the second is, "The man worthy of God is a god among men." As Genius
gave to the ministers of Egypt worship, that empire in late ages so
fearfully decayed, thus by Genius only can the dominion be restored. I
saw in you, Apaecides, a pupil worthy of my lessons--a minister worthy
of the great ends which may yet be wrought; your energy, your talents,
your purity of faith, your earnestness of enthusiasm, all fitted you for
that calling which demands so imperiously high and ardent qualities: I
fanned, therefore, your sacred desires; I stimulated you to the step you
have taken. But you blame me that I did not reveal to you the little
souls and the juggling tricks of your companions. Had I done so,
Apaecides, I had defeated my own object; your noble nature would have at
once revolted, and Isis would have lost her priest.'
Apaecides groaned aloud. The Egyptian continued, without heeding the
interruption.
'I placed you, therefore, without preparation, in the temple; I left you
suddenly to discover and to be sickened by all those mummeries which
dazzle the herd. I desired that you should perceive how those engines
are moved by which the fountain that refreshes the world casts its
waters in the air. It was the trial ordained of old to all our priests.
They who accustom themselves to the impostures of the vulgar, are left
to practise them--for those like you, whose higher natures demand higher
pursuit, religion opens more god-like secrets. I am pleased to find in
you the character I had expected. You have taken the vows; you cannot
recede. Advance--I will be your guide.'
'And what wilt thou teach me, O singular and fearful man? New
cheats--new...'
'No--I have thrown thee into the abyss of disbelief; I will lead thee
now to the eminence of faith. Thou hast seen the false types: thou
shalt learn now the realities they represent. There is no shadow,
Apaecides, without its substance. Come to me this night. Your hand.'
Impressed, excited, bewildered by the language of the Egyptian,
Apaecides gave him his hand, and master and pupil parted.
It was true that for Apaecides there was no retreat. He had taken the
vows of celibacy: he had devoted himself to a life that at present
seemed to possess all the austerities of fanaticism, without any of the
consolations of belief It was natural that he should yet cling to a
yearning desire to reconcile himself to an irrevocable career. The
powerful and profound mind of the Egyptian yet claimed an empire over
his young imagination; excited him with vague conjecture, and kept him
alternately vibrating between hope and fear.
Meanwhile Arbaces pursued his slow and stately way to the house of Ione.
As he entered the tablinum, he heard a voice from the porticoes of the
peristyle beyond, which, musical as it was, sounded displeasingly on his
ear--it was the voice of the young and beautiful Glaucus, and for the
first time an involuntary thrill of jealousy shot through the breast of
the Egyptian. On entering the peristyle, he found Glaucus seated by the
side of Ione. The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver
spray in the air, and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the
sultry noon. The handmaids, almost invariably attendant on Ione, who
with her freedom of life preserved the most delicate modesty, sat at a
little distance; by the feet of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had
been playing to Ione one of the Lesbian airs. The scene--the group
before Arbaces, was stamped by that peculiar and refined ideality of
poesy which we yet, not erroneously, imagine to be the distinction of
the ancients--the marble columns, the vases of flowers, the statue,
white and tranquil, closing every vista; and, above all, the two living
forms, from which a sculptor might have caught either inspiration or
despair!
Arbaces, pausing for a moment, gazed on the pair with a brow from which
all the usual stern serenity had fled; he recovered himself by an
effort, and slowly approached them, but with a step so soft and
echoless, that even the attendants heard him not; much less Ione and her
lover.
'And yet,' said Glaucus, 'it is only before we love that we imagine that
our poets have truly described the passion; the instant the sun rises,
all the stars that had shone in his absence vanish into air. The poets
exist only in the night of the heart; they are nothing to us when we
feel the full glory of the god.'
'A gentle and most glowing image, noble Glaucus.'
Both started, and recognized behind the seat of Ione the cold and
sarcastic face of the Egyptian.
'You are a sudden guest,' said Glaucus, rising, and with a forced smile.
