egyptian ? ” 
 
 fone’s silence assented to the question. 
 
 “‘ His motives are sufficiently obvious.” 
 
 “Talk not of him,” said Ione, covering her face with her 
 hands, as if to shut out his very thought. 
 
 “Perhaps he may be already by the banks of the slow | 
 Styx,” resumed Glaucus; “yet in that case we should prob- 
 ably have heard of his death. Thy brother, methinks, hath 
 felt the dark influence of his gloomy soul. When we arrived 
 last night at thy house he left me abruptly. Will he ever 
 vouchsafe to be my friend?” 
 
 “He is consumed with some secret care,” answered Ione, 
 tearfully. “Would that we could lure him from himself! 
 Let us join in that tender office.” 
 
 “He shall be my brother,” returned the Greek. 
 
 “ How calmly,” said Ione, rousing herself from the gloom into 
 which her thoughts of Apecides had plunged her, “ how calmly 
 the clouds seem to repose in heaven ; and yet you tell me, for I 
 knew it not myself, that the earth shook beneath us last night.” 
 
 “Tt did, and. more violently, they say, than it has done since 
 the great convulsion sixteen years ago. The land we live in 
 yet nurses mysterious terror; and the reign of Pluto, which 
 spreads beneath our burning fields, seems rent with unseen 
 commotion. Didst thou not fee] the earth quake, Nydia, 
 where thou wert seated last night; and was it not the fear 
 that it occasioned thee that made thee weep ?” 
 
 “T felt the soil creep and heave beneath me, like some 
 monstrous serpent,” answered Nydia; “but as I saw nothing, 
 I did not fear ; I imagined the convulsion to be a spell of the 
 Egyptian’s. They say he has power over the elements.” 
 
 “Thou art a Thessalian, my Nydia,” rephed Glaucus, “and 
 hast a national right to believe in magic.” 
 
 “Magic !— who doubts it?” answered Nydia, simply : “dost 
 thou ? ” 
 
 “ Until last night (when a necromantic prodigy did indeed 
 appall me) methinks I was not credulous in any other magic 
 
. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 169 
 
 save that of leve!” said Glaucus, in a tremulous voice, and 
 fixing his eyes on Ione. 
 
 “Ah!” said Nydia, with a sort of shiver, and she awoke 
 mechanically a few pleasing notes from her lyre; the sound 
 suited well the tranquillity of the waters and the sunny still- 
 ness of the noon. 
 
 “ Play to us, dear Nydia,” said Glaucus, —“ play, and give 
 us one of thine old Thessalian songs: whether it be of magic 
 or not, as thou wilt; let it, at least, be of love!” 
 
 “Of love!” repeated Nydia, raising her large, wandering 
 eyes, that ever thrilled those who saw them with a mingled 
 fear and pity; you could never familiarize yourself to their 
 aspect: so strange did it seem that those dark wild orbs were 
 ignorant of the day, and either so fixed was their deep myste- 
 rious gaze, or so restless and perturbed their glance, that you 
 felt, when you encountered them, that same vague and chill- 
 ing and half-preternatural impression which comes over you 
 in the presence of the insane, —of those who, having a life 
 outwardly like your own, have a life within life, dissimilar, 
 unsearchable, unguessed ! 
 
 «“ Will you that I should sing of love?” said she, fixing 
 those eyes upon Glaucus. 
 
 “Yes,” replied he, looking down. 
 
 She moved a little way from the arm of Ione, still cast 
 round her, as if that soft embrace embarrassed; and placing 
 her light and graceful instrument on her knee, after a short 
 prelude she sang the following strain: — 
 
 NYDIA’S LOVE-SONG. 
 
 be 
 The Wind and the Beam loved the Rose, 
 And the Rose loved one ; 
 For who recks the wind where it blows, 
 Or loves not the sun ? 
 
 Il. 
 None knew whence the humble Wind stole, 
 Poor sport of the skies ; 
 None dreamt that the Wind had a soul, 
 Tn its mournful sighs ! 
 
170 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 III. 
 
 Oh, happy Beam! how canst thou prove 
 That bright love of thine ? 
 
 In thy light is the proof of thy love, 
 Thou hast but — to shine! 
 
 IV. 
 
 How its love can the Wind reveal ? 
 Unwelcome its sigh ; 
 
 Mute — mute to its Rose let it steal, — 
 Its proof is — to die! 
 
 “Thou singest but sadly, sweet girl,” said Glaucus; ‘thy 
 youth only feels as yet the dark shadow of Love; far other 
 inspiration doth he wake when he himself bursts and brightens 
 upon us.” 
 
 “T sing as I was taught,” rephed Nydia, sighing. 
 
 “Thy master was love-crossed then; try thy hand at a gayer 
 air. Nay, girl, give the instrument tome.” As Nydia obeyed, 
 her hand touched his, and with that slight touch her breast 
 heaved, her cheek flushed. Ione and Glaucus, occupied with 
 each other, perceived not those signs of strange and prema- 
 ture emotions which preyed upon a heart that, nourished by 
 imagination, dispensed with hope. 
 
 And now, broad, blue, bright before them spread that hal- 
 cyon sea, fair as at this moment, seventeen centuries from 
 that date, I behold it rippling on the same divinest shores. 
 Clime that yet enervates with a soft and Circean spell, that 
 moulds us insensibly, mysteriously, into harmony with thy- 
 self, banishing the thought of austerer labor, the voices of 
 wild ambition, the contests and the roar of life; filling us with 
 gentle and subduing dreams, making necessary to our nature 
 that which is its least earthly portion, so that the very air 
 inspires us with the yearning and thirst of love. Whoever 
 visits thee seems to leave earth and its harsh cares behind ; 
 to enter by the Ivory Gate into the Land of Dreams. The 
 young and laughing hours of the Present, —the Hours, those 
 children of Saturn, which he hungers ever to devour, seem 
 snatched from his grasp. The past, the future, are forgotten ; 
 we enjoy but the breathing-time. Flower of the world’s 
 
‘ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 171 
 
 garden, Fountain of Delight, Italy of Italy, beautiful, benign 
 Campania! vain were, indeed, the Titans, if on this spot they 
 yet struggled for another heaven! Here, if God meant this 
 working-day life for a perpetual holiday, who would not sigh 
 to dwell forever, asking nothing, hoping nothing, fearing 
 nothing, while thy skies shone over him, while thy seas spar- 
 kled at his feet, while thine air brought him sweet messages 
 from the violet and the orange, and while the heart, resigned 
 to, beating with, but one emotion, could find the lips and the 
 eyes, which flatter it (vanity of vanities!) that love can defy 
 custom and be eternal? 
 
 It was then in this clime, on those; seas, that the Athenian 
 gazed upon a face that might have suited the nymph, the 
 spirit of the place: feeding his eyes on the changeful roses of 
 that softest cheek, happy beyond the happiness of common 
 life, loving, and knowing himself beloved. 
 
 In the tale of human passion, in past ages, there is some- 
 thing of interest even in the remoteness of the time. We love 
 to feel within us the bond which unites the most distant eras : 
 men, nations, customs perish; the affections are immortal ; 
 they are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations. 
 The past lives again, when we look upon its emotions, — it 
 lives in our own! That which was, everis! The magician’s 
 gift that revives the dead, that animates the dust of forgotten 
 graves, is not in the author’s skill, —it is in the heart of the 
 reader ! 
 
 Still vainly seeking the eyes of Ione, as, half downcast, half 
 averted, they shunned his own, the Athenian, in a low and 
 soft voice, thus expressed the feelings inspired by happier 
 thoughts than those which had colored the song of Nydia. 
 
 THE SONG OF GLAUCUS. 
 
 I. 
 
 As the bark floateth on o’er the summer-lit sea, 
 Floats my heart o’er the deeps of its passion for thee; 
 All lost in the space, without terror it glides, 
 
 For bright with thy soul is the face of the tides. 
 
172 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Now heaving, now hush’d, is that passionate ocean, 
 As it catches thy smile or thy sighs ; 
 
 And the twin-stars! that shine on the wanderer’s devotion, 
 Its guide and its god — are thine eyes! 
 
 II. 
 
 The bark may go down, should the cloud sweep above, 
 For its being is bound to the light of thy love. 
 As thy faith and thy smile are its life and its joy, 
 So thy frown or thy change are the storms that destroy. 
 Ah! sweeter to sink while the sky is serene, 
 
 If time hath a change for thy heart! 
 If to live be to weep over what thou hast been, 
 
 Let me die while I know what thou art! 
 
 As the last words of the song trembled over the sea, Ione 
 raised her looks; they met those of her lover. Happy Nydia, 
 —happy in thy affliction, that thou couldst not see that fas- 
 cinated and charmed gaze, that said so much, that made the 
 eye the voice of the soul, that promised the impossibility of 
 change! 
 
 But though the Thessalian could not detect that gaze, she 
 divined its meaning by their silence, by their sighs. She 
 pressed her hands tightly across her breast, as if to keep down 
 its bitter and jealous thoughts; and then she hastened to 
 speak, for that silence was intolerable to her. 
 
 “ After all, O Glaucus,” said she, “there is nothing very 
 mirthful in your strain!” 
 
 “Yet I meant it to be so, when I took up thy lyre, pretty 
 one. Perhaps happiness will not permit us to be mirthful.” 
 
 “How strange is it,’ said Ione, changing a conversation 
 which oppressed her while it charmed, “that for the last 
 several days yonder cloud has hung motionless over Vesuvius ! 
 Yet not indeed motionless, for sometimes it changes its form ; 
 and now methinks it looks like some vast giant, with an arm 
 outstretched over the city. Dost thou see the likeness, or is 
 it only to my fancy ?” 
 
 “Fair Ione, I see it also. It is astonishingly distinct. The 
 giant seems seated on the brow of the mountain: the different 
 
 1 Tn allusion to the Dioscuri, or twin-stars, the guardian deity of the 
 seamen. 
 
. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 173 
 
 shades of the cloud appear to form a white robe that sweeps 
 over its vast breast and limbs; it seems to gaze with a steady 
 face upon the city below, to point with one hand, as thou 
 sayest, over its glittering streets, and to raise the other — dost 
 thou note it?— towards the higher heaven. It is like the 
 ghost of some huge Titan brooding over the beautiful world 
 he lost; sorrowful for the past, yet with something of menace 
 for the future.” 
 
 ‘Could that mountain have any connection with the last 
 night’s earthquake? They say that, ages ago, almost in the 
 earliest era of tradition, it gave forth fires as Attna still. 
 Perhaps the flames yet lurk and dart beneath.” 
 
 “Tt is possible,” said Glaucus, musingly. 
 
 “Thou sayest thou art slow to believe in magic,” said Nydia, 
 suddenly. “I have heard that a potent witch dwells amongst 
 the scorched caverns of the mountain, and yon cloud may be 
 the dim shadow of the demon she confers with.” 
 
 “Thou art full of the romance of thy native Thessaly,” said 
 Glaucus ; “and a strange mixture of sense and all conflicting 
 superstitions.” 
 
 “We are ever superstitious in the dark,” replied Nydia. 
 “Tell me,” she added, after a slight pause, “tell me, O Glau- 
 cus, do all that are beautiful resemble each other? They say 
 you are beautiful, and Ione also. Are your faces then the 
 same? I fancy not; yet it ought to be so.” 
 
 ‘“‘ Fancy no such grievous wrong to Ione,” answered Glaucus, 
 laughing. “But we do not, alas! resemble each other, as the 
 homely and the beautiful sometimes do. JIone’s hair is dark, 
 mine light; [one’s eyes are — what color, Ione ? I cannot see; 
 turn them to me. Oh, are they black? No, they are too soft. 
 Are they blue? No, they are too deep ; they change with every 
 ray of the sun, —I know not their color; but mine, sweet Nydia, 
 are gray, and bright only when Ione shines on them! Ione’s 
 cheek is —” 
 
 “J do not understand one word of thy description,” inter- 
 rupted Nydia, peevishly. “I comprehend only that you do 
 not resemble each other, and I am glad of it.” 
 
 “Why, Nydia?” said Ione. 
 
174 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Nydia colored slightly. “Because,” she replied coldly, “I 
 have always imagined you under different forms, and one likes 
 to know one is right.” 
 
 “ And what hast thou imagined Glaucus to resemble ? ” asked 
 Ione, softly. 
 
 “Music!” replied Nydia, looking down. 
 
 “Thou art right,” thought Ione. 
 
 ¢¢ And what likeness hast thou ascribed to Ione ? ” 
 
 “T cannot tell yet,” answered the blind girl; “TI have not 
 yet known her long enough to find a shape and sign for my 
 guesses.” 
 
 “JT will tell thee, then,” said Glaucus, passionately; “she is 
 like the sun that warms, — like the wave that refreshes.” 
 
 “The sun sometimes scorches, and the wave sometimes 
 drowns,” answered Nydia. 
 
 “ Take then these roses,” said Glaucus; “let their fragrance 
 suggest to thee Ione.” 
 
 “ Alas, the roses will fade!” said the Neapolitan, archly. 
 
 Thus conversing, they wore away the hours; the lovers, 
 conscious only of the brightness and smiles of love, the blind 
 girl feeling only its darkness, its tortures, — the fierceness of 
 jealousy and its woe! 
 
 And now, as they drifted on, Glaucus once more resumed 
 the lyre, and woke its strings, with a careless hand, to a strain 
 so wildly and gladly beautiful that even Nydia was aroused 
 from her reverie, and uttered a cry of admiration. 
 
 “Thou seest, my child,” cried Glaucus, “that I can yet 
 redeem the character of love’s music, and that I was wrong 
 in saying happiness could not be gay. ‘Listen, Nydia! listen, 
 dear Ione! and hear 
 
 THE BIRTH OF LOVE. 
 
 I. 
 Like a Star in the seas above, 
 Like a Dream to the waves of sleep — 
 Up, up, THE INCARNATE LOVE, 
 She rose from the charméd deep! 
 
 ~ 
 
 1 Suggested by a picture of Venus rising from the sea, taken from Pom- 
 peii, and now in the Museum at Naples. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 175 
 
 And over the Cyprian Isle 
 The skies shed their silent smile; 
 And the Forest’s green heart was rife 
 With the stir of the gushing life, — 
 The life that had leap’d to birth, 
 In the veins of the happy earth! 
 Hail! oh, hail! 
 The dimmest sea-cave below thee, 
 The farthest sky-arch above, 
 In their innermost stillness know thee: 
 And heave with the Birth of Love! 
 Gale! soft Gale! 
 Thou comest on thy silver winglets, 
 From thy home in the tender west ;1 
 Now fanning her golden ringlets, 
 Now hush’d on her heaving breast. 
 And afar on the murmuring sand, 
 The Seasons wait hand in hand 
 To welcome thee, Birth Divine, 
 To the earth which is henceforth thine. 
 
 II. 
 
 Behold ! how she kneels in the shell, 
 . Bright pearl in its floating cell ! 
 Behold! how the shell’s rose-hues 
 The cheek and the breast of snow. 
 And the delicate limbs suffuse 
 Like a blush, with a bashful glow. 
 Sailing on, slowly sailing 
 O’er the wild water ; 
 All hail! as the fond light is hailing 
 Her daughter, 
 All hail! 
 We are thine, all thine evermore: 
 Not a leaf on the laughing shore, 
 Not a wave on the heaving sea, 
 Nor a single sigh 
 In the boundless sky, 
 But is vow’d evermore to thee ! 
 
 1 According to the ancient mythologists, Venus rose from the sea near 
 Cyprus, to which island she was wafted by the Zephyrs. The Seasons waited 
 to welcome her on the sea-shore. 
 
176 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPELD. 
 
 Ill. 
 
 And thou, my beloved one — thou, 
 As I gaze on thy soft eyes now, 
 Methinks from their depths I view 
 The Holy Birth born anew; 
 Thy lids are the gentle cell 
 Where the young Love blushing lies: 
 See! she breaks from the mystic shell, 
 She comes from thy tender eyes! 
 Hail! all hail! 
 She comes, as she came from the sea, 
 To my soul as it looks on thee; 
 She comes, she comes! 
 She comes, as she came from the sea, 
 To my soul as it looks on thee! 
 Hail! all hail! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE CONGREGATION. 
 
 FottowEp by Apezecides, the Nazarene gained the side of 
 the Sarnus. That river, which now has shrunk into a petty 
 stream, then rushed gayly into the sea, covered with countless 
 vessels, and reflecting on its waves the gardens, the vines, the 
 palaces, and the temples of Pompeii. From its more noisy 
 and frequented banks Olinthus directed his steps to a path 
 which ran amidst a shady vista of trees, at the distance of 
 a few paces from the river. This walk was in the evening a 
 favorite resort of the Pompeians, but during the heat and 
 business of the day was seldom visited, save by some groups 
 of playful children, some meditative poet, or some disputative 
 philosophers. At the side farthest from the river, frequent 
 copses of box interspersed the more delicate and evanescent 
 foliage, and these were cut into a thousand quaint shapes, 
 sometimes into the forms of fauns and satyrs, sometimes into 
 the mimicry of Egyptian pyramids, sometimes into the letters 
 that composed the name of a popular or eminent citizen. 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 177 
 
 Thus the false taste is equally ancient as the pure; and the 
 retired traders of Hackney and Paddington, a century ago, 
 were little aware, perhaps, that in their tortured yews and 
 sculptured box, they found their models in the most polished 
 period of Roman antiquity, in the gardens of Pompeii, and the 
 villas of the fastidious Pliny. 
 
 This walk now, as the noonday sun shone perpendicularly 
 through the checkered leaves, was entirely deserted; at least, 
 no other forms than those of Olinthus and the priest infringed 
 upon the solitude. They sat themselves on one of the benches, 
 placed at intervals between the trees, and facing the faint 
 breeze that came languidly from the river, whose waves danced 
 and sparkled before them,—a singular and contrasted pair; 
 the believer in the latest, the priest of the most ancient, wor- 
 ship of the world. 
 
 “Since thou leftst me so abruptly,” said Olinthus, “hast 
 thou been happy? Has thy heart found contentment under 
 these priestly robes ? Hast thou, still yearning for the voice 
 of God, heard it whisper comfort to thee from the oracles 
 of Isis? That sigh, that averted countenance, give me the 
 answer my soul predicted.” 
 
 “ Alas!” answered Apecides, sadly, “thou seest before thee 
 a wretched and distracted man. From my childhood upward I 
 have idolized the dreams of virtue. I have envied the holiness 
 of men who, in caves and lonely temples, have been admitted 
 to the companionship of beings above the world; my days have 
 been consumed with feverish and vague desires, my nights 
 with mocking but solemn visions. Seduced by the mystic 
 prophecies of an impostor, I have indued these robes: my 
 nature (I confess it to thee frankly) —my nature has revolted 
 at what I have seen and been doomed to share in. Searching 
 after truth, I have become but the minister of falsehoods. On 
 the evening in which we last met, I was buoyed by hopes 
 created by that same impostor, whom I ought already to have 
 better known. I have —no matter, no matter! suffice it, I 
 have added perjury and sin to rashness and to sorrow. The 
 veil is now rent forever from my eyes; I behold a villain 
 where I obeyed a demigod; the earth darkens in my sight; I 
 
 VOL. 1. — 12 
 
178 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 am in the deepest abyss of gloom; I know not if there be gods 
 above; if we are the things of chance; if beyond the bounded 
 and melancholy present there is annihilation or an hereafter: 
 tell me, then, thy faith; solve me these doubts, if thou hast 
 indeed the power.” 
 
 ‘“T do not marvel,” answered the Nazarene, “that thou hast 
 thus erred, or that thou art thus sceptic. Eighty years ago 
 there was no assurance to man of God, or of a certain and 
 definite future beyond the grave. New laws are declared to 
 him who has ears; a heaven, a true Olympus, is revealed to 
 him who has eyes; heed, then, and listen.” 
 
 And with all the earnestness of a man believing ardently 
 himself, and zealous to convert, the Nazarene poured forth to 
 Apecides the assurances of Scriptural promise. He spoke 
 first of the sufferings and miracles of Christ; he wept as he 
 spoke: he turned next to the glories of the Saviour’s ascen- 
 sion, —to the clear predictions of Revelation. He described 
 that pure and unsensual heaven destined to the virtuous, — 
 those fires and torments that were the doom of guilt. 
 
 The doubts which spring up to the mind of later reasoners, 
 in the immensity of the sacrifice of God to man, were not such 
 as would occur to an early heathen. He had been accustomed 
 to believe that the gods had lived upon earth, and taken upon 
 themselves the forms of men; had shared in human passions, 
 in human labors, and in human misfortunes. What was the 
 travail of his own Alemena’s son, whose altars now smoked 
 with the incense of countless cities, but a toil for the human 
 race? Had not the great Dorian Apollo expiated a mystic 
 sin by descending to the grave? Those who were the deities 
 of heaven had been the lawgivers or benefactors on earth, and 
 gratitude had led to worship. It seemed therefore to the 
 heathen a doctrine neither new nor strange that Christ had 
 been sent from heaven, that an immortal had indued mortality, 
 and tasted the bitterness of death. And the end for which He 
 thus toiled and thus suffered,— how far more glorious did it 
 seem to Apezcides than that for which the deities of old had 
 visited the nether world, and passed through the gates of 
 death! Was it not worthy of a God to descend to these dim 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 179 
 
 valleys, in order to clear up the clouds gathered over the dark 
 mount beyond; to satisfy the doubts of sages; to convert 
 speculation into certainty ; by example to point out the rules 
 of life; by revelation to solve the enigma of the grave; and 
 to prove that the soul did not yearn in vain when it dreamed 
 of an immortality ? In this last was the great argument of 
 those lowly men destined to convert the earth. As nothing is 
 more flattering to the pride and the hopes of man than the 
 belief in a future state, so nothing could be more vague and con- 
 fused than the notions of the heathen sages upon that mystic 
 subject. Apzecides had already learned that the faith of the 
 philosophers was not that of the herd; that if they secretly 
 professed a creed in some diviner power, it was not the creed 
 which they thought it wise to impart to the community. He 
 had already learned that even the priest ridiculed what he 
 preached to the people; that the notions of the few and the 
 many were never united. But in this new faith it seemed to 
 him that philosopher, priest, and people, the expounders of the 
 religion and its followers, were alike accordant: they did not 
 speculate and debate upon immortality, they spoke of it as a 
 thing certain and assured; the magnificence of the promise 
 dazzled him; its consolations soothed. For the Christian faith 
 made its early converts among sinners; many of its fathers 
 and its martyrs were those who had felt the bitterness of vice, 
 and who were therefore no longer tempted by its false aspect 
 from the paths of an austere and uncompromising virtue. All 
 the assurances of this healing faith invited to repentance; 
 they were peculiarly adapted to the bruised and sore of spirit ; 
 the very remorse which Apecides felt for his late excesses 
 made him incline to one who found holiness in that remorse, 
 and who whispered of the joy in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth. 
 
 “Come,” said the Nazarene, as he perceived the effect he 
 had produced, “ come to the humble hall in which we meet, — a 
 select and a chosen few; listen there to our prayers; note the 
 sincerity of our repentant tears; mingle in our simple sacri- 
 fice, — not of victims, nor of garlands, but offered by white-robed 
 thoughts upon the altar of the heart... The flowers that we 
 
180 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 lay there are imperishable; they bloom over us when we are - 
 no more ; nay, they accompany us beyond the grave, they spring 
 up beneath our feet in heaven, they delight us with an eternal 
 odor ; for they are of the soul; they partake of its nature : these 
 offerings are temptations overcome and sins repented. Come, 
 oh, come! lose not another moment ; prepare already for the 
 great, the awful journey from darkness to light, from sorrow 
 to bliss, from corruption to immortality! This is the day of the 
 Lord the Son, a day that we have set apart for our devotions. 
 Though we meet usually at night, yet some among us are gath- 
 ered together even now. What joy, what triumph, will be with 
 us all, if we can bring one stray lamb into the sacred fold!” 
 There seemed to Apecides, so naturally pure of heart, some- 
 thing ineffably generous and benign in that spirit of conver- 
 sion which animated Olinthus, —a spirit that found its own 
 bliss in the happiness of others ; that sought in its wide soci- 
 ality to make companions for eternity. He was touched, 
 softened, and subdued. He was not in that mood which can 
 bear to be left alone; curiosity, too, mingled with his purer 
 stimulants; he was anxious to see those rites of which so 
 many dark and contradictory rumors were afloat. He paused 
 a moment, looked over his garb, thought of Arbaces, shud- 
 dered with horror, lifted his eyes to the broad brow of the 
 Nazarene, intent, anxious, watchful, — but for hzs benefit, for 
 his salvation! He drew his cloak round him, so as wholly to 
 conceal his robes, and said, ‘Lead on; I follow thee.” 
 Olinthus pressed his hand joyfully, and then descending to 
 the river side, hailed one of the boats that plied there con- 
 stantly ; they entered it; an awning overhead, while it shel- 
 tered them from the sun, screened also their persons from 
 observation: they rapidly skimmed the wave. From one of 
 the boats that passed them floated a soft music, and its prow 
 was decorated with flowers; it was gliding towards the sea. 
 “So,” said Olinthus, sadly, “unconscious and mirthful in 
 their delusions, sail the votaries of luxury into the great ocean 
 of storm and shipwreck! We pass them, silent and unnoticed, 
 to gain the land.” 
 Apecides, lifting his eyes, caught through the aperture in 
 
. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPET.. 181 
 
 the awning a glimpse of the face of one of the inmates of that 
 gay bark: it was the face of Ione. The lovers were embarked 
 on the excursion at which we have been made present. The 
 priest sighed, and once more sank back upon his seat. They 
 reached the shore where, in the suburbs, an alley of small and 
 mean houses stretched towards the bank; they dismissed the 
 boat, landed, and Olinthus, preceding the priest, threaded the 
 labyrinth of lanes, and arrived at last at the closed door of 
 a habitation somewhat larger than its neighbors. He knocked 
 thrice: the door was opened and closed again, as Apecides 
 followed his guide across the threshold. 
 
 They passed a deserted atrium, and gained an inner cham- 
 ber of moderate size, which, when the door was closed, re- 
 ceived its only light from a small window cut over the door 
 itself. But, halting at the threshold of this chamber, and 
 knocking at the door, Olinthus said, “ Peace be with you!” 
 A voice from within returned, “ Peace with whom?” “The 
 Faithful!” answered Olinthus, and the door opened; twelve 
 or fourteen persons were sitting in a semicircle, silent, and 
 seemingly absorbed in thought, and opposite to a crucifix 
 rudely carved in wood. 
 
 They lifted up their eyes when Olinthus entered, without 
 speaking; the Nazarene himself, before he accosted them, 
 knelt suddenly down, and by his moving lips, and his eyes 
 fixed steadfastly on the crucifix, Apeecides saw that he prayed 
 inly. This rite performed, Olinthus turned to the congre- 
 gation. “Men and brethren,” said he, “start not to behold 
 amongst you a priest of Isis: he hath sojourned with the 
 blind, but the Spirit hath fallen on him; he desires to see, to 
 hear, and to understand.” 
 
 “ Let him,’ said one of the assembly ; and Apsecides beheld 
 in the speaker a man still younger than himself, of a counte- 
 nance equally worn and pallid, of an eye which equally spoke 
 of the restless and fiery operations of a working mind. 
 
 “ Let him,” repeated a second voice; and he who thus spoke 
 was in the prime of manhood. His bronzed skin and Asiatic 
 features bespoke him a son of Syria: he had been a robber in 
 his youth, 
 
182 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Let him,” said a third voice; and the priest, again turning 
 to regard the speaker, saw an old man with a long gray beard 
 whom he recognized as a slave to the wealthy Diomed. 
 
 “Let him,” repeated simultaneously the rest, —men who, 
 with two exceptions, were evidently of the inferior ranks. In 
 these exceptions, Apecides noted an officer of the guard and 
 an Alexandrian merchant. 
 
 “We do not,” recommenced Olinthus, “we do not bind you 
 to secrecy ; we impose on you no oaths (as some of our weaker 
 brethren would do) not to betray us. It is true, indeed, that 
 there is no absolute law against us; but the multitude, more 
 savage than their rulers, thirst for our lives. So, my friends, 
 when Pilate would have hesitated, it was the people who 
 shouted, ‘Christ to the Cross!’ But we bind you not to our 
 safety —no! Betray us to the crowd! impeach, calumniate, 
 malign us if you will! we are above death; we should walk 
 cheerfully to the den of the lion or the rack of the torturer; 
 we can. trample down the darkness of the grave, and what is 
 death to a criminal is eternity to the Christian.” 
 
 A low and applauding murmur ran through the assembly. 
 
 .“Thou comest amongst us as an examiner, mayest thou 
 remain a convert! Our religion? You behold it, —yon cross 
 our sole image, yon scroll the mysteries of our Cere and Eleu- 
 sis! Our morality ? Itis in our lives! Sinners we all have 
 been; who now can accuse us of acrime? We have baptized 
 ourselves from the past. Think not that this is of us, it is of 
 God. Approach, Medon,” beckoning to the old slave who had 
 spoken third for the admission of Apecides, “thou art the 
 sole man amongst us who is not free. But in heaven the 
 last shall be first: so with us. Unfold your scroll, read, and 
 explain.” 
 
 Useless would it be for us to accompany the lecture of 
 . Medon or the comments of the congregation. Familiar now 
 are those doctrines, then strange and new. Eighteen centuries 
 have left us little to expound upon the lore of Scripture or the 
 life of Christ. To us, too, there would seem little congenial in 
 the doubts that occurred to a heathen priest, and little learned 
 in the answers they received from men uneducated, rude, and 
 
“THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 183 
 
 simple, possessing only the knowledge that they were greater 
 than they seemed. 
 
 There was one thing that greatly touched the Neapolitan. 
 When the lecture was concluded, they heard a very gentle 
 knock at the door: the password was given, and replied to; 
 the door opened, and two young children, the eldest of whom 
 might have told its seventh year, entered timidly; they were 
 the children of the master of the house, that dark and hardy 
 Syrian, whose youth had been spent in pillage and bloodshed. 
 The eldest of the congregation (it was that old slave) opened 
 to them his arms; they fled to the shelter, they crept to his 
 breast, and his hard features smiled as he caressed them. And 
 then these bold and fervent men, nursed in vicissitude, beaten 
 by the rough winds of hfe,— men of mailed and impervious 
 fortitude, ready to affront a world, prepared for torment and 
 armed for death, —men who presented all imaginable contrast 
 to the weak nerves, the light hearts, the tender fragility of 
 childhood, crowded round the infants, smoothing their rugged 
 brows and composing their bearded lips to kindly and fostering 
 smiles; and then the old man opened the scroll, and he taught 
 the infants to repeat after him that beautiful prayer which we 
 still dedicate to the Lord and still teach to our children; and 
 then he told them in simple phrase, of God’s love to the 
 young, and how not a sparrow falls but His eye sees it. This 
 lovely custom of infant initiation was long cherished by the 
 early Church, in memory of the words which said, “Suffer lit- 
 tle children to come unto me, and forbid them not;” and was 
 perhaps the origin of the superstitious calumny which ascribed 
 to the Nazarenes the crime which the Nazarene, when victo- 
 rious, attributed to the Jew; namely, the decoying children to 
 hideous rites, at which they were secretly immolated. 
 
 And the stern paternal penitent seemed to feel in the inno- 
 cence of his children a return into early life, —life ere yet it 
 sinned: he followed the motion of their young lips with an 
 earnest gaze; he smiled as they repeated, with hushed and 
 reverent looks, the holy words; and when the lesson was done, 
 and they ran, released, and gladly to his knee, he clasped them 
 to his breast, kissed them again and again, and tears flowed 
 
184 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 fast down his cheek, — tears, of which it would have been im- 
 possible to trace the source, so mingled they were with joy 
 and sorrow, penitence and hate, — remorse for himself and iove 
 for them! 
 
 Something, I say, there was in this scene which peculiarly 
 affected Apzecides; and, in truth, it is difficult to conceive a 
 ceremony more appropriate to the religion of benevolence, 
 more appealing to the household and every-day affections, 
 striking a more sensitive chord in the human breast. 
 
 It was at this time that an inner door opened gently, and a 
 very old man entered the chamber, leaning on a staff. At his 
 presence the whole congregation rose; there was an expression 
 of deep, affectionate respect upon every countenance; and 
 Apeecides, gazing on his countenance, felt attracted towards 
 him by an irresistible sympathy. No man ever looked upon 
 that face without love; for there had dwelt the smile of the 
 Deity, the incarnation of divinest love: and the glory of the 
 smile had never passed away. 
 
 “My children, God be with you!” said the old man, stretch- 
 ing his arms; and as he spoke the infants ran to his knee. 
 He sat down, and they nestled fondly to his bosom. It was 
 beautiful to see that mingling of the extremes of life, — the 
 rivers gushing from their early source, the majestic stream 
 gliding to the ocean of eternity! As the light of declining 
 day seems to mingle earth and heaven, making the outline 
 of each scarce visible, and blending the harsh mountain-tops 
 with the sky, even so did the smile of that benign old age ap- 
 pear to hallow the aspect of those around, to blend together 
 the strong distinctions of varying years, and to diffuse over 
 infancy and manhood the light of that heaven into which it 
 must so soon vanish and be lost. 
 
 ‘ Father,” said Olinthus, “thou on whose form the miracle 
 of the Redeemer worked, thou who wert snatched from the 
 grave to become the living witness of His mercy and His 
 power, behold! a stranger in our meeting, —a new lamb gath- 
 ered to the fold!” } 
 
 “Let me bless him,” said the old man: the throng gave way. 
 Apecides approached him as by an instinct: he fell on his 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 185 
 
 knees before him; the old man laid his hand on the priest’s 
 head, and blessed him, but not aloud. As his hps moved, his 
 eyes were upturned, and tears —those tears that good men 
 only shed in the hope of happiness to another — flowed fast 
 down his cheeks. 
 
 The children were on either side of the convert; his heart 
 was theirs; he had become as one of them, to enter into the 
 kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE STREAM OF LOVE RUNS ON, — WHITHER? 
 
 Days are like years in the love of the young, when no bar, 
 no obstacle, is between their hearts; when the sun shines, 
 and the course runs smooth; when their love is prosperous and 
 confessed. Jone no longer concealed from Glaucus the attach- 
 ment she felt for him, and their talk now was only of their 
 love. Over the rapture of the present the hopes of the future 
 glowed like the heaven above the gardens of spring. They 
 went in their trustful thoughts far down the stream of time; 
 they laid out the chart of their destiny to come; they suffered 
 the light of to-day to suffuse the morrow. In the youth of 
 their hearts it seemed as if care, and change, and death were 
 as things unknown. Perhaps they loved each other the more 
 because the condition of the world left to Glaucus no aim and 
 no wish but love; because the distractions common in free 
 States to men’s affections existed not for the Athenian; be- 
 cause his country wooed him not to the bustle of civil life; 
 because ambition furnished no counterpoise to love: and 
 therefore over their schemes and their projects love only 
 reigned. In the iron age they imagined themselves of the 
 golden, doomed only to live and to love. 
 
 To the superficial observer, who interests himself only in 
 characters strongly marked and broadly colored, both the lov- 
 ers may seem of too slight and commonplace a mould: in the 
 delineation of characters purposely subdued, the reader some- 
 
186 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII.’ 
 
 times imagines that there is a want of character; perhaps, 
 indeed, I wrong the real nature of these two lovers by not 
 painting more impressively their stronger individualities. 
 But in dwelling so much on their bright and birdlike exist- 
 ence I am influenced almost insensibly by the forethought of 
 the changes that await them, and for which they were so ill- 
 prepared. It was this very softness and gayety of life that 
 contrasted most strongly the vicissitudes of their coming fate. 
 For the oak without fruit or blossom, whose hard and rugged 
 heart is fitted for the storm, there is less fear than for the 
 delicate branches of the myrtle and the laughing clusters of 
 the vine. 
 
 They had now advanced far into August; the next month 
 their marriage was fixed, and the threshold of Glaucus was 
 already wreathed with garlands; and nightly by the door of » 
 Ione he poured forth the rich libations. He existed no longer 
 for his gay companions; he was ever with Ione. In the morn- 
 ings they beguiled the sun with music: in the evenings they 
 forsook the crowded haunts of the gay for excursions on the 
 water, or along the fertile and vine-clad plains that lay beneath 
 the fatal mount of Vesuvius. The earth shook no more; the 
 lively Pompeians forgot even that there had gone forth so ter- 
 rible a warning of their approaching doom. Glaucus imagined 
 that convulsion, in the vanity of his heathen religion, an es- 
 pecial interposition of the gods, less in behalf of his own safety 
 than that of Ione. He offered up the sacrifices of gratitude at 
 the temples of his faith, and even the altar of Isis was covered 
 with his votive garlands; as to the prodigy of the animated 
 marble, he blushed at the effect it had produced on him. He 
 believed it, indeed, to have been wrought by the magic of man; 
 but the result convinced him that it betokened not the anger 
 of a goddess. 
 
 Of Arbaces, they heard only that he still lived: stretched on 
 the bed of suffering, he recovered slowly from the effect of the 
 shock he had sustained; he left the lovers unmolested, but it 
 was only to brood over the hour and the method of revenge. 
 
 Alike in their mornings at the house of Ione, and in their 
 evening excursions, Nydia was usually their constant, and 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 187 
 
 often their sole companion. They did not guess the secret 
 fires which consumed her: the abrupt freedom with which 
 she mingled in their conversation, her capricious and often 
 her peevish moods found ready indulgence in the recollection 
 of the service they owed her, and their compassion for her 
 affliction. ‘They felt an interest in her, perhaps the greater 
 and more affectionate from the very strangeness and way- 
 wardness of her nature, her singular alternations of passion 
 and softness, the mixture of ignorance and genius, of delicacy 
 and rudeness, of the quick humors of the child and the 
 proud calmness of the woman. Although she refused to 
 accept of freedom, she was constantly suffered to be free; she 
 went where she listed: no curb was put either on her words 
 or actions; they felt for one so darkly fated,.and so suscepti- 
 ble of every wound, the same pitying and compliant indulgence 
 the mother feels for a spoiled and sickly child, dreading to 
 impose authority, even where they imagined it for her benefit. 
 She availed herself of this license by refusing the companion- 
 ship of the slave whom they wished to attend her. With the 
 slender staff by which she guided her steps, she went now, as 
 in her former unprotected state, along the populous streets ; 
 it was almost miraculous to perceive how quickly and how 
 dexterously she threaded every crowd, avoiding every danger, 
 and could find her benighted way through the most intricate 
 windings of the city. But her chief delight was still in visit- 
 ing the few feet of ground which made the garden of Glaucus, 
 — in tending the flowers that at least repaid her love. Some- 
 times she entered the chamber where he sat, and sought a 
 conversation, which she nearly always broke off abruptly, for 
 conversation with Glaucus only tended to one subject, Jone ; 
 and that name from his lips inflicted agony upon her, Often 
 she bitterly repented the service she had rendered to Ione; 
 often she said inly, “If she had fallen, Glaucus could have 
 loved her no longer;” and then dark and fearful thoughts 
 crept into her breast. 
 
 She had not experienced fully the trials that were in store 
 for her when she had been thus generous. She had never 
 before been present when Glaucus and Ione were together; 
 
188 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL. 
 
 she had never heard that voice so kind to her, so much softer 
 to another. The shock that crushed her heart with the tidings 
 that Glaucus loved, had at first only saddened and benumbed. 
 By degrees jealousy took a wilder and fiercer shape: it par- 
 took of hatred; it whispered revenge. As you see the wind 
 only agitate the green leaf upon the bough, while the leaf 
 which has lain withered and seared on the ground, bruised 
 and trampled upon till the sap and lfe are gone, is suddenly . 
 whirled aloft, now here, now there, without stay and without 
 rest, so the love which visits the happy ana the hopeful 
 hath but freshness on its wings: its violence is but sportive. 
 But the heart that hath fallen from the green things of life, 
 that is without hope, that hath no summer in its fibres, is 
 torn and whirled by the same wind that but caresses its breth- 
 ren; it hath no bough to cling to; it is dashed from path to 
 path, till the winds fall, and it is crushed into the mire 
 forever. 
 
 The friendless childhood of Nydia had hardened prema- 
 turely her character; perhaps the heated scenes of profligacy 
 through which she had passed, seemingly unscathed, had 
 ripened her passions, though they had not sullied her purity. 
 The orgies of Burbo might only have disgusted, the banquets 
 of the Egyptian might only have terrified, at the moment; 
 but the winds that pass unheeded over the soil leave seeds 
 behind them. As darkness, too, favors the imagination, so, 
 perhaps, her very blindness contributed to feed with wild and 
 delirious visions the love of the unfortunate girl. The voice 
 of Glaucus had been the first that had sounded musically to 
 her ear; his kindness made a deep impression upon her 
 mind; when he had left Pompeii in the former year, she had 
 treasured up in her heart every word he had uttered; and 
 when any one told her that this friend and patron of the 
 poor flower-girl was the most brilliant and the most graceful 
 of the young revellers of Pompeii, she had felt a pleasing 
 pride in nursing his recollection. Even the task which she 
 imposed upon herself, of tending his flowers, served to keep 
 him in her mind; she associated him with all that was most 
 charming to her impressions; and when she had refused to 
 
- THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. . 189 
 
 express what image she fancied Ione to resemble, it was 
 partly, perhaps, that whatever was bright and soft in nature 
 she had already combined with the thought of Glaucus. If 
 any of my readers ever loved at an age which they would now 
 smile to remember, an age in which fancy forestalled the 
 reason, — let them say whether that love, among all its strange 
 and complicated delicacies, was not, above all other and later 
 passions, susceptible of jealousy? I seek not here the cause; 
 I know that it is commonly the fact. 
 
 When Glaucus returned to Pompeii, Nydia had told another 
 year of life; that year, with its sorrows, its loneliness, its 
 trials, had greatly developed her mind and heart: and when 
 the Athenian drew her unconsciously to his breast, deeming 
 her still in soul asin years a child, when he kissed her 
 smooth cheek, and wound his arm round her trembling frame, 
 Nydia felt suddenly, and as by revelation, that those feelings 
 she had long and innocently cherished were of love. Doomed 
 to be rescued from tyranny by Glaucus, doomed to take shelter 
 under his roof, doomed to breathe, but for so brief a time, the 
 same air, and doomed in the first rush of a thousand happy, 
 erateful, delicious sentiments of an overflowing heart, to hear 
 that he loved another; to be commissioned to that other, the 
 messenger, the minister; to feel all at once that utter noth- 
 ingness which she was, which she ever must be, but which, till 
 then, her young mind had not taught her, —that utter noth- 
 ingness to him who was all to her, — what wonder that in her 
 wild and passionate soul all the elements jarred discordant ; 
 that if love reigned over the whole, it was not the love which 
 is born of the more sacred and soft emotions? Sometimes 
 she dreaded only lest Glaucus should discover her secret; 
 sometimes she felt indignant that it was not suspected; it 
 was a sign of contempt; could he imagine that she pre- 
 sumed so far? Her feelings to Ione ebbed and flowed with 
 every hour: now she loved her because he did ; now she hated 
 her for the same cause. There were moments when she could 
 have murdered her unconscious mistress ; moments when she 
 could have laid down life for her. These fierce and tremu- 
 lous alternations of passion were too severe to be borne long. 
 
190 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Her health gave way, though she felt it not; her cheek paled, 
 her step grew feebler, tears came to her eyes more often and 
 relieved her less. 
 
 One morning, when she repaired to her usual task in the 
 garden of the Athenian, she found Glacus under the columns 
 of the peristyle, with a merchant of the town; he was select- 
 ing jewels for his destined bride. He had already fitted up 
 her apartment; the jewels he bought that day were placed 
 also within it; they were never fated to grace the fair 
 form of Ione; they may be seen at this day among the dis- 
 interred treasures of Pompeii, in the chambers of the studio at 
 Naples.? 
 
 “Come hither, Nydia; put down thy vase, and come hither. 
 Thou must take this chain from me; stay ; there, I have put it 
 on. There, Servilius, does it not become her?” 
 
 ‘Wonderfully !” answered the jeweller ; for jewellers were 
 well-bred and flattering men, even at that day. “ But when 
 these earrings glitter in the ears of the noble Ione, then, 
 by Bacchus! you will see whether my art adds anything to 
 beauty.” 
 
 “Tone?” repeated Nydia, who had hitherto acknowledged 
 by smiles and blushes the gift of Glaucus. 
 
 “Yes,” replied the Athenian, carelessly toying with the 
 gems; “TI am choosing a present for Ione, but there are none 
 worthy of her.” 
 
 He was startled as he spoke by an abrupt gesture of Nydia; 
 she tore the chain violently from her neck, and dashed it on 
 the ground. 
 
 “How is this? What, Nydia, dost thou not like the 
 bauble? Art thou offended ?” 
 
 “You treat me ever as a slave and as a child,” replied the 
 Thessalian, with a breast heaving with ill-suppressed sobs; 
 and she turned hastily away to the opposite corner of the 
 garden. 
 
 Glaucus did not attempt to follow, or to soothe; he was 
 offended : he continued to examine the jewels and to comment 
 on their fashion; to object to this and to praise that, and 
 
 1 Several bracelets, chains, and jewels, were found in the house. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 191 
 
 finally to be talked by the merchant into buying all, — the 
 safest plan for a lover, and a plan that any one will do right 
 to adopt, provided always that he can obtain an Ione! 
 
 When he had completed his purchase and dismissed the 
 jeweller, he retired into his chamber, dressed, mounted his 
 chariot, and went to Ione. He thought no more of the blind 
 girl or her offence; he had forgotten both the one and the 
 other. 
 
 He spent the forenoon with his beautiful Neapolitan, re- 
 paired thence to the baths, supped (if, as we have said before, 
 we can justly so translate the three o’clock cena of the Ro- 
 mans) alone, and abroad, for Pompeii had its restaurateurs : 
 and returning home to change his dress ere he again repaired 
 to the house of fone, he passed the peristyle, but with the 
 absorbed reverie and absent eyes of a man in love, and did 
 not note the form of the poor blind girl, bending exactly in 
 the same place where he had left her. But though he saw 
 her not, her ear recognized at once the sound of his step. 
 She had been counting the moments to his return. He had 
 scarcely entered his favorite chamber, which opened on the 
 peristyle, and seated himself musingly on his couch, when 
 he felt his robe timorously touched, and turning, he beheld 
 Nydia kneeling before him, and holding up to him a handful 
 of flowers, —a gentle and appropriate peace-offering ; her eyes, 
 darkly upheld to his own, streamed with tears. 
 
 ‘“‘T have offended thee,” said she, sobbing, “and for the first 
 time. I would die rather than cause thee a moment’s pain: say 
 that thou wilt forgive me. See! I have taken up the chain; I 
 have put it on; I will never part from it: it is thy gift.” 
 
 “My dear Nydia,” returned Glaucus, and raising her, he 
 kissed her forehead, “think of it no more! But why, my 
 child, wert thou so suddenly angry ? I could not divine the 
 cause 7” 
 
 “Do not ask!” said she, coloring violently. “I am a thing 
 full of faults and humors; you know I am but a child; you 
 say so often: is it from a child that you can expect a reason 
 for every folly?” 
 
 “But, prettiest, you will soon be a child no more; and if 
 
192 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 you would have us treat you as a woman you must learn to 
 govern these singular impulses and gales of passion. Think 
 not I chide: no, it is for your happiness only I speak.” 
 
 “Ttis true,” said Nydia, “I must learn to govern myself. 
 I must hide, I must suppress, my heart. This is a woman’s 
 task and duty ; methinks her virtue is hypocrisy.” 
 
 “Self-control is not deceit, my Nydia,” returned the Athe- 
 nian; “and that is the virtue necessary alike to man and to 
 woman ; it is the true senatorial toga, the badge of the dignity 
 it covers.” 
 
 “ Self-control! self-control! Well, well, what you say is 
 right! When I listen to you, Glaucus, my wildest thoughts 
 grow calm and sweet, and a delicious serenity falls over me. 
 Advise, ah, guide me ever, my preserver !” 
 
 “Thy affectionate heart will be thy best guide, Nydia, when 
 thou hast learned to regulate its feelings.” 
 
 “ Ah! that will be never,” sighed Nydia, wiping away her 
 tears. 
 
 “Say not so: the first effort is the only difficult one.” 
 
 “T have made many first efforts,” answered Nydia, inno- 
 cently. “But you, my Mentor, do you find it so easy to con- 
 trol yourself ? Can you conceal, can you even regulate your 
 love for Ione ? ” 
 
 “Love! dear Nydia: ah! that 1s quite another matter,” 
 answered the young preceptor. 
 
 “T thought so,” returned Nydia, with a melancholy smile. 
 “ Glaucus, wilt thou take my poor flowers? Do with them as 
 thou wilt: thou canst give them to Ione,” added she, with a 
 little hesitation. 
 
 “Nay, Nydia,” answered Glaucus, kindly, divining some- 
 thing of jealousy in her language, though he imagined it only 
 the jealousy of a vain and susceptible child, “I will not give 
 thy pretty flowers to any one. Sit here and weave them into 
 a garland; I will wear it this night: it is not the first those 
 delicate fingers have woven for me.” 
 
 The poor girl deightedly sat down beside Glaucus. She 
 drew from her girdle a ball of the many-colored threads, or 
 rather slender ribbons, used in the weaving of garlands, and 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 193 
 
 which (for it was her professional occupation) she carried 
 constantly with her, and began quickly and gracefully to 
 commence her task. Upon her young cheeks the tears were 
 already dried; a faint but happy smile played round her lips; 
 childlike, indeed, she was sensible only of the joy of the pres- 
 ent; she was reconciled to Glaucus; he had forgiven her; she 
 was beside him; he played caressingly with her silken hair; 
 his breath fanned her cheek ; Ione, the cruel Ione, was not by ; 
 none other demanded, divided, his care. Yes, she was happy 
 and forgetful; 1t was one of the few moments in her brief 
 and troubled life that it was sweet to treasure, to recall. 
 As the butterfly, allured by the winter sun, basks for a little 
 while in the: sudden light ere yet the wind awakes and the 
 frost comes on, which shall blast it before the eve, she rested 
 beneath a beam, which, by contrast with the wonted skies, was 
 not chilling; and the instinct which should have warned her 
 of its briefness, bade her only gladden in its smile. 
 
 “Thou hast beautiful locks,” said Glaucus. “They were 
 once, I ween well, a mother’s delight.” 
 
 Nydia sighed; it would seem that she had not been born a 
 slave; but she ever shunned the mention of her parentage, 
 and, whether obscure or noble, certain it is that her birth was 
 never known by her benefactors, nor by any one in those 
 distant shores, even to the last. The child of sorrow and 
 of mystery, she came and went as some bird that enters 
 our chamber for a moment; we see it flutter for a while 
 before us: we know not whence it flew or to what region it 
 escapes. | 
 
 Nydia sighed, and after a short pause, without answering 
 the remark, said, — 
 
 “But do I weave too many roses in my wreath, Glaucus ? 
 They tell me it is thy favorite flower.” 
 
 “ And ever favored, my Nydia, be it by those who have the 
 soul of poetry: it is the flower of love, of festivals; it is also 
 the flower we dedicate to silence and to death; it blooms on 
 our brows in life, while hfe be worth the having; it is scat- 
 tered above our sepulchre when we are no more.” 
 
 “Ah! would,’ said Nydia, “instead of this perishable 
 
 VOL, 1.— 13 
 
194 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 wreath, that I could take thy web from the hand of the Fates, 
 and insert the roses there!” 
 
 “Pretty one! thy wish is worthy of a voice so attuned to 
 song: it is uttered in the spirit of song; and, whatever my 
 doom, I thank thee.” 
 
 “ Whatever thy doom! Is it not already destined to all 
 things bright and fair? My wish was vain. The Fates will 
 be as tender to thee as I should.” 
 
 “Jt might not be so, Nydia, were it not for love! While 
 youth lasts, [ may forget my country fora while. But what 
 Athenian, in his graver manhood, can think of Athens as she 
 was, and be contented that he is happy, while she is fallen, — 
 fallen, and forever ? ” 
 
 “ And why forever ? ” 
 
 “ As ashes cannot be rekindled, as love once dead can never 
 revive, so freedom departed from a people is never regained. 
 But talk we not of these matters unsuited to thee.” 
 
 “To me! oh, thou errest! I, too, have my sighs for Greece ; 
 my cradle was rocked at the foot of Olympus; the gods have 
 left the mountain, but their traces may be seen, -— seen in the 
 hearts of their worshippers, seen in the beauty of their clime; 
 they tell me it ¢s beautiful, and Z have felt its airs, to which 
 even these are harsh, —its sun, to which these skies are chill. 
 Oh, talk to me of Greece! Poor fool that Iam, I can com- 
 prehend thee! and methinks, had I yet lingered on those 
 shores, had I been a Grecian maid whose happy fate it was to 
 love and to be loved, I myself could have armed my lover for 
 another Marathon, a new Platzea. Yes, the hand that now 
 weaves the roses should have woven thee the olive crown!” 
 
 “Tf such a day could come!” said Glaucus, catching the 
 enthusiasm of the blind Thessalian, and half rising. ‘“ But 
 no! The sun has set, and the night only bids us be forgetful, 
 and in forgetfulness be gay: weave still the roses !” 
 
 But it was with a melancholy tone of forced gayety that the 
 Athenian uttered the last words: and sinking into a gloomy 
 reverie, he was only wakened from it,a few minutes after- 
 wards, by the voice of Nydia, as she sang in a low tone the 
 following words, which he had once taught her : — 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 195 
 ( 
 
 THE APOLOGY FOR PLEASURE. 
 
 Xs 
 
 Who will assume the bays 
 That the hero wore ? 
 Wreaths on the Tomb of Days 
 Gone evermore! 
 Who shall disturb the brave, 
 Or one leaf on their holy grave ? 
 The laurel is vowed to them, 
 Leave the bay on its sacred stem! 
 But this, the rose, the fading rose, 
 Alike for slave and freeman grows. 
 
 il. 
 
 If Memory sit beside the dead 
 With tombs her only treasure ; 
 If Hope is lost and Freedom fled, 
 The more excuse for Pleasure. 
 Come, weave the wreath, the roses weave, 
 The rose at least is ours: 
 To feeble hearts our fathers leave, 
 In pitying scorn the flowers! 
 
 III. 
 
 On the summit worn and hoary, 
 Of Phyle’s solemn hill, 
 The tramp of the brave is still! 
 And still in the saddening Mart, 
 The pulse of that mighty heart, 
 Whose very blood was glory! 
 Glaucopis forsakes her own, 
 The angry gods forget us; 
 But yet, the blue streams along, 
 Walk the feet of the silver Song ; 
 And the night-bird wakes the moon; 
 And the bees in the blushing noon 
 Haunt the heart of the old Hymettus. 
 Weare fallen, but not forlorn, 
 If something is left to cherish ; 
 As Love was the earliest born, 
 So Love is the last to perish. 
 
196 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 Iv. 
 
 Wreathe then the roses, wreathe, 
 The BEAUTIFUL still is ours; 
 While the stream shall flow and the sky shall glow, 
 The BEAvTIFUL still is ours! 
 Whatever is fair, or soft, or bright, 
 In the lap of day or the arms of night, 
 Whispers our soul of Greece — of Greece, 
 And hushes our care with a voice of peace. 
 Wreathe then the roses, wreathe ! 
 They tell me of earlier hours ; 
 And I hear the heart of my country breathe 
 From the lips of the stranger’s flowers. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 NYDIA ENCOUNTERS JULIA. —INTERVIEW OF THE HEATHEN 
 SISTER AND CONVERTED BROTHER. — AN ATHENIAN’S NOTION 
 OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 “ Wuat happiness to Ione! what bliss to be ever by the side 
 of Glaucus, to hear his voice! And she too can see him! ” 
 
 Such was the soliloquy of the blind girl, as she walked 
 alone and at twilight to the house of her new mistress, whither 
 Glaucus had already preceded her. Suddenly she was inter- 
 rupted in her fond thoughts by a female voice. 
 
 “Blind flower-girl, whither goest thou? ‘There is no pan- 
 nier under thine arm; hast thou sold all thy flowers ? ” 
 
 The person thus accosting Nydia was a lady of a hand- 
 some but a bold and unmaidenly countenance: it was Julia, 
 the daughter of Diomed. Her veil was half raised as she 
 spoke; she was accompanied by Diomed himself, and by a 
 slave carrying a lantern before them: the merchant and his 
 daughter were returning home from a supper at one of their 
 neighbors’. 
 
 “Dost thou not remember my voice?” continued Julia, 
 “T am the daughter of Diomed the wealthy.” 
 
* THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 197 
 
 “Ah! forgive me; yes, I recall the tones of your voice. 
 No, noble Julia, I have no flowers to sell.” 
 
 “T heard that thou wert purchased by the beautiful Greek, 
 Glaucus ; is that true, pretty slave ?” asked Julia. 
 
 “T serve the Neapolitan, Ione,’ rephed Nydia, evasively. 
 
 “Ah! and it is true, then —” 
 
 “Come, come!” interrupted Diomed, with his cloak up to 
 his mouth, “the night grows cold; I cannot stay here while 
 you prate to that blind girl. Come, let her follow you home, 
 if you wish to speak to her.” 
 
 “ Do, child,” said Julia, with the air of one not accustomed 
 to be refused; “I have much to ask of thee: come.” 
 
 “T cannot this night, it grows late,” answered Nydia. “T 
 must be at home; I am not free, noble Julia.” 
 
 “What, the meek Ione will chide thee? Ay, I doubt not 
 she is a second Thalestris. But come, then, to-morrow, do. 
 Remember, I have been thy friend of old.” 
 
 “T will obey thy wishes,” answered Nydia; and Diomed 
 again impatiently summoned his daughter. She was obliged 
 to proceed, with the main question she had desired to put to 
 Nydia unasked. 
 
 Meanwhile we return to Ione. The interval of time that 
 had elapsed that day between the first and second visit of 
 Glaucus had not been too gayly spent. She had received a 
 visit from her brother. Since the night he had assisted 
 in saving her from the Egyptian, she had not before seen 
 him. 
 
 Occupied with his own thoughts, —thoughts of so serious 
 and intense a nature,—the young priest had thought little 
 of his sister; in truth, men perhaps of that fervent order of 
 mind which is ever aspiring above earth, are but little prone 
 to the earthlier affections; and it had been long since Apecides 
 had sought those soft and friendly interchanges of thought, 
 those sweet confidences which in his earlier youth had bound 
 him to Ione, and which are so natural to that endearing con- 
 nection which existed between them. 
 
 Ione, however, had not ceased to regret his estrangement. 
 She attributed it at present to the engrossing duties of his 
 
198 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 severe fraternity. And often, amidst all her bright hopes, 
 and her new attachment to her betrothed, — often, when she 
 thought of her brother’s brow prematurely furrowed, his un- 
 smiling lip and bended frame, — she sighed to think that the 
 service of the gods could throw so deep a shadow over that 
 earth which the gods created. 
 
 But this day when he visited her there was a strange calm- 
 ness on his features, a more quiet and self-possessed expres- 
 sion in his sunken eyes, than she had marked for years. This 
 apparent improvement was but momentary; it was a false 
 calm, which the least breeze could ruffle. 
 
 “‘ May the gods bless thee, my brother!” said she, embracing 
 him. 
 
 “The gods! Speak not thus vaguely; perchance there is 
 but one God!” 
 
 “‘ My brother !” 
 
 “What if the sublime faith of the Nazarene be true? 
 What if God be a monarch, — One, Invisible, Alone? What 
 if these numerous, countless deities, whose altars fill the earth, 
 be but evil demons, seeking to wean us from the true creed ? 
 This may be the case, Ione!” 
 
 “ Alas! can we believe it; or if we believed, would it not 
 be a melancholy faith ?” answered the Neapolitan. ‘“ What! 
 all this beautiful world made only human, the mountain 
 disenchanted of its Oread, the waters of their Nymph, that 
 beautiful prodigality of faith which makes everything divine, 
 consecrating the meanest flowers, bearing celestial whispers 
 in the faintest breeze, — wouldst thou deny this, and make the 
 earth mere dust and clay? No, Apecides ; all that is brightest 
 in our hearts is that very credulity which peoples the universe 
 with gods.” 
 
 Jone answered as a believer in the poesy of the old mythol- 
 ogy would answer. We may judge by that reply how obsti- 
 nate and hard the contest which Christianity had to endure 
 among the heathens. The Graceful Superstition was never 
 silent; every, the most household, action of their lives was 
 entwined with it; it was a portion of life itself, as the flowers 
 are a part of the thyrsus. At every incident they recurred to 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 199 
 
 & 
 
 a god; every cup of wine was prefaced by a libation ; the very 
 garlands on their thresholds were dedicated to some divinity; 
 their ancestors themselves, made holy, presided as Lares over 
 their hearth and hall. So abundant was belief with them, 
 that in their own climes at this hour idolatry has never thor- 
 oughly been outrooted. It changes but its objects of worship; 
 it appeals to innumerable saints where once it resorted to 
 divinities; and it pours its crowds, in listening reverence, to 
 oracles at the shrines of Saint Januarius or Saint Stephen 
 instead of to those of Isis or Apollo. 
 
 But these superstitions were not to the early Christians the 
 object of contempt so much as of horror. They did not believe, 
 with the quiet scepticism of the heathen philosopher, that 
 the gods were inventions of the priests; nor even, with the 
 vulgar, that, according to the dim light of history, they had 
 been mortals like themselves. They imagined the heathen 
 divinities to be evil spirits; they transplanted to Italy and 
 to Greece the gloomy demons of India and the East; and in 
 Jupiter or in Mars they shuddered at the representative of 
 Moloch or of Satan.? 
 
 Apeecides had not yet adopted formally the Christian faith, 
 but he was already on the brink of it. He already participated 
 the doctrines of Olinthus; he already imagined that the hvely 
 imaginations of the heathen were the suggestions of the arch- 
 enemy of mankind. The innocent and natural answer of Ione 
 made him shudder. He hastened to reply vehemently, and 
 yet so confusedly, that Ione feared for his reason more than 
 she dreaded his violence. 
 
 “Ah, my brother!” said she, “these hard duties of thine 
 have shattered thy very sense! Come to me, Apecides, my 
 brother, my own brother; give me thy hand, let me wipe the 
 
 1 In Pompeii a rough sketch of Pluto delineates that fearful deity in the 
 shape we at present ascribe to the devil, and decorates him with the parapher- 
 nalia of horns and a tail. But in all probability it was from the mysterious 
 Pan, the haunter of solitary places, the inspirer of vague and soul-shaking 
 terrors, that we took the vulgar notion of the outward likeness of the fiend ; 
 it corresponds exactly to the cloven-footed Satan. And in the lewd and profli- 
 
 gate rites of Pan, Christians might well imagine they traced the deceptions 
 of the devil. 
 
200 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 dew from thy brow; chide me not now, I understand thee 
 not; think only that Ione could not offend thee!” 
 
 “Tone,” said Apeecides, drawing her towards him, and 
 regarding her tenderly, “can I think that this beautiful 
 form, this kind heart, may be destined to an eternity of 
 torment ?” 
 
 “ Dii meliora/ [the gods forbid !] ” said Ione, in the customary 
 form of words by which her contemporaries thought an omen | 
 might be averted. 
 
 The words, and still more the superstition they implied, 
 wounded the ear of Apzcides. He rose, muttering to himself, 
 turned from the chamber, then, stopping half-way, gazed wist- 
 fully on Ione and extended his arms. 
 
 Tone flew to them in joy; he kissed her earnestly, and then 
 he said, — 
 
 “Farewell, my sister! When we next meet, thou mayst be 
 to me as nothing; take thou, then, this embrace, — full yet 
 of all the tender reminiscences of childhood, when faith and 
 hope, creeds, customs, interests, objects, were the same to us. 
 Now the tie is to be broken!” 
 
 With these strange words he left the house. 
 
 The great and severest trial of the primitive Christians was 
 indeed this: their conversion separated them from their dear- 
 est bonds. They could not associate with beings whose com- 
 monest actions, whose commonest forms of speech, were 
 impregnated with idolatry. They shuddered at the blessing of 
 love; to their ears it was uttered in ademon’s name. This, 
 their misfortune, was their strength; if it divided them from 
 the rest of the world, it was to unite them proportionally to 
 each other. They were men of iron, who wrought forth the 
 Word of God, and verily the bonds that bound them were 
 of iron also. 
 
 Glaucus found Ione in tears; he had already assumed the 
 sweet privilege to console. He drew from her a recital of her 
 interview with her brother; but in her confused account of 
 language, itself so confused to one not prepared for it, he was 
 equally at a loss with Ione to conceive the intentions or the 
 meaning of Apecides. 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 201 
 
 ‘Hast thou ever heard much,” asked she, “of this new sect 
 of the Nazarenes of which my brother spoke ?” 
 
 “T have often heard enough of the votaries,” returned 
 Glaucus; “but of their exact tenets know I naught, save that 
 in their doctrine there seemeth something preternaturally 
 chilling and morose. They live apart from their kind; they 
 affect to be shocked even at our simple uses of garlands; they 
 have no sympathies with the cheerful amusements of life; 
 they utter awful threats of the coming destruction of the 
 world; they appear, in one word, to have brought their un- 
 smiling and gloomy creed out of the cave of Trophonius. 
 Yet,” continued Glaucus, after a slight pause, “they have not 
 wanted men of great power and genius, nor converts, even 
 among the Areopagites of Athens. Well do I remember to 
 have heard my father speak of one strange guest at Athens, 
 many years ago; methinks his name was Paun. My father 
 was amongst a mighty crowd that gathered on one of our 
 immemorial hills to hear this sage of the East expound; 
 through the wide throng there rang not a single murmur; the 
 jest and the roar, with which our native orators are received, 
 were hushed for him; and when, on the loftiest summit of 
 that hill, raised above the breathless crowd below, stood this 
 mysterious visitor, his mien and his countenance awed every 
 heart, even before a sound left his lips. He was a man, I 
 have heard my father say, of no tall stature, but of noble and 
 impressive mien; his robes were dark and ample; the de. 
 clining sun — for it was evening — shone aslant upon his form 
 as it rose aloft, motionless and commanding; his countenance 
 was much worn and marked, as of one who had braved alike 
 misfortune and the sternest vicissitude of many climes; but 
 his eyes were bright with an almost unearthly fire; and when 
 he raised his arm to speak, it was with the majesty of a man 
 into whom the spirit of a god hath rushed. 
 
 “¢Men of Athens,’ he is reported to have said, ‘I find 
 amongst ye an altar with this inscription, To Tak UNKNOWN 
 Gop. Ye worship in ignorance the same Deity I serve. To 
 you unknown till now, to you be it now revealed.’ — 
 
 “Then declared that solemn man how this great Maker of 
 
coe 
 
 202 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 all things, who had appointed unto man his several tribes and 
 his various homes, the Lord of earth and the universal heaven, 
 dwelt not in temples made with hands; that His presence, His 
 spirit, were in the air we breathed; our life and our being 
 were with Him. ‘Think you,’ he cried, ‘that the Invisible is 
 like your statues of gold and marble? Think you that He 
 needeth sacrifice from you, — He who made heaven and earth ?’ 
 Then spake he of fearful and coming times, of the end of the ~ 
 world, of a second rising of the dead, whereof an assurance 
 had been given to man in the resurrection of the mighty Being 
 whose religion he came to preach. 
 
 “When he thus spoke, the long-pent murmur went forth, 
 and the philosophers that were mingled with the people mut- 
 tered their sage contempt; there might you have seen the 
 chilling frown of the Stoic and the Cynic’s sneer;? and the 
 Epicurean, who believeth not even in our own Elysium, mut- 
 tered a pleasant jest, and swept laughing through the crowd: 
 but the deep heart of the people was touched and thrilled; 
 and they trembled, though they knew not why, for verily the 
 stranger had the voice and majesty of a man to whom ‘the 
 Unknown God’ had committed the preaching of His faith.” 
 
 Tone listened with rapt attention, and the serious and earnest 
 manner of the narrator betrayed the impression that he him- 
 self had received from one who had been amongst the audience 
 that on the hill of the heathen Mars had heard the first tidings 
 of the word of Christ! | 
 
 1 “The haughty Cynic scowl’d his grovelling hate, 
 And the soft garden’s rose-encircled child — 
 Smil’d unbelief, and shudder’d as he smil’d.” 
 Pragep: Prize Poem, “ Athens.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 208 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE PORTER. — THE GIRL.— AND THE GLADIATOR. 
 
 THE door of Diomed’s house stood open, and Medon, the 
 old slave, sat at the bottom of the steps by which you as- 
 cended to the mansion. That luxurious mansion of the rich 
 merchant of Pompeii is still to be seen just without the gates 
 of the city, at the commencement of the Street of Tombs; it 
 was a gay neighborhood, despite the dead. On the opposite 
 side, but at some yards nearer the gate, was a spacious hos- 
 telry, at which those brought by business or by pleasure to 
 Pompeii often stopped to refresh themselves. In the space 
 before the entrance of the inn now stood wagons and carts 
 and chariots, some just arrived, some just quitting, in all the 
 bustle of an animated and popular resort of public entertain- 
 ment. Before the door, some farmers, seated on a bench by 
 a small circular table, were talking, over their morning cups, 
 on the affairs of their calling. On the side of the door itself 
 was painted gayly and freshly the eternal sign of the check- 
 erst By the roof of the inn stretched a terrace, on which 
 some females, wives of the farmers above mentioned, were, 
 some seated, some leaning over the railing, and conversing 
 with their friends below. In a deep recess, at a little dis- 
 tance, was a covered seat, in which some two or three poorer 
 travellers were resting themselves, and shaking the dust from 
 their garments. On the other side stretched a wide space, 
 originally the burial-ground of a more ancient race than the 
 present denizens of Pompeii, and now converted into the 
 Ustrinum, or place for the burning of the dead. Above this 
 rose the terraces of a gay villa, half hid by trees. The tombs 
 themselves, with their graceful and varied shapes, the flowers 
 and the foliage that surrounded them, made no melancholy 
 feature in the prospect. Hard by the gate of the city, ina 
 
 1 There is another inn within the walls similarly adorned. 
 
204 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 small niche, stood the still form of the well-disciplined Roman 
 sentry, the sun shining brightly on his polished crest, and the 
 lance on which he leaned. The gate itself was divided into 
 three arches, the centre one for vehicles, the others for the 
 foot-passengers ; and on either side rose the massive walls 
 which girt the city, composed, patched, repaired at a thousand 
 different epochs, according as war, time, or the earthquake 
 had shattered that vain protection. At frequent intervals rose 
 square towers, whose summits broke in picturesque rudeness 
 the regular line of the wall, and contrasted well with the 
 modern buildings gleaming whitely by. 
 
 The curving road, which in that direction leads from Pom- 
 peli to Herculaneum, wound out of sight amidst hanging vines, 
 above which frowned the sullen majesty of Vesuvius. 
 
