Thou art slave to the earth no more!
O soul, thou art freed!--and we?--
Ah! when shall our toil be o'er?
Ah! when shall we rest with thee?
And now high and far into the dawning skies broke the fragrant fire; it
flushed luminously across the gloomy cypresses--it shot above the
massive walls of the neighboring city; and the early fisherman started
to behold the blaze reddening on the waves of the creeping sea.
But Ione sat down apart and alone, and, leaning her face upon her hands,
saw not the flame, nor heard the lamentation of the music: she felt only
one sense of loneliness--she had not yet arrived to that hallowing sense
of comfort, when we know that we are not alone--that the dead are with
us!
The breeze rapidly aided the effect of the combustibles placed within
the pile. By degrees the flame wavered, lowered, dimmed, and slowly, by
fits and unequal starts, died away--emblem of life itself; where, just
before, all was restlessness and flame, now lay the dull and smouldering
ashes.
The last sparks were extinguished by the attendants--the embers were
collected. Steeped in the rarest wine and the costliest odorous, the
remains were placed in a silver urn, which was solemnly stored in one of
the neighboring sepulchres beside the road; and they placed within it
the vial full of tears, and the small coin which poetry still
consecrated to the grim boatman. And the sepulchre was covered with
flowers and chaplets, and incense kindled on the altar, and the tomb
hung round with many lamps.
But the next day, when the priest returned with fresh offerings to the
tomb, he found that to the relics of heathen superstition some unknown
hands had added a green palm-branch. He suffered it to remain,
unknowing that it was the sepulchral emblem of Christianity.
When the above ceremonies were over, one of the Praeficae three times
sprinkled the mourners from the purifying branch of laurel, uttering the
last word, 'Ilicet!'--Depart!--and the rite was done.
But first they paused to utter--weepingly and many times--the affecting
farewell, 'Salve Eternum!' And as Ione yet lingered, they woke the
parting strain.
SALVE ETERNUM
I
Farewell! O soul departed!
Farewell! O sacred urn!
Bereaved and broken-hearted,
To earth the mourners turn.
To the dim and dreary shore,
Thou art gone our steps before!
But thither the swift Hours lead us,
And thou dost but a while precede us,
Salve--salve!
Loved urn, and thou solemn cell,
Mute ashes!--farewell, farewell!
Salve--salve!
II
Ilicet--ire licet--
Ah, vainly would we part!
Thy tomb is the faithful heart.
About evermore we bear thee;
For who from the heart can tear thee?
Vainly we sprinkle o'er us
The drops of the cleansing stream;
And vainly bright before us
The lustral fire shall beam.
For where is the charm expelling
Thy thought from its sacred dwelling?
Our griefs are thy funeral feast,
And Memory thy mourning priest.
Salve--salve!
III
Ilicet--ire licet!
The spark from the hearth is gone
Wherever the air shall bear it;
The elements take their own--
The shadows receive thy spirit.
It will soothe thee to feel our grief,
As thou glid'st by the Gloomy River!
If love may in life be brief,
In death it is fixed for ever.
Salve--salve!
In the hall which our feasts illume,
The rose for an hour may bloom;
But the cypress that decks the tomb--
The cypress is green for ever!
Salve--salve!
Chapter IX
IN WHICH AN ADVENTURE HAPPENS TO IONE.
WHILE some stayed behind to share with the priests the funeral banquet,
Ione and her handmaids took homeward their melancholy way. And now (the
last duties to her brother performed) her mind awoke from its
absorption, and she thought of her allianced, and the dread charge
against him. Not--as we have before said--attaching even a momentary
belief to the unnatural accusation, but nursing the darkest suspicion
against Arbaces, she felt that justice to her lover and to her murdered
relative demanded her to seek the praetor, and communicate her
impression, unsupported as it might be. Questioning her maidens, who
had hitherto--kindly anxious, as I have said, to save her the additional
agony--refrained from informing her of the state of Glaucus, she learned
that he had been dangerously ill: that he was in custody, under the roof
of Sallust; that the day of his trial was appointed.
