A Thorny Path. Complete

“You may confide to me what will be left of me—unless, indeed, you mean the worms which shall eat me and so proceed from me. It can not be good for much, at any rate, and I will tell no one.”

To this Arjuna solemnly replied: “There is one thing which persists to all eternity and can never be lost in all the ages of the universe, and that is—the deed.”

“I know that,” replied the old man with an indifferent shrug; but the word struck Caesar like a thunder-bolt. He listened breathlessly to hear what more the Indian might say; but Arjuna, who regarded it as sacrilege to waste the highest lore on one unworthy of it, went on reading to himself, and Adventus stretched himself out to sleep.

All was silent in and about the sleeping-room, and the fearful words, “the deed,” still rang in the ears of the man who had just committed the most monstrous of all atrocities. He could not get rid of the haunting words; all the ill he had done from his childhood returned to him in fancy, and seemed heaped up to form a mountain which weighed on him like an incubus.

The deed!

His, too, must live on, and with it his name, cursed and hated to the latest generations of men. The souls of the slain would have carried the news of the deeds he had done even to Hades; and if Tarautas were to come and fetch him away, he would be met below by legions of indignant shades—a hundred thousand! And at their head his stern father, and the other worthy men who had ruled Rome with wisdom and honor, would shout in his face: “A hundred thousand times a murderer! robber of the state! destroyer of the army!” and drag him before the judgment-seat; and before judgment could be pronounced the hundred thousand, led by the noblest of all his victims, the good Papinian, would rush upon him and tear him limb from limb.

Dozing as he lay, he felt cold, ghostly hands on his shoulder, on his head, wherever the cold breath of the waning night could fan him through the open window; and with a loud cry he sprang out of bed as he fancied he felt a touch of the shadowy hand of Vindex. On hearing his voice, Adventus and the Indian hurried in, with Epagathos, who had even heard his shriek in the farther room. They found him bathed in a sweat of horror, and struggling for breath, his eyes fixed on vacancy; and the freedman flew off to fetch the physician. When he came Caesar angrily dismissed him, for he felt no physical disorder. Without dressing, he went to the window. It was about three hours before sunrise.

However, he gave orders that his bath should be prepared, and desired to be dressed; then Macrinus and others were to be sent for. Sooner would he step into boiling water than return to that bed of terror. Day, life, business must banish his terrors. But then, after the evening would come another night; and if the sufferings he had just gone through should repeat themselves then, and in those to follow, he should lose his wits, and he would bless the spirit of Tarautas if it would but come to lead him away to death.

But “the deed”! The Indian was right—that would survive him on earth, and mankind would unite in cursing him.

Was there yet time—was he yet capable of atoning for what was done by some great and splendid deed? But the hundred thousand—

The number rose before him like a mountain, blotting out every scheme he tried to form as he went to his bath—taking his lion with him; he reveled in the warm water, and finally lay down to rest in clean linen wrappers. No one had dared to speak to him. His aspect was too threatening.

In a room adjoining the bath-room he had breakfast served him. It was, as usual, a simple meal, and yet he could only swallow a few mouthfuls, for everything had a bitter taste. The praetorian prefect was roused, and Caesar was glad to see him, for it was in attending to affairs that he most easily forgot what weighed upon him. The more serious they were, the better, and Macrinus looked as if there was something of grave importance to be settled.

Caracalla’s first question was with reference to the Parthian ambassadors. They had, in fact, departed; now he must prepare for war. Caesar was eager to decide at once on the destination of each legion, and to call the legates together to a council of war; but Macrinus was not so prompt and ready as usual on such occasions. He had that to communicate which, as he knew, would to Caesar take the head of all else. If it should prove true, it must withdraw him altogether from the affairs of government; and this was what Macrinus aimed at when, before summoning the legates, he observed with a show of reluctance that Caesar would be wroth with him if, for the sake of a council of war, he were to defer a report which had just reached his ears.

“Business first!” cried Caracalla, with decisive prohibition.

“As you will. I thought only of what I was told by an official of this temple, that the gem-cutter’s daughter—you know the girl—is still alive—”

But he got no further, for Caesar sprang to his feet, and desired to hear more of this.

