'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.
'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 ashes 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
cauldron.'
The Egyptian moved his seat from so unblessed or so unhealthful a
vicinity as the witch spoke.
'It 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.'
'And what connection hath thy love, witch, with my commands?' said
Arbaces, impetuously.
'Patience,' resumed the witch; 'patience, I implore. I loved! another
and less fair than I--yes, by Nemesis! less fair--allured from me my
chosen. I was of that dark Etrurian 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! dead! Since then, what has been life to me I became suddenly old,
I devoted myself to the sorceries 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 glazing 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 contemptuous eye.
'And this foul thing has yet human emotions!' thought he; 'still she
cowers over the ashes of the same fire that consumes 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 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 Orcus and by Nemesis, he
must die.'
And working himself up at every word, the Egyptian, forgetful 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 when the risk that 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 vengeance, 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,' returned 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 at the
entrance of the cavern, gazing fixedly on his receding form; and as the
sad moonlight streamed over her shadowy 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, groaningly 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.
'I love to look at you,' said she, apostrophising 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 grey
locks; and, looking into the cavity, she beheld, 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 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
cauldron: '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, that 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, Apaecides was baptized.
Chapter XI
PROGRESS OF EVENTS. THE PLOT THICKENS. THE WEB IS WOVEN, BUT THE NET
CHANGES HANDS.
'AND 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
knowledge 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 courteous 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 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 may not return until late, they will miss
thee.'
'Ione is indulgent,' replied 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 it so. I will take my leave now; make my request, which I
know will be readily granted, and return shortly.'