'Averting gods,' she exclaimed; 'and have I been so long forgetful of
him? Have I seemed to shun him? O! let me hasten to do him justice--to
show that I, the nearest relative of the dead, believe him innocent of
the charge. Quick! quick! let us fly. Let me soothe--tend--cheer him!
and if they will not believe me; if they will not lead to my conviction;
if they sentence him to exile or to death, let me share the sentence
with him!'
Instinctively she hastened her pace, confused and bewildered, scarce
knowing whither she went; now designing first to seek the praetor, and
now to rush to the chamber of Glaucus. She hurried on--she passed the
gate of the city--she was in the long street leading up the town. The
houses were opened, but none were yet astir in the streets; the life of
the city was scarce awake--when lo! she came suddenly upon a small knot
of men standing beside a covered litter. A tall figure stepped from the
midst of them, and Ione shrieked aloud to behold Arbaces.
'Fair Ione!' said he, gently, and appearing not to heed her alarm: 'my
ward, my pupil! forgive me if I disturb thy pious sorrows; but the
praetor, solicitous of thy honour, and anxious that thou mayest not
rashly be implicated in the coming trial; knowing the strange
embarrassment of thy state (seeking justice for thy brother, but
dreading punishment to thy betrothed)--sympathizing, too, with thy
unprotected and friendless condition, and deeming it harsh that thou
shouldst be suffered to act unguided and mourn alone--hath wisely and
paternally confided thee to the care of thy lawful guardian. Behold the
writing which intrusts thee to my charge!'
'Dark Egyptian!' cried Ione, drawing herself proudly aside; 'begone! It
is thou that hast slain my brother! Is it to thy care, thy hands yet
reeking with his blood, that they will give the sister Ha! thou turnest
pale! thy conscience smites thee! thou tremblest at the thunderbolt of
the avenging god! Pass on, and leave me to my woe!'
'Thy sorrows unstring thy reason, Ione,' said Arbaces, attempting in
vain his usual calmness of tone. 'I forgive thee. Thou wilt find me
now, as ever, thy surest friend. But the public streets are not the
fitting place for us to confer--for me to console thee. Approach,
slaves! Come, my sweet charge, the litter awaits thee.'
The amazed and terrified attendants gathered round Ione, and clung to
her knees.
'Arbaces,' said the eldest of the maidens, 'this is surely not the law!
For nine days after the funeral, is it not written that the relatives of
the deceased shall not be molested in their homes, or interrupted in
their solitary grief?'
'Woman!' returned Arbaces, imperiously waving his hand, 'to place a ward
under the roof of her guardian is not against the funeral laws. I tell
thee I have the fiat of the praetor. This delay is indecorous. Place
her in the litter.'
So saying, he threw his arm firmly round the shrinking form of Ione.
She drew back, gazed earnestly in his face, and then burst into
hysterical laughter:
'Ha, ha! this is well--well! Excellent guardian--paternal law! Ha,
ha!' And, startled herself at the dread echo of that shrill and maddened
laughter, she sunk, as it died away, lifeless upon the ground... A
minute more, and Arbaces had lifted her into the litter. The bearers
moved swiftly on, and the unfortunate Ione was soon borne from the sight
of her weeping handmaids.
Chapter X
WHAT BECOMES OF NYDIA IN THE HOUSE OF ARBACES. THE EGYPTIAN FEELS
COMPASSION FOR GLAUCUS. COMPASSION IS OFTEN A VERY USELESS VISITOR TO
THE GUILTY.