Macrinus proceeded to relate that a slaughterer in the court of sacrifice had told him that Melissa had been seen last evening, and was somewhere in the Serapeum. More than this the prefect knew not, and Caesar forthwith dismissed him to make further inquiry before he himself should take steps to prove the truth of the report.

Then he paced the room with revived energy. His eye sparkled, and, breathing fast, he strove to reduce the storm of schemes, plans, and hopes which surged up within him to some sort of order. He must punish the fugitive—but yet more surely he would never again let her out of his sight. But if only he could first have her cast to the wild beasts, and then bring her to life again, crown her with the imperial diadem, and load her with every gift that power and wealth could procure! He would read every wish in her eyes, if only she would once more lay her hand on his forehead, charm away his pain, and bring sleep to his horror-stricken bed. He had done nothing to vex her; nay, every petition she had urged—But suddenly the image rose before him of old Vindex and his nephew, whom he had sent to execution in spite of her intercession; and again the awful word, “the deed,” rang in his inward ear. Were these hideous thoughts to haunt him even by day?

No, no! In his waking hours there was much to be done which might give him the strength to dissipate them.

The kitchen-steward was by this time in attendance; but what did Caracalla care for dainties to tickle his palate now that he had a hope of seeing Melissa once more? With perfect indifference he left the catering to the skillful and inventive cook; and hardly had he retired when Macrinus returned.

The slaughterer had acquired his information through a comrade, who said that he had twice caught sight of Melissa at the window of the chambers of mystery in the upper story of the Serapeum, yesterday afternoon. He had hoped to win the reward which was offered for the recovery of the fugitive, and had promised his colleague half the money if he would help him to capture the maiden. But just at sunset, hearing that the massacre was ended, the man had incautiously gone out into the town, where he had been slain by a drunken solder of the Scythian legion. The hapless man’s body had been found, but Macrinus’s informant had assured him that he could entirely rely on the report of his unfortunate colleague, who was a sober and truthful man, as the chief augur would testify.

This was enough for Caracalla. Macrinus was at once to go for the high-priest, and to take care that he took no further steps to conceal Melissa. The slaughterer had ever since daybreak kept secret watch on all the doors of the Serapeum, aided by his comrades, who were to share in the reward, and especially on the stairway leading from the ground floor up to the mystic’s galleries.

The prefect at once obeyed the despot’s command. On the threshold he met the kitchen-steward returning to submit his list of dishes for Caesar’s approval.

He found Caracalla in an altered mood, rejuvenescent and in the highest spirits. After hastily agreeing to the day’s bill of fare, he asked the steward in what part of the building the chambers of mystery were; and when he learned that the stairs leading up to them began close to the kitchens, which had been arranged for Caesar’s convenience under the temple laboratory, Caracalla declared in a condescending tone that he would go to look round the scene of the cook’s labors. And the lion should come too, to return thanks for the good meat which was brought to him so regularly.

The head cook, rejoiced at the unwonted graciousness of a master whose wrath had often fallen on him, led the way to his kitchen hearth. This had been constructed in a large hall, originally the largest of the laboratories, where incense was prepared for the sanctuary and medicines concocted for the sick in the temple hospital. There were smaller halls and rooms adjoining, where at this moment some priests were busy preparing kyphi and mixing drugs.

The steward, proud of Caesar’s promised visit, announced to his subordinates the honor they might expect, and he then went to the door of the small laboratory to tell the old pastophoros who was employed there, and who had done him many a good turn, that if he wished to see the emperor he had only to open the door leading to the staircase. He was about to visit the mystic chambers with his much-talked-of lion. No one need be afraid of the beast; it was quite tame, and Caesar loved it as a son.

At this the old drug-pounder muttered some reply, which sounded more like a curse than the expected thanks, and the steward regretted having compared the lion to a son in this man’s presence, for the pastophoros wore a mourning garment, and two promising sons had been snatched from him, slain yesterday with the other youths in the stadium.

