skilled in the art to please.'
'None! Her Greek soul despises the barbarian Romans, and would scorn
itself if it admitted a thought of love for one of that upstart race.'
'But thou art an Egyptian, not a Greek!'
'Egypt,' replied Arbaces, 'is the mother of Athens. Her tutelary
Minerva is our deity; and her founder, Cecrops, was the fugitive of
Egyptian Sais. This have I already taught to her; and in my blood she
venerates the eldest dynasties of earth. But yet I will own that of
late some uneasy suspicions have crossed my mind. She is more silent
than she used to be; she loves melancholy and subduing music; she sighs
without an outward cause. This may be the beginning of love--it may be
the want of love. In either case it is time for me to begin my
operations on her fancies and her heart: in the one case, to divert the
source of love to me; in the other, in me to awaken it. It is for this
that I have sought you.'
'And how can I assist you?'
'I am about to invite her to a feast in my house: I wish to dazzle--to
bewilder--to inflame her senses. Our arts--the arts by which Egypt
trained her young novitiates--must be employed; and, under veil of the
mysteries of religion, I will open to her the secrets of love.'
'Ah! now I understand:--one of those voluptuous banquets that, despite
our dull vows of mortified coldness, we, the priests of Isis, have
shared at thy house.'
'No, no! Thinkest thou her chaste eyes are ripe for such scenes? No;
but first we must ensnare the brother--an easier task. Listen to me,
while I give you my instructions.'
Chapter V
MORE OF THE FLOWER-GIRL. THE PROGRESS OF LOVE.
THE sun shone gaily into that beautiful chamber in the house of Glaucus,
which I have before said is now called the 'Room of Leda'. The morning
rays entered through rows of small casements at the higher part of the
room, and through the door which opened on the garden, that answered to
the inhabitants of the southern cities the same purpose that a
greenhouse or conservatory does to us. The size of the garden did not
adapt it for exercise, but the various and fragrant plants with which it
was filled gave a luxury to that indolence so dear to the dwellers in a
sunny clime. And now the odorous, fanned by a gentle wind creeping from
the adjacent sea, scattered themselves over that chamber, whose walls
vied with the richest colors of the most glowing flowers. Besides the
gem of the room--the painting of Leda and Tyndarus--in the centre of
each compartment of the walls were set other pictures of exquisite
beauty. In one you saw Cupid leaning on the knees of Venus; in another
Ariadne sleeping on the beach, unconscious of the perfidy of Theseus.
Merrily the sunbeams played to and fro on the tessellated floor and the
brilliant walls--far more happily came the rays of joy to the heart of
the young Glaucus.
'I have seen her, then,' said he, as he paced that narrow chamber--'I
have heard her--nay, I have spoken to her again--I have listened to the
music of her song, and she sung of glory and of Greece. I have
discovered the long-sought idol of my dreams; and like the Cyprian
sculptor, I have breathed life into my own imaginings.'
Longer, perhaps, had been the enamoured soliloquy of Glaucus, but at
that moment a shadow darkened the threshold of the chamber, and a young
female, still half a child in years, broke upon his solitude. She was
dressed simply in a white tunic, which reached from the neck to the
ankles; under her arm she bore a basket of flowers, and in the other
hand she held a bronze water-vase; her features were more formed than
exactly became her years, yet they were soft and feminine in their
outline, and without being beautiful in themselves, they were almost
made so by their beauty of expression; there was something ineffably
gentle, and you would say patient, in her aspect. A look of resigned
sorrow, of tranquil endurance, had banished the smile, but not the
sweetness, from her lips; something timid and cautious in her
step--something wandering in her eyes, led you to suspect the affliction
which she had suffered from her birth--she was blind; but in the orbs
themselves there was no visible defect--their melancholy and subdued
light was clear, cloudless, and serene. 'They tell me that Glaucus is
here,' said she; 'may I come in?'
'Ah, my Nydia,' said the Greek, 'is that you I knew you would not
neglect my invitation.'
