though ambition could not be ennobled. But all that was best and
brightest in his soul woke at once when he knew Ione. 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 favorable 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 incarnation 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 holiday of
nature, so glorious and so fresh were their youth, their beauty, and
their love. They seemed out of place in the 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 knowledge 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 imagined 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 candour, 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?
At deepest night, then, when the streets were hushed, and the high moon
only beheld his devotions, he stole to that temple of his heart--her
home; and wooed her after the beautiful fashion of his country. He
covered her threshold with 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 Lydian lute: and verses, which the inspiration 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 departed, 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 Ione'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 reverence 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 presence 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 she never thought of forbidding his visits. She was
passive under the influence which created in her breast, not the
repugnance, but something of the stillness of terror.
Arbaces himself now resolved to exert all his arts to possess himself of
that treasure he so burningly coveted. He was cheered and elated by his
conquests over her brother. From the hour in which Apaecides fell
beneath the voluptuous sorcery of that fete 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 thraldom of the senses.
When Apaecides 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--appalled. His vows of austerity and
celibacy echoed in his ear; his thirst after holiness--had it been
quenched at so unhallowed 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 dazzled, 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 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 creed 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 its 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--'observe 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
"Saviour"--observe, that the sign by which his human qualities are
denoted is the cross.' 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 eternal heavens. But the allegory unknown, the types
themselves 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
unconscious 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 something; 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--all that was alluring in pleasure, served to
invite to, and contributed 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 consummate 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 anguish
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 if 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 Clodius or of Lepidus. He
affected to class them together as things of a low and ephemeral
species; as things wanting nothing of the butterfly, save its innocence
and its grace. Sometimes 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 for Glaucus the first fluttering prepossessions that
lead 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 honour 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?'
'I 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 gaiety.
'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 is 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.'