IT will be remembered that, at the command of Arbaces, Nydia followed
the Egyptian to his home, and conversing there with her, he learned from
the confession of her despair and remorse, that her hand, and not
Julia's, had administered to Glaucus the fatal potion. At another time
the Egyptian might have conceived a philosophical interest in sounding
the depths and origin of the strange and absorbing passion which, in
blindness and in slavery, this singular girl had dared to cherish; but
at present he spared no thought from himself. As, after her confession,
the poor Nydia threw herself on her knees before him, and besought him
to restore the health and save the life of Glaucus--for in her youth and
ignorance she imagined the dark magician all-powerful to effect
both--Arbaces, with unheeding ears, was noting only the new expediency of
detaining Nydia a prisoner until the trial and fate of Glaucus were
decided. For if, when he judged her merely the accomplice of Julia in
obtaining the philtre, he had felt it was dangerous to the full success
of his vengeance to allow her to be at large--to appear, perhaps, as a
witness--to avow the manner in which the sense of Glaucus had been
darkened, and thus win indulgence to the crime of which he was
accused--how much more was she likely to volunteer her testimony when
she herself had administered the draught, and, inspired by love, would
be only anxious, at any expense of shame, to retrieve her error and
preserve her beloved? Besides, how unworthy of the rank and repute of
Arbaces to be implicated in the disgrace of pandering to the passion of
Julia, and assisting in the unholy rites of the Saga of Vesuvius!
Nothing less, indeed, than his desire to induce Glaucus to own the
murder of Apaecides, as a policy evidently the best both for his own
permanent safety and his successful suit with Ione, could ever have led
him to contemplate the confession of Julia.
As for Nydia, who was necessarily cut off by her blindness from much of
the knowledge of active life, and who, a slave and a stranger, was
naturally ignorant of the perils of the Roman law, she thought rather of
the illness and delirium of her Athenian, than the crime of which she
had vaguely heard him accused, or the chances of the impending trial.
Poor wretch that she was, whom none addressed, none cared for, what did
she know of the senate and the sentence--the hazard of the law--the
ferocity of the people--the arena and the lion's den? She was
accustomed only to associate with the thought of Glaucus everything that
was prosperous and lofty--she could not imagine that any peril, save
from the madness of her love, could menace that sacred head. He seemed
to her set apart for the blessings of life. She only had disturbed the
current of his felicity; she knew not, she dreamed not that the stream,
once so bright, was dashing on to darkness and to death. It was
therefore to restore the brain that she had marred, to save the life
that she had endangered that she implored the assistance of the great
Egyptian.
'Daughter,' said Arbaces, waking from his reverie, 'thou must rest here;
it is not meet for thee to wander along the streets, and be spurned from
the threshold by the rude feet of slaves. I have compassion on thy soft
crime--I will do all to remedy it. Wait here patiently for some days,
and Glaucus shall be restored.' So saying, and without waiting for her
reply, he hastened from the room, drew the bolt across the door, and
consigned the care and wants of his prisoner to the slave who had the
charge of that part of the mansion.
Alone, then, and musingly, he waited the morning light, and with it
repaired, as we have seen, to possess himself of the person of Ione.
His primary object, with respect to the unfortunate Neapolitan, was that
which he had really stated to Clodius, viz., to prevent her interesting
herself actively in the trial of Glaucus, and also to guard against her
accusing him (which she would, doubtless, have done) of his former act
of perfidy and violence towards her, his ward--denouncing his causes for
vengeance against Glaucus--unveiling the hypocrisy of his character--and
casting any doubt upon his veracity in the charge which he had made
against the Athenian. Not till he had encountered her that morning--not
till he had heard her loud denunciations--was he aware that he had also
another danger to apprehend in her suspicion of his crime. He hugged
himself now at the thought that these ends were effected: that one, at
once the object of his passion and his fear, was in his power. He
believed more than ever the flattering promises of the stars; and when
he sought Ione in that chamber in the inmost recesses of his mysterious
mansion to which he had consigned her--when he found her overpowered by
blow upon blow, and passing from fit to fit, from violence to torpor, in
all the alternations of hysterical disease--he thought more of the
loveliness which no frenzy could distort than of the woe which he had
brought upon her. In that sanguine vanity common to men who through
life have been invariably successful, whether in fortune or love, he
flattered himself that when Glaucus had perished--when his name was
solemnly blackened by the award of a legal judgment, his title to her
love for ever forfeited by condemnation to death for the murder of her
own brother--her affection would be changed to horror; and that his