 “Hast thou heard the news, old Medon?” said a young 
 woman, with a pitcher in her hand, as she paused by Diomed’s 
 door to gossip a moment with the slave, ere she repaired to 
 the neighboring inn to fill the vessel, and coquet with the 
 travellers. 
 
 “The news! What news?” said the slave, raising his eyes 
 moodily from the ground. 
 
 “Why, there passed through the gate this morning, no doubt 
 ere thou wert well awake, such a visitor to Pompeii!” 
 
 “ Ay,” said the slave, indifferently. 
 
 “Yes, a present from the noble Pomponianus.” 
 
 “A present! I thought thou saidst a visitor!” 
 
 “Tt is both visitor and present. Know, O dull and stupid! 
 that it is a most beautiful young tiger, for our approaching 
 games in the amphitheatre. Hear you that, Medon? Oh, 
 what pleasure! I declare J shall not sleep a wink till I see it; 
 they say it has such a roar!” 
 
 “Poor fool!” said Medon, sadly and cynically. 
 
 “Fool me no fool, old churl! It is a pretty thing, a tiger, 
 especially if we could but find somebody for him to eat. We 
 have now a lion and a tiger: only consider that, Medon; and 
 for want of two good criminals perhaps we shall be forced to 
 see them eat each other. By the bye, your son is a gladiator, 
 a handsome man and a strong; can you not persuade him to 
 
* THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 205 
 
 fight the tiger? Do now; you would oblige me mightily: nay, 
 you would be a bénefactor to the whole town.” 
 
 “Vah! vah!” said the slave, with great asperity; “think 
 of thine own danger ere thou thus pratest of my poor boy’s 
 death.” 
 
 “My own danger!” said the girl, frightened and looking 
 hastily round: “avert the omen; let thy words fall on thine 
 own head!” And the girl, as she spoke, touched a talisman 
 suspended round her neck. “‘Thine own danger!’ What 
 danger threatens me ?” 
 
 “Had the earthquake but a few nights since no warning ? ” 
 sald Medon. “Has it nota voice? Did it not say to us all, 
 ‘Prepare for death; the end of all things is at hand’?” 
 
 “Bah, stuff!” said the young woman, settling the folds of 
 her tunic. ‘Now thou talkest as they say the Nazarenes talk ; 
 methinks thou art one of them. Well, I can prate with thee, 
 gray croaker, no more; thou growest worse and worse. Vale/ 
 O Hercules, send us a man for the lion, and another for the 
 tiger ! 
 
 ‘Ho! ho! forthe merry, merry show, 
 With a forest of faces in every row! 
 Lo, the swordsmen, bold as the son of Alemena, 
 Sweep, side by side, o’er the hush’d arena; 
 Talk while you may: you will hold your breath 
 When they meet in the grasp of the glowing death. 
 Tramp, tramp, how gayly they go! 
 Ho! ho! for the merry, merry show!’” 
 
 Chanting in a silver and clear voice this feminine ditty, and 
 holding up her tunic from the dusty road, the young woman 
 stepped lightly across to the crowded hostelry. 
 
 ‘¢ My poor son !” said the slave, half aloud, “is it for things 
 like this thou art to be butchered? O faith of Christ, I 
 could worship thee in all sincerity, were it but for the horror 
 which thou inspirest for these bloody lists!” 
 
 The old man’s head sank dejectedly on his breast. He re- 
 mained silent and absorbed, but every now and then with the 
 corner of his sleeve he wiped his eyes. His heart was with 
 his son; he did not see the figure that now approached from 
 the gate with a quick step, and a somewhat fierce and reckless 
 
206 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 gait and carriage. He did not lift his eyes till the figure 
 paused opposite the place where he sat, and with a soft voice 
 addressed him by the name of — 
 
 “ Father!” 
 
 “My boy! my Lydon! is it indeed thou?” said the old 
 man, joyfully. “Ah, thou wert present to my thoughts.” 
 
 “T am. glad to hear it, my father,” said the gladiator, re- 
 spectfully touching the knees and beard of the slave; “and 
 soon may I be always present with thee, not in thought 
 only.” 
 
 “Yes, my son, but not in this world,” replied the slave, 
 mournfully. 
 
 “Talk not thus, oh, my sire! look cheerfully, for I feel so: 
 Iam sure that I shall win the day; and then, the gold I gain 
 buys thy freedom. Oh, my father, it was but a few days 
 since that I was taunted, by one, too, whom I would gladly 
 have undeceived, for he is more generous than the rest of his 
 equals. He is not Roman, he is of Athens; by him I was 
 taunted with the lust of gain, when I demanded what sum 
 was the prize of victory. Alas! he little knew the soul of 
 Lydon !” 
 
 “My boy! my boy!” said the old slave, as, slowly ascend- 
 ing the steps, he conducted his son to his‘own little chamber 
 communicating with the entrance-hall (which in this villa was 
 the peristyle, not the atrium— you may see it now; it is the 
 third door to the right on entering. The first door conducts 
 to the staircase; the second is but a false recess, in which 
 there stood a statue of bronze). “Generous, affectionate, 
 pious as are thy motives,” said Medon, when they were thus 
 secured from observation, “thy deed itself is guilt: thou art 
 to risk thy blood for thy father’s freedom, — that might be for- 
 given; but the prize of victory is the blood of another. Oh, 
 that is a deadly sin; no object can purify it. Forbear! for- 
 bear! rather would I be a slave forever, than purchase liberty 
 on such terms!” 
 
 “Hush, my father!” replied Lydon, somewhat impatiently ; 
 “thou has picked up in this new creed of thine, of which I 
 pray thee not to speak to me, for the gods that gave me 
 
“THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 207 
 
 strength denied me wisdom, and I understand not one word of 
 what thou often preachest to me, — thou hast picked up, I say, 
 in this new creed, some singular fantasies of right and wrong. 
 Pardon me if I offend thee: but reflect! Against whom shall 
 I contend? Oh, couldst thou know those wretches with 
 whom for thy sake I assort, thou wouldst think I purified 
 earth by removing one of them! Beasts, whose very lips drop 
 blood ; things, all savage, unprincipled in their very courage ; 
 ferocious, heartless, senseless; no tie of life can bind them}; 
 they know not fear, it is true, but neither know they gratitude, 
 nor charity, nor love; they are made but for their own career, 
 to slaughter without pity, to die without dread! Can thy 
 gods, whosoever they ‘be, look with wrath on a conflict with 
 such as these, and in such a cause ? Oh, my father, wherever 
 the powers above gaze down on earth, they behold no duty so 
 sacred, so sanctifying, as the sacrifice offered to an aged parent 
 by the piety of a grateful son!” 
 
 The poor old slave, himself deprived of the ights of knowl- 
 edge, and only late a convert to the Christian faith, knew not 
 with what arguments to enlighten an ignorance at once so 
 dark and yet so beautiful in its error. His first impulse was 
 to throw himself on his son’s breast, his next to start away, to 
 wring his hands; and in the attempt to reprove, his broken 
 voice lost itself in weeping. | 
 
 “ And if,” resumed Lydon, — “if thy Deity (methinks thou 
 wilt own ‘but one!) be indeed that benevolent and pitying 
 Power which thou assertest Him to be, He will know also that 
 thy very faith in Him first confirmed me in that determination 
 thou blamest.” 
 
 “How! what mean you?” said the slave. 
 
 “Why, thou knowest that I, sold in my childhood as a slave, 
 was set free at Rome by the will of my master, whom I had 
 been fortunate enough to please. I hastened to Pompeii to 
 see thee; I found thee already aged and infirm, under the 
 yoke of a capricious and pampered lord; thou hadst lately 
 adopted this new faith, and its adoption made thy slavery 
 doubly painful to thee; it took away all the softening charm 
 of custom, which reconciles us so often to the worst. Didst 
 
208 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 thou not complain to me that thou wert compelled to offices 
 that were not odious to thee as a slave, but guilty as a 
 Nazarene? Didst thou not tell me that thy soul shook with 
 remorse when thou wert compelled to place even a crumb of 
 cake before the Lares that watch over yon impluvium; that 
 thy soul was torn by a perpetual struggle? Didst thou not 
 tell me that even by pouring wine before the threshold, and 
 calling on the name of some Grecian deity, thou didst fear 
 thou wert incurring penalties worse than those of Tantalus, 
 an eternity of tortures more terrible than those of the Tar- 
 tarean fields? Didst thou not tell me this? I wondered, 
 I could not comprehend: nor, by Hercules! can I now; but I 
 was thy son, and my sole task was to compassionate and re- 
 lieve. Could I hear thy groans, could I witness thy myste- 
 rious horrors, thy constant anguish, and remain inactive ? 
 No! by the immortal gods! the thought struck me like light 
 from Olympus! I had no money, but I had strength and 
 youth, —these were thy gifts: I could sell these in my turn 
 for thee! I learned the amount of thy ransom; I learned 
 that the usual prize of a victorious gladiator would doubly 
 pay it. I became a gladiator; I linked myself with those 
 accursed men, scorning, loathing, while I joined; I acquired 
 their skill; blessed be the lesson! it shall teach me to free 
 my father!” 
 
 “ Oh, that thou couldst hear Olinthus!” sighed the old man, 
 more and more affected by the virtue of his son, but not less 
 strongly convinced of the criminality of his purpose. 
 
 “T will hear the whole world talk if thou wilt,” answered 
 the gladiator, gayly; “but not till thou art a slave no more. 
 Beneath thy own roof, my father, thou shalt puzzle this dull 
 brain all day long, ay, and all night too, if it give thee pleas- 
 ure. Oh, sucha spot as I have chalked out for thee! It is one 
 of the nine hundred and ninety-nine shops of old Julia Felix, 
 in the sunny part of the city, where thou mayst bask before the 
 door in the day. And I will sell the oil and the wine for thee, 
 my father, and then, please Venus (or if it does not please her, 
 since thou lovest not her name, it is all one to Lydon), then, 
 I say, perhaps thou mayst have a daughter, too, to tend thy 
 
'THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 209 
 
 gray hairs, and hear shrill voices at thy knee that shall call 
 thee ‘ Lydon’s father’! Ah! weshall be so happy: the prize 
 can purchase all. Cheer thee! cheer up, my sire! And now 
 I must away; day wears; the lanista waits me. Come! thy 
 blessing ! ” 
 
 As Lydon thus spoke, he had already quitted the dark 
 _chamber of his father; and speaking eagerly, though in a 
 whispered tone, they now stood at the same place in which 
 we introduced the porter at his post. 
 
 “Oh, bless thee! bless thee, my brave boy!” said Medon, 
 fervently; “and may the great Power that reads all hearts 
 see the nobleness of thine, and forgive its error!” 
 
 The tall shape of the gladiator passed swiftly down the 
 path; the eyes of the slave followed its light but stately 
 steps, till the last glimpse was gone; and then, sinking once 
 more on his seat, his eyes again fastened themselves on the 
 ground: his form, mute and unmoving as a thing of stone; 
 his heart—-who in our happier age can even imagine its 
 struggles, its commotion ? 
 
 “May I enter?” said a sweet voice. “Is thy mistress Julia 
 within ?” | 
 
 The slave mechanically motioned to the visitor to enter, but 
 she who addressed him could not see the gesture; she repeated 
 her question timidly, but in a louder voice. 
 
 “ Have I not told thee ?” said the slave, peevishly ; “ enter.” 
 
 “Thanks,” said the speaker, plaintively; and the slave, 
 roused by the tone, looked up, and recognized the blind flower- 
 girl. Sorrow can sympathize with affliction: he raised him- 
 self, and guided her steps to the head of the adjacent staircase 
 (by which you descended to Julia’s apartment), where, sum- 
 moning a female slave, he consigned to her the charge of the 
 blind girl. ? 
 
 VoL. 1.—14 
 
210 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DRESSING-ROOM OF A POMPEIAN BEAUTY. — IMPORTANT 
 CONVERSATION BETWEEN JULIA AND NYDIA, 
 
 Tue elegant Julia sat in her chamber, with her slaves around ° 
 her; like the cubiculum which adjoined it, the room was — 
 small, but much larger than the usual apartments appro- 
 priated to sleep, which were so diminutive that few who have 
 not seen the bed-chambers, even in the gayest mansions, can 
 form any notion of the petty pigeon-holes in which the citi- 
 zens of Pompeii evidently thought it desirable to pass the 
 night. But, in fact, “bed” with the ancients was not that 
 erave, serious, and lunportant part of domestic mysteries which 
 it is with us. The couch itself was more like a very narrow 
 and small sofa, light enough to be transported easily, and by 
 the occupant himself,’ from place to place; and it was no doubt 
 constantly shifted from chamber to chamber, according to the 
 caprices of the inmate or the changes of the season; for that 
 side of the house which was crowded in one month, might 
 perhaps be carefully avoided in the next. There was also 
 among the Italians of that period a singular and fastidious 
 apprehension of too much daylight; their darkened cham- 
 bers, which first appear to us the result of a negligent archi- 
 tecture were the effect of the most elaborate study. In their 
 porticos and gardens they courted the sun whenever it so 
 pleased their luxurious tastes. In the interior of their houses 
 they sought rather the coolness and the shade. 
 
 Julia’s apartment at that season was in the lower part of 
 the house, immediately beneath the state rooms above, and 
 looking upon the garden, with which it was on a level. The 
 wide door, which was glazed, alone admitted the morning rays ; 
 yet her eye, accustomed to a certain darkness, was sufficiently 
 acute to perceive exactly what colors were the most becoming, 
 what shade of the delicate rouge gave the brightest beam to 
 
 1 “Take up thy bed and walk ” was (as Sir W. Gell somewhere observes) 
 no metaphorical expression. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 211 
 
 her dark glance and the most youthful freshness to her 
 cheek. 
 
 On the table, before which she sat, was a small and circular 
 mirror of the most polished steel ; round which, in precise order, 
 were ranged the cosmetics and the unguents, the perfumes 
 and the paints, the jewels and the combs, the ribbons and the 
 gold pins, which were destined to add to the natural attrac- 
 tions of beauty the assistance of art and the capricious allure- 
 ments of fashion. Through the dimness of the room glowed 
 brightly the vivid and various colorings of the wall, in all the 
 dazzling frescos of Pompeian taste. Before the dressing- 
 table, and under the feet of Julia, was spread a carpet, woven 
 from the looms of the Hast. Near at hand, on another table, 
 was a silver basin and ewer; an extinguished lamp, of most 
 exquisite workmanship, in which the artist had represented a 
 Cupid reposing under the spreading branches of a myrtle-tree ; 
 and a smallroll of papyrus, containing the softest elegies 
 of Tibullus. Before the door, which communicated with the 
 eubiculum, hung a curtain richly broidered with gold flowers. 
 Such was the dressing-room of a beauty eighteen centuries ago. 
 
 The fair Julia leaned indolently back on her seat, while the 
 ornatrix (that is, hairdresser) slowly piled, one above the other, 
 a mass of small curls, dexterously weaving the false with the 
 true, and carrying the whole fabric to a height that seemed 
 to place the head rather at the centre than the summit of the 
 human form. 
 
 Her tunic, of a deep amber, which well set off her dark hair 
 and somewhat embrowned complexion, swept in ample folds 
 to her feet, which were cased in shippers, fastened round the 
 slender ankle by white thongs; while a profusion of pearls 
 were embroidered in the slipper itself, which was of purple, 
 and turned slightly upward, as do the Turkish slippers at 
 this day. An old slave, skilled by long experience in all the 
 arcana of the toilet, stood beside the hairdresser, with the 
 broad and studded girdle of her mistress over her arm, and 
 giving, from time to time (mingled with judicious flattery to 
 the lady herself), instructions to the mason of the ascending 
 pile. 
 
212 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Put that pin rather more to the right; lower, stupid one! 
 Do you not observe how even those beautiful eyebrows are ? 
 One would think you were dressing Corinna, whose face is all 
 of one side. Now put in the flowers; what, fool! not that 
 dull pink ; you are not suiting colors to the dim cheek of Chlo- 
 ris: it must be the brightest flowers that can alone suit the 
 cheek of the young Julia.” 
 
 “Gently!” said the lady, stamping her small foot violently ; - 
 “you pull my hair as if you were plucking up a weed!” 
 
 “Dull thing!” continued the directress of the ceremony. 
 “Do you not know how delicate is your mistress? You are 
 not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, 
 then, the ribbon; that’s right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; 
 saw you ever anything so lovely as yourself ? ” 
 
 When, after innumerable comments, difficulties, and delays, 
 the intricate tower was at length completed, the next prepa- 
 ration was that of giving to the eyes the soft languish, pro- 
 duced by a dark powder apphed to the lids and brows; a 
 small patch cut in the form of a crescent, skilfully placed by 
 the rosy lips, attracted attention to their dimples, and to the 
 teeth, to which already every art had been applied in order to 
 heighten the dazzle of their natural whiteness. 
 
 To another slave, hitherto idle, was now consigned the 
 charge of arranging the jewels, —the earrings of pearl (two to 
 each ear); the massive bracelets of gold; the chain formed of 
 rings of the same metal, to which a talisman cut in crystals 
 was attached; the graceful buckle on the left shoulder, in 
 which was set an exquisite cameo of Psyche; the girdle of 
 purple ribbon, richly wrought with threads of gold and 
 clasped by interlacing serpents; and lastly, the various rings, 
 fitted to every joint of the white and slender fingers. The 
 toilet was now arranged according to the last mode of Rome. 
 The fair Julia regarded herself with a last gaze of complacent 
 vanity, and reclining again upon her seat, she bade the young- 
 est of her slaves, in a listless tone, read to her the enamoured 
 couplets of Tibullus. This lecture was still proceeding, when 
 a female slave admitted Nydia into the presence of the lady 
 of the place. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 213 
 
 4 
 
 “ Salve, Julia,” said the flower-girl, arresting her steps within 
 a few paces from the spot where Julia sat, and crossing her 
 arms upon her breast. “I have obeyed your commands.” 
 
 “ You have done well, flower-girl,” answered the lady. “ Ap- 
 proach: you may take a seat.” 
 
 One of the slaves placed a stool by Julia, and Nydia seated 
 herself. 
 
 Julia looked hard at the Thessalian for some moments in 
 rather an embarrassed silence. She then motioned her at- 
 tendants to withdraw, and to close the door. When they 
 were alone, she said, looking mechanically from Nydia, and 
 forgetful that she was with one who could not observe her 
 countenance, — 
 
 “ You serve the Neapolitan, Ione ? ” 
 
 “Tam with her at present,” answered Nydia. 
 
 “Ts she as handsome as they say ? ” 
 
 “T know not,” replied Nydia. “How can Ijudge ?” 
 
 “Ah! I should have remembered. But thou hast ears, if 
 not eyes. Do thy fellow-slaves tell thee she is handsome ? 
 Slaves talking with one another forget to flatter even their 
 mistress.” 
 
 “They tell me that she is beautiful.” 
 
 “Hem! Say they that she is tall?” 
 
 66 Yes,” 
 
 “Why, soamJ. Dark-haired ?” 
 
 “JT have heard so.” 
 
 “SoamI. And doth Glaucus visit her much ?” 
 
 “Daily,” returned Nydia, with a half-suppressed sigh. 
 
 “Daily, indeed! Does he find her handsome ? ” 
 
 “T should think so, since they are so soon to be wedded.” 
 
 “ Wedded!” cried Julia, turning pale even through the 
 false roses on her cheek, and starting from her couch. Nydia 
 did not, of course, perceive the emotion she had caused. Julia 
 remained a long time silent; but her heaving breast and flash- 
 ing eyes would have betrayed, to one who could have seen, the 
 wound her vanity had sustained. 
 
 “They tell me thou art a Thessalian,” said she, at last 
 breaking silence. 
 
214 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETL. 
 
 “ And truly !” 
 
 “ Thessaly is the land of magic and of witches, of talismans 
 and of love-philtres,” said Julia. 
 
 “Tt has ever been celebrated for its sorcerers,” returned 
 Nydia, timidly. 
 
 “Knowest thou, then, blind Thessalian, of any love- 
 charms ? ” 
 
 “T!” gaid the flower-girl, coloring; “JZ/ how should I?- 
 No, assuredly not!” 
 
 “The worse for thee ; I could have given thee gold enough 
 to have purchased thy freedom hadst thou been more wise.” 
 
 “ But what,’ asked Nydia, “can induce the beautiful and 
 wealthy Julia to ask that question of her servant? Has she 
 not money, and youth, and loveliness? Are they not love- 
 charms enough to dispense with magic ?” 
 
 “To all but one person in the world,” answered Julia, 
 haughtily; “but methinks thy blindness is infectious, and 
 —but no matter.” 
 
 “ And that one person ?” said Nydia, eagerly. 
 
 “Ts not Glaucus,” replied Julia, with the customary deceit 
 of her sex. “Glaucus—no!” 
 
 Nydia drew her breath more freely, and after a short pause 
 Julia recommenced. 
 
 “But talking of Glaucus and his attachment to this Nea- 
 politan reminded me of the influence of love-spells, which, for 
 aught I know or care, she may have exercised upon him. 
 Blind girl, I love, and —shall Julia live to say it ? —am loved 
 not in return! This humbles, — nay, not humbdles, but it stings 
 my pride. I would see this ingrate at my feet; not in order 
 that I might raise, but that I might spurn him. When they 
 told me thou wert Thessalian, I imagined thy young mind 
 might have learned the dark secrets of thy clime.” 
 
 “ Alas! no,” murmured Nydia; “would it had!” 
 
 “Thanks, at least, for that kindly wish,” said Julia, uncon- 
 scious of what was passing in the breast of the flower-girl. 
 “But tell me,—thou hearest the gossip of slaves, always 
 prone to these dim beliefs, always ready to apply to sorcery 
 for their own low loves, — hast thou ever heard of any Eastern 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 215 
 é # 
 magician in this city, who possesses the art of which thou art 
 
 ignorant ? No vain chiromancer, no juggler of the market- 
 place, but some more potent and mighty magician of India or 
 of Egypt?” 
 
 “Of Egypt? yes!” said Nydia, shuddering. “ What 
 Pompeian has not heard of Arbaces ? ” 
 
 “¢ Arbaces! true,” replied Julia, grasping at the recollection. 
 ‘They say he is a man above all the petty and false im- 
 postures of dull pretenders; that he is versed in the learn- 
 ing of the stars, and the secrets of the ancient Nox: why not 
 in the mysteries of love?” 
 
 “If there be one magician living whose art is above that of 
 others, it is that dread man,” answered Nydia; and she felt 
 her talisman while she spoke. 
 
 “He is too wealthy to divine for money !” continued Julia, 
 sneeringly. “Can I not visit him ?” 
 
 “Tt is an evil mansion for the young and the beautiful,” 
 replied Nydia. “I have heard, too, that he languishes 
 in peek a7: 
 
 “ An evil mansion!” said Julia, catching only the first 
 sentence. “ Why so?” 
 
 “The orgies of his midnight leisure are impure and polluted ; 
 at least, so says rumor.” 
 
 “By Ceres, by Pan, and by Cybele! thou dost but provoke 
 my curiosity, instead of exciting my fears,” returned the way- 
 ward and pampered Pompeian. “I will seek and question 
 him of his lore. If to these orgies love be admitted, — why, 
 the more likely that he knows its secrets!” 
 
 Nydia did not answer. | 
 
 “TY will seek him this very day,” resumed Julia; “nay, 
 why not this very hour?” 
 
 “At daylight, and in his present state, thou hast assuredly 
 the less to fear,” answered Nydia, yielding to her own sudden 
 and secret wish to learn if the dark Egyptian were indeed 
 possessed of those spells to rivet and attract love, of which 
 the Thessalian had so often heard. 
 
 “ And who would dare insult the rich daughter of Diomed ?” 
 said Julia, haughtily. “I will go.” 
 
216 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “May I visit thee afterwards to learn the result ?” asked 
 Nydia, anxiously. 
 
 “Kiss me for thy interest in Julia’s honor,” answered the 
 lady. ‘Yes, assuredly. This eve we sup abroad; come hither 
 at the same hour to-morrow, and thou shalt know all. I may 
 have to employ thee too; but enough for the present. Stay ; 
 take this bracelet for the new thought thou hast inspired me 
 with: remember, if thou servest Julia, she is grateful and she 
 is generous.” 
 
 “T cannot take thy present,” said Nydia, putting aside the 
 bracelet: “but young as I am, I can sympathize unbought 
 with those who love, and love in vain.” 
 
 “ Sayest thou so?” returned Julia. “Thou speakest like a 
 free woman, and thou shalt yet be free: farewell! ” 
 
 END OF VOLUME I. 
 
of pa 
 
 hen 
 
 yours 
 
 Peg: thy 
 
 Pane AGE a ie Kah 
 REE ROLES 
 
 SSL MUD EN 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Wook III. (continued). 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Julia seeks Arbaces.— The Result of that Interview . . .« » « « e 1 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 A Storm in the South.— The Witch’s Cavern . 1... 6 « «© « « rd 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Lord of the Burning Belt and his Minion. — Fate writes her 
 Prophecy in red Letters, but who shallread them ...... 18 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Progress of Events. — The Plot thickens. — The Web is woven, but the 
 RRC HAC RE USOT hI ger eighth ge DG 
 
 ‘Book IV. 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 
 Reflections on the Zeal of the early Christians. —Two Men come to a 
 perilous Resolve. — Walls have Ears, — particularly Sacred Walls 35 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 A Classic Host, Cook, and Kitchen. — Apacides seeks Ione. — Their 
 eT SALLOI NN oily Svc anal CONNER. a ghia Ma anew cota ata nk 3S 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 A Fashionable Party and a Dinner ala Mode in Pompeii . . . . . 50 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Story halts fora Moment at an Episode. . . .....«. 68 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 eee Cre iS Freeh yO) i) stb ie ra cha Stn igi ah alriatihy taeib te ai POD 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI, 
 
 A Reunion of Different Actors. — Streams that flowed apparently apart 
 rush into one Gulf eter Se! We he. Se Oe RW OLE Soe ue seater Ry eras 6.) 6) S 6 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 In which the Reader learns the Condition of Glaucus.— Friendship tested. 
 —Enmity softened. — Love the same, — because the one loving is 
 ‘ blind e eis ° . . ° ° ernie . © ° in eet et ins ve; ° Cie 
 CHAPTER VIIL. 
 
 A Classe rineral | 55° eek tenets! %. teeta tale ft idea betas aor ice in ats far ee 
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 
 In which an Adventure happens to Ione . . . « + « « « » 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 What becomes of Nydia in the House of Arbaces. —— The Egyptian feels 
 compassion for Glaucus.— Compassion is often a very useless Visitor 
 POMC CU) PG Cath Neneh hers tatalee Mec! ath nah lading 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 rGtaairerts thei Sorcerces 5) 631s bs le ie) aes jie tee Ue ened eas ene 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 A Wasp ventures into the Spider’s Web . . . . 6 «© « + 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Slave consults the Oracle. — They who blind themselves the Blind 
 may fool. — Two new Prisoners made in one Night. . . . . . 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 miydia accosta Calentia 00/0") 10 ie Leite orale ts eek cee alc en tie 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Arbaces and Ione. — Nydia gains the Garden. — Will she escape and 
 save the Athenian ? 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Sorrow of Boon Companions for our Afflictions. -- The Dungeon 
 AUTEN LOCTAS AY ee EL ISN) 20s OES SI Tas a me ere eee 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 AV change(for Glaus iy iii villa shin i esate Ri ava nee a 
 
 Page 
 
 77 
 
 88 
 
 99 
 
 107 
 
 109 
 
 114 
 
 123 
 
 130 
 
 132 
 
 140 
 
CONTENTS. vil 
 
 Wook V. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 Page 
 
 The Dream of Arbaces. — A Visitor and a Warning to the Egyptian . 163 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
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 CHAPTER IIL 
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 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Amphitheatre once more . « 2 5 « 6 © © «© © © 6 te of IDE 
 
 CHAPTER. V. 
 
 The Cell of the Prisoner and the Den of the Dead — Grief unconscious 
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 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Calenus and Burbo. — Diomed and Clodius, — The Girl of the Amphi- 
 BP AIPOM UIE ig iliei la +. .8 (8) ie vaetie) co) 4) 8 ele) el pee he Od 
 
 CHAPTER VIL. 
 The Progress of the Destruction . . « 6 6 © « © © «© © © © »& 208 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Arbaces encounters Glaucus and Ione . .. 4 © «© © © © «6 @ «© 213 
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 The Despair\of the Lovers. — The condition of the Multitude . . . . 216 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The next Morning, — The Fate of Nydia . 5 « 1 « « «© «© © «© « 221 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST, 
 Wherein all Things cease. we ew tt ee ww tw 228 
 
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Nydia—From a painting by 
 Carl Bodenhausen Frontispiece 
 Dancing Nymph : Loy ene: 
 Princtpal room in the house of Pansa 74 
 The Hortus—House of Pansa OWES 
 Ruéns of the Temple of Hercules 172 
 House of Marcus Lucretius ari 
 
 Petrified body found in the ruins of ee 226 
 
ae 
 
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 Fi ey 
 1 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 Bron ttl 
 
 ( Continued.) 
 
 ooo 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 JULIA SEEKS ARBACES. — THE RESULT OF THAT INTERVIEW. 
 
 ARBACES was seated in a chamber which opened on a kind 
 of balcony or portico that fronted his garden. His cheek was 
 pale and worn with the sufferings he had endured, but his iron 
 frame had already recovered from the severest effects of that 
 accident which had frustrated his fell designs in the moment 
 of victory. ‘The air that came fragrantly to his brow revived 
 his languid senses, and the blood circulated more freely than 
 it had done for days through his shrunken veins. 
 
 “So, then,” thought he, “the storm of fate has broken and 
 blown over; the evil which my lore predicted, threatening 
 life itself, has chanced — and yet I live! It came as the stars — 
 foretold; and now the long, bright, and prosperous career 
 which was to succeed that evil, if I survived it, smiles beyond: 
 I have passed, I have subdued the latest danger of my des- 
 tiny. NowTI have but to lay out the gardens of my future 
 fate, unterrified and secure. First, then, of all my pleasures, 
 even before that of love, shall come revenge! This boy Greek, 
 
 VOL. 11.—1 
 
2 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 who has crossed my passion, thwarted my designs, baffled me 
 even when the blade was about to drink his accursed blood, 
 shall not a second time escape me! But for the method of my . 
 vengeance? Of that let me ponder well! Oh, Até, if thou 
 art indeed a goddess, fill me with thy direst inspiration !” 
 The Egyptian sank into an intent reverie, which did not seem 
 to present to him any clear or satisfactory suggestions. He 
 changed his position restlessly, as he revolved scheme after 
 scheme, which no sooner occurred than it was dismissed; sev- 
 eral times he struck his breast and groaned aloud, with the 
 desire of vengeance, and a sense of his impotence to accom- 
 plish it. While thus absorbed, a boy-slave timidly entered 
 the chamber. 
 
 A female, evidently of rank from her dress, and that of the 
 single slave who attended her, waited below, and sought an 
 audience with Arbaces. 
 
 “A female!” his heart beat quick. “Is she young?” 
 
 “Her face is concealed by her veil; but her form is slight, 
 yet round as that of youth.” 
 
 “ Admit her,” said the Egyptian; for a moment his vain 
 heart dreamed the stranger might be Ione. 
 
 The first glance of the visitor now entering the apartment 
 sufficed to undeceive so erring a fancy. True, she was about 
 the same height as Ione, and perhaps the same age; true, she 
 was finely and richly formed: but where was that undulating 
 and ineffable grace which accompanied every motion of the 
 peerless Neapolitan, —the chaste and decorous garb, so simple 
 even in the care of its arrangement, the dignified yet bashful 
 step, the majesty of womanhood and its modesty ? 
 
 “Pardon me that I rise with pain,” said Arbaces, gazing on 
 the stranger; “I am still suffering from recent illness.” 
 
 “Do not disturb thyself, O great Egyptian!” returned Julia, 
 seeking to disguise the fear she already experienced beneath 
 the ready resort of flattery; “and forgive an unfortunate 
 female, who seeks consolation from thy wisdom.” 
 
 “ Draw near, fair stranger,” said Arbaces, “and speak with- 
 out apprehension or reserve.” 
 
 Julia placed herself on a seat beside the Egyptian, and 
 
- THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 3 
 
 wonderingly gazed around an apartment whose elaborate and 
 costly luxuries. shamed even the ornate enrichment of her 
 father’s mansion; fearfully, too, she regarded the hieroglyphi- 
 cal inscriptions on the walls, the faces of the mysterious images 
 which at every corner gazed upon her, the tripod at a little 
 distance, and, above all, the grave and remarkable countenance 
 of Arbaces himself. A long white robe like a veil half cov- 
 ered his raven locks, and flowed to his feet; his face was 
 made even more impressive by its present paleness; and 
 his dark and penetrating eyes seem: to pierce the shelter of 
 her veil, and explore the secrets of her vain and unfeminine 
 soul. 
 
 “And what,’ said his low, deep voice, “brings thee, O 
 maiden, to the house of the Hastern stranger ?” 
 
 “His fame,” replied Julia. 
 
 “In what?” said he, with a strange and slight smile, 
 
 ‘“Canst thou ask, O wise Arbaces? Is not rhe knowledge 
 the very gossip theme of Pompeii ?” 
 
 “Some little lore have I, indeed, treasured up,” replied 
 Arbaces; “but in what can such serious and sterile secrets 
 benefit the ear of beauty ? ” 
 
 “Alas!” said Julia, a little cheered by the accustomed 
 accents of adulation, “does not sorrow fly to wisdom for re- 
 lief, and they who love unrequitedly, are not they the chosen 
 victims of grief?” 
 
 “Ha!” said Arbaces, “can unrequited love be the lot of 
 so fair a form, whose modelled proportions are visible even 
 beneath the folds of thy graceful robe ? Deign, O maiden, to 
 lift thy veil, that I may see at least if the face correspond in 
 loveliness with the form.” 
 
 Not unwilling, perhaps, to exhibit her charms, and thinking 
 they were likely to interest the magician in her fate, Julia, 
 after some slight hesitation, raised her veil, and revealed a 
 beauty, which, but for art, had been indeed attractive to the 
 fixed gaze of the Egyptian. 
 
 “Thou comest to me for advice in unhappy love,” said he; 
 “well, turn that face on the ungrateful one; what other love- 
 charm can I give thee ?” 
 
a THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Oh, cease these courtesies!” said Julia; “it zs a love 
 charm, indeed, that I would ask from thy skill.” 
 
 “Fair stranger!” replied Arbaces, somewhat scornfully, 
 “love-spells are not among the secrets I have wasted the 
 midnight oil to attain.” 
 
 “Ts it indeed so? Then pardon me, great Arbaces, and 
 farewell!” 
 
 “Stay,” said Arbaces, who, despite his passion for Ione, was - 
 not unmoved by the beauty of his visitor, and had he been in 
 the flush of a more assured health, might have attempted to 
 console the fair Julia by other means than those of supernat- 
 ural wisdom; “stay; although that I confess I have left the 
 witchery of philtres and potions to those whose trade is in 
 such knowledge, yet am I myself not so dull to beauty but 
 that in earlier youth I may have employed them in my own 
 behalf. I may give thee advice, at least, if thou wilt be can- 
 did with me. Tell me then, first, art thou unmarried, as thy 
 dress betokens ? ” 
 
 “Ves,” said Julia. 
 
 “ And, being unblest with fortune, wouldst thou allure some 
 wealthy suitor ?” 
 
 “JT am richer than he who disdains me.” 
 
 “Strange and more strange! And thou lovest him who 
 loves not thee ?” 
 
 “T know not if I love him,” answered Julia, haughtily ; 
 “but I know that I would see myself triumph over a rival; I 
 would see him who rejected me my suitor; I would see her 
 whom he has preferred in her turn despised.” 
 
 “ A natural ambition and a womanly,” said the Egyptian, 
 in a tone too grave for irony. “Yet more, fair maiden; wilt 
 thou confide to me the name of thy lover? Can he be Pom- 
 peian, and despise wealth, even if blind to beauty ? ” 
 
 “ He is of Athens,” answered Julia, looking down. 
 
 “ Ha!” cried the Egyptian, impetuously, as the blood rushed 
 to his cheek; “there is but one Athenian, young and noble, in 
 Pompeii. Can it be Glaucus of whom thou speakest !” 
 
 “Ah, betray me not! So indeed they call him.” 
 
 The Egyptian sank back, gazing vacantly on the averted 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 5 
 
 face of the merchant’s daughter, and muttering inly to him- 
 self: this conference, with which he had hitherto only trifled, 
 amusing himself with the credulity and vanity of his visitor, 
 — might it not minister to his revenge ? 
 
 “T see thou canst assist me not,” said Julia, offended by his 
 continued silence; “guard at least my secret. Once more, 
 farewell!” 
 
 “‘Maiden,” said the Egyptian, in an earnest and serious tone, 
 “thy suit hath touched me; I will minister to thy will. Listen 
 to me; I have not myself dabbled in these lesser mysteries, 
 but I know one who hath. At the base of Vesuvius, less than 
 a league from the city, there dwells a powerful witch; beneath 
 the rank dews of the new moon, she has gathered the herbs 
 which possess the virtue to chain Love in eternal fetters. Her 
 art can bring thy lover to thy feet. Seek her, and mention to 
 her the name of Arbaces; she fears that name, and will give 
 thee her most potent philtres.” 
 
 “ Alas!” answered Julia, “I know not the road to the home 
 of her whom thou speakest of; the way, short though it be, 
 is long to traverse for a girl who leaves, unknown, the house 
 of her father. The country is entangled with wild vines, and 
 dangerous with precipitous caverns. I dare not trust to mere 
 strangers to guide me; the reputation of women of my rank ig 
 easily tarnished ; and though I care not who knows that I love 
 Glaucus, I would not have it imagined that I obtained his love 
 by a spell.” 
 
 “Were I but three days advanced in health,” said the 
 Egyptian, rising and walking (as if to try his strength) across 
 the chamber, but with irregular and feeble steps, “I myself 
 would accompany thee. Well, thou must wait.” 
 
 “But Glaucus is soon to wed that hated Neapolitan.” 
 
 6c Wed ! 2) 
 
 “Yes; in the early part of next month.” 
 
 ‘So soon! Art thou well advised of this ?” 
 
 “From the lips of her own slave.” 
 
 “Tt shall not be!” said the Egyptian, impetuously. “ Fear 
 nothing: Glaucus shall be thine. Yet how, when thou ob- 
 tainest it, canst thou administer to him this potion ? ” 
 
6 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “ My father has invited him, and, I believe, the Neapolitan 
 also, to a banquet, on the day following to-morrow; I shall 
 then have the opportunity to administer it.” 
 
 “So be it!” said the Egyptian, with eyes flashing such 
 fierce joy that Julia’s gaze sank trembling beneath them. 
 “To-morrow eve, then, order thy litter: thou hast one at thy 
 command ? ” 
 
 “Surely — yes,” returned the purse-proud Julia. 
 
 “Order thy litter: at two miles’ distance from the city is 
 a house of entertainment, frequented by the wealthier Pom- 
 peians, from the excellence of its baths and the beauty of its 
 gardens. There canst thou pretend only to shape thy course ; 
 there, ill or dying, I will meet thee by the statue of Silenus, in 
 the copse that skirts the garden, and I myself will guide thee 
 tothe witch. Let us wait till, with the evening star, the goats 
 of the herdsmen are gone to rest, when the dark twilight con- 
 ceals us, and none shall cross our steps. Go home, and fear 
 not. By Hades, swears Arbaces, the sorcerer of Egypt, that 
 lone shall never wed with Glaucus!” 
 
 « And that Glaucus shall be mine ?” added Julia, filling up 
 the incompleted sentence. 
 
 “Thou hast said it!” replied Appatent and Julia, half 
 frightened at this unhallowed appointment, but urged on 
 by jealousy and the pique of rivalship, even more than love, 
 resolved to fulfil it. 
 
 Left alone, Arbaces burst forth, — 
 
 “Bright stars that never lie, ye already begin the execution 
 of your promises, —— success in love, and victory over foes, for 
 the rest of my smooth existence. In the very hour when my 
 mind could devise no clew to the goal of vengeance, have 
 ye sent this fair fool for my guide!” He paused in deep 
 thought. “Yes,” said he again, but in a calmer voice, “I 
 could not myself have given to her the poison, that shall be 
 indeed a philtre! his death might be thus tracked to my door. 
 But the witch, ay, there is the fit, the natural agent of my 
 designs !” 
 
 He summoned one of his slaves, bade him hasten to track 
 the steps of Julia, and acquaint himself with her name and 
 
* THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 7 
 
 condition. This done, he stepped forth into the portico. The 
 skies were serene and clear; but he, deeply read in the signs 
 of their various change, beheld in one mass of cloud, far on 
 the horizon, which the wind began slowly to agitate, that a 
 storm was brooding above. 
 
 “Tt is like my vengeance,” said he, as he gazed; “the sky 
 is clear, but the cloud moves on.” 
 
 CHAPTER, LX. 
 A STORM IN THE SOUTH. — THE WITCH’S CAVERN. 
 
 It was when the heats of noon died gradually away from 
 the earth, that Glaucus and Ione went forth to enjoy the 
 cooled and grateful air. At that time various carriages were 
 in use among the Romans; the one most used by the richer 
 citizens, when they required no companion in their excursions, 
 was the biga, already described in the early portion of this 
 work; that appropriated to the matrons was termed car- 
 pentum,' which had commonly two wheels; the ancients used 
 also a sort of litter, a vast sedan-chair, more commodiously 
 arranged than the modern, inasmuch as the occupant thereof 
 could lie down at ease, instead of being perpendicularly and 
 stiffly jostled up and down.? There was another carriage, used 
 both for travelling and for excursions in the country; it was 
 commodious, containing three or four persons with ease, hav- 
 ing a covering which could be raised at pleasure; and, in short, 
 answering very much the purpose of (though very different in 
 shape from) the modern britska. It was a vehicle of this 
 description that the lovers, accompanied by one female slave 
 of Ione, now used in their excursion. About ten miles from 
 the city there was at that day an old ruin, the remains of a 
 temple, evidently Grecian; and as for Glaucus and Ione every- 
 
 1 For public festivals and games they used one more luxurious and costly 
 called pilentum, with four wheels. 
 2 But they had also the sella, or sedan, in which they sat as we do. 
 
8 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 thing Grecian possessed an interest, they had agreed to visit 
 these ruins: it was thither they were now bound. 
 
 Their road lay among vines and olive-groves, till, winding 
 more and more towards the higher ground of Vesuvius, the 
 path grew rugged; the mules moved slowly, and with labor ; 
 and at every opening in the wood they beheld those gray and 
 horrent caverns indenting the parched rock, which Strabo has 
 described, but which the various revolutions of time and the 
 volcano have removed from the present aspect of the moun- 
 tain. The sun, sloping towards his descent, cast long and deep 
 shadows over the mountain; here and there they still heard 
 the rustic reed of the shepherd amongst copses of the beech- 
 wood and wild oak. Sometimes they marked the form of the 
 silk-haired and graceful capella, with its wreathing horn and 
 bright gray eye, which, still beneath Ausonian skies, recalls 
 the eclogues of Maro, browsing half-way up the hills; and the 
 erapes, already purple with the smiles of the deepening sum- 
 mer, glowed out from the arched festoons which hung pendent 
 from tree to tree. Above them light clouds floated in the 
 serene heavens, sweeping so slowly athwart the firmament 
 that they scarcely seemed to stir; while on their right they 
 caught ever and anon glimpses of the waveless sea, with some 
 light bark skimming its surface, and the sunlight breaking 
 over the deep in those countless and softest hues so peculiar 
 to that delicious sea. 
 
 “How beautiful,” said Glaucus, in a half-whispered tone, 
 “is that expression by which we call Earth our Mother! 
 With what a kindly equal love she pours her blessings upon 
 her children! and even to those sterile spots to which Nature 
 has denied beauty, she yet contrives to dispense her smiles: 
 witness the arbutus and the vine, which she wreathes over the 
 arid and burning soil of yon extinct voleano. Ah! in such an 
 hour and scene as this, well might we imagine that the laugh- 
 ing face of the Faun should peep forth from those green fes- 
 toons; or that we might trace the steps of the Mountain 
 Nymph through the thickest mazes of the glade. But the 
 Nymphs ceased, beautiful Ione, when ¢how wert created !” 
 
 There is no tongue that flatters like a lover’s; and yet, in 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 9 
 
 the exaggeration of his feelings flattery seems to him com- 
 monplace. Strange and prodigal exuberance, which soon ex- 
 hausts itself by overflowing! 
 
 They arrived at the ruins; they examined them with that 
 fondness with which we trace the hallowed and household 
 vestiges of our own ancestry; they lingered there till Hes- 
 perus appeared in the rosy heavens; and then returning home- 
 ward in the twilight, they were more silent than they had 
 been ; for in the shadow and beneath the stars they felt more 
 jeu their mutual love. 
 
 It was at this time that the storm which fhe Egyptian had 
 predicted began to creep invisibly over them. At first, a low 
 and distant thunder gave warning of the approaching conflict of 
 the elements, and then rapidly rushed above the dark ranks 
 of the serried clouds. The suddenness of storms in that cli- 
 mate is something almost preternatural, and might well sug- 
 gest to early superstition the notion of a divine agency; a few 
 large drops broke heavily among the boughs that half over- 
 hung their path, and then, swift and intolerably bright, the 
 forked lightning darted across their very eyes, and was swal- 
 lowed up by the increasing darkness. 
 
 “Swifter, good Carrucarius!” cried Glaucus to the driver; 
 “the tempest comes on apace.” | 
 
 The slave urged on the mules; they went swift over the 
 uneven and stony road; the clouds thickened, near and more 
 near broke the thunder, and fast rushed the dashing rain. 
 
 “Dost thou fear?” whispered Glaucus, as he sought excuse 
 in the storm to come nearer to Ione. 
 
 “ Not with thee,” said she, softly. | 
 
 At that instant the carriage, fragile and ill-contrived (as, 
 despite their graceful shapes, were, for practical uses, most of 
 such inventions at that time), struck violently into a deep rut 
 over which lay a log of fallen wood; the driver, with a curse, 
 stimulated his mules yet faster for the obstacle, the wheel was 
 torn from the socket, and the carriage suddenly overset. 
 
 Glaucus, quickly extricating himself from the vehicle, has- 
 tened to assist Ione, who was fortunately unhurt; with some 
 difficulty they raised the carruca (or carriage), and found that 
 
10 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 it ceased any longer even to afford them shelter; the springs 
 that fastened the covering were snapped asunder, and the rain 
 poured fast and fiercely into the interior. 
 
 In this dilemma, what was to be done? They were yet some 
 distance from the city; no house, no aid, seemed near. 
 
 “There is,” said the slave, “a smith about a mile off; I 
 could seek him, and he might fasten at least the wheel to the 
 carruca: but, Jupiter! how the rain beats! my mistress will © 
 be wet before I come back.” 
 
 “ Run thither at least,” said Glaucus; “we must find the best 
 shelter we can till you return.” 
 
 The lane was overshadowed with trees, beneath the amplest 
 of which Glaucus drew Ione. He endeavored, by stripping his 
 own cloak, to shield her yet more from the rapid rain; but it 
 descended with a fury that broke through all puny obstacles ; 
 and suddenly, while Glaucus was yet whispering courage to his 
 beautiful charge, the lightning struck one of the trees imme- 
 diately before them, and split with a mighty crash its huge 
 trunk in twain. This awful incident apprized them of the dan- 
 ger they braved in their present shelter; and Glaucus looked 
 anxiously round for some less perilous place of refuge. ‘We 
 are now,” said he, “half-way up the ascent of Vesuvius; there 
 ought to be some cavern or hollow in the vine-clad rocks, could 
 we but find it, in which the deserting Nymphs have left a 
 shelter.” While thus saying, he moved from the trees, and, 
 looking wistfully towards the mountain, discovered through 
 the advancing gloom a red and tremulous light at no consid- 
 erable distance. “That must come,” said he, “from the hearth 
 of some shepherd or vine-dresser; it will guide us to some 
 hospitable retreat. Wilt thou stay here, while I—yet no; 
 that would be to leave thee to danger.” 
 
 “JT will go with you cheerfully,” said Ione. “Open as the 
 space seems, it is better than the treacherous shelter of these 
 boughs.” 
 
 Half leading, half carrying Ione, Glaucus, accompanied by 
 the trembling female slave, advanced towards the light, which 
 yet burned red and steadfastly. At length the space was no 
 longer open; wild vines entangled their steps, and hid from 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 11 
 
 them, save by imperfect intervals, the guiding beam. But 
 faster and fiercer came the rain, and the lightning assumed 
 its most deadly and blasting form; they were still, therefore, 
 impelled onward, hoping at last, if the light eluded them, to 
 arrive at some cottage or some friendly cavern. The vines 
 grew more and more intricate; the light was entirely snatched 
 from them; but a narrow path, which they trod with labor and 
 pain, guided only by the constant and long-lingering flashes of 
 the storm, continued to lead them towards its direction. The 
 rain ceased suddenly ; precipitous and rough crags of scorched 
 lava frowned before them, rendered more fearful by the lhght- 
 ning that illumined the dark and dangerous soil. Sometimes 
 the blaze lingered over the iron-gray heaps of scoria, covered 
 in part with ancient mosses or stunted trees, as if seeking in 
 vain for some gentler product of earth more worthy of its ire; 
 and sometimes leaving the whole of that part of the scene in 
 darkness, the lightning, broad and sheeted, hung redly over 
 the ocean, tossing far below, until its waves seemed glow- 
 ing into fire; and so intense was the blaze, that it brought 
 vividly into view even the sharp outline of the more distant 
 windings of the bay, from the eternal Misenum, with its 
 lofty brow, to the beautiful Sorentum and the giant hills 
 behind. 
 
 Our lovers stopped in perplexity and doubt, when suddenly 
 as the darkness that gloomed between the fierce flashes of 
 lightning once more wrapped them round, they saw near, but 
 high before them, the mysterious light. Another blaze, in 
 which heaven and earth were reddened, made visible to them 
 the whole expanse: no house was near, but just where they 
 had beheld the light, they thought they saw in the recess of 
 a cavern the outline of a human form. The darkness once 
 more returned; the light, no longer paled beneath the fires of 
 heaven, burned forth again: they resolved to ascend towards 
 it; they had to wind their way among vast fragments of stone, 
 here and there overhung with wild bushes; but they gained 
 nearer and nearer to the light, and at length they stood oppo- 
 site the mouth of a kind of cavern, apparently formed by huge 
 splinters of rock that had fallen transversely athwart each 
 
12 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 other; and, looking into the gloom, each drew back involun- 
 tarily with a superstitious fear and chill. 
 
 A fire burned in a far recess of the cave, and over it was a 
 small caldron; on a tall and thin column of iron stood a rude 
 lamp; over that part of the wall, at the base of which burned 
 the fire, hung in many rows as if to dry, a profusion of herbs 
 and weeds. A fox, couched before the fire, gazed upon the 
 strangers with its bright and red eye, its hair bristling, and ~ 
 a low growl stealing from between its teeth; in the centre 
 of the cave was an earthen statue, which had three heads of 
 a singular and fantastic cast: they were formed by the real 
 skulls of a dog, a horse, and a boar; a low tripod stood before 
 this wild representation of the popular Hecate. 
 
 But it was not these appendages and appliances of the cave 
 that thrilled the blood of those who gazed fearfully therein, — 
 it was the face of its inmate. Before the fire, with the light 
 shining full upon her features, sat a woman of considerable 
 age. Perhaps in no country are there seen so many hags as 
 in Italy, —in no country does beauty so awfully change in age 
 to hideousness the most appalling and revolting. But the old 
 woman now before them was not one of these specimens of the 
 extreme of human ugliness; on the contrary, her countenance 
 betrayed the remains of a regular but high and aquiline order 
 of feature: with stony eyes turned upon them, with a look 
 that met and fascinated theirs, they beheld in that fearful 
 countenance the very image of a corpse,— the same, the 
 glazed and lustreless regard, the blue and shrunken lips, the 
 drawn and hollow jaw, the dead, lank hair of a pale gray, 
 the livid, green, ghastly skin, which seemed all surely tinged 
 and tainted by the grave! 
 
 “Tt is a dead thing!” said Glaucus. 
 
 “ Nay, it stirs, —it is a ghost or darva,” faltered Ione, as she 
 clung to the Athenian’s breast. 
 
 “Oh, away, away!” groaned the slave; “it is the Witch of 
 Vesuvius!” 
 
 “Who are ye?” said a hollow and ghostly voice. “And 
 what do ye here?” 
 
 The sound, terrible and deathlike as it was, suiting well 
 
“THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 13 
 
 the countenance of the speaker, and seeming rather the voice 
 of some bodiless wanderer of the Styx than living mortal, 
 would have made Ione shrink back into the pitiless fury of 
 the storm; but Glaucus, though not without some misgiving, 
 drew her into the cavern. 
 
 “We are storm-beaten wanderers from the neighboring city,” 
 said he, “ and decoyed hither by yon light; we crave shelter 
 and the comfort of your hearth.” 
 
 As he spoke, the fox rose from the ground and advanced 
 towards the strangers, showing from end to end its white 
 teeth, and deepening in its menacing growl. 
 
 “ Down, slave!” said the witch; and at the sound of her 
 voice the beast dropped at once, covering its face with its 
 brush, and keeping only its quick vigilant eye fixed upon the 
 invaders of its repose. ‘Come to the fire if ye will!” said she, 
 turning to Glaucus and his companions. “I never welcome 
 living thing, save the owl, the fox, the toad, and the viper, so 
 I cannot welcome ye; but come to the fire without welcome: 
 why stand upon form ?” | 
 
 The language in which the hag addressed them was a strange 
 and barbarous Latin, interlarded with many words of some 
 more rude and ancient dialect. She did not stir from her seat, 
 but gazed stonily upon them as Glaucus now released Ione of 
 her outer wrapping garments, and making her place herself on 
 a log of wood, which was the only other seat he perceived at 
 hand, fanned with his breath the embers into a more glowing 
 flame. The slave, encouraged by the boldness of her superiors, 
 divested herself also of her long padla, and crept timorously to 
 the opposite corner of the hearth. 
 
 “We disturb you, I fear,” said the silver voice of Ione, in 
 conciliation. 
 
 The witch did not reply; she seemed like one who has 
 awakened for a moment from the dead, and has then relapsed 
 once more into the eternal slumber. 
 
 “Tell me,” said she, suddenly, and after a long pause, “ are 
 ye brother and sister ?” 
 
 “No,” said Ione, blushing. 
 
 “ Are ye married ?” 
 
14 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “ Not so,” rephed Glaucus. 
 
 “Ho, lovers! ha! ha! ha!” and the witch laughed so loud 
 and so long that the caverns rang again. 
 
 The heart of Ione stood still at that strange mirth. Glaucus 
 muttered arapid counterspell to the omen, and the slave turned 
 as pale as the cheek of the witch herself. 
 
 “Why dost thou laugh, old crone ?” said Glaucus, somewhat 
 sternly, as he concluded his invocation. 
 
 “Did I laugh?” said the hag, absently. ! 
 
 “She is in her dotage,” whispered Glaucus: as he said this, 
 he caught the eye of the hag fixed upon him with a malignant 
 and vivid glare. 
 
 “Thou hest!” said she, abruptly. 
 
 “Thou art an uncourteous welcomer,” returned Glaucus. 
 
 “TWush! provoke her not, dear Glaucus!” whispered Ione. 
 
 “JT will tell thee why I laughed when I discovered ye were 
 lovers,” said the old woman. “It was because it is a pleasure 
 to the old and withered to look upon young hearts like yours, 
 and to know the time will come when you will loathe each 
 other, — loathe — loathe —ha! ha! ha!” 
 
 It was now Ione’s turn to pray against the unpleasing 
 prophecy. 
 
 “The gods forbid!” said she. “Yet, poor woman, thou 
 knowest lttle of love, or thou wouldst know that it never 
 changes.” 
 
 “Was I young once, think ye,” returned the hag, quickly; 
 ‘and am I old, and hideous, and deathly now? Suchas is the 
 form, so is the heart.” With these words she sank again into a 
 stillness profound and fearful, as if the cessation of life itself. 
 
 “Hast thou dwelt here long?” said Glaucus, after a pause, 
 feeling uncomfortably oppressed beneath a silence so appalling. 
 
 “ Ah, long !— yes.” 
 
 “Tt is but a drear abode.” 
 
 “Ha! thou mayst well say that: Hell is beneath us!” re- 
 pled the hag, pointing her bony finger to the earth. “And I 
 will tell thee a secret: the dim things below are preparing 
 wrath for ye above, —you, the young, and the thoughtless, and 
 the beautiful.” 
 
' THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 15 
 
 “Thou utterest but evil words, ill becoming the hospitable,” 
 said Glaucus; “and in future I will brave the tempest rather 
 than thy welcome.” 
 
 “Thou wilt do well. None should ever seek me, save the 
 wretched !” | 
 
 “And why the wretched ?” asked the Athenian. 
 
 “T am the witch of the mountain,” replied the sorceress, 
 with a ghastly grin; “ my trade is to give hope to the hopeless: 
 for the crossed in love, I have philtres; for the avaricious, 
 promises of treasure; for the malicious, potions of revenge ; 
 for the happy and the good, I have only what life has, — 
 curses! Trouble me no more.” 
 
 With this the grim tenant of the cave relapsed into a silence 
 so obstinate and sullen, that Glaucus in vain endeavored to 
 draw her into farther conversation. She did not evince, by 
 any alteration of her locked and rigid features, that she even 
 heard him. Fortunately, however, the storm, which was brief 
 as violent, began now to relax; the rain grew less and less 
 fierce ; and at last, as the clouds parted, the moon burst forth 
 in the purple opening of heaven, and streamed clear and full 
 into that desolate abode. Never had she shone, perhaps, on a 
 group more worthy of the painter’s art—-the young, the all- 
 beautiful Ione, seated by that rude fire, her lover already for- 
 getful of the presence of the hag, at her feet, gazing upward to 
 her face, and whispering sweet words; the pale and affrighted 
 slave at a little distance, and the ghastly hag resting her deadly 
 eyes upon them: yet seemingly serene and fearless (for the 
 companionship of love hath such power) were these beautiful 
 beings, things of another sphere, in that dark and unholy 
 cavern, with its gloomy quaintness of appurtenance. The fox 
 regarded them from his corner with his keen and fiery eye: 
 and as Glaucus now turned towards the witch, he perceived 
 for the first time, just under her seat, the bright gaze and 
 crested head of a large snake. Whether it was that the vivid 
 coloring of the Athenian’s cloak, thrown over the shoulders of 
 Ione, attracted the reptile’s anger, its crest began to glow and 
 rise, as if menacing and preparing itself to spring upon the 
 Neapolitan; Glaucus caught quickly at one of the half-burned 
 
16 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 logs upon the hearth, and, as if enraged at the action, the 
 snake came forth from its shelter, and with a loud hiss raised 
 itself on end till its height nearly approached that of the 
 Greek. 
 
 “Witch!” cried Glaucus, “command thy creature, or thou 
 wilt see it dead.” 
 
 “Tt has been despoiled of its venom!” said the witch, 
 aroused at his threat; but ere the words had left her lip, the 
 snake had sprung upon Glaucus; quick and watchful, the 
 agile Greek leaped lightly aside, and struck so fell and dex- 
 terous a blow on the head of the snake, that it fell prostrate 
 and writhing among the embers of the fire. 
 
 The hag sprung up, and stood confronting Glaucus with a 
 face which would have befitted the fiercest of the Furies, so 
 utterly dire and wrathful was its expression; yet even in hor- 
 ror and ghastliness preserving the outline and trace of beauty, 
 and utterly free from that coarse grotesque at which the 
 imaginations of the North have sought the source of terror. 
 
 “Thou hast,” said she, in a slow and steady voice, which 
 belied the expression of her face, so much was it passionless 
 and calm, — “thou hast had shelter under my roof, and warmth 
 at my hearth; thou hast returned evil for good; thou hast 
 smitten and haply slain the thing that loved me and was mine: 
 nay, more, the creature, above all others, consecrated to gods 
 and deemed venerable by man; now hear thy punishment. 
 By the moon, who is the guardian of the sorceress, by Orcus, 
 who is the treasurer of wrath, I curse thee, and thou art 
 cursed! May thy love be blasted, may thy name be blackened, 
 may the infernals mark thee, may thy heart wither and scorch, 
 may thy last hour recall to thee the prophet voice of the Saga 
 of Vesuvius! And thou—7” she added, turning sharply to-— 
 wards Ione, and raising her right arm, when Glaucus burst 
 impetuously on her speech. 
 
 “Hag!” cried he, “forbear! Me thou hast cursed, and I 
 commit myself to the gods; I defy and scorn thee! but 
 
 1 A peculiar sanctity was attached by the Romans (as, indeed, by perhaps 
 
 every ancient people) to serpents, which they kept tame in their houses, and 
 often introduced at their meals. 
 
“THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 17 
 
 breathe but one word against yon maiden, and I will convert 
 the oath on thy foul lips to thy dying groan. Beware!” 
 
 “JT have done,” replied the hag, laughing wildly; “for in 
 thy doom is she who loves thee accursed. And not the less, 
 that I heard her lips breathe thy name, and know by what 
 word to commend thee to the demons. Glaucus, thou art 
 doomed!” So saying, the witch turned from the Athenian, 
 and kneeling down beside her wounded favorite, which she 
 dragged from the hearth, she turned to them her face no 
 MOTE! s.<") 
 
 “QO Glaucus!” said Ione, greatly terrified, “what have we 
 done? Let us hasten from this place; the storm has ceased. 
 Good mistress, forgive him; recall thy words; he meant but to 
 defend himself: accept this peace-offering to unsay the said; ” 
 and Ione, stooping, placed her purse on the hag’s lap. 
 
 “ Away!” said she, bitterly, —‘“away! The oath once 
 woven the Fates only can untie. Away!” 
 
 “Come, dearest!” said Glaucus, impatiently. “Thinkest 
 thou that the gods above us or below hear the impotent ravings 
 of dotage? Come!” 
 
 Long and loud rang the echoes of the cavern with the dread 
 laugh of the Saga. She deigned no further reply. 
 
 The lovers breathed more freely when they gained the open 
 air: yet the scene they had witnessed, the words and the 
 laughter of the witch, still fearfully dwelt with Ione; and 
 even Glaucus could not thoroughly shake off the impression 
 they bequeathed. The storm had subsided, save, now and 
 then, a low thunder muttered at the distance amidst the 
 darker clouds, or a momentary flash of lightning affronted the 
 sovereignty of the moon. With some difficulty they regained 
 the road, where they found the vehicle already sufficiently 
 repaired for their departure, and the carrucarius calling loudly 
 upon Hercules to tell him where his charge had vanished. 
 
 Glaucus vainly endeavored to cheer the exhausted spirits of 
 Ione, and scarce less vainly to recover the elastic tone of his 
 own natural gayety. They soon arrived before the gate of the 
 city: as it opened to them, a litter borne by slaves impeded 
 the way. 
 
 VOL. I1.—2 
 
18 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “I+ is too late for egress,” cried the sentinel to the inmate 
 of the litter. 
 
 “ Not so,” said a voice, which the lovers started to hear; it 
 was a voice they well recognized. “I am bound to the villa 
 of Marcus Polybius. I shall return shortly. I am Arbaces 
 the Egyptian.” 
 
 The scruples of him of the gate were removed, and the litter 
 passed close beside the carriage that bore the lovers. 
 
 “ Arbaces, at this hour!— scarce recovered too, methinks { 
 Whither and for what can he leave the city ?” said Glaucus. 
 
 “ Alas!” replied Ione, bursting into tears, ““my soul feels 
 still more and more the omen of evil. Preserve us, O ye Gods! 
 or at least,” she murmured inly, “ preserve my Glaucus !” 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LORD OF THE BURNING BELT AND HIS MINION. —FATE 
 WRITES HER PROPHECY IN RED LETTERS, BUT WHO SHALL 
 READ THEM ? 
 
 Arpaces had tarried only till the cessation of the tem- 
 pest allowed him, under cover of night, to seek the Saga of 
 Vesuvius. 
 
 Borne by those of his trustier slaves in whom in all more 
 secret expeditions he was accustomed to confide, he lay ex- 
 tended along his litter, and resigning his sanguine heart to 
 the contemplation of vengeance gratified and love possessed. 
 The slaves in so short a journey moved very little slower than 
 the ordinary pace of mules; and Arbaces soon arrived at the 
 commencement of a narrow path, which the lovers had not 
 been fortunate enough to discover, but which, skirting the 
 thick vines, led at once to the habitation of the witch. Here 
 he rested the litter; and bidding his slaves conceal themselves 
 and the vehicle among the vines from the observation of any 
 chance passenger, he mounted alone, with steps still feeble but 
 supported by a long staff, the drear and sharp ascent. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 19 
 
 - Not a drop of rain fell from the tranquil heaven; but the 
 moisture dripped mournfully from the laden boughs of the 
 vine, and now and then collected in tiny pools in the crevices 
 and hollows of the rocky way. 
 
 “ Strange passions these for a philosopher,” thought Arbaces, 
 “that lead one like me just new from the bed of death, and 
 lapped even in health amidst the roses of luxury, across such 
 nocturnal paths as this; but Passion and Vengeance treading 
 to their goal can make an Elysium of a Tartarus.” High, 
 clear, and melancholy shone the moon above the road of that 
 dark wayfarer, glassing herself in every pool that lay before 
 him, and sleeping in shadow along the sloping mount. He 
 saw before him the same light that had guided the steps of 
 his intended victims, but, no longer contrasted by the black- 
 ened clouds, it shone less redly clear. 
 
 He paused, as at length he approached the mouth of the 
 cavern, to recover breath; and then, with his wonted collected 
 and stately mien, he crossed the unhallowed threshold. 
 
 The fox sprang up at the ingress of this new-comer, and by 
 a long howl announced another visitor to his mistress. 
 
 The witch had resumed her seat, and her aspect of grave- 
 like and grim repose. By her feet, upon a bed of dry weeds 
 which half covered it, lay the wounded snake; but the quick 
 eye oi the Egyptian caught its scales glittering in the reflected 
 light of the opposite fire, as it writhed,— now contracting, 
 now lengthening, its folds, in pain and unsated anger. 
 
 “Down, slave!” said the witch, as before, to the fox; and, 
 as before, the animal dropped to the ground, mute, but vigilant. 
 
 “ Rise, servant of Nox and Erebus!” said Arbaces, com- 
 mandingly ; “a stperior in thine art salutes thee! Rise, and 
 welcome him.” 
 
 At these words the hag turned her gaze upon the Egyptian’s 
 towering form and dark features. She looked long and fix- 
 edly upon him, as he stood before her in his Oriental robe, 
 and folded arms, and steadfast and haughty brow. ‘ Who art 
 thou,” she said at last, “that callest thyself greater in art 
 than the Saga of the Burning Fields, and the daughter of the 
 perished Etrurian race ?” 
 
20 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETL. 
 
 “Tam he,’ answered Arbaces, “from whom all cultivators 
 of magic, from north to south, from east to west, from the 
 Ganges and the Nile to the vales of Thessaly and the shores 
 of the yellow Tiber, have stooped to learn.” 
 
 “There is but one such man in these places,” answered the 
 witch, “whom the men of the outer world, unknowing his 
 loftier attributes and more secret fame, call Arbaces the 
 Egyptian; to us of a higher nature and deeper knowledge, 
 his rightful appellation is Hermes of the Burning Girdle.” 
 
 “ Look again,” returned Arbaces; “Iam he.” 
 
 As he spoke he drew aside his robe, and revealed a cincture 
 seemingly of fire, that burned around his waist, clasped in the 
 centre by a plate whereon was engraven some sign apparently 
 vague and unintelligible, but which was evidently not unknown 
 to the Saga. She rose hastily, and threw herself at the feet of 
 Arbaces. ‘I have seen then,” said she, in a voice of deep humil- 
 ity, “the Lord of the Mighty Girdle; vouchsafe my homage.” 
 
 “Rise,” said the Egyptian, “ I have need of thee.” 
 
 So saying, he placed himself on the same log of wood on 
 which Ione had rested before, and motioned to the witch to 
 resume her seat. 
 
 “Thou sayest,” said he, as she obeyed, “that thou art a 
 daughter of the ancient Etrurian ! tribes, the mighty walls of 
 whose rock-built cities yet frown above the robber race that 
 hath seized upon their ancient reign. Partly came those tribes 
 from Greece, partly were they exiles from a more burning and 
 primeval soil. In either case art thou of Egyptian lineage, 
 for the Grecian masters of the aboriginal helot were among 
 the restless sons whom the Nile banished from her bosom. 
 Equally then, O Saga! thy descent is from ancestors that 
 swore allegiance to mine own. By birth as by knowledge, 
 art thou the subject of Arbaces. Hear me, then, and obey!” 
 
 The witch bowed her head. 
 
 1 The Etrurians (it may be superfluous to mention) were celebrated for 
 their enchantments. Arbaces is wrong in assuming their Egyptian origin, 
 but the Egyptians arrogated the ancestry of almost every one of the more 
 illustrious races, and there are not wanting modern schoolmen who too 
 credulously support the claim. 
 
‘ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 21 
 
 “Whatever art we possess in sorcery,” continued Arbaces, 
 “we are sometimes driven to natural means to attain our 
 object. The ring’ and the crystal,? and the ashes3 and the 
 herbs,* do not give unerring divinations; neither do the higher 
 mysteries of the moon yield even the possessor of the girdle 
 a dispensation from the necessity of employing ever and anon 
 human measures for a human object. Mark me, then: thou 
 art deeply skilled, methinks, in the secrets of the more deadly 
 herbs; thou knowest those which arrest life, which burn and 
 scorch the soul from out her citadel, or freeze the channels 
 of young blood into that ice which no sun can melt. Do I 
 overrate thy skill? Speak, and truly!” , 
 
 - “ Mighty Hermes, such lore is indeed mine own. Deign to 
 look at these ghostly and corpse-like features: they have 
 waned from the hues of life merely by watching over the rank 
 herbs which simmer night and day in yon caldron.” 
 
 The Egyptian moved his seat from so unblessed or so un- 
 healthful a vicinity as the witch spoke. 
 
 “Tt is well,” said he; “thou hast learned that maxim of all 
 the deeper knowledge which saith, ‘Despise the body to make 
 wise the mind.’ But to thy task. There cometh to thee by 
 to-morrow’s starlight a vain maiden, seeking of thine art a 
 love-charm to fascinate from another the eyes that should utter 
 but soft tales to her own; instead of thy philtres, give the 
 maiden one of thy most powerful poisons. Let the lover 
 breathe his vows to the Shades.” 
 
 The witch trembled from head to foot. 
 
 “Oh, pardon! pardon! dread master,” said she, falteringly, 
 “but this I dare not. The law in these cities is sharp and 
 vigilant; they will seize, they will slay me.” 
 