'So ought all to be who know they are welcome,' returned Arbaces,
seating himself, and motioning to Glaucus to do the same.
'I am glad,' said Ione, 'to see you at length together; for you are
suited to each other, and you are formed to be friends.'
'Give me back some fifteen years of life,' replied the Egyptian, 'before
you can place me on an equality with Glaucus. Happy should I be to
receive his friendship; but what can I give him in return? Can I make
to him the same confidences that he would repose in me--of banquets and
garlands--of Parthian steeds, and the chances of the dice? these
pleasures suit his age, his nature, his career: they are not for mine.'
So saying, the artful Egyptian looked down and sighed; but from the
corner of his eye he stole a glance towards Ione, to see how she
received these insinuations of the pursuits of her visitor. Her
countenance did not satisfy him. Glaucus, slightly coloring, hastened
gaily to reply. Nor was he, perhaps, without the wish in his turn to
disconcert and abash the Egyptian.
'You are right, wise Arbaces,' said he; 'we can esteem each other, but
we cannot be friends. My banquets lack the secret salt which, according
to rumor, gives such zest to your own. And, by Hercules! when I have
reached your age, if I, like you, may think it wise to pursue the
pleasures of manhood, like you, I shall be doubtless sarcastic on the
gallantries of youth.'
The Egyptian raised his eyes to Glaucus with a sudden and piercing
glance.
'I do not understand you,' said he, coldly; 'but it is the custom to
consider that wit lies in obscurity.' He turned from Glaucus as he
spoke, with a scarcely perceptible sneer of contempt, and after a
moment's pause addressed himself to Ione.
'I have not, beautiful Ione,' said he, 'been fortunate enough to find
you within doors the last two or three times that I have visited your
vestibule.'
'The smoothness of the sea has tempted me much from home,' replied Ione,
with a little embarrassment.
The embarrassment did not escape Arbaces; but without seeming to heed
it, he replied with a smile: 'You know the old poet says, that "Women
should keep within doors, and there converse."'
'The poet was a cynic,' said Glaucus, 'and hated women.'
'He spoke according to the customs of his country, and that country is
your boasted Greece.'
'To different periods different customs. Had our forefathers known
Ione, they had made a different law.'
'Did you learn these pretty gallantries at Rome?' said Arbaces, with
ill-suppressed emotion.
'One certainly would not go for gallantries to Egypt,' retorted Glaucus,
playing carelessly with his chain.
'Come, come,' said Ione, hastening to interrupt a conversation which she
saw, to her great distress, was so little likely to cement the intimacy
she had desired to effect between Glaucus and her friend, 'Arbaces must
not be so hard upon his poor pupil. An orphan, and without a mother's
care, I may be to blame for the independent and almost masculine liberty
of life that I have chosen: yet it is not greater than the Roman women
are accustomed to--it is not greater than the Grecian ought to be.
Alas! is it only to be among men that freedom and virtue are to be
deemed united? Why should the slavery that destroys you be considered
the only method to preserve us? Ah! believe me, it has been the great
error of men--and one that has worked bitterly on their destinies--to
imagine that the nature of women is (I will not say inferior, that may
be so, but) so different from their own, in making laws unfavorable to
the intellectual advancement of women. Have they not, in so doing, made
laws against their children, whom women are to rear?--against the
husbands, of whom women are to be the friends, nay, sometimes the
advisers?' Ione stopped short suddenly, and her face was suffused with
the most enchanting blushes. She feared lest her enthusiasm had led her
too far; yet she feared the austere Arbaces less than the courteous
Glaucus, for she loved the last, and it was not the custom of the Greeks
to allow their women (at least such of their women as they most honored)
the same liberty and the same station as those of Italy enjoyed. She
felt, therefore, a thrill of delight as Glaucus earnestly replied:
'Ever mayst thou think thus, Ione--ever be your pure heart your unerring
guide! Happy it had been for Greece if she had given to the chaste the
same intellectual charms that are so celebrated amongst the less worthy
of her women. No state falls from freedom--from knowledge, while your
sex smile only on the free, and by appreciating, encourage the wise.'