But the cook soon forgot the old man’s ill-humor; he had to clear his subordinates out of the way as quickly as possible and prepare for his illustrious visitor. As he bustled around, here, there, and everywhere, the pastophoros entered the kitchen and begged for a piece of mutton. This was granted him by a hasty sign toward a freshly slaughtered sheep, and the old man busied himself for some time behind the steward’s back. At last he had cut off what he wanted, and gazed with singular tenderness at the piece of red, veinless meat. On returning to his laboratory, he hastily bolted himself in, and when he came out again a few minutes later his calm, wrinkled old face had a malignant and evil look. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking about him cautiously; then he flew up the steps with the agility of youth, and at a turn in the stairs he stuck the piece of meat close to the foot of the balustrade.

He returned as nimbly as he had gone, cast a sorrowful glance through the open laboratory window at the arena where all that had graced his life lay dead, and passed his hand over his tearful face. At last he returned to his task, but he was less able to do it than before. It was with a trembling hand that he weighed out the juniper berries and cedar resin, and he listened all the time with bated breath.

Presently there was a stir on the stairs, and the kitchen slaves shouted that Caesar was coming. So he went out of the laboratory, which was behind the stairs, to see what was going forward, and a turnspit at once made way for the old man so as not to hinder his view.

Was that little young man, mounting the steps so gayly, with the high-priest at his side and his suite at his heels, the dreadful monster who had murdered his noble sons? He had pictured the dreadful tyrant quite differently. Now Caesar was laughing, and the tall man next him made some light and ready reply—the head cook said it was the Roman priest of Alexander, who was not on good terms with Timotheus. Could they be laughing at the high-priest? Never, in all the years he had known him, had he seen Timotheus so pale and dejected.

The high-priest had indeed good cause for anxiety, for he suspected who it was that Caesar hoped to find in the mystic rooms, and feared that his wife might, in fact, have Melissa in hiding in that part of the building to which he was now leading the way. After Macrinus had come to fetch him he had had no opportunity of inquiring, for the prefect had not quitted him for a moment, and Euryale was in the town busy with other women in seeking out and nursing such of the wounded as had been found alive among the dead.

Caesar triumphed in the changed, gloomy, and depressed demeanor of a man usually so self-possessed; for he fancied that it betrayed some knowledge on the part of Timotheus of Melissa’s hiding-place; and he could jest with the priest of Alexander and his favorite Theokritus and the other friends who attended him, while he ignored the high-priest’s presence and never even alluded to Melissa.

Hardly had they gone past the old man when, just as the kitchen slaves were shouting “Hail, Caesar!” the lady Euryale, as pale as death, hurried in, and with a trembling voice inquired whither her husband was conducting the emperor.

She had turned back when half way on her road, in obedience to the impulse of her heart, which prompted her, before she went on her Samaritan’s errand, to visit Melissa in her hiding-place, and let her see the face of a friend at the beginning of a new, lonely, and anxious day. On hearing the reply which was readily given, her knees trembled beneath her, and the steward, who saw her totter, supported her and led her into the laboratory, where essences and strong waters soon restored her to consciousness. Euryale had known the old pastophoros a long time, and, noticing his mourning garb, she asked sympathetically: “And you, too, are bereft?”

“Of both,” was the answer. “You were always so good to them—Slaughtered like beasts for sacrifice—down there in the stadium,” and tears flowed fast down the old man’s furrowed cheeks. The lady uplifted her hands as though calling on Heaven to avenge this outrageous crime; at the same instant a loud howl of pain was heard from above, and a great confusion of men’s voices.

Euryale was beside herself with fear. If they had found Melissa in her room her husband’s fate was sealed, and she was guilty of his doom. But they could scarcely yet have opened the chambers, and the girl was clever and nimble, and might perhaps escape in time if she heard the men approaching. She eagerly flew to the window. She could see below her the stone which Melissa must move to get out; but between the wall and the stadium the street was crowded, and at every door of the Serapeum lictors were posted, even at that stone door known only to the initiated, with the temple slaughterers and other servants who seemed all to be on guard. If Melissa were to come out now she would be seized, and it must become known who had shown her the way into the hiding-place that had sheltered her.