 “For what purpose, then, thy herbs and thy potions, vain 
 Saga?” said Arbaces, sneeringly. 
 
 The witch hid her loathsome face with her hands. 
 
 “Oh, years ago,” said she, in a voice unlike her usual tones, 
 so plaintive was it and so soft, “I was not the thing that I am 
 now! I loved, I fancied myself beloved.” 
 
 1 AaxrvAoparreia. 2 KpvotadAoua”rela. 
 3 Teppopayteia. 4 Boravopaytela. 
 
22 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ‘¢ And what connection hath thy love, witch, with my com- 
 mands ?” said Arbaces, impetuously. 
 
 “Patience,” resumed the witch; “patience, I implore. I 
 loved! Another and less fair than l[—yes, by Nemesis! less 
 fair —allured from me my chosen. I was of that dark Etru- 
 rian tribe to whom most of all were known the secrets of the 
 gloomier magic. My mother was herself a Saga: she shared 
 the resentment of her child; from her hands I received the 
 potion that was to restore me his love; and from her also the 
 poison that was to destroy my rival. Oh, crush me, dread 
 walls! my trembling hands mistook the phials, my lover fell 
 indeed at my feet; but dead! dead! Since then, what has 
 been life tome? I became suddenly old; I devoted myself to 
 the soreeries of my race; still by an irresistible impulse I curse 
 myself with an awful penance; still I seek the most noxious 
 herbs; still I concoct the poisons; still I imagine that I am to 
 give them to my hated rival; still I pour them into the phial; 
 still I fancy that they shall blast her beauty to the dust; still 
 I wake and see the quivering body, the foaming lips, the glaz- 
 ing eyes of my Aulus, — murdered, and by me!” 
 
 The skeleton frame of the witch shook beneath strong 
 convulsions. | 
 
 Arbaces gazed upon her with a curious though contemptu- 
 ous eye. 
 
 “ And this foul thing has yet human emotions!” thought 
 he; “she still cowers over the ashes of the same fire that con- 
 sumes Arbaces. Such are we all! Mystic is the tie of those 
 mortal passions that unite the greatest and the least.” 
 
 He did not reply till she had somewhat recovered herself, 
 and now sat rocking to and fro in her seat, with glassy eyes 
 fixed on the opposite flame, and large tears rolling down her 
 livid cheeks. 
 
 ‘A grievous tale is thine, in truth,” said Arbaces. “ But 
 these emotions are fit only for our youth: age should harden 
 our hearts to all things but ourselves; as every year adds a 
 scale to the shell-fish, so should each year wall and incrust the 
 heart. Think of those frenzies no more! And now, listen to 
 me again. By the revenge that was dear to thee I command 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 23 
 
 thee to obey me! it is for vengeance that I seek thee! This 
 youth whom I would sweep from my path has crossed me, 
 despite my spells: this thing of purple and broidery, of smiles 
 and glances, soulless and mindless, with no charm but that of 
 beauty — accursed be it! — this insect, this Glaucus, I tell thee, 
 by Oreus and by Nemesis, he must die!” 
 
 And working himself up at every word, the Egyptian, for- 
 getful of his debility, of his strange companion, of everything 
 but his own vindictive rage, strode, with large and rapid steps, 
 the gloomy cavern. 
 
 “Glaucus! saidst thou, mighty master?” said the witch, 
 abruptly; and her dim eye glared at the name with all that 
 fierce resentment at the memory of small affronts so common 
 amongst the solitary and the shunned. 
 
 “ Ay, so he is called; but what matters the name? Let 
 it not be heard as that of a living man three days from this 
 date!” 
 
 “Hear me,” said the witch, breaking from a short reverie 
 into which she was plunged after this last sentence of the 
 Egyptian. ‘ Hear me! I am thy thing and thy slave! Spare 
 me! If I give to the maiden thou speakest of that which 
 would destroy the life of Glaucus, I shall be surely detected ; 
 the dead ever find avengers. Nay, dread man! if thy visit to 
 me be tracked, if thy hatred to Glaucus be known, thou mayest 
 have need of thy archest magic to protect thyself!” 
 
 ‘¢ Ha!” said Arbaces, stopping suddenly short; and as a 
 proof of that blindness with which passion darkens the eyes 
 even of the most acute, this was the first time that the risk he 
 himself ran by this method of vengeance had occurred to a 
 mind ordinarily wary and circumspect. 
 
 “ But,” continued the witch, “if instead of that which shall 
 arrest the heart, I give that which shall sear and blast the 
 brain, which shall make him who quaffs it unfit for the uses’ 
 and career of life, an abject, raving, benighted thing, smiting 
 sense to drivelling, youth to dotage, will not thy vengeance be 
 equally sated, thy object equally attained ? ” 
 
 “Oh, witch! no longer the servant, but the sister, the equal 
 of Arbaces, how much brighter is woman’s wit, even in ven- 
 
24 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 geance, than ours! How much more exquisite than death is 
 such a doom!” 
 
 “And,” continued the hag, gloating over her fell scheme, 
 “in this is but little danger; for by ten thousand methods, 
 which men forbear to seek, can our victim become mad. He 
 may have been among the vines and seen a nymph,! or the 
 vine itself may have had the same effect; ha, ha! they never 
 inquire too scrupulously into these matters in which the gods 
 may be agents. And let the worst arrive, let it be known 
 that it is a love-charm, why, madness is a common effect of 
 philtres, and even the fair she that gave it finds indulgence 
 in the excuse. Mighty Hermes, have I ministered to thee 
 cunningly ?” | 
 
 “Thou shalt have twenty years’ longer date for this,” re- 
 turned Arbaces. ‘I will write anew the epoch of thy fate on 
 the face of the pale stars; thou shalt not serve in vain the 
 Master of the Flaming Belt. And here, Saga, carve thee out, 
 by these golden tools, a warmer cell in this dreary cavern ; 
 one service to me shall countervail a thousand divinations by 
 sieve and shears to the gaping rustics.” So saying, he cast 
 upon the floor a heavy purse, which clinked not unmusically to 
 the ear of the hag, who loved the consciousness of possessing 
 the means to purchase comforts she disdained. “Farewell,” 
 said Arbaces; “fail not; outwatch the stars in concocting thy 
 beverage ; thou shalt lord it over thy sisters at the Walnut 
 Tree,? when thou tellest them that thy patron and thy friend 
 is'Hermes the Egyptian. To-morrow night we meet again.” 
 
 He stayed not to hear the valediction or the thanks of the 
 witch: with a quick step he passed into the moonlit air, and 
 hastened down the mountain. 
 
 The witch, who followed his steps to the threshold, stood 
 long at the entrance of the cavern, gazing fixedly on his reced- 
 ing form; and as the sad moonlight streamed upon her shad- 
 
 1 To see a nymph was to become mad, according to classic and popular 
 superstition. ; 
 
 2 The celebrated and immemorial rendezvous of the witches at Benevento. 
 The winged serpent attached to it, long an object of idolatry in those parts, 
 was prcbably consecrated by Egyptian superstitions. 
 
pot 
 i ae 
 
 j 
 ce 
 ; 7 
 
 d 
 Sted 
 
‘ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 25 
 
 owy form and deathlike face, emerging from the dismal rocks, 
 it seemed as if one, gifted indeed by supernatural magic, had 
 escaped from the dreary Orcus, and the foremost of its ghostly 
 throng stood at its black portals, vainly summoning his return, 
 or vainly sighing to rejoin him. The hag, then slowly re- 
 entering the cave, droningly picked up the heavy purse, took 
 the lamp from its stand, and, passing to the remotest depth of 
 her cell, a black and abrupt passage, which was not visible save 
 at a near approach, closed round as it was with jutting and 
 sharp crags, yawned before her; she went several yards along 
 this gloomy path, which sloped gradually downwards, as if 
 towards the bowels of the earth, and, lifting a stone, deposited 
 her treasure in a hole beneath, which, as the lamp pierced 
 its secrets, seemed already to contain coins of various value, 
 wrung from the credulity or gratitude of her visitors. 
 
 “T love to look at you,” said she, apostrophizing the 
 moneys; “for when I see you I feel that I am indeed of 
 power. And I am to have twenty years’ longer life to increase 
 your store! O thou great Hermes!” 
 
 She replaced the stone, and continued her path onward for 
 some paces, when she stopped before a deep, irregular fissure 
 in the earth. Here, as she bent, strange, rumbling, hoarse, 
 and distant sounds might be heard, while ever and anon, with 
 a loud and grating noise, which, to use a homely but faithful 
 simile, seemed to resemble the grinding of steel upon wheels, 
 volumes of streaming and dark smoke issued forth, and rushed 
 spirally along the cavern. 
 
 “The Shades are noisier than their wont,” said the hag, 
 shaking her gray locks; and looking into the cavity, she be- 
 held, far down, glimpses of a long streak of light, intensely 
 but darkly red. “Strange!” she said, shrinking back; “it is 
 only within the last two days that dull, deep light hath been 
 visible. What can it portend ?” 
 
 The fox, who had attended the steps of his fell mistress, 
 uttered a dismal howl, and ran cowering back to the inner 
 cave; a cold shuddering seized the hag herself at the cry 
 of the animal, which, causeless as it seemed, the superstitions 
 of the time considered deeply ominous. She muttered her 
 
26 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 placatory charm, and tottered back into her cavern, where, 
 amidst her herbs and incantations, she prepared to execute the 
 orders of the Egyptian. 
 
 ‘He called me dotard,” said she, as the smoke curled from 
 the hissing caldron; “when the jaws drop, and the grinders 
 fall, and the heart scarce beats, it is a pitiable thing to dote; 
 but when,” she added, with a savage and exulting grin, “the 
 young, and the beautiful, and the strong are suddenly smitten 
 into idiocy, — ah, ¢hat is terrible! Burn flame, simmer herb, 
 swelter toad; I cursed him, and he shall be cursed !” 
 
 ' On that night, and at the same hour which witnessed the 
 dark and unholy interview between Arbaces and the Saga, 
 Apecides was baptized. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PROGRESS OF EVENTS—THE PLOT THICKENS—THE WEB IS 
 WOVEN, BUT THE NET CHANGES HANDS. 
 
 “ Anp you have the courage, then, Julia, to seek the Witch 
 of Vesuvius this evening; in company, too, with that fearful 
 man?” 
 
 “Why, Nydia,” replied Julia, timidly; “dost thou really 
 think there is anything to dread? These old hags, with their 
 enchanted mirrors, their trembling sieves, and their moon- 
 gathered herbs, are, I imagine, but crafty impostors, who have 
 learned, perhaps, nothing but the very charm for which I 
 apply to their skill, and which is drawn but from the knowl- 
 edge of the field’s herbs and simples, Wherefore should I 
 dread ?” 
 
 “Dost thou not fear thy companion ? ” 
 
 “What, Arbaces? By Dian, I never saw lover more cour- 
 teous than that same magician! And were he not so dark, he 
 would be even handsome.” 
 
 Blind as she was, Nydia had the penetration to perceive that 
 Julia’s mind was not one that the gallantries of Arbaces were 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 27 
 
 likely to terrify. She therefore dissuaded her no more, but 
 nursed in her excited heart the wild and increasing desire to 
 know if sorcery had indeed a spell to fascinate love to love. 
 
 “Let me go with thee, noble Julia,” said she, at length; 
 “my presence is no protection, but I should like to be beside 
 thee to the last.” 
 
 “Thine offer pleases me much,” replied the daughter of 
 Diomed, ‘Yet how canst thou contrive it? We Daya not 
 return until late; they will miss thee.” 
 
 “Tone is Be acleunk. ” rephed Nydia. “If thou wilt permit 
 me to sleep beneath thy roof, I will say that thou, an early 
 patroness and friend, hast invited me to pass the day with 
 thee, and sing thee my Thessalian songs; her courtesy will 
 readily grant to thee so light a boon.” 
 
 “Nay, ask for thyself!” said the haughty Julia. “I stoop 
 to request no favor from the Neapolitan! ” 
 
 “Well, be itso. I will take my leave now, make my request, 
 which I know will be readily granted, and return shortly.” 
 
 Do so; and thy bed shall be prepared in my own chamber.” 
 
 With that, Nydia left the fair Pompeian. 
 
 On her way back to Ione she was met by the chariot of 
 Glaucus, on whose fiery and curveting steeds was riveted the 
 gaze of the crowded street. 
 
 He kindly stopped for a moment to speak to the flower-girl. 
 
 “Blooming as thine own roses, my gentle Nydia! And how 
 is thy fair, mistress? Recovered, I trust, from the effects of 
 the storm?” 
 
 “JT have not seen her this morning,” answered Nydia, 
 “but —” 
 
 ‘ But what? Draw back; the horses are too near thee.’ 
 
 “But think you Ione will permit me to pass the day with 
 Julia, the daughter of Diomed ? She wishes it, and was kind 
 to me when I had few friends.” 
 
 “The gods bless thy grateful heart! I will answer for 
 Jone’s permission.” 
 
 “Then I may stay over the night, and return to-morrow ?” 
 said Nydia, shrinking from the praise she so little merited. 
 
 “ As thou and fair Julia please. Commend me to her; and 
 
28 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 hark ye, Nydia, when thou hearest her speak, note the con- 
 trast of her voice with that of the silver-toned Ione. Vale/” 
 
 His spirits entirely recovered from the effects of the past . 
 night, his locks waving in the wind, his joyous and elastic 
 heart bounding with every spring of his Parthian steeds, a 
 very prototype of his country’s god, full of youth and of love, 
 — Glaucus was borne rapidly to his mistress. 
 
 Enjoy while ye may the present: who can read the future ? 
 
 As the evening darkened, Julia, reclined within her litter, 
 which was capacious enough also to admit her blind com- 
 panion, took her way to the rural baths indicated by Arbaces. 
 To her natural levity of disposition, her enterprise brought 
 less of terror than of pleasurable excitement; above all, she 
 glowed at the thought of her coming triumph over the hated 
 Neapolitan. 
 
 A small but gay group was collected round the door of the 
 villa as her litter passed by it to the private entrance of the 
 baths appropriated to the women. | 
 
 “Methinks, by this dim light,” said one of the bystanders, 
 “T recognize the slaves of Diomed.” 
 
 “True, Clodius,” said Sallust: “it is probably the litter of 
 his daughter Julia. She is rich, my friend; why dost thou 
 not proffer thy suit to her?” 
 
 “Why, I had once hoped that Glaucus would have married 
 her. She does not disguise her attachment; and then, as he 
 gambles freely and with ill-success — ” 
 
 “The sesterces would have passed to thee, wise Clodius. A 
 wife is a good thing — when it belongs to another man!” 
 
 “But,” continued Clodius, “as Glaucus is, I understand, to 
 wed the Neapolitan, I think I must even try my chance with 
 the rejected maid. After all, the lamp of Hymen will be gilt, 
 and the vessel will reconcile one to the odor of the flame. I 
 shall only protest, my Sallust, against Diomed’s making thee 
 trustee to his daughter’s fortune.” } 
 
 1 Tt was an ancient Roman law that no one should make a woman his heir. 
 This law was evaded by the parent’s assigning his fortune to a friend in trust 
 for his daughter, but the trustee might keep it if he liked. The law had, 
 however, fallen into disuse before the date of this story. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 29 
 
 “Ha! ha! let us within, my commissator; the wine and the 
 garlands wait us.” 
 
 Dismissing her slaves to that part of the house set apart for 
 their entertainment, Julia entered the baths with Nydia, and 
 declining the offers of the attendants, passed by a private door 
 into the garden behind. 
 
 “She comes by appointment, be sure,” said one of the 
 slaves. : 
 
 “What is that to thee?” said a superintendent, sourly; 
 “she pays for the baths, and does not waste the saffron. 
 Such appointments are the best of the trade. Hark! do you 
 not hear the widow Fulvia clapping her hands? Run, fool, — 
 run !” 
 
 Julia and Nydia, avoiding the more public part of the 
 garden, arrived at the place specified by the Egyptian. Ina 
 small circular plot of grass the stars gleamed upon the statue 
 of Silenus; the merry god reclined upon a fragment of rock, 
 the lynx of Bacchus at his feet, and over his mouth he held, 
 with extended arm, a bunch of grapes, which he seemingly 
 laughed to welcome ere he devoured. 
 
 “JT see not the magician,” said Julia, looking round; when, 
 as she spoke, the Egyptian slowly emerged from the neigh- 
 boring foliage, and the light fell palely over his sweepin | 
 robes. 
 
 “ Salve, sweet maiden! But ha! whom hast thou here? 
 We must have no companions!” 
 
 “Tt is but the blind flower-girl, wise magician,” replied 
 Julia; “herself a Thessalian.” 
 
 “Oh, Nydia!” said the Egyptian; “I know her well.” 
 
 Nydia drew back and shuddered. 
 
 “Thou hast been at my house, methinks!” said he, ap- 
 proaching his voice to Nydia’s ear; “thou knowest the oath! 
 Silence and secrecy, now as then, or beware! Yet,” he 
 added, musingly to himself, “why confide more than is ne- 
 cessary, even in the blind? Julia, canst thou trust thyself 
 alone with me? Believe me, the magician is less formidable 
 than he seems.” 
 
 As he spoke he gently drew Julia aside. 
 
30 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “The witch loves not many visitors at once,” said he; 
 ‘leave Nydia here till your return; she can be of no assist- 
 ance to us: and for protection, your own beauty suffices, — your 
 own beauty and your own rank; yes, Julia, | know thy name 
 ,and birth. Come, trust thyself with me, fair rival of the 
 youngest of the Naiads!” 
 
 The vain Julia was not, as we have seen, easily affrighted ; 
 she was moved by the flattery of Arbaces, and she readily con- — 
 sented to suffer Nydia to await her return; nor did Nydia 
 press her presence. At the sound of the Egyptian’s voice all 
 her terror of him returned: she felt a sentiment of pleasure 
 at learning she was not to travel in his companionship. 
 
 She returned to the bath-house, and in one of the private 
 chambers waited their return. Many and bitter were the 
 thoughts of this wild girl as she sat there in her eternal dark- 
 ness. She thought of her own desolate fate, far from her 
 native land, far from the bland cares that once assuaged the 
 April sorrows of childhood, deprived of the light of day, 
 with none but strangers to guide her: steps, accursed by the 
 one soft feeling of her heart, loving and without hope, save 
 the dim and unholy ray which shot across her mind, as her 
 Thessalian fancies questioned of the force of spells and the 
 gifts of magic. 
 
 Nature had sown in the heart of this poor girl the seeds of 
 virtue never destined to ripen. The lessons of adversity are 
 not always salutary; sometimes they soften and amend, but 
 as often they indurate and pervert. If we consider ourselves 
 more harshly treated by fate than those around us, and do 
 not acknowledge in our own deeds the justice of the severity, 
 we become too apt to deem the world our enemy, to case our- 
 selves in defiance, to wrestle against our softer self, and to 
 indulge the darker passions which are so easily fermented by 
 the sense of injustice. Sold early into slavery, sentenced to a 
 sordid task-master, exchanging her situation only yet more to 
 embitter her lot, —the kindlier feelings, naturally profuse in 
 the breast of Nydia, were nipped and blighted. Her sense of 
 right and wrong was confused by a passion to which she had 
 so madly surrendered herself; and the same intense and tragic 
 
“THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 31 
 
 emotions which we read of in the women of the classic age, — 
 a Myrrha, a Medea, —and which hurried and swept away the 
 whole soul when once delivered to love, ruled and rioted in 
 her breast. 
 
 Time passed; a light step entered the chamber where 
 Nydia yet indulged her gloomy meditations. 
 
 “Oh, thanked be the immortal gods!” said Julia, “I have 
 returned; I have left that terrible cavern! Come, Nydia! let 
 us away forthwith !” 
 
 It was not till they were seated in the litter that Julia 
 again spoke. 
 
 “Oh!” said she, tremblingly, “such a scene! such fearful 
 incantations ! and the dead face of the hag !— But let us talk 
 not of it. I have obtained the potion; she pledges its effect. 
 My rival shall be suddenly indifferent to his eye, and I, I 
 alone, the idol of Glaucus.” 
 
 “ Glaucus!” exclaimed Nydia. 
 
 “Ay! I told thee, girl, at first, that it was not the Athenian 
 whom I loved; but I see now that I may trust thee wholly, — 
 it zs the beautiful Greek !” : 
 
 What then were Nydia’s emotions! She had connived, she 
 had assisted, in tearing Glaucus from Ione, but only to trans- 
 fer, by all the power of magic, his affections yet more hope- 
 lessly to another. Her heart swelled almost to suffocation ; 
 she gasped for breath. In the darkness of. the vehicle Julia 
 did not perceive the agitation of her companion; she went on 
 rapidly dilating on the promised effect of her acquisition, and 
 on her approaching triumph over Ione, every now and then 
 abruptly digressing to the horror of the scene she had quitted, 
 —the unmoved mien of Arbaces, and his authority over the 
 dreadful Saga. 
 
 Meanwhile Nydia recovered her self-possession ; a thought 
 flashed across her: she slept in the chamber of Julia, she 
 might possess herself of the potion. 
 
 They arrived at the house of Diomed, and descended to 
 Julia’s apartment, where the night’s repast awaited them. 
 
 “Drink, Nydia, thou must be cold; the air was chill to- 
 night; as for me, my veins are yet ice.” 
 
32 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 And Julia unhesitatingly quaffed deep draughts of the spiced 
 wine. 
 
 ‘Thou hast the potion,” said Nydia; “let me hold it in 
 my hands. How small the phial is! Of what color is the 
 draught ? ” 
 
 “Clear as crystal,” replied Julia, as she retook the philtre; 
 “thou couldst not tell it from this water. The witch assures 
 me it is tasteless. Small though the phial, it suffices for a 
 life’s fidelity : it is to be poured into any liquid; and Glaucus 
 will only know what he has quaffed by the effect.” 
 
 “ Exactly like this water in appearence?” 
 
 “Yes, sparkling and colorless as this. How bright it seems! 
 it is as the very essence of moonlit dews. Bright thing! how 
 thou shinest on my hopes through thy crystal vase !” 
 
 “ And how is it sealed ?” 
 
 “But by one little stopper: I withdraw it now; the draught 
 gives no odor. Strange, that that which speaks to neither 
 sense should thus command all !” 
 
 “Ts the effect instantaneous ? ” 
 
 “ Usually ; but sometimes it remains dormant for a few 
 hours.” 
 
 “Oh, how sweet is this perfume!” said Nydia, suddenly, 
 as she took up asmall bottle on the table and bent over its 
 fragrant contents. 
 
 “Thinkest thou so? The bottle is set with gems of some 
 value. Thou wouldst not have the bracelet yestermorn; wilt 
 thou take the bottle?” 
 
 “Tt ought to be such perfumes as these that should remind 
 one who cannot see of the generous Julia. If the bottle be 
 not too costly —” 
 
 ‘Oh, I have a thousand costlier ones; take it, child!” 
 
 Nydia bowed her gratitude, and placed the bottle in her 
 vest. 
 
 “And the draught would be equally efficacious, whoever 
 adminsters it ?” 
 
 “Tf the most hideous hag beneath the sun bestowed it, such 
 is its asserted virtue that Glaucus would deem her beautiful, 
 and none but her!” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 33 
 
 Julia, warmed by wine, and the reaction of her spirits, was 
 now all animation and delight: she laughed loud and talked 
 on a hundred matters; nor was it till the night had advanced 
 far towards morning that she summoned her slaves and 
 undressed. 
 
 When they were dismissed, she said to Nydia, — 
 
 “JT will not suffer this holy draught to quit my presence till 
 the hour comes for its uses. Lie under my pillow, bright 
 spirit, and give me happy dreams!” 
 
 So saying, she placed the potion under her pillow. Nydia’s 
 heart beat violently. 
 
 “ Why dost thou drink that unmixed water, Nydia? Take 
 the wine by its side.” 
 
 “T am fevered,” replied the blind girl, “and the water cools 
 me. I will place this bottle by my bedside; it refreshes in 
 these summer nights, when the dews of sleep fall not on our 
 lips. Fair Julia, I must leave thee very early, — so Ione bids, 
 — perhaps before thou art awake; accept therefore now my 
 congratulations.” 
 
 “Thanks: when next we meet you may find Glaucus at my 
 feet.’ 
 
 They had retired to their couches, and Julia, worn out by 
 the excitement of the day, soon slept. But anxious and burn- 
 ing thoughts rolled over the mind of the wakeful Thessalian. 
 She listened to the calm breathing of Julia; and her ear, ac- 
 customed to the finest distinctions of sound, speedily assured 
 her of the deep slumber of her companion. 
 
 “Now befriend me, Venus!” said she, softly. 
 
 She rose gently, and poured the perfume from the gift of 
 Julia upon the marble floor; she rinsed it several times care- 
 fully with the water that was beside her, and then easily find- 
 ing the bed of Julia (for night to her was as day), she pressed 
 her trembling hand under the pillow and seized the potion. 
 Julia stirred not; her breath regularly fanned the burning 
 cheek of the blind girl. Nydia, then, opening the phial, 
 poured its contents into the bottle, which easily contained 
 them; and then refilling the former reservoir of the potion 
 with that limpid water which Julia had assured her it so 
 
 VOL. II. ——8 
 
34 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 resembled, she once more placed the phial in its former place. 
 She then stole again to her couch and waited — with what 
 thoughts ! —the dawning day. 
 
 The sun had risen: Julia slept still; Nydia noiselessly 
 dressed herself, placed her treasure carefully in her vest, took 
 up her staff, and hastened to quit the house. 
 
 The porter, Medon, saluted her kindly as she descended 
 the steps that led to the street; she heard him not; her mind 
 was confused and lost in the whirl of tumultuous thoughts, 
 each thought a passion. She felt the pure morning air upon 
 her cheek, but it cooled not her scorching veins. 
 
 “ Glaucus,” she murmured, “all the love-charms of the 
 wildest magic could not make thee love me as I love thee. 
 Jone! ah; away hesitation! away remorse! Glaucus, my fate 
 is in thy smile; and thine! O hope! O joy! O transport! thy 
 fate is in these hands !” 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 Philtra nocent animis, vimque furoris habent. — Ov1p. 
 
 Philtres are baneful to the reasoning mind, 
 And have the strength of madness. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE ZEAL OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. — TWO 
 MEN COME TO A PERILOUS RESOLVE. — WALLS HAVE EARS,—- 
 PARTICULARLY SACRED WALLS. 
 
 WHOEVER regards the early history of Christianity will 
 perceive how necessary to its triumph was that fierce spirit of 
 zeal, which, fearing no danger, accepting no compromise, in- 
 spired its champions and sustained its martyrs. In a domi- 
 nant church the genius of intolerance detrays its cause; in a 
 weak and a persecuted church, the same genius mainly sup- 
 ports. It was necessary to scorn, to loathe, to abhor the 
 ereeds of other men, in order to conquer the temptations 
 which they presented; it was necessary rigidly to believe not 
 only that the Gospel was the true faith, but the sole true faith 
 that saved, in order to nerve the disciple to the austerity of 
 its doctrine, and to encourage him to the sacred and perilous 
 chivalry of converting the Polytheist and the Heathen. The 
 sectarian sternness which confined virtue and heaven to a 
 chosen few, which saw demons in other gods, and the penal- 
 ties of hell in another religion, made the believer naturally 
 anxious to convert all to whom he felt the ties of human affec- 
 tion; and the circle thus traced by benevolence to man was 
 yet more widened by a desire for the glory of God. It 
 was for the honor of the Christian faith that the Christian 
 boldly forced its tenets upon the scepticism of some, the 
 
36 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 repugnance of others, the sage contempt of the philosopher, the 
 pious shudder of the people: his very intolerance supplied 
 him with his fittest instruments of success; and the soft 
 Heathen began at last to imagine there must indeed be some- 
 thing holy in a zeal wholly foreign to his experience, which 
 stopped at no obstacle, dreaded no danger, and even at the 
 torture or on the scaffold referred a dispute far other than 
 the calm differences of speculative philosophy to the tribunal 
 of an Eternal Judge. It was thus that the same fervor 
 which made the Churchman of the middle age a bigot without 
 mercy, made the Christian of the early days a hero without 
 fear. 
 
 Of these more fiery, daring, and earnest natures, not the 
 least ardent was Olinthus. No sooner had Apecides been 
 received by the rites of baptism into the bosom of the Church, 
 than the Nazarene hastened to make him conscious of the im- 
 possibility to retain the office and robes of priesthood. He 
 could not, it was evident, profess to worship God, and con- 
 tinue even outwardly to honor the idolatrous altars of the 
 Fiend. 
 
 Nor was this all: the sanguine and impetuous mind of 
 Olinthus beheld in the power of Apecides the means of di- 
 vulging to the deluded people the juggling mysteries of the 
 oracular Isis. He thought Heaven had sent this instrument 
 of his design in order to disabuse the eyes of the crowd, and 
 prepare the way, perchance, for the conversion of a whole 
 city. He did not hesitate then to appeal to all the new- 
 kindled enthusiasm of Apecides, to arouse his courage, and 
 to stimulate his zeal. They met, according to previous agree- 
 ment, the evening after the baptism of Apzecides, in the grove 
 of Cybele, which we have before described. 
 
 “At the next solemn consultation of the oracle,” said 
 Olinthus, as he proceeded in the warmth of his address, 
 “advance yourself to the railing, proclaim aloud to the people 
 the deception they endure, invite them to enter, to be them- 
 selves the witness of the gross but artful mechanism of im- 
 posture thou hast described tome. Fear not: the Lord, who 
 protected Daniel, shall protect thee; we, the community of 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 37 
 
 Christians, will be amongst the crowd; we will urge on the 
 shrinking; and in the first flush of the popular indignation 
 and shame, I myself, upon those very altars, will plant the 
 palm-branch typical of the Gospel, and to my tongue shall 
 descend the rushing Spirit of the living God.” 
 
 Heated and excited as he was, this suggestion was not un- 
 pleasing to Apeecides. He was rejoiced at so early an oppor- 
 tunity of distinguishing his faith in his new sect, and to his 
 holier feelings were added those of a vindictive loathing at the 
 imposition he had himself suffered, and a desire to avenge 
 it. In that sanguine and elastic overbound of obstacles (the 
 rashness necessary to all who undertake venturous and lofty 
 actions), neither Olinthus nor the proselyte perceived the 
 impediments to the success of their scheme, which might be 
 found in the reverent superstition of the people themselves, 
 who would probably be loth, before the sacred altars of the 
 great Egyptian goddess, to believe even the testimony of her 
 priest against her power. 
 
 Apecides then assented to this proposal with a readiness 
 which delighted Olnthus. They parted with the under- 
 standing that Olinthus should confer with the more important 
 of his Christian brethren on his great enterprise, should re- 
 ceive their advice and the assurances of their support on the 
 eventful day. It so chanced that one of the festivals of Isis 
 was to be held on the second day after this conference. The 
 festival proffered a ready occasion for the design. They ap- 
 pointed to meet once more on the next evening at the same 
 spot; and in that meeting were finally to be settled the order 
 and details of the disclosure for the following day. 
 
 It happened that the latter part of this conference had been 
 held near the sacellum, or small chapel, which I have de- 
 scribed in the early part of this work; and so soon as the 
 forms of the Christian and the priest had disappeared from 
 the grove, a dark and ungainly figure emerged from behind 
 the chapel. 
 
 “T have tracked you with some effect, my brother flamen,” 
 soliloquized the eavesdropper; “you, the priest of Isis, have 
 not for mere idle discussion conferred with this gloomy 
 
88 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Christian. Alas! that I could not hear all your precious plot: 
 enough! I find, at least, that you meditate revealing the sa- 
 cred mysteries, and that to-morrow you meet again at this place 
 to plan the how and the when. May Osiris sharpen my ears 
 then to detect the whole of your unheard-of audacity! When 
 I have learned more, I must confer at once with Arbaces. We 
 will frustrate you, my friends, deep as you think yourselves. 
 At present, my breast is a locked treasury of your secret.” 
 
 Thus muttering, Calenus, for it was he, wrapped his robe 
 round him, and strode thoughtfully homeward. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A CLASSIC HOST, COOK, AND KITCHEN. —APACIDES SEEKS 
 IONE. — THEIR CONVERSATION, 
 
 Ir was then the day for Diomed’s banquet to the most select 
 of his friends. The graceful Glaucus, the beautiful Ione, the 
 official Pansa, the high-born Clodius, the immortal Fulvius, the 
 exquisite Lepidus, the epicurean Sallust, were not the only 
 honorers of his festival. He expected also an invalid senator 
 from Rome (a man of considerable repute and favor at court ) 
 and a great warrior from Herculaneum, who had fought with 
 Titus against the Jews, and having enriched himself prodig- 
 lously in the wars, was always told by his friends that his 
 country was eternally indebted to his disinterested exertions ! 
 The party, however, extended to a yet greater number; for 
 although, critically speaking, it was at one time thought in- 
 elegant among the Romans to entertain less than three or more 
 than nine at their banquets, yet this rule was easily disre- 
 garded by the ostentatious. And we are told, indeed, in his- 
 tory, that one of the most splendid of these entertainers 
 usually feasted a select party of three hundred. Diomed, 
 however, more modest, contented himself with doubling the 
 number of the Muses. His party consisted of eighteen, — no 
 unfashionable number in the present day. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 389 
 
 It was the morning of Diomed’s banquet, and Diomed him- 
 self, though he greatly affected the gentleman and the scholar, 
 retained enough of his mercantile experience to know that a 
 master’s eye makes a ready servant. Accordingly, with his 
 tunic ungirdled on his portly stomach, his easy slippers on his 
 feet, a small wand in his hand, wherewith he now directed the 
 gaze and now corrected the back, of some duller menial, he 
 went from chamber to chamber of his costly villa. 
 
 He did not disdain even a visit to that sacred apartment in 
 which the priests of the festival prepare their offerings. On 
 entering the kitchen, his ears were agreeably stunned by the 
 noise of dishes and pans, of oaths and commands. Small as 
 this indispensable chamber seems to have been in all the 
 houses of Pompeiii, it was nevertheless usually fitted up with 
 all that amazing variety of stoves and shapes, stewpans and 
 saucepans, cutters and moulds, without which a cook of spirit, 
 no matter whether he be an ancient or a modern, declares it 
 utterly impossible that he can give you anything to eat. And 
 as fuel was then, as now, dear and scarce in those regions, great 
 seems to have been the dexterity exercised in preparing as 
 many things as possible with as little fire. An admirable con- 
 trivance of this nature may be still seen in the Neapolitan 
 Museum; namely, a portable kitchen, about the size of a folio 
 volume, containing stoves for four dishes, and an apparatus 
 for heating water or other beverages. 
 
 Across the small kitchen flitted many forms which the 
 quick eye of the master did not recognize. 
 
 “Oh! oh!” grumbled he to himself, “that cursed Congrio 
 hath invited a whole legion of cooks to assist him. They won’t 
 serve for nothing, and this is another item in the total of my 
 day’s expenses. By Bacchus! thrice lucky shall I be if the slaves 
 do not help themselves to some of the drinking-vessels : ready, 
 alas, are their hands, capacious are their tunics! Me miserum!” 
 
 The cooks, however, worked on, seemingly heedless of the 
 apparition of Diomed. 
 
 ‘Ho, Euclio, your egg-pan! What, is this the largest ? it 
 only holds thirty-three eggs: in the houses J usually serve, 
 the smallest egg-pan holds fifty, if need be!” 
 
40 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “The unconscionable rogue!” thought Diomed; “he talks 
 of eggs as if they were a sesterce a hundred!” 
 
 “ By Mercury !” cried a pert little culinary disciple, scarce 
 in his novitiate, “whoever saw such antique sweetmeat shapes 
 as these ? —it is impossible to do credit to one’s art with 
 such rude materials. Why, Sallust’s commonest sweetmeat 
 shape represents the whole siege of Troy, —Hector and Paris 
 and Helen, with little Astyanax and the Wooden Horse into 
 the bargain ! ” 
 
 “Silence, fool!” said Congrio, the cook of the house, wha 
 seemed to leave the chief part of the battle to his allies. 
 “ My master, Diomed, is not one of those expensive good-for- 
 noughts who must have the last fashion, cost what it will!” 
 
 “Thou liest, base slave!” cried Diomed, in a great passion ; 
 “and thou costest me already enough to have ruined Lucullus 
 himself! Come out of thy den; I want to talk to thee.” 
 
 The slave, with a sly wink at his confederates, obeyed the 
 command. 
 
 “Man of three letters,’’? said Diomed, with his face of sol- 
 emn anger, “ how didst thou dare to invite all those rascals into 
 my house? I see thief written in every line of their faces.” 
 
 “Yet I assure you, master, that they are men of most 
 respectable character, —the best cooks of the place; it is a 
 great favor to get them. But for my sake —” 
 
 “Thy sake, unhappy Congrio!” interrupted Diomed; “and 
 by what purloined moneys of mine, by what reserved filch- 
 ings from marketing, by what goodly meats converted into 
 grease and sold in the suburbs, by what false charges for 
 bronzes marred and earthenware broken, hast thou been 
 enabled to make them serve thee for thy sake?” 
 
 “Nay, master, do not impeach my honesty! May the gods 
 desert me if —” 
 
 “Swear not!” again interrupted the choleric Diomed, “for 
 then the gods will smite thee for a perjurer, and I shall lose 
 my cook on the eve of dinner. But enough of this at present: 
 keep a sharp eye on thy ill-favored assistants, and tell me no 
 tales to-morrow of vases broken and cups miraculously van- 
 
 1 The common witty objurgation, from the triliteral word “fur ” (thief). 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 41 
 
 ished, or thy whole back shall be one pain. And hark thee! 
 thou knowest thou hast made me pay for those Phrygian 
 attagens* enough, by Hercules! to have feasted a sober man 
 for a year together; see that they be not one iota over-roasted. 
 The last time, O Congrio, that I gave a banquet to my friends, 
 when thy vanity did so boldly undertake the becoming ap- 
 pearance of a Melian crane, thou knowest it came up like a 
 stone from Avtna, as if all the fires of Phiegethon had been 
 scorching out its juices. Be modest this time, Congrio, — 
 wary and modest. Modesty is the nurse of great actions: and 
 in all other things, as in this, if thou wilt not spare thy 
 master’s purse, at least consult thy master’s glory.” 
 
 “There shall not be such a ccena seen at Pompeii since the 
 days of Hercules.” 
 
 “Softly, softly; thy cursed boasting again! But I say, 
 Congrio, yon homunculus, yon pygmy assailant of my cranes, 
 yon pert-tongued neophite of the kitchen, — was there aught 
 but insolence on his tongue when he maligned the comeliness 
 of my sweetmeat shapes? I would not be out of the fashion, 
 Congrio.” 
 
 “Tt is but the custom of us cooks,” replied Congrio, gravely, 
 “to undervalue our tools, in order to increase the effect of our 
 art. The sweetmeat shape is a fair shape, and a lovely; but 
 I would recommend my master at the first occasion to purchase 
 some new ones of a —” 
 
 “That will suffice,” exclaimed Diomed, who seemed resolved 
 never to allow his slave to finish his sentences. ‘“ Now, resume 
 thy charge; shine, eclipse thyself. Let men envy Diomed his 
 cook, let the slaves of Pompeii style thee Congrio the great! 
 Go! Yet stay; thou hast not spent all the moneys I gave 
 thee for the marketing ? ” : 
 
 “¢ 4]l/’ Alas! the nightingales’ tongues and the Roman 
 tomacula,? and the oysters from Britain, and sundry other 
 
 1 The attagen of Phrygia or Ionia (the bird thus anglicised in the plural) 
 was held in peculiar esteem by the Romans. “ Attagen carnis suavissime.” 
 (Athen., lib. ix. cap. 8,9.) It was a little bigger than a partridge. 
 
 2 “__ candiduli divina tomacula porci.” (Juvenal, x. 1. 355.) A rich and 
 delicate species of sausage. 
 
42 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 things too numerous now to recite, are yet left unpaid for. 
 But what matter? Every one trusts the Archimagirus? of 
 Diomed the wealthy!” 
 
 “Oh, unconscionabie prodigal! what waste! what profu- 
 sion! Iam ruined! But go! hasten! inspect! taste! per- 
 form! surpass thyself! Let the Roman senator not despise 
 the poor Pompeian. Away, slave; and remember, the Phry- 
 gian attagens.” 
 
 The chief disappeared within his natural domain, and 
 Diomed rolled back his portly presence to the more courtly 
 chambers. All was to his liking; the flowers were fresh, the 
 fountains played briskly, the mosaic pavements were smooth 
 as mirrors. 
 
 ‘Where is my daughter Julia?” he asked. 
 
 “ At the bath.” 
 
 “Ah, that reminds me! time wanes! and I must bathe 
 also.” 
 
 Our story returns to Apeecides. On awaking that day from 
 the broken and feverish sleep which had followed his adoption 
 of a faith so strikingly and sternly at variance with that in 
 which his youth had been nurtured, the young priest could 
 scarcely imagine that he was not yet ina dream; he had 
 crossed the fatal river, — the past was henceforth to have no 
 sympathy with the future; the two worlds were distinct and 
 separate, that which had been, from that which was to be. 
 To what a bold and adventurous enterprise he had pledged his 
 life !— to unveil the mysteries in which he had participated, 
 to desecrate the altars he had served, to denounce the goddess 
 whose ministering robe he wore! Slowly he became sensible 
 of the hatred and the horror he should provoke amongst 
 the pious, even if successful; if frustrated in his daring 
 attempt, what penalties might he not incur for an offence 
 hitherto unheard of,—for which no specific law, derived 
 from experience, was prepared, and which, for that very rea- 
 son, precedents, dragged from the sharpest armory of obsolete 
 and inapplicable legislation, would probably be distorted to 
 meet! His friends, the sister of his youth, — could he expect 
 
 1 Archimagirus was the lofty title of the chief cook. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 43 
 
 justice, though he might receive compassion from them? This 
 brave and heroic act would by their heathen eyes be regarded, 
 perhaps, as a heinous apostasy,—at the best as a pitiable 
 madness. 
 
 He dared, he renounced everything in this world in the hope 
 of securing that eternity in the next which had so suddenly 
 been revealed to him. While these thoughts on the one hand 
 invaded his breast, on the other hand his pride, his courage, 
 and his virtue mingled with reminiscences of revenge for 
 deceit, of indignant disgust at fraud, conspired to raise and 
 to support him. 
 
 The conflict was sharp and keen; but his new feelings 
 triumphed over his old, and a mighty argument in favor of 
 wrestling with the sanctities of old opinions and hereditary 
 forms might be found in the conquest over both, achieved by 
 that humble priest. Had the early Christians been more con- 
 trolled by “the solemn plausibilities of custom,’ —less of 
 democrats in the pure and lofty acceptation of that perverted 
 word, — Christianity would have perished in its cradle! 
 
 As each priest in succession slept several nights together in 
 the chambers of the temple, the term imposed on Apecides 
 was not yet completed; and when he had risen from his 
 couch, attired himself as usual in his robes, and left his narrow 
 chamber, he found himself before the altars of the temple. 
 
 In the exhaustion of his late emotions he had slept far into 
 the morning, and the vertical sun already poured its fervid 
 beams over the sacred place. 
 
 “ Salve, Apecides!” said a voice, whose natural asperity was 
 smoothed by long artifice into an almost displeasing softness 
 of tone. “Thou art late abroad; has the goddess revealed 
 herself to thee in visions ?” 
 
 “Could she reveal her true self to the people, Calenus, how 
 incenseless would be these altars ! ” 
 
 “That,” replied Calenus, “may possibly be true; but the 
 deity is wise enough to hold commune with none but 
 priests.” 
 
 “A time may come when she will be unveiled without her 
 own acquiescence.” 
 
44 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Tt is not likely: she has triumphed for countless ages. 
 And that which has so long stood the test of time rarely suc- 
 cumbs to the lust of novelty. But hark ye, young brother! 
 these sayings are indiscreet.” 
 
 “Tt is not for thee to silence them,” replied Apecides, 
 haughtily. 
 
 “So hot! yet I will not quarrel with thee. Why, my 
 Apecides, has not the Egyptian convinced thee of the neces- — 
 sity of our dwelling together in unity ? Has he not convinced 
 thee of the wisdom of deluding the people and enjoying our- 
 selves? If not, O brother, he is not that great magician 
 he is esteemed.” 
 
 “Thou, then, hast shared his lessons?” said Apzcides, 
 with a hollow smile. 
 
 “Ay! but I stood less in need of them than thou. Nature 
 had already gifted me with the love of pleasure and the desire 
 of gain and power. Long is the way that leads the volup- 
 tuary to the severities of life; but it is only one step from 
 pleasant sin to sheltering hypocrisy. Beware the vengeance 
 of the goddess, if the shortness of that step be disclosed!” 
 
 “ Beware, thou, the hour when the tomb shall be rent 
 and the rottenness exposed,” returned Apecides, solemnly. 
 “Valei?? 
 
 With these words he left the flamen to his meditations. 
 When he got a few paces from the temple, he turned to look 
 back. Calenus had already disappeared in the entry room of 
 the priests, for it now approached the hour of that repast 
 which, called prandiuwm by the ancients, answers in point of 
 date to the breakfast of the moderns. ‘The white and graceful 
 fane gleamed brightly in the sun. Upon the altars before it 
 rose the incense and bloomed the garlands. The priest gazed 
 long and wistfully upon the scene; it was the last time that 
 it was ever beheld by him. 
 
 He then turned and pursued his way slowly towards the 
 house of Ione; for before possibly the last tie that united 
 them was cut in twain, before the uncertain peril of the next 
 day was incurred, he was anxious to see his last surviving 
 relative, his fondest as his earliest friend. 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 45 
 
 He arrived at her house, and found her in the garden with 
 Nydia. 
 
 “This is kind, Apzecides,” said Ione, joyfully; “and how 
 eagerly have I wished to see thee! what thanks do I not owe 
 thee! How churlish hast thou been to answer none of my 
 letters, to abstain from coming hither to receive the expres- 
 sions of my gratitude! Oh, thou hast assisted to preserve 
 thy sister from dishonor! What, what can she say to thank 
 thee, now thou art come at last?” 
 
 “My sweet Ione, thou owest me no gratitude, for thy cause 
 was mine. Let us avoid that subject — let us not recur to 
 that impious man, — how hateful to both of us! I may have 
 a speedy opportunity to teach the world the nature of his 
 pretended wisdom and hypocritical severity. But let us sit 
 down, my sister; I am wearied with the heat of the sun; let 
 us sit in yonder shade, and for a little while longer be to 
 each other what we have been.” 
 
 Beneath a wide plane-tree, with the cistus and the arbutus 
 clustering round them, the living fountain before, the green- 
 sward beneath their feet; the gay cicada, once so dear to 
 Athens, rising merrily ever and anon amidst the grass; the 
 butterfly, beautiful emblem of the soul, dedicated to Psyche, 
 and which has continued to furnish illustrations to the Chris- 
 tian bard, rich in the glowing colors caught from Sicilian 
 skies,’ hovering above the sunny flowers, itself like a winged 
 flower, — in this spot and this scene the brother and the sister 
 sat together for the last time on earth. You may tread now 
 on the same place; but the garden is no more, the columns 
 are shattered, the fountain hath ceased to play. Let the 
 traveller search amongst the ruins of Pompeii for the house of 
 Jone. Its remains are yet visible; but I will not betray them 
 to the gaze of commonplace tourists. He who is more sensi- 
 tive than the herd will discover them easily: when he has 
 done so, let him keep the secret. 
 
 They sat down, and Nydia, glad to be alone, Anes to the 
 farther end of the garden. 
 
 “Jone, my sister,” said the young convert, “place your 
 
 1 Tn Sicily are found, perhaps, the most beautiful varieties of the butterfly. 
 
46 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 hand upon my brow; let me feel your cool touch. Speak to 
 me, too, for your gentle voice is like a breeze that hath fresh- 
 ness as well as music. Speak to me, but forbear to bless me! 
 Utter not one word of those forms of speech which our child- 
 hood was taught to consider sacred!” 
 
 “ Alas! and what then shall I say? Our language of affec- 
 tion is so woven with that of worship, that the words grow 
 chilled and trite if I banish from them allusion to our gods.” 
 
 “Our gods/” murmured Apzcides with a shudder: “thou 
 slightest my request already.” 
 
 “Shall I speak then to thee only of Isis ?” 
 
 “The Evil Spirit! No, rather be dumb forever, unless at 
 least thou canst— but away, away this talk! Not now will 
 we dispute and cavil; not now will we judge harshly of each 
 other; thou regarding me as an apostate, and I all sorrow 
 and shame for thee as an idolater. No, my sister, let us avoid 
 such topics and such thoughts. In thy sweet presence a calm 
 falls over my spirit; for a little while I forget. As I thus 
 lay my temples on thy bosom, as J thus feel thy gentle arm 
 embrace me, I think that we are children once more, and that 
 the heaven smiles equally upon both. For oh, if hereafter 
 I escape, no matter what peril; and it be permitted me to 
 address thee on one sacred and awful subject, should I find 
 thine ear closed and thy heart hardened, what hope for myself 
 could countervail the despair for thee? In thee, my sister, 
 I behold a likeness made beautiful, made noble, of myself. 
 Shall the mirror live forever and the form itself be broken as 
 the potter’s clay ? Ah, no—no—thou wilt listen to me yet! 
 Dost thou remember how we went into the fields by Baie, 
 hand in hand together, to pluck the flowers of spring? Even 
 so, hand in hand, shall we enter the Eternal Garden, and 
 crown ourselves with imperishable asphodel!” 
 
 Wondering and bewildered by words she could not com- 
 prehend, but excited even to tears by the plaintiveness of 
 their tone, Ione listened to these outpourings of a full and 
 oppressed heart. In truth Apecides himself was softened 
 much beyond his ordinary mood, which to outward seeming 
 was usually either sullen or impetuous. For the noblest 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 47 
 
 desires are of a jealous nature; they engross, they absorb the 
 soul, and often leave the splenetic humors stagnant and un- 
 heeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things around us, 
 we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to 
 the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. 
 For as there is no chimera vainer than the hope that one 
 human heart shall find sympathy in another, so none ever 
 interpret us with justice; and none, no, not our nearest and 
 our dearest ties, forbear with us in mercy! When we are 
 dead and repentance comes too late, both friend and foe may 
 wonder to think how little there was in us to forgive! 
 
 “J will talk to thee then of our early years,” said Ione. 
 “Shall yon blind girl sing to thee of the days of childhood ? 
 Her voice is sweet and musical, and she hath a song on that 
 theme which contains none of those allusions it pains thee 
 to hear.” 
 
 “Dost thou remember the words, my sister?” asked Ape- 
 cides. 
 
 “Methinks yes; for the tune, which is simple, fixed them 
 on my memory.” | 
 
 “Sing to me then thyself. My ear is not in unison with 
 unfamiliar voices; and thine, Ione, full of household associa- 
 tions, has ever been to me more sweet than all the hireling 
 melodies of Lycia or of Crete. Sing to me!” 
 
 Ione beckoned to a slave that stood in the portico, and 
 sending for her lute, sang, when it arrived, to a tender and 
 simple air, the following verses : — 
 
 REGRET FOR CHILDHOOD. 
 
 I. 
 
 It is not that our earlier Heaven 
 Escapes its April showers, 
 Or that to childhood’s heart is given 
 No snake amidst the flowers. 
 Ah! twined with grief 
 Each brightest leaf 
 That ’s wreath’d us by the Hours! 
 
48 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Young though we be, the Past may sting, 
 The Present feed its sorrow, 
 But hope shines bright on everything 
 That waits us with the morrow. 
 Like sunlit glades, 
 The dimmest shades 
 Some rosy beam can borrow. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is not that our later years 
 Of cares are woven wholly, 
 But smiles less swiftly chase the tears, 
 And wounds are healed more slowly ; 
 And memory’s vow 
 To lost ones now, 
 Makes joys too bright, unholy ; 
 And ever fled the Iris bow 
 That smiled when clouds were o’er us. 
 If storms should burst, uncheered we go, 
 A drearier waste before us ; — 
 And with the toys 
 Of childish joys 
 We’ve broke the staff that bore us! 
 
 Wisely and delicately had Ione chosen that song, sad though 
 its burden seemed; for when we are deeply mournful, dis- 
 cordant above all others is the voice of mirth: the fittest spell 
 is that borrowed from melancholy itself, for dark thoughts can 
 be softened down when they cannot be brightened; and so. 
 they lose the precise and rigid outline of their truth, and their — 
 colors melt into the ideal. As the leech apples in remedy to 
 the internal sore some outward irritation, which, by a gentler 
 wound, draws away the venom of that which is more deadly, 
 thus in the rankling festers of the mind our art is to divert 
 to a milder sadness on the surface the pain that gnaweth at 
 the core. And so with Apzcides, yielding to the influence of 
 the silver voice that reminded him of the past, and told but 
 of half the sorrow born to the present, he forgot his more 
 immediate and fiery sources of anxious thought. He spent 
 hours in making Ione alternately sing to and converse with 
 him; and when he rose to leave her, it was with a calmed and 
 lulled mind. 
 
'THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 49 
 
 “Tone,” said he, as he pressed her hand, “should you 
 hear my name blackened and maligned, will you credit the 
 aspersion ? ” 
 
 “¢ Never, my brother, never!” 
 
 “Dost thou not imagine, according to thy belief, that the 
 evil-doer is punished hereafter, and the good rewarded ? ” 
 
 “Can you doubt it?” 
 
 “Dost thou think, then, that he who is truly good’ should 
 sacrifice every selfish interest in his zeal for virtue ?” 
 
 ‘“‘ He who does so is the equal of the gods.” 
 
 “And thou believest that according to the purity and 
 courage with which he thus acts shall be his portion of bliss 
 beyond the grave ?” 
 
 “So we are taught to hope.” 
 
 “ Kiss me, my sister. One question more. Thou art to be 
 wedded to Glaucus,— perchance that marriage may separate 
 us more hopelessly; but not of this speak I now, —thou art 
 to be married to Glaucus; dost thou love him? Nay, my 
 sister, answer me by words.” 
 
 “Yes!” murmured Ione, blushing. 
 
 “Dost thou feel that for his sake thou couldst renounce 
 pride, brave dishonor, and incur death? I have heard that 
 when women really love, it is to that excess.” 
 
 “My brother, all this could I do for Glaucus, and feel that 
 it were not a sacrifice. There is no sacrifice to those who love, 
 in what is\borne for the one we love.” 
 
 “Enough! Shall woman feel thus for man, and man feel 
 less devotion to his God?” 
 
 He spoke no more. His whole countenance seemed instinct 
 and inspired with a divine life; his chest swelled proudly ; 
 his eyes glowed; on his forehead was writ the majesty of a 
 man who can dare be noble. He turned to meet the eyes of 
 Jone, — earnest, wistful, fearful; he kissed her fondly, strained 
 her warmly to his breast, and in a moment more he had left 
 the house. 
 
 Long did Ione remain in the same place, mute and thought- 
 ful. The maidens again and again came to warn her of the 
 deepening noon, and her engagement to Diomed’s banquet. 
 
 VOL. I1.—4 
 
50 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 At length she woke from her reverie, and prepared not with 
 the pride of beauty, but listless and melancholy, for the fes- 
 tival. One thought alone reconciled her to the promised visit, 
 —she should meet Glaucus; she could confide to him her 
 alarm and uneasiness for her brother. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 A FASHIONABLE PARTY AND A DINNER A LA MODE IN POMPEII. 
 
 MEANWHILE Sallust and Glaucus were slowly strolling 
 towards the house of Diomed. Despite the habits of his 
 life, Sallust was not devoid of many estimable qualities. He 
 would have been an active friend, a useful citizen, in short, 
 an excellent man, if he had not taken it into his head to be 
 a philosopher. Brought up in the schools in which Roman 
 plagiarism worshipped the echo of Grecian wisdom, he had 
 imbued himself with those doctrines by which the later Epi- 
 cureans corrupted the simple maxims of their great master. 
 He gave himself altogether up to pleasure, and imagined there 
 was no sage like a boon companion. Still, however, he had a 
 considerable degree of learning, wit, and good-nature; and the 
 hearty frankness of his very vices seemed lke virtue itself 
 beside the utter corruption of Clodius and the prostrate effemi- 
 nacy of Lepidus, and therefore Glaucus liked him the best 
 of his companions; and he, in turn, appreciating the nobler 
 qualities of the Athenian, loved him almost as much as a cold 
 murena, or a bowl of the best Falernian. 
 
 “This is a vulgar old fellow, this Diomed,” said Sallust ; 
 “but he has some good qualities — in his cellar.” 
 
 “ And some charming ones —in his daughter.” 
 
 “True, Glaucus; but you are not much moved by them, me- 
 thinks. I fancy Clodius is desirous to be your successor.” 
 
 “He is welcome. At the banquet of Julia’s beauty, no 
 guest, be sure, is considered a musca.”’ } 
 
 1 Unwelcome and uninvited guests were called musce, or flies. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 51 
 
 “You are severe; but she has, indeed, something of the 
 Corinthian about her: they will be well matched, after all! 
 What good-natured fellows we are to associate with that gam- 
 bling good-for-nought.” 
 
 “Pleasure unites strange varieties,” answered Glaucus. 
 - “We amuses me — ” 
 
 “ And flatters; but then he pays himself well. He powders 
 his praise with gold-dust.” 
 
 “You often hint that he plays unfairly; think you so 
 realy te 
 
 “My dear Glaucus, a Roman noble has his dignity to keep 
 up; dignity is very expensive; Clodius must cheat like a 
 scoundrel in order to live like a gentleman.” 
 
 “Ha, ha! Well, of late I have renounced the dice. Ah, 
 Sallust, when I am wedded to Ione, I trust I may yet redeem 
 a youth of follies. Weare both born for better things than 
 those in which we sympathize now; born to render our wor- 
 ship in nobler temples than the sty of Epicurus.” 
 
 “Alas!” returned Sallust, in rather a melancholy tone, 
 “what do we know more than this, — life is short, beyond the 
 grave all is dark? ‘There is no wisdom like that which says 
 “enjoy. ” 
 
 “By Bacchus! I doubt sometimes if we do enjoy the utmost 
 of which life is capable.” 
 
 “T am a moderate man,” returned Sallust, “and do not 
 ask ‘the utmost.? We are like malefactors, and intoxicate 
 ourselves with wine and myrrh as we stand on the brink 
 of death; but if we did not do so, the abyss would look 
 very disagreeable. I own that I was inclined to be gloomy 
 until I took so heartily to drinking; that is a new life, my 
 Glaucus.” 
 
 “Yes, but it brings us next morning to a new death.” 
 
 “Why, the next morning is unpleasant, I own; but then, if 
 it were not so, one would never be inclined to read. I study 
 betimes ; because, by the gods! I am generally unfit for any- 
 thing else till noon!” 
 
 “Fie, Scythian !” 
 
 ““Pshaw! the fate of Pentheus to him who denies Bacchus.” 
 
52 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 “Well, Sallust, with all your faults, you are the best profli- 
 gate I ever met; and verily, if I were in danger of life, you 
 are the only man in all Italy who would stretch out a finger 
 to save me.” 
 
 “Perhaps J should not, if it were in the middle of supper. 
 But, in truth, we Italians are fearfully selfish.” 
 
 “So are all men who are not free,” said Glaucus, with a sigh, 
 “Freedom alone makes men sacrifice to each other.” 
 
 “Freedom, then, must be a very fatiguing thing to an Epi- 
 curean,” answered Sallust. “ But here we are at our host’s.” 
 
 As Diomed’s villa is one of the most considerable in point 
 of size of any yet discovered at Pompeii, and is, moreover, 
 built much according to the specific instructions for a suburban 
 villa laid down by the Roman architect, 1t may not be uninter- 
 esting briefly to describe the plan of the apartments through 
 which our visitors passed. 
 
 They entered, then, by the same small vestibule at which we 
 have before been presented to the aged Medon, and passed at 
 once into a colonnade, technically termed the peristyle; for 
 the main difference between the suburban villa and the town 
 mansion consisted in placing in the first the said colonnade, in 
 exactly the same place as that which in the town mansion was 
 occupied by the atrium. In the centre of the peristyle was an 
 open court, which contained the impluvium. 
 
 From this peristyle descended a staircase to the offices; 
 another narrow passage on the opposite side communicated 
 with a garden; various small apartments surrounded the colon- 
 nade, appropriated probably to country visitors. Another door 
 to the left on entering communicated with a small triangular 
 portico, which belonged to the baths; and behind was the 
 wardrobe, in which were kept the vests of the holiday suits of 
 the slaves, and perhaps of the master. Seventeen centuries 
 afterwards were found those relics of ancient finery, calcined 
 and crumbling; kept longer, alas! than their thrifty lord 
 foresaw. 
 
 Return we to the peristyle, and endeavor now to present to 
 the reader a coup dail of the whole suite of apartments, which 
 immediately stretched before the steps of the visitors. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 53 
 
 Let him then first imagine the columns of the portico, hung 
 with festoons of flowers; the columns themselves in the lower 
 part painted red, and the walls around glowing with various 
 frescos; then looking beyond a curtain, three parts drawn 
 aside, the eye caught the tablinum or saloon (which was closed 
 at will by glazed doors, now slid back into the walls). On 
 either side of this tablinum were small rooms, one of which 
 was a kind of cabinet of gems; and these apartments, as well 
 as the tablinum, communicated with a long gallery, which 
 opened at either end upon terraces; and between the terraces, 
 and communicating with the central part of the gallery, was a 
 hall, in which the banquet was that day prepared. All these 
 apartments, though almost on a level with the street, were one 
 story above the garden; and the terraces communicating with 
 the gallery were continued into corridors, raised above the pil- 
 lars which to the right and left skirted the garden below. 
 
 Beneath, and on a level with the garden, ran the apartments 
 we have already described as chiefly appropriated to Julia. 
 
 In the gallery, then, just mentioned, Diomed received his 
 guests. 
 
 The merchant affected greatly the man of letters, and there- 
 fore he also affected a passion for everything Greek; he paid 
 particular attention to Glaucus. 
 
 “You will see, my friend,” said he, with a wave of his hand, 
 “that Iam a little classical here—a little Cecropian— eh ? 
 The hall in ‘which we shall sup is borrowed from the Greeks, 
 It is an CGicus Cyzicene. Noble Sallust, they have not, I am 
 told, this sort of apartment in Rome.” 
 
 “Oh,” replied Sallust, with a half smile, “you Pompeians 
 combine all that is most eligible in Greece and in Rome; may 
 you, Diomed, combine the viands as well as the architecture!” 
 
 “You shall see— you shall see, my Sallust,” replied the 
 merchant. “We have a taste at Pompeii, and we have also 
 money.” 
 
 “They are two excellent things,” replied Sallust. “ But, 
 behold, the lady Julia!” 
 
 The main difference, as I have before remarked, in the man- 
 ner of life observed among the Athenians and Romans, was, 
 
54. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, 
 
 that with the first the modest women rarely or never took 
 part in entertainments ; with the latter they were the common 
 ornaments of the banquet; but when they were present at the 
 feast, it usually terminated at an early hour. 
 
 Magnificently robed in white, interwoven with pearls and 
 threads of gold, the handsome Julia entered the apartment. 
 
 Scarcely had she received the salutation of the two guests, 
 ere Pansa and his wife, Lepidus, Clodius, and the Roman sen- 
 ator, entered almost simultaneously; then came the widow 
 Fulvia; then the poet Fulvius, ike to the widow in name if 
 in nothing else; the warrior from Herculaneum, accompanied 
 by his umbra, next stalked in; afterwards, the less eminent 
 of the guests. Ione yet tarried. 
 
 It was the mode among the courteous ancients to flatter 
 whenever it was in their power: accordingly it was a sign of 
 ill-breeding to seat themselves immediately on entering the 
 house of their host. After performing the salutation, which 
 was usually accomplished by the same cordial shake of the 
 right hand which we ourselves retain, and sometimes by the 
 yet more familiar embrace, they spent several minutes in sur- 
 veying the apartment, and admiring the bronzes, the pictures, 
 or the furniture, with which it was adorned,—a mode very 
 impolite according to our refined English notions, which place 
 good breeding in indifference. We would not for the world 
 express much admiration of another man’s house, for fear 
 it should be thought we had never seen anything so fine 
 before ! 
 
 “A beautiful statue this of Bacchus!” said the Roman 
 senator. 
 
 “ A mere trifle!” replied Diomed. 
 
 “ What charming paintings!” said Fulvia. 
 
 “ Mere trifles !”’ answered the owner. 
 
 “Exquisite candelabra!” cried the warrior. 
 
 “Exquisite!” echoed his umbra. 
 
 “Trifles! trifles!” reiterated the merchant. 
 
 Meanwhile, Glaucus found himself by one of the windows 
 of the gallery, which communicated with the terraces, and the 
 fair Julia by his side. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 55 
 
 “Ts it an Athenian virtue, Glaucus,” said the merchant’s 
 daughter, “to shun those whom we once sought?” 
 
 “ Fair Julia, no!” 
 
 “Yet methinks it is one of the qualities of Glaucus.” 
 
 “ Glaucus never shuns a friend/” repled the Greek, with 
 some emphasis on the last word. 
 
 “May Julia rank among the number of his friends ?” 
 
 “Tt would be an honor to the emperor to find a friend in 
 one so lovely.” 
 
 “You evade my question,” returned the enamoured Julia. 
 “But tell me, is it true that you admire the Neapolitan 
 Tone?” 
 
 “Does not beauty constrain our admiration ?” 
 
 “Ah, subtle Greek, still do you fly the meaning of my 
 words! But say, shall Julia be indeed your friend ?” 
 
 “Tf she will so favor me, blessed be the gods! The day in 
 which I am thus honored shall be ever marked in white.” 
 
 “Yet even while you speak, your eye is restless; your color 
 comes and goes; you move away involuntarily; you are im- 
 patient to join lone.” 
 
 For at that moment Ione had entered, and Glaucus had 
 indeed betrayed the emotion noticed by the jealous beauty. 
 
 “Can admiration to one woman make me unworthy the 
 friendship of another? Sanction not so, O Julia, the libels of 
 the poets on your sex!” 
 
 “Well, you are right, or I will learn to think so. Glaucus, 
 yet one moment. You are to wed Ione; is it not so?” 
 
 “Tf the Fates permit, such is my blessed hope.” 
 
 “ Accept, then, from me, in token of our new friendship, a 
 present for your bride. Nay, it is the custom of friends, you 
 know, always to present to bride and bridegroom some such 
 little marks of their esteem and favoring wishes.” 
 
 “ Julia, I cannot refuse any token of friendship from one like 
 you. I will accept the gift as an omen from Fortune herself.” 
 
 “Then, after the feast, when the guests retire, you will 
 descend with me to my apartment, and receive it from my 
 hands. Remember!” said Julia as she joined the wife of 
 Pansa, and left Glaucus to seek Ione. 
 
56 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 The widow Fulvia and the spouse of the zedile were engaged 
 in high and grave discussion. 
 
 “Oh, Fulvia, I assure you that the last account from Rome 
 declares that the frizzling mode of dressing the hair is growing 
 antiquated; they only now wear it built up in a tower, like 
 Julia’s, or arranged as a helmet, —the Galerian fashion, like 
 mine, you see: it has a fine effect, I think. I assure you Ves- 
 pius [Vespius was the name of the Herculaneum hero] admires 
 it greatly.” 
 
 “And nobody wears the hair like yon Neapolitan, in the 
 Greek way.” 
 
 “What, parted in front, with the knot behind? Oh, no; 
 how ridiculous it is! it reminds one of the statue of Diana! 
 Yet this Ione is handsome, eh?” 
 
 “So the men say; but then she is rich: she is to marry the 
 Athenian. I wish her joy. He will not be long faithful, I 
 suspect ; those foreigners are very faithless.” 
 
 “Oh, Julia,” said Fulvia, as the merchant’s daughter 
 joined them; “have you seen the tiger yet ?” 
 
 ‘Noh? 
 
 “Why, all the ladies have been to see him. He is so hand- 
 some !” 
 
 “T hope we shall find some criminal or other for him and 
 the lion,” replied Julia. “ Your husband [turning to Pansa’s 
 wife] is not so active as he should be in this matter.” 
 
 “Why, really, the laws are too mild,” replied the dame of 
 the helmet. “There are so few offences to which the punish- 
 ment of the arena can be awarded; and then, too, the gladi- 
 ators are growing effeminate! The stoutest bestiarii declare 
 they are willing enough to fight a boar or a bull; but as for 
 a lion or a tiger, they think the game too much in earnest.” 
 
 “They are worthy of a mitre,” ! replied Julia, in disdain. 
 
 “Oh, have you seen the new house of Fulvius, the dear 
 poet?” said Pansa’s wife. 
 
 “No; is it handsome ?” 
 
 “Very! such good taste. But they say, my dear, that he 
 
 1 Mitres were worn sometimes by men, and considered a great mark of 
 effeminacy. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 5T 
 
 has such improper pictures! He won’t show them to the 
 women: how ill-bred !” 
 
 “Those poets are always odd,” said the widow. “But he 
 is an interesting man; what pretty verses he writes! We 
 improve very much in poetry: it is impossible to read the old 
 stuff now.” 
 
 “T declare I am of your opinion,” returned the lady of the 
 helmet. “There is so much more force and energy in the 
 modern school.” 
 
 The warrior sauntered up to the ladies. 
 
 “Tt reconciles me to peace,” said he, “when I see such 
 faces.”” 
 
 “Oh, you heroes are ever flatterers!” returned Fulvia, 
 hastening to appropriate the compliment specially to herself. 
 
 “By this chain, which I received from the emperor’s own 
 hand,” replied the warrior, playing with a short chain which 
 hung round the neck like a collar, instead of descending to the 
 breast, according to the fashion of the peaceful, — “by this chain 
 you wrong me! Jam a blunt man; a soldier should be so.” 
 
 “How do you find the ladies of Pompeii generally?” said 
 Julia. 
 
 “By Venus, most beautiful! They favor me a little, it is 
 true, and that inclines my eyes to double their charms.” 
 
 “We love a warrior,” said the wife of Pansa. 
 
 “T see it: by Hercules! it is even disagreeable to be too 
 celebrated in these cities. At Herculaneum they climb the 
 root of my atrium to catch a glimpse of me through the com- 
 pluvium; the admiration of one’s citizens is pleasant at first, 
 but burdensome afterwards.” 
 
 “True, true, O Vespius!” cried the poet, joining the group: 
 “T find it so myself.” 
 
 “You!” said the stately warrior, scanning the small form 
 of the poet with ineffable disdain. “In what legion have you 
 served ?” 
 
 “You may see my spoils, my exuvie, in the forum itself,” 
 returned the poet, with a significant glance at the women. “TI 
 have been among the tent-companions, the contubernales, of the 
 great Mantuan himself.” 
 
58 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 “‘T know no general from Mantua,” said the warrior, gravely. 
 «“ What campaign have you served ?” 
 
