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 subjects 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 made his victims, partly
because he thus secured to himself their secrecy--partly because he thus
yet more confirmed to himself his peculiar power. Hence the motives of
his conduct to Apaecides, 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 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 magnificence of the court itself. The Campanian cities
proffered to him all that his nature craved--the luxuries of an
unequalled 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 tenour 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 chasing 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 love. 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
consider 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,
knowing the influence that the mind possesses over those who are 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: viz, a character which, however criminal and perverted, was
rich in its original 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 the
sprinkling of the anxieties of jealousy; it takes then a wilder, a more
resistless flame; it forgets its softness; it ceases to be tender; it
assumes something 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 barrier 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 possession. 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 concentrate 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 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 ominous and warning in the still and mournful
faces of those dread Theban monsters, whose majestic and passionless
features 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 AEthiopian 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 enamoured, and more
than ever disposed to renew the offence he had committed; he, however,
answered quickly and gaily, 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--sometimes 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.
'I 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 possession; 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 gallantries 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 sought to ward off
shafts deliberately aimed, and to laugh or to talk away the meaning from
his warming language. Nothing 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 powerful 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 the 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 I 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? It is a drama more striking than those of AEschylus: 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 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 moments silent, and then answered:
'It 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 gardens 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 ineffable odorous, the airs of
night, were thickly scattered amidst alleys cut through the star-lit
foliage; or, gathered in baskets, lay like offerings at the feet of the
frequent statues that gleamed along their path.
'Whither wouldst thou lead me, Arbaces?' said Ione, wonderingly.