At this moment Theokritus came leaping down the stairs, crying out to her: “The lion—a physician—where shall I find a leech?”

The matron pointed to the old man, who was one of the medical students of the sanctuary, and the favorite shouted out to him, “Come up!” and then rushed on, paying no heed to Euryale’s inquiry for Melissa; but the old man laughed scornfully and shouted after him, “I am no beast-healer.”

Then, turning to the lady, he added:

“I am sorry for the lion. You know me, lady. I could never till yesterday bear to see a fly hurt. But this brute! It was as a son to that bloodhound, and he shall feel for once something to grieve him. The lion has had his portion. No physician in the world can bring him to life again.”

He bent his head and returned to his laboratory; but the matron understood that this kind, peaceable man, in spite of his white hair, had become a poisoner, and that the splendid, guiltless beast owed its death to him. She shuddered. Wherever this unblest man went, good turned to evil; terror, suffering, and death took the place of peace, happiness, and life. He had forced her even into the sin of disobedience to her husband and master. But now her secret hiding of Melissa against his will would be avenged. He and she alike would probably pay for the deed with their life; for the murder of his lion would inevitably rouse Caesar’s wildest passions.

Still, she knew that Caracalla respected her; for her sake, perhaps, he would spare her husband. But Melissa? What would her fate be if she were dragged out of her hiding-place?—and she must be discovered! He had threatened to cast her to the beasts; and ought she not to prefer even that fearful fate to forgiveness and a fresh outburst of Caesar’s passion?

Pale and tearless, but shaken with alarms, she bent over the balustrade of the stairs and murmured a prayer commending herself, her husband, and Melissa to God. Then she hastened up the steps. The great doors leading to the chambers of mystery stood wide open, and the first person she met was her husband.

“You here?” said he in an undertone. “You may thank the gods that your kind heart did not betray you into hiding the girl here. I trembled for her and for ourselves. But there is not a sign of her; neither here nor on the secret stair. What a morning—and what a day must follow! There lies Caesar’s lion. If his suspicion that it has been poisoned should be proved true, woe to this luckless city, woe to us all!”

And Caesar’s aspect justified the worst anticipations. He had thrown himself on the floor by the side of his dead favorite, hiding his face in the lion’s noble mane, with strange, quavering wailing. Then he raised the brute’s heavy head and kissed his dead eyes, and as it slipped from his hand and fell on the floor, he started to his feet, shaking his fist, and exclaiming:

“Yes, you have poisoned him! Bring the miscreant here, or you shall follow him!”

Macrinus assured him that if indeed some basest of base wretches had dared to destroy the life of this splendid and faithful king of beasts, the murderer should infallibly be found. But Caracalla screamed in his face:

“Found? Dare you speak of finding? Have you even brought me the girl who was hidden here? Have you found her? Where is she? She was seen here and she must be here!”

And he hurried from room to room in undignified haste, like a slave hunting for some lost treasure of his master’s, tearing open closets, peeping behind curtains and up chimneys, and snatching the clothes, behind which she might have hidden, from the pegs on which they hung. He insisted on seeing every secret door, and ran first down and then up the hidden stairs by which Melissa had in fact escaped.

In the great hall, where by this time physicians and courtiers had gathered round the carcass of the lion, Caesar sank on to a seat, his brow damp with heat, and stared at the floor; while the leeches, who, as Alexandrians for the most part, were anxious not to rouse the despot’s rage, assured him that to all appearance the lion, who had been highly fed and getting little exercise, had died of a fit. The poison had indeed worked more rapidly than any the imperial body physician was acquainted with; and he, not less anxious to mollify the sovereign, bore them out in this opinion. But their diagnosis, though well meant, had the contrary effect to that they had intended. The prosecution and punishment of a murderer would have given occupation to his revengeful spirit and have diverted his thoughts, and the capture of the criminal would have pacified him; as it was, he could only regard the death of the lion as a fresh stroke of fate directed against himself. He sat absorbed in sullen gloom, muttering frantic curses, and haughtily desired the high-priest to restore the offering he had wasted on a god who was so malignant, and as hostile to him as all else in this city of abomination.