 “That of Helicon.” 
 
 “T never heard of it.” 
 
 “Nay, Vespius, he does but joke,” said Julia, laughing. 
 
 “Joke! By Mars, am I a man to be joked?” 
 
 “Yes; Mars himself was in love with the mother of jokes,” 
 said the poet, alittle alarmed. “Know, then, O Vespius, that I 
 am the poet Fulvius! It is I who make warriors immortal!” 
 
 “The gods forbid!” whispered Sallust to Julia. “If Vespius 
 were made immortal, what a specimen of tiresome braggadocio 
 would be transmitted to posterity !” 
 
 The soldier looked puzzled; when, to the infinite relief of 
 himself and his companions, the signal for the feast was given. 
 
 As we have already witnessed at the house of Glaucus the 
 ordinary routine of a Pompeian entertainment, the reader is 
 spared any second detail of the courses, and the manner in 
 which they were introduced. 
 
 Diomed, who was rather ceremonious, had appointed a no- 
 menclator, or appointer of places, to each guest. 
 
 The reader understands that the festive board was composed 
 of three tables, — one at the centre, and one at each wing. It 
 was only at the outer side of these tables that the guests re- 
 clined ; the inner space was left untenanted, for the greater 
 convenience of the waiters or ministri. The extreme corner of 
 one of the wings was appropriated to Julia as the lady of the 
 feast; that next her, to Diomed. At one corner of the centre 
 table was placed the eedile; at the opposite corner, the Roman 
 senator; these were the posts of honor. The other guests 
 were arranged so that the young (gentleman or lady) should sit 
 next each other, and the more advanced in years be similarly 
 matched. An agreeable provision enough, but one which must 
 often have offended those who wished to be thought still 
 young. 
 
 The chair of Ione was next to the couch of Glaucus.1' The 
 
 1 In formal parties the women sat in chairs, —the men reclined. - It was 
 
 only in the bosom of families that the same ease was granted to both sexes; 
 the reason is obvious. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 59 
 
 seats were veneered with tortoise-shell, and covered with 
 quilts stuffed with feathers, and ornamented with costly em- 
 broideries. ‘The modern ornaments of epergne or plateau 
 were supplied by images of the gods, wrought in bronze, ivory, 
 and silver. The sacred salt-cellar and the familiar Lares were 
 not forgotten. Over the table and the seats a rich canopy 
 was suspended from the ceiling. At each corner of the table 
 were lofty candelabra, —for though it was early noon, the 
 room was darkened, — while from tripods, placed in different 
 parts of the room, distilled the odor of myrrh and frankin- 
 cense; and upon the abacus, or sideboard, large vases and 
 various ornaments of silver were ranged, much with the same 
 ostentation (but with more than the same taste) that we find 
 displayed at a modern feast. 
 
 The custom of grace was invariably supplied by that of liba- 
 tions to the gods; and Vesta, as queen of the household gods, 
 usually received first that graceful homage. 
 
 This ceremony being performed, the slaves showered flowers 
 upon the couches and the floor, and crowned each guest with 
 rosy garlands, intricately woven with ribbons, tied by the rind 
 of the linden-tree, and each intermingled with the ivy and the 
 amethyst, — supposed preventives against the effect of wine; 
 the wreaths of the women only were exempted from these 
 leaves, for it was not the fashion for them to drink wine 
 in public. It was then that the president Diomed thought 
 it advisable to institute a dasileus, or director of the feast, 
 an important office, sometimes chosen by lot, sometimes, as 
 now, by the master of the entertainment. 
 
 Diomed was not a little puzzled as to his election. The 
 invalid senator was too grave and too infirm for the proper 
 fulfilment of his duty: the edile Pansa was adequate enough 
 to the task ; but then, to choose the next in official rank to the 
 senator, was an affront to the senator himself. While delib- 
 erating between the merits of the others, he caught the mirth- 
 ful glance of Sallust, and, by a sudden inspiration, named the 
 jovial epicure to the rank of director, or arbiter bibendi. 
 
 Sallust received the appointment with becoming humility. 
 
 “T shall be a merciful king,” said he, “to those who drink 
 
60 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 deep; to a recusant, Minos himself shall be less inexorable. 
 Beware !” | 
 
 The slaves handed round basins of perfumed water, by 
 which lavation the feast commenced: and now the table 
 groaned under the initiatory course. 
 
 The conversation, at first desultory and scattered, allowed 
 Jone and Glaucus to carry on those sweet whispers which are 
 worth all the eloquence in the world. Julia watched them 
 with flashing eyes. 
 
 ‘“‘ How soon shall her place be mine ? ” thought she. 
 
 But Clodius, who sat at the centre table, so as to observe 
 well the countenance of Julia, guessed her pique, and re- 
 solved to profit by it. He addressed her across the table in 
 set phrases of gallantry ; and as he was of high birth and of a 
 showy person, the vain Julia was not so much in love as to be 
 insensible to his attentions. 
 
 The slaves, in the interim, were constantly kept upon the 
 alert by the vigilant Sallust, who chased one cup by another 
 with a celerity which seemed as if he were resolved upon ex- 
 hausting those capacious cellars which the reader may yet see 
 beneath the house of Diomed. The worthy merchant began 
 to repent his choice, as amphora after amphora was pierced 
 and emptied. The slaves, all under the age of manhood (the 
 youngest being about ten years old, —it was they who filled the 
 wine ; the eldest, some five years older, mingled it with water), 
 seemed to share in the zeal of Sallust ; and the face of Diomed 
 began to glow as he watched the provoking complacency with 
 which they seconded the exertions of the king of the feast. 
 
 “ Pardon me, O senator!” said Sallust; “I see you flinch ; 
 your purple hem cannot save you: drink!” 
 
 “‘ By the gods!” said the senator, coughing, “my lungs are 
 already on fire; you proceed with so miraculous a swiftness, 
 that Phaeton himself was nothing to you. I am infirm, O 
 pleasant Sallust; you must exonerate me.” 
 
 “Not I, by Vesta! Jam an impartial monarch: drink!” 
 
 The poor senator, compelled by the laws of the table, was 
 forced to comply. Alas! every cup was bringing him nearer 
 and nearer to the Stygian pool. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 61 
 
 “Gently, gently, my king!” groaned Diomed ; “ we already 
 begin to —” 
 
 “Treason!” interrupted Sallust; “no stern Brutus here! 
 no interference with royalty!” 
 
 ‘“ But our female guests — ” 
 
 “Love a toper! Did not Ariadne dote upon Bacchus ? ” 
 
 The feast proceeded; the guests grew more talkative and 
 noisy ; the dessert or last course was already on the table; and 
 the slaves bore round water with myrrh and hyssop for the 
 finishing lavation. At the same time a small circular table 
 that had been placed in the space opposite the guests sud- 
 denly, and as by magic, seemed to open in the centre, and cast 
 up a fragrant shower, sprinkling the table and the guests; 
 while as it ceased the awning above them was drawn aside, 
 and the guests perceived that a rope had been stretched across 
 the ceiling, and that one of those nimble dancers for which 
 Pompeii was so celebrated, and whose descendants add so 
 charming a grace to the festivities of Astley’s or Vauxhall, 
 was now treading his airy measures right over their heads. 
 
 This apparition, removed but by a cord from one’s peri- 
 cranium, and indulging the most vehement leaps, apparently 
 with the intention of alighting upon that cerebral region, 
 would probably be regarded with some terror by a party in 
 Mayfair; but our Pompeian revellers seemed to behold the 
 spectacle with delighted curiosity, and applauded in propor- 
 tion as the dancer appeared with the most difficulty to miss 
 falling upon the head of whatever guest he particularly 
 selected to dance above. He paid the senator, indeed, the 
 peculiar compliment of literally falling from the rope, and 
 catching it again with his hand, just as the whole party im- 
 agined the skull of the Roman was as much fractured as 
 ever that of the poet whom the eagle took for a tortoise. At 
 length, to the great relief of at least Ione, who had not much 
 accustomed herself to this entertainment, the dancer suddenly 
 paused, as a strain of music was heard from without. He 
 danced again still more wildly; the air changed, the dancer 
 paused again; no, it could not dissolve the charm which was 
 supposed to possess him! He represented one who by a 
 
62 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 strange disorder is compelled to dance, and whom only a cer- 
 tain air of music can cure.t At length the musician seemed to 
 hit on the right tune; the dancer gave one leap, swung himself 
 down from the rope, alighted on the floor, and vanished. 
 
 One art now yielded to another; and the musicians who 
 were stationed without on the terrace struck up a soft and 
 mellow air, to which were sung the following words, made 
 almost indistinct by the barrier between and the exceeding 
 lowness of the minstrelsy : — 
 
 FESTIVE MUSIC SHOULD BE LOW. 
 
 I. 
 Hark! through these flowers our music sends its greeting 
 To your loved halls, where Psilas? shuns the day ; 
 When the young god his Cretan nymph was meeting, 
 He taught Pan’s rustic pipe this gliding lay: 
 Soft as the dews of wine 
 Shed in this banquet hour, 
 The rich libation of Sound’s stream divine, 
 O reverent harp, to Aphrodite pour! 
 
 . 
 
 II. 
 
 Wild rings the trump o’er ranks to glory marching ; 
 Music’s sublimer bursts for war are meet; 
 But sweet lips murmuring under wreaths o’erarching 
 Find the low whispers like their own most sweet. 
 Steal, my lull’d music, steal 
 Like woman’s half-heard tone, 
 So that whoe’er shall hear, shall think to feel 
 In thee the voice of lips that love his own. 
 
 At the end of that song Ione’s cheek blushed more deeply 
 than before, and Glaucus had contrived, under cover of the 
 table, to steal her hand. 
 
 “Tt is a pretty song,” said Fulvius, patronizingly. 
 
 “ Ah, if you would oblige us!” murmured the wife of Pansa. 
 
 “Do you wish Fulvius to sing?” asked the king of the 
 feast, who had just called on the assembly to drink the health 
 of the Roman senator, a cup to each letter of his name. 
 
 “Can you ask?” said the matron, with a complimentary 
 glance at the poet. 
 
 1 A dance still retained in Campania. 2 Bacchus. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 63 
 
 Sallust snapped his fingers, and whispering the slave who 
 came to learn his orders, the latter disappeared, and returned 
 in a few moments with a small harp in one hand and a branch 
 of myrtle in the other, 
 
 The slave approached'the poet, and with a low reverence 
 presented to him the harp. 
 
 “ Alas! I cannot play,” said the poet. 
 
 “Then you must sing to the myrtle. It isa Greek fashion: 
 Diomed loves the Greeks; I love the Greeks; you love the 
 Greeks; we all love the Greeks; and between you and me this 
 is not the only thing we have stolen from them. However, I 
 introduce this custom, — I, the king: sing, subject, sing!” 
 
 The poet, with a bashful smile, took the myrtle in his hands, 
 and after a short prelude sang as follows, in a pleasant and 
 well-tuned voice : — 
 
 THE CORONATION OF THE LOVES. 
 
 I. 
 
 The merry Loves one holiday: 
 Were all at gambols madly ; 
 But Loves too long can seldom play 
 Without behaving sadly. 
 They laugh’d, they toy’d, they romp’d about, 
 And then for change they all fell out. 
 Fie, fie! how can they quarrel so 2 
 My Lesbia —ah, for shame, love! 
 Methinks ’tis scarce an hour ago 
 When we did just the same, love. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Loves, ’tis thought, were free till then, 
 They had no king or laws, dear; 
 But gods, like men, should subject be, 
 Say all the ancient saws, dear. 
 And so our crew resolved, for quiet, 
 To choose a king to curb their riot. 
 A kiss: ah! what a grievous thing 
 For both, methinks, ’t would be, child, 
 If I should take some prudish king, 
 And cease to be so free, child! 
 
 1 Suggested by two Pompeian pictures in the Museum at Naples, which 
 represented a dove and a helmet enthroned by Cupids. 
 
64 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 III. 
 
 Among their toys a casque they found, — 
 It was the helm of Ares; 
 With horrent plumes the crest was crown’d, — 
 It frightened all the Lares. 
 So fine a king was never known: 
 They placed the helmet on the throne. 
 My girl, since Valor wins the world, 
 They chose a mighty master ; 
 But thy sweet flag of smiles unfurled 
 Would win the world much faster ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Casque soon found the Loves too wild 
 A troop for him to school them ; 
 For warriors know how one such child 
 Has aye contrived to fool them. 
 They plagued him so, that in despair 
 He took a wife the plague to share. 
 If kings themselves thus find the strife 
 Of earth, unshared, severe, girl, 
 Why, just to halve the ills of life, 
 Come, take your partner here, girl. 
 
 Vv. 
 
 Within that room the Bird of Love 
 The whole affair had eyed then ; 
 The monarch hail’d the royal dove, 
 And placed her by his side then : 
 What mirth amidst the Loves was seen : 
 “Long live,” they cried, “our King and Queen.” 
 Ah, Lesbia, would that thrones were mine, 
 And crowns to deck that brow, love! 
 Anda yet I know that heart of thine 
 For me is throne enow, love! 
 
 VI. 
 
 The urchins hoped to tease the mate 
 As they had teased the hero; 
 But when the Dove in judgment sate 
 They found her worse than Nero! 
 Each look a frown, each word a law; 
 The little subjects shook with awe. 
 In thee I find the same deceit, — 
 Too late, alas! a learner! 
 For where a mien more gently sweet, 
 And where a tyrant sterner ? 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 65 
 
 This song, which greatly suited the gay and lively fancy of 
 the Pompeians, was received with considerable applause, and 
 the widow insisted on crowning her namesake with the very 
 branch of myrtle to which he had sung. It was easily twisted 
 into a garland, and the immortal Fulvius was crowned amidst 
 the clapping of hands and shouts of Jo triumphe/! The song 
 and the harp now circulated round the party, a new myrtle 
 branch being handed about, stopping at each person who could 
 be prevailed upon to sing.? 
 
 The sun began now to decline, though the revellers, who had 
 worn away several hours, perceived it not in their darkened 
 chamber; and the senator, who was tired, and the warrior, 
 who had to return to Herculaneum, rising to depart, gave the 
 signal for the general dispersion. “Tarry yet a moment, my 
 friends,” said Diomed; “if you will go so soon, you must at 
 least take a share in our concluding game.” 
 
 So saying, he motioned to one of the ministri, and whisper- 
 ing him the slave went out, and presently returned with a 
 small bowl containing various tablets carefully sealed, and 
 apparently exactly similar. Each guest was to purchase one 
 of these at the nominal price of the lowest piece of silver: and 
 the sport of this lottery (which was the favorite diversion of 
 Augustus, who introduced it) consisted in the inequality, and 
 sometimes the incongruity, of the prizes, the nature and amount 
 of which were specified within the tablets. For instance, the 
 poet, with a wry face, drew one of his own poems (no physi- 
 cian ever less willingly swallowed his own draught); the war- 
 rior drew a case of bodkins, which gave rise to certain novel 
 witticisms relative to Hercules and the distaff; the widow 
 Fulvia obtained a large drinking-cup; Julia, a gentleman’s 
 buckle; and Lepidus, a lady’s patch-box. The most appro- 
 priate lot was drawn by the gambler Clodius, who reddened 
 with anger on being presented to a set of cogged dice? A 
 
 1 According to Plutarch (Sympos. lib. i.) it seems that the branch of myrtle 
 or laurel was not carried round in order, but passed from the first person on 
 one couch to the first on another, and then from the second on the one to the 
 second on the other, and so on. 
 
 2 Several cogged dice were found in Pompeii. Some of the virtues may be 
 modern, but it is quite clear that all the vices are ancient. 
 
 VOL, 11.—5 | 
 
66 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 certain damp was thrown upon the gayety which these various 
 lots created by an accident that was considered ominous ; 
 Glaucus drew the most valuable of all the prizes, —a small 
 marble statue of Fortune, of Grecian workmanship: on hand- 
 ing it to him the slave suffered it to drop, and it broke in 
 pieces. 
 
 A shiver went round the assembly, and each voice cried 
 spontaneously on the gods to avert the omen. 
 
 Glaucus alone, though perhaps as superstitious as the rest, 
 affected to be unmoved. ‘ 
 
 “Sweet Neapolitan,” whispered he tenderly to Ione, who 
 had turned pale as the broken marble itself, “I aecept the 
 omen. It signifies that in obtaining thee, Fortune can give 
 no more,—she breaks her image when she blesses me with 
 thine.” 
 
 In order to divert. the impression which this incident had 
 occasioned in an assembly which, considering the civilization 
 of the guests, would seem miraculously superstitious if at the 
 present day in a country party we did not often see a lady 
 grow hypochondriacal on leaving a room last of thirteen, Sal- 
 lust, now crowning his cup with flowers, gave the health of 
 their host. This was followed by a similar compliment to the 
 emperor; and then, with a parting cup to Mercury to send 
 them pleasant slumbers, they concluded the entertainment by 
 a last libation, and broke up the party. 
 
 Carriages and litters were little used in Pompeii, partly 
 owing to the extreme narrowness of the streets, partly to the 
 convenient smallness of the city. Most of the guests replacing 
 their sandals, which they had put off in the banquet-room, and 
 induing their cloaks, left the house on foot attended by their 
 slaves. 
 
 Meanwhile, having seen Ione depart, Glaucus, turning to the 
 staircase which led down to the rooms of Julia, was conducted 
 by a slave to an apartment in which he found the merchant’s 
 daughter already seated. 
 
 “Glaucus,” said she, looking down, “I see that you really 
 love Ione; she is indeed beautiful.” 
 
 “Julia is charming enough to be generous,” replied the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 67 
 
 . Greek. “Yes, I love Ione; amidst all the youth who court 
 you, may you have one worshipper as sincere.” 
 
 “T pray the gods to grant it! See, Glaucus, these pearls 
 are the present I destine to your bride: may Juno give her 
 health to wear them!” ! 
 
 So saying, she placed a case in his hand, containing a row 
 of pearls of some size and price. It was so much the custom 
 for persons about to be married to receive these gifts, that 
 Glaucus could have little scruple in accepting the necklace, 
 though the gallant and proud Athenian inly resolved to re- 
 quite the gift by one of thrice its value. Julia then, stopping 
 short his thanks, poured forth some wine into a small bowl. 
 
 “You have drunk many toasts with my father,” said she, 
 smiling, — “one now with me. Health and fortune to your 
 bride !” 
 
 She touched the cup with her lips and then presented it to 
 Glaucus. The customary etiquette required that Glaucus 
 should drain the whole contents; he accordingly did so. 
 Julia, unknowing the deceit which Nydia had practised upon 
 her, watched him with sparkling eyes; although the witch 
 had told her that the effect might not be immediate, she yet 
 sanguinely trusted to an expeditious operation in favor of her 
 charms. She was disappointed when she found Glaucus 
 coldly replace the cup, and converse with her in the same 
 unmoved but gentle tone as before; and though she detained 
 him as long as she decorously could do, no change took place 
 in his manner. 
 
 ‘But to-morrow,” thought she, exultingly recovering her 
 disappointment, — “ to-morrow, alas for Glaucus !” 
 
 Alas for him, indeed ! 
 
68 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE STORY HALTS FOR A MOMENT AT AN EPISODE. 
 
 RestLEss and anxious, Apezecides consumed the day in 
 wandering through the most sequestered walks in the vicinity 
 of the city. The sun was slowly setting as he paused beside 
 a lonely part of the Sarnus, ere yet it wound amidst the 
 evidences of luxury and power. Only through openings in 
 the woods and vines were caught glimpses of the white and 
 gleaming city, in which was heard in the distance no din, no 
 sound, nor “busiest hum of men.” Amidst the green banks 
 crept the lizard and the grasshopper, and here and there in 
 the brake some solitary bird burst into sudden song, as sud- 
 denly stilled. There was deep calm around, but not the calm 
 of night; the air still breathed of the freshness and life of 
 day; the grass still moved to the stir of the insect horde; 
 and on the opposite bank the graceful and white capella 
 passed browsing through the herbage, and paused at the wave 
 to drink. 
 
 As Apecides stood musingly gazing upon the waters, he 
 heard beside him the low bark of a dog. 
 
 “Be still, poor friend,” said a voice at hand; “the stranger’s 
 step,,varms not thy master.” The convert recognized the 
 voice, and, turning, he beheld the old mysterious man whom 
 he had seen in the congregation of the Nazarenes. 
 
 The old man was sitting upon a fragment of stone covered 
 with ancient mosses; beside him were his staff and scrip; at 
 his feet lay a small shaggy dog, the companion in how many 
 a pilgrimage perilous and strange. 
 
 The face of the old man was as balm to the excited spirit 
 of the neophyte; he approached, and craving his blessing, sat 
 down beside him. 
 
 “Thou art provided as for a journey, father,” said he: 
 “wilt thou leave us yet?” 
 
 “‘My son,” replied the old man, “the days in store for me 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 69 
 
 on earth are few and scanty; I employ them as becomes me, 
 travelling from place to place, comforting those whom God 
 has gathered together in His name, and proclaiming the glory 
 of His Son, as testified to His servant.” 
 
 “Thou hast looked, they tell me, on the face of Christ ?” 
 
 “And the face revived me from the dead. Know, young 
 proselyte to the true faith, that Iam he of whom thou readest 
 in the scroll of the Apostle. In the far Judea, and in the city 
 of Nain, there dwelt a widow, humble of spirit and sad of 
 heart, for of all the ties of life one son alone was spared to 
 her; and she loved him with a melancholy love, for he was 
 the likeness of the lost. And the son died. The reed on 
 which she leaned was broken, the oil was dried up in the 
 widow’s cruse. ‘They bore the dead upon his bier; and near 
 the gate of the city, where the crowd were gathered, there 
 came a silence over the sounds of woe, for the Son of God was 
 passing by. The mother, who followed the bier, wept, not 
 noisily, but all who looked upon her saw that her heart was 
 crushed. And the Lord pitied her, and He touched the bier, 
 and said, ‘I say UNTO THEE, ARISE.’ And the dead man woke 
 and looked upon the face of the Lord. Oh that calm and 
 solemn brow, that unutterable smile, that careworn an@sorrow- 
 ful face, lighted up with a God’s benignity, —it chased away 
 the shadows of the grave! lI rose, I spoke, I was living, 21d in 
 my mother’s arms; yes, J am the dead revived! The people 
 shouted, the funeral horns rung forth merrily: there was a 
 cry, ‘God has visited His people!’ I heard them not; I felt, 
 I saw — nothing, but the face of the Redeemer !” 
 
 The old man paused, deeply moved; and the youth felt his 
 blood creep and his hair stir. He was in the presence of one 
 who had known the Mystery of Death! 
 
 “Till that time,’ renewed the widow’s son, “I had been as 
 other men, — thoughtless, not abandoned ; taking no heed but 
 of the things of love and life; nay, I had inclined to the 
 gloomy faith of the earthly Sadducee! But, raised from the 
 dead, from awful and desert dreams that these lips never dare 
 reveal, recalled upon earth to testify the powers of Heaven, 
 once more mortal, the witness of immortality, I drew a new 
 
70 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 being from the grave. O faded, O lost Jerusalem! Him 
 from whom came my life, I beheld adjudged to the agonized — 
 and parching death! Farin the mighty crowd I saw the light 
 rest and glimmer over the cross; I heard the hooting mob, I 
 cried aloud, I raved, I threatened; none heeded me; I was lost 
 in the whirl and the roar of thousands! But even then, in 
 my agony and His own, methought the glazing eye of the Son 
 of Man sought me out; His lip smiled, as when it conquered 
 death; it hushed me, and I became calm. He who had defied 
 the grave for another, what was the grave to Him? The sun 
 shone aslant the pale and powerful features, and then died 
 away! Darkness fell over the earth; how long it endured, I 
 know not. A loud cry came through the gloom,—a sharp 
 and bitter cry !—and all was silent. 
 
 ‘“‘But who shall tell the terrors of the night? I walked 
 along the city; the earth reeled to and fro, and the houses 
 trembled to their base; the living had deserted the streets, 
 but not the dead: through the gloom I saw them glide, — the 
 dim and ghastly shapes, in the cerements of the grave, with 
 horror and woe and warning on their unmoving lips and 
 lightless eyes. They swept by me, as I passed; they glared 
 upon me; I had been their brother, and they bowed their heads 
 in recognition; they had risen to tell the living that the dead 
 can rise!” 
 
 Again the old man paused, and when he resumed, it was in 
 a calmer tone. 
 
 “From that night I resigned all earthly thought but that of 
 serving Him. A preacher and a pilgrim, I have traversed the 
 remotest corners of the earth, proclaiming His Divinity and 
 bringing new converts to His fold. I come as the wind, and as 
 the wind depart; sowing, as the wind sows, the seeds that 
 enrich the world. 
 
 “Son, on earth we shall meet no more. Forget not this 
 hour. What are the pleasures and the pomps of life? As the 
 lamp shines, so life glitters for.an hour; but the soul’s light is 
 the star that burns forever in the heart of illimitable space.” 
 
 It was then that their conversation fell upon the general and 
 sublime doctrines of immortality ; it soothed and elevated the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. th 
 
 young mind ‘of the convert, which yet clung to many of the 
 damps and shadows of that cell of faith which he had so lately 
 left; it was the air of heaven breathing on the prisoner released 
 at last. There was a strong and marked distinction between 
 the Christianity of the ol& man and that of Olinthus; that of 
 the first was more soft, more gentle, more divine. The hard 
 heroism of Olinthus had something in it fierce and intolerant ; 
 it was necessary to the part he was destined to play; it had 
 in it more of the courage of the martyr than the charity of the 
 saint. It aroused, it excited, it nerved, rather than subdued 
 and softened. But the whole heart of that divine old man was 
 bathed in love; the smile of the Deity had burned away from 
 it the leaven of earthlier and coarser passions, and left to the 
 energy of the hero all the meekness of the child. 
 
 “ And now,” said he, rising at length, as the sun’s last ray 
 died in the west, “now, in the cool of twilight, I pursue my 
 way towards the Imperial Rome. There yet dwell some holy 
 men who like me have beheld the face of Christ; and them 
 would I see before I die.” 
 
 “But the night is chill for thine age, my father, and the way 
 is long, and the robber haunts it; rest thee till to-morrow.” 
 
 “Kind son, what is there in this scrip to tempt the robber ? 
 And the Night and the Solitude!—<these make the ladder 
 round which angels cluster, and beneath which my spirit can 
 dream of God. Oh, none can know what the pilgrim feels 
 as he walks on his holy course, nursing no fear, and dreading 
 no danger, for God is with him! He hears the winds mur- 
 mur glad tidings; the woods sleep in the shadow of Almighty 
 wings; the stars are the Scriptures of Heaven, the tokens of 
 love, and the witnesses of immortality. Night is the pilgrim’s 
 day.” With these words the old man pressed Apzcides to 
 his breast, and taking up his staff and scrip, the dog bounded 
 eheerily before him, and with slow steps and downcast eyes 
 he went his way. 
 
 The convert stood watching his bended form till the trees 
 shut the last glimpse from his view; and then, as the stars 
 broke forth, he woke from the musings with a start, reminded 
 of his appointment with Olinthus. 
 
-l 
 bo 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. > 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE PHILTRE,—ITS EFFECT. 
 
 Wuen Glaucus arrived at his own home, he found Nydia 
 seated under the portico of his garden. In fact, she had 
 sought his house in the mere chance that he might return at 
 an early hour; anxious, fearful, anticipative, she resolved 
 upon seizing the earliest opportunity of availing herself of 
 the love-charm, while at the same time she half hoped the 
 opportunity might be deferred. 
 
 It was then, in that fearful burning mood, her heart beating, 
 her cheek. flushing, that Nydia awaited the possibility of 
 Glaucus’s return before the night. He crossed the portico 
 just as the first stars began to rise, and the heaven above 
 had assumed its most purple robe. 
 
 “ Ho, my child, wait you for me?” 
 
 “Nay, I have been tending the flowers, and did but linger 
 a little while to rest myself.” 
 
 ‘‘Tt has been warm,” said Glaucus, placing himself also on 
 one of the seats beneath the colonnade. 
 
 ae Verve 
 
 “Wilt thou summon Davus? ‘The wine I have drunk heats 
 me, and i long for some cooling drink.” 
 
 Here at once, suddenly and unexpectedly, the very oppor- 
 tunity that Nydia awaited presented itself; of himself, at 
 his own free choice, he afforded to her that occasion. She 
 breathed quick. “I will prepare for you myself,” said she, 
 “the summer draught that Ione loves, —of honey and weak 
 wine cooled in snow.” 
 
 “ Thanks,” said the unconscious Glaucus. “If Ione love it, 
 enough; it would be grateful were it poison.” 
 
 Nydia frowned, and then smiled; she withdrew for a few 
 moments, and returned with the cup containing the beverage. 
 Glaucus took it from her hand. What would not Nydia have 
 given then for one hour’s prerogative of sight, to have watched 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 73 
 
 her hopes ripening to effect; to have seen the first dawn of 
 the imagined love; to have worshipped with more than Per- 
 sian adoration the rising of that sun which her credulous soul 
 believed was to break upon her dreary night! Far different, 
 as she stood then and there, were the thoughts, the emotions 
 of the blind girl, from those of the vain Pompeian under a 
 Similar suspense. In the last, what poor and frivolous pas- 
 sions had made up the daring whole! What petty pique, 
 what small revenge, what expectation of a paltry triumph, 
 had swelled the attributes of that sentiment she dignified 
 with the name of love! But in the wild heart of the Thes- 
 salian all was pure, uncontrolled, unmodified passion; erring, 
 unwomanly, frenzied, but debased by no elements of a more 
 sordid feeling. Filled with love as with life itself, how could 
 .she resist the occasion of winning love in return ? 
 
 \. She leaned for support against the wall, and her face, before 
 so flushed, was now white as snow, and with her delicate 
 hands elasped convulsively together, her lips apart, her eyes 
 on the ground, she waited the next words Glaucus should 
 utter. 
 
 Glaucus had raised the cup to his lips, he had already 
 drained about a fourth of its contents, when his eye suddenly 
 glancing upon the face of Nydia, he was so forcibly struck by 
 its alteration, by its intense and painful and strange expres- 
 sion, that he paused abruptly, and still holding the cup near 
 his lips, exclaimed, — 
 
 «Why, Nydia! Nydia! I say, art thou ill or in pain? 
 Nay, thy ‘face speaks for thee. What ails my poor child?” 
 As he spoke, he put down the cup and rose from his seat to 
 approach her, when a sudden pang shot coldly to his heart, 
 and was followed by a wild, confused, dizzy sensation at the 
 brain. The floor seemed to glide from under him; his feet 
 seemed to move on air; a mighty and unearthly gladness 
 rushed upon his spirit; he felt too buoyant for the earth; he 
 longed for wings, nay, it seemed in the buoyancy of his new 
 existence as if he possessed them. He burst involuntarily 
 into a loud and thrilling laugh. He clapped his hands, he 
 bounded aloft, he was as a Pythoness inspired ; suddenly as it 
 
74 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 came, this preternatural transport passed, though only par- 
 tially, away. He now felt his blood rushing loudly and rap- 
 idly through his veins; it seemed to swell, to exult, to leap 
 along, as a stream that has burst its bounds and hurries to the 
 ocean. It throbbed in his ear with a mighty sound; he felt it 
 mount to his brow; he felt the veins in the temples stretch 
 and swell as if they could no longer contain the violent and 
 increasing tide; then a kind of darkness fell over his eyes, — 
 darkness, but not entire; for through the dim shade he saw 
 the opposite walls glow out, and the figures painted there- 
 on seemed, ghost-like, to creep and glide. What was most 
 strange, he did not feel\himself <7; he did not sink or quail 
 beneath the dread frenzy that was gathering over him. The 
 novelty of the feelings seemed bright and vivid; he felt as if 
 a younger health had been infused into his frame. He was 
 gliding on to madness, and he knew it not! 
 
 Nydia had not answered his first question, she had not been 
 able to reply; his wild and fearful laugh had roused her from 
 her passionate suspense: she could not see his fierce gestures, 
 she could not mark his reeling and unsteady step as he paced 
 unconsciously to and fro; but she heard the words, broken, 
 incoherent, insane, that gushed from his lips. She became 
 terrified and appalled; she hastened to him, feeling with 
 her arms until she touched his knees, and then falling on 
 the ground she embraced them, weeping with terror and 
 excitement. 
 
 “Oh, speak to me! speak! You donot hate me? Speak, 
 speak !” 
 
 “By the bright goddess, a beautiful land this Cyprus! Ho! 
 how they fill us with wine instead of blood! Now they open 
 the veins of the Faun yonder to show how the tide within 
 bubbles and sparkles. Come hither, jolly old god! thou rid- 
 est on a goat, eh ? What long silky. hair he has! He is worth 
 all the coursers of Parthia. But a word with thee: this wine 
 of thine is too strong for us mortals. Oh, beautiful! the 
 boughs are at rest! the green waves of the forest have caught 
 the Zephyr and drowned him! Not a breath stirs the leaves, 
 and I view the Dreams sleeping with folded wings upon the 
 
Orage saa ly rik 
 sg in 
 
 vin ee ae 
 
 ~“ 
 
 ra 
 ’ 
 “he 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. T5 
 
 motionless elm; and I look beyond, and I see a blue stream 
 sparkle in the silent noon! a fountain, — a fountain springing 
 aloft! Ah, my fount, thou wilt not put out the rays of my 
 Grecian sun, though thou triest ever so hard with thy nimble 
 and silver arms! And now, what form steals yonder through 
 the boughs? She glides ike a moonbeam; she has a garland 
 of oak-leaves on her head. In her hand is a vase upturned, 
 ~ from which she pours pink and tiny shells, and sparkling 
 water. Oh, look on yon face! Man never before saw its lke. 
 See! we are alone; only I and she in the wide forest. There 
 is no smile upon her lips; she moves, grave and sweetly sad. 
 Ha! fly! it isanymph! it is one of the wild Napeex.t Who: 
 ever sees her becomes mad; fly! see, she discovers me!” 
 
 “Oh, Glaucus! Glaucus! do you not know me? Rave not 
 so wildly, or thou wilt kill me with a word!” 
 
 A new change seemed now to operate upon the jarring and 
 disordered mind of the unfortunate Athenian. He put his 
 hands upon Nydia’s silken hair; he smoothed the locks, he 
 looked wistfully upon her face, and then, as in the broken 
 chain of thought one or two links were yet unsevered, it 
 seemed that her countenance brought its associations of Ione; 
 and with that remembrance his madness became yet more 
 powerful, and it was swayed and tinged by passion, as he 
 burst forth, — 
 
 “JT swear by Venus, by Diana, and by Juno, that though I 
 have now the world on my shoulders, as my countryman 
 Hercules (ah, dull Rome! whoever was truly great was of 
 Greece ; why, you would be godless if it were not for us!) I 
 say, as my countryman Hercules had before me, I would let 
 it fall into chaos for one smile from Ione. Ah, Beautiful, 
 Adored,” he added, in a voice inexpressibly fond and plaintive, 
 “thou lovest me not. Thou art unkind tome. The Egyptian 
 hath belied me to thee; thou knowest not what hours I have 
 spent beneath thy casement; thou knowest not how I have 
 outwatched the stars, thinking thou, my sun, wouldst rise at 
 last: and thou lovest me not, thou forsakest me! Oh, do - 
 not leave me now! I feel that my lfe will not be long; let 
 
 1 Presiding over hills and woods. 
 
76 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 me gaze on thee at least unto the last. I am of the bright 
 land of thy fathers ; I have trod the heights of Phyle; I have 
 gathered the hyacinth and rose amidst the olive-groves of 
 Ilissus. Zhow shouldst not desert me, for thy fathers were 
 brothers to my own. And they say this land is lovely, and 
 these climes serene, but I will bear thee with me. Ho! dark 
 form, why risest thou like a cloud between me and mine ? 
 Death sits calmly dread upon thy brow; on thy lip is the 
 smile that slays: thy name is Orcus, but on earth men call 
 thee Arbaces. See, I know thee! fly, dim shadow, thy spells 
 avail not!” \ eer RLY 
 
 “Glaucus! Glaucus!” murmured Nydia, releasing her hold 
 and falling, beneath the excitement of her dismay, remorse, 
 and anguish, insensible on the floor. 
 
 “Who calls?” said he, in a loud voice. “Tone, it is she! 
 They have borne her off ; we will save her: where is my stilus ? 
 Ha, I have it! I come, Ione, to thy rescue! I come! I 
 come !” 
 
 So saying, the Athenian with one bound passed the portico, 
 he traversed the house, and rushed with swift but vacillating 
 steps, and muttering audibly to himself, down the starlit 
 streets. ‘The direful potion burnt like fire in his veins, for its 
 effect was made, perhaps, still more sudden from the wine he 
 had drunk previously. Used to the excesses of nocturnal 
 revellers, the citizens, with smiles and winks, gave way to his 
 reeling steps; they naturally imagined him under the in- 
 fluence of the Bromian god, not vainly worshipped at Pom- 
 peil; but they who looked twice upon his face started in a 
 nameless fear, and the smile withered from their lips. He 
 passed the more populous streets; and, pursuing mechani- 
 cally the way to Ione’s house, he traversed a more deserted 
 quarter, and entered now the lonely grove of Cybele, in which 
 Apzcides had held his interview with Olinthus. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. TT 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A REUNION OF DIFFERENT ACTORS. —STREAMS THAT FLOWED 
 APPARENTLY APART RUSH INTO ONE GULF. 
 
 IMPATIENT to learn whether the fell drug had yet been 
 administered by Julia to his hated rival, and with what effect, 
 Arbaces resolved, as the evening came on, to seek her house 
 and satisfy his suspense. It was customary, as I have before 
 said, for men at that time to carry abroad with them the tab- 
 lets and the stilus attached to their girdle; and with the 
 girdle they were put off when at home. In fact, under the 
 appearance of a literary instrument, the Romans carried about 
 with them in that same stilus a very sharp and formidable 
 weapon. It was with his stilus? that Cassius stabbed Cesar 
 in the senate-house. Taking, then, his girdle and his cloak, 
 Arbaces left his house supporting his steps, which were still 
 somewhat feeble (though hope and vengeance had conspired 
 greatly with his own medical science, which was profound, to 
 restore his natural strength), by his long staff: Arbaces took 
 his way to the villa of Diomed. 
 
 And beautiful is the moonlight of the south! In those 
 climes the night so quickly glides into the day, that twilight 
 scarcely makes a bridge between them. One moment of 
 darker purple in the sky, of a thousand rose-hues in the 
 water, of, shade half victorious over light, and then burst 
 forth at once the countless stars: the moon is up; night has 
 resumed her reign! 
 
 Brightly then, and softly bright, fell the moonbeams over 
 the antique grove consecrated to Cybele; the stately trees, 
 whose date went beyond tradition, cast their long shadows 
 over the soil, while through the openings in their boughs the 
 stars shone, still and frequent. The whiteness of the small 
 sacellum in the centre of the grove, amidst the dark foliage, 
 had in it something abrupt and startling; it recalled at once 
 
 1 From the stilas may be derived the stiletto of the Italians. 
 
78 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 the purpose to which the wood was consecrated, — its holiness 
 and solemnity. 
 
 With a swift and stealthy pace, Calenus, gliding under the 
 shade of the trees, reached the chapel, and gently putting 
 back the boughs that completely closed around its rear, set- 
 tled himself in his concealment,—a concealment so com- 
 plete, what with the fane in front and the trees behind, that 
 no unsuspicious passenger could possibly have detected him. 
 Again, all was apparently solitary in the grove; afar off you 
 heard faintly the voices of some noisy revellers, or the music 
 that played ‘cheerily to the groups that then, as now, in those 
 climates, during the nights of summer, lingered in the streets, 
 and enjoyed, in the fresh air and the liquid moonlight, a 
 milder day. 
 
 From the height on which the grove was placed, you saw 
 through the intervals of the trees the broad and purple sea 
 rippling in the distance, the white villas of Stabiz in the 
 curving shore, and the dim Lectiarian hills mingling with the 
 delicious sky. Presently the tall figure of Arbaces, on his 
 way to the house of Diomed, entered the extreme end of 
 the grove; and at the same instant Apzcides, also bound 
 to his appointment with Olinthus, crossed the Egyptian’s 
 path. 
 
 “ Hem! Apzcides,” said Arbaces, recognizing the priest at 
 a glance; “when last we met you were myfoe. I have wished 
 since then to see you, for I would have iets still my pupil and 
 my friend.” 
 
 Apecides started at the voice of the Egyptian, and halting 
 abruptly, gazed upon him with a countenance full of contend- 
 ing, bitter, and scornful emotions. 
 
 “Villain and impostor!” said he at length; “thou hast 
 recovered then from the jaws of the grave! But think not 
 again to weave around me thy guilty meshes. etiarius, I am 
 armed against thee!” 
 
 “Hush !” said Arbaces, in a very low voice; but his prido, 
 which in that descendant of kings was great, betrayed the 
 wound it received from the insulting epithets of the priest in 
 the quiver of his lip and the flush of his tawny brow. “ Hush! 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 79 
 
 more low! thou mayest be overheard, and if other ears than 
 mine had drunk those sounds, why — ” 
 
 “Dost thou threaten? What if the whole city had heard 
 meth 
 
 “The manes of my gncestors would not have suffered me to 
 forgive thee. But hold, and hear me. Thou art enraged that 
 I would have offered violence to thy sister. Nay, peace, peace, 
 but one instant, I pray thee. Thou art right; it was the frenzy 
 of passion and of jealousy. I have repented bitterly of my 
 madness. Forgive me; I, who never implored pardon of liv- 
 ing man, beseech thee now to forgive me. Nay, I will atone 
 the insult; I ask thy sister in marriage: start not, consider, — 
 what is the alliance of yon holiday Greek compared to mine ? 
 Wealth unbounded, birth that in its far antiquity leaves your 
 Greek and Roman names the things of yesterday, science — 
 but that thou knowest! Give me thy sister, and my whole 
 life shall atone a moment’s error.” 
 
 “Hgyptian, were even I to consent, my sister loathes the 
 very air thou breathest; but I have my own wrongs to forgive. 
 I may pardon thee that thou hast made me a tool to thy 
 deceits, but never that. thou hast seduced me to become the 
 abettor of thy vices, —a polluted and a perjured man. ‘Trem- 
 ble! Even now I prepare the hour in which thou and thy 
 false gods shall be unveiled. Thy lewd and Circean life shall 
 be dragged to day, thy mumming oracles disclosed, the fane 
 of the idol Isis shall be a byword and a scorn, the name of 
 Arbaces a mark for the hisses of execration! Tremble!” 
 
 The flush on the Egyptian’s brow was succeeded by a livid 
 paleness. He looked behind, before, around, to feel assured 
 that none was by; and then he fixed his dark and dilating eye 
 on the priest, with such a gaze of wrath and menace, that one 
 perhaps less supported than Apeecides by the fervent daring 
 of a divine zeal, could not have faced with unflinching look that 
 lowering aspect. As it was, however, the young convert met it 
 unmoved, and returned it with an eye of proud defiance. 
 
 “ Apecides,” said the Egyptian, in a tremulous and inward 
 tone, “beware! What is it thou wouldst meditate? Speakest 
 thou — reflect, pause before thou repliest —from the hasty 
 
80 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 influences of wrath, as yet setae no settled purpose, or 
 from some fixed design?” 
 
 “JT speak from the inspiration of the True God, whose ser- 
 vant I now am,” answered the Christian, boldly; “and in the 
 knowledge that by His grace human courage has already fixed 
 the date of thy hypocrisy and thy demon’s worship; ere thrice 
 the sun has dawned, thou wilt know all! Dark sorcerer, trem- 
 ble, and farewell!” 
 
 All the fierce and lurid passions which he inherited from 
 his nation and his clime, at all times but ill concealed beneath 
 the blandness of craft and the coldness of philosophy, were 
 released in the breast-of the Egyptian. Rapidly one thought 
 chased another; he saw before him an obstinate barrier to 
 even a lawful alliance with Ione,—the fellow-champion of 
 Glaucus in the struggle which had baffled his designs, the 
 reviler of his name, the threatened desecrator of the goddess 
 he served while he disbelieved, the avowed and approaching 
 revealer of his own impostures and vices. His love, his re- 
 pute, nay, his very life, might be in danger,—the day and 
 hour seemed even to have been fixed for some design against 
 him. He knew by the words of the convert that Apecides 
 had adopted the Christian faith; he knew the indomitable 
 zeal which led on the proselytes of that creed. Such was 
 his enemy; he grasped his stilus,— that enemy was in his 
 power. They were now before the chapel; one hasty glance 
 once more he cast around; he saw none near, — silence and 
 solitude alike tempted him. 
 
 “Die, then, in thy rashness!” he muttered; “away, obstacle 
 to my rushing fates!” 
 
 And just as the young Christian had turned to depart, Arbaces 
 raised his hand high over the left shoulder of Apzcides, and 
 plunged his sharp weapon twice into his breast. 
 
 Apeecides fell to the ground pierced to the heart; he fell 
 mute, without even a groan, at the very base of the sacred 
 chapel. 
 
 Arbaces gazed upon him for a moment with the fierce animal 
 joy of conquest overafoe. But presently the full sense of the 
 danger to which he was exposed flashed upon him; he wiped 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 81 
 
 his weapon carefully in the long grass, and with the very gar- 
 ments of his victim; drew his cloak round him, and was about 
 to depart, when he saw coming up the path right before him 
 the figure of a young man, whose steps reeled and vacillated 
 strangely as he advanceé: The quiet moonlight streamed full 
 upon his face, which seemed, by the whitening ray, colorless as 
 marble. The Egyptian recognized the face and form of Glau- 
 cus. The unfortunate and benighted Greek was chanting a 
 disconnected and mad song, composed from snatches of hymns 
 and. sacred odes, all jarringly woven together. 
 
 “Ha!” thought the Egyptian, instantaneously divining his 
 state and its terrible cause; “so, then, the hell-draught works, 
 and destiny hath sent thee hither to crush two of my foes at 
 once.” 
 
 Quickly, even ere this thought occurred to him, he had 
 withdrawn on one side of the chapel, and concealed himself 
 amongst the boughs; from that lurking-place he watched, as a 
 tiger in his lair, the advance of his second victim. He noted 
 the wandering and restless fire in the bright and beautiful 
 eyes of the Athenian; the convulsions that distorted his 
 statue-like features and writhed his hueless lip. He saw 
 that the Greek was utterly deprived of reason. Nevertheless, 
 as Glaucus came up to the dead body of Apecides, from which 
 the dark red stream flowed slowly over the grass, so strange 
 and ghastly a spectacle could not fail to arrest him, benighted 
 and erring as was his glimmering sense. He paused, placed his 
 hand to his brow, as if to collect himself, and then saying, — 
 
 “ What ho! Endymion, sleepest thou:so soundly? What 
 has the moon said to thee? Thou makest me jealous; it is 
 time to wake,” he stooped down, with the intention of lifting 
 up the body. 
 
 Forgetting, feeling not, his own debility, the Egyptian sprung 
 from his hiding-place, and, as the Greek bent, struck him 
 forcibly to the ground, over the very body of the Christian; 
 then, raising his powerful voice to its loudest pitch, he 
 shouted, — 
 
 “Ho, citizens! ho! help me; run hither, hither! A mur- 
 der, a murder before your very fane! Help, or the murderer 
 
 VOL. 11. —6 
 
82 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 escapes!” As he spoke, he placed his foot on the breast of 
 Glaucus: an idle and superfluous precaution; for the potion 
 operating with the fall, the Greek lay there motionless and 
 insensible, save that now and then his lips gave vent to some 
 vague and raving sounds. 
 
 As he there stood awaiting the coming of those his voice 
 still continued to summon, perhaps some remorse, some com- 
 punctious visitings — for, despite his crimes, he was human — 
 haunted the breast of the Egyptian; the defenceless state 
 of Glaucus, his wandering words, his shattered reason, smote 
 him even more than the death of Apzcides, and he said half 
 audibly to himself, — 
 
 ‘Poor clay, poor human reason; where is the soul now? I 
 could spare thee, O my rival—rival never more. But destiny 
 must be obeyed; my safety demands thy sacrifice”’ With 
 that, as if to drown compunction, he shouted yet more loudly ; 
 and drawing from the girdle of Glaucus the stilus it contained, 
 he steeped it in the blood of the murdered man, and laid it 
 beside the corpse. 
 
 And now, fast and breathless, several of the citizens came 
 thronging to the place, some with torches, which the moon 
 rendered unnecessary, but which flared red and tremulously 
 against the darkness of the trees: they surrounded the spot. 
 
 “ Lift up yon corpse,” said the Egyptian, “and guard well 
 the murderer.” 
 
 They raised the body, and great was their horror and sacred 
 indignation to discover in that lifeless clay a priest of the 
 adored and venerable Isis; but still greater, perhaps, was their 
 surprise when they found the accused in the brilliant and 
 admired Athenian. , 
 
 “Glaucus!” cried the bystanders, with one accord; “is it 
 even credible ?” 
 
 ‘‘T would sooner,” whispered one man to his neighbor, 
 “believe it to be the Egyptian himself.” 
 
 Here a centurion thrust himself into the gathering crowd, 
 with an air of authority. 
 
 “How! blood spilt! who the murderer ?” 
 
 The bystanders pointed to Glaucus. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 83 
 
 “He! By Mars, he has rather the air of being the victim! 
 Who accuses him ?” 
 
 “J,” said Arbaces, drawing himself up haughtily; and the 
 jewels which adorned his dress flashing in the eyes of the sol- 
 dier, instantly convinced.that worthy warrior of the witness’s 
 respectability. 
 
 “ Pardon me: your name ?” said he. 
 
 “ Arbaces; itis well known, methinks,in Pompeii. Passing 
 through the grove, I beheld before me the Greek and the priest 
 in earnest conversation. I was struck by the reeling motions 
 of the first, his violent gestures, and the loudness of his voice; 
 he seemed, to me either drunk or mad. Suddenly I saw him 
 raise his stilus; I darted forward, too late to arrest the blow. 
 He had twice stabbed his victim, and was bending over him, 
 when, in my horror and indignation, I struck the murderer to 
 the ground. He fell without a struggle, which makes me yet 
 more suspect that he was not altogether in his senses when 
 the crime was perpetrated; for, recently recovered from a 
 severe illness, my blow was comparatively feeble, and the 
 - frame of Glaucus, as you see, is strong and youthful.” 
 
 “His eyes are open now; his lips move,” said the soldier. 
 “Speak, prisoner: what sayest thou to the charge ?” 
 
 “The charge —ha, ha! Why, it was merrily done; when 
 the old hag set her serpent at me, and Hecate stood by laugh- 
 ing from ear to ear, what could Ido? ButIam ill; I faint; 
 the serpent’s fiery tongue hath bitten me. Bear me to bed, 
 and send for your physician; old Aisculapius himself will 
 attend me if you let him know that Iam Greek. Oh, mercy, 
 mercy, I burn! marrow and brain, I burn!” 
 
 And, with a thrilling and fierce groan, the Athenian fell back 
 in the arms of the bystanders. 
 
 “He raves,” said the officer, compassionately, “and in his 
 delirium he has struck the priest. Hath any one present seen 
 him to-day ?” 
 
 “J,” said one of the spectators, “beheld him in the morning. 
 He passed my shop and accosted me. He seemed well and 
 sane as the stoutest of us.” 
 
 “ And I saw him half an hour ago,” said another, “ passing 
 
84. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 up the streets muttering to himself with strange gestures, and 
 just as the Egyptian has described.” 
 
 “ A corroboration of the witness! It must be too true. He 
 must at all events to the pretor: a pity, so young and so rich! 
 But the crime is dreadful: a priest of Isis, in his very robes, 
 too, and at the base itself of our most ancient chapel!” 
 
 At these words the crowd were reminded more forcibly, 
 than in their excitement and curiosity they had yet been, of 
 the heinousness of the sacrilege. They shuddered in pious 
 horror. 
 
 “No wonder the earth has quaked,” said one, “when it held 
 such a monster!” 
 
 “ Away with him to prison, —away!” cried they all. 
 
 And one solitary voice was heard shrilly and joyously above 
 the rest, — 
 
 “The beasts will not want a gladiator now, 
 
 ‘Ho, ho! for the merry, merry show!’” 
 
 It was the voice of the young woman whose conversation 
 with Medon has been repeated. 
 
 “True, true, it chances in season for the games!” cried 
 several; and at that thought all pity for the accused seemed 
 vanished. His youth, his beauty, but fitted him better for the 
 purpose of the arena. 
 
 “Bring hither some planks —or, if at hand, a litter —to 
 bear the dead,” said Arbaces: “a priest of Isis ought scarcely 
 to be carried to his temple by vulgar hands, like a butchered 
 gladiator.” 
 
 At this the bystanders reverently laid the corpse of Apzecides 
 on the ground, with the face upwards; and some of them went 
 in search of some contrivance to bear the body, untouched by 
 the profane. 
 
 It was just at that time that the crowd gave way to right 
 and left as a sturdy form forced itself through, and Olinthus 
 the Christian stood immediately confronting the Egyptian. 
 But his eyes at first only rested with inexpressible grief and 
 horror on that gory side and upturned face on which the agony 
 of violent death yet lingered. 
 
3 he 
 < 
 
 " 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 85 
 
 “Murdered!” he said. “Is it thy zeal that has brought 
 thee to this? Have they detected thy noble purpose, and by 
 death prevented their own shame ?” 
 
 He turned his head abruptly, and his eyes fell full on the 
 solemn features of the Egyptian. 
 
 As he looked, you might see in his face, and even the slight 
 shiver of his frame, the repugnance and aversion which the 
 Christian felt for one whom he knew to be so dangerous and so 
 criminal. It was indeed the gaze of the bird upon the basilisk, 
 so silent was it and so prolonged. But shaking off the sudden 
 chill that had crept over him, Olinthus extended his right arm 
 towards Arbaces, and said, in a deep and loud voice, — 
 
 “Murder hath been done upon this corpse! Where is the 
 murderer? Stand forth, Egyptian! For, as the Lord liveth, 
 I believe thou art the man!” | 
 
 An anxious and perturbed change might for one moment be 
 detected on the dusky features of Arbaces; but it gave way to 
 the frowning expression of indignation and scorn, as, awed 
 and arrested by the suddenness and vehemence of the charge, 
 the spectators pressed nearer and nearer upon the two more 
 prominent actors. 
 
 “7 know,” said Arbaces, proudly, “who is my accuser, and 
 I guess wherefore he thus arraigns me. Men and citizens, 
 know this man for the most bitter of the Nazarenes, if that 
 or Christians be their proper name! What marvel that in 
 his malignity he dares accuse even an Egyptian of the murder 
 of a priest of Egypt!” 
 
 “T know him! I know the dog!” shouted several voices. 
 “Tt is Olinthus the Christian, or rather the Atheist; he de- 
 nies the gods!” 
 
 “Peace, brethren,” said Olinthus, with dignity, “and hear 
 me! This murdered priest of Isis before his death embraced 
 the Christian faith ; he revealed to me the dark sins, the sor- 
 ceries of yon Egyptian, —the mummeries and delusions of the 
 fane of Isis. He was about to declare them publicly. He, a 
 stranger, unoffending, without enemies, — who should shed his 
 blood but one of those who feared his witness ? Who might 
 fear that testimony the most? Arbaces the Egyptian !” 
 
86 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “You hear him!” said Arbaces; “you hear him! he blas- 
 phemes! Ask him if he believe in Isis.” 
 
 “Do I believe in an evil demon?” returned Olinthus, 
 boldly. 
 
 A groan and shudder passed through the assembly. Nothing 
 daunted, for prepared at every time for peril, and in the present 
 excitement losing all prudence, the Christian continued, — 
 
 “ Back, idolaters! this clay is not for your vain and pollut- 
 ing rites; it is to us—to the followers of Christ —that the - 
 last offices due to a Christian belong. I claim this dust in : 
 the name of the great Creator who has recalled the spirit!” 
 
 With so solemn and commanding a voice and aspect the 
 Christian spoke these words, that even the crowd forbore to— 
 utter aloud the execration of fear and hatred which in their 
 hearts they conceived. And never, perhaps, since Lucifer 
 and the Archangel contended for the body of the mighty 
 Lawgiver, was there a more striking subject for the painter’s 
 genius than that scene exhibited: the dark trees, the stately 
 fane, the moon full on the corpse of the deceased, the torches 
 tossing wildly to and fro in the rear, the various faces of the 
 motley audience, the insensible form of the Athenian, sup- 
 ported, in the distance, and in the foreground, and above all, 
 the forms of Arbaces and the Christian, —the first drawn to 
 its full height, far taller than the herd around, his arms 
 folded, his brow knit, his eyes fixed, his lip slightly curled in 
 defiance and disdain; the last bearing, on a brow worn and 
 furrowed, the majesty of an equal command, the features 
 stern yet frank, the aspect bold yet open, the quiet dignity 
 of the whole form impressed with an ineffable earnestness, 
 hushed, as it were, in a solemn sympathy with the awe he 
 himself had created, his left hand pointing to the corpse, 
 his right hand raised to heaven. 
 
 The centurion pressed forward again. 
 
 “Tn the first place, hast thou, Olinthus, or whatever be thy 
 name, any proof of the charge thou hast made against Arbaces, 
 beyond thy vague suspicions ? ” 
 
 Olinthus remained silent; the Egyptian laughed con- 
 temptuously. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 87 
 
 “ Dost thou claim the body of a priest of Isis as one of the 
 Nazarine or Christian sect ? ” 
 
 (£4 I do. 9) 
 
 “Swear then by yon fane, yon statue of Cybele, by yon most 
 ancient sacellum in Poripeii, that the dead man embraced 
 your faith!” 
 
 “Vain man, I disown your rane I abhor your temples! 
 How can I swear by Cybele then ? ” 
 
 “ Away, away with the Atheist! away! the earth will 
 swallow us if we suffer these blasphemers in a sacred grove, 
 —away with him to death!” 
 
 “ To the beasts /’’ added a female voice in the centre of 
 the crowd; “we shall have one apiece now for the lion and 
 tiger |” 
 
 “Tf, O Nazarene, thou disbelievest in Cybele, which of our 
 gods dost thou own?” resumed the soldier, unmoved by the 
 cries around. 
 
 “¢ None!” 
 
 “ Hark to him! hark!” cried the crowd. 
 
 “Q vain and blind!” continued the Christian, raising his 
 voice, “can you believe in images of wood and stone? Do you 
 imagine that they have eyes to see, or ears to hear, or hands te 
 help ye? Is yon mute thing carved by man’s art a goddess ! 
 hath it made mankind? Alas! by mankind was it made. Lo! 
 convince yourselves of its nothingness, — of your folly.” 
 
 And as he spoke he strode across to the fane, and ere any of 
 the bystanders were aware of his purpose, he, in his compas- 
 sion or his zeal, struck the statue of wood from its pedestal. 
 
 “See!” cried he, “your goddess cannot avenge herself. Is 
 this a thing to worship ? ” 
 
 Further words were denied to him: so gross and daring a 
 sacrilege —of one, too, of the most sacred of their places of 
 worship — filled even the most lukewarm with rage and horror. 
 With one accord the crowd rushed upon him, seized, and but 
 for the interference of the centurion, they would have torn 
 him to pieces. 
 
 “ Peace!” said the soldier, authoritatively ; — “refer we this 
 insolent blasphemer to the proper tribunal: time has been 
 
88 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 already wasted. Bear we both the culprits to the magistrates ; 
 place the body of the priest on the litter: carry it to his own 
 home.” 
 
 At this moment a priest of Isis stepped forward. “TI claim 
 these remains, according to the custom of the priesthood.” 
 
 “The flamen be obeyed,” said the centurion. “How is the 
 murderer ? ” 
 
 ‘“‘Insensible or asleep.” 
 
 “Were his crime less, I could pity him. On!” 
 
 Arbaces, as he turned, met the eye of that priest of Isis, — 
 
 it was Calenus; and something there was in that glance, , 
 
 so significant and sinister, that the Egyptian muttered to 
 himself, — 
 
 “Could he have witnessed the deed ? ” 
 
 A girl darted from the crowd, and gazed hard on the face of 
 Olinthus. “by Jupiter, a stout knave! I say, we shall have a 
 man for the tiger now ; one for each beast !” 
 
 “Ho!” shouted the mob; “a man for the lion, and another 
 for the tiger! Whatluck! Io Pean!” 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IN WHICH THE READER LEARNS THE CONDITION OF GLAUCUS. 
 — FRIENDSHIP TESTED. — ENMITY SOFTENED. — LOVE THE 
 SAME, — BECAUSE THE ONE LOVING IS BLIND. 
 
 THe night was somewhat advanced, and the gay lounging- 
 places of the Pompeians were still crowded. You might ob- 
 serve in the countenances of the various idlers a more earnest 
 expression than usual. They talked in large knots or groups, 
 as if they sought by numbers to divide the half-painful, half- 
 pleasurable anxiety which belonged to the subject on which 
 they conversed : it was a subject of life and death. 
 
 A young man passed briskly by the graceful portico of the 
 Temple of Fortune, —so briskly, indeed, that he came with no 
 slight force full against the rotund and comely form of that 
 
 } 
 
 KE 
 
 x 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 89 
 
 respectable citizen Diomed, who was retiring homeward to his 
 suburban villa. 
 
 “Holloa!” groaned the merchant, recovering with some 
 difficulty his equilibrium; “have you no eyes, or do you 
 think I have no feeling? By Jupiter! you have well-nigh 
 driven out the divine particle; such another shock, and my 
 soul will be in Hades!” 
 
 *“ Ah, Diomed! is it you? Forgive my inadvertence. I was 
 absorbed in thinking of the reverses of life. Our poor friend 
 Glaucus, eh! who could have guessed it ?” 
 
 “Well, but tell me, Clodius, is he really to be tried by the 
 senate ? ” 
 
 “Yes; they say the crime is of so extraordinary a nature 
 that the senate itself must adjudge it; and so the lictors are 
 to induct him ? formally.” 
 
 “ He has been accused publicly, then? ” 
 
 “To be sure; where have you been, not to hear that ? ” 
 
 “Why, I have only just returned from Neapolis, whither I 
 went on business the very morning after his crime: so shock- 
 ing, and at my house the same night that it happened!” 
 
 “ There is no doubt of his guilt,” said Clodius, shrugging his 
 shoulders; “and as these crimes take precedence of all little 
 undignified peccadilloes, they will hasten to finish the sentence 
 previous to the games.” 
 
 “The games! Good gods!” replied Diomed, with a slight 
 shudder; “can they adjudge him to the beasts, so young, 
 so rich?” 
 
 “True; but then he is a Greek. Had he been a Roman, it 
 would have been a thousand pities. These foreigners can be 
 borne with in their prosperity ; but in adversity we must not 
 forget that they are in reality slaves. However, we of the 
 upper classes are always tender-hearted, and he would cer- 
 tainly get off tolerably well if he were left to us; for, between 
 ourselves, what is a paltry priest of Isis; what Isis herself? 
 But the common people are superstitious; they clamor for 
 the blood of the sacrilegious one. It is dangerous not to give 
 way to public opinion.” 
 
 1 Plin. Ep. ii. 11, 12; v. 4, 13. 
 
90 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ¢¢ And the blasphemer, — the Christian, or Nazarene, or what« 
 ever else he be called ?” 
 
 “Oh, poor dog! if he will sacrifice to Cybele or Isis, he will 
 be pardoned; if not, the tiger has him. At least, so I sup- 
 pose; but the trial will decide. We talk while the urn is 
 still empty. And the Greek may yet escape the deadly @! 
 of his own alphabet. But enough of this gloomy subject. 
 How is the fair Julia?” 
 
 “ Well, I fancy.” : aeins 
 
 “Commend me to her. But hark! the door yonder creaks 
 on its hinges; it is the house of the pretor. “Who comes 
 forth? By Pollux, it is the Egyptian! What can he want 
 with our official friend ? ” 
 
 “Some conference touching the murder, doubtless,” replied 
 Diomed; “but what was supposed to be the inducement 
 to the crime? Glaucus was to have married the priest’s 
 sister.” 
 
 “Yes; some say Apecides refused the alliance. It might 
 have been a sudden quarrel. Glaucus was evidently drunk ; 
 nay, so much so as to have been quite insensible when taken 
 up, and I hear is still delirious; whether with wine, terror, 
 remorse, the Furies, or the Bacchanals, I cannot say.” 
 
 ‘Poor fellow! he has good counsel ?” 
 
 “The best, — Caius Pollio, an eloquent fellow enough. Pol- 
 lio has been hiring all the poor gentlemen and well-born 
 spendthrifts of Pompeii to dress shabbily and sneak about, 
 swearing their friendship to Glaucus (who would not have 
 spoken to them to be made emperor! I will do him justice, 
 he was a gentleman in his choice of acquaintance), and trying 
 to melt the stony citizens into pity. But it will not do; Isis 
 is mighty popular just at this moment.” 
 
 “ And, by the bye, I have some merchandise at Alexandria. 
 Yes, Isis ought to be protected.” 
 
 “True; so farewell, old gentleman: we shall meet soon; if 
 not, we must have a friendly bet at the Amphitheatre. All 
 my calculations are confounded by this cursed misfortune of 
 
 AZ 
 
 1 @, the initial of @dvaros (death), the condemning letter of the Greeks, as 
 C was of the Romans. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 91 
 
 Glaucus! He had bet on Lydon the gladiator; I must make 
 up my tablets elsewhere. Vale/” 
 
 Leaving the less active Diomed to regain his villa, Clodius 
 strode on, humming a Greek air, and perfuming the night 
 with the odors that steamed from his atic garments and 
 flowing locks. 
 
 “Tf,” thought he, “ Glaucus feed the lion, Julia will no longer 
 have a person to love better than me; she will certainly dote 
 on me, and so, I suppose, | must marry. By the gods! the 
 twelve lines begin to fail: men look suspiciously at my hand 
 when it rattles the dice. That infernal Sallust insinuates 
 cheating; and if it be discovered that the ivory is cogged, 
 why, farewell to the merry supper and the perfumed billet; 
 Clodius is undone! Better marry, then, while I may, renounce 
 gaming, and push my fortune (or rather the gentle Julia’s) 
 at the imperial court.” 
 
 Thus muttering the schemes of his ambition, if by that — 
 high name the projects of Clodius may be called, the gamester 
 found himself suddenly accosted; he turned and beheld the 
 dark brow of Arbaces. 
 
 “Hail, noble Clodius! pardon my interruption, and inform 
 me, I pray you, which is the house of Sallust.” 
 
 “Tt is but a few yards hence, wise Arbaces. But does 
 Sallust entertain to-night ?” 
 
 “T know not,” answered the Egyptian; “nor am I, perhaps, 
 one of those whom he would seek as a boon companion. But 
 thou knowest that his house holds the person of Glaucus the 
 murderer.” 
 
 “Ay; he, good-hearted epicure, believes in the Greek’s in- 
 nocence! You remind me that he has become his surety, and 
 therefore, till the trial, is responsible for his appearance.? 
 Well, Sallust’s house is better than a prison, especially that 
 wretched hole in the forum. But for what can you seek 
 Glaucus ?” 
 
 “Why, noble Clodius, if we could save him from execution 
 it would be well. The condemnation of the rich is a blow 
 
 1 Tf a criminal could obtain surety (called vades in capital offences), he was 
 not compelled to lie in prison till after sentence. 
 
92 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 upon society itself. I should like to confer with him, — for I 
 hear he has recovered his senses, — and ascertain the motives 
 of his crime; they may be so extenuating as to plead in his 
 defence.” 
 
 “You are benevolent, Arbaces.” 
 
 ‘Benevolence is the duty of one who aspires to wisdom,” 
 replied the Egyptian, modestly. “Which way lies Sallust’s 
 mansion ?” 
 
 “T will show you,” said Clodius, “if you will suffer me to 
 accompany you a few steps. But pray, what has become of 
 the poor girl who was to have wed the Athenian, — the sister 
 of the murdered priest ‘ Bat: 
 
 “‘ Alas! well-nigh insane. Sometimes she utters impreca- 
 tions on the murderer, then suddenly stops short, then cries, 
 ‘But why curse? Ob, my brother! Glaucus was not thy 
 murderer; never will I believe it!’ Then she begins again, 
 and again stops short and mutters awfully to herself, ‘ Yet if 
 it were indeed he ?’” 
 
 “ Unfortunate Ione!” 
 
 “But it is well for her that those solemn cares to the dead 
 which religion enjoins have hitherto greatly absorbed her 
 attention from Glaucus and herself; and in the dimness of 
 her senses she scarcely seems aware that Glaucus is appre- 
 hended and on the eve of trial. When the funeral rites due 
 to Apzcides are performed, her apprehensions will return; 
 and then I fear me much that her friends will be revolted 
 by seeing her run to succor and aid the murderer of her 
 brother !” 
 
 “Such scandal should be prevented.” 
 
 “T trust I have taken precautions to that effect. Iam her 
 lawful guardian, and have just succeeded in obtaining per- 
 mission to escort her, after the funeral of Apecides, to my 
 own house; there, please the gods, she will be secure.” 
 
 “ You have done well, sage Arbaces. And now yonder is 
 the house of Sallust. The gods keep you! Yet hark you, 
 Arbaces, why so gloomy and unsocial? Men say you can be 
 gay; why not let me initiate you into the pleasures of Pom. 
 peii? I flatter myself no one knows them better.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 93 
 
 “JT thank you, noble Clodius: under your auspices I might 
 venture, I think, to wear the philyra; but at my age I should 
 be an awkward pupil.” 
 
 “Oh, never fear; I have made converts of fellows of 
 seventy. The rich, too,“are never old.” 
 
 “You flatter me. At some future time I will remind you 
 of your promise.” 
 
 “You may command Marcus Clodius at all times; and so 
 vale!” 
 
 “Now,” said the Egyptian, soliloquizing, “I am not wan- 
 tonly a man of blood; I would willingly save this Greek, if, 
 by confessing the crime, he will lose himself forever to Ione, 
 and forever free me from the chance of discovery; and I can 
 save him by persuading Julia to own the philtre, which will 
 be held his excuse. But if he do not confess the crime, why, 
 Julia must be shamed from the confession, and he must die, 
 —die, lest he prove my rival with the living,—die that he 
 may be my proxy with the dead! Will he confess? Can he 
 not be persuaded that in his delirium he struck the blow? 
 To me it would give far greater safety than even his death. 
 Hem! we must hazard the experiment.” 
 
 Sweeping along the narrow street, Arbaces now approached 
 the house of Sallust, when he beheld a dark form wrapped in 
 a cloak, and stretched at length across the threshold of the 
 door. 
 
 So still lay the figure and so dim was its outline, that any 
 other than Arbaces might have felt a superstitious fear lest 
 he beheld one of those grim lemures, who, above all other 
 spots, haunted the threshold of the homes they formerly 
 possessed. But not for Arbaces were such dreams. 
 
