'I cannot,' said Lydon.
'And why?'
'I have said--because he has challenged me.'
'But he will not hold you to the precise weapon.'
'My honour holds me!' returned Lydon, proudly.
'I bet on Tetraides, two to one, at the cestus,' said Clodius; shall it
be, Lepidus?--even betting, with swords.'
'If 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.
'I will take the odds three to one.'
'Ten sestertia to thirty.'
'Yes.'
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 honour,
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.'
'I am not a miser,' said Lydon, haughtily, and he withdrew 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, Clodius, let us go
shares with Jupiter; perhaps he has caught a Leda.'
At this moment a loud cry of pain and terror startled the group.
'Oh, spare me! spare me! I am but a child, I am blind--is not that
punishment enough?'
'O Pallas! I know that voice, it is my poor flower-girl!' exclaimed
Glaucus, and he darted at once into the quarter whence the cry rose.
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.
'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, a child! My
Nydia, my poor infant!'
'Oh? is that you--is 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 mannikin.'
'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 forsook distress!'
'Holla!' said Burbo, rising reluctantly, 'What turmoil is all this 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 help-mate.
'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 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 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 disheveled hair from her eyes, she looked around, as if, alas,
she had the power to see!
'Sell our Nydia! no, indeed,' said Stratonice, gruffly.
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? If I 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.
'I paid six sestertia for her, she is worth twelve now,' muttered
Stratonice.
'You shall have twenty; come to the magistrates at once, and then to my
house for your money.'
'I 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 amphitheatre, 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 like 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? O happiness!' 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,
bright the instant before; she sighed heavily, and then once more taking
his hand, she said:
'I thought I was to go to your house?'
'And so thou shalt for the present; come, we lose time.'
Chapter IV
THE RIVAL OF GLAUCUS PRESSES ONWARD IN THE RACE.
IONE was one of those brilliant characters which, but once or twice,
flash across our career. She united in the highest perfection 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 modesty you admire never disguises its extent from its
possessor. It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that it
cannot reveal to the everyday world, that gives to genius that shy, and
reserved, and troubled air, which puzzles and flatters you when you
encounter it.
Ione, then, knew her genius; but, with that charming versatility 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 concentred 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 inexhaustible--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 sentiment which
has so little 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 passions. 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 solitude 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 Egyptian, 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 penetration 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 gaoler; 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. For 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
praetorships 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 patriotism. 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 applause
of your citizens is like 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 inhabitants is not yours. In the
court you desire favor instead of glory; at a distance from the court,
public opinion has vanished 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 republics, into one empire;
false, pernicious delusion! your only hope of regeneration is in
division. Florence, Milan, Venice, Genoa, may be free once more, if
each is free. But dream not of freedom 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 transcending the
natural proportions of health and vigour.
Thus thrown back upon themselves, the more ardent qualities of Glaucus
found no vent, save in that overflowing imagination 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