'Glaucus did but justice to himself,' answered Nydia, with a blush; 'for
he has always been kind to the poor blind girl.'
'Who could be otherwise?' said Glaucus, tenderly, and in the voice of a
compassionate brother.
Nydia sighed and paused before she resumed, without replying to his
remark. 'You have but lately returned?'
'This is the sixth sun that hath shone upon me at Pompeii.'
'And you are well? Ah, I need not ask--for who that sees the earth,
which they tell me is so beautiful, can be ill?'
'I am well. And you, Nydia--how you have grown! Next year you will be
thinking what answer to make your lovers.'
A second blush passed over the cheek of Nydia, but this time she frowned
as she blushed. 'I have brought you some flowers,' said she, without
replying to a remark that she seemed to resent; and feeling about the
room till she found the table that stood by Glaucus, she laid the basket
upon it: 'they are poor, but they are fresh-gathered.'
'They might come from Flora herself,' said he, kindly; 'and I renew
again my vow to the Graces, that I will wear no other garlands while thy
hands can weave me such as these.'
'And how find you the flowers in your viridarium?--are they thriving?'
'Wonderfully so--the Lares themselves must have tended them.'
'Ah, now you give me pleasure; for I came, as often as I could steal the
leisure, to water and tend them in your absence.'
'How shall I thank thee, fair Nydia?' said the Greek. 'Glaucus little
dreamed that he left one memory so watchful over his favorites at
Pompeii.'
The hand of the child trembled, and her breast heaved beneath her tunic.
She turned round in embarrassment. 'The sun is hot for the poor
flowers,' said she, 'to-day and they will miss me; for I have been ill
lately, and it is nine days since I visited them.'
'Ill, Nydia!--yet your cheek has more color than it had last year.'
'I am often ailing,' said the blind girl, touchingly; 'and as I grow up
I grieve more that I am blind. But now to the flowers!' So saying, she
made a slight reverence with her head, and passing into the viridarium,
busied herself with watering the flowers.
'Poor Nydia,' thought Glaucus, gazing on her; 'thine is a hard doom!
Thou seest not the earth--nor the sun--nor the ocean--nor the
stars--above all, thou canst not behold Ione.'
At that last thought his mind flew back to the past evening, and was a
second time disturbed in its reveries by the entrance of Clodius. It
was a proof how much a single evening had sufficed to increase and to
refine the love of the Athenian for Ione, that whereas he had confided
to Clodius the secret of his first interview with her, and the effect it
had produced on him, he now felt an invincible aversion even to mention
to him her name. He had seen Ione, bright, pure, unsullied, in the
midst of the gayest and most profligate gallants of Pompeii, charming
rather than awing the boldest into respect, and changing the very nature
of the most sensual and the least ideal--as by her intellectual and
refining spells she reversed the fable of Circe, and converted the
animals into men. They who could not understand her soul were made
spiritual, as it were, by the magic of her beauty--they who had no heart
for poetry had ears, at least, for the melody of her voice. Seeing her
thus surrounded, purifying and brightening all things with her presence,
Glaucus almost for the first time felt the nobleness of his own
nature--he felt how unworthy of the goddess of his dreams had been his
companions and his pursuits. A veil seemed lifted from his eyes; he saw
that immeasurable distance between himself and his associates which the
deceiving mists of pleasure had hitherto concealed; he was refined by a
sense of his courage in aspiring to Ione. He felt that henceforth it
was his destiny to look upward and to soar. He could no longer breathe
that name, which sounded to the sense of his ardent fancy as something
sacred and divine, to lewd and vulgar ears. She was no longer the
beautiful girl once seen and passionately remembered--she was already
the mistress, the divinity of his soul. This feeling who has not
experienced?--If thou hast not, then thou hast never loved.