 “Rise!” said he, touching the figure with his foot; “thou 
 obstructest the way !” 
 
 “ Ha! who art thou?” cried the form, in a sharp tone; and 
 as she raised herself from the ground, the starlight fell full on 
 the pale face and fixed but sightless eyes of Nydia the Thes- 
 salian. ‘ Who art thou? I know the burden of thy voice.” 
 
 “Blind girl, what dost thon here at this late hour? Fie! 
 is this seeming thy sex or years? Home, girl!” 
 
94 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “T know thee,” said Nydia, in a low voice; “thou art Ar- 
 baces the Egyptian.” ‘Then, as if inspired by some sudden im- 
 pulse, she flung herself at his feet, and clasping his knees ex- 
 claimed, in a wild and passionate tone, “O dread and potent 
 man! save him—save him! He is not guilty; itis I! He 
 lies within, ill, dying, and I, —I am the hateful cause! And 
 they will not admit me to him; they spurn the blind girl from 
 the hall. Oh, heal him! thou nbwast t_some herb, some spell, 
 some countercharm, for it is a potion. that hath wrought this 
 frenzy !” tae 
 
 “ Hush, child! I paw allt “Thou forgettest that I accom- 
 panied Julia to the Saga’s home. Doubtless her hand admin- 
 istered the draught, but her reputation demands thy silence. 
 Reproach not thyself; what must be, must: meanwhile, I seek 
 the criminal; he may yet be saved. Away!” 
 
 Thus saying, Arbaces extricated himself from the clasp of 
 the despairing Thessalian, and knocked loudly at the door. 
 
 In a few moments the heavy bars were heard suddenly to 
 yield, and the porter, half opening the door, demanded who 
 was there. 
 
 “‘ Arbaces ; important business to Sallust relative to Glaucus. 
 I come from the pretor.” 
 
 The porter, half yawning, half groaning, admitted the tall 
 form of the Egyptian. Nydia sprang forward. “How is 
 he ?” she cried; “tell me, tell me!” 
 
 “Ho, mad girl! is it thou still? for shame! Why, they 
 say he is sensible.” 
 
 “The gods be praised! And you will not admit me? Ah! 
 I beseech thee —” 
 
 “ Admit thee! No. A pretty salute I should prepare for 
 these shoulders were I to admit such things as thou! Go 
 home!” 
 
 The door closed, and Nydia with a deep sigh laid herself 
 down once more on the cold stones, and wrapping her cloak 
 round her face, resumed her weary vigil. 
 
 Meanwhile Arbaces had already gained the triclinium, where 
 Sallust, with his favorite freedman, sat late at supper. 
 
 “What! Arbaces! and at this hour! Accept this cup.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 95 
 
 “Nay, gentle Sallust; it is on business, not pleasure, that I 
 venture to disturb thee. How doth thy charge? They say 
 in the town that he has recovered sense.” 
 
 “ Alas! and truly,” replied the good-natured but thoughtless 
 Sallust, wiping the tear trom his eyes; “but so shattered are 
 his nerves and frame that I scarcely recognize the brilliant and 
 gay carouser I was wont to know. Yet, strange to say, he 
 cannot account for the cause of the sudden frenzy that seized 
 him; he retains but a dim consciousness of what hath passed ; 
 and, despite thy witness, wise Egyptian, solemnly upholds his 
 innocence of the death of Apsecides.” 
 
 “Sallust,” said Arbaces, gravely, “there is much in thy 
 friend’s case that merits a peculiar indulgence; and could we 
 learn from his lips the confession and the cause of his crime, 
 much might be yet hoped from the mercy of the senate; for 
 the senate, thou knowest, hath the power either to mitigate or 
 to sharpen the law. Therefore it is that I have conferred with 
 the highest authority of the city, and obtained his permission 
 to hold a private conference this night with the Athenian. 
 To-morrow, thou knowest, the trial comes on.” 
 
 “Well,” said Sallust, “thou wilt be worthy of thy Eastern 
 name and fame if thou canst learn aught from him; but thou 
 mayst try. Poor Glaucus! And he had such an excellent 
 appetite! He eats nothing now!” 
 
 The benevolent epicure was moved sensibly at this thought. 
 He sighed, and ordered his slaves to refill his cup. 
 
 “Night wanes,” said the Egyptian; “suffer me to see thy 
 ward now.” 
 
 Sallust nodded assent, and led the way to a small chamber, 
 guarded without by two dozing slaves. The door opened ; at 
 the request of Arbaces, Sallust withdrew: the Egyptian was 
 alone with Glaucus. 
 
 One of those tall and graceful candelabra common to that 
 day, supporting a single lamp, burned beside the narrow bed. 
 Its rays fell palely over the face of the Athenian, and Arbaces 
 was moved to see how sensibly that countenance had changed. 
 The rich color was gone, the cheek was sunk, the lips were 
 convulsed and pallid; fierce had been the struggle between 
 
96 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 reason and madness, life and death. The youth, the strength 
 of Glaucus had conquered; but the freshness of blood and 
 soul, the life of life, its glory and its zest, were gone forever. 
 
 The Egyptian seated himself quietly beside the bed; Glau- 
 cus still lay mute, and unconscious of his presence. At length, 
 after a considerable pause, Arbaces thus spoke, — 
 
 ‘“‘Glaucus, we have been enemies. I come to thee alone and 
 in the dead of night, — thy friend, perhaps thy saviour.” 
 
 As the steed starts from the path of the tiger, Glaucus — 
 sprang up breathless, alarmed, panting at the abrupt voice, 
 the sudden apparition of his foe. Their eyes met, and neither, 
 for some moments, had power to withdraw his gaze. The 
 flush went and came over the face of the Athenian, and the 
 bronzed cheek of the Egyptian grew a shade more pale. At 
 length, with an inward groan, Glaucus turned away, drew his 
 hand across his brow, sank back, and muttered, — 
 
 “ Am I still dreaming ? ” 
 
 “No, Glaucus, thou art awake. By this right hand and my 
 father’s head, thou seest one who may save thy life. Hark! 
 I know what thou hast done, but I know also its excuse, of » 
 which thou thyself art ignorant. Thou hast committed mur- 
 der, it is true, —a sacrilegious murder: frown not, start not, 
 these eyes saw it. But I can save thee; I can prove how thou 
 wert bereaved of sense, and made not a free-thinking and free- 
 acting man. But in order to save thee, thou must confess thy 
 crime. Sign but this paper, acknowledging thy hand in the 
 death of Apeecides, and thou shalt avoid the fatal urn.” 
 
 “ What words are these? Murder and Apecides! Did I 
 not see him stretched on the ground, bleeding and a corpse, 
 and wouldst thou persuade me that Z did the deed? Man, 
 thou hest! Away!” 
 
 “Be not rash, Glaucus, be not hasty; the deed is proved. 
 Come, come, thou mayst well be excused for not recalling the 
 act of thy delirium, and which thy sober senses would have 
 shunned even to contemplate. But let me try to refresh thy 
 exhausted and weary memory. Thou knowest thou wert 
 walking with the priest, disputing about his sister; thou 
 knowest he was intolerant, and half a Nazarene, and he sought 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 97 
 
 to convert thee, and ye had hot words; and he calumniated 
 thy mode of life, and swore he would not marry Ione to thee, 
 — and then, in thy wrath and thy frenzy, thou didst strike the 
 sudden blow. Come, come; you can recollect this! Read 
 this papyrus; it runs to that effect: sign it, and thou art 
 saved.” 
 
 ‘‘ Barbarian, give me the written lie, that I may tear it! J 
 the murderer of lone’s brother! J confess to have injured 
 one hair of the head of him she loved! Let me rather perish 
 a thousand times!” 
 
 “Beware!” said Arbaces, in a low and hissing tone; “there 
 is but one choice, — thy confession and thy signature, or the 
 amphitheatre and the lion’s maw !” 
 
 As the Egyptian fixed his eyes upon the sufferer, he hailed 
 with joy the signs of evident emotion that seized the latter at 
 these words. <A slight shudder passed over the Athenian’s 
 frame, his lip fell, an expression of sudden fear and wonder 
 betrayed itself in his brow and eye. 
 
 “Great gods!” he said in a low voice, “ what reverse is this ? 
 It seems but a little day since life laughed out from amidst 
 roses: Ione mine, — youth, health, love lavishing on me their 
 treasures; and now, — pain, madness, shame, death! And for 
 what? What have I have done? Oh, I am mad still!” 
 
 “Sign, and be saved!” said the soft, sweet voice of the 
 Egyptian. 
 
 “Tempter, never!” cried Glaucus, in the reaction of rage. 
 ‘‘Thou knowest me not: thou knowest not the haughty soul of 
 an Athenian. The sudden face of death might appall me for a 
 moment, but the fear is over. Dishonor appalls forever. Who 
 will debase his name to save his life; who exchange clear 
 thoughts for sullen days? Who will belie himself to shame, 
 and stand blackened in the eyes of glory and of love? If to 
 earn a few years of polluted life there be so base a coward, 
 dream not, dull barbarian of Egypt! to find him in one who 
 has trod the same sod as Harmodius, and breathed the same 
 air as Socrates. Go! leave me to live without self-reproach, or 
 to perish without fear!” 
 
 “ Bethink thee well,—the lion’s fangs, the hoots of the 
 
 VoL. 11.—7 
 
98 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 brutal mob, the vulgar gaze on thy dying agony and muti- 
 lated limbs, thy name degraded, thy corpse unburied; the 
 shame thou wouldst avoid clinging to thee for aye and ever! ” 
 
 “Thou ravest! thou art the madman! Shame is not in the 
 loss of other men’s esteem, —it is in the loss of our own. 
 Wilt thou go? My eyes loathe the sight of thee! hating ever, 
 I despise thee-now ! ” 
 
 “T go,” said Arbaces, stung and exasperated, but not with- 
 out some pitying admiration of his victim, — “I go; we meet: 
 twice again: once at the Trial, once at the Death! Farewell!” 
 
 The Egyptian rose slowly, gathered his robes about him, and 
 left the chamber. He sought Sallust for a moment, whose 
 eyes began to reel with the vigils of the cup: “He is still un- 
 conscious, or still obstinate; there is no hope for him.” 
 
 “Say not so,” replied Sallust, who felt but little resentment 
 against the Athenian’s accuser, for he possessed no great 
 austerity of virtue, and was rather moved by his friend’s 
 reverses than persuaded of his innocence, — “say not so, my 
 Egyptian! So good a drinker shall be saved if possible. 
 Bacchus against Isis!” 
 
 “We shall see,” said the Egyptian. 
 
 Suddenly the bolts were again withdrawn, the door unclosed ; 
 Arbaces was in the open street; and poor Nydia once more 
 started from her long watch. 
 
 “ Wilt thou save him ?” she cried, clasping her hands. 
 
 “Child, follow me home; I would speak to thee: it is for 
 his sake I ask it.” 
 
 “ And thou wilt save him ? ” 
 
 No answer came forth to the thirsting ear of the blind girl: 
 Arbaces had already proceeded far up the street; she hesitated 
 a moment, and then followed his steps in silence. 
 
 “JY must secure this girl,” said he, musingly, “lest she give 
 evidence of the philtre; as to the vain Julia, she will not 
 betray herself.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 99 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A CLASSIC FUNERAL. 
 
 Wuitt Arbaces had been thus employed, Sorrow and Death 
 - were in the house of Ione. It was the night preceding the 
 morn in which the solemn funeral rites were to be decreed to 
 the remains of the murdered Apecides. The corpse had been 
 removed from the temple of Isis to the house of the nearest 
 surviving relative, and Ione had heard in the same breath the 
 death of her brother and the accusation against her betrothed. 
 That first violent anguish which blunts the sense to all but “ 
 itself, and the forbearing silence of her slaves, had prevented 
 her learning minutely the circumstances attendant on the fate 
 of her lover. His illness, his frenzy, and his approaching trial 
 were unknown to her. She learned only the accusation against 
 him, and at once indignantly rejected it; nay, on hearing that 
 Arbaces was the accuser, she required no more to induce her 
 firmly and solemnly to believe that the Egyptian himself was 
 the criminal. But the vast and absorbing importance attached 
 by the ancients to the performance of every ceremonial con- 
 nected with the death of a relation, had as yet confined her 
 woe and her convictions to the chamber of the deceased. Alas! 
 it was not for her to perform that tender and touching office 
 which obliged the nearest relative to endeavor to catch the last 
 breath, the parting soul, -—of the beloved one: but it was 
 hers to close the straining eyes, the distorted lips; to watch 
 by the consecrated clay, as, fresh bathed and anointed, it lay 
 in festive robes upon the ivory bed; to strew the couch with | 
 leaves and flowers, and to renew the solemn cypress-branch at 
 the threshold of the door. And in these sad offices, in lamen- 
 tation and in prayer, Ione forgot herself. It was among the 
 loveliest customs of the ancients to bury the young at the 
 morning twilight; for, as they strove to give the softest inter- 
 pretation to death, so they poetically imagined that Aurora, 
 who loved the young, had stolen them to her embrace; and 
 though in the instance of the murdered priest this fable could 
 
100 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL. | 
 
 not appropriately cheat the fancy, the general custom was still 
 preserved.? | 
 
 The stars were fading one by one from the gray heavens, 
 and night slowly receding before the approach of morn, when 
 a dark group stood motionless before Ione’s door. High and 
 slender torches, made paler by the unmellowed dawn, cast 
 their light over various countenances, hushed for the moment 
 in one solemn and intent expression. And now there arose a 
 slow and dismal music, which accorded sadly with the rite, and. 
 floated far along the desolate and breathless streets; while a 
 chorus of female voices (the Preefice so often cited by the Ro- 
 man poets), accompanying the Tibicen and the Mysian flute, 
 woke the following strain: — 
 
 THE FUNERAL DIRGE. 
 
 O’er the sad threshold, where the cypress-bough 
 Supplants the rose that should adorn thy home, 
 On the last pilgrimage on earth that now 
 Awaits thee, wanderer to Cocytus, come! 
 Darkly we woo, and weeping we invite : 
 Death is thy host, his banquet asks thy soul ; 
 Thy garlands hang within the House of Night, 
 And the black stream alone shall fill thy bowl. 
 
 No more for thee the laughter and the song, 
 The jocund night, the glory of the day. 
 
 The Argive daughters ? at their labors long ; 
 The hell-bird swooping on its Titan prey — 
 
 The false AZolides ? upheaving slow, 
 O’er the eternal hill, the eternal stone ; 
 
 The crowned Lydian,‘ in his parching woe, 
 And green Callirrhoé’s monster-headed son,5 
 
 These shalt thou see, dim shadow’d through the dark, 
 Which makes the sky of Pluto’s dreary shore ; 
 
 Lo! where thou stand’st, pale-gazing on the bark 
 That waits our rite ® to bear thee trembling o’er! 
 
 1 This was rather a Greek than a Roman custom; but the reader will ob- 
 serve that in the cities of Magna Grecia the Greek customs and superstitions 
 were much mingled with the Roman. 
 
 2 The Danaides. 3 Sisyphus. 4 Tantalus. 5 Geryon. 
 
 6 The most idle novel-reader need scarcely be reminded that not till after 
 the funeral rites were the dead carried over the Styx. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 101 
 
 Come, then, no more delay! — the phantom pines 
 Amidst the Unburied for its latest home ; 
 
 O’er the gray sky the torch impatient shines, — 
 Come, mourner, forth! — the lost one bids thee come. 
 
 As the hymn died away, the group parted in twain; and 
 placed upon a couch, spread with a purple pall, the corpse of 
 Apeecides was carried forth, with the feet foremost. The 
 designator, or marshal of the sombre ceremonial, accompanied. 
 by his torch-bearers, clad in black, gave the signal, and the 
 procession moved dreadly on. : 
 
 First went the musicians, playing a slow march; the solem- 
 nity of the lower instruments broken by many a louder and 
 wilder burst of the funeral trumpet; next followed the hired 
 mourners, chanting their dirges to the dead; and the female 
 voices were mingled with those of boys, whose tender years 
 made still more striking the contrast of life and death, the 
 fresh leaf and the withered one. But the players, the buf- 
 foons, the archimimus (whose duty it was to personate the 
 dead), — these, the customary attendants at ordinary funerals, 
 were banished from a funeral attended with so many terrible 
 associations. 
 
 The priests of Isis came next in their snowy garments, 
 barefooted, and supporting sheaves of corn; while before the 
 corpse were carried the images of the deceased and his many 
 Athenian forefathers. And behind the bier followed, amidst 
 her women, the sole surviving relative of the dead, her 
 head bare, her locks dishevelled, her face paler than marble, 
 but composed and still, save ever and anon, as some tender 
 thought, awakened by the music, flashed upon the dark leth- 
 argy of woe, she covered that countenance with her hands, and 
 sobbed unseen; for hers were not the noisy sorrow, the shrill 
 lament, the ungoverned gesture, which characterized those 
 who honored less faithfully. In that age, as in all, the chan- 
 nel of deep grief flowed hushed and still. 
 
 And so the procession swept on, till it had traversed the 
 streets, passed the city gate, and gained the Place of Tombs 
 without the wall, which the traveller yet beholds. 
 
 Raised in the form of an altar — of unpolished pine, amidst 
 
102 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 whose interstices were placed preparations of combustible 
 matter —stood the funeral pyre; and around it drooped the 
 dark and gloomy cypresses so consecrated by song to the 
 tomb. | 
 
 As soon as the bier was placed upon the pile, the attendants 
 parting on either side, Ione passed up to the couch, and stood 
 before the unconscious clay for some moments motionless and 
 silent. The features of the dead had been composed from the 
 first agonized expression of violent death. Hushed forever 
 the terror and the doubt, the contest of passion, the awe of re- 
 ligion, the struggle of the past and present, the hope and the 
 horror of the future! Of all that racked and desolated the 
 breast of that young aspirant to the Holy of Life, what trace 
 was visible in the awful serenity of that impenetrable brow 
 and unbreathing lip? The sister gazed, and not a sound was 
 heard amidst the crowd; there was something terrible, yet 
 softening also, in the silence; and when it broke, it broke 
 sudden and abrupt: it broke with a loud and passionate cry, 
 the event of long-smothered despair. 
 
 “My brother! my brother!” cried the poor orphan, falling 
 upon the couch; “thou whom the worm on thy path feared 
 not— what enemy couldst thou provoke? Oh, is it in truth 
 come to this? Awake! awake! We grew together! Are 
 we thus torn asunder? ‘Thou art not dead: thou sleepest. 
 Awake! awake!” 
 
 The sound of her piercing voice aroused the sympathy of 
 the mourners, and they broke into loud and rude lament, 
 This startled, this recalled Ione; she looked up hastily and 
 confusedly, as if for the first time sensible of the presence of 
 those around. 
 
 “Ah!” she murmured with a shiver, “we are not then 
 alone /” } 
 
 With that, after a brief pause, she rose, and her pale and 
 beautiful countenance was again composed and rigid. With 
 fond and trembling hands she unclosed the lids of the de- 
 ceased ;* but when the dull, glazed eye, no longer beaming 
 with love and life, met hers, she shrieked aloud, as if she had 
 
 1 Pliny, ii. 37. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETL. 103 
 
 seen a spectre. Once more recovering herself, she kissed 
 again and again the lids, the lips, the brow, and with me- 
 chanic and unconscious hand received from the high priest 
 of her brother’s temple the funeral torch. 
 
 The sudden burst of music, the sudden song of the mourn- 
 ers, announced the birth of the sanctifying flame. 
 
 HYMN TO THE WIND. 
 
 Bie 
 
 On thy couch of cloud reclined, 
 
 Wake, O soft and sacred Wind! 
 
 Soft and sacred will we name thee, 
 Whosoe’er the sire that claim thee, — 
 Whether old Auster’s dusky child, 
 
 Or the loud son of Eurus wild; 
 
 Or his! who o’er the darkling deeps, 
 From the bleak North, in tempest sweeps, 
 Still shalt thou seem as dear to us 
 
 As flowery-crowned Zephyrus, 
 
 When, through twilight’s starry dew, 
 Trembling, he hastes his nymph? to woo. 
 
 II. 
 Lo! our silver censers swinging, 
 Perfumes o’er thy path are flinging, — 
 Ne’er o’er Tempe’s breathless valleys, 
 Ne’er o’er Cypria’s cedarn alleys, 
 Or the Rose-Isle’s 3 moonlit sea, 
 Floated sweets more worthy thee. 
 Lo! around our vases sending 
 Myrrh and nard with cassia blending : 
 Paving air with odors meet 
 For thy silver-sandall’d feet ! 
 
 III. 
 
 August and everlasting air! 
 The source of all that breathe and be, 
 From the mute clay before thee bear 
 The seeds it took from thee ! 
 Aspire, bright Flame! aspire ! 
 Wild Wind !— awake, awake! 
 Thine own, O solemn Fire! 
 O Air, thine own retake ! 
 
 1 Boreas. 2 Flora. 8 Rhodes. 
 
104 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 IV. 
 
 It comes! it comes! Lo! it sweeps, 
 The Wind we invoke the while! 
 And crackles, and darts, and leaps 
 The light on the holy pile! 
 It rises! its wings interweave 
 With the flames, —how they howl and heave! 
 Toss’d, whirl’d to and fro, 
 How the flame-serpents glow! 
 Rushing higher and higher, 
 On, on, fearful Fire! 
 Thy giant limbs twined 
 With the arms of the Wind! 
 Lo! the elements meet on the throne 
 Of death — to reclaim their own! 
 
 Vv. 
 
 Swing, swing the censer round; 
 Tune the strings to a softer sound! 
 From the chains of thy earthly toil, 
 From the clasp of thy mortal coil, 
 From the prison where clay confined thee, 
 The hands of the flame unbind thee! 
 O Soul! thou art free — all free! 
 
 As the winds in their ceaseless chase, 
 When they rush o’er their airy sea, 
 Thou mayst speed through the realms of space, — 
 No fetter is forged for thee! 
 Rejoice! o’er the sluggard tide 
 Of the Styx thy bark can glide, 
 And thy steps evermore shall rove 
 Through the glades of the happy grove, 
 Where, far from the loath’d Cocytus, 
 The loved and the lost invite us. 
 Thou art slave to the earth no more! 
 O soul, thou art freed! and we, — 
 Ah! when shall our toil be o’er ? 
 Ah! when shall we rest with thee ? 
 
 And now high and far into the dawning skies broke the fra- 
 grant fire; it flushed luminously across the gloomy cypresses ; 
 it shot above the massive walls of the neighboring city; and 
 the early fisherman started to behold the blaze reddening on 
 the waves of the creeping sea. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 105 
 
 But Ione sat down apart and alone, and, leaning her face 
 upon her hands, saw not the flame nor heard the lamentation 
 or the music; she felt only one sense of loneliness; she had 
 not yet arrived at that hallowing sense of comfort, when we 
 know that we are not alone, — that the dead are with us. 
 
 The breeze rapidly aided the effect of the combustibles 
 placed within the pile. By degrees the flame wavered, low- 
 ered, dimmed, and slowly, by fits and unequal starts, died 
 away, — emblem of life itself; where, just before, all was rest- 
 lessness and flame, now lay the dull and smouldering ashes. 
 
 The last sparks were extinguished by the attendants; the 
 embers were collected. Steeped in the rarest wine and the 
 costliest odors, the remains were placed in a silver urn, which 
 was solemnly stored in one of the neighboring sepulchres be- 
 side the road; and they placed within it the phial full of tears, 
 and the small coin which poetry still consecrated to the grim 
 boatman. And the sepulchre was covered with flowers and 
 chaplets, and incense kindled on the altar, and the tomb hung 
 round with many lamps. 
 
 But the next day, when the priest returned with fresh 
 offerings to the tomb, he found that to the relics of heathen 
 superstition some unknown hands had added a green palm- 
 branch. He suffered it to remain, unknowing that it was the 
 sepulchral emblem of Christianity. 
 
 When the above ceremonies were over, one of the Preeficee 
 three times sprinkled the mourners from the purifying branch 
 of laurel, uttering the last word, “ Ilicet /” (Depart) and the 
 rite was done. 
 
 But first they paused to utter, weepingly and many times, 
 the affecting farewell, “Salve Hternum/” And as Ione yet 
 lingered they woke the parting strain. 
 
 SALVE ETERNUM. 
 
 1: 
 Farewell, O soul departed ! 
 Farewell, O sacred urn! 
 Bereaved and broken-hearted, 
 To earth the mourners turn! 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 To the dim and dreary shore 
 Thou art gone our steps before ! 
 But thither the swift Hours lead us, 
 And thou dost but a while precede us! 
 Salve —salve! 
 Loved urn, and thou solemn cell, 
 Mute ashes! farewell, farewell! 
 Salve — salve! 
 
 II. 
 
 Tlicet — ire licet — 
 Ah, vainly would we part! 
 Thy tomb is the faithful heart. 
 About evermore we bear thee ; 
 For who from the heart can tear thee ? 
 Vainly we sprinkle o’er us 
 
 The drops of the cleansing stream ; 
 And vainly bright before us 
 
 The lustral fire shall beam. 
 For where is the charm expelling 
 Thy thought from its sacred dwelling ? 
 Our griefs are thy funeral feast, 
 And memory thy mourning priest : 
 
 Salve — salve! 
 
 Ill. 
 Tlicet — ire licet ! 
 The spark from the hearth is gone 
 Wherever the air shall bear it ; 
 The elements take their own, — 
 The shadows receive thy spirit. 
 It will soothe thee to feel our grief 
 As thou glid’st by the Gloomy River! 
 If love may in life be brief, 
 In death it is fix’d forever. 
 Salve — salve ! 
 In the hall which our feasts illume, 
 The rose for an hour may bloom ; 
 But the cypress that decks the tomb, == 
 The cypress is green forever ! 
 Salve — salve ! 
 
 Le a 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 107 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 IN WHICH AN ADVENTURE HAPPENS TO IONE. 
 
 _ WuttE some stayed behind to share with the priests the 
 
 funeral banquet, Ione and her handmaids took homeward their 
 melancholy way. And now (the last duties to her brother 
 -performed) her mind awoke from its absorption, and she 
 thought of her affianced, and the dread charge against him- 
 Not, as we have before said, attaching even a momentary be- 
 lief to the unnatural accusation, but nursing the darkest sus- 
 picion against Arbaces, she felt that justice to her lover and 
 to her murdered relative demanded her to seek the preetor, 
 and communicate her impression, unsupported as it might 
 be. Questioning her maidens, who had _ hitherto — kindly 
 anxious, as I have said, to save her the additional agony — 
 refrained from informing her of the state of Glaucus, she 
 learned that he had been dangerously ill; that he was in 
 custody, under the roof of Sallust; that the day of his trial 
 was appointed. 
 
 “ Averting gods!” she exclaimed, “and have I been so 
 long forgetful of him? Have I seemed to shun him? Oh, 
 let me hasten to do him justice; to show that I, the nearest 
 relative of the dead, believe him innocent of the charge. 
 Quick! quick! let us fly. Let me soothe, tend, cheer him! 
 And if they will not believe me; if they will not yield to my 
 conviction; if they sentence him to exile or to death, let me 
 share the sentence with him!” 
 
 Instinctively she hastened her pace, confused and bewil- 
 dered, scarce knowing whither she went; now designing first 
 to seek the pretor, and now to rush to the chamber of Glaucus. 
 She hurried on, she passed the gate of the city, she was in the 
 long street leading up the town. The houses were opened, but 
 none were yet astir in the streets; the life of the city was 
 scarce awake, when lo! she came suddenly upon a small knot 
 of men standing beside a covered litter. A tall figure stepped 
 
108 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 from the midst of them, and Ione shrieked aloud to behold 
 Arbaces. ) 
 
 “Fair Ione,” said he, gently, and appearing not to heed 
 her alarm, “my ward, my pupil! forgive me if I disturb thy 
 pious sorrows; but the pretor, solicitous of thy honor, and 
 anxious that thou mayst not rashly be implicated in the com- 
 ing trial, knowing the strange embarrassment of thy state (seek- 
 ing justice for thy brother, but dreading punishment to thy 
 betrothed), sympathizing, too, with thy unprotected and friend- 
 less condition, and deeming it harsh that thou shouldst be 
 suffered to act unguided and mourn alone, hath wisely and 
 paternally confided thee to the care of thy lawful guardian. 
 Behold the writing which intrusts thee to my charge!” 
 
 “Dark Egyptian,” cried Ione, drawing herself proudly 
 aside, “begone! It is thon that hast slain my brother! Is it 
 to thy care, thy hands yet reeking with his blood, that they 
 will give the sister? Ha! thou turnest pale! thy conscience 
 smites thee! thou tremblest at the thunderbolt of the aveng- 
 ing gods! Pass on, and leave me to my woe!” 
 
 “Thy sorrows unstring thy reason, Jone,” said Arbaces, 
 attempting in vain his usual calmness of tone. “I forgive 
 thee. Thou wilt find me now, as ever, thy surest friend. But 
 the public streets are not the fitting place for us to confer, 
 for me to console thee. Approach, slaves! Come, my sweet 
 charge, the litter awaits thee.” 
 
 The amazed and terrified attendants gathered round Ione 
 and clung to her knees. 
 
 “ Arbaces,” said the eldest of the maidens, “this is surely 
 not the law! Yor nine days after the funeral, is it not written 
 that the relatives of the deceased shall not be molested in their 
 homes, or interrupted in their solitary grief?” 
 
 “Woman!” returned Arbaces, imperiously waving his hand, 
 “to place a ward under the roof of her guardian is not against 
 the funeral laws. I tell thee I have the fiat of the preetor. 
 This delay is indecorous. Place her in the litter.” 
 
 So saying, he threw his arms firmly round the shrinking 
 form of Ione. She drew back, gazed earnestly in his face, 
 and then burst into hysterical laughter: — 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 109 
 
 “Ha, ha! this is well— well! Excellent guardian, pater- 
 nallaw! Ha, ha!” And, startled herself at the dread echo 
 of that shrill and maddened laughter, she sunk, as it died 
 away, lifeless upon the ground....A minute more, and 
 Arbaces had lifted her into the litter. The bearers moved 
 swiftly on, and the unfortunate lone was soon borne from 
 the sight of her weeping handmaids. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 WHAT BECOMES OF NYDIA IN THE HOUSE OF ARBACES. — THE 
 EGYPTIAN FEELS COMPASSION FOR GLAUCUS. — COMPASSION 
 IS OFTEN A VERY USELESS VISITOR TO THE GUILTY. 
 
 Ir will be remembered that at the command of Arbaces 
 Nydia followed the Egyptian to his home, and conversing 
 there with her, he learned from the confession of her despair 
 and remorse that her hand, and not Julia’s, had administered 
 to Glaucus the fatal potion. At another time the Egyptian 
 might have conceived a philosophical interest in sounding the 
 depths and origin of the strange and absorbing passion which, 
 in blindness and in slavery, this singular girl had dared to 
 cherish; but at present he spared no thought from himself. 
 As, after her confession, the poor Nydia threw herself on her 
 knees before him, and besought him to restore the health and 
 save the life of Glaucus, — for in her youth and ignorance she 
 imagined the dark magician all-powerful to effect both, — 
 Arbaces, with unheeding ears, was noting only the new ex- 
 pediency of detaining Nydia a prisoner until the trial and 
 fate of Glaucus were decided. For if, when he judged her 
 merely the accomplice of Julia in obtaining the philtre, he 
 had felt it was dangerous to the full success of his vengeance 
 to allow her to be at large, to appear, perhaps, as a witness, 
 to avow the manner in which the sense of Glaucus had been 
 darkened, and thus win indulgence to the crime of which he 
 was accused, — how much more was she likely to volunteer her 
 
110 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 testimony when she herself had administered the draught, and, 
 inspired by love, would be only anxious, at any expense of 
 shame, to retrieve her error and preserve her beloved? Be- 
 sides, how unworthy of the rank and repute of Arbaces to be 
 implicated in the disgrace of pandering to the passion of Julia, 
 and assisting in the unholy rites of the Saga of Vesuvius! Noth- 
 ing less, indeed, than his desire to induce Glaucus to own the 
 murder of Apecides, as a policy evidently the best both for his 
 own permanent safety and his successful suit with Ione, could - 
 ever have led him to contemplate the confession of Julia. 
 
 As for Nydia, who was necessarily cut off by her blindness 
 from much of the knowledge of active life, and who, a slave 
 and a stranger, was naturally ignorant of the perils of the 
 Roman law, she thought rather of the illness and delirium of 
 her Athenian than the crime of which she had vaguely heard 
 him accused, or the chances of the impending trial. Poor 
 wretch that she was, whom none addressed, none cared for, 
 what did she know of the senate and the sentence, the hazard 
 of the law, the ferocity of the people, the arena, and the 
 lion’s den? She was accustomed only to associate with the 
 thought of Glaucus everything that was prosperous and lofty: 
 she could not imagine that any peril, save from the madness 
 of her love, could menace that sacred head. He seemed to 
 her set apart for the blessings of life. She only had disturbed 
 the current of his felicity; she knew not, she dreamed not 
 that the stream once so bright was dashing on to darkness 
 and to death. It was therefore to restore the brain that she 
 had marred, to save the life that she had endangered, that she 
 implored the assistance of the great Egyptian. 
 
 “Daughter,” said Arbaces, waking from his reverie, “thou 
 must rest here; it is not meet for thee to wander along the 
 streets, and be spurned from the threshold by the rude feet of 
 slaves. J have compassion on thy soft crime; I will do all to 
 remedy it. Wait here patiently for some days, and Glaucus 
 shall be restored.” So saying, and without waiting for her 
 reply, he hastened from the room, drew the bolt across the 
 door, and consigned the care and wants of his prisoner to the 
 slave who had the charge of that part of the mansion. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 111 
 
 _ Alone, then, and musingly, he waited the morning light, and 
 with it repaired, as we have seen, to possess himself of the 
 person of Ione. 
 
 His primary object with respect to the unfortunate Neapoli- 
 tan was that which he had really stated to Clodius; namely, to 
 prevent her interesting herself actively in the trial of Glaucus, 
 _and also to guard against her accusing him (which she would, 
 doubtless, have done) of his former act of perfidy and violence 
 towards her, his ward, — denouncing his causes for vengeance 
 against Glaucus, unveiling the hypocrisy of his character, and 
 casting any doubt upon his veracity in the charge which he 
 had made against the Athenian. Not till he had encountered 
 her that morning, not till he had heard her loud denunciations, 
 was he aware that he had also another danger to apprehend in 
 her suspicion of his crime. He hugged himself now in the 
 thought that these ends were effected; that one, at once the 
 object of his passion and his fear, was in his power. He be- 
 lieved more than ever the flattering promises of the stars; and 
 when he sought Ione in that chamber in the inmost recesses 
 of his mysterious mansion to which he had consigned her, 
 when he found her overpowered by blow upon blow, and 
 passing from fit to fit, from violence to torpor, in all the 
 alternations of hysterical disease, he thought more of the love- 
 liness which no frenzy could distort, than of the woe which 
 he had brought upon her. In that sanguine vanity common 
 to men who through life have been invariably successful, 
 whether in, fortune or love, he flattered himself that when 
 Glaucus had perished, when his name was solemnly black- 
 ened by the award of a legal judgment, his title to her love 
 forever forfeited by condemnation to death for the murder of 
 her own brother, her affection would be changed to horror; 
 and that his tenderness and his passion, assisted by all the 
 arts with which he well knew how to dazzle woman’s imagi- 
 nation, might elect him to that throne in her heart from 
 which his rival would be so awfully expelled. This was his 
 hope; but should it fail, his unholy and fervid passion whis- 
 pered, “ At the worst, now she is in my power.” 
 
 Yet, withal, he felt that uneasiness and apprehension which 
 
112 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 attend upon the chance of detection, even when the criminal is 
 insensible to the voice of conscience, — that vague terror of the 
 consequences of crime which is often mistaken for remorse 
 at the crime itself. The buoyant air of Campania weighed 
 heavily upon his breast; he longed to hurry from a scene 
 where danger might not sleep eternally with the dead; and, 
 having Jone now in his possession, he secretly resolved, as 
 soon as he had witnessed the last agony of his rival, to trans- 
 port his wealth, and her, the costliest treasure of all, to some © 
 distant shore. 
 
 “Yes,” said he, striding to and fro his solitary chamber, — 
 “ves, the law that gave me the person of my ward gives me 
 the possession of my bride. Far across the broad main will 
 we Sweep on our search after novel luxuries and inexperienced 
 pleasures. Cheered by my stars, supported by the omens of 
 my soul, we will penetrate to those vast and glorious worlds 
 which my wisdom tells me lie yet untracked in the recesses 
 of the circling sea. There may this heart, possessed of love, 
 grow once more alive to ambition; there, amongst nations 
 uncrushed by the Roman yoke, and to whose ear the name 
 of Rome has not yet been wafted, I may found an empire, and 
 transplant my ancestral creed, renewing the ashes of the dead 
 Theban rule, continuing in yet grander shores the dynasty of 
 my crowned fathers, and waking in the noble heart of Ione the 
 grateful consciousness that she shares the lot of one who, far 
 from the aged rottenness of this slavish civilization, restores 
 the primal elements of greatness, and unites in one mighty 
 soul the attributes of the prophet and the king.” 
 
 From this exultant soliloquy Arbaces was awakened to at- 
 tend the trial of the Athenian. 
 
 The worn and pallid cheek of his victim touched him less 
 than the firmness of his nerves and the dauntlessness of his 
 brow; for Arbaces was one who had little pity for what was 
 unfortunate, but a strong sympathy for what was bold. The 
 congenialities that bind us to others ever assimilate to the 
 qualities of our own nature. The hero weeps less at the re- 
 verses of his enemy than at the fortitude with which he bears 
 them. All of us are human, and Arbaces, criminal as he was, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 113 
 
 had his share of our common feelings and our mother clay. 
 Had he but obtained from Glaucus the written confession of 
 his crime, which would, better than even the judgment of 
 others, have lost him with Ione, and removed from Arbaces the 
 chance of future detection, the Egyptian would have strained 
 every nerve to save his rival. Even now his hatred was over, 
 his desire of revenge was slaked: he crushed his prey, not in 
 enmity, but as an obstacle in his path. Yet was he not the 
 less resolved, the less crafty and persevering, in the course he 
 pursued for the destruction of one whose doom was become 
 necessary to the attainment of his objects; and while, with 
 apparent reluctance and compassion, he gave against Glaucus 
 the evidence which condemned him, he secretly, and through 
 the medium of the priesthood, fomented that popular indigna- 
 tion which made an effectual obstacle to the pity of the senate. 
 He had sought Julia; he had detailed to her the confession of 
 Nydia; he had easily, therefore, lulled any scruple of con- 
 science which might have led her to extenuate the offence of 
 Glaucus by avowing her share in his frenzy: and the more 
 readily, for her vain heart had loved the fame and the pros- 
 perity of Glaucus, not Glaucus himself; she felt no affection 
 for a disgraced man; nay, she almost rejoiced in the disgrace 
 that humbled the hated Ione. If Glaucus could not be her 
 slave, neither could he be the adorer of her rival. This was 
 sufficient consolation for any regret at his fate. Volatile and 
 fickle, she began again to be moved by the sudden and earnest 
 suit of Clodius, and was not willing to hazard the loss of an 
 alliance with that base but high-born noble by any public ex- 
 posure of her past weakness and immodest passion for another. 
 All things then smiled upon Arbaces: all things frowned 
 upon the Athenian. 
 
 VOL. 11.—8 
 
114 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 NYDIA AFFECTS THE SORCERESS. 
 
 WueEwn the Thessalian found that Arbaces returned to her 
 no more, when she was left, hour after hour, to all the torture 
 of that miserable suspense which was rendered by blindness 
 doubly intolerable, she began, with outstretched arms, to feel 
 around her prison for some channel of escape; and finding the 
 only entrance secure, she called aloud, and with the vehemence 
 of a temper naturally violent, and now sharpened by impatient 
 agony. 
 
 “Ho, girl!” said the slave in attendance, opening the door, 
 “art thou bit by a.scorpion, or thinkest thou that we are 
 dying of silence here, and only to be preserved, like the infant 
 Jupiter, by a hullabaloo ? ” 
 
 “Where is thy master, and wherefore am I caged here? I 
 want air and liberty: let me go forth!” 
 
 “Alas! little one, hast thou not seen enough of Arbaces to 
 know that his will is imperial? He hath ordered thee to be 
 caged; and caged thou art, and 1am thy keeper. Thou canst 
 not have air and liberty ; but thou mayst have what are much 
 better things, — food and wine.” 
 
 “Proh Jupiter!” cried the girl, wringing her hands; “and 
 why am I thus imprisoned? What can the great Arbaces 
 want with so poor a thing as Iam?” 
 
 “That I know not, unless it be to attend on thy new mis- 
 tress, who has been brought hither this day.” 
 
 “ What! Ione here ?” 
 
 “Yes, poor lady! she liked it little, I fear. Yet, by the 
 Temple of Castor! Arbaces is a gallant man to the women. 
 Thy lady is his ward, thou knowest.” 
 
 “Wilt thou take me to her ?” 
 
 “She is ill; frantic with rage and spite. Besides, I have no 
 orders to do so; and I never think for myself. When Arbaces 
 
 ——— eS ee eee 
 
 ae we 
 
 re aia 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL. 115 
 
 made me slave of these chambers,! he said, ‘I have but one 
 lesson to give thee: while thou servest me, thou must have 
 neither ears, eyes, nor thought; thou must be but one quality, 
 — obedience.’ ”’ 
 
 “ But what harm is there in seeing Ione ?” 
 
 “That I know not; but if thou wantest a companion, I am 
 willing to talk to thee, little one, for I am solitary enough in 
 my dull cubiculum. And, by the way, thou art Thessalian; 
 knowest thou not some cunning amusement of knife and 
 Shears, some pretty trick of telling fortunes, as most of thy 
 race do, in order to pass the time?” 
 
 “Tush, slave, hold thy peace! or, if thou wilt speak, what 
 hast thou heard of the state of Glaucus ? ” 
 
 “Why, my master has gone to the Athenian’s trial; Glaucus 
 will smart for it!” | 
 
 “For what ?” 
 
 “The murder of the priest Apzcides.” 
 
 “a!” said Nydia, pressing her hands to her forehead ; 
 “something of this I have indeed heard, but understand not. 
 Yet who will dare to touch a hair of his head?” 
 
 “That will the lion, I fear.” 
 
 “ Averting gods! what wickedness dost thou utter?” 
 
 “Why, only that, if he be found guilty, the lion, or may be 
 the tiger, will be his executioner.” 
 
 Nydia leaped up, as if an arrow had entered her heart; she 
 uttered a piercing scream; then, falling before the feet of 
 the slave, she cried, in a tone that melted even his rude 
 heart, — 
 
 “ Ah! tell me thou jestest —thou utterest not the truth — 
 speak, speak !” 
 
 “Why, by my faith, blind girl, I know nothing of the 
 law; it may not be so bad as I say. But Arbaces is his ac- 
 cuser, and the people desire a victim for the arena. Cheer 
 thee! But what hath the fate of the Athenian to do with — 
 thine ?” 
 
 “No matter, no matter; he has been kind to me: thou 
 knowest not, then, what they will do? Arbaces his accuser! 
 
 1 In the houses of the great, each suite of chambers had its peculiar slave. 
 
116% THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 O fate! The people, the people! Ah, they can look upon 
 his face! Who will be cruel to the Athenian! Yet was not 
 Love itself cruel to him?” 
 
 So saying, her head drooped upon her bosom: she sunk into 
 silence; scalding tears flowed down her cheeks; and all the 
 kindly efforts of the slave were unable either to console her or 
 distract the absorption of her reverie. 
 
 When his household cares obliged the ministrant to leave 
 her room, Nydia began to re-collect her thoughts. Arbaces - 
 was the accuser of Glaucus; Arbaces had imprisoned her 
 here: was not that a proof that her liberty might be service- 
 able to Glaucus? Yes, she was evidently inveigled into some 
 snare; she was contributing to the destruction of her beloved. 
 Oh, how she panted for release! Fortunately for her 
 sufferings, all sense of pain became merged in the desire of 
 escape; and as she began to revolve the possibility of deliver- 
 ance, she grew calm and thoughtful. She possessed much of 
 the craft of her sex, and it had been increased in her breast 
 by her early servitude. What slave was ever destitute of 
 cunning? She resolved to practise upon her keeper; and, 
 calling suddenly to mind his superstitious query as to her 
 Thessalian art, she hoped by that handle to work out some 
 method of release. These doubts occupied her mind during 
 the rest of the day and the long hours of night; and accord- 
 ingly when Sosia visited her the following morning, she 
 hastened to divert his garrulity into that channel in which it 
 had before evinced a natural disposition to flow. 
 
 She was aware, however, that her only chance of escape was 
 at night: and accordingly she was obliged, with a bitter pang 
 at the delay, to defer till then her purposed attempt. 
 
 “The night,” said she, “is the sole time in which we can 
 well decipher the decrees of Fate; then it is thou must seek 
 me. But what desirest thou to learn?” 
 
 “By Pollux! I should like to know as much as my master; 
 but that is not to be expected. Let me know, at least, whether 
 T shall save enough to purchase my freedom, or whether this 
 Egyptian will give it me for nothing. He does such generous 
 things sometimes. Next, supposing that be true, shall I pos- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. i Wy 
 
 sess myself of that snug taberna among the Myropolia,! which 
 I have long had in my eye? ’Tis a genteel trade, that of a 
 perfumer, and suits a retired slave who has something of a 
 gentleman about him!” 
 
 “Ay! so you would have precise answers to those ques- 
 tions ? There are various ways of satisfying you. There is 
 the Lithomanteia, or Speaking-stone, which answers your 
 prayer with an infant’s voice; but then, we have not that 
 precious stone with us,—costly is it and rare. Then there 
 is the Gastromanteia, whereby the demon casts pale and deadly 
 images upon water, prophetic of the future. But this art re- 
 quires also glasses of a peculiar fashion, to contain the conse- 
 crated liquid, which we have not. I think, therefore, that the 
 simplest method of satisfying your desire would be by the 
 Magic of Air.” 
 
 “7 trust,” said Sosia, tremulously, “that there is noth- 
 ing very frightful in the operation? I have no love for 
 apparitions.” 
 
 “Fear not; thou wilt see nothing; thou wilt only hear by 
 the bubbling of water whether or not thy suit prospers. First, 
 then, be sure, from the rising of the evening star, that thou 
 leavest the garden-gate somewhat open, so that the demon 
 may feel himself invited to enter therein; and place fruits 
 and water near the gate as a sign of hospitality ; then, three 
 hours after twilight, come here with a bowl of the coldest and 
 purest water, and thou shalt learn all, according to the Thes- 
 salian lore my mother taught me. But forget not the garden- 
 gate, —all rests upon that: it must be open when you come, 
 and for three hours previously.” 
 
 “Trust me,” replied the unsuspecting Sosia; “I know what 
 a gentleman’s feelings are when a door is shut in his face, as 
 the cook-shop’s hath been in mine many a day; and I know 
 also that a person of respectability, as a demon of course is, 
 cannot but be pleased, on the other hand, with any little mark 
 of courteous hospitality. Meanwhile, pretty one, here is thy 
 morning’s meal.” 
 
 “ And what of the trial ? ” 
 
 1 The shops of the perfumers. . 
 
118 THE LAST. DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Oh, the lawyers are still at it, — talk, talk, —it will last 
 over till to-morrow.” 
 
 “To-morrow ? you are sure of that?” 
 
 “So I hear.” 
 
 “ And Jone?” 
 
 “By Bacchus! she must be tolerably well, for she was 
 strong enough to make my master stamp and bite his lip this 
 morning. I saw him quit her apartment with a brow like a 
 thunder-storm.” 
 
 “Lodges she near this ?” 
 
 ‘No; in the upper apartments. But I must not stay prating 
 here gee Vale /” 
 
 CHAPTER .XI1. 
 A WASP VENTURES INTO THE SPIDER’S WEB. 
 
 Tue second night of the trial had set in; and it was nearly 
 the time in which Sosia was to brave the dread Unknown, when 
 there entered, at that very garden-gate which the slave had 
 left ajar, —not, indeed, one of the mysterious spirits of earth 
 or air, but the heavy and most human form of Calenus, the 
 priest of Isis. He scarcely noted the humble offerings of 
 indifferent fruit and still more indifferent wine, which the 
 pious Sosia had deemed good enough for the invisible stranger 
 they were intended to allure. “Some tribute,” thought he, 
 “to the garden god. By my father’s head! if his deityship 
 were never better served, he would do well to give up the 
 godly profession. Ah, were it not for us priests, the gods 
 ‘would have a sad time of it. And now for Arbaces: I am 
 treading a quicksand, but it ought to covera mine. I have the 
 Egyptian’s life in my power: what will he value it at?” 
 
 As he thus soliloquized, he crossed through the open court 
 into the peristyle, where a few lamps here and there broke 
 upon the empire of the starlit night, and issuing from one 
 of the chambers that bordered the colonnade, suddenly en- 
 countered Arbaces. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 119 
 
 ‘Ho! Calenus, seekest thou me?” said the Egyptian; and 
 there was a little embarrassment in his voice. 
 
 “Yes, wise Arbaces; I trust my visit is not unseasonable ? ” 
 
 “Nay; it was but this instant that my freedman Callias 
 sneezed thrice at my right hand: I knew, therefore, some 
 good fortune was in store for me; and lo! the gods have sent 
 me Calenus.” 
 
 «Shall we within to your chamber, Arbaces ? ” 
 
 “As you will; but the night is clear and balmy. I have 
 some remains of languor yet lingering on me from my recent 
 illness; the air refreshes me; let us walk in the garden; 
 we are equally alone there.” 
 
 “With all my heart,” answered the priest; and the two 
 friends passed slowly to one of the many terraces which, bor- 
 dered by marble vases and sleeping flowers, intersected the 
 garden. 
 
 “Tt is a lovely night,” said Arbaces, “blue and beautiful as 
 that on which, twenty years ago, the shores of Italy first broke 
 upon my view. My Calenus, age creeps upon us: let us, at 
 least, feel that we have lived.” | 
 
 ‘Thou, at least, mayst arrogate that boast,” said Calenus, 
 beating about, as it were, for an opportunity to communicate 
 the secret which weighed upon him, and feeling his usual awe 
 of Arbaces still more impressively that night, from the quiet 
 and friendly tone of dignified condescension which the Egyp- 
 tian assumed, — “thou, at least, mayst arrogate that boast. 
 Thou hast had countless wealth, a frame on whose close- 
 woven fibres disease can find no space to enter, prosperous 
 love, inexhaustible pleasure and, even at this hour, trium- 
 phant revenge.” 
 
 “Thou alludest to the Athenian. Ay, to-morrow’s sun the 
 fiat of his death will go forth. The senate does not relent. 
 But thou mistakest: his death gives me no other gratification 
 than that it releases me from a rival in the affections of Ione. 
 I entertain no other sentiment of animosity against that un- 
 fortunate homicide.” 
 
 “ Homicide!” repeated Calenus, slowly and meaningly ; and, 
 halting as he spoke, he fixed his eyes upon Arbaces. The stars 
 
120 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 shone pale and steadily on the proud face of their prophet, 
 but they betrayed there no change; the eyes of Calenus fell 
 disappointed and abashed. He continued rapidly: “Homicide! 
 it is well to charge him with that crime; but thou, of all men, 
 knowest that he is innocent.” 
 
 “ Explain thyself,” said Arbaces, coldly, for he had prepared 
 himself for the hint his secret fears had foretold. 
 
 “‘ Arbaces,”’ answered Calenus, sinking his voice into a whis- 
 per, “I was in the sacred grove, sheltered by the chapel and 
 the surrounding foliage. I overheard, I marked the whole. I 
 saw thy weapon pierce the heart of Apecides. I blame not 
 the deed; it destroyed a foe and an apostate.” 
 
 “Thou sawest the whole!” said Arbaces, dryly; “so I 
 imagined: thou wert alone ?” 
 
 “ Alone!” returned Calenus, surprised at the Egyptian’s 
 calmness. 
 
 “And wherefore wert thou hid behind the chapel at that 
 hour ?” 
 
 “Because I had learned the conversion of Apecides to the 
 Christian faith; because I knew that on that spot he was to 
 meet the fierce Olinthus; because they were to meet there to 
 discuss plans for unveiling the sacred mysteries of our goddess 
 to the people; and 1 was there to detect, in order to defeat 
 them.” | 
 
 “ Hast thou told living ear what thou didst witness ?” 
 
 “No, my master; the secret is locked in thy servant’s breast.” 
 
 “What! even thy kinsman Burbo guesses it not? Come, 
 the truth!” | 
 
 “ By the gods —” 
 
 “Hush! we know each other; what are the gods to us?” 
 
 “ By the fear of thy vengeance, then —no!” 
 
 “ And why hast thou hitherto concealed from me this secret ? 
 Why hast thou waited till the eve of the Athenian’s condem: 
 nation before thou hast ventured to tell me that Arbaces is a 
 murderer; and, having tarried so long, why revealest thou 
 now that knowledge ? ” 
 
 “ Because — because — 
 in confusion. 
 
 ” stammered Calenus, coloring and 
 
 a 
 
 EEO ee 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 1p 
 
 “ Because,” interrupted Arbaces, with a gentle smile, and 
 tapping the priest on the shoulder with a kindly and familiar 
 gesture, — “because, my Calenus (see, now, I will read thy heart 
 and explain its motives), because thou didst wish thoroughly 
 to commit and entangle me in the trial, so that I might have 
 no loophole of escape; that I might stand firmly pledged to 
 
 perjury and to malice, as well as to homicide; that having 
 myself whetted the appetite of the populace to blood, no 
 wealth, no power, could prevent my becoming their victim ; 
 and thou tellest me thy secret now, ere the trial be over and 
 the innocent condemned, to show what a desperate web of 
 villany thy word to-morrow could destroy ; to enhance in this, 
 the ninth hour, the price of thy forbearance; to show that my 
 own arts, in arousing the popular wrath, would, at thy wit- 
 ness, recoil upon myself; and that, if not for Glaucus, for me 
 would gape the jaws of the lion! Is it not so?” 
 
 “ Arbaces,’”’ replied Calenus, losing all the vulgar audacity 
 of his natural character, “verily thou art a Magian; thou 
 readest the heart as it were a scroll.” 
 
 “Jt is my vocation,” answered the Egyptian, laughing 
 gently. “Well, then, forbear; and when all is over, I will 
 make thee rich.” 
 
 “Pardon me,” said the priest, as the quick suggestion of 
 that avarice, which was his master-passion, bade him trust no 
 future chance of generosity; “pardon me; thou saidst right — 
 we know each other. If thou wouldst have me silent, thou 
 must pay something in advance, as an offer to Harpocrates.? 
 If the rose, sweet emblem of discretion, is to take root firmly, 
 water her this night with a stream of gold.” 
 
 “Witty and poetical!” answered <Arbaces, still in that 
 bland voice which lulled and encouraged, when it ought to 
 have alarmed and checked his griping comrade. “ Wilt thou 
 not wait the morrow ? ” 
 
 “Why this delay ? Perhaps, when I can no longer give my 
 testimony without shame for not having given it ere the inno- 
 cent man suffered, thou wilt forget my claim; and, indeed, thy 
 present hesitation is a bad omen of thy future gratitude.” 
 
 1 The god of silence. 
 
122 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Well, then, Calenus, what wouldst thou have me pay 
 thee ? ” 
 
 “Thy life is very precious, and thy wealth is very great,” 
 returned the priest, grinning. 
 
 “ Wittier and more witty. But speak out: what shall be 
 the sum?” 
 
 “‘ Arbaces, I have heard that in thy secret treasury below, 
 beneath those rude Oscan arches which prop thy stately halls, 
 thou hast piles of gold, of vases, and of jewels, which might. 
 rival the receptacles of the wealth of the deified Nero. Thou 
 mayst easily spare out of those piles enough to make Calenus 
 among the richest priests of Pompeii, and yet not miss the 
 loss.” 
 
 “Come, Calenus,” said Arbaces, winningly, and with a 
 frank and generous air, “thou art an old friend, and hast been 
 a faithful servant. Thou canst have no wish to take away 
 my life, nor I a desire to stint thy reward: thou shalt descend 
 with me to that treasury thou referrest to; thou shalt feast 
 thine eyes with the blaze of uncounted gold and the sparkle of 
 priceless gems; and thou shalt, for thy own reward, bear away 
 with thee this night as much as thou canst conceal beneath thy 
 robes. Nay, when thou hast once seen what thy friend possesses, 
 thou wilt learn how foolish it would be to injure one who has 
 so much to bestow. When Glaucus is no more, thou shalt 
 pay the treasury another visit. Speak I frankly and as a 
 friend ? ” 
 
 “Oh, greatest, best of men,” cried Calenus, almost weeping 
 with joy, “canst thou thus forgive my injurious doubts of 
 thy justice, thy generosity ? ” 
 
 “Hush! one other turn, and we will descend to the Deenh 
 arches.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 123 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE SLAVE CONSULTS THE ORACLE. — THEY WHO BLIND THEM- 
 SELVES THE BLIND MAY FOOL,-—-TWO NEW PRISONERS 
 MADE IN ONE NIGHT. 
 
 ImMPATIENTLY Nydia awaited the arrival of the no less 
 anxious Sosia. Fortifying his courage by plentiful potations 
 of a better liquor than that provided for the demon, the credu- 
 lous ministrant stole into the blind girl’s chamber. 
 
 “Well, Sosia, and art thou prepared? Hast thou the bowl 
 of pure water?” 
 
 “Verily, yes; but I tremble a little. You are sure I shall 
 not see the demon? I have heard that these gentlemen are 
 by no means of a handsome person or a civil demeanor.” 
 
 “Be assured. And hast thou left the garden gate gently 
 open ?” 
 
 “Yes; and placed some beautiful nuts and apples on a Little 
 table close by.” 
 
 “That’s well. And the gate is open now, so that the demon 
 may pass through it?” 
 
 “Surely it is.” 
 
 “Well, then, open this door; there—leave it just ajar. 
 And now, Sosia, give me the lamp.” 
 
 “What, you will not extinguish it ?” 
 
 “No; but I must breathe my spell over its ray. There is a 
 spirit in fire. Seat, thyself.” 
 
 The slave obeyed; and Nydia, after bending for some 
 moments silently over the lamp, rose, and in a low voice 
 chanted the following rude 
 
 INVOCATION TO THE SPECTRE OF THE ATR. 
 
 Loved alike by Air and Water 
 
 Aye must be Thessalia’s daughter ; 
 
 To us, Olympian hearts, are given 
 Spells that draw the moon from heaven, 
 
424 
 
 “The spectre zs certainly coming,” said Sosia. 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 All that Egypt’s learning wrought, 
 All that Persia’s Magian taught, — 
 
 Won from song, or wrung from flowers, 
 Or whisper’d low by fiend, are ours. 
 
 Spectre of the viewless air! 
 
 Hear the blind Thessalian’s prayer! 
 By Erictho’s art, that shed 
 
 Dews of life when life was fled ; 
 
 By lone Ithaca’s wise king, 
 
 Who could wake the crystal spring 
 To the voice of prophecy ; 
 
 By the lost Eurydice, 
 
 Summon’d from the shadowy throng 
 At the muse-son’s magic song ; 
 
 By the Colchian’s awful charms, 
 
 When fair-haired Jason left her arms ; — 
 
 Spectre of the airy halls, 
 
 One who owns thee duly calls! 
 
 Breathe along the brimming bowl, 
 
 And instruct the fearful soul 
 
 In the shadowy things that lie 
 
 Dark in dim futurity. 
 
 Come, wild demon of the air, 
 
 Answer to thy votary’s prayer! 
 Come, oh, come! 
 
 And no god on heaven or earth, — 
 
 Not the Paphian Queen of Mirth, 
 
 Nor the vivid Lord of Light, : 
 
 Nor the triple Maid of Night, 
 
 Nor the Thunderer’s self shall be 
 
 Blest and honor’d more than thee! 
 Come, oh, come! 
 
 running along my hair!” 
 “Place thy bowl of water on the ground. Now, then, give 
 me thy napkin, and let me fold up thy face and eyes.” 
 “ Ay! that’s always the custom with these charms. Not so 
 
 tight, though; gently, gently.” 
 
 “There; thou canst not see ?” 
 
 “See, by Jupiter! No, nothing but darkness.” 
 
 “T feel him 
 
 “ Address, then, to the spectre whatever question thou 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 125 
 
 wouldst ask him, in a low-whispered voice, three times. If 
 thy question is answered in the affirmative, thou wilt hear the 
 water ferment and bubble before the demon breathes upon it; 
 if in the negative, the water will be quite silent.” 
 
 “But you will not play any trick with the water, eh?” 
 
 “Tet me place the bowl under thy feet—so. Now thou 
 wilt perceive that I cannot touch it without thy knowledge.” 
 
 “Very fair. Now then, O Bacchus, befriend me! Thou 
 knowest that I have always loved thee better than all the 
 other gods, and I will dedicate to thee that silver cup I stole 
 last year from the burly carptor [butler], if thou wilt but 
 befriend me with this water-loving demon. And thou, O 
 Spirit, listen and hear me! ShallI be enabled to purchase my 
 freedom next year? Thou knowest; for, as thou livest in the 
 air, the birds? have doubtless acquainted thee with every secret 
 of this house: thou knowest that I have filched and pilfered 
 all that I honestly — that is, safely —could lay finger upon 
 for the last three years, and I yet want two thousand sesterces 
 of the fullsum. Shall I be able, O good Spirit, to make up 
 the deficiency in the course of this year? Speak. Ha! does 
 the water bubble? No; all is as stillasatomb. Well, then, 
 if not this year, in two years? Ah,I hear something; the 
 demon is scratching at the door; he’ll be here presently. In 
 two years, my good fellow? Come, now, two; that’s a very 
 reasonable time. What! dumb still? Two years and a half — 
 three —four? Ill fortune to you, friend demon! You are no 
 lady, that’s clear, or you would not keep silence so long. 
 Five — six — sixty years ? and may Pluto seize you! I’ll ask 
 no more.” And Sosia, in a rage, kicked down the water over 
 his legs. He then, after much fumbling, and more cursing, 
 managed to extricate his head from the napkin in which it was 
 completely folded, stared round, and discovered that he was 
 in the dark, 
 
 “What, ho! Nydia; the lamp is gone. Ah, traitress; and 
 thou art gone, too; but I’ll catch thee; thou shalt smart for 
 this !” 
 
 - 1 Who are supposed to know all secrets. The same superstition prevails 
 in the East, and is not without example, also, in our Northern legends. 
 
126 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 The slave groped his way to the door; it was bolted from 
 without: he was a prisoner instead of Nydia. What could he 
 do? He did not dare to knock loud—to call out — lest 
 Arbaces should overhear him, and discover how he had been 
 duped; and Nydia, meanwhile, had probably already gained 
 the garden gate and was fast on her escape. 
 
 “But,” thought he, “she will go home, or at least be some- 
 where in the city. To-morrow, at dawn, when the slaves are 
 at work in the peristyle, I can make myself heard; then I can - 
 go forth and seek her. I shall be sure to find and bring her 
 back before Arbaces knows a word of the matter. Ah! that’s 
 the best plan. Little traitress, my fingers itch at thee: and to 
 leave only a bowl of water, too! Had it been wine, it would 
 have been some comfort.” 
 
 While Sosia, thus entrapped, was lamenting his fate, and 
 revolving his schemes to repossess himself of Nydia, the blind 
 girl, with that singular precision and dexterous rapidity of 
 motion which, we have before observed, was peculiar to her, 
 had passed lightly along the peristyle, threaded the opposite 
 passage that led into the garden, and with a beating heart was 
 about to proceed towards the gate, when she suddenly heard 
 the sound of approaching steps, and distinguished the dreaded 
 voice of Arbaces himself. She paused for a moment in doubt 
 and terror; then suddenly it flashed across her recollection 
 that there was another passage which was little used except 
 for the admission of the fair partakers of the Egyptian’s secret 
 revels, and which wound along the basement of that massive 
 fabric towards a door which also communicated with the gar- 
 den. By good fortune it might be open. At that thought she 
 hastily retraced her steps, descended the narrow stairs at the 
 right, and was soon at the entrance of the passage. Alas! the 
 door at the entrance was closed and secured. While she was 
 yet assuring herself that it was indeed locked, she heard behind 
 her the voice of Calenus, and a,moment after, that of Arbaces 
 in low reply. She could not stay there; they were probably 
 passing to this very door. She sprang onward, and felt her- 
 self in unknown ground. The air grew damp and chill; this 
 reassured her. She thought she might be among the cellars of 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 127 
 
 the luxurious mansion, or at least in some rude spot not likely 
 to be visited by its haughty lord, when again her quick ear 
 caught steps and the sound of voices. On, on, she hurried, 
 extending her arms, which now frequently encountered pillars 
 of thick and massive form. With a tact, doubled in acuteness 
 by her fear, she escaped these perils, and continued her way, 
 the air growing more and more damp as she proceeded; yet 
 still, as she ever and anon paused for breath, she heard the 
 advancing steps and the indistinct murmur of voices. At 
 length she was abruptly stopped by a wall that seemed the 
 limit of her path. Was there no spot in which she could hide, 
 no aperture, no cavity? There was none! She stopped, and 
 wrung her hands in despair; then again nerved as the voices 
 neared upon her, she hurried on by the side of the wall; and 
 coming suddenly against one of the sharp buttresses that here 
 and there jutted boldly forth, she fell to the ground. Though 
 much bruised, her senses did not leave her; she uttered no cry; 
 nay, she hailed the accident that had led her to something like 
 a screen; and creeping close up to the angle formed by the 
 buttress, so that on one side at least she was sheltered from 
 view, she gathered her sight and small form into its smallest 
 compass, and breathlessly awaited her fate. 
 
 Meanwhile Arbaces and the priest were taking their way to 
 that secret chamber whose stores were so vaunted by the Egyp- 
 tian. They were in a vast subterranean atrium, or hall; the 
 low roof was supported by short, thick pillars of an architec- 
 ture far remote from the Grecian graces of that luxuriant 
 period. The single and pale lamp, which Arbaces bore, shed 
 but an imperfect ray over the bare and rugged walls, in which 
 the huge stones, without cement, were fitted curiously and 
 uncouthly into each other. The disturbed reptiles glared 
 dully on the intruders, and then crept into the shadow of the 
 walls. 
 
 Calenus shivered as he looked ea and breathed the 
 damp, unwholesome air. 
 
 “Yet,” said Arbaces, with a smile, perceiving his shudder, 
 “it is these rude abodes that furnish the luxuries of the halls 
 above. They are like the laborers of the world; we despise 
 
128 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 their ruggedness, yet they feed the very pride that disdains 
 them.” 
 
 “ And whither goes yon dim gallery to the left?” asked 
 Calenus; “in this depth of gloom it seems without limit, as if 
 winding into Hades.” 
 
 “On the contrary, it does but conduct to the upper day,” 
 answered Arbaces, carelessly ; “it is to the right that we steer 
 to our bourn.” 
 
 The hall, like many in the more habitable regions of Pom- 
 pei, branched off at the extremity into two wings or passages, 
 the length of which, not really great, was to the eye consider- 
 ably exaggerated by the sullen gloom against which the lamp 
 so faintly struggled. To the right of these ale the two com- 
 rades now directed their steps. 
 
 “The gay Glaucus will be lodged to-morrow in apartments 
 not much drier, and far less spacious than this,” said Calenus, 
 as they passed by the very spot where, completely wrapped 
 in the shadow of the broad, projecting buttress, cowered the 
 Thessalian. 
 
 “ Ay, but then he will have dry room, and ample enough, in 
 the arena on the following day. And to think,” continued 
 Arbaces slowly, and very deliberately, — “to think that a 
 word of thine could save him, and consign Arbaces to his 
 doom !” 
 
 “That word shall never be spoken,” said Calenus. 
 
 “Right, my Calenus! it never shall,” returned Arbaces, 
 familiarly leaning his arm on the priest’s shoulder ; “and now, 
 halt; we are at the door!” 
 
 The light trembled against asmall door deep set in the wall, 
 and guarded strongly by many plates and bindings of iron, 
 that intersected the rough and dark wood. From his girdle 
 Arbaces now drew a small ring, holding three or four short 
 but strong keys. Oh, how beat the griping heart of Calenus, 
 as he heard the rusty wards growl, as if resenting the admis- 
 sion to the treasures they guarded! 
 
 “Enter, my friend,” said Arbaces, “while I hold the lamp 
 on high, that thou mayst glut thine eyes on the yellow 
 heaps.” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 129 
 
 The impatient Calenus did not wait to be twice invited; he 
 hastened towards the aperture. 
 
 Searce had he crossed the threshold, when the strong hand 
 of Arbaces plunged him forwards. 
 
 “The word shall never be spoken!” said the Egyptian, with 
 a loud, exultant laugh, and closed the door upon the priest. 
 
 Calenus had been precipitated down several steps, but not 
 feeling at the moment the pain of his fall, he sprang up again 
 to the door, and beating at it fiercely with his clenched fist, he 
 cried aloud in what seemed more a beast’s howl than a human 
 voice, so keen was his agony and despair: “Oh, release me, 
 release me, and I will ask no gold!” 
 
 The words but imperfectly penetrated the massive door, and 
 Arbaces again laughed. ‘Then, stamping his foot violently, 
 rejoined, perhaps to give vent to his long-stifled passions, — 
 
 “ All the gold of Dalmatia will not buy thee a crust of 
 bread. Starve, wretch! thy dying groans will never wake 
 even the echo of these vast halls; nor will the air ever re- 
 veal, as thou gnawest, in thy desperate famine, thy flesh from 
 thy bones, that so perishes the man who threatened, and could 
 have undone, Arbaces! Farewell!” 
 
 “Oh, pity —mercy! Inhuman villain, was it for this —” 
 
 The rest of the sentence was lost to the ear of Arbaces as 
 he passed backward along the dim hall. A toad, plump and 
 bloated, lay unmoving before his path; the rays of the lamp 
 fell upon its unshaped hideousness and red upward eye. Ar- 
 baces turned aside that he might not harm it. 
 
 “Thou art loathsome and obscene,” he muttered, “but thou 
 canst not injure me; therefore thou art safe in my path.” 
 
 The cries of Calenus, dulled and choked by the barrier that 
 confined him, yet faintly reached the ear of the Egyptian. He 
 paused and listened intently. 
 
 “This is unfortunate,” thought he; “for I cannot sail till 
 that voice is dumb forever. My stores and treasures lie, not 
 in yon dungeon, it is true, but in the opposite wing. My 
 slaves, as they move them, must not hear his voice. But what 
 fear of that? In three days, if he still survive, his accents, 
 by my father’s beard, must be weak enough then! No, they 
 
 VOL. 11.—9 
 
130 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 could not pierce even through his tomb. By Isis, it is cold! 
 I long for a deep draught of the spiced Falernian.” 
 