Arbaces was silent, for it was neither his part to sanction the
sentiment of Glaucus, nor to condemn that of Ione, and, after a short
and embarrassed conversation, Glaucus took his leave of Ione.
When he was gone, Arbaces, drawing his seat nearer to the fair
Neapolitan's, said in those bland and subdued tones, in which he knew so
well how to veil the mingled art and fierceness of his character:
'Think not, my sweet pupil, if so I may call you, that I wish to shackle
that liberty you adorn while you assume: but which, if not greater, as
you rightly observe, than that possessed by the Roman women, must at
least be accompanied by great circumspection, when arrogated by one
unmarried. Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise
themselves, to your feet--continue to charm them with the conversation
of an Aspasia, the music of an Erinna--but reflect, at least, on those
censorious tongues which can so easily blight the tender reputation of a
maiden; and while you provoke admiration, give, I beseech you, no
victory to envy.'
'What mean you, Arbaces?' said Ione, in an alarmed and trembling voice:
'I know you are my friend, that you desire only my honour and my
welfare. What is it you would say?'
'Your friend--ah, how sincerely! May I speak then as a friend, without
reserve and without offence?'
'I beseech you do so.'
'This young profligate, this Glaucus, how didst thou know him? Hast thou
seen him often?' And as Arbaces spoke, he fixed his gaze steadfastly
upon Ione, as if he sought to penetrate into her soul.
Recoiling before that gaze, with a strange fear which she could not
explain, the Neapolitan answered with confusion and hesitation: 'He was
brought to my house as a countryman of my father's, and I may say of
mine. I have known him only within this last week or so: but why these
questions?'
'Forgive me,' said Arbaces; 'I thought you might have known him longer.
Base insinuator that he is!'
'How! what mean you? Why that term?'
'It matters not: let me not rouse your indignation against one who does
not deserve so grave an honour.'
'I implore you speak. What has Glaucus insinuated? or rather, in what
do you suppose he has offended?'
Smothering his resentment at the last part of Ione's question, Arbaces
continued: 'You know his pursuits, his companions his habits; the
comissatio and the alea (the revel and the dice) make his occupation;
and amongst the associates of vice how can he dream of virtue?'
'Still you speak riddles. By the gods! I entreat you, say the worst at
once.'
'Well, then, it must be so. Know, my Ione, that it was but yesterday
that Glaucus boasted openly--yes, in the public baths--of your love to
him. He said it amused him to take advantage of it. Nay, I will do him
justice, he praised your beauty. Who could deny it? But he laughed
scornfully when his Clodius, or his Lepidus, asked him if he loved you
enough for marriage, and when he purposed to adorn his door-posts with
flowers?'
'Impossible! How heard you this base slander?'
'Nay, would you have me relate to you all the comments of the insolent
coxcombs with which the story has circled through the town? Be assured
that I myself disbelieved at first, and that I have now painfully been
convinced by several ear-witnesses of the truth of what I have
reluctantly told thee.'
Ione sank back, and her face was whiter than the pillar against which
she leaned for support.
'I own it vexed--it irritated me, to hear your name thus lightly pitched
from lip to lip, like some mere dancing-girl's fame. I hastened this
morning to seek and to warn you. I found Glaucus here. I was stung
from my self-possession. I could not conceal my feelings; nay, I was
uncourteous in thy presence. Canst thou forgive thy friend, Ione?'
Ione placed her hand in his, but replied not.
'Think no more of this,' said he; 'but let it be a warning voice, to
tell thee how much prudence thy lot requires. It cannot hurt thee,
Ione, for a moment; for a gay thing like this could never have been
honored by even a serious thought from Ione. These insults only wound
when they come from one we love; far different indeed is he whom the
lofty Ione shall stoop to love.'
'Love!' muttered Ione, with an hysterical laugh. 'Ay, indeed.'
It is not without interest to observe in those remote times, and under a