When Clodius therefore spoke to him in affected transport of the beauty
of Ione, Glaucus felt only resentment and disgust that such lips should
dare to praise her; he answered coldly, and the Roman imagined that his
passion was cured instead of heightened. Clodius scarcely regretted it,
for he was anxious that Glaucus should marry an heiress yet more richly
endowed--Julia, the daughter of the wealthy Diomed, whose gold the
gamester imagined he could readily divert into his own coffers. Their
conversation did not flow with its usual ease; and no sooner had Clodius
left him than Glaucus bent his way to the house of Ione. In passing by
the threshold he again encountered Nydia, who had finished her graceful
task. She knew his step on the instant.
'You are early abroad?' said she.
'Yes; for the skies of Campania rebuke the sluggard who neglects them.'
'Ah, would I could see them!' murmured the blind girl, but so low that
Glaucus did not overhear the complaint.
The Thessalian lingered on the threshold a few moments, and then guiding
her steps by a long staff, which she used with great dexterity, she took
her way homeward. She soon turned from the more gaudy streets, and
entered a quarter of the town but little loved by the decorous and the
sober. But from the low and rude evidences of vice around her she was
saved by her misfortune. And at that hour the streets were quiet and
silent, nor was her youthful ear shocked by the sounds which too often
broke along the obscene and obscure haunts she patiently and sadly
traversed.
She knocked at the back-door of a sort of tavern; it opened, and a rude
voice bade her give an account of the sesterces. Ere she could reply,
another voice, less vulgarly accented, said:
'Never mind those petty profits, my Burbo. The girl's voice will be
wanted again soon at our rich friend's revels; and he pays, as thou
knowest, pretty high for his nightingales' tongues.
'Oh, I hope not--I trust not,' cried Nydia, trembling. 'I will beg from
sunrise to sunset, but send me not there.'
'And why?' asked the same voice.
'Because--because I am young, and delicately born, and the female
companions I meet there are not fit associates for one who--who...'
'Is a slave in the house of Burbo,' returned the voice ironically, and
with a coarse laugh.
The Thessalian put down the flowers, and, leaning her face on her hands,
wept silently.
Meanwhile, Glaucus sought the house of the beautiful Neapolitan. He
found Ione sitting amidst her attendants, who were at work around her.
Her harp stood at her side, for Ione herself was unusually idle, perhaps
unusually thoughtful, that day. He thought her even more beautiful by
the morning light and in her simple robe, than amidst the blazing lamps,
and decorated with the costly jewels of the previous night: not the less
so from a certain paleness that overspread her transparent hues--not the
less so from the blush that mounted over them when he approached.
Accustomed to flatter, flattery died upon his lips when he addressed
Ione. He felt it beneath her to utter the homage which every look
conveyed. They spoke of Greece; this was a theme on which Ione loved
rather to listen than to converse: it was a theme on which the Greek
could have been eloquent for ever. He described to her the silver olive
groves that yet clad the banks of Ilyssus, and the temples, already
despoiled of half their glories--but how beautiful in decay! He looked
back on the melancholy city of Harmodius the free, and Pericles the
magnificent, from the height of that distant memory, which mellowed into
one hazy light all the ruder and darker shades. He had seen the land of
poetry chiefly in the poetical age of early youth; and the associations
of patriotism were blended with those of the flush and spring of life.
And Ione listened to him, absorbed and mute; dearer were those accents,
and those descriptions, than all the prodigal adulation of her
numberless adorers. Was it a sin to love her countryman? she loved
Athens in him--the gods of her race, the land of her dreams, spoke to
her in his voice! From that time they daily saw each other. At the
cool of the evening they made excursions on the placid sea. By night
they met again in Ione's porticoes and halls. Their love was sudden,
but it was strong; it filled all the sources of their life.
Heart--brain--sense--imagination, all were its ministers and priests.
As you take some obstacle from two objects that have a mutual
attraction, they met, and united at once; their wonder was, that they
had lived separate so long. And it was natural that they should so
love. Young, beautiful, and gifted--of the same birth, and the same
soul--there was poetry in their very union. They imagined the heavens
smiled upon their affection. As the persecuted seek refuge at the
shrine, so they recognized in the altar of their love an asylum from the
sorrows of earth; they covered it with flowers--they knew not of the
serpents that lay coiled behind.
One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, Glaucus and