 With that the remorseless Egyptian drew his gown closer 
 round him, and resought the upper air. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 NYDIA ACCOSTS CALENUS. 
 
 Wuar words of terror, yet of hope, had Nydia overheard! 
 The next day Glaucus was to be condemned; yet there lived 
 one who could save him, and adjudge Arbaces to his doom, 
 and that one breathed within a few steps of her hiding-place ! 
 She caught his cries and shrieks, his imprecations, his prayers, 
 though they fell choked and muffled on her ear. He was im- 
 prisoned, but she knew the secret of his cell: could she but 
 escape, could she but seek the pretor, he might yet in time 
 be given to light, and preserve the Athenian. Her emotions 
 almost stifled her; her brain reeled, she felt her sense give 
 way, but by a violent effort she mastered herself; and, after 
 listening intently for several minutes, till she was convinced 
 that Arbaces had left the space to solitude and herself, she 
 crept on as her ear guided her to the very door that had 
 closed upon Calenus. Here she more distinctly caught his 
 accents of terror and despair. Thrice she attempted to speak, 
 and thrice her voice failed to penetrate the folds of the heavy 
 door. At length, finding the lock, she applied her lips to its 
 small aperture, and the prisoner distinctly heard a soft tone 
 breathe his name. 
 
 His blood curdled, his hair stood on end. That awful soli- 
 tude what mysterious and preternatural being could pene- 
 trate! ‘“Who’s there?” he cried in new alarm; “ What 
 spectre, what dread darva, calls upon the lost Calenus ?” 
 
 “Priest,” replied the Thessalian, “unknown to Arbaces, I 
 have been, by the permission of the gods, a witness to his per- 
 fidy. If I myself can escape from these walls, I may save 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 181 
 
 thee. But let thy voice reach my ear through this narrow 
 passage, and answer what I ask.” 
 
 ‘Ah, blessed spirit,” said the priest, exultingly, and obey- 
 ing the suggestion of Nydia, “save me, and I will sell the 
 very cups on the altar to pay thy kindness.” 
 
 “T want not thy gold, I want thy secret. Did I hear 
 aright? Canst thou save the Athenian Glaucus from the 
 charge against his life ?” 
 
 “T can; I can; therefore (may the Furies blast the foul 
 Egyptian!) hath Arbaces snared me thus, and left me to 
 starve and rot!” 
 
 “They accuse the Athenian of murder: canst thou disprove 
 the accusation ? ” 
 
 “Only free me, and the proudest head of Pompeii is not 
 more safe than his. I saw the deed done; I saw Arbaces 
 strike the blow; I can convict the true murderer and acquit 
 the innocent man. But if I perish, he dies also. Dost thou 
 interest thyself for him? Oh, blessed stranger, in my heart 
 is the urn which condemns or frees him!” 
 
 “ And thou wilt give full evidence of what thou knowest ?” 
 
 “Will? Oh, were hell at my feet— yes! Revenge on 
 the false Egyptian, — revenge! revenge! revenge!” 
 
 As through ‘his ground teeth Calenus shrieked forth those 
 last words, Nydia felt that in his worst passions was her cer- 
 tainty of his justice to the Athenian. Her heart beat: was it 
 to be her proud destiny to preserve her idolized, her adored ? 
 “Enough,” said she; “the powers that conducted me hither 
 will carry me through all. Yes, I feel that I shall deliver 
 thee. Wait in patience and hope.” 
 
 “But be cautious, be prudent, sweet stranger. Attempt not 
 to appeal to Arbaces; he is marble. Seek the pretor, say 
 what thou knowest, obtain his writ of search; bring soldiers, 
 and smiths of cunning; these locks are wondrous strong! 
 Time flies: I may starve — starve, if you are not quick! Go, 
 go! Yet stay; it is horrible to be alone! the air is like a 
 charnel; and the scorpions, — ha! and the pale larve. Oh! 
 stay, stay!” 
 
 “Nay,” said Nydia, terrified by the terror of the priest, 
 
132 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPET. 
 
 and anxious to confer with herself, —“‘nay, for thy sake I 
 must depart. Take Hope for thy companion: farewell!” 
 
 So saying, she glided away, and felt with extended arms 
 along the pillared space until she had gained the farther end 
 of the hall and the mouth of the passage that led to the upper 
 air. But there she paused; she felt that it would be more 
 safe to wait a while, until the night was so far blended with 
 the morning that the whole house would be buried in sleep, 
 and so that she might quit it unobserved. She therefore — 
 once more laid herself down, and counted the weary moments. 
 In her sanguine heart, joy was the predominant emotion. 
 Glaucus was in deadly peril; but she should save him! 
 
 CHAPTER XY. 
 
 ARBACES AND IONE. — NYDIA GAINS THE GARDEN. — WILL 
 SHE ESCAPE AND SAVE THE ATHENIAN ? 
 
 Wuen Arbaces had warmed his veins by large draughts of 
 that spiced and perfumed wine so valued by the luxurious, he 
 felt more than usually elated and exultant of heart. There is 
 a pride in triumphant ingenuity, not less felt, perhaps, though 
 its object be guilty. Our vain human nature hugs itself in 
 the consciousness of superior craft and self-obtained success : 
 afterwards comes the horrible reaction of remorse. 
 
 But remorse was not a feeling which Arbaces was likely 
 ever to experience for the fate of the base Calenus. He 
 swept from his remembrance the thought of the priest’s ago- 
 nies and lingering death: he felt only that a great danger 
 was passed, and a possible foe silenced; all left to him now 
 would be to account to the priesthood for the disappearance 
 of Calenus; and this he imagined it would not be difficult to 
 do. Calenus had often been employed by him in various 
 religious missions to the neighboring cities. On some such 
 errand he could now assert that he had been sent, with offer- 
 ings to the shrines of Isis at Herculaneum and Neapolis, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 133 
 
 placatory of the goddess for the recent murder of her priest 
 Apezecides. When Calenus had expired, his body might be 
 thrown, previous to the Egyptian’s departure from Pompeii, 
 into the deep stream of the Sarnus; and when discovered, 
 suspicion would probably fall upon the Nazarene atheists, as 
 an act of revenge for the death of Olinthus at the arena. 
 After rapidly running over these plans for screening himself, 
 Arbaces dismissed at once from his mind all recollection of 
 the wretched priest; and, animated by the success which had 
 lately crowned all his schemes, he surrendered his thoughts 
 to Ione. The last time he had seen her, she had driven him 
 from her presence by a reproachful and bitter scorn, which 
 his arrogant nature was unable to endure. He now felt 
 emboldened once more to renew that interview; for his pas- 
 sion for her was like similar feelings in other men: it made 
 him restless for her presence, even though in that presence 
 he was exasperated and humbled. From delicacy to her 
 grief he laid not aside his dark and unfestive robes, but 
 renewing the perfumes on his raven locks, and arranging his 
 tunic in its most becoming folds, he sought the chamber of 
 the Neapolitan. Accosting the slave in attendance without, 
 he inquired if Ione had yet retired to rest; and learning that 
 she was still up, and unusually quiet and composed, he ven- 
 tured into her presence. He found his beautiful ward sitting 
 before a small table, and leaning her face upon both her hands 
 in the attitude of thought. Yet the expression of the face 
 itself possessed not its wonted bright and Psyche-like expres- 
 sion of sweet intelligence ; the lips were apart, the eye vacant 
 and unheeding, and the long dark hair, falling neglected and 
 dishevelled upon her neck, gave by the contrast additional 
 paleness to a cheek which had already lost the roundness of 
 its contour. 
 
 Arbaces gazed upon her a moment ere he advanced. She, 
 too, lifted up her eyes; and when she saw who was the in- 
 truder, shut them with an expression of pain, but did not stir. 
 
 “ Ah!” said Arbaces, in a low and earnest tone, as he re- 
 spectfully, nay, humbly, advanced and seated himself at a 
 little distance fron the table,— “ah! that my death could 
 
154 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 remove thy hatred, then would I gladly die! Thou wrongest 
 me, Ione; but I will bear the wrong without a murmur, only 
 let me see thee sometimes. Chide, reproach, scorn me, if thou 
 wilt; I will teach myself to bear it. And is not even thy bit- 
 terest tone sweeter to me than the music of the most artful 
 lute? In thy silence the world seems to stand still; a stag- 
 nation curdles up the veins of the earth: there is no earth, no 
 life, without the light of thy countenance and the melody of 
 
 thy voice.” ; 
 
 “Give me back my brother and my betrothed,” said Ione, 
 in a calm and imploring tone; and a few large tears rolled 
 unheeded down her cheeks. 
 
 “ Would that I could restore the one and save the other!” 
 returned Arbaces, with apparent emotion. “Yes; to make 
 thee happy I would renounce my ill-fated love, and gladly join 
 thy hand to the Athenian’s. Perhaps he will yet come un- 
 scathed from his trial [Arbaces had prevented her learning 
 that the trial had already commenced]; if so, thou art free to 
 judge or condemn him thyself. And think not, O Ione, that I 
 would follow thee longer with a prayer of love. I know it is 
 in vain. Suffer me only to weep —to mourn with thee. For- 
 give a violence deeply repented, and that shall offend no more. 
 Let me be to thee only what I once was, — a friend, a father, 
 a protector. Ah, Ione, spare me and forgive!” 
 
 “J forgive thee. Save but Glaucus, and I will renounce 
 him. O mighty Arbaces! thou art powerful in evil or in 
 gsood: save the Athenian, and the poor Ione will never see 
 him more.” As she spoke, she rose with weak and trembling 
 limbs, and falling at his feet she clasped his knees: “Oh, if 
 thou really lovest me, if thou art human, remember my 
 father’s ashes, remember my childhood, think of all the hours 
 we passed happily together, and save my Glaucus!” 
 
 Strange convulsions shook the frame of the Egyptian; his 
 features worked fearfully: he turned his face aside, and said, 
 in a hollow voice, “If I could save him even now, I would; 
 but the Roman law is stern and sharp. Yet if I could succeed, 
 if I could rescue and set him free, wouldst thou be mine, — my 
 bride ? ” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 185 
 
 “Thine!” repeated Ione, rising: “thine! thy bride? My 
 brother’s blood is unavenged: who slew him? O Nemesis! 
 ean I even sell, for the hfe of Glaucus, thy solemn trust? 
 Arbaces — thine? Never.” 
 
 “Tone, Ione!” cried Arbaces, passionately, “why these 
 mysterious words; why dost thou couple my name with the 
 _ thought of thy brother’s death?” 
 
 “My dreams couple it, and dreams are from the gods.” 
 
 ‘Vain fantasies all! Is it for a dream that thou wouldst 
 wrong the innocent, and hazard thy sole chance of saving thy 
 lover’s life ?” 
 
 ‘“ Hear me!” said Ione, speaking firmly, and with a delib- 
 erate and solemn voice. “If Glaucus be saved by thee, I will 
 never be borne to his home a bride. But I cannot master the 
 horror of other rites: I cannot wed with thee. Interrupt me 
 not; but mark me, Arbaces! If Glaucus die, on that same day 
 IT baffle thine arts, and leave to thy love only my dust! Yes, 
 thou mayst put the knife and the poison from my reach; thou 
 mayst imprison, thou mayst chain me, but the brave soul re- 
 solved to escape is never without means. These hands, naked 
 and unarmed though they be, shall tear away the bonds of 
 life. Fetter them, and these lips shall firmly refuse the air. 
 Thou art learned ; thou hast read how women have died rather 
 than meet dishonor. If Glaucus perish, I will not unworthily 
 linger behind him. By all the gods of the heaven, and the 
 ocean, and the earth, I devote myself to death! I have 
 said !” i 
 
 High, proud, dilating in her stature, like one inspired, the 
 air and voice of Jone struck an awe into the breast of her 
 listener. 
 
 “Brave heart!” said he, after a short pause, “thou art in- 
 deed worthy to be mine. Oh that I should have dreamt of 
 such a. partner in my lofty destinies, and never found it but 
 in thee! Ione,” he continued rapidly, “ dost thou not see that 
 we are born for each other? Canst thou not recognize some- 
 thing kindred to thine own energy, thine own courage, in 
 this high and self-dependent soul? We were formed to 
 unite our sympathies; formed to breathe a new spirit into this 
 
136 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 hackneyed and gross world; formed for the mighty ends 
 which my soul, sweeping down the gloom of time, foresees 
 with a prophet’s vision. With a resolution equal to thine 
 own I defy thy threats of an inglorious suicide. I hail thee 
 as my own! Queen of climes undarkened by the eagle’s 
 wing, unravaged by his beak, I bow before thee in homage 
 and in awe; but I claim thee in worship and in love! To- 
 gether will we cross the ocean; together will we found our 
 realm; and far distant ages shall acknowledge the long race 
 of kings born from the marriage-bed of Arbaces and Ione!” 
 
 “Thou ravest! These mystic declamations are suited rather 
 to some palsied crone selling charms in the market-place than 
 to the wise Arbaces. Thou hast heard my resolution, —it is 
 fixed as the Fates themselves. Orcus has heard my vow, and 
 it is written in the book of the unforgetful Hades. Atone, 
 then, O Arbaces, atone the past: convert hatred into regard, 
 vengeance into gratitude; preserve one who shall never be thy 
 rival. These are acts suited to thy original nature, which 
 gives forth sparks of something high and noble. They weigh 
 in the scales of the Kings of Death; they turn the balance on 
 that day when the disembodied soul stands shivering and dis- 
 mayed between Tartarus and Elysium; they gladden the heart 
 in life, better and longer than the reward of a momentary 
 passion. Oh, Arbaces, hear me, and be swayed!” 
 
 “Enough, Ione. All that I can do for Glaucus shall be done; 
 but blame me not if I fail. Inquire of my foes, even, if I have 
 not sought, if I do not seek, to turn aside the sentence from his 
 head, and judge me accordingly. Sleep, then, Ione. Night 
 wanes ; I leave thee to its rest, —and mayst thou have kinder 
 dreams of one who has no existence but in thine.” 
 
 Without waiting a reply, Arbaces hastily withdrew, afraid, 
 perhaps, to trust himself further to the passionate prayer of 
 Jone, which racked him with jealousy, even while it touched 
 him to compassion. But compassion itself came too late. Had 
 Ione even pledged him her hand as his reward, he could not 
 now, his evidence given, the populace excited, have saved the 
 Athenian. Still, made sanguine by his very energy of mind, 
 he threw himself on the chances of the future, and believed he 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL ~ 187 
 
 should yet triumph over the woman that had so entangled his 
 passions. 
 
 As his attendants assisted to unrobe him for the night, the 
 thought of Nydia flashed across him. He felt it was necessary 
 that Ione should never learn of her lover’s frenzy, lest it might 
 excuse his imputed crime; and it was possible that her attend- 
 — ants might inform her that Nydia was under his roof, and she 
 
 might desire to see her. As this idea crossed him, he turned 
 to one of his freedmen, — 
 
 “Go, Callias,” said he, “forthwith to Sosia, and tell him that 
 _on no pretence is he to suffer the blind slave Nydia out of her 
 chamber. But stay! first seek those in attendance upon my 
 ward, and caution them not to inform her that the blind girl is 
 under my roof. Go, quick!” 
 
 The freedman hastened to obey. After having discharged 
 ‘his commission with respect to Ione’s attendants, he sought 
 the worthy Sosia. He found him not in the little cell which 
 was apportioned for his cubiculum; he called his name aloud, 
 and from Nydia’s chamber, close at hand, he heard the voice 
 of Sosia reply, — 
 
 “Oh, Callias, is it you that I hear? The gods be praised! 
 ‘Open the door, I pray you!” 
 
 Callias withdrew the bolt, and the rueful face of Sosia hastily 
 obtruded itself. 
 
 “ What! in the chamber with that young girl, Sosia! Proh 
 pudor! Are there not fruits ripe enough on the wall, but that 
 thou must tamper with such green —” 
 
 ‘Name not the little witch !” interrupted Sosia, impatiently ; 
 “she will be my, ruin!” And he forthwith imparted to 
 Callias the history of the Air Demon, and the escape of the 
 Thessalian. 
 
 “Hang thyself, then, unhappy Sosia! I am just charged 
 from Arbaces with a message to thee; on no account art thou 
 to suffer her, even for a moment, from that chamber!” 
 
 “ Me miserum/” exclaimed the slave. “What can I do? 
 By this time she may have visited half Pompeii. But to- 
 morrow I will undertake to catch her in her old haunts. 
 Keep but my counsel, my dear Callias.” | 
 
158 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “TJ will do all that friendship can, consistent with my own 
 safety. But are you sure she has left the house ? She may be 
 hiding here yet.” 
 
 ‘How is that possible? She could easily sea gained the 
 garden; and the door, as I told thee, was open.” 
 
 “Nay, not so! for at that very hour thou specifiest, eres 
 was in the garden with the priest Calenus. I went there in 
 search of some herbs for my master’s bath to-morrow. I saw 
 the table set out; but the gate I am sure was shut: depend 
 upon it, that Calenus entered by the garden, and naturally 
 closed the door after him.” 
 
 “But it was not locked.” 
 
 “Yes; for I myself, angry at a negligence which might 
 expose the bronzes in the peristyle to the mercy of any robber, 
 turned the key, took it away, and, as I did not see the proper 
 slave to whom to give it, or I should have rated him finely, 
 here it actually is, still in my girdle.” 
 
 “© merciful Bacchus! I did not pray to thee in vain, 
 after all. Let us not losea moment! Let us to the garden 
 instantly ; she may yet be there!” 
 
 The good-natured Callias consented to assist the slave; and 
 after vainly searching the chambers at hand, and the recesses 
 of the peristyle, they entered the garden. 
 
 It was about this time that Nydia had resolved to quit her 
 hiding-place, and venture forth on her way. Lightly, tremu- 
 lously holding her breath, which ever and anon broke forth in 
 quick convulsive gasps, now gliding by the flower-wreathed 
 columns that bordered the peristyle, now darkening the still 
 moonshine that fell over its tessellated centre, now ascending 
 the terrace of the garden, now gliding amidst the gloomy 
 and breathless trees, she gained the fatal door, to find it 
 locked! We have all seen that expression of pain, of uncer- 
 tainty, of fear, which a sudden disappointment of touch, if I 
 may use the expression, casts over the face of the blind. But 
 what words can paint the intolerable woe, the sinking of the 
 whole heart, which was now visible on the features of the 
 Thessalian? Again and again her small, quivering hands 
 wandered to and fro the inexorable door. Poor thing that 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 139 
 
 thou wert! in vain had been all thy noble courage, thy inno- 
 cent craft, thy doublings to escape the hound and huntsmen! 
 Within but a few yards from thee, laughing at thy endeavors, 
 thy despair, knowing thou wert now their own, and watching 
 with’ cruel patience their own moment to seize their prey, — 
 thou art saved from seeing thy pursuers ! 
 
 “Hush, Callias! let her go on. Let us see what she will do 
 when she has convinced herself that the door is honest.” 
 
 “Took! she raises her face to the heavens, she mutters, 
 sher sinks down despondent! No! by Pollux, she has some 
 new scheme! She will not resign herself! By Jupiter, a 
 tough spirit! See, she springs up, she retraces her steps, she 
 thinks of some other chance! I advise thee, Sosia, to delay no 
 longer: seize her ere she quit the garden; now!” 
 
 “Ah! runaway! I have thee, eh?” said Sosia, seizing upon 
 the unhappy Nydia. 
 
 As a hare’s last human cry in the fangs of the dogs, as 
 the sharp voice of terror uttered by a sleep-walker suddenly 
 awakened, broke the shriek of the blind girl when she felt 
 the abrupt gripe of her jailer. It was a shriek of such utter 
 agony, such entire despair, that it might have rung hauntingly 
 in your ears forever. She felt as if the last plank of the sink- 
 ing Glaucus were torn from his clasp! It had been a suspense 
 of life and death ; and death had now won the game. 
 
 “Gods! that cry will alarm the house! Arbaces sleeps 
 full lightly. Gag her!” cried Callias. 
 
 ¢ Ah! here is the very napkin with which the young witch 
 conjured away my reason! Come, that’s right; now thou art 
 dumb as well as blind.” 
 
 And, catching the light weight in his arms, Sosia soon 
 gained the house, and reached the chamber from which Nydia 
 had escaped. ‘There, removing the gag, he left her to a soli- 
 tude so racked and terrible, that out of Hades its anguish 
 could scarcely be exceeded. 
 
140 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SORROW OF BOON COMPANIONS FOR OUR AFFLICTIONS. — 
 THE DUNGEON AND ITS VICTIMS. 
 
 Ir was now late on the third and last day of the trial of 
 Glaucus and Olinthus. A few hours after the court had 
 broken up and judgment been given, a small party of ,the 
 fashionable youth at Pompeii were assembled round the fas- 
 tidious board of Lepidus. 
 
 “So Glaucus denies his crime to the last ?” said Clodius. 
 
 “Yes; but the testimony of Arbaces was convincing: he 
 saw the blow given,” answered Lepidus. 
 
 “ What could have been the cause ?” 
 
 “Why, the priest was a gloomy and sullen fellow. He 
 probably rated Glaucus soundly about his gay life and gam- 
 ing habits, and ultimately swore he would not consent to his 
 marriage with Ione. High words arose; Glaucus seems to 
 have been full of the passionate god, and struck in sudden 
 exasperation. The excitement of wine, the desperation of 
 abrupt remorse, brought on the delirium under which he suf- 
 fered for some days; and I can readily imagine, poor fellow! 
 that, yet confused by that delirium, he is even now uncon- 
 scious of the crime he committed! Such, at least, is the 
 shrewd conjecture of Arbaces, who seems to have been most 
 kind and forbearing in his testimony.” 
 
 “Yes; he has made himself generally popular by it. But, 
 in consideration of these extenuating circumstances, the senate 
 should have relaxed the sentence.” 
 
 “ And they would have done so but for the people; but they 
 were outrageous. The priest had spared no pains to excite 
 them; and they imagined—the ferocious brutes !— because 
 Glaucus was a rich man and a gentleman, that he was likely 
 to escape; and therefore they were inveterate against him, 
 and doubly resolved upon his sentence. It seems, by some 
 accident or other, that he was never formerly enrolled as a 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 141 
 
 Roman citizen; and thus the senate is deprived of the power 
 to resist the people, though, after all, there was but a majority 
 of three against him. Ho! the Chian!” 
 
 “He looks sadly altered; but how composed and fearless!” 
 
 “Ay, we shall see if his firmness will last over to-morrow. 
 But what merit in courage, when that atheistical hound, Olin- 
 thus, manifested the same ? ” 
 
 “The blasphemer! Yes,” said Lepidus, with pious wrath, 
 “no wonder that one of the decurions was, but two days ago, 
 struck dead by lightning in a serene sky.! The gods feel 
 vengeance against Pompeii while the vile desecrator is alive 
 within its walls.” 
 
 “Yet so lenient was the senate, that had he but expressed 
 his penitence, and scattered a few grains of incense on the 
 altar of Cybele, he would have been let off. I doubt whether 
 these Nazarenes, had they the state religion, would be as tol- 
 erant to us, supposing we had kicked down the image of their . 
 Deity, blasphemed their rites, and denied their faith.” 
 
 “They give Glaucus one chance, in consideration of the 
 circumstances; they allow him, against the lion, the use of the 
 same stilus wherewith he smote the priest.” 
 
 “‘ Hast thou seen the lion? Hast thou looked at his teeth 
 and fangs, and wilt thou call that a chance? Why, sword and 
 buckler would be mere reed and papyrus against the rush of 
 the mighty beast! No, I think the true mercy has been, not 
 to leave him long in suspense; and it was therefore fortunate 
 for him that our benign laws are slow to pronounce, but swift 
 to execute; and that the games of the amphitheatre had been, 
 by a sort of providence, so long since fixed for to-morrow. He 
 who awaits death, dies twice.” 
 
 “As for the Atheist,” said Clodius, “he is to cope the grim 
 tiger naked-handed. Well, these combats are past betting on. 
 Who will take the odds ?” 
 
 A peal of laughter announced the ridicule of the question. 
 
 ‘Poor Clodius!” said the host, “to lose a friend is some- 
 
 1 Pliny says that, immediately before the eruption of Vesuvius, one of the 
 decuriones municipales was — though the heaven was unclouded — struck dead 
 by lightning. 
 
142 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 thing; but to find no one to bet on the chance of his escape is 
 a worse misfortune to thee.” 
 
 “Why, it is provoking; it would have been some consola- 
 tion to him and to me to think he was useful to the last.” 
 
 “The people,” said the grave Pansa, “are all delighted with 
 the result. They were so much afraid the sports at the am- 
 phitheatre would go off without a criminal for the beasts: 
 and now, to get two such criminals is indeed a joy for the 
 poor fellows! They work hard; they ought to have some 
 amusement.” 
 
 “There speaks the popular Pansa, who never moves with- 
 out a string of clients as long as an Indian triumph. He is 
 always prating about the people. Gods! he will end by being 
 a Gracchus! ” 
 
 “Certainly Iam no insolent patrician,” said Pansa, with a 
 generous alr. 
 
 “ Well,” observed Lepidus, “it would have been assuredly 
 dangerous to have been merciful at the eve of a beast-fight. 
 If ever J, though a Roman bred and born, come to be tried, 
 pray Jupiter there may be either no beasts in the vivaria, 
 or plenty of criminals in the jail.” 
 
 “And pray,” said one of the party, “what has become of 
 the poor girl whom Glaucus was to have married? A widow 
 without being a bride, — that is hard!” 
 
 “Oh,” returned Clodius, “she is safe under the protection 
 of her guardian, Arbaces. It was natural she should go to 
 him when she had lost both lover and brother.” 
 
 “By sweet Venus, Glaucus was fortunate among the women! 
 They say the rich Julia was in love with him.” 
 
 “A mere fable, my friend,” said Clodius, coxcombically ; 
 “TY was with her to-day. If any feeling of the sort she ever 
 conceived, I flatter myself that I have consoled her.” 
 
 “Hush, gentlemen!” said Pansa; “do you not know that 
 Clodius is employed at the house of Diomed in blowing hard 
 at the torch? It begins to burn, and will soon shine bright 
 on the shrine of Hymen.” 
 
 “Ts it so?” said Lepidus. “What! Clodius become a 
 married man? Fie!” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPET. 143 
 
 “‘ Never fear,” answered Clodius; “old Diomed is delighted 
 at the notion of marrying his daughter to a nobleman, and 
 will come down largely with the sesterces. You will see that 
 I shall not lock them up in the atrium. It will be a white 
 day for his jolly friends, when Clodius marries an heiress.” 
 
 “Say you so?” cried Lepidus; “come, then, a full cup to 
 the health of the fair Julia!” 
 
 While such was the conversation, — one not discordant to 
 the tone of mind common among the dissipated of that day, 
 and which might perhaps, a century ago, have found an echo 
 in the looser circles of Paris, — while such, I say, was the con- 
 versation in the gaudy triclinium of Lepidus, far different the 
 scene which scowled before the young Athenian. 
 
 After his condemnation, Glaucus was admitted no more to 
 the gentle guardianship of Sallust, the only friend of his dis- 
 tress. He was led along the forum till the guards stopped at 
 a small dvor by the side of the temple of Jupiter. You may 
 see the place still. The door opened in the centre in a some- 
 what singular fashion, revolving round on its hinges, as it 
 were, like a modern turnstile, so as only to leave half the 
 threshold open at the same time. Through this narrow aper- 
 ture they thrust the prisoner, placed before him a loaf and a 
 pitcher of water, and left him to darkness, and, as he thought, 
 to solitude. So sudden had been that revolution of fortune 
 which had prostrated him from the palmy height of youthful 
 pleasure and successful love to the lowest abyss of ignominy 
 and the horror of a most bloody death, that he could scarcely 
 convince himself that he was not held in the meshes of some 
 fearful dream. His elastic and glorious frame had triumphed 
 over a potion, the greater part of which he had fortunately 
 not drained. He had recovered sense and consciousness, but 
 still a dim and misty depression clung to his nerves and dark- 
 ened his mind. His natural courage, and the Greek nobility 
 of pride, enabled him to vanquish all unbecoming apprehen- 
 sion, and, in the judgment-court, to face his awful lot with a 
 steady mien and unquailing eye. But the consciousness of 
 innocence scarcely sufficed to support him when the gaze of 
 men no longer excited his haughty valor, and he was left to 
 
144 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. — 
 
 Joneliness and silence. He felt the damps of the dungeon 
 sink chillingly into his enfeebled frame, — he, the fastidious, 
 the luxurious, the refined; he who had hitherto braved no 
 hardship and known no sorrow. Beautiful bird that he was! 
 why had he left his far and sunny clime, the olive-groves of 
 his native hill, the music of immemorial streams? Why had 
 he wantoned on his glittering plumage amidst these harsh and 
 ungenial strangers, dazzling the eye with his gorgeous hues, 
 charming the ear with his blithesome song, thus suddenly to 
 be arrested, caged in darkness, a victim and a prey, his gay 
 flights forever over, his hymns of gladness forever stilled! 
 The poor Athenian! his very faults the exuberance of a gentle 
 and joyous nature, how little had his past career fitted him 
 for the trials he was destined to undergo! The hoots of the 
 mob, amidst whose plaudits he had so often guided his grace- 
 ful car and bounding steeds, still rang gratingly in his ear. 
 The cold and stony faces of his former friends (the co-mates 
 of his merry revels) still rose before his eye. None now were 
 by to soothe, to sustain, the admired, the adulated stranger. 
 These walls opened but on the dread arena of a violent and 
 shameful death. And Ione! of her, too, he had heard naught; 
 no encouraging word, no pitying message: she, too, had for- 
 saken him; she believed him guilty —and of what crime? 
 The murder of a brother! He ground his teeth, he groaned 
 aloud, and ever and anon a sharp fear shot across him. In 
 that fell and fierce delirium which had so unaccountably seized 
 his soul, which had so ravaged the disordered -brain, might he 
 not, indeed, unknowing to himself, have committed the crime 
 of which he was accused ? Yet, as the thought flashed upon 
 him, it was as suddenly checked; for, amidst all the darkness 
 of the past, he thought distinctly to recall the dim grove of 
 Cybele, the upward face of the pale dead, the pause that he 
 had made beside the corpse, and the sudden shock that felled 
 him to the earth. He felt convinced of his innocence; and 
 yet who, to the latest time, long after his mangled remains 
 were mingled with the elements, would believe him guiltless, 
 or uphold his fame? As he recalled his interview with Ar- 
 baces, and the causes of revenge which had been excited in 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 145 
 
 the heart of that dark and fearful man, he could not but 
 believe that he was the victim of some deep-laid and myste- 
 rious snare, the clew and train of which he was lost in at- 
 tempting to discover; and Ione—Arbaces loved her! Might 
 his rival’s success be founded upon his ruin? That thought 
 cut him more deeply than all; and his noble heart was more 
 _ stung by jealousy than appalled by fear. Again he groaned 
 aloud. 
 
 A voice from the recess of the darkness answered that burst 
 of anguish. ‘“ Who,” it said, “is my companion in this awful 
 hour ? Athenian Glaucus, is it thou ?” 
 
 ‘So, indeed, they called me in mine hour of fortune: they 
 may have other names forme now. And thy name, stranger ?” 
 
 “ Ts Olinthus, thy co-mate in the prison as the trial.” 
 
 “What! he whom they call the Atheist ? Is it the injus- 
 tice of men that hath taught thee to deny the providence of 
 the gods?” 
 
 “ Alas!” answered Olinthus, “thou, not IJ, art the true 
 Atheist, for thou deniest the sole true God—the unknown 
 One —to whom thy Athenian fathers erected an altar. It is 
 in this hour that I know my God. He is with me in the dun- 
 geon; His smile penetrates the darkness ; on the eve of death 
 my heart whispers immortality, and earth recedes from me 
 but to bring the weary soul nearer unto heaven.” 
 
 “Tell me,” said Glaucus, abruptly, “did I not hear thy name 
 coupled with that of Apzecides in my trial? Dost thou believe 
 me guilty ?” | 
 
 “ God alone reads the heart! but my suspicion rested not 
 upon thee.” 
 
 “On whom, then ?” 
 
 “Thy accuser, Arbaces.” 
 
 “Ha! thou cheerest me: and wherefore ? ” 
 
 “ Because I know the man’s evil breast, and he had cause to 
 fear him who is now dead.” 
 
 With that, Olnthus proceeded to inform Glaucus of those 
 details which the reader already knows, — the conversion of 
 Apecides, the plan they had proposed for the detection of the 
 impostures of the Egyptian priestcraft, and of the seductions 
 
 VOL. 11.— 10 
 
146 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 practised by Arbaces upon the youthful weakness of the pros- 
 elyte. “Therefore,” concluded Olinthus, “had the deceased 
 encountered Arbaces, reviled his treasons, and threatened de- 
 tection, the place, the hour, might have favored the wrath of 
 the Egyptian, and passion and craft alike dictated the fatal 
 blow.” | 
 
 “Tt must have been so!” cried Glaucus, joyfully. “I am 
 happy.” 
 
 “Yet what, O unfortunate ! avails to thee now the discovery ? 
 Thou art condemned and fated; and in thine innocence thou 
 wilt perish.” 
 
 “But I shall know myself guiltless; and in my mysterious 
 madness I had fearful, though momentary, doubts. Yet tell 
 me, man of a strange creed, thinkest thou that for small errors, 
 or for ancestral faults, we are forever abandoned and accursed 
 by the powers above, whatever name thou ailottest to them ?” 
 
 “God is just, and abandons not His creatures for their 
 mere human frailty. God is merciful, and curses none but 
 the wicked who repent not.” 
 
 ‘Yet it seemeth to me as if, in the divine anger, I had been 
 smitten by a sudden madness, a supernatural and solemn 
 frenzy, wrought not by human means.” 
 
 “There are demons on earth,” answered the Nazarene, fear- 
 fully, “as well as there are God and His Son in heaven; and 
 since thou acknowledgest not the last, the first may have had 
 power over thee.” 
 
 Glaucus did not reply, and there was a silence for some min- 
 utes. At length the Athenian said, in a changed and soft 
 and half-hesitating voice, “Christian, believest thou, among 
 the doctrines of thy creed, that the dead live again; that they 
 who have loved here are united hereafter; that beyond the 
 erave our good name shines pure from the mortal mists that 
 unjustly dim it in the gross-eyed world; and that the streams 
 which are divided by the desert and the rock meet in the sol- 
 emn Hades, and flow once more into one ? ” 
 
 “Believe I that, O Athenian? No, I do not believe —I 
 know / and it is that beautiful and blessed assurance which 
 supports me now. O Cyllene!” continued Olinthus, passion- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 147 
 
 ately. “bride of my heart! torn from me in the first month of 
 our nuptials, shall I not see thee yet, and ere many days be 
 past ? Welcome, welcome death, that will bring me to heaven 
 and thee!” 
 
 There was something in this sudden burst of human affection 
 which struck a kindred chord in the soul of the Greek. He 
 - felt, for the first time, a sympathy greater than mere affliction 
 between him and his companion. He crept nearer towards 
 Olinthus; for the Italians, fierce in some points, were not un- 
 necessarily cruel in others; they spared the separate cell and 
 the superfluous chain, and allowed the victims of the arena the 
 sad comfort of such freedom and such companionship as the 
 prison would afford. 
 
 “ Yes,” continued the Christian with holy fervor, “the im- 
 mortality of the soul, the resurrection, the reunion of the 
 dead, is the great principle of our creed; the great truth a 
 God suffered death itself to attest and proclaim. No fabled 
 Elysium, no poetic Orcus, but a pure and radiant heritage of 
 heaven itself, is the portion of the good.” 
 
 “Tell me, then, thy doctrines, and expound to me thy 
 hopes,” said Glaucus, earnestly. 
 
 Olinthus was not slow to obey that prayer; and there —as 
 oftentimes in the early ages of the Christian creed — it was in 
 the darkness of the dungeon, and over the approach of death, 
 that the dawning Gospel shed its soft and consecrating rays. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 A CHANGE FOR GLAUCUS. 
 
 Tnx hours passed in lingering torture over the head of Nydia 
 from the time in which she had been replaced in her cell. 
 
 Sosia, as if afraid he should be again outwitted, had refrained 
 from visiting her until late in the morning of the following day, 
 and then he but thrust in the periodical basket of food and 
 wine, and hastily reclosed the door. That day rolled on, and 
 
148 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Nydia felt herself pent, barred, inexorably confined, when that 
 day was the judgment-day of Glaucus, and when her release 
 would have saved him! Yet knowing, almost impossible as 
 seemed her escape, that the sole chance for the hfe of Glaucus 
 rested on her, this young girl, frail, passionate, and acutely 
 susceptible as she was, resolved not to give way to a despair 
 that would disable her from seizing whatever opportunity 
 might occur. She kept her senses whenever, beneath the whirl 
 of intolerable thought, they reeled and tottered ; nay, she took 
 food and wine that she might sustain her strength — that she 
 might be prepared ! 
 
 She revolved scheme after scheme of escape, and was forced 
 to dismiss all. Yet Sosia was her only hope, the only instru- 
 ment with which she could tamper. He had been superstitious 
 in the desire of ascertaining whether he could eventually pur- 
 chase his freedom. Blessed gods! might he not be won by the 
 bribe of freedom itself? Was she not nearly rich enough to 
 purchase it? Her slender arms were covered with bracelets, 
 the presents of Ione; and on her neck she yet wore that very 
 chain which, it may be remembered, had occasioned her jealous 
 quarrel with Glaucus, and which she had afterwards promised 
 vainly to wear forever. She waited burningly till Sosia should 
 again appear; but as hour after hour passed, and he came not, 
 she grew impatient. Every nerve beat with fever; she could 
 endure the solitude no longer; she groaned, she shrieked 
 aloud, she beat herself against the door. Her cries echoed 
 along the hall, and Sosia, in peevish anger, hastened to see 
 what was the matter, and silence his prisoner if possible. 
 
 “Ho! ho! what is this?” said he, surlily. “Young slave, 
 if thou screamest out thus, we must gag thee again. My 
 shoulders will smart for it, if thou art heard by my master.” 
 
 “ Kind Sosia, chide me not; I cannot endure to be so long 
 alone,” answered Nydia; “the solitude appalls me. Sit with 
 me, I pray, a little while. Nay, fear not that I should attempt 
 to escape; place thy seat before the door, Keep thine eye on 
 me; I will not stir from this spot.” 
 
 Sosia, who was a considerable gossip himself, was moved by 
 this address. He pitied one who had nobody to talk with; it 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 149 
 
 was his case, too; he pitied, and resolved to relieve himself. 
 He took the hint of Nydia, placed a stool before the door, 
 leaned his back against it, and rephed, — 
 
 “JT am sure I do not wish to be churlish; and so far as a 
 little innocent chat goes, I have no objection to indulge you. 
 But mind, no tricks; no more conjuring!” 
 
 “No, no; tell me, dear Sosia, what is the hour?” 
 
 “‘Tt is already evening; the goats are going home.” 
 
 “OQ gods! how went the trial ?” 
 
 ‘Both condemned !” 
 
 Nydia repressed the shriek. “ Well, well, I thought it would 
 be so. When do they suffer?” 
 
 “To-morrow, in the amphitheatre. If it were not for thee, 
 little wretch, I should be allowed to go with the rest and 
 see it.” 
 
 Nydia leaned back for some moments. Nature could endure 
 no more; she had fainted away. But Sosia did not perceive 
 it, for it was the dusk of eve, and he was full of his own pri- 
 vations. He went on lamenting the loss of so delightful a 
 show, and accusing the injustice of Arbaces for singling him 
 out from all his fellows to be converted into a jailer; and ere 
 he had half finished, Nydia, with a deep sigh, recovered the 
 sense of life. 
 
 “Thou sighest, blind one, at my loss! Well, that is some 
 comfort. So long as you acknowledge how much you cost me, 
 I will endeavor not to grumble. It is hard to be ill-treated, 
 and yet not pitied.” 
 
 “ Sosia, how much dost thou require to make up the purchase 
 of thy freedom ?” 
 
 “How much? Why, about two thousand sesterces.” 
 
 “The gods be praised! not more? Seest thou these brace- 
 lets and this chain? They are well worth double that sum. 
 I will give them thee if —” 
 
 “Tempt me not: I cannot release thee. Arbaces is a severe 
 and awful master. Who knows but I might feed the fishes of 
 the Sarnus? Alas! all the sesterces in the world would not 
 buy-me back into life. Better a live dog than a dead lion.” 
 
 “Sosia, thy freedom! ‘Think well! If thou wilt let me out 
 
150 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 oniy for one little hour—let me out at midnight-- 1 will 
 return ere to-morrow’s dawn; nay, thou canst go with me.” 
 
 “No,” said Sosia, sturdily ; “aslave once disobeyed Arbaces, 
 and he was never more heard of.” 
 
 “But the law gives a master no power over the life of a 
 slave.” 
 
 “The law is very obliging, but more polite than efficient. 
 I know that Arbaces always gets the law on his side. Besides, 
 if I am once dead, what law can bring me to life again ?” 
 
 Nydia wrung her hands. “Is there no hope, then?” said 
 she, convulsively. 
 
 “None of escape till Arbaces gives the word.” 
 
 ‘Well, then,” said Nydia, quickly, “thou wilt not, at least, 
 refuse to take a letter for me: thy master cannot kill thee 
 for that.” 
 
 “To whom ?” 
 
 “The preetor.” 
 
 “To a magistrate? No,—not I. I should be made a wit- 
 ness in court, for what I know; and the way they cross- 
 examine the slaves is by the torture.” 
 
 “Pardon: I meant not the pretor,—it was a word that 
 escaped me unawares: I meant quite another person, —the 
 gay Sallust.” 
 
 “Oh! and what want you with him ?” 
 
 “@Glaucus was my master; he purchased me from a cruel 
 lord. He alone has been kind tome. He is todie. I shall 
 never live happily if I cannot, in this hour of trial and doom, 
 let him know that one heart is grateful to him. Sallust is 
 his friend; he will convey my message.” 
 
 “T am sure he will do no such thing. Glaucus will 
 have enough to think of between this and to-morrow without 
 troubling his head about a blind girl.” 
 
 “Man,” said Nydia, rising, “wilt thou become free? Thou 
 hast the offer in thy power; to-morrow it will be too late. 
 Never was freedom more cheaply purchased. Thou canst 
 easily and unmissed leave home: less than half an hour will 
 suffice for thine absence. And for such a trifle wilt thou 
 refuse liberty ? ” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 151 
 
 Sosia was greatly moved. It was true that the request was 
 remarkably silly, but what was that to him? So much the 
 better. He could lock the door on Nydia, and if Arbaces 
 should learn his absence, the offence was venial, and would 
 merit but a reprimand. Yet, should Nydia’s letter contain 
 something more than what she had said, — should it speak of 
 her imprisonment, as he shrewdly conjectured it would do, — 
 what then! It need never be known to Arbaces that he had 
 carried the letter. At the worst the bribe was enormous, 
 the risk light, the temptation irresistible. He hesitated no 
 longer; he assented to the proposal. 
 
 “Give me the trinkets, and I will take the letter. Yet 
 stay: thou art a slave, thou hast no right to these orna- 
 ments, they are thy master’s.” 
 
 “They were the gifts of Glaucus; he is my master. What 
 chance hath he to claim them? Who else will know they are 
 in my possession ? ” 
 
 “Enough: I will bring thee the papyrus.” 
 
 ‘No, not papyrus, — a tablet of wax and a stilus.” 
 
 Nydia, as the reader will have seen, was born of gentle 
 parents. They bad done all to lighten her calamity, and her 
 quick intellect seconded their exertions. Despite her blind- 
 ness, she had therefore acquired in childhood, though in- 
 perfectly, the art to write with a sharp stilus upon waxen 
 tablets, in which her exquisite sense of touch came to her aid. 
 When the tablets were brought to her, she thus painfully 
 traced some words in Greek, the language of her childhood, 
 and which almost every Italian of the higher ranks was then 
 supposed to know. She carefully wound round the epistle 
 the protecting thread, and covered its knot with wax; and 
 ere she placed it in the hands of Sosia, she thus addressed 
 him : — 
 
 “ Sosia, I am blind and in prison. Thou mayst think to 
 deceive me, thou mayst pretend only to take this letter to 
 Sallust, thou mayst not fulfil thy charge: but here I sol- 
 emnly dedicate thy head to vengeance, thy soul to the infernal 
 powers, if thou wrongest thy trust; and I call upon thee to 
 place thy right hand of faith in mine, and repeat after me 
 
152 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 these words: ‘By the ground on which we stand, by the 
 elements which contain life and can curse life, by Orcus 
 the all-avenging, by the Olympian Jupiter the all-seeing, I 
 swear that I will honestly discharge my trust, and faithfully 
 deliver into the hands of Sallust this letter! And if I per- 
 jure myself in this oath, may the full curses of heaven and 
 hell be wreaked upon me!’ Enough! I trust thee: take 
 thy reward. It is already dark: depart at once.” 
 
 “Thou art a strange girl, and thou hast frightened me 
 terribly ; but it is all very natural: and if Sallust is to be 
 found, I give him this letter as I have sworn. By my faith, I 
 may have my little peccadilloes! but perjury,—no! I leave 
 that to my betters.” 
 
 With this Sosia withdrew, carefully passing the heavy bolt 
 athwart Nydia’s door, carefully locking its wards; and, hang- 
 ing the key to his girdle, he retired to his own den, enveloped 
 himself from head to foot in a huge disguising cloak, and 
 slipped out by the back way undisturbed and unseen. 
 
 The streets were thin and empty. He soon gained the house 
 of Sallust. The porter bade him leave his letter and be gone; 
 for Sallust was so grieved at the condemnation of Glaucus, 
 that he could not on any account be disturbed. 
 
 «¢ Nevertheless, I have sworn to give this letter into his own 
 hands; do sol must.” And Sosia, well knowing by experience 
 that Cerberus loves a sop, thrust some half a dozen sesterces 
 into the hand of the porter. 
 
 ‘Well, well,” said the latter, relenting, “you may enter if 
 you will; but, to tell you the truth, Sallust is drinking him- 
 self out of his grief. It is his way when anything disturbs 
 him. He orders a capital supper, the best wine, and does not 
 give over till everything is out of his head — but the liquor.” 
 
 “An excellent plan, —excellent! Ah, what it is to be rich! 
 If I were Sallust, I would have some grief or another every 
 day. But just say a kind word for me with the atriensis; I 
 see him coming.” 
 
 Sallust was too sad to receive company; he was too sad, 
 also, to drink alone; so, as was his wont, he admitted his 
 favorite freedman to his entertainment, and a stranger ban- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 153 
 
 quet never was held; for ever and anon the kind-hearted epi- 
 cure sighed, whimpered, wept outright, and then turned with 
 double zest to some new dish or his refilled goblet. 
 
 “My good fellow,” said he to his companion, “it was a most 
 awful judgment — heigho !—it is not bad that kid,eh? Poor, 
 dear Glaucus! what a jaw the lion has too! Ah, ah, ah!” 
 
 And Sallust sobbed loudly; the fit was stopped by a counter- 
 action of hiccups. 
 
 “Take a cup of wine,” said the freedman. 
 
 “ A thought too cold; but then how cold Glaucus must be! 
 Shut up the house to-morrow; not a slave shall stir forth; 
 none of my people shall honor that cursed arena! No, no!” 
 
 “Taste the Falernian; your grief distracts you. By the 
 gods it does —a piece of that cheesecake.” 
 
 It was at this auspicious moment that Sosia was admitted to 
 the presence of the disconsolate carouser. 
 
 “Ho! what art thou?” 
 
 “Merely a messenger to Sallust. I give him this billet from 
 a young female. There is no answer that I know of. May I 
 withdraw ? ” 
 
 Thus said the discreet Sosia, keeping his face muffled in his 
 cloak, and speaking with a feigned voice, so that he might not 
 hereafter be recognized. 
 
 “By the gods,a pimp! Unfeeling wretch! do you not see 
 my sorrows? Go! and the curses of Pandarus with you!” 
 
 Sosia lost not a moment in retiring. 
 
 ‘Will you read the letter, Sallust ?” said the freedman. 
 
 “Letter! which letter?” said the epicure, reeling, for he 
 began to see double. “A curse on these wenches, say 1! Am 
 I a man to think of [hiccup] pleasure, when — when — my 
 friend is going to be eat up?” 
 
 “‘ Hat another tartlet.” 
 
 “No, no! My grief chokes me!” 
 
 “Take him to bed,” said the freedman; and, Sallust’s head 
 now declining fairly on his breast, they bore him off to his 
 cubiculum, still muttering lamentations for Glaucus, and im- 
 precations on the unfeeling overtures of ladies of pleasure. 
 
 Meanwhile Sosia strode indignantly homeward. “Pimp, 
 
154 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 indeed!” quoth he to himself. “Pimp! a scurvy-tongued fel- 
 low that Sallust! Had I been called knave or thief, I could 
 have forgiven it; but pimp! Faugh! there is something in 
 the word which the toughest stomach in the world would rise 
 against. A knave is a knave for his own pleasure, and a thief 
 a thief for his own profit; and there is something honorable 
 and philosophical in being a rascal for one’s own sake; that is, 
 doing things upon principle, — upon a grand scale. Buta pimp 
 is a thing that defiles itself for another; a pipkin that is put 
 on the fire for another man’s pottage; a napkin that every 
 guest wipes his hands upon, and the scullion says, ‘By your 
 leave,’ too. A pimp! I would rather he had called me parri- 
 cide! But the man was drunk, and did not know what he 
 said; and besides, I disguised myself. Had he seen it had 
 been Sosia who addressed him, it would have been ‘honest 
 Sosia!’? and ‘worthy man!’ I warrant. Nevertheless, the 
 trinkets have been won easily; that’s some comfort. And, 
 O goddess Feronia! I shall be a freedman soon! and then I 
 should lke to see who’ll call me pimp! unless, indeed, he 
 pay me pretty handsomely for it!” 
 
 While Sosia was soliloquizing in this high-minded and 
 generous vein, his path lay along a narrow lane that led 
 toward the amphitheatre and its adjacent palaces. Suddenly, 
 as he turned a sharp corner he found himself in the midst of 
 a considerable crowd. Men, women, and children, all were 
 hurrying or laughing, talking, gesticulating; and ere he was 
 aware of it, the worthy Sosia was borne away with the noisy 
 stream. 
 
 “What now ?” he asked of his nearest neighbor, a young 
 artificer, —“ what now? Where are all these good folks 
 thronging? Does any rich patron give away alms or viands 
 to-night ?” 
 
 “Not so, man; better still,” replied the artificer: “the noble 
 Pansa, the people’s friend, has granted the public leave to see 
 the beasts in their vivaria, By Hercules! they will not be 
 seen so safely by some persons to-morrow.” 
 
 “Tis a pretty sight,” said the slave, yielding to the throng 
 that impelled him onward; “and since I may not go to the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 155 
 
 sports to-morrow, I may as well take a peep at the beasts 
 to-night.” 
 
 “You will do well,” returned his new acquaintance; “a lion 
 and a tiger are not to be seen at Pompeii every day.” 
 
 The crowd had now entered a broken and wide space of 
 ground, on which, as it was only lighted scantily and from a 
 distance, the press became dangerous to those whose limbs 
 and shoulders were not fitted for a mob. Nevertheless, the 
 women especially — many of them with children in their arms, 
 or even at the breast — were the most resolute in forcing their 
 way; and their shrill exclamations of complaint or objurgation 
 were heard loud above the more jovial and masculine voices. 
 Yet amidst them was a young and girlish voice, that appeared 
 to come from one too happy in her excitement to be alive to 
 the inconvenience of the crowd. 
 
 “ Aha!” cried the young woman to some of her companions, 
 “T always told you so; I always said we should have a man 
 for the lion; and now we have one for the tiger too! I wish 
 to-morrow were come ! 
 
 ‘Ho! ho! for the merry, merry show, 
 With a forest of faces in every row! 
 Lo, the swordsmen, bold as the son of Alemena, 
 Sweep, side by side, o’er the hush’d arena; 
 Talk while you may —you will hold your breath 
 When they meet in the grasp of the glowing death. 
 Tramp, tramp, how gayly they go! 
 Ho! ho! for the merry, merry show!’” 
 
 « A jolly girl!” said Sosia. | 
 
 “Ves,” replied the young artificer, a curly-headed, handsome 
 youth. “Yes,” replied he, enviously; “the women love a 
 gladiator. If I had been a slave, I would have soon found my 
 schoolmaster in the lanista!” 
 
 “Would you indeed?” said Sosia, with a sneer. “ People’s 
 notions differ.” } 
 
 The crowd had now arrived at the place of destination; but 
 as the cell in which the wild beasts were confined was ex- 
 tremely small and narrow, tenfold more vehement than it 
 hitherto had been, was the rush of the aspirants to obtain 
 
156 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 admittance. Two of the officers of the amphitheatre, placed 
 at the entrance, very wisely mitigated the evil by dispensing 
 to the foremost only a limited number of tickets at a time, and 
 admitting no new visitors till their predecessors had sated their 
 curiosity. Sosia, who was a tolerably stout fellow, and not 
 troubled with any remarkable scruples of diffidence or good- 
 breeding, contrived to be among the first of the initiated. 
 
 Separated from his companion the artificer, Sosia found him- 
 self in a narrow cell of oppressive heat and atmosphere, and 
 lighted by several rank and flaring torches. 
 
 The animals, usually kept in different vzvaria, or dens, were 
 now, for the greater entertainment of the visitors, placed in 
 one, but equally indeed divided from each other by strong 
 cages protected by iron bars. 
 
 There they were, the fell and grim wanderers of the desert, 
 who have now become almost the principal agents of this 
 story. The lion, who, as being the more gentle by nature than 
 his fellow-beast, had been more incited to ferocity by hunger, 
 stalked restlessly and fiercely to and fro his narrow confines ; 
 his eyes were lurid with rage and famine; and as, every now 
 and then, he paused and glared around, the spectators fearfully 
 pressed backward, and drew their breath more quickly. But 
 the tiger lay quiet and extended at full length in his cage, and 
 only by an occasional play of his tail, or a long impatient 
 yawn, testified any emotion at his confinement, or at the crowd 
 which honored him with their presence. 
 
 “T have seen no fiercer beast than yon lion even in the 
 amphitheatre of Rome,” said a gigantic and sinewy fellow 
 who stood at the right hand of Sosia. 
 
 “YT feel humbled when I look at his limbs,” replied, at the 
 left of Sosia, a slighter and younger figure, with his arms 
 folded on his breast. 
 
 The slave looked first at one, and then at the other. “ Vir- 
 tus in medio / [ Virtue is ever in the middle !] ” muttered he to 
 himself; “a goodly neighborhood for thee, Sosia, —a gladia- 
 tor on each side!” 
 
 “That is well said, Lydon,” returned the huger gladiator ; 
 “T feel the same.” 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 157 
 
 “ And to think,” observed Lydon, in a tone of deep feeling, 
 “to think that the noble Greek, he whom we saw but a day or 
 two since before us, so full of youth and health and joyous- 
 ness, is to feast yon monster!” | 
 
 “Why not?” growled Niger, savagely ; “many an honest 
 gladiator has been compelled to a like combat by the emperor: 
 why not a wealthy murderer by the law ?” 
 
 Lydon sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and remained silent. 
 Meanwhile the common gazers listened with staring eyes and 
 lips apart: the gladiators were objects of interest as well 
 as the beasts; they were animals of the same species; so 
 the crowd glanced from one to the other, —the men and the 
 brutes, — whispering their comments and anticipating the 
 morrow. 
 
 “Well,” said Lydon, turning away, “I thank the gods that 
 it is not the lion or the tiger Jam to contend with; even you, 
 Niger, are a gentler combatant than they.” . 
 
 “But equally dangerous,” said the gladiator, with a fierce 
 laugh ; and the bystanders, admiring his vast limbs and fero- 
 cious countenance, laughed too. 
 
 “That as it may be,” answered Lydon, carelessly, as he 
 pressed through the throng and quitted the den. 
 
 “T may as well take advantage of his shoulders,” thought 
 the prudent Sosia, hastening to follow him; “the crowd always 
 give way to a gladiator, so I will keep close behind, and come 
 in for a share of his consequence.” 
 
 The son of Medon strode quickly through the mob, many of 
 whom recognized his features and profession. 
 
 “That is young Lydon, a brave fellow; he fights to-mor- 
 row,” said one. 
 
 “ Ah! I have a bet on him,” said another; “see how firmly 
 he walks!” 
 
 “ Good luck to thee, Lydon!” said a third. 
 
 “Lydon, you have my wishes,” half whispered a fourth, 
 smiling (a comely woman of the middle class), “and if you 
 win, why, you may hear more of me.” 
 
 “ A handsome man, by Venus!” cried a fifth, who was a girl 
 scarce in her teens. 
 
158 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Thank you,” returned Sosia, gravely taking the compli- 
 ment to himself. 
 
 However strong the purer motives of Lydon, and certain 
 though it be that he would never have entered so bloody a 
 calling but from the hope of obtaining his father’s freedom, 
 he was not altogether unmoved by the notice he excited. He 
 forgot that the voices now raised in commendation might, on 
 the morrow, shout over his death-pangs. By nature fierce and 
 reckless, as well as generous and warm-hearted, he was already 
 imbued with the pride of a profession that he fancied he 
 disdained, and affected by the influence of a companionship 
 that in reality he loathed. He saw himself now a man of 
 importance; his step grew yet lighter, and his mien more 
 elate. 
 
 “Niger,” said he, turning suddenly, as he had now threaded 
 the crowd, “we have often quarrelled; we are not matched 
 against each other, but one of us, at least, may reasonably 
 expect to fall; give us thy hand.” 
 
 “ Most readily,” said Sosia, extending his palm. 
 
 “Wa! what fool is this? Why, I thought Niger was at my 
 heels!” 
 
 “JT forgive the mistake,” replied Sosia, condescendingly ; 
 “don’t mention it; the error was easy; I and Niger are some- 
 what of the same build.” 
 
 “Ha! ha! that is excellent! Niger would have slit thy 
 throat had he heard thee!” 
 
 “You gentlemen of the arena have a most disagreeable mode 
 of talking,” said Sosia: “let us change the conversation.” 
 
 “Vah! vah!” said Lydon, impatiently; “I am in no 
 humor to converse with thee!” 
 
 “Why, truly,” returned the slave, “you must have serious 
 thoughts enough to occupy your mind: to-morrow is, I think, 
 your first essay in the arena. Well, I am sure you will die 
 bravely.” 
 
 “May thy words fall on thine own head!” said Lydon, 
 superstitiously, for he by no means liked the blessing of Sosia. 
 “Die! No—I trust my hour is not yet come.” 
 
 ‘He who plays at dice with death must expect the dog’s 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 159 
 
 throw,” replied Sosia, maliciously. “But you are a strong 
 fellow, and I wish you all imaginable luck; and so, vale /” 
 
 With that the slave turned on his heel, and took his way 
 homeward. 
 
 “T trust the rogue’s words are not ominous,” said Lydon, 
 musingly. “In my zeal for my father’s liberty, and my con- 
 fidence in my own thews and sinews, I have not contemplated 
 the possibility of death. My poor father! Iam thy only son! 
 if I were to fall —” 
 
 As the thought crossed him, the gladiator strode on with a 
 more rapid and restless pace, when suddenly, in an opposite 
 street, he beheld the very object of his thoughts. Leaning 
 on his stick, his form bent by care and age, his eyes down- 
 cast and his steps trembling, the gray-haired Medon slowly 
 approached towards the gladiator, Lydon paused a moment: 
 he divined at once the cause that brought forth the old man 
 at that late hour. : 
 
 ‘“‘ Be sure it is I whom he seeks,” thought he; “he is horror- 
 struck at the condemnation of Olinthus; he more than ever 
 esteems the arena criminal and hateful; he comes again to 
 dissuade me from the contest. I must shun him; I cannot 
 brook his prayers, his tears.” 
 
 These thoughts, so long to recite, flashed across the young 
 man like lightning. He turned abruptly and fled swiftly in an 
 opposite direction. He paused not till, almost spent and 
 breathless, he found himself on the summit of a small acclivity 
 which overlooked the most gay and splendid part of that 
 miniature city; and as he there paused, and gazed along the 
 tranquil streets glittering in the rays of the moon (which had 
 just arisen, and brought partially and picturesquely into light 
 the crowd around the amphitheatre at a distance, murmuring, 
 and swaying to and fro), the influence of the scene affected 
 him, rude and unimaginative though his nature. He sat him- 
 self down to rest upon the steps of a deserted portico, and 
 felt the calm of the hour quiet and restore him. Opposite, 
 and near at hand, the lights gleamed from a palace in which 
 the master now held his revels. The doors were open for 
 coolness, and the gladiator beheld the numerous and festive 
 
160 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPET. 
 
 group gathered round the tables in the atrium;! while behind 
 them, closing the long vista of the illumined rooms beyond, 
 the spray of the distant fountain sparkled in the moonbeams. 
 There, the garlands wreathed around the columns of the hall; 
 there, gleamed still and frequent the marble statue; there, 
 amidst peals of jocund laughter, rose the music and the lay. 
 
 EPICUREAN SONG. 
 
 Away with your stories of Hades, 
 
 Which the Flamen has forged to affright us, — 
 We laugh at your three Maiden Ladies, 
 
 Your fates, and your sullen Cocytus. 
 
 Poor Jove has a troublesome life, sir, 
 Could we credit your tales of his portals: 
 In shutting his ears on his wife, sir, 
 And opening his eyes upon mortals. 
 
 Oh, blest be the bright Epicurus! 
 
 Who taught us to laugh at such fables ; 
 On Hades they wanted to moor us, 
 
 And his hand cut the terrible cables. 
 
 If, then, there’s a Jove or a Juno, 
 
 They vex not their heads about us, man; 
 Besides, if they did, I and you know 
 
 ”T is the life of a god to live thus, man! 
 
 What! think you the gods place their bliss, eh ? — 
 In playing the spy on a sinner ? 
 
 In counting the girls that we kiss, eh, 
 Or the cups that we empty at dinner ? 
 
 Content with the soft lips that love us, 
 
 This music, this wine, and this mirth, boys, 
 We care not for gods up above us, — 
 
 We know there ’s no god for this earth, boys! 
 
 While Lydon’s piety (which, accommodating as it might be, 
 was in no slight degree disturbed by these verses, which em- 
 bodied the fashionable philosophy of the day) slowly recov- 
 
 1 Jn the atrium, as I have elsewhere observed, a larger party of guests 
 than ordinary was frequently entertained. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 161 
 
 ered itself from the shock it had received, a small party of 
 men, in plain garments and of the middle class, passed by his 
 resting-place. ‘They were in earnest conversation, and did not 
 seem to notice or heed the gladiator as they moved on. 
 
 ‘Qh, horror on horrors!” said one, “ Olinthus is snatched 
 from us! our right arm is lopped away! When will Christ 
 descend to protect His own ?” 
 
 “Can human atrocity go farther,” said another, “to sen- 
 tence an innocent man to the same arena as a murderer! But 
 let us not despair; the thunder of Sinai may yet be heard, and 
 the Lord preserve His saint. ‘The fool has said in his heart, 
 There is no God.’” 
 
 At that moment out broke again, from the illumined palace, 
 the burden of the revellers’ song: — 
 
 “We care not for gods up above us, — 
 We know there ’s no god for this earth, boys!” 
 
 Ere the words died away, the Nazarenes, moved by sudden 
 indignation, caught up the echo, and, in the words of one of 
 their favorite hymns, shouted aloud: — 
 
 THE WARNING HYMN OF THE NAZARENES. 
 
 Around — about — forever near thee, 
 God — our Gop — shall mark and hear thee! 
 On His car of storm He sweeps! 
 Bow, ye heavens, and shrink, ye deeps! 
 Woe to the proud ones who defy Him! — 
 Woe to the dreamers who deny Him! 
 Woe to the wicked, woe! 
 The proud stars shall fail — 
 The sun shall grow pale — 
 The heavens shrivel up like a scroll— , 
 Hell’s ocean shall bare 
 Its depths of despair, 
 Each wave an eternal soul! 
 For the only thing, then, 
 That shall not live again 
 Is the corpse of the giant Timez. 
 Hark, the trumpet of thunder! 
 Lo, earth rent asunder! 
 
 1 See note (a) at the end. 
 
 VOL. 11.—11 
 
162 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 
 
 And, forth, on his Angel-throne, 
 He comes through the gloom, 
 The Judge of the Tomb, 
 To summon and save His own! 
 Oh, joy to Care, and woe to Crime, 
 He comes to save His own! 
 Woe to the proud ones who defy Him! 
 Woe to the dreamers who deny Him! 
 Woe to the wicked, woe! 
 
 A sudden silence from the startled hall of revel succeeded 
 these ominous words: the Christians swept on, and were 
 soon hidden from the sight of the gladiator. Awed, he scarce 
 knew why, by the mystic denunciations of the Christians, 
 Lydon, after a short pause, now rose to pursue his way home- 
 ward. 
 
 Before him, how serenely slept the starlight on that lovely 
 city! how breathlessly its pillared streets reposed in their 
 security ! how softly rippled the dark-green waves beyond! 
 how cloudless spread, aloft and blue, the dreaming Campanian 
 skies! Yet this was the last night for the gay Pompeii, the 
 colony of the hoar Chaldean, the fabled city of Hercules, the 
 delight of the voluptuous Roman! Age after age had rolled, 
 indestructive, unheeded, over its head, and now the last ray 
 quivered on the dial-plate of its doom. The gladiator heard 
 some light steps behind; a group of females were wending 
 homeward from their visit to the amphitheatre. As he turned, 
 his eye was arrested by a strange and sudden apparition. 
 From the summit of Vesuvius, darkly visible at the distance, 
 there shot a pale, meteoric, livid light; it trembled an instant 
 and was gone. And at the same moment that his eye caught 
 it, the voice of one of the youngest of the women broke out 
 hilariously and shrill : — 
 
 “TRAMP! TRAMP! HOW GAYLY THEY Go! 
 Ho, Ho! FOR THE MORROW’S MERRY SHOW!” 
 
BOOK VV. 
 
 Stat ecce ad aras hostia, expectat manum 
 Cervice prona. — SENEC. 
 
 Before the altars, lo, the victim stands, 
 And waits with bended neck the fatal blow. 
 
 Mutatus ordo est — sede nil propria jacet, 
 Sed acta retro cuncta. — Jbid. 
 
 The appointed order changes! nought remains 
 In the allotted ranks, but backward rolls 
 The tide of acted things. 
 
 Tempore quanquam illo tellus quoque, et sequora ponte 
 Signa dabant.— VireiL: Georgie. lib. i. 
 
 In the same time, the earth and surging seas 
 Gave signal ! 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DREAM OF ARBACES.—A VISITOR AND A WARNING TO 
 THE EGYPTIAN. 
 
 Tue awful night preceding the fierce joy of the amphi- 
 theatre rolled drearily away, and grayly broke forth the dawn 
 of THE LAST DAY OF Pomprir! The air was uncommonly 
 calm and sultry, a thin and dull mist gathered over the valleys 
 and hollows of the broad Campanian fields. But yet it was 
 remarked in surprise by the early fishermen, that, despite the 
 exceeding stillness of the atmosphere, the waves of the sea 
 were agitated, and seemed, as it were, to run disturbedly back 
 from the shore; while along the blue and stately Sarnus, 
 whose ancient breadth of channel the traveller now vainly 
 seeks to discover, there crept a hoarse and sullen murmur, as 
 it glided by the laughing plains and the gaudy villas of the 
 
164 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI, 
 
 wealthy citizens. Clear above the low mist rose the time- 
 worn towers of the immemorial town, the red-tiled roofs of 
 the bright streets, the solemn columns of many temples, and 
 the statue-crowned portals of the Forum and the Arch of 
 Triumph. Far in the distance the outline of the circling 
 hills soared above the vapors and mingled with the changeful 
 hues of the morning sky. The cloud that had so long rested 
 over the crest of Vesuvius had suddenly vanished, and its 
 rugged and haughty brow looked without a frown over the 
 beautiful scenes below. 
 
 Despite the earliness of the hour, the gates of the city were 
 already opened. Horsemen upon horsemen, vehicle after vehi- 
 cle, poured rapidly in; and the voices of numerous pedes- 
 trian groups, clad in holiday attire, rose high in joyous and 
 excited merriment; the streets were crowded with citizens 
 and strangers from the populous neighborhood of Pompeii; 
 and noisily, fast, confusedly swept the many streams of life 
 towards the fatal show. 
 
 Despite the vast size of the amphitheatre, seemingly so dis- 
 proportioned to the extent of the city, and formed to include 
 nearly the whole population of Pompeii itself, so great, on 
 extraordinary occasions, was the concourse of strangers from 
 all parts of Campania, that the space before it was usually 
 crowded for several hours previous to the commencement of 
 the sports, by such persons as were not entitled by their rank 
 to appointed and special seats. And the intense curiosity 
 which the trial and sentence of two criminals so remarkable 
 had occasioned, increased the crowd on this day to an extent 
 wholly unprecedented. 
 
 While the common people, with the lively vehemence of 
 their Campanian blood, were thus pushing, scrambling, hurry- 
 ing on, yet, amidst all their eagerness, preserving, as is now 
 the wont with Italians in such meetings, a wonderful order 
 and unquarrelsome good-humor, a strange visitor to Arbaces 
 was threading her way to his sequestered mansion. At the 
 sight of her quaint and primeval garb, of her wild gait and 
 gestures, the passengers she encountered touched each other 
 and smiled; but as they caught a glimpse of her countenance, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 165 
 
 the mirth was hushed at once, for the face was as the face of 
 the dead; and, what with the ghastly features and obsolete 
 robes of the stranger, it seemed as if one long entombed had 
 risen once more amongst the living. In silence and awe each 
 group gave way as she passed along, and she soon gained the 
 _ broad porch of the Egyptian’s palace. 
 
 The black porter, ike the rest of the world, astir at an un-— 
 usual hour, started as he opened the door to her summons. 
 
 The sleep of the Egyptian had been unusually profound 
 during the night; but as the dawn approached it was dis- 
 turbed by strange and unquiet dreams, which impressed him 
 the more as they were colored by the peculiar philosophy he 
 embraced. 
 
 He thought that he was transported to the bowels of the 
 earth, and that he stood alone in a mighty cavern, supported 
 by enormous columns of rough and primeval rock, lost, as 
 they ascended, in the vastness of a shadow athwart whose 
 eternal darkness no beam of day had ever glanced. And in 
 the space between these columns were huge wheels, that 
 whirled round and round unceasingly, and with a rushing and 
 roaring noise. Only to the right and left extremities of the 
 cavern, the space between the pillars was left bare, and the 
 apertures stretched away into galleries, not wholly dark, but 
 dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that, meteor- 
 like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and 
 dank soil, and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across 
 the vast gloom in wild gambols, suddenly disappearing, and 
 as suddenly bursting into tenfold brilliancy and power. And 
 while he gazed wonderingly upon the gallery to the left, thin, 
 mist-like, aerial shapes passed slowly up; and when they had 
 gained the hall they seemed to rise aloft, and to vanish, as 
 the smoke vanishes, in the measureless ascent. 
 