He then rose, desired every one to stand back from where the lion lay, and gazed down at the beast for many minutes. And as he looked, his excited imagination showed him Melissa stroking the noble brute, and the lion lashing the ground with his tail when he heard the light step of her little feet. He could hear the music of her voice when she spoke coaxingly to the lion; and then again he started off to search the rooms once more, shouting her name, heedless of the bystanders, till Macrinus made so bold as to assure him that the slaughterer’s report must have been false. He must have mistaken some one else for Melissa, for it was proved beyond a doubt that Melissa had been burned in her father’s house.

At this Caesar looked the prefect in the face with glazed and wandering eyes, and Macrinus started in horror as he suddenly shrieked, “The deed, the deed!” and struck his brow with his fist.

From that hour Caracalla had lost forever the power of distinguishing the illusions which pursued him from reality.

CHAPTER XXXV

A week later Caracalla quitted Alexandria to make war on the Parthians. What finally drove the unhappy man to hurry from the hated place was the torturing fear of sharing his lion’s fate, and of being sent after the murdered Tarautas by the friends who had heard his appeal to fate.

Quite mad he was not, for the illusions which haunted him were often absent for several hours, when he spoke with perfect lucidity, received reports, and gave orders. It was with peculiar terror that his soul avoided every recollection of his mother, of Theokritus, and all those whose opinion he had formerly valued and whose judgment was not indifferent to him.

In constant terror of the dagger of an avenger—a dread which, with many other peculiarities, the leech could hardly ascribe to the diseased phenomena of his mental state—he only showed himself to his soldiers, and he might often be seen making a meal off a pottage he himself had cooked to escape the poison which had been fatal to his lion. He was never for an instant free from the horrible sense of being hated, shunned, and persecuted by the whole world.

Sometimes he would remember that once a fair girl had prayed for him; but when he tried to recall her features he could only see the charred arm with the golden snake held up before him as he had pictured it that night after the most hideous of his massacres; and every time, at the sight of it, that word came back to him which still tortured his soul above all else—“The deed.” But his attendants, who heard him repeating it day and night, never knew what he meant by it.

When Zminis met his end by the wild beasts in the arena, it was before half-empty seats, though several legions had been ordered into the amphitheatre to fill them. The larger number of the citizens were slain, and the remainder were in mourning for relatives more or less near; and they also kept away from the scene to avoid the hated despot.

Macrinus now governed the empire almost as a sovereign, for Caesar, formerly a laborious and autocratic ruler, shrank from all business. Even before they left Alexandria the plebeian prefect could see that Serapion’s prophecy was fulfilling itself. He remained in close intimacy with the soothsayer; but only once more, and just before Caesar’s departure, could the magian be induced to raise the spirits of the dead, for his clever accomplice, Castor, had fallen a victim in the massacre because, prompted by the high price set on Alexander’s head, and his own fierce hatred of the young painter, he would go out to discover where he and his sister had concealed themselves.

When at last the unhappy monarch quitted Alexandria one rainy morning, followed by the curses of innumerable mourners—fathers, mothers, widows, and orphans—as well as of ruined artisans and craftsmen, the ill-used city, once so proudly gay, felt itself relieved of a crushing nightmare. This time it was not to Caesar that the cloudy sky promised welfare—his life was wrapped in gloom—but to the people he had so bitterly hated. Thousands looked forward hopefully to life once more, in spite of their mourning robes and widows’ veils, and notwithstanding the serious hindrances which the malice of their “afflicted” sovereign had placed in the way of the resuscitation of their town, for Caracalla had commanded that a wall should be built to divide the great merchant city into two parts.

Nay, he had intended to strike a death-blow even at the learning to which Alexandria owed a part of her greatness, by decreeing that the Museum and schools should be removed and the theatres closed.

Maddening alike to heart and brain was the memory that he left behind him, and the citizens would shake their fists if only his name were spoken. But their biting tongues had ceased to mock or jest. Most of the epigramatists were silenced forever, and the nimble wit of the survivors was quelled for many a month by bitter curses or tears of sorrow.