 He turned in fear towards the opposite extremity, and 
 behold! there came swiftly from the gloom above, similar 
 shadows, which swept hurriedly along the gallery to the right, 
 as if borne involuntarily adown the tides of some invisible 
 stream; and the faces of these spectres were more distinct 
 than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and on. 
 
166 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 some was joy, and on others sorrow; some were vivid with 
 expectation and hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and 
 horror. And so they passed, swift and constantly on, till the 
 eyes of the gazer grew dizzy and blinded with the whirl of an 
 ever-varying succession of things impelled by a power appar- 
 ently not their own. 
 
 Arbaces turned away, and in the recess of the hall he saw 
 the mighty form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and 
 her hands were busy upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he 
 saw that the woof communicated with the numberless wheels, 
 as if it guided the machinery of their movements. He thought 
 his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards the 
 female, and that he was borne onwards till he stood before her, 
 face to face. The countenance of the giantess was solemn and 
 hushed, and beautifully serene. It was as the face of some 
 colossal sculpture of his own ancestral sphinx. No passion, 
 no human emotion, disturbed its brooding and unwrinkled 
 brow: there was neither sadness, nor joy, nor memory, nor 
 hope; it was free from all with which the wild human heart 
 can sympathize. The mystery of mysteries rested on its 
 beauty; it awed, but terrified not: it was the Incarnation of 
 the Sublime. And Arbaces felt the voice leave his ips, with- 
 out an impulse of his own; and the voice asked, — 
 
 “Who art thou, and what is thy task ?” 
 
 “Tam That which thou hast acknowledged,” answered, with- 
 out desisting from its work, the mighty phantom. “My name 
 is Nature! These are the wheels of the world, and my hand 
 guides them for the life of all things.” 
 
 “ And what,” said the voice of Arbaces, “are these galleries, 
 that, strangely and fitly illumined, stretch on either hand into 
 the abyss of gloom ?” 
 
 “That,” answered the giant mother, “ which thou beholdest 
 to the left, is the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that 
 flit onward and upward into the world are the souls that pass 
 from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on 
 earth. That which thou beholdest to thy right, wherein the 
 shadows descending from above sweep on, cay unknown 
 and dim, is the gallery of the dead!” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 167 
 
 “ And wherefore,” said the voice of Arbaces, “yon wander- 
 ing lights, that so wildly break the darkness; but only break, 
 not reveal?” 
 
 “Dark fool of the human sciences, dreamer of the stars, and 
 would-be decipherer of the heart and origin of things! those 
 lights are but the glimmerings of such knowledge as is vouch- 
 safed to Nature to work her way, to trace enough of the past 
 and future to give providence to her designs. Judge, then, 
 puppet as thou art, what lights are reserved for thee!” 
 
 Arbaces felt himself tremble as he asked again, “ Wherefore 
 am I here?” 
 
 “Tt is the forecast of thy soul; the prescience of thy rushing 
 doom; the shadow of thy fate lengthening into eternity as it 
 declines from earth.” 
 
 Ere he could answer, Arbaces felt a rushing Winp sweep 
 down the cavern, as the winds of a giant god. Borne aloft 
 from the ground, and whirled on high as a leaf in the storms 
 of autumn, he beheld himself in the midst of the Spectres of 
 the Dead, and hurrying with them along the length of gloom. 
 As in vain and impotent despair he struggled against the im- 
 pelling power, he thought the Winp grew into something lke 
 a shape,—a spectral outline of the wings and talons of an 
 eagle, with limbs floating far and indistinctly along the air, 
 and eyes that, alone clearly and vividly seen, glared stonily 
 and remorselessly on his own. 
 
 “What art thou?” again said the voice of the Egyptian. 
 
 “T am That which thou hast acknowledged,” —and the 
 spectre laughed aloud, — “and my name is Nrcrssity.” 
 
 “To what dost thou bear me?” 
 
 “To the Unknown.” 
 
 “To happiness, or to woe?” 
 
 “ As thou hast sown, so shalt thou reap.” 
 
 “Dread thing, not so! If thou art the Ruler of Life, thine 
 are my misdeeds, not mine.” 
 
 “Tam but the breath of God!” answered the mighty 
 WIND. 
 
 “Then is my wisdom vain!” groaned the dreamer. 
 
 “The husbandman accuses not fate, when, having sown 
 
168 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 thistles, he reaps not corn. Thou hast sown crime, accuse not 
 fate if thou reapest not the harvest of virtue.” 
 
 The scene suddenly changed. Arbaces was in a place of 
 human bones; and lo! in the midst of them was a skull, and 
 the skull, still retaining its fleshless hollows, assumed slowly, 
 and in the mysterious confusion of a dream, the face of 
 Apecides; and forth from the grinning jaws there crept a 
 small worm, and it crawled to the feet of Arbaces. He at-— 
 tempted to stamp on it and crush it; but it became longer and 
 larger with that attempt. It swelled and bloated till it grew 
 into a vast serpent: it coiled itself round the limbs of Arbaces ; 
 it crunched his bones; it raised its glaring eyes and poisonous 
 jaws to his face. He writhed in vain; he withered, he gasped, 
 beneath the influence of the blighting breath; he felt himself 
 blasted into death. And then a voice came from the reptile, 
 which still bore the face of Apecides, and rang in his reeling 
 ear, — | 
 
 “THY VICTIM IS THY JUDGE! THE WORM THOU WOULDST 
 CRUSH BECOMES THE SERPENT THAT DEVOURS THEE!” 
 
 With a shriek of wrath and woe and despairing resistance, 
 Arbaces awoke, his hair on end, his brow bathed in dew, his 
 eyes glazed and staring, his mighty frame quivering as an 
 infant’s, beneath the agony of that dream. He awoke; he 
 collected himself; he blessed the gods whom he disbelieved, 
 that he was in a dream; he turned his eyes from side to side ; 
 he saw the dawning light break through his small but lofty win- 
 dow; he was in the Precincts of Day; he rejoiced ; he smiled ; 
 his eyes fell, and opposite to him he beheld the ghastly fea- 
 tures, the. lifeless eye, the livid lip, of the hag of Vesuvius! 
 
 “Ha!” he cried, placing his hands before his eyes, as to 
 shut out the grisly vision, “do I dream still? Am I with the 
 dead ? ” 
 
 “Mighty Hermes, no! Thou art with one death-like, but 
 not dead. Recognize thy friend and slave.” 
 
 There was a long silence. Slowly the shudders that passed 
 over the limbs of the Egyptian chased each other away, faint. 
 lier and faintlher dying till he was himself again. 
 
 “Tt was a dream, then,” said he. “ Well, let me dream no 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 169 
 
 more, or the day cannot compensate for the pangs of night. 
 Woman, how camest thou here, and wherefore ?” 
 
 “T came to warn thee,” answered the sepulchral voice of the 
 Saga. 
 
 “Warn me! The dream lied not, then? Of what peril?” 
 
 “Listen tome. Some evil hangs over this fated city. Fly 
 while it be time. Thou knowest that I hold my home on that 
 mountain beneath which old tradition saith there yet burn the 
 fires of the river of Phlegethon; and in my cavern is a vast 
 abyss, and in that abyss I have of late marked a red and dull > 
 stream creep slowly, slowly on; and heard many and mighty 
 sounds hissing and roaring through the gloom. But last night, 
 as I looked thereon, behold the stream was no longer dull, but 
 intensely and fiercely luminous; and while I gazed, the beast 
 that liveth with me, and was cowering by my side, uttered a 
 shrill howl, and fell down and died,! and the slaver and froth 
 were round his lips. I crept back to my lair; but I distinctly 
 heard, all the night, the rock shake and tremble, and though 
 the air was heavy and still, there were the hissing of pent 
 winds, and the grinding as of wheels beneath the ground. So, 
 when I rose this morning at the very birth of dawn, I looked 
 again down the abyss, and I saw vast fragments of stone borne 
 black and floatingly over the lurid stream; and the stream 
 itself was broader, fiercer, redder than the night before. Then 
 I went forth, and ascended to the summit of the rock: and in 
 that summit there appeared a sudden and vast hollow, which 
 I had never perceived before, from which curled a dim, faint 
 smoke; and the vapor was deathly, and I gasped, and sickened, 
 and nearly died. I returned home. I took my gold and my 
 drugs, and left the habitation of many years; for I remembered 
 the dark Etruscan prophecy which saith, ‘When the mountain 
 opens the city shall fall; when the smoke crowns the Hill of 
 the Parched Fields, there shall be woe and weeping in the 
 hearths of the Children of the Sea.’ Dread master, ere I leave 
 these walls for some more distant dwelling, I come to thee. 
 As thou livest, know I in my heart that the earthquake that 
 
 1 We may suppose that the exhalations were similar in effect to those of 
 the Grotia del Cane. 
 
170 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 sixteen years ago shook this city to its solid base, was but the 
 forerunner of more deadly doom. The walls of Pompeii are 
 built above the fields of the Dead, and the rivers of the sleep. 
 less Hell. Be warned and fly!” 
 
 “Witch, I thank thee for thy care of one not ungrateful. 
 On yon table stands a cup of gold; take it, itisthine. Idreamt 
 not that there lived one, out of the priesthood of Isis, who 
 would have saved Arbaces from destruction. The signs thou 
 hast seen in the bed of the extinct volcano,” continued the 
 Egyptian, musingly, “surely tell of some coming danger to the 
 city; perhaps another earthquake fiercer than the last. Be 
 that as it may, there is a new reason for my hastening from 
 these walls. After this day I will prepare my departure. 
 Daughter of Etruria, whither wendest thou ? ” 
 
 “JT shall cross over to Herculaneum this day, and, wander- 
 ing thence along the coast, shall seek out anew home. I am 
 friendless; my two companions, the fox and the snake, are 
 dead. Great Hermes, thou hast promised me twenty addi- 
 tional years of life!” 
 
 “Ay,” said the Egyptian, “I have promised thee. But 
 woman,” he added, lifting himself upon his arm, and gaz- 
 ing curiously on her face, “tell me, I pray thee, wherefore 
 thou wishest to live? What sweets dost thou discover in 
 existence ? ” 
 
 “Tt is not life that is sweet, but death that is awful,” replied 
 the hag, in a sharp, impressive tone, that struck forcibly upon 
 the heart of the vain star-seer. He winced at the truth of the 
 reply; and, no longer anxious to retain so uninviting a com- 
 panion, he said: “Time wanes; I must prepare for the solemn 
 spectacle of this day. Sister, farewell! enjoy thyself as thou 
 canst over the ashes of life.” 
 
 The hag, who had placed the costly gift of Arbaces in the 
 loose folds of her vest, now rose to depart. When she had 
 gained the door she paused, turned back, and said, “This may 
 be the last time we meet on earth; but whither flieth the 
 flame when it leaves the ashes ? Wandering to and fro, up and 
 down, as an exhalation on the morass, the flame may be seen in 
 the marshes of the !ake below; and the witch and the Magian, 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 171 
 
 the pupil and the master, the great one and the accursed one, 
 may meet again. Farewell!” 
 
 “Out, croaker!” muttered Arbaces, as the door closed on 
 the hag’s tattered robes; and, impatient of his own thoughts, 
 not yet recovered from the past dream, he hastily summoned 
 his slaves. 
 
 It was the custom to attend the ceremonials of the amphi- 
 theatre in festive robes, and Arbaces arrayed himself that day 
 with more than usual care. His tunic was of the most daz- 
 zling white; his many fibula were formed from the most: 
 precious stones; over his tunic flowed a loose Eastern robe, 
 half-gown, half-mantle, glowing in the richest hues of the 
 Tyrian dye; and the sandals, that reached half-way up the 
 knee, were studded with gems and inlaid with gold. In the 
 quackeries that belonged to his priestly genius, Arbaces never 
 neglected, on great occasions, the arts which dazzle and impose 
 upon the vulgar; and on this day, that was forever to release 
 him, by the sacrifice of Glaucus, from the fear of a rival and 
 the chance of detection, he felt that he was arraying himself 
 as for a triumph or a nuptial feast. 
 
 It was customary for men of rank to be accompanied to the 
 shows of the amphitheatre by a procession of their slaves and 
 freedmen; and the long “family” of Arbaces were already 
 arranged in order, to attend the litter of their lord. . 
 
 Only, to their great chagrin, the slaves in attendance on 
 Tone, and the worthy Sosia, as jailer to Nydia, were con- 
 demned to remain at home. 
 
 ‘“Oallias,” said Arbaces, apart to his freedman, who was 
 buckling on his girdle, “I am weary of Pompeii; I propose 
 to quit it in three days, should the wind favor. Thou knowest 
 the vessel that lies in the harbor, which belonged to Narses 
 of Alexandria; I have purchased it of him. The day after 
 to-morrow we shall begin to remove my stores.” 
 
 “So soon! ’Tis well. Arbaces shall be obeyed; and his 
 ward, Jone?” 
 
 «“ Accompanies me. Enough! Is the morning fair?” 
 
 “Dim and oppressive ; it will probably be intensely hot in 
 the forenoon.” 
 
172 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 “The poor gladiators, and more wretched criminals! De- 
 scend, and see that the slaves are marshalled.” 
 
 Left alone, Arbaces stepped into his chamber of study, and 
 thence upon the portico without. He saw the dense masses 
 of men pouring fast into the amphitheatre, and heard the ery 
 of the assistants and the cracking of the cordage, as they were 
 straining aloft the huge awning under which the citizens, 
 molested by no discomforting ray, were to behold, at luxurious 
 ease, the agonies of their fellow-creatures. Suddenly a wild, 
 strange sound went forth, and as suddenly died away: it was 
 the roar of the lion. There was a silence in the distant crowd; 
 but the silence was followed by joyous laughter: they were 
 making merry at the hungry impatience of the royal beast. 
 
 “ Brutes!”? muttered the disdainful Arbaces, “are ye less 
 homicides thanIam? J slay but in self-defence; ye make 
 murder pastime.” . 
 
 He turned with a restless and curious eye towards Vesuvius. 
 Beautifully glowed the green vineyards round its breast, and 
 tranquil as eternity lay in the breathless skies the form of the 
 mighty hill. 
 
 “We have time yet, if the earthquake be nursing,” thought 
 Arbaces; and he turned from the spot. He passed by the 
 table which bore his mystic scrolls and Chaldean calculations. 
 
 “ August art,” he thought, “I have not consulted thy decrees 
 since I passed the danger and the crisis they foretold. What 
 matter? I know that henceforth all in my path is bright and 
 smooth. Have not events already proved it? Away, doubt; 
 away, pity! Reflect, O my heart, reflect, for the future, but 
 two images !— Empire and lone! ” 
 
On Ory, 
 Me OL Pare 
 ie 
 
 j 
 fe, 
 Wg 
 
 ey) 
 iG) 
 
‘THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 173 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE AMPHITHEATRE. 
 
 NyprA, assured by the account of Sosia, on his return home, 
 and satisfied that her letter was in the hands of Sallust, gave 
 herself up once more to hope. Sallust would surely lose no 
 time in seeking the pretor, in coming to the house of the 
 Egyptian, in releasing her, in breaking the prison of Calenus. 
 That very night Glaucus would be free. Alas! the night 
 passed; the dawn broke; she heard nothing but the hurried 
 footsteps of the slaves along the hall and peristyle, and their 
 voices in preparation for the show. By and by the commanding 
 voice of Arbaces broke on her ear; a flourish ‘of music rang out 
 cheerily; the long procession were sweeping to the amphithe- 
 atre to glut their eyes on the death-pangs of the Athenian ! 
 
 The procession of Arbaces moved along slowly, and with 
 much solemnity, till now, arriving at the place where it was 
 necessary for such as came in litters or chariots to alight, 
 Arbaces descended from his vehicle, and proceeded to the 
 entrance by which the more distinguished spectators were 
 admitted. His slaves, mingling with the humbler crowd, were 
 stationed by officers who received their tickets (not much un- 
 like our modern opera ones), in places in the popularia (the 
 seats apportioned to the vulgar). And now, from the spot 
 where Arbaces sat, his eyes scanned the mighty and impatient 
 crowd that filled the stupendous theatre. 
 
 On the upper tier (but apart from the male spectators) sat 
 the women, their gay dresses resembling some gaudy flower- 
 bed; it is needless to add that they were the most talkative 
 part of the assembly ; and many were the looks directed up to 
 them, especially from the benches appropriated to the young 
 and the unmarried men. On the lower seats round the arena 
 sat the more high-born and wealthy visitors, the magistrates, 
 and those of senatorial or equestrian! dignity: the passages 
 
 1 The equites sat immediately behind the senators. 
 
174 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 which, by corridors at the right and left, gave access to these 
 seats, at either end of the oval arena, were also the entrances 
 for the combatants. Strong palings at these passages pre- 
 vented any unwelcome eccentricity in the movements of the 
 beasts, and confined them to their appointed prey. Around 
 the parapet which was raised above the arena, and from which 
 the seats gradually rose, were gladiatorial inscriptions, and 
 paintings wrought in fresco, typical of the entertainments for 
 which the place was designed. Throughout the whole building 
 wound invisible pipes, from which, as the day advanced, cool- 
 ing and fragrant showers were to be sprinkled over the spec- 
 tators. The officers of the amphitheatre were still employed 
 in the task of fixing the vast awning (or velaria) which covered 
 the whole, and which luxurious invention the Campanians 
 arrogated to themselves: it was woven of the whitest Apulian 
 wool, and variegated with broad stripes of crimson. Owing 
 either to some inexperience on the part of the workmen, or to 
 some defect in the machinery, the awning, however, was not 
 arranged that day so happily as usual: indeed, from the im- 
 mense space of the circumference, the task was always one of 
 great difficulty and art; so much so, that it could seldom be 
 adventured in rough or windy weather But the present day 
 was so remarkably still that there seemed to the spectators no 
 excuse for the awkwardness of the artificers; and when a 
 large gap in the back of the awning was still visible, from the 
 obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria to ally itself with 
 the rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud and general. 
 
 The zedile Pansa, at whose expense the exhibition was given, 
 looked particularly annoyed at the defect, and vowed bitter 
 vengeance on the head of the chief officer of the show, who, 
 fretting, puffing, perspiring, busied himself in idle orders and 
 unavailing threats. 
 
 The hubbub ceased suddenly, the operators desisted, the 
 crowd were stilled, the gap was forgotten; for now, with 
 a loud and warlike flourish of trumpets, the gladiators, mar- 
 shalled in ceremonious procession, entered the arena. They 
 swept round the oval space very slowly and deliberately, in 
 order to give the spectators full leisure to admire their stern 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL. 175 
 
 serenity of feature, their brawny limbs and various arms, as 
 well as to form such wagers as the excitement of the moment 
 might suggest. 
 
 “Oh,” cried the widow Fulvia to the wife of Pansa, as they 
 leaned down from their lofty bench, “do you see that gigantic 
 gladiator ? How drolly he is dressed!” 
 
 “Yes,” said the edile’s wife with complacent importance, 
 for she knew all the names and qualities of each combatant, 
 “he is a retiarius, or netter; he is armed only, you see, with 
 a three-pronged spear like a trident, and a net; he wears no 
 armor, only the fillet and the tunic. He is a mighty man, and 
 is to fight with Sporus, yon thick-set gladiator with the round 
 shield and drawn sword, but without body armor; he has not 
 his helmet on now, in order that you may see his face, — 
 how fearless it is! By and by he will fight with his visor 
 down.” 
 
 “ But surely a net and a spear are poor arms against a shield 
 and sword ?” 
 
 “That shows how innocent you are, my dear Fulvia; the 
 retiarius has generally the best of it.” 
 
 ‘But who is yon handsome gladiator, nearly naked, — is it 
 not quite improper ? By Venus! but his hmbs are beautifully 
 shaped!” 
 
 “Tt is Lydon, a young untried man! He has the rashness to 
 fight yon other gladiator similarly dressed, or rather undressed, 
 — Tetraides. They fight first in the Greek fashion, with the 
 cestus; afterwards they put on armor, and try sword and 
 shield.” 
 
 “He is a proper man, this Lydon; and the women, I am 
 sure, are on his side.” | 
 
 “So are not the experienced betters; Clodius offers three to 
 one against him.” 
 
 “Oh, Jove, how beautiful!” exclaimed the widow, as two 
 gladiators, armed cap-a-pie, rode round the arena on light and 
 prancing steeds. Resembling much the combatants in the 
 tilts of the Middle Ages, they bore lances and round. shields 
 beautifully inlaid: their armor was woven intricately with 
 bands of iron, but it covered only the thighs and the right 
 
176 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 arms; short cloaks, extending to the seat, gave a picturesque 
 and graceful air to their costume; their legs were naked, with 
 the exception of sandals, which were fastened a little above 
 the ankle. “Oh, beautiful! Who are these?” asked the 
 widow. 
 
 “The one is named Berbix,—he has conquered twelve 
 times; the other assumes the arrogant name of Nobilor. 
 They are both Gauls.” 
 
 While thus conversing, the first formalities of the show 
 were over. To these succeeded a feigned combat with wooden 
 swords between the various gladiators matched against each 
 other. Amongst these the skill of two Roman gladiators, 
 hired for the occasion, was the most admired; and next to 
 them the most graceful combatant was Lydon. This sham 
 contest did not last above an hour, nor did it attract any very 
 lively interest except among those connoisseurs of the arena to 
 whom art was preferable to more coarse excitement; the body 
 of the spectators were rejoiced when it was over, and when the 
 sympathy rose to terror. The combatants were now arranged 
 in pairs, as agreed beforehand, their weapons examined; and 
 the grave sports of the day commenced amidst the deepest 
 silence, broken only by an exciting and preliminary blast of 
 warlike music. 
 
 It was often customary to begin the sports by the most eruel 
 of all, and some lestiarius, or gladiator appointed to the beasts, 
 was slain first, as an initiatory sacrifice. But in the present 
 instance the experienced Pansa thought it better that the 
 sanguinary drama should advance, not decrease, in interest; 
 and accordingly the execution of Olinthus and Glaucus was 
 reserved for the last. It was arranged that the two horsemen 
 should first occupy the arena; that the foot gladiators, paired 
 off, should then be loosed indiscriminately on the stage; that 
 Glaucus and the lion should next perform their part in the 
 bloody spectacle, and the tiger and the Nazarene be the grand 
 finale. And in the spectacles of Pompeii the reader of 
 Roman history must limit his imagination, nor expect to find 
 those vast and wholesale exhibitions of magnificent slaughter 
 with which a Nero or a Caligula regaled the inhabitants of the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. LG 
 
 Imperial City. The Roman shows, which absorbed the more 
 celebrated gladiators and the chief proportion of foreign 
 beasts, were indeed the very reason why, in the lesser towns 
 of the empire, the sports of the amphitheatre were compara- 
 tively humane and rare; and in this, as in other respects, 
 Pompeii was but the miniature, the microcosm of Rome. Still, 
 it was an awful and imposing spectacle, with which modern 
 times have, happily, nothing to compare: a vast theatre, 
 rising row upon row, and swarming with human beings, from 
 fifteen to eighteen thousand in number, intent upon no ficti- 
 tious representation, no tragedy of the stage, but the actual 
 victory or defeat, the exultant life or the bloody death, of each 
 and all who entered the arena! 
 
 The two horsemen were now at either extremity of the lists 
 Gf so they might be called), and at a given signal from 
 Pansa the combatants started simultaneously as in full col- 
 lision, each advancing his round buckler, each poising on high 
 his light yet sturdy javelin; but just when within three paces 
 of his opponent, the steed of Berbix suddenly halted, wheeled 
 round, and, as Nobilior was borne rapidly by, his antagonist 
 spurred upon him. The buckler of Nobilior, quickly and skil- 
 fully extended, received a blow which otherwise would have 
 been fatal. 
 
 ‘Well done, Nobilior!” cried the pretor, giving the first 
 vent to the popular excitement. 
 
 “ Bravely struck, my Berbix!” answered Clodius from his 
 seat. 
 
 And the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed 
 from side to side. 
 
 The visors of both the horsemen were completely closed 
 (like those of the knights in after times), but the head was, 
 nevertheless, the great point of assault; and Nobilior, now 
 wheeling his charger with no less adroitness than his opponent, 
 directed his spear full on the helmet of his foe. Berbix raised 
 his buckler to shield himself, and his quick-eyed antagonist, 
 suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him through the breast. 
 Berbix reeled and fell. 
 
 “ Nobilior! Nobilior!” shouted the populace. 
 
 VOL. 11. — 12 
 
178 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “T fave lost ten sestertia,’”’! said Clodius, between his teeth. 
 
 “ Habet / [he has it!]” said Pansa, deliberately. 
 
 The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the 
 signal of mercy; but as the attendants of the arena ap- 
 proached, they found the kindness came too late; the heart 
 of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were set in death. 
 It was his life’s blood that flowed so darkly over the sand and 
 sawdust of the arena. 
 
 “Tt is a pity it was so soon over; there was little enough 
 for one’s trouble,” said the widow Fulvia. 
 
 “Yes; I have no compassion for Berbix. Any one might 
 have seen that Nobilior did but feint. Mark, they fix the fatal 
 hook to the body; they drag him away to the spoliarium; 
 they scatter new sand over the stage! Pansa regrets nothing 
 more than that he is not rich enough to strew the arena with 
 borax and cinnabar, as Nero used to do!” 
 
 “Well, if it has been a brief battle, it is quickly succeeded. 
 See my handsome Lydon on the arena; ay, and the net-bearer 
 too, and the swordsmen! Oh, charming!” 
 
 There were now on the arena six combatants: Niger and 
 his net, matched against Sporus with his shield and his short 
 broadsword ; Lydon and Tetraides, naked save by a cincture 
 round the waist, each armed only with a heavy Greek cestus ; 
 and two gladiators from Rome clad in complete steel, and 
 evenly matched with immense bucklers and pointed swords. 
 
 The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being 
 less deadly than that between the other combatants, no sooner 
 had they advanced to the middle of the arena than, as by 
 common consent, the rest held back, to see how that contest 
 should be decided, and wait till fiercer weapons might replace 
 the cestus, ere they themselves commenced hostilities. They 
 stood leaning on their arms and apart from each other, gazing 
 on the show, which, if not bloody enough thoroughly to please 
 the populace, they were still inclined to admire, because its 
 origin was of their ancestral Greece. 
 
 No person could, at first glance, have seemed less evenly 
 matched than the two antagonists. Tetraides, though not 
 
 1 A little more than £80. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 179 
 
 taller than Lydon, weighed considerably more; the natural 
 size of his muscles was increased, to the eyes of the vulgar, 
 by masses of solid flesh; for, as it was a notion that the con- 
 test of the cestus fared easiest with him who was plumpest, 
 Tetraides had encouraged to the utmost his hereditary pre- 
 disposition to the portly. His shoulders were vast, and his 
 lower limbs thick-set, double-jointed, and slightly curved out- 
 ward in that formation which takes so much from beauty 
 to give so largely to strength. But Lydon, except that he 
 was slender even almost to meagreness, was beautifully and 
 delicately proportioned ; and the skilful might have perceived 
 that, with much less compass of muscle than his foe, that 
 which he had was more seasoned,—iron and compact. In 
 proportion, too, as he wanted flesh, he was likely to possess 
 activity ; and a haughty smile on his resolute face, which 
 strongly contrasted the solid heaviness of his enemy’s, gave 
 assurance to those who beheld it, and united their hope to 
 their pity: so that, despite the disparity of their seeming 
 strength, the cry of the multitude was nearly as loud for 
 Lydon as for Tetraides. 
 
 Whoever is acquainted with the modern prize-ring — who- 
 ever has witnessed the heavy and disabling strokes which the 
 human fist, skilfully directed, hath the power to bestow — 
 may easily understand how much that happy facility would 
 be increased by a band carried by thongs of leather round the 
 arm as high as the elbow, and terribly strengthened about the 
 knuckles by a plate of iron, and sometimes a plummet of lead. 
 Yet this, which was meant to increase, perhaps rather dimin- 
 ished, the interest of the fray; for it necessarily shortened its 
 duration. A very few blows, successfully and scientifically 
 planted, might suffice to bring the contest to a close; and the 
 battle did not, therefore, often allow full scope for the energy, 
 fortitude, and dogged perseverance that we technically style 
 pluck, which not unusually wins the day against superior sci- 
 ence, and which heightens to so painful a delight the interest 
 in the battle and the sympathy for the brave. 
 
 “Guard thyself!” growled Tetraides, moving nearer and 
 nearer to his foe, who rather shifted round him than receded. 
 
180 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 Lydon did not answer, save by a scornful glance of his: 
 quick, vigilant eye. Tetraides struck: it was as the blow of 
 a smith on a vice; Lydon sank suddenly on one knee, — the 
 blow passed over his head. Notso harmless was Lydon’s re- 
 taliation: he quickly sprung to his feet, and aimed his cestus 
 full on the broad breast of his antagonist. Tetraides reeled; 
 the populace shouted. 
 
 “You are unlucky to-day,” said Lepidus to Clodius: “you 
 have lost one bet; you will lose another.” 
 
 “ By the gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the 
 case. I have no less thana hundred sestertia? upon Tetraides. 
 Ha, ha! see how he rallies! That was a home stroke; he has 
 cut open Lydon’s shoulder. A Tetraides! a Tetraides !” 
 
 “ But Lydon is not disheartened. By Pollux! how well he 
 keeps his temper! See how dexterously he avoids those 
 hammer-like hands,—dodging now here, now there, — cir- 
 cling round and round! Ah, poor Lydon! he has it again.” 
 
 “Three to one still on Tetraides! What say you, Lepidus?” 
 
 “Well, nine sestertia to three —be it so! What! again, 
 Lydon? He stops—he gasps for breath. By the gods, he 
 is down! No, he is again on his legs. Brave Lydon! 
 Tetraides is encouraged; he laughs loud; he rushes on 
 him.” 
 
 ‘Fool ! success blinds him: he should be cautious. Lydon’s 
 eye is like a lynx’s!” said Clodius, between his teeth. 
 
 “Ha, Clodius! saw you that ? Your man totters! Another 
 blow; he falls — he falls!” 
 
 ‘¢ Harth revives him, then. He is once more up; but the 
 blood rolls down his face.” 
 
 “By the thunderer! Lydon wins it. See how he presses on 
 him! That blow on the temple would have crushed an ox; 
 it has crushed Tetraides. He falls again; he cannot move: 
 habet! habet!” 
 
 “ Habet /” repeated Pansa. “Take them out and give them 
 the armor and swords.” 
 
 “Noble editor,” said the officers, “we fear that Tetraides 
 will not recover in time; howbeit, we will try.” 
 
 1 Above £800. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 181 
 
 “Do so.” 
 
 In a few minutes the officers who had dragged off the 
 stunned and insensible gladiator, returned with rueful counte- 
 nances. They feared for his life; he was utterly incapacitated 
 from re-entering the arena. 
 
 “In that case,”’ said Pansa, “hold Lydon a subditius ; and 
 the first gladiator that is vanquished, let Lydon supply his 
 place with the victor.” 
 
 The people shouted their applause at this sentence: then 
 they again sunk into deep silence. The trumpet sounded 
 loudly. The four combatants stood each against each in 
 prepared and stern array. 
 
 “Dost thou recognize the Romans, my Clodius? Are they 
 among the celebrated, or are they merely ordinarii? ” 
 
 “ Kumolpus is a good second-rate swordsman, my Lepidus. 
 Nepimus, the lesser man, I have never seen before; but he is 
 the son of one of the imperial jiscales,’ and brought up in a 
 proper school; doubtless they will show sport, but I have no 
 heart for the game; I cannot win back my money: I am un- 
 done. Curses on that Lydon! who could have supposed he 
 was so dexterous or so lucky ?” 
 
 “Well, Clodius, shall I take compassion on you, and accept 
 your own terms with these Romans ? ” 
 
 “ An even ten sestertia on Kumolpus, then?” 
 
 “ What! when Nepimus is untried? Nay, nay; that is too 
 bad.” 
 
 “ Well, ten to eight ?” 
 
 “ Aoreed.” 
 
 While the contest in the amphitheatre had thus commenced, 
 there was one in the loftier benches for whom it had assumed, 
 indeed, a poignant, a stifling interest. The aged father of 
 Lydon, despite his Christian horror of the spectacle, in his 
 agonized anxiety for his son had not been able to resist being 
 the spectator of his fate. One amidst a fierce crowd of 
 strangers—the lowest rabble of the populace—the old man 
 saw, felt nothing, but the form, the presence of his brave son! 
 _ Not a sound had escaped his lips when twice he had seen him 
 
 1 Gladiators maintained by the emperor. 
 
182 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 fall to the earth; only he had turned paler, and his limbs trem- 
 bled. But he had uttered one low cry when he saw him vic- 
 torious, unconscious, alas! of the more fearful battle to which 
 that victory was but a prelude. 
 
 “My gallant boy!” said he, and wiped his eyes. 
 
 “Ts he thy son?” said a brawny fellow to the right of the 
 Nazarene; “he has fought well: let us see how he does by and 
 by. Hark! he is to fight the first victor. Now, old boy, pray 
 the gods that that victor be neither of the Romans, nor, next 
 to them, the giant Niger!” 
 
 The old man sat down again and covered his face. The 
 fray for the moment was indifferent to him; Lydon was not 
 one of the combatants. Yet, yet the thought flashed across 
 him —the fray was indeed of deadly interest; the first who 
 fell was to make way for Lydon! He started, and bent 
 down, with straining eyes and clasped hands, te view the 
 encounter. 
 
 The first interest was attracted towards the combat of Niger 
 with Sporus; for this species of contest, from the fatal result 
 which usually attended it, and from the great science it re- 
 quired in either antagonist, was always peculiarly inviting to 
 the spectators. 
 
 They stood at a considerable distance from each other. The 
 singular helmet which Sporus wore (the visor of which was 
 down) concealed his face; but the features of Niger attracted 
 a fearful and universal interest from their compressed and 
 vigilant ferocity. Thus they stood for some moments, each 
 eying each, until Sporus began slowly, and with great caution, 
 to advance, holding his sword pointed, like a modern fencer’s, 
 at the breast of his foe. Niger retreated as his antagonist 
 advanced, gathering up his net with his right hand, and never 
 taking his small glittering eye from the movements of the 
 swordsman. Suddenly when Sporus had approached nearly 
 at arm’s length, the retiarius threw himself forward, and cast 
 his net. A quick inflection of body saved the gladiator from 
 the deadly snare! He uttered a sharp ery of joy and rage, and 
 rushed upon Niger: but Niger had already drawn in his net, 
 thrown it across his shoulders, and now fled round the lists 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 183 
 
 with a swiftness which the secufor! in vain endeavored to 
 equal. The people laughed and shouted aloud, to see the 
 ineffectual efforts of the broad-shouldered gladiator to over- 
 take the flying giant: when, at that moment, their attention 
 was turned from these to the two Roman combatants. 
 
 They had placed themselves at the onset face to face, at the 
 distance of modern fencers from each other: but the extreme 
 caution which both evinced at first had prevented any warmth 
 of engagement, and allowed the spectators full leisure to 
 interest themselves in the battle between Sporus and his 
 foe. But the Romans were now heated into full and fierce 
 encounter: they pushed, returned, advanced on, retreated from, 
 each other with all that careful yet scarcely perceptible 
 caution which characterizes men well experienced and equally 
 matched. But at this moment Eumolpus, the elder gladiator, 
 by that dexterous back-stroke which was considered in the 
 arena so difficult to avoid, had wounded Nepimus in the side. 
 The people shouted ; Lepidus turned pale. 
 
 “Ho!” said Clodius, “the game is nearly over. If Eumol- 
 pus fights now the quiet fight, the other will gradually bleed 
 himself away.” 
 
 “But, thank the gods! he does not fight the backward 
 fight. See! he presses hard upon Nepimus. By Mars! but 
 Nepimus had him there! the helmet rang again! Clodius, I 
 shall win!” 
 
 “Why do I ever bet but at the dice?” groaned Clodius to 
 himself; “or why cannot one cog a gladiator ?” 
 
 “A Sporus! a Sporus!” shouted the populace, as Niger, 
 having now suddenly paused, had again cast his net, and 
 again unsuccessfully. He had not retreated this time with 
 sufficient agility; the sword of Sporus had inflicted a se- 
 vere wound upon his right leg; and, incapacitated to fly, 
 he was pressed hard by the fierce swordsman. His great 
 height and length of arm still continued, however, to give 
 him no despicable advantages; and steadily keeping his tri- 
 
 1 So called, from the office of that tribe of gladiators, in following the foe 
 the moment the net was cast, in order to smite him ere he could have time to 
 rearrange it. 
 
184. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 dent at the front of his foe, he repelled him successfully for. 
 several minutes. Sporus now tried, by great rapidity of evo- 
 lution, to get round his antagonist, who necessarily moved 
 with pain and slowness. In so doing, he lost his caution, he 
 advanced too near to the giant, raised his arm to strike, 
 and received the three points of the fatal spear full in his 
 breast! He sank on his knee. In a moment more the deadly 
 net was cast over him, he struggled against its messes in vain; 
 again — again — again he writhed mutely beneath the fresh 
 strokes of the trident; his blood flowed fast through the net 
 and redly over the sand. He lowered his arms in acknowl- 
 edgment of defeat. 
 
 The conquering retiarius withdrew his net, and leaning on 
 his spear, looked to the audience for their judgment. Slowly, 
 too, at the same moment the vanquished gladiator rolled his 
 dim and despairing eyes around the theatre. From row to 
 row, from bench to bench, there glared upon him but merciless 
 and unpitying eyes. 
 
 Hushed was the roar, the murmur! The silence was dread, 
 for in it was no sympathy; not a hand —no, not even a 
 woman’s hand — gave the signal of charity and life! Sporus 
 had never been popular in the arena; and lately the interest 
 of the combat had been excited on behalf of the wounded 
 Niger. The people were warmed into blood: the mimic fight 
 had ceased to charm; the interest had mounted up to the de- 
 sire of sacrifice and the thirst of death! 
 
 The gladiator felt that his doom was sealed: he uttered no 
 prayer, no groan. The people gave the signal of death! In 
 dogged but agonized submission he bent his neck to receive 
 the fatal stroke. And now, as the spear of the retiarius was not 
 a weapon to inflict instant and certain death, there stalked into 
 the arena a grim and fatal form, brandishing a short, sharp 
 sword, and with features utterly concealed beneath its visor. 
 With slow and measured steps this dismal headsman ap- 
 proached the gladiator, still kneeling, laid the left hand on his 
 humbled crest, drew the edge of the blade across his neck, 
 turned round to the assembly, lest, in the last moment, remorse 
 ’ should come upon them ; the dread signal continued the same: 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 185 
 
 the blade glittered brightly in the air, fell, and the gladiator 
 rolled upon the sand; his limbs quivered, were still: he was 
 a corpse.? | 
 
 His body was dragged at once from the arena through the 
 gate of death, and thrown into the gloomy den termed tech- 
 nically the spoliarium; and ere it had well reached that des- 
 tination the strife between the remaining combatants was 
 decided. The sword of Eumolpus had inflicted the death- 
 wound upon the less experienced combatant. A new victim 
 was added to the receptacle of the slain. 
 
 Throughout that mighty assembly there now ran a univer- 
 sal movement; the people breathed more freely, and resettled 
 themselves in their seats. A grateful shower was cast over 
 every row from the concealed conduits. In cool and luxurious 
 pleasure they talked over the late spectacle of blood. Jumol- 
 pus removed his helmet, and wiped his brows ; his close-curled 
 hair and short beard, his noble Roman features and bright 
 dark eye attracted the general admiration. He was fresh, 
 unwounded, unfatigued. 
 
 The editor paused, and proclaimed aloud that, as Niger’s 
 wound disabled him from again entering the arena, Lydon was 
 to be the successor to the slaughtered Nepimus, and the new 
 combatant of Eumolpus. 
 
 “Yet, Lydon,” added he, “if thou wouldst decline the com- 
 bat with one so brave and tried, thou mayst have full liberty 
 to do so. Eumolpus is not the antagonist that was originally 
 decreed for thee. Thou knowest best how far thou canst cope 
 with him. If thou failest, thy doom is honorable death; if 
 thou conquerest, out of my own purse I will double the 
 stipulated prize.” 
 
 The people shouted applause. Lydon stood in the lists; he 
 gazed around; high above he beheld the pale face, the strain- 
 ing eyes, of his father. He turned away irresolute for a 
 moment. No! the conquest of the cestus was not sufficient : 
 he had not yet won the prize of victory; his father was still 
 a slave ! 
 
 1 See the engraving from the friezes of Pompeii, in the work on that city 
 published in the “ Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” vol. ii. p. 211. 
 
186 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Noble sdile!” he replied, in a firm and deep tone, “I 
 shrink not from this combat. For the honor of Pompeii I de- 
 mand that one trained by its long-celebrated lanista shall do 
 battle with this Roman.” 
 
 The people shouted louder than before. 
 
 “Four to one against Lydon!” said Clodius to Lepidus. 
 
 “T would not take twenty to one! Why, Eumolpus is a 
 very Achilles, and this poor fellow is but a tira /” 
 
 Eumolpus gazed hard on the face of Lydon; he smiled: 
 yet the smile was followed by a slight and scarce audible 
 sigh, a touch of compassionate emotion, which custom con- 
 quered the moment the heart acknowledged it. 
 
 And now both, clad in complete armor, the sword drawn, 
 the visor closed, the two last combatants of the arena (ere 
 man, at least, was matched with beast) stood opposed to each 
 other. 
 
 It was just at this time that a letter was delivered to the pre- 
 tor by one of the attendants of the arena: he removed the cinc- 
 ture, glanced over it for a moment; his countenance betrayed 
 surprise and embarrassment. He re-read the letter, and then 
 muttering, “Tush, it is impossible! the man must be drunk, 
 even in the morning, to dream of such follies!” threw it care- 
 lessly aside, and gravely settled himself once more in the 
 attitude of attention to the sports. 
 
 The interest of the public was wound up very high. Eumol- 
 pus had at first won their favor; but the gallantry of Lydon, 
 and his well-timed allusion to the honor of the Pompeian 
 lanista, had afterwards given the latter the preference in their 
 eyes. 
 
 “ Holla, old fellow!” said Medon’s neighbor to him, “your 
 son is hardly matched ; but never fear, the editor will not per- 
 mit him to be slain, —no, nor the people neither; he has be- 
 haved too bravely for that. Ha! that was a home thrust! 
 well averted, by Pollux! At him again, Lydon! They stop 
 to breathe! What art thou muttering, old boy ?” 
 
 “ Prayers!” answered Medon, with a more calm and hopeful 
 mien than he had yet maintained. 
 
 “Prayers! trifles! The time for gods to carry a man away 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 18T 
 
 in a cloud is gone now! Ha! Jupiter! what a blow! Thy 
 side, thy side! take care of thy side, Lydon!” 
 
 There was a convulsive tremor throughout the assembly. 
 A fierce blow from Eumolpus, full on the crest, had brought 
 Lydon to his knee. 
 
 “ Habet/ [he has it!]” cried a shrill female voice; “he 
 has it!” : 
 
 It was the voice of the girl who had so anxiously anticipated 
 the sacrifice of some criminal to the beasts. 
 
 “Be silent, child!” said the wife of Pansa, haughtily. Non 
 habet/ [he is no¢ wounded! ]” 
 
 “T wish he were, if only to spite old surly Medon,” muttered 
 the girl. 
 
 Meanwhile Lydon, who had hitherto defended himself with 
 great skill and valor, began to give way before the vigorous 
 assaults of the practised Roman; his arm grew tired, his eye 
 dizzy, he breathed hard and painfully. The combatants paused 
 again for breath. 
 
 “Young man,” said Kumolpus, in a low voice, “desist; I 
 will wound thee slightly, then lower thy arms; thou hast 
 propitiated the editor and the mob; thou wilt be honorably 
 saved !” 
 
 “ And my father still enslaved!” groaned Lydon to himself. 
 “No! death or his freedom!” 
 
 At that thought, and seeing that, his strength not being 
 equal to the endurance of the Roman, everything depended 
 on a sudden and desperate effort, he threw himself fiercely on 
 Eumolpus; the Roman warily retreated; Lydon thrust again ; 
 Eumolpus drew himself aside; the sword grazed his cuirass; 
 Lydon’s breast was exposed; the Roman plunged his sword 
 through the joints of the armor, not meaning, however, to 
 inflict a deep wound; Lydon, weak and exhausted, fell for- 
 ward, fell right on the point: it passed through and through, 
 even to the back. Eumolpus drew forth his blade; Lydon still 
 made an effort to regain his balance; his sword left his grasp; 
 he struck mechanically at the gladiator with his naked hand, 
 and fell prostrate on the arena. With one accord, editor and 
 assembly made the signal of mercy; the officers of the arena 
 
188 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 approached; they took off the helmet of the vanquished. He 
 still breathed; his eyes rolled fiercely on his foe; the savage- 
 ness he had acquired in his calling glared from his gaze, and 
 lowered upon the brow darkened already with the shades of 
 death; then, with a convulsive groan, with a half start, he 
 lifted his eyes above. They rested not on the face of the 
 editor nor on the pitying brows of his relenting judges. He 
 saw them not; they were as if the vast space was desolate and 
 bare; one pale agonizing face alone was all he recognized; 
 one cry of a broken heart was all that, amidst the murmurs 
 and the shouts of the populace, reached his ear. The ferocity 
 vanished from his brow; a soft, a tender expression of sanc- 
 tifying but despairing filial love played over his features, — 
 played, waned, darkened. His face suddenly became locked 
 and rigid, resuming its former fierceness. He fell upon the 
 earth. 
 
 ‘Look to him,” said the edile; “he has done his duty.” 
 
 The officers dragged him off to the spoliarium. 
 
 “ A true type of glory and of its fate!” murmured Arbaces 
 to himself; and his eye, glancing round the amphitheatre, 
 betrayed so much of disdain and scorn, that whoever encoun- 
 tered it felt his breath suddenly arrested, and his emotions 
 frozen into one sensation of abasement and of awe. 
 
 Again rich perfumes were wafted around the theatre; the 
 attendants sprinkled fresh sand over the arena. 
 
 “Bring forth the hon and Glaucus the Athenian,” said the 
 editor. 
 
 And a deep and breathless hush of overwrought interest, 
 and intense (yet, strange to say, not unpleasing) terror lay, 
 like a mighty and awful dream, over the assembly. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEI. 189 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 SALLUST AND NYDIA’S LETTER. 
 
 Turick had Sallust awakened from his morning sleep, and 
 thrice, recollecting that his friend was that day to perish, had 
 he turned himself with a deep sigh once more to court obliv- 
 ion. His sole object in life was to avoid pain; and where he 
 could not avoid, at least to forget it. 
 
 At length, unable any longer to steep his conscience in 
 slumber, he raised himself from his recumbent posture, and 
 discovered his favorite freedman sitting by his bedside as 
 usual; for Sallust, who, as I have said, had a gentlemanlike 
 taste for the polite letters, was accustomed to be read to for 
 an hour or so previous to his rising in the morning. 
 
 “No books to-day! no more Tibullus! no more Pindar for 
 me! Pindar! alas, alas! the very name recalls those games 
 to which our arena is the savage successor. Has it begun, — 
 the amphitheatre ? Are its rites commenced ?” 
 
 “Tong since, O Sallust! Did you not hear the trumpets and 
 the trampling feet ? ” 
 
 “ Ay, ay; but the gods be thanked, I was drowsy, and had 
 only to turn round to fall asleep again.” 
 
 “The gladiators must have been long in the ring.” 
 
 “The wretches! None of my people have gone to the 
 spectacle ?” 
 
 “ Assuredly not; your orders were too strict.” 
 
 “That is well; would the day were over! What is that 
 letter yonder on the table ?” 
 
 “That! Oh, the letter brought to you last night, when you 
 were too — too —” 
 
 “ Drunk to read it, I suppose. No matter, it cannot be of 
 much importance.” 
 
 “ Shall I open it for you, Sallust ? ” 
 
 “Do: anything to divert my thoughts. Poor Glaucus!” 
 
190 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 The freedman opened the letter. “What! Greek?” said 
 he: “Some learned lady, I suppose.” He glanced over the 
 letter, and for some moments the irregular lines traced by the 
 blind girl’s hand puzzled him. Suddenly, however, his coun- 
 tenance exhibited emotion and surprise. ‘Good gods! noble 
 Sallust! what have we done not to attend to this before? 
 Hear me read! 
 
 ‘“¢ Nydia, the slave, to Sallust, the friend of Glaucus. I am a pris- 
 oner in the house of Arbaces. Hasten to the pretor! procure my re- 
 lease, and we shall yet save Glaucus from the lion. There is another 
 prisoner within these walls, whose witness can exonerate the Athenian 
 from the charge against him; one who saw the crime, who ean prove 
 the criminal in a villain hitherto unsuspected. Fly! hasten! quick! 
 quick! Bring with you armed men, lest resistance be made, and a 
 cunning and dexterous smith; for the dungeon of my fellow-prisoner is 
 thick and strong. Oh! by thy right hand, and thy father’s ashes, lose 
 not a moment!’” 
 
 “Great Jove!” exclaimed Sallust, starting, “and this day 
 —nay, within this hour, perhaps, he dies. What is to be 
 done? I will instantly to the pretor.” 
 
 “Nay; not so. The pretor (as well as Pansa, the editor 
 himself) is the creature of the mob; and the mob will not 
 hear of delay; they will not be balked in the very moment 
 of expectation. Besides, the publicity of the appeal would 
 forewarn the cunning Egyptian. It is evident that he has 
 some interest in these concealments. No; fortunately, thy 
 slaves are in thy house,” 
 
 “‘T seize thy meaning,” interrupted Sallust; “arm the slaves 
 instantly. The streets are empty. We will ourselves hasten 
 to the house of Arbaces and release the prisoners, Quick! 
 quick! What ho! Davus there! My gown and sandals, 
 the papyrus and a reed. I will write to the pretor, to be- 
 seech him to delay the sentence of Glaucus, for that, within 
 an hour, we may yet prove him innocent. So, so; that is 
 
 1 The reed (calamus) was used for writing on papyrus and parchment ; 
 the stilus for writing on waxen tablets, plates of metal, etc. Letters were 
 written sometimes on tablets, sometimes on papyrus. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 191 
 
 well. Hasten with this, Davus, to the pretor, at the amphi- 
 theatre. See it given to his own hand. Now then, O ye 
 gods! whose providence Epicurus denied, befriend me, and I 
 will call Epicurus a liar!” 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE AMPHITHEATRE ONCE MORE. 
 
 Guavucus and Olinthus had been placed together in that 
 gloomy and narrow cell in which the criminals of the arena 
 awaited their last and fearful struggle. Their eyes, of late 
 accustomed to the darkness, scanned the faces of each other 
 in this awful hour, and by that dim light, the paleness, which 
 chased away the natural hues from either cheek, assumed a yet 
 more ashy and ghastly whiteness. Yet their brows were erect 
 and dauntless, their limbs did not tremble, their lips were 
 compressed and rigid. The religion of the one, the pride of 
 the other, the conscious innocence of both, and, it may be, the 
 support derived from their mutual companionship, elevated the 
 victim into the hero. , 
 
 “Hark! hearest thou that shout? They are growling over 
 their human blood,” said Olinthus. | 
 
 “T hear; my heart grows sick; but the gods support me.” 
 
 “The gods! Orash young man! in this hour recognize only 
 the One God. Have I not taught thee in the dungeon, wept 
 for thee, prayed for thee? In my zeal and in my agony, have 
 I not thought more of thy salvation than my own?” 
 
 “Brave friend!” answered Glaucus, solemnly, “I have lis- 
 tened to thee with awe, with wonder, and with a secret tendency 
 towards conviction. Had our lives been spared, I might grad- 
 ually have weaned myself from the tenets of my own faith, 
 and inclined to thine; but, in this last hour it were a craven 
 thing, and a base, to yield to hasty terror what should only be 
 the result of lengthened meditation. Were I to embrace thy 
 creed, and cast down my father’s gods, should I not be bribed 
 
192 THE LASI #AYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 by thy promise of heaven, or awed by thy threats of hell? 
 Olinthus, no! Think we of each other with equal charity, — 
 I honoring thy sincerity, thou pitying my blindness or my obs 
 durate courage. As have been my deeds, such will be my re. 
 ward; and the Power or Powers above will not judge harshly 
 of human error when it is linked with honesty of purpose and 
 truth of heart. Speak we no more of this. Hush! Dost thou 
 hear them drag yon heavy body through the passage ? Such 
 as that clay will be ours soon.” 
 
 “OQ Heaven! O Christ! already I behold ye!” cried the 
 fervent Olinthus, lifting up his hands; “I tremble not: I 
 rejoice that the prison-house shall be soon broken.” 
 
 Glaucus bowed his head in silence. He felt the distinction 
 between his fortitude and that of his fellow-sufferer. The 
 heathen did not tremble; but the Christian exulted. 
 
 The door swung gratingly back, the gleam of spears shot 
 along the walls. 
 
 ‘“Glaucus the Athenian, thy time has come,” said a loud and 
 clear voice; “the lion awaits thee.” 
 
 “Tam ready,” said the Athenian. “Brother and co-mate, 
 one last embrace! Bless me, and farewell!” 
 
 The Christian opened his arms; he clasped the young heathen 
 to his breast; he kissed his forehead and cheek; he sobbed’ 
 aloud; his tears flowed fast and hot over the features of his 
 new friend. 
 
 “Oh, could I have converted thee, I had not wept! Oh, 
 that I might say to thee, ‘We two shall sup this night in 
 Paradise ’ !” 
 
 “Tt may be so yet,” answered the Greek, with a tremulous 
 voice. “They whom death part not, may meet yet beyond the 
 erave: on the earth, on the beautiful, the beloved earth, fare- 
 well forever! Worthy officer, I attend you.” 
 
 Glaucus tore himself away; and when he came forth into 
 the air, its breath, which, though sunless, was hot and arid, 
 smote witheringly upon him. His frame, not yet restored 
 from the effects of the deadly draught, shrank and trembled. 
 The officers supported him. 
 
 “Courage!” said one; “thou art young, active, well-knit. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 193 
 
 They give thee a weapon! despair not, and thou mayst yet 
 conquer.” 
 
 Glaucus did not reply; but, ashamed of his infirmity, he 
 made a desperate and convulsive effort, and regained the firm- 
 ness of his nerves. They anointed his body, completely naked, 
 save by a cincture round his loins, placed the stilus (vain 
 weapon !) in his hand, and led him into the arena. 
 
 And now when the Greek saw the eyes of thousands and 
 tens of thousands upon him, he no longer felt that be was 
 mortal. All evidence of fear, all fear itself, was gone. A red 
 and haughty flush spread over the paleness of his features; be 
 towered aloft to the full of his glorious stature. In the elastie 
 beauty of his limbs and form, in his intent but unfrowning 
 brow, in the high disdain, and in the indomitable soul, which 
 breathed visibly, which spoke audibly, from his attitude, his 
 lip, his eye, he seemed the very incarnation, vivid and corpo- 
 real, of the valor of his land, of the divinity of its worship, 
 at once a hero and a god! 
 
 The murmur of hatred and horror at his crime, which had 
 greeted his entrance, died into the silence of involuntary ad- 
 miration and half-compassionate respect; and with a quick 
 and convulsive sigh, that seemed to move the whole mass of 
 life as if it were one body, the gaze of the spectators turned 
 from the Athenian to a dark uncouth object in the centre of 
 the arena. It was the grated den of the lion! 
 
 “By Venus, how warm it is!” said Fulvia; “yet there’ is 
 no sun. Would that those stupid sailors! could have fastened 
 up that gap in the awning!” 
 
 “Oh, it is warm, indeed! I turn sick, I faint!” said the 
 wife of Pansa: even her experienced stoicism giving way at 
 the struggle about to take place. 
 
 The lion had been kept without food for twenty-four hours, 
 and the animal had, during the whole morning, testified a sin- 
 gular and restless uneasiness, which the keeper had attributed 
 to the pangs of hunger. Yet its bearing seemed rather that 
 of fear than of rage; its roar was painful and distressed; it 
 
 1 Sailors were generally employed in fastening the velaria of the amphi 
 theatre. 
 
 VOL. 11.—138 
 
194 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 hung its head, snuffed the air through the bars, then lay down, 
 started again, and again uttered its wild and far-resounding 
 cries. And now, in its den, it lay utterly dumb and mute, 
 with distended nostrils forced hard against the grating, and 
 disturbing, with a heavy breath, the sand below on the arena. 
 
 The editor’s lip quivered, and his cheek grew pale; he 
 looked anxiously around, hesitated, delayed; the crowd became 
 impatient. Slowly he gave the signal; the keeper, who was 
 behind the den, cautiously removed the grating, and the lion 
 Jeaped forth with a mighty and glad roar of release. The 
 keeper hastily retreated through the grated passage leading 
 from the arena, and left the lord of the forest —and his prey. 
 
 Glaucus had bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest 
 posture at the expected rush of the lion, with his small and 
 shining weapon raised on high, in the faint hope that one well- 
 directed thrust (for he knew that he should have time but for 
 one) might penetrate through the eye to the brain of his grim 
 foe. 
 
 But, to the unutterable astonishment of all, the beast seemed 
 not even aware of the presence of the criminal. 
 
 At the first moment of its release it halted abruptly in the 
 arena, raised itself half on end, snuffing the upward air with 
 impatient sighs; then suddenly it sprang forward, but not on 
 the Athenian. At half-speed it circled round and round the 
 space, turning its vast head from side to side with an anxious 
 and perturbed gaze, as if seeking only some avenue of escape; 
 once or twice it endeavored to leap up the parapet that divided 
 it from the audience, and, on failing, uttered rather a baffled 
 howl than its deep-toned and kingly roar. It evinced no sign, 
 either of wrath or hunger; its tail drooped along the sand, in- 
 stead of lashing its gaunt sides; and its eye, though it wan- 
 dered at times to Glaucus, rolled again listlessly from him. 
 At length, as if tired of attempting to escape, it crept with a 
 moan into its cage, and once more laid itself down to rest. 
 
 The first surprise of the assembly at the apathy of the lion 
 soon grew converted into resentment at its cowardice; and the 
 populace already merged their pity for the fate of Glaucus into 
 angry compassion for their own disappointment. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 195 
 
 The editor called to the keeper. 
 
 “How is this? Take the goad, prick him forth, aha then 
 close the door of the den.” 
 
 As the keeper, with some fear, but more astonishment, was 
 preparing to obey, a loud cry was heard at one of the entrances 
 of the arena; there was a confusion, a bustle, voices of remon- 
 strance suddenly breaking forth, and suddenly silenced at the 
 reply. All eyes turned in wonder, at the interruption, towards 
 the quarter of the disturbance; the crowd gave way, and 
 suddenly Sallust appeared on the senatorial benches, his hair 
 dishevelled, breathless, heated, half exhausted. He cast his 
 eyes hastily around the ring. “Remove the Athenian,” he 
 eried: “haste, he is innocent! Arrest Arbaces the Egyptian : 
 HE is the murderer of Apezcides !” 
 
 “ Art thou mad, O Sallust!” said the pretor, rising from 
 his seat. “ What means this raving ? ” 
 
 “Remove the Athenian! Quick! or his blood be on your 
 head. Preetor, delay, and you answer with your own life to 
 the emperor! I bring with me the eye-witness to the death 
 of the priest Apzcides. Room there! stand back! give 
 way! People of Pompeii, fix every eye upon Arbaces: there 
 he sits! Room there for the priest Calenus !” 
 
 Pale, haggard, fresh from the jaws of famine and of death, 
 his face fallen, his eyes dull as a vulture’s, his broad frame 
 gaunt as a skeleton, Calenus was supported into the very row 
 in which Arbaces sat. His releasers had given him sparingly 
 of food; but the chief sustenance that nerved his feeble limbs 
 was revenge! 
 
 “The priest Calenus! Calenus!” cried the mob, “Js it 
 he? No, it isa dead man!” 
 
 “‘ Tt 7s the priest Calenus,” said the preetor, gravely. “ What 
 hast thou to say ?” 
 
 “ Arbaces of Egypt is the murderer of Apzecides, the priest 
 of Isis; these eyes saw him deal the blow. It is from the 
 dungeon into which he plunged me, it is from the darkness 
 and horror of a death by famine, that the gods have raised 
 me to proclaim his crime! Release the Athenian —he is 
 innocent !” 
 
196 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 “Tt is for this, then, that the lion spared him. A miracle! 
 a miracle!” cried Pansa. | 
 
 “A miracle! a miracle!” shouted the people; “remove 
 the Athenian — Arbaces to the lion !” 
 
 And that shout echoed from hill to vale, from coast to sea, 
 “ Arbaces to the lion !” 
 
 ‘“‘ Officers, remove the accused Glaucus: remove, but guard 
 him yet,” said the pretor. “The gods lavish their wonders 
 upon this day.” 
 
 As the pretor gave the word of release, there was a cry of 
 joy, —a female voice, a child’s voice, and it was of joy! It 
 rang through the heart of the assembly with electric force, — 
 it was touching, it was holy, that child’s voice! And the 
 populace echoed it back with sympathizing congratulation ! 
 
 “Silence!” said the grave preetor: “who is there?” 
 
 “The blind girl, Nydia,” answered Sallust; “itis her hand 
 that has raised Calenus from the grave, and delivered Glaucus 
 from the lion.” 
 
 “Of this hereafter,” said the preetor. ‘Calenus, priest of 
 Isis, thou accusest Arbaces of the murder of Apecides ?” 
 
 66 T do.” 
 
 “Thou didst behold the deed ?” 
 
 “Preetor, with these eyes —” 
 
 “ Knough at present ; the details must be reserved for more 
 suiting time and place. Arbaces of Egypt, thou hearest the 
 charge against thee; thou hast not yet spoken: what hast 
 thou to say ?” 
 
 The gaze of the crowd had been long riveted on Arbaces; 
 but not until the confusion which he had betrayed at the first 
 charge of Sallust and the entrance of Calenus had subsided. 
 At the shout, “Arbaces to the lion!” he had indeed trem- 
 bled, and the dark bronze of his cheek had taken a paler hue. 
 But he had soon recovered his haughtiness and self-control. 
 Proudly he returned the angry glare of the countless eyes 
 around him; and replying now to the question of the pretor, 
 he said, in that accent so peculiarly tranquil and commanding, 
 which characterized his tones, — 
 
 “Preetor, this charge is so mad that it scarcely deserves 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 197 
 
 reply. My first accuser is the noble Sallust, the most intimate 
 friend of Glaucus; my second is a priest: I revere his garb 
 and calling, but, people of Pompeii! ye know somewhat of 
 the character of Calenus; he is griping and gold-thirsty to a 
 proverb; the witness of such men is to be bought! Pretor, I 
 am innocent!” | 
 
 “ Sallust,” said the magistrate, “ where found you Calenus ? ” 
 
 “In the dungeons of Arbaces.” 
 
 “Heyptian,” said the pretor, frowning, “thou didst, then, 
 dare to imprison a priest of the gods: and wherefore ?” 
 
 “Hiear me,” answered Arbaces, rising calmly, but with 
 agitation visible in his face. “This man came to threaten 
 that he would make against me the charge he has now made, 
 unless I would purchase his silence with half my fortune: 
 I remonstrated, in vain. Peace there; let not the priest in- 
 terrupt me! Noble pretor, and ye, O people! I was a stranger 
 in the land; I knew myself innocent of crime, but the witness 
 of a priest against me might yet destroy me. In my perplexity 
 I decoyed him to the cell whence he has been released, on 
 pretence that it was the coffer-house of my gold. I resolved 
 to detain him there until the fate of the true criminal was 
 sealed, and his threats could avail no longer; but I meant no 
 worse. I may have erred, but who amongst ye will not ac- 
 knowledge the equity of self-preservation? Were I guilty, why 
 was the witness of this priest silent at the trial! Zhen I had not 
 detained or concealed him. Why did he not proclaim my guilt 
 when I proclaimed that of Glaucus? Pretor, this needs an 
 answer. For the rest, I throw myself on your laws. I demand 
 their protection. Remove hence the accused and the accuser. 
 I will willingly meet, and cheerfully abide by, the decision of 
 the legitimate tribunal. This is no place for further parley.” 
 
 “He says right,” said the pretor. “Ho! guards, remove 
 Arbaces, guard Calenus! Sallust, we hold you responsible for 
 your accusation. Let the sports be resumed.” 
 
 “What!” cried Calenus, turning round to the people, “shall 
 Tsis-be thus contemned? Shall the blood of Apacides yet 
 ery for vengeance? Shall justice be delayed now, that it may 
 be frustrated hereafter? Shall the lion be cheated of his 
 
198 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 lawful prey? A god! a god! I feel the god rush to my lips! 
 To the lion — to the lion with Arbaces !” 
 
 His exhausted frame could support no longer the ferocious 
 malice of the priest; he sank on the ground in strong con- 
 vulsions; the foam gathered to his mouth; he was as a man, 
 indeed, whom a supernatural power had entered. The people 
 saw and shuddered. 
 
 “Tt is a god that inspires the holy man! To the lion with 
 the Egyptian 1” 
 
 With that cry up sprang, on moved, thousands upon thou- 
 sands! They rushed from the heights; they poured down in 
 the direction of the Egyptian. In vain did the edile com- 
 mand; in vain did the pretor lift his voice and proclaim the 
 law. The people had been already rendered savage by the 
 exhibition of blood ;.they thirsted for more; their superstition 
 was aided by their ferocity. Aroused, inflamed by the spec- 
 tacle of their victims, they forgot the authority of their rulers. 
 It was one of those dread popular convulsions common to 
 crowds wholly ignorant, half free and half servile; and which 
 the peculiar constitution of the Roman provinces so frequently 
 exhibited. The power of the pretor was as a reed beneath 
 the whirlwind; still, at his word the guards had drawn them- 
 selves along the lower benches, on which the upper classes sat 
 separate from the vulgar. They made but a feeble barrier; 
 the waves of the human sea halted for a moment, to enable 
 Arbaces to count the exact moment of his doom! In despair, 
 and in a terror which beat down even pride, he glanced his 
 eyes over the rolling and rushing crowd, when, right above 
 them, through the wide chasm which had been left in the 
 velaria, he beheld a strange and awful apparition; he beheld, 
 and his craft restored his courage! 
 
 He stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and 
 royal features there came an expression of unutterable solem- 
 nity and command. 
 
 “Behold!” he shouted with a voice of thunder, which 
 stilled the roar of the crowd; “behold how the gods protect 
 the guiltless! The fires of the avenging Orcus burst forth 
 against the false witness of my accusers!” 
 
The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, 
 
 and beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapor shooting from 
 
 the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree,? . 
 
 the trunk, blackness, the branches, fire, —a fire that shifted 
 and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely 
 luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed 
 terrifically forth with intolerable glare. 
 
 There was a dead, heart-sunken silence, through which 
 there suddenly broke the roar of the lion, which was echoed 
 back from within the building by the sharper and _ fiercer 
 yells of its fellow-beast. Dread seers were they of the Bur- 
 den of the Atmosphere, and wild prophets of the wrath to 
 come ! 
 
 Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women ; 
 the men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that 
 moment they felt the earth shake beneath their feet; the 
 walls of the theatre trembled, and beyond in the distance 
 they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more and 
 the mountain-cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and 
 rapid, like a torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its 
 bosom a shower of ashes mixed with vast fragments of burn- 
 ing stone! Over the crushing vines, over the desolate 
 streets, over the amphitheatre itself, far and wide, with 
 many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell that awful 
 shower ! 
 
 No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces ; safety 
 for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly, — 
 each dashing, pressing, crushing, against the other. Tramp- 
 ling recklessly over the fallen, amidst groans, and oaths, and 
 
 prayers, and sudden shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited it- | 
 
 self forth through the numerous passages. Whither should 
 they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake, hastened 
 to their homes to load themselves with their more costly 
 goods, and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the 
 showers of ashes that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over 
 the streets, rushed under the roofs of the nearest houses, or 
 temples, or sheds, — shelter of any kind, — for protection from 
 
 1 Pliny. 
 
 ce 
 
 ‘ 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. ¢ 199 ) 
 
200 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 the terrors of the open air. But darker, and larger, and 
 mightier, spread the cloud above them. It was a sudden 
 and more ghastly Night rushing upon the realm of Noon! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CELL OF THE PRISONER AND THE DEN OF THE DEAD. —~ 
 GRIEF UNCONSCIOUS OF HORROR. 
 
 StunnED by his reprieve, doubting that he was awake, 
 Glaucus had been led by the officers of the arena into a small 
 cell within the walls of the theatre. They threw a loose robe 
 over his form, and crowded round him in congratulation and 
 wonder. There was an impatient and fretful cry without the 
 cell; the throng gave way, and the blind girl, led by some 
 gentler hand, flung herself at the feet of Glaucus. 
 
 “It is J who have saved thee,” she sobbed; “now let me 
 die!” 
 
 “ Nydia, my child! my preserver !” 
 
 “Oh, let me feel thy touch, thy breath! Yes, yes, thou 
 livest! We are not too late! That dread door, methought 
 it would never yield! And Calenus,—oh! his voice was as 
 the dying wind among tombs: we had to wait,—gods! it 
 seemed hours ere food and wine restored to him something 
 of strength. But thou livest! thou livest yet! and I—JZ 
 have saved thee!” 
 
 This affecting scene was soon interrupted by the event just 
 described. 
 
 “The mountain! the earthquake!” resounded from side to 
 side. The officers fled with the rest; they left Glaucus and 
 Nydia to save themselves as they might. 
 
 As the sense of the dangers around them flashed on the 
 Athenian, his generous heart recurred to Olinthus. He, too, 
 was reprieved from the tiger by the hand of the gods; should 
 he be left to a no less fatal death in the neighboring cell ? 
 Taking Nydia by the hand, Glaucus hurried across the pas- 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 201 
 
 sages; he gained the den of the Christian! He found Olin- 
 thus kneeling and in prayer. 
 
 “ Arise! arise! my friend,” he cried. “Save thyself, and 
 fly! See! Nature is thy dread deliverer!” He led forth the 
 bewildered Christian, and pointed to a cloud which advanced 
 darker and darker, disgorging forth showers of ashes and 
 pumice-stones, and bade him hearken to the cries and tramp- 
 ling rush of the scattered crowd. 
 
 “This is the hand of God,—God be praised!” said 
 Olinthus, devoutly. 
 
 “Fly! seek thy brethren! Concert with them thy escape. 
 Farewell!” 
 
 Olinthus did not answer, neither did he mark the retreating 
 form of his friend. High thoughts and solemn absorbed his 
 soul; and in the enthusiasm of his kindling heart he exulted 
 in the mercy of God rather than trembled at the evidence of 
 His power. 
 
 At length he roused himself, and hurried on, he scarce 
 knew whither. 
 
 The open doors of a dark, desolate cell suddenly appeared 
 on his path; through the gloom within there flared and flick- 
 ered a single lamp, and by its hght he saw three grim and 
 naked forms stretched on the earth in death. His feet were 
 suddenly arrested; for amidst the terrors of that drear recess, 
 the spoliarium of the arena, he heard a low voice calling on 
 the name of Christ. 
 
 He could not resist lingering at that appeal: he entered the 
 den, and his feet were dabbled in the slow streams of blood 
 that gushed from the corpses over the sand. 
 
 “Who,” said the Nazarene, “ calls upon the Son of God ? ” 
 
 No answer came forth; and turning round, Olinthus beheld, 
 by the light of the lamp, an old gray-headed man sitting on 
 the floor, and supporting in his lap the head of one of the 
 dead. The features of the dead man were firmly and rigidly 
 locked in the last sleep; but over the lip there played a fierce 
 smile — not the Christian’s smile of hope, but the dark sneer 
 of hatred and defiance. Yet on the face still lingered the 
 beautiful roundness of early youth. The hair curled thick 
 
202 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 and glossy over the unwrinkled brow, and the down of man- 
 hood but slightly shaded the marble of the hueless cheek. 
 And over this face bent one of such unutterable sadness, of 
 such yearning tenderness, of such fond and such deep de- 
 spair! The tears of the old man fell fast and hot, but he did 
 not feel them; and when his lips moved, and he mechanically 
 uttered the prayer of his benign and hopeful faith, neither his 
 heart nor his sense responded to the words: it was but the 
 involuntary emotion that broke from the lethargy of his mind. 
 His boy was dead, and had died for him, and the old man’s 
 heart was broken. 
 
 “Medon!” said Olinthus, pityingly, “arise, and fly! God 
 is forth upon the wings of the elements! The New Gomorrah 
 is doomed! Fly, ere the fires consume thee!” 
 
 “He was ever so full of life! he cannot be dead! Come 
 hither! place your hand on his heart; sure it beats yet?” 
 
 ‘Brother, the soul has fled! We will remember it in our 
 prayers. Thou canst not reanimate the dumb clay. Come, 
 come — hark! while I speak, yon crashing walls !— hark! 
 yon agonizing cries! Not a moment is to be lost! Come!” 
 
 “T hear nothing,” said Medon, shaking his gray hair. “The 
 poor boy, — his love murdered him !” 
 
 “Come! come! forgive this friendly force.” 
 
 “What! Who would sever the father from the son?” 
 And Medon clasped the body tightly in his embrace, and 
 covered it with passionate kisses. “Go!” said he, lifting up 
 his face for one moment. “Go! we must be alone!” 
 
 “ Alas!” said the compassionate Nazarene, “Death hath 
 severed ye already!” 
 
 The old man smiled very calmly. “No, no, no!” he mut- 
 tered, his voice growing lower with each word, — “ Death has 
 been more kind !” 
 
 With that his head drooped on his son’s breast, his arms 
 relaxed their grasp. Olinthus caught him by the hand; the 
 pulse had ceased to beat! The last words of the father were 
 the words of truth, — Death had been more kind. 
 
 Meanwhile Glaucus and Nydia were pacing swiftly up the 
 perilous and fearful streets. ‘The Athenian had learned from 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 203 
 
 his preserver that Ione was yet in the house of Arbaces. 
 Thither he fled, to release —to save her! The few slaves 
 whom the Egyptian had left at his mansion when he had re- 
 paired in long procession to the amphitheatre had been able 
 to offer no resistance to the armed band of Sallust; and when 
 afterwards the volcano broke forth, they had huddled together, 
 stunned and frightened, in the inmost recesses of the house. 
 iiven the tall Ethiopian had forsaken his post at the door; 
 and Glaucus (who left Nydia without — the poor Nydia, jeal- 
 ous once more, even in such an hour!) passed on through the 
 vast hall without meeting one from whom to learn the 
 chamber of Ione. Even as he passed, however, the darkness 
 that covered the heavens increased so rapidly that it was 
 with difficulty he could guide his steps. The flower-wreathed 
 columns seemed to reel and tremble, and with every instant 
 he heard the ashes fall cranchingly into the roofless peristyle. 
 He ascended to the upper rooms; breathless he paced along, 
 shouting out aloud the name of Ione ; and at length he heard, 
 at the end of a gallery, a voice,-— her voice, in wondering 
 reply. To rush forward, to shatter the door, to seize Ione in 
 his arms, to hurry from the mansion, seemed to him the work 
 of an instant! Scarce had he gained the spot where Nydia 
 was, than he heard steps advancing towards the house, and 
 recognized the voice of Arbaces, who had returned to seek his 
 wealth and Ione ere he fled from the doomed Pompeii. But 
 so dense was already the reeking atmosphere, that the foes 
 saw not each other, though so near, save that, dimly in the 
 gloom, Glaucus caught the moving outline of the snowy robes 
 of the Egyptian. 
 
 They hastened onward,— those three. Alas! whither? 
 They now saw not a step before them,—the blackness be- 
 came utter. They were encompassed with doubt and horror ; 
 and the death he had escaped seemed to Glaucus only to have 
 changed its form and augmented its victims. 
 
204 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CALENUS AND BURBO. —DIOMED AND CLODIUS.-——THE GIRL OF 
 THE AMPHITHEATRE AND JULIA. 
 
 Tue sudden catastrophe which had, as it were, riven the very 
 bonds of society, and left prisoner and jailer alike free, had 
 soon rid Calenus of the guards to whose care the pretor had 
 consigned him. And when the darkness and the crowd sepa- 
 rated the priest from his attendants, he hastened with trembling 
 steps towards the temple of his goddess. As he crept along, 
 and ere the darkness was complete, he felt himself suddenly 
 caught by the robe, and a voice muttered in his ear, — 
 
 “Hist! Calenus! an awful hour!” 
 
 “Ay! by my father’s head! Who art thou? Thy face is 
 dim, and thy voice is strange!” 
 
 “ Not know thy Burbo? Fie!” 
 
 “Gods! how the darkness gathers! Ho, ho! by yon terrific 
 mountain what sudden blazes of lightning!+ How they dart 
 and quiver! Hades is loosed on earth!” 
 
 “Tush! thou believest not these things, Calenus! Now is 
 the time to make our fortune!” 
 
 (14 Ha ! 93 
 
 “Tisten! Thy temple is full of gold and precious mum- 
 meries. Let us load ourselves with them, and then hasten to 
 the sea and embark. None will ever ask an account of the 
 doings of this day.” 
 
 “Burbo, thou art right! Hush! and follow me into the 
 temple. Who cares now, who sees now, whether thou art a 
 priest or not? Follow, and we will share.” 
 
 In the precincts of the temple were many priests gathered 
 around the altars, praying, weeping, grovelling in the dust. 
 Impostors in safety, they were not the less superstitious in 
 
 1 Volcanic lightnings. These phenomena were especially the characteristic 
 of the long subsequent eruption of 1779, and their evidence is visible in the 
 tokens of that more awful one now so imperfectly described. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. Ceo ie, 
 
 danger. Calenus passed them, and entered the chamber yet 
 to be seen in the south side of the court. Burbo followed 
 him; the priest struck a light. Wine and viands strewed the 
 table, the remains of a sacrificial feast. 
 
 “A man who has hungered forty-eight hours,” muttered 
 Calenus, “has an appetite even in suchatime.” He seized on 
 the food and devoured it greedily. Nothing could, perhaps, 
 be-more unnaturally horrid than the selfish baseness of these 
 villains; for there is nothing more loathsome than the valor 
 of avarice. Plunder and sacrilege while the pillars of the 
 world tottered to and fro! What an increase to the terrors 
 of nature can be made by the vices of man! 
 
 “Wilt thou never have done?” said Burbo, impatiently; 
 “thy face purples and thine eyes start already.” 
 
 “Ttis not every day one has such a right to be hungry. O 
 Jupiter! what sound is that? The hissing of fiery water! 
 What! does the cloud give rain as well as flame! Ha! what! 
 shrieks? And, Burbo, how silent all is now! Look forth!” 
 
 Amidst the other horrors, the mighty mountain now cast up | 
 
 columns of boiling water. Blent and kneaded with the half- |. 
 
 burning ashes, the streams fell like seething mud over the | 
 streets in frequent intervals. And full, where the priests of | 
 
 Isis had now cowered around the altars, on which they had 
 vainly sought to kindle fires and pour incense, one of the 
 fiercest of those deadly torrents, mingled with immense frag- 
 ments of scoria, had poured its rage. Over the bended forms 
 of the priests it dashed: that cry had been of death; that 
 silence had been of eternity. The ashes, the pitchy stream, 
 sprinkled the, altars, covered the pavement, and half concealed 
 the quivering corpses of the priests. 
 
 “They are dead,” said Burbo, terrified for the first time, and 
 hurrying back into the cell. “I thought not the danger was 
 so near and fatal.” 
 
 The two wretches stood staring at each other; you might 
 have heard their hearts beat! Calenus, the less bold by nature, 
 but the more griping, recovered first. 
 
 “We must to our task, and away!” he said, in a low whis- 
 per, frightened at his own voice. He stepped to the threshold, 
 
 x 
 
206.” THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEIL 
 
 paused, crossed over the heated floor and his dead brethren to 
 the sacred chapel, and called to Burbo to follow; but the 
 gladiator quaked, and drew back. 
 
 “So much the better,” thought Calenus; “the more will be 
 my booty.” Hastily he loaded himself with the more portable 
 treasures of the temple, and thinking no more of his comrade, 
 hurried from the sacred place. A sudden flash of lightning 
 from the mount showed to Burbo, who stood motionless at the 
 threshold, the flying and laden form of the priest. He took 
 heart; he stepped forth to join him, when a tremendous shower 
 of ashes fell right before his feet, The gladiator shrank back 
 once more. Darkness closed him in. But the shower con- 
 tinued fast, fast; its heaps rose high and suffocatingly ; deathly 
 vapors steamed fromthem. The wretch gasped for breath; he 
 sought in despair again to fly: the ashes had blocked up the 
 threshold; he shrieked as his feet shrank from the boiling fluid. 
 How could he escape ? He could not climb to the open space ; 
 nay, were he able, he could not brave its horrors. It were best 
 to remain in the cell, protected, at least, from the fatal air. 
 He sat down and clenched his teeth. By degrees the atmos- 
 phere from without — stifling and venomous — crept into the 
 chamber. He could endure it no longer. His eyes, glaring 
 round, rested on a sacrificial axe, which some priest had left in 
 the chamber: he seized it. With the desperate strength of his 
 gigantic arm he attempted to hew his way through the walls. 
 
 Meanwhile the streets were already thinned ; the crowd had 
 hastened to disperse itself under shelter; the ashes began to 
 
 »fill up the lower parts of the town; but here and there you 
 heard the steps of fugitives cranching them warily, or saw 
 their pale and haggard faces by the blue glare of the lightning, 
 or the more unsteady glare of torches, by which they endeav- 
 ored to steer their steps. But ever and anon the boiling water, 
 or the straggling ashes, mysterious and gusty winds, rising and 
 dying in a breath, extinguished these wandering lights, and 
 with them the last living hope of those who bore them. 
 
 In the street that leads to the gate of Herculaneum, Clodius 
 now bent his perplexed and doubtful way. “If I ean gain the 
 open country,” thought he, “doubtless there will be various 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 207 
 
 vehicles beyond the gate, and Herculaneum is not far dis- 
 tant. Thank Mercury! I have little to lose, and that little is 
 about me !” 
 
 “ Holloa! help there, — help!” cried a querulous and fright- 
 ened voice. “I have fallen down, my torch has gone out, my 
 slaves have deserted me. I am Diomed,—the rich Diomed; 
 ten thousand sesterces to him who helps me!” 
 
 At the same moment Clodius felt himself caught by the 
 feet. “Ill fortune to thee; let me go, fool!” said the gambler. 
 
 “Oh, help me up! give me thy hand!” 
 
 “There, rise!” 
 
 “Ts this Clodius? I knowthe voice! Whither fliest thou?” 
 
 “Towards Herculaneum.” 
 
 “Blessed be the gods! our way is the same, then, as far as 
 the gate. Why not take refuge in my villa? Thou knowest 
 the long range of subterranean cellars beneath the basement, 
 —that shelter what shower can penetrate ? ” 
 
 “You speak well,” said Clodius, musingly. “And by stor- 
 ing the cellar with food, we can remain there even some days, 
 should these wondrous storms endure so long.” 
 
 “Oh, blessed be he who invented gates to a city!” cried 
 Diomed. ‘See, they have placed a light within yon arch: by 
 that let us guide our steps.” 
 
 The air was now still for a few minutes; the lamp from the 
 gate streamed out far and clear; the fugitives hurried on, 
 they gained the gate, they passed by the Roman sentry; the 
 lightning flashed over his livid face and polished helmet, but 
 his stern features were composed even in their awe. He re- 
 mained erect and motionless at his post. That hour itself 
 had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of 
 Rome into the reasoning and self-acting man. There he stood, 
 amidst the crashing elements; he had not received the permis- 
 sion to desert his station and escape. 
 
 Diomed and his companions hurried on, when suddenly a 
 female form rushed athwart their way. It was the girl whose 
 ominous voice had been raised so often and so gladly in antici- 
 pation of “the merry show !” 
 
 1 The skeletons of more than one sentry were found at their posts. 
 
ite 
 
 a 
 208, \ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 «0 Diomed,” she cried, “shelter! shelter! See,” — pointing 
 
 to an infant clasped to her breast, — “see this little one; it is 
 mine, —thechild of shame! Ihave never owned it till this hour. 
 But now I remember I am a mother. I have plucked it from 
 the cradle of its nurse; she had fled. Who could think of the 
 babe in such an hour but she who bore it? Save it! save it!” 
 
 “Curses on thy shrill voice! Away, harlot,’ muttered Clo- 
 dius between his ground teeth. 
 
 “Nay, girl,” said the more humane Diomed: “follow if thou 
 wilt. This way, this way: to the vaults.” 
 
 They hurried on; they arrived at the house of Diomed; 
 they laughed aloud as they crossed the threshold, for they 
 deemed the danger over. 
 
 Diomed ordered his slaves to carry down into the subterra- 
 nean gallery before described a profusion of food, and oil for 
 lights ; and there Julia, Clodius, the mother and her babe, the 
 greater part of the slaves, and some frightened visitors and 
 clients of the neighborhood, sought their shelter. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE PROGRESS OF THE DESTRUCTION. 
 
 THE cloud, which had scattered so deep a murkiness over 
 
 | the day, had now settled into a solid and impenetrable mass. 
 
 It resembled less even the thickest gloom of night in the open 
 air than the close and blind darkness of some narrow room. 
 But in proportion as the blackness gathered did the lightnings 
 around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. 
 Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of 
 fire ; no rainbow ever rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes. 
 Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky ; 
 now of alivid and snake-like green, darting restlessly to and 
 fro, as the folds of an enormous serpent; now of a lurid and 
 intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of 
 1 Pliny. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 209 
 
 smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch 
 to arch; then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, ike the 
 ghost of their own life. 
 
 In the pauses of the showers you heard the rumbling of the \ 
 earth beneath, and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or, | 
 
 lower still, and audible but to the watch of intensest fear, the 
 grinding and hissing murmur of the escaping gases through 
 the chasms of the distant mountain. Sometimes the cloud 
 appeared to break from its solid mass, and, by the lightning, 
 
 to assume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster; | J ~~ 
 
 shapes, striding across the gloom, hurtling one upon the other, 
 and vanishing swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade; so 
 that to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the 
 unsubstantial vapors were as the bodily forms of gigantic foes, 
 the agents of terror and of death.! 
 
 The ashes in many places were already knee-deep; and the 
 boiling showers which came from the steaming breath of the 
 voleano forced their way into the houses, bearing with them a 
 strong and suffocating vapor. In some places, immense frag- 
 ments of rock, hurled upon the house-roofs, bore down along 
 the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, 
 with every hour, obstructed the way; and as the day ad- 
 vanced, the motion of the earth was more sensibly felt; the 
 footing seemed to slide and creep, nor could chariot or litter 
 be kept steady, even on the most level ground. 
 
 Sometimes the huger stones, striking against each other 
 as they fell, broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks 
 of fire, which caught whatever was combustible within their 
 reach; and along the plains beyond the city the darkness was 
 now terribly relieved, for several houses, and even vineyards, 
 had been set on flames; and at various intervals the fires rose 
 sullenly and fiercely against the solid gloom. To add to this 
 partial relief of the darkness, the citizens had, here and there, 
 in the more public places, such as the porticos of temples 
 and the entrances to the forum, endeavored to place rows of 
 torches; but these rarely continued long; the showers and 
 the winds extinguished them, and the sudden darkness into 
 
 1 Dion Cassius. 
 VOL. 11.—14 
 
 — 
 
210 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPETI. 
 
 which their sudden birth was converted had something in it 
 doubly terrible and doubly impressing on the impotence of 
 human hopes, the lesson of despair. 
 
 Frequently, by the momentary hght of these torches, parties 
 of fugitives encountered each other, some hurrying towards 
 the sea, others flying from the sea back to the land; for the 
 ocean had retreated rapidly from the shore: an utter dark- 
 ness lay over it, and upon its groaning and tossing waves the 
 storm of cinders and rock fell without the protection which 
 the streets and roofs afforded to the land. Wild, haggard, 
 ghastly with supernatural fears, these groups encountered 
 each other, but without the leisure to speak, to consult, to 
 advise; for the showers fell now frequently, though not eon- 
 tinuously, extinguishing the lights, which showed to each 
 band the death-like faces of the other, and hurrying all to 
 seek refuge beneath the nearest shelter. The whole elements 
 of civilization were broken up. Ever and anon, by the flicker- 
 ing lights, you saw the thief hastening by the most solemn 
 authorities of the law, laden with, and fearfully chuckling over, 
 the produce of his sudden gains. If, in the darkness, wife 
 was separated from husband, or parent from child, vain was 
 the hope of reunion. Each hurried blindly and confusedly 
 on. Nothing in all the various and complicated machinery of 
 social life was left, save the primal law of self-preservation ! 
 
 Through this awful scene did the Athenian make his way, 
 accompanied by lone and the blind girl. Suddenly a rush of 
 hundreds, in their path to the sea, swept by them. Nydia 
 was torn from the side of Glaucus, who, with Ione, was borne 
 rapidly onward; and when the crowd (whose forms they saw 
 not, so thick was the gloom) were gone, Nydia was still 
 separated from their side. Glaucus shouted her name. No 
 answer came. ‘They retraced their. steps,—in vain: they 
 could not discover her; it was evident that she had been 
 swept along some opposite direction by the human current. 
 Their friend, their preserver, was lost! And hitherto Nydia 
 had been their guide. Her blindness rendered the scene fa- 
 miliar to her alone. Accustomed, through a perpetual night, 
 to thread the windings of the city, she had led them unerr- 
 
Hy 
 a 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 211 
 
 ingly towards the sea-shore, by which they had resolved to 
 hazard an escape. Now, which way could they wend? All 
 was rayless to them,—a maze without a clew. Wearied, 
 despondent, bewildered, they, however, passed along, the 
 ashes falling upon their heads, the fragmentary stones dash- 
 ing up in sparkles before their feet. 
 
 “ Alas! alas!” murmured Ione, “I can go no eurthon? my 
 steps sink among the scorching cinders. Fly, dearest !— be- 
 loved, fly! and leave me to my fate!” 
 
 “Hush, my betrothed! my bride! Death with thee is 
 sweeter than life without thee! Yet, whither —oh! whither, 
 can we direct ourselves through the gloom? Already it seems 
 that we have made but a circle, and are in the very spot which 
 we quitted an hour ago.” 
 
 “QO gods! yon rock,—see, it hath riven the roof before 
 us! It is death to move through the streets!” 
 
 “Blessed lightning! See, Ione —see! the portico of the 
 Temple of Fortune is before us. Let us creep beneath it; it 
 will protect us from the showers.” 
 
 He caught his beloved in his arms, and with difficulty and 
 labor gained the temple. He bore her to the remoter and 
 more sheltered part of the portico, and leaned over her that 
 he might shield her with his own form from the lightning 
 and the showers! The beauty and the unselfishness of love 
 could hallow even that dismal time! 
 
 “Who is there?” said the trembling and hollow voice of 
 one who had preceded them in their place of refuge. “Yet 
 what matters? The crush of the ruined world forbids to us 
 friends or foes.” 
 
 Tone turned at the sound of that voice, and, with a faint 
 shriek, cowered again beneath the arms of Glaucus: and he, 
 looking in the direction of the voice, beheld the cause of her 
 alarm. Through the darkness glared forth two burning eyes, 
 — the lightning flashed and lingered athwart the temple, — and 
 Glaucus, with a shudder, perceived the lion to which he had 
 been doomed couched beneath the pillars; and, close beside 
 it, unwitting of the vicinity, lay the giant form of him who 
 had accosted them, — the wounded gladiator, Niger. 
 
212 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 That lightning had revealed to each other the form of beast 
 and man; yet the instinct of both was quelled. Nay, the lion 
 crept near and nearer to the gladiator, as for companionship; 
 and the gladiator did not recede or tremble. The Revolution 
 of Nature had dissolved her lighter terrors as well as her 
 wonted ties. 
 
 While they were thus terribly protected, a group of men and 
 
 women, bearing torches, passed by the temple. They were of 
 the congregation of the Nazarenes, and a sublime and un- 
 earthly emotion had not, indeed, quelled their awe, but it had 
 robbed awe of fear. They had long believed, according to the 
 error of the early Christians, that the Last Day was at hand; 
 they imagined now that the day had come. 
 
 “Woe! woe!” cried, in a shrill and piercing voice, the 
 elder at their head. “Behold! the Lord descendeth to judg- 
 ment! He maketh fire come down from heaven in the sight 
 of men! Woe! woe! ye strong and mighty! Woe to ye of 
 the fasces and the purple! Woe to the idolater and the wor- 
 shipper of the beast! Woe to ye who pour forth the blood of 
 saints, and gloat over the death-pangs of the sons of God! 
 Woe to the harlot of the sea! Woe! woe!” 
 
 And with a loud and deep chorus the troop chanted forth 
 along the wild horrors of the air, “ Woe to the harlot of the 
 sea! Woe! woe!” 
 
 The Nazarenes paced slowly on, their torches still flickering 
 in the storm, their voices still raised in menace and solemn 
 warning, till, lost amid the windings in the streets, the dark- 
 ness of the atmosphere and the silence of death again fell over 
 the scene. 
 
 There was one of the frequent pauses in the showers, and 
 Glaucus encouraged Ione once more to proceed. Just as they 
 stood, hesitating, on the last step of the portico, an old man, 
 with a bag in his right hand and leaning upon a youth, tottered 
 by. The youth bore a torch. Glaucus recognized the two as 
 father and son, — miser and prodigal. 
 
 “Father,” said the youth, “if you cannot move more swiftly, 
 I must leave you, or we both perish!” 
 
 “Fly, boy, then, and leave thy sire !” 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 213 
 
 “But I cannot fly to starve; give me thy bag of gold!” 
 And the youth snatched at it. 
 
 “ Wretch! wouldst thou rob thy father?” 
 
 “ Ay! who can tell the tale in this hour? Miser, perish!” 
 
 The boy struck the old man to the ground, plucked the bag 
 from his relaxing hand, and fled onward with a shrill yell. 
 
 “Ye gods!” cried Glaucus; “are ye blind, then, even in the 
 dark ? Such crimes may well confound the guiltless with the 
 guilty in one common ruin. Ione, on! on!” 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 ARBACES ENCOUNTERS GLAUCUS AND IONE. 
 
 ADVANCING, as men grope for escape in a dungeon, Ione 
 and her lover continued their uncertain way. At the moments 
 when the volcanic lightnings lingered over the streets, they 
 were enabled, by that awful light, to steer and guide their 
 progress: yet little did the view it presented to them cheer 
 or encourage their path. In parts, where the ashes lay dry 
 and uncommixed with the boiling torrents cast upward from 
 ‘the mountain at capricious intervals, the surface of the earth 
 presented a leprous and ghastly white. In other places, cinder 
 and rock lay matted in heaps, from beneath which emerged the 
 half-hid limbs of some crushed and mangled fugitive. The 
 groans of the dying were broken by wild shrieks of women’s 
 terror, now near, now distant, which, when heard in the utter 
 darkness, were rendered doubly appalling by the crushing 
 sense of helplessness and the uncertainty of the perils around; 
 and clear and distinct through all were the mighty and various 
 noises from the Fatal Mountain, —its rushing winds, its whirl- 
 ing torrents, and from time to time the burst and roar of 
 some more fiery and fierce explosion. And ever as the winds 
 swept howling along the street they bore sharp streams of 
 burning dust, and such sickening and poisonous vapors as 
 took away, for the instant, breath and consciousness, followed 
 
A 214 / THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 bya rapid revulsion of the arrested blood, and a tingling sen- 
 sation of agony trembling through every nerve and fibre of 
 the frame. 
 
 “Oh, Glaucus, my beloved! my own! take me to thy 
 arms! One embrace! let me feel thy arms around me, and 
 in that embrace let me die; I can no more!” : 
 
 “For my sake, for my life, courage yet, sweet Ione: my 
 life is linked with thine. And see — torches —this way! Lo! 
 how they brave the wind! Ha! they live through the storm, 
 doubtless fugitives to the sea! we will join them.” 
 
 As if to aid and reanimate the lovers, the winds and showers 
 came to a sudden pause; the atmosphere was profoundly still, 
 the mountain seemed at rest, gathering, perhaps, fresh fury 
 for its next burst: the torch-bearers moved quickly on. “We 
 are nearing the sea,” said, ina calm voice, the person at their 
 head. “Liberty and wealth to each slave who survives this 
 day! Courage! I tell you that the gods themselves have 
 assured me of deliverance! On!” 
 
 Redly and steadily the torches flashed full on the eyes of 
 Glaucus and Ione, who lay trembling and exhausted on his 
 bosom. Several slaves were bearing, by the light, panniers 
 and coffers, heavily laden; in front of them, a drawn sword 
 in his hand, towered the lofty form of Arbaces. 
 
 “ By my fathers!” cried the Egyptian, “ Fate smiles upon 
 me even through these horrors, and, amidst the dreadest 
 aspects of woe and death, bodes me happiness and love. 
 Away, Greek! I claim my ward, Ione!” 
 
 “Traitor and murderer!” cried Glaucus, glaring upon his 
 foe, ‘‘ Nemesis hath guided thee to my revenge, — a just sacri- 
 fice to the shades of Hades, that now seemed loosed on earth ! 
 Approach, touch but the hand of Ione, and thy weapon shall 
 be as a reed: I will tear thee limb from limb!” 
 
 Suddenly, as he spoke, the place became lighted with an 
 intense and lurid glow. Bright and gigantic through the 
 darkness, which closed around it like the walls of hell, the 
 mountain shone, —a pile of fire! Its summit seemed riven 
 in two; or rather, above its surface there seemed to rise two 
 monster shapes, each confronting each, as Demons contending 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 215 
 
 for a World. These were of one deep blood-red hue of fire, 
 which lighted up the whole atmosphere far and wide; but, 
 
 below, the nether part of the mountain was still dark and | 
 shrouded, save in three places, adown which flowed serpentine | 
 
 and irregular rivers of the molten lava.t Darkly red through 
 the profound gloom of their banks, they flowed slowly on, as 
 towards the devoted city. Over the broadest there seemed to 
 spring a cragged and stupendous arch, from which, as from 
 the jaws of hell, gushed the sources of the sudden Phlegethon; 
 and through the stilled air was heard the rattling of the frag- 
 ments of rock, hurtling one upon another as they were borne 
 down the fiery cataracts, darkening, for one instant, the spot 
 where they fell, and suffused, the next, in the burnished hues 
 of the flood along which they floated ! 
 
 The slaves shrieked aloud, and, cowering, hid their faces. 
 The Egyptian himself stood transfixed to the spot, the glow 
 lighting up his commanding features and jewelled robes. 
 High behind him rose a tall column that supported the bronze 
 statue of Augustus; and the imperial image seemed changed 
 to a shape of fire! 
 
 With his left hand circled round the form of Ione, with his 
 right arm raised in menace, and grasping the stilus which was 
 to have been his weapon in the arena, and which he still fortu- 
 nately bore about him, with his brow knit, his lips apart, the 
 wrath and menace of human passions arrested as by a charm, 
 upon his features, Glaucus fronted the Egyptian ! 
 
 Arbaces turned his eyes from the mountain ; they rested on 
 the form of Glaucus! He paused a moment. “Why,” he 
 muttered, “should I hesitate? Did not the stars foretell the 
 only crisis of imminent peril to which I was subjected? Is 
 not that peril past ? 
 
 “The soul,” cried he aloud, “can brave, the wreck of worlds 
 and the wrath of imaginary gods! By that soul will I conquer 
 to the last! Advance, slaves! Athenian, resist me, and thy 
 blood be on thine own head! Thus, then, I regain Ione!” 
 
 He advanced one step; it was his last on earth! The ground 
 shook beneath him with a convulsion that cast all around upon 
 
 1 See note (a) at the end. 
 
 ppm 
 
 ee 
 
216 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 its surface. A simultaneous crash resounded through the city, 
 as down toppled many a roof and pillar! The lightning, as 
 if caught by the metal, lingered an instant on the Imperial 
 Statue, then shivered bronze and column! Down fell the ruin, 
 echoing along the street, and riving the solid pavement where 
 it crashed! The prophecy of the stars was fulfilled. 
 
 The sound, the shock, stunned the Athenian for several 
 moments. When he recovered, the light still illumined the — 
 scene, the earth still slid and trembled beneath! Ione lay © 
 senseless on the ground; but he saw her not yet: his eyes © 
 were fixed upon a ghastly face that seemed to emerge, without 
 limbs or trunk, from the huge fragments of the shattered 
 column, a face of unutterable pain, agony, and despair! The 
 eyes shut and opened rapidly, as if sense were not yet fled; 
 the lips quivered and grinned; then sudden stillness and 
 darkness fell over the features, yet retaining that aspect of 
 horror never to be forgotten ! 
 
 So perished the wise Magician, the great Arbaces, the Her- 
 mes of the Burning Belt, the last of the royalty of Egypt! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DESPAIR OF THE LOVERS. — THE CONDITION OF THE 
 MULTITUDE. 
 
 GuaAucus turned in gratitude but in awe, caught Ione once 
 more in his arms, and fled along the street, that was yet in- 
 tensely luminous. But suddenly a duller shade fell over the 
 air. Instinctively he turned to the mountain, and behold! 
 one of the two gigantic crests, into which the summit had 
 been divided, rocked and wavered to and fro; and then, with 
 a sound, the mightiness of which no language can describe, 
 it fell from its burning base, and rushed, an avalanche of fire, 
 down the sides of the mountain! At the same instant gushed 
 forth a volume of blackest smoke, rolling on over air, sea, 
 and earth. 
 
# 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 217 
 
 Another — and another —and another shower of ashes far 
 more profuse than before, scattered fresh desolation along the 
 streets. Darkness once more wrapped them as a veil; and 
 Glaucus, his bold heart at last quelled and despairing, sank 
 beneath the cover of an arch, and, clasping Ione to his heart, 
 —a bride on that couch of ruin, — resigned himself to die. 
 
 Meanwhile Nydia, when separated by the throng from Glau- 
 cus and Ione, had in vain endeavored to regain them. In vain 
 she raised that plaintive cry so peculiar to the blind; it was 
 lost amidst a thousand shrieks of more selfish terror. Again 
 and again she returned to the spot where they had been divided, 
 —to find her companions gone, to seize every fugitive, to 
 inquire of Glaucus, to be dashed aside in the impatience of 
 distraction. Who in that hour spared one thought to his 
 neighbor? Perhaps in scenes of universal horror, nothing is 
 more horrid than the unnatural selfishness they engender. At 
 length it occurred to Nydia, that as it had been resolved to seek 
 the sea-shore for escape, her most probable chance of rejoining 
 her companions would be to persevere in that direction. Guid- 
 ing her steps, then, by the staff which she always carried, she 
 continued, with incredible dexterity, to avoid the masses of 
 ruin that encumbered the path, to thread the streets, and 
 unerringly (so blessed now was that accustomed darkness, so 
 afflicting in ordinary life!) to take the nearest direction to the 
 sea-side. 
 
 Poor girl! her courage was beautiful to behold, and Fate 
 seemed to favor one so helpless. The boiling torrents touched 
 her not, save by the general rain which accompanied them ; 
 the huge fragments of scoria shivered the pavement before 
 and beside her, but spared that frail form: and when the lesser 
 ashes fell over her, she shook them away with a slight tremor, 
 and dauntlessly resumed her course. 
 
 Weak, exposed yet fearless, supported but by one wish, she 
 was a very emblem of Psyche in her wanderings; of Hope, 
 walking through the Valley of the Shadow; of the soul it- 
 
 1 « A heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which every now and then we 
 
 were, obliged to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried 
 in the heap.” — Pliny. 
 
218 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 self, lone but undaunted, amidst the dangers and the snares 
 of life! 
 
 Her path was, however, constantly impeded by the crowds 
 that now groped amidst the gloom, now fled in the temporary 
 glare of the lightnings across the scene; and at length, a 
 group of torch-bearers rushing full against her, she was thrown 
 down with some violence. 
 
 “What!” said the voice of one of the party, “is this the 
 brave blind girl? By Bacchus, she must not be left here to 
 die! Up! my Thessalian! So—so. Are you hurt? That’s 
 well. Come along with us! we are for the shore!” 
 
 “QO Sallust! It is thy voice! The gods be thanked! 
 Glaucus! Glaucus! have ye seen him ?” 
 
 “NotI. He is doubtless out of the city by this time. The 
 gods who saved him from the lion will save him from the 
 burning mountain.” 
 
 As the kindly epicure thus encouraged Nydia, he drew her 
 along with him towards the sea, heeding not her passionate 
 entreaties that he would linger yet a while to search for Glau- 
 cus; and still, in the accent of despair, she continued to 
 shriek out that beloved name, which, amidst all the roar of 
 the convulsed elements, kept alive a music at her heart. 
 
 The sudden illumination, the bursts of the floods of lava, 
 and the earthquake, which we have already described, chanced 
 when Sallust and his party had just gained the direct path 
 leading from the city to the port; and here they were arrested 
 by an immense crowd, more than half the population of the 
 city. They spread along the field without the walls, thou- 
 sands upon thousands, uncertain whither to fly. The sea had 
 retired far from the shore; and they who had fled to it had 
 been so terrified by the agitation and preternatural shrinking 
 of the element, the gasping forms of the uncouth sea things 
 which the waves had left upon the sand, and by the sound of 
 the huge stones cast from the mountain into the deep, that they 
 had returned again to the land, as presenting the less frightful 
 aspect of the two. Thus the two streams of human beings, the 
 one seaward, the other from the sea, had met together, feeling 
 a sad comfort in numbers, arrested in despair and doubt. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 219 
 
 “The world is to be destroyed by fire,” said an old man in 
 long loose robes, a philosopher of the Stoic school: “Stoic 
 and Epicurean wisdom have alike agreed in this prediction ; 
 and the hour is come!” 
 
 “Yea; the hour is come!” cried a loud voice, solemn but 
 not fearful. 
 
 Those around turned in dismay. The voice came from 
 above them. It was the voice of Olinthus, who, surrounded 
 by his Christian friends, stood upon an abrupt eminence on 
 which the old Greek colonists had raised a temple to Apollo, 
 now timeworn and half in ruin. 
 
 As he spoke, there came that sudden illumination which 
 had heralded the death of Arbaces, and glowing over that 
 mighty multitude, awed, crouching, breathless, never on earth 
 had the faces of men seemed so haggard; never had meeting 
 of mortal beings been so stamped with the horror and sublim- 
 ity of dread; never, till the last trumpet sounds, shall such 
 meeting be seen again! And above rose the form of Olinthus, 
 with outstretched arm and prophet brow, girt with the living 
 fires. And the crowd knew the face of him they had doomed 
 to the fangs of the beast, then their victim, now their warner ; 
 and through the stillness again came his ominous voice, — 
 
 “The hour is come!” 
 
 The Christians repeated the cry. It was caught up; it was 
 echoed from side to side; woman and man, childhood and 
 old age, repeated, not aloud, but in a smothered and dreary 
 murmur, — 
 
 “THE HOUR IS COME!” 
 
 At that moment a wild yell burst through the air; and, 
 thinking only of escape, whither it knew not, the terrible tiger 
 of the desert leaped amongst the throng and hurried through 
 its parted streams. And so came the earthquake, and so dark- 
 ness once more fell over the earth! 
 
 And now new fugitives arrived. Grasping the treasures no 
 longer destined for their lord, the slaves of Arbaces joined the 
 throng. One only of their torches yet flickered on. It was 
 borne by Sosia; and its light falling on the face of Nydia, he 
 recognized the Thessalian. 
 
220 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ¢¢ What avails thy liberty now, blind girl ?” said the slave. 
 
 “Who art thou? Canst thou tell me of Glaucus ? ” 
 
 “Ay; I saw him but a few minutes since.” 
 
 “Blessed be thy head! where ?” 
 
 “Couched beneath the arch of the forum, dead or dying! 
 Gone to rejoin Arbaces, who is no more!” 
 
 Nydia uttered not a word; she slid from the side of Sallust; 
 silently she glided through those behind her, and retraced her 
 “ steps to the city. She gained the forum, the arch; she stooped 
 down, she felt around, she called on the name of Glaucus. 
 
 A weak voice answered, “ Who calls on me? Is it the voice 
 of the Shades? Lo! I am prepared!” 
 
 “ Arise! follow me! Take my hand! Glaucus, thou shalt 
 be saved!” 
 
 In wonder and sudden hope, Glaucus arose. “ Nydia still? 
 Ah! thou, then, art safe!” 
 
 The tender joy of his voice pierced the heart of the poor 
 Thessalian, and she blessed him for his thought of her. 
 
 Half leading, half carrying Ione, Glaucus followed his guide. 
 With admirable discretion she avoided the path which led to 
 the crowd she had just quitted, and, by another route, sought 
 the shore. 
 
 After inany pauses and incredible perseverance, they gained 
 the sea, and joined a group, who, bolder than the rest, resolved 
 to hazard any peril rather than continue in sucha scene. In 
 darkness they put forth to sea; but, as they cleared the land 
 and caught new aspects of the mountain, itschannels of molten 
 fire threw a partial redness over the waves. 
 
 Utterly exhausted and worn out, Ione slept on the breast of 
 Glaucus, and Nydia lay at his feet. Meanwhile the showers 
 of dust and ashes, still borne aloft, fell into the wave, and 
 scattered their snows over the deck. Far and wide, borne by 
 the winds, those showers descended upon the remotest climes, 
 startling even the swarthy African, and whirled along the an- 
 tique soil of Syria and of Egypt.? 
 
 1 Dion Cassius. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 221 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE NEXT MORNING. — THE FATE OF NYDIA. 
 
 Anp meekly, softly, beautifully dawned at last the light 
 over the trembling deep! The winds were sinking into rest; 
 the foam died from the glowing azure of that delicious sea. 
 Around the east, thin mists caught gradually the rosy hues 
 that heralded the morning; Light was about to resume her 
 reign. Yet still, dark and massive in the distance, lay the 
 broken fragments of the destroying cloud, from which red 
 streaks, burning dimlier and more dim, betrayed the yet roll- 
 ing fires of the mountain of the “Scorched Fields.” The 
 white walls and gleaming columns that had adorned the lovely 
 coasts were no more. Sullen and dull were the shores so 
 lately crested by the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The 
 darlings of the Deep were snatched from her embrace! Cen- 
 tury after century shall the mighty Mother stretch forth her 
 azure arms, and know them not, moaning round the sepulchres 
 of the Lost! 
 
 There was no shout from the mariners at the dawning light; 
 it had come too gradually, and they were too wearied for such 
 sudden bursts of joy; but there was a low, deep murmur of 
 thankfulness amidst those watchers of the long night. They 
 looked at each other and smiled; they took heart; they felt 
 ence more that there was a world around and a God above 
 them! And inthe feeling that the worst was passed, the over- 
 _ wearied ones turned round, and fell placidly to sleep. In the 
 growing light of the skies there came the silence which night 
 had wanted, and the bark drifted calmly onward to its port. 
 A few other vessels, bearing similar fugitives, might be seen in 
 the expanse, apparently motionless, yet gliding also on. There 
 was a sense of security, of companionship, and of hope, in the 
 sight of their slender masts and white sails. What beloved 
 friends, lost and missed in the gloom, might they not bear to 
 safety and to shelter! 
 
222 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 In the silence of the general sleep, Nydia rose gently. She 
 bent over the face of Glaucus, she inhaled the deep breath of 
 his heavy slumber; timidly and sadly she kissed his brow, his 
 lips. She felt for his hand; it was locked in that of Ione: 
 she sighed deeply, and her face darkened. Again she kissed 
 his brow, and with her hair wiped from it the damps of night. 
 ‘‘ May the gods bless you, Athenian!” she murmured: “ may 
 you be happy with your beloved one; may you sometimes 
 remember Nydia! Alas! she is of no further use on earth!” 
 
 With these words she turned away. Slowly she crept along 
 by the fori, or platforms, to the farther side of the vessel, and 
 pausing, bent low over the deep; the cool spray dashed up- 
 ward on her feverish brow. “It is the kiss of death,” she 
 said; “it is welcome.” ‘The balmy air played through her 
 waving tresses; she put them from her face, and raised those 
 eyes — so tender, though so lightless —to the sky, whose soft 
 face she had never seen! 
 
 “No, no!” she said, half aloud, and in a musing and 
 thoughtful tone, “I cannot endure it; this jealous, exacting 
 love, —it shatters my whole soul in madness! I might harm 
 him again, wretch that I was! I have saved him, twice saved 
 him, happy, happy thought: why not de happy? It is the 
 last glad thought I can ever know. O sacred Sea! I hear 
 thy voice invitingly: it hath a freshening and joyous call. 
 They say that in thy embrace is dishonor, that thy victims 
 cross not the fatal Styx: be it so! I would not meet him in 
 the Shades, for I should meet him still with her/ Rest, rest, 
 rest! there is no other Elysium for a heart like mine!” 
 
 A sailor, half dozing on the deck, heard a slight splash on 
 the waters. Drowsily he looked up, and behind, as the vessel 
 merrily bounded on, he fancied he saw something white above 
 the waves; but it vanished in an instant. He turned round 
 again, and dreamed of his home and children. 
 
 When the lovers awoke, their first thought was of each 
 other, their next of Nydia! She was not to be found: none 
 had seen her since the night. Every crevice of the vessel was 
 searched; there was no trace of her. Mysterious from first 
 to last, the blind Thessalian had vanished forever from the 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 223 
 
 living world! They guessed her fate in silence: and Glaucus 
 and Ione, while they drew nearer to each other (feeling each 
 other the world itself), forgot their deliverance, and wept as 
 for a departed sister. 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST. 
 WHEREIN ALL THINGS CEASE. 
 
 Letter from Glaucus to Sallust, ten years after the destruction 
 of Pompei. 
 ATHENS. 
 
 ‘¢ GLAucuS to his beloved Sallust, greeting and health! You request 
 me to visit you at Rome: no, Sallust, come rather to me at Athens! 
 I have forsworn the Imperial City, its tumult and hollow joys. In my 
 own land henceforth I dwell forever. The ghosts of our departed 
 greatness are dearer to me than the gaudy life of your loud prosperity. 
 There is a charm to me which no other spot can supply, in the porticos 
 hallowed still by holy and venerable shades. In the olive-groves of 
 Ilissus I still hear the voice of poetry: on the heights of Phyle the 
 clouds of twilight seem yet the shrouds of departed freedom, — the 
 heralds, the heralds of the morrow that shall come! You smile at my 
 enthusiasm, Sallust! Better be hopeful in chains than resigned to 
 their glitter. \You tell me you are sure that I cannot enjoy life in these 
 melancholy haunts of a fallen majesty. You dwell with rapture on the 
 Roman splendors, and the luxuries of the imperial court. My Sallust, 
 “non sum qualis eram’ (I am not what | was)! The events of my life 
 have sobered the bounding blood of my youth. My health has never 
 quite recovered its wonted elasticity ere it felt the pangs of disease, and 
 languished in the damps of a criminal’s dungeon. My mind has never 
 shaken off the dark shadow of the Last Day of Pompeii, the horror and 
 the desolation of that awful ruin! Our beloved, our remembered Nydia! 
 I have reared a tomb to her shade, and I see it every day from the 
 window of my study. It keeps alive in me a tender recollection — 
 a not unpleasing sadness — which are but a fitting homage to her 
 fidelity, and the mysteriousness of her early death. Ione gathers the 
 flowers, but my own hand wreathes them daily around the tomb! She 
 was worthy of a tomb in Athens ! 
 
224 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 
 ‘You speak of the growing sect of the Christians at Rome. Sal- 
 lust, to you I may confide my secret; I have pondered much over that 
 faith, — I have adopted it. After the destruction of Pompeii, I met once 
 more with Olinthus, — saved, alas! only for a day, and falling after- 
 wards a martyr to the indomitable energy of his zeal. In my preserva- 
 tion from the lion and the earthquake he taught me to behold the hand 
 of the unknown God! [I listened, believed, adored! My own, my 
 more than ever beloved Ione has also embraced the creed, —a creed, 
 Sallust, which, shedding light over this world, gathers its concentrated 
 glory, like a sunset, over the next! We know that we are united in 
 the soul, as in the flesh, forever and forever! Ages may roll on, our 
 very dust be dissolved, the earth shrivelled like a scroll; but round 
 and round the circle of eternity rolls the wheel of life, imperishable, 
 unceasing! And as the earth from the sun, so immortality drinks hap- 
 piness from virtue, which is the smile upon the face of God! Visit me, 
 then, Sallust ; bring with you the learned scrolls of Epicurus, Pythag- 
 oras, Diogenes ; arm yourself for defeat ; and let us, amidst the groves 
 of Academus, dispute, under a surer guide than any granted to our 
 fathers, on the mighty problem of the true ends of life and the nature 
 of the soul. 
 
 ‘¢ Tone — at that name my heart yet beats —TIone is by my side as I 
 write: I lift my eyes, and meet her smile. The sunlight quivers over 
 Hymettus, and along my garden I hear the hum of the summer bees. 
 Am I happy, ask you? Oh, what can Rome give me equal to what I 
 possess at Athens? Here, everything awakens the soul and inspires 
 the affections; the trees, the waters, the hills, the skies, are those of 
 Athens !— fair, though mourning, — mother of the Poetry and the 
 Wisdom of the World. In my hall I see the marble faces of my ances- 
 tors. In the Ceramicus I survey their tombs! In the streets, I behold 
 the hand of Phidias and the soul of Pericles. Harmodius, Aristogiton, 
 they are everywhere ; but in our hearts — in mine, at least — they shall 
 not perish! If anything can make me forget that I am an Athenian 
 and not free, it is partly the soothing, the love — watchful, vivid, sleep- 
 less —of Ione: a love that has taken a new sentiment in our new 
 creed!: a love which none of our poets, beautiful though they be, had 
 shadowed forth in description; for, mingled with religion, it partakes 
 of religion; it is blended with pure and unworldly thoughts; it is that 
 which we way hope to carry through eternity, and keep, therefore, 
 white and unsullied, that we may not blush to confess it to our God! 
 This is the true type of the dark fable of our Grecian Eros and Psyche ; 
 
 1 See note (d) at the end. 
 
Oe 4 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 225 
 
 it is, In truth, the soul asleep in the arms of love. And if this, our 
 love, support me partly against the fever of the desire for freedom, my 
 religion supports me more; for whenever I would grasp the sword and 
 sound the shell, and rush to a new Marathon (but Marathon without 
 victory), I feel my despair at the chilling thought of my country’s im- 
 potence, the crushing weight of the Roman yoke, comforted, at least, 
 by the thought that earth is but the beginning of life; that the glory 
 of a few years matters little in the vast space of eternity ; that there is 
 no perfect freedom till the chains of clay fall from the soul, and all 
 space, all time, become its heritage and domain. Yet, Sallust, some 
 mixture of the soft Greek blood still mingles with my faith. I can 
 share not the zeal of those who see crime and eternal wrath in men who 
 cannot believe as they. I shudder not at the creed of others. I dare 
 not curse them; I pray the great Father to convert. This lukewarm- 
 ness exposes me to some suspicion amongst the Christians: but I for- 
 give it; and, not offending openly the prejudices of the crowd, I am 
 thus enabled to protect my brethren from the danger of the law, and 
 the consequences of their own zeal. If moderation seem to me the 
 natural creature of benevolence, it gives, also, the greatest scope to 
 beneficence. 
 
 ‘“Such, then, O Sallust! is my life, such my opinions. In this man- 
 ner I greet existence and await death. And thou, glad-hearted and 
 kindly pupil of Epicurus, thou — But come hither, and see what enjoy- 
 ments, what hopes are ours; and not the splendor of imperial banquets, 
 nor the shouts of the crowded circus, nor the noisy forum, nor the glit- 
 tering theatre, nor the luxuriant gardens, nor the voluptuous baths of 
 Rome, shall seem to thee to constitute a life of more vivid and uninter- 
 rupted happiness than that which thou so unreasonably pitiest as the 
 career of Glaucus the Athenian! Farewell!” 
 
 Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the city 
 of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb,/all vivid with 
 undimmed hues; its walls fresh as if painted yesterday; not 
 a hue faded on the rich mosaic of its floors; in its forum the 
 half-finished columns as left by the workman’s hand; in its 
 gardens the sacrificial tripod ; in its halis the chest of treasure ; 
 in its baths the strigil; in its theatres the counter of admis- 
 sion; in its saloons the furniture and the lamp; in its triclinia 
 the fragments of the last feast; in its cubicula the perfumes 
 
 1 Destroyed a. D. 79; first discovered a. D. 1750. 
 
 VOL. 11.—15 
 
pe 
 226 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII 
 
 and the rouge of faded beauty; and everywhere the bones 
 and skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that 
 minute yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of life! 
 
 In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults, twenty 
 skeletons (one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the 
 door, covered by a fine ashen dust, that had evidently been 
 wafted slowly through the apertures until it had filled the 
 whole space. There were jewels and coins, candelabra for 
 unavailing light, and wine hardened in the amphore for a 
 prolongation of agonized life. The sand, consolidated by 
 damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; 
 and the traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck 
 and bosom of young and round proportions, —the trace of the 
 fated Julia! It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been 
 gradually changed into a sulphurous vapor; the inmates of 
 the vaults had rushed to the door, to find it closed and blocked 
 up by the scoria without, and in their attempts to force it had 
 been suffocated with the atmosphere. 
 
 In the garden was found a skeleton with a key by its bony 
 hand, and near it a bag of coins. This is believed to have 
 been the master of the house, — the unfortunate Diomed, who 
 had probably sought to escape by the garden, and been de- 
 stroyed either by the vapors or some fragment of stone. 
 Beside some silver vases lay another skeleton, probably of a 
 slave. 
 
 The houses of Sallust and of Pansa, the Temple of Isis, with 
 the juggling concealments behind the statues, —the lurking- 
 place of its holy oracles,— are now bared to the gaze of the 
 curious. In one of the chambers of that temple was found a 
 huge skeleton with an axe beside it: two walls had been 
 pierced by the axe; the victim could penetrate no farther. 
 In the midst of the city was found another skeleton, by the 
 side of which was a heap of coins, and many of the mystic 
 ornaments of the fane of Isis. Death had fallen upon him 
 in his avarice, and Calenus perished simultaneously with 
 Burbo! As the excavators cleared on through the mass of 
 ruin, they found the skeleton of a man literally severed in two 
 
 1 See note (c) at the end. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 227 
 
 by a prostrate column; the skull was of so striking a confor- 
 mation, so boldly marked in its intellectual as well as its 
 worse physical developments, that it has excited the constant 
 speculation of every itinerant believer in the theories of Spurz- 
 heim, who has gazed upon that ruined palace of the mind. 
 Still, after the lapse of ages, the traveller may survey that 
 airy hall, within whose cunning galleries and elaborate cham- 
 bers once thought, reasoned, dreamed, and sinned, the soul of 
 Arbaces the Egyptian. 
 
 Viewing the various witnesses of a social system which has 
 passed from the world forever, —a stranger, from that remote 
 barbarian Isle which the Imperial Roman shivered when he 
 named, paused amidst the delights of the soft Campania and 
 composed this history ! 
 
eer at BLS 
 in Behe 
 Tet ka Ps 
 
 ie vag a oe A 
 Mon DA 1 igak-y tak 
 1a Sa ee Bip . 
 
 ; i hel fp 
 Fie 6 
 iy eT 
 
 patie 7 
 ’ ir 
 
NOE CS: 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK I. 
 
 (a) p. 6. — “Flowers more alluring to the ancient Italians than to their 
 descendants,” etc. 
 
 The modern Italians, especially those of the more southern parts of Italy, 
 have a peculiar horror of perfumes ; they consider them remarkably unwhole- 
 some; and the Roman or Neapolitan lady requests her visitors not to use them. 
 What is very strange, the nostril so susceptible of a perfume is wonderfully 
 obtuse to its reverse. You may literally call Rome, “ Sentina Gentium,” — 
 the sink of nations. 
 
 (6) p. 27.—“ The sixth banqueter, who was the umbra of Clodius.” 
 
 A very curious and interesting treatise might be written on the parasites of 
 Greece and Rome. In the former, they were more degraded than in the latter 
 country. The Hpuistles of Alciphron express, in a lively manner, the insults 
 which they underwent for the sake of a dinner: one man complains that fish- 
 sauce was thrown into his eyes, that he was beat on the head, and given to 
 eat stones smeared with honey; while a courtesan threw at him a bladder 
 filled with blood, which burst on his face and covered him with the stream. 
 The manner in which these parasites repaid the hospitality of their hosts was, 
 like that of modern diners-out, by witty jokes and amusing stories ; sometimes 
 they indulged practical jokes on each other, “boxing one another’s ears.” 
 The magistrates at Athens appear to have looked very sternly upon these 
 humble buffoons, and they complain of stripes and a prison with no philosophi- 
 cal resignation. In fact, the parasite seems at Athens to have answered the 
 purpose of the fool of the Middle Ages; but he was far more worthless and 
 perhaps more witty; the associate of courtesans, uniting the pimp with the 
 buffoon. This is a character peculiar to Greece. The Latin comic writers 
 made indeed prodigal use of the parasite; yet he appears at Rome to have 
 held a somewhat higher rank, and to have met with a somewhat milder treat- 
 ment, than at Athens. Nor do the delineations of Terence, which, in por- 
 traying Athenian manners, probably soften down whatever would have been 
 exaggerated to a Roman audience, present so degraded or so abandoned a 
 character as the parasite of Alciphron and Atheneus. The more haughty and 
 fastidious Romans often disdained indeed to admit such buffoons as compan- 
 
 a 
 
230 NOTES. 
 
 ions, and hired (as we may note in Pliny’s Epistles) fools or mountebanks, to 
 entertain their guests and to supply the place of the Grecian parasite. When 
 (be it observed) Clodius is styled parasite in the text, the reader must take 
 the modern, not the ancient interpretation of the word. 
 
 A very feeble, but very flattering reflex of a parasite was the umbra or 
 shadow, who accompanied any invited guest, and who was sometimes a man 
 of equal consequence, though usually a poor relative or an humble friend; 
 in modern cant, ‘‘a toady.” Such is the umbra of our friend Clodius. ; 
 
 (c) p. 830 —“ The dice in summer, and I an edile!” 
 
 All games of chance were forbidden by law (“ Vetita legibus alea.” — Horat. 
 Od. xxiv. 1,3), except “in Saturnalibus,”’ during the month of December; 
 the ediles were charged with enforcing this law, which, like all laws against 
 gaming, in all times, was wholly ineffectual. 
 
 (d) p. 37.— “ The small but graceful temple consecrated to Isis.” 
 
 Sylla is said to have transported to Italy the worship of the Egyptian Isis.! 
 It soon became “ the rage,” and was peculiarly in vogue with the Roman ladies. 
 Its priesthood were sworn to chastity, and, like all such brotherhoods, were 
 noted for their licentiousness. Juvenal styles the priestesses by a name (Isiacze 
 lenz) that denotes how convenient they were to lovers, and under the mantle 
 of night many an amorous intrigue was carried on in the purlieus of the sacred 
 temples. A lady vowed for so many nights to watch by the shrine of Isis: 
 it was a sacrifice of continence towards her husband, to be bestowed on her 
 lover! While one passion of human nature was thus appealed to, another 
 scarcely less strong was also pressed into the service of the goddess, namely, 
 Credulity. The priests of Isis arrogated a knowledge of magic and of the fu- 
 ture. Among women of all classes, and among many of the harder sex, the 
 Egyptian sorceries were consulted and revered as oracles. Voltaire, with much 
 plausible ingenuity, endeavors to prove that the gypsies are a remnant of the 
 ancient priests and priestesses of Isis, intermixed with those of the goddess of 
 Syria. In the time of Apuleius these holy impostors had lost their dignity 
 and importance ; despised and poor, they wandered from place to place selling 
 prophecies and curing disorders ; and Voltaire shrewdly bids us remark that 
 Apuleius has not forgot their peculiar skill in filching from outhouses and 
 courtyards; afterwards they practised palmistry and singular dances (query, 
 the Bohemian dances?). “ Such,” says the too-conclusive Frenchman, “such 
 has been the end of the ancient religion of Isis and Osiris, whose very names 
 still impress us with awe!” At the time in which my story is cast, the wor- 
 ship of Isis was, however, in the highest repute; and the wealthy devotees 
 sent even to the Nile, that they might sprinkle its mysterious waters over the 
 altars of the goddess. I have introduced the ibis in the sketch of the temple 
 of Isis, although it has been supposed that that bird languished and died when 
 
 1 In the Campanian cities the trade with Alexandria was probably more effica- 
 cious than the piety of Sylla (no very popular example, perhaps) in establishing 
 the worship of the favorite deity of Egypt. 
 
NOTES. 231 
 
 taken from Egypt. But from various reasons, too long now to enumerate, I 
 incline to believe that the ibis was by no means unfrequent in the Italian tem- 
 ples of Isis, though it rarely lived long, and refused to breed in a foreign 
 climate. 
 
 NOTE TO BOOK IL. 
 
 (a) p. 144.—“ The marvels of Faustus are not comparable to those of 
 Apollonius.” 
 
 During the earlier ages of the Christian epoch, the heathen philosophy, es- 
 pecially of Pythagoras and of Plato, had become debased and adulterated, not 
 only by the wildest mysticism, but the most chimerical dreams of magic. 
 Pythagoras, indeed, scarcely merited a nobler destiny; for though he was an 
 exceedingly clever man, he was a most prodigious mountebank, and was 
 exactly formed to be the great father of a school of magicians. Pythagoras 
 himself either cultivated magic or arrogated its attributes, and his followers 
 told marvellous tales of his writing on the moon’s disk, and appearing in sev- 
 eral places at once. His golden rules and his golden thigh were in especial 
 veneration in Magna Grecia, and out of his doctrines of occult numbers his 
 followers extracted numbers of doctrines. The most remarkable of the later 
 impostors who succeed him was Apollonius of Tyana, referred to in the text. 
 All sorts of prodigies accompanied the birth of this gentleman. Proteus, the 
 Egyptian god, foretold to his mother, yet pregnant, that it was he himself (Pro- 
 teus) who was about to reappear in the world through her agency. After this, 
 Proteus might well be considered to possess the power of transformation ! 
 Apollonius knew the language of birds, read men’s thoughts in their bosoms, 
 and walked about with a familiar spirit. He was a devil of a fellow witha 
 devil, and induced a mob to stone a poor demon of venerable and mendicant 
 appearance, who after the lapidary operation changed into a huge dog. He 
 raised the dead, passed a night with Achilles, and, when Domitian was mur- 
 dered, he called out aloud (though at Ephesus at the moment), “ Strike the 
 tyrant!” The end of so honest and great a man was worthy his life. It 
 would seem that he ascended into heaven. What less could be expected of 
 one who had stoned the devil! Should any English writer meditate a new 
 Faust, I recommend to him Apollonius. 
 
 But the magicians of this sort were philosophers (!), excellent men and pious ; 
 there were others of a far darker and deadlier knowledge, the followers of the 
 Goetic magic ; in other words, the Black Art. Both of these, the Goetic and 
 the Theurgic, seem to be of Egyptian origin ; and it is evident, at least, that 
 their practitioners appeared to pride themselves on drawing their chief secrets 
 from that ancient source, and both are intimately connected with astrology. 
 In attributing to Arbaces the knowledge and the repute of magic, as well as 
 that of the science of the stars, I am, therefore, perfectly in accordance with 
 the spirit of his time and the circumstances of his birth. He is a character- 
 istic of that age. At one time I purposed to have developed and detailed 
 more than I have done the pretensions of Arbaces to the mastery of his art, 
 and to have initiated the reader into the various sorceries of the period. But 
 
232 NOTES. 
 
 as the character of the Egyptian grew upon me, I felt that it was necessary 
 to be sparing of that machinery which, thanks to the march of knowledge, 
 every one now may fancy he can detect. Such as he is, Arbaces is become 
 too much of an intellectual creation to demand a frequent repetition of the 
 coarser and more physical materials of terror. I suffered him, then, merely 
 to demonstrate his capacities in the elementary and obvious secrets of his 
 craft, and leave the subtler magic he possesses to rest in mystery and shadow. 
 
 As to the Witch of Vesuvius, her spells and her philtres, her cavern and 
 its appliances, however familiar to us of the North, are faithful also to her 
 time and nation. A witch of a lighter character, and manners less ascetic 
 the learned reader will remember with delight in the Golden Ass of Apuleius ; 
 and the reader who is not learned is recommended to the spirited translations 
 of that enchanting romance by Taylor. 
 
 NOTE TO BOOK Iii. 
 
 (a) p. 163 —“ The influence of the evil eye.” 
 
 This superstition, to which I have more than once alluded throughout this 
 work, still flourishes in Magna Grecia, with scarcely diminished vigor. I 
 remember conversing at Naples with a lady of the highest rank, and of intel- 
 lect and information very uncommon amongst the noble Italians of either sex, 
 when I suddenly observed her change color, and make a rapid and singular 
 motion with her finger. “ My God, that man!” she whispered, tremblingly. 
 
 “ What man ?” 
 
 “ See! the Count ——! he has just entered!” 
 
 “He ought to be much flattered to cause such emotion; doubtless he has 
 been one of the Signora’s admirers ? ” 
 
 “ Admirer! Heaven forbid. He has the evil eye! His look fell full upon 
 me. Something dreadful will certainly happen.” 
 
 “T see nothing remarkable in his eyes.” 
 
 ‘‘So much the worse. The danger is greater for being disguised. Heisa 
 terrible man. The last time he looked upon my husband, it was at cards, and 
 he lost half his income at a sitting; his ill-luck was miraculous. The Count 
 met my little boy in the gardens, and the poor child broke his arm that even- 
 ing. Oh! what shallldo? Something dreadful will certainly happen; and, 
 heavens! he is admiring my cap!” 
 
 “ Does every one find the eyes of the Count equally fatal, and his admiration 
 equally exciting ? ” 
 
 “Every one — he is universally dreaded ; and, what is very strange, he is 
 so angry if he sees you avoid him!” 
 
 “That is very strange indeed, — the wretch!” 
 
 At Naples the superstition works well for the jewellers, —so many charms 
 and talismans as they sell for the ominous fascination of the mal-occhio! In 
 Pompeii the talismans were equally numerous, but not always of so elegant a 
 shape, nor of so decorous a character. But, generally speaking, a coral orna- 
 ment was, as it now is, among the favorite averters of the evil influence. The 
 Thebans about Pontus were supposed to have an hereditary claim to this 
 
NOTES. 233 
 
 charming attribute, and could even kill grown-up men with a glance. As for 
 Africa, where the belief also still exists, certain families could not only destroy 
 children, but wither up trees: they did this, not with curses but praises. The 
 malus oculus was not always different from the eyes of other people. But 
 persons, especially of the fairer sex, with double pupils to the organ, were 
 above all to be shunned and dreaded. The Ilyrians were said to possess this 
 fatal deformity. In all countries, even in the North, the eye has ever been 
 held the chief seat of fascination; but now-a-days, ladies with a single pupil 
 manage the work of destruction pretty easily. So much do we improve upon 
 our forefathers! 
 
 NOTE TO BOOK IV. 
 (a) p. 376. 
 “ We care not for gods up above us, — 
 We know there ’s no god for this earth, boys!” 
 
 The doctrines of Epicurus himself are pure and simple. Far from denying 
 the existence of diviner powers, Velleius (the defender and explainer of his 
 philosophy in Cicero’s dialogue on the nature of the gods) asserts “that Epi- 
 curus was the first who saw that there were gods, from the impression which 
 Nature herself makes on the minds of all men.” He imagined the belief of 
 the Deity to be an innate or antecedent notion (mpéAnyis) of the mind,—a 
 doctrine of which modern metaphysicians (certainly not Epicureans) have 
 largely availed themselves! He believed that worship was due to the divine 
 powers from the veneration which felicity and excellence command, and not 
 from any dread of their vengeance or awe of their power: a sublime and 
 fearless philosophy, suitable perhaps to half a dozen great and refined spirits, 
 but which would present no check to the passions of the mass of mankind. 
 According to him, the gods were far too agreeably employed in contemplating 
 their own happiness to trovble their heads about the sorrows and the joys, the 
 quarrels and the cares, the petty and transitory affairs of man. Yor this earth 
 they were unsympathizing abstractions :— 
 
 “Wrapt up in majesty divine, 
 Can they regard on what we dine!” 
 
 Cotta, who, in the dialogue referred to, attacks the philosophy of Epicurus 
 with great pleasantry, and considerable, though not uniform, success, draws 
 the evident and practical corollary from the theory that asserts the non-inter- 
 ference of the gods. “How,” says he, “can there be sanctity, if the gods 
 regard not human affairs? Ifthe Deity show no benevolence to man, let us 
 dismiss Him at once. Why should I entreat Him to be propitious? He can- 
 not be propitious, — since, according to you, favor and benevolence are only 
 the effects of imbecility.” Cotta, indeed, quotes from Posidonius (De Naturéd 
 Deorum), to prove that Epicurus did not really believe in the existence of 
 a God; but that his concession of a being wholly nugatory was merely a pre- 
 caution against accusations of atheism. “ Epicurus could not be such a fool,” 
 says Cotta, “as sincerely to believe that a Deity has the members of a man 
 without the power to use them, — a thin pellucidity, regarding no one and doing 
 
234 NOTES. 
 
 nothing.” And, whether this be true or false concerning Epicurus, it is cer- 
 tain that, to all effects and purposes, his later disciples were but refining 
 atheists. The sentiments uttered in the song in the text are precisely those 
 professed in sober prose by the graceful philosophers of the garden, who, as 
 they had wholly perverted the morals of Epicurus, which are at once pure 
 and practical, found it a much easier task to corrupt his metaphysics, which 
 are equally dangerous and visionary. 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK V. 
 
 (a) p. 430. — “ Rivers of the molten lava.” 
 
 Various theories as to the exact mode by which Pompeii was destroyed 
 have been invented by the ingenious. I have adopted that which is the most 
 generally received, and which, upon inspecting the strata, appears the only 
 one admissible by common sense; namely, a destruction by showers of ashes 
 and boiling water, mingled with frequent irruptions of large stones, and aided 
 by partial convulsions of the earth. Herculaneum, on the contrary, appears 
 to have received not only the showers of ashes, but also inundations from 
 molten lava; and the streams referred to in the text must be considered as 
 destined for that city rather than for Pompeii. The volcanic lightnings intro- 
 duced in my description were evidently among the engines of ruin at Pompeii. 
 Papyrus and other of the more inflammable materials are found in a burnt 
 state. Some substances in metal are partially melted; and a bronze statue is 
 completely shivered, as by lightning. Upon the whole (excepting only the 
 inevitable poetic license of shortening the time which the destruction occu- 
 pied), I believe my description of that awful event is very little assisted by 
 invention, and will be found not the less accurate for its appearance in a 
 Romance. 
 
 (d) p. 439. — “ A love that has taken a new sentiment in our new creed.” 
 
 What we now term and feel to be sentiment in love was very little known 
 amongst the ancients, and at this day is scarcely acknowledged out of Chris- 
 tendom. It is a feeling intimately connected with, not a belief, but a convic- 
 tion, that the passion is of the soul, and, like the soul, immortal. Chateau- 
 briand, in that work so full both of error and of truth, his essay on The 
 Genius of Christianity, has referred to this sentiment with his usual eloquence, 
 It makes, indeed, the great distinction between the amatory poetry of the 
 moderns and that of the ancients. And I have thought that I might, with 
 some consonance to truth and nature, attribute the consciousness of this 
 sentiment to Glaucus after his conversion to Christianity, though he is only 
 able vaguely to guess at, rather than thoroughly to explain, its cause. 
 
 (c) p. 441. — “ And everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once 
 moved the springs of that minute yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of 
 life!” 
 
 At present (1834) there have been about three hundred and fifty or four 
 hundred skeletons discovered in Pompeii; but as a great part of the city is 
 
NOTES. 235 
 
 yet to be disinterred, we can scarcely calculate the number of those who 
 perished in the destruction. Still, however, we have every reason to conclude 
 that they were very few in proportion to those who escaped. The ashes had 
 been evidently cleared away from many of the houses, no doubt for the pur- 
 pose of recovering whatever treasures had been left behind. The mansion of 
 our friend Sallust is one of those thus revisited. ‘The skeletons which, re- 
 animated for a while, the reader has seen play their brief parts upon the stage, 
 under the names of Burbo, Calenus, Diomed, Julia, and Arbaces, were found 
 exactly as described in the text. May they have been reanimated more 
 successfully for the pleasure of the reader than they have been for the solace 
 of the author, who has vainly endeavored, in the work which he now con- 
 cludes, to beguile the most painful, gloomy, and despondent period of a life, 
 in the web of which has been woven less of white than the world may deem! 
 But like most other friends, the Imagination is capricious, and forsakes us 
 often at the moment in which we most need its aid. As we grow older, we 
 begin to learn that, of the two, our more faithful and steadfast comforter is — 
 Custom. But I should apologize for this sudden and unseasonable indulgence 
 of a momentary weakness it is but for a moment. With returning health 
 returns also that energy without which the soul were given us in vain, and 
 which enables us calmly to face the evils of our being and resolutely to fulfil 
 its objects. There is but one philosophy (though there area thousand schools), 
 and its name is Fortitude. 
 
 “TO BEAR IS TO CONQUER OUR FATE!” 
 
 THE END. 
 
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