Domitia

“My child, how odd you are! What need we consider them? They may have their own motives, I can’t tell; I never was a herdsman nor a slave – never did any useful work in my life. As to a slave, of course Push is a motive – he pushes to gain his freedom.”

“And when he has got that?”

“Then he strives to accumulate a fortune.”

“And then?”

“Then he will have a statue or a bust of himself sculptured, and when he gets old, erect a splendid mausoleum.”

“And so all ends in a handful of dust.”

“Of course. What else would you have? – Remember, a splendid mausoleum.”

“Yes, enclosing a pot of ashes. That picture teaches a sad truth. Pursue your butterfly: when you have caught it, you find only dust between your fingers.”

“Domitia! as the Gods love me! I wish you would refrain from this talk. It is objectionable. It is prematurely oldening you, and what ages you reflects on me – it advances my years. I will listen to no more of this. If you relish it, I do not; go, chatter to the Philosopher Claudius Senecio, he is paid to talk this stuff.”

“I will not speak to him. I know beforehand what he will say.”

“He will give you excellent advice, he is hired to do it.”

“O yes – to bear everything with equanimity. That is the sum and substance of his doctrine. Then not to be too wise about the Gods; to aim to sit on the fulcrum of a see-saw, when I prefer an end of the plank.”

“Equanimity! I desire it with my whole soul.”

“But why so, mother? It is not running thought, but stagnation.”

“Because, my dear, it keeps off wrinkles.”

“Mother, you and I will never understand each other.”

“As the Gods love me, I sincerely hope not. Send me Plancus, Lucilla. I must scold him so as to soothe my ruffled spirits.”

“And, Euphrosyne, go, send the Chaldæan to me in the garden,” said the girl.

The slave obeyed and departed.

“Ubi Felicitas? Running, pursuing and finding nothing,” said Domitia as she went forth.

The sun was hot. She passed under an arched trellis with vines trained over it; the swelling bunches hung down within.

At intervals in the arcade were openings through which could be seen the still lake, and beyond the beautiful ridges of the limestone Sabine Mountains. The air was musical with the hum of bees.

Domitia paced up and down this walk for some while.

Presently the Magus appeared at the end, under the guidance of the girl Euphrosyne.

He approached, bowing at intervals, till he reached Domitia, when he stood still.

“Ubi Felicitas?” asked she. And when he raised his eyebrows in question, she added in explanation: “There is a picture in the atrium representing a damsel in pursuit of a butterfly, and beneath is the legend I have just quoted. When she catches the butterfly it will not content her. It will be a dead pinch of dust. It is now some months since you spoke on the Artemis, when I asked you a question, and then you were forced to admit that all your science was built up on conjecture, and that there was no certainty underlying it. But a guess is better than nothing, and a guess that carries the moral sense with it in approval, may come near to the truth. I recall all you then said. Do not repeat it, but answer my question, Ubi Felicitas? I asked it of my mother, and she said that it was to be found in Push. If I asked Senecio, he would say in Equanimity. Where say you that it is to be found?”

“The soul of man is a ray out of the Godhead,” answered the Magus, “it is enveloped, depressed, smothered by matter; and the straining of the spirit in man after happiness is the striving of his divine nature to emancipate itself from the thraldom of matter and return to Him from whom the ray emanated.”

“Then felicity is to be found – ?”

“In the disengagement of the good in man from matter, which presses it down, and which is evil.”

“Evil!” exclaimed Domitia, looking through one of the gaps in the arcade, at the lake; on a balustrade above the water stood a dreaming peacock, whilst below it grew bright flowers. Beyond, as clouds, hung the blue Sabine hills.

“The Divine ray,” said the girl, “seems rarely to delight in its incorporation in Matter, and to find therein its expression, much as do our thoughts in words. May it not be that Primordial Idea is inarticulate without Matter in which to utter itself?”

“Felicity,” continued the Chaldæan, disregarding the objection, “is sought by many in the satisfying of their animal appetites, in pleasing eye and ear and taste and smell. But in all is found the after-taste of satiety that gluts. True happiness is to be sought in teaching the mind to dispense with sensuous delights, and to live in absorption in itself.”

“Why, Elymas!” said Domitia. “In fine, you arrive by another method at that Apathy which Senecio the Stoic advocates. I grant you give a reason – which seems to me lame – but it is a reason, whereas he supplies none. But I like not your goal – Apathy is the reverse from Felicity. Leave me.”

The Magus retired, mortified at his doctrine being so ill received.

Then Euphrosyne approached timidly.

Domitia, who was in moody thought, looked up. The girl could not venture to speak till invited to do so by her mistress.

“Your lady mother has desired me to announce to you that Lucius Ælius Lamia hath ridden over from Rome.”

“I will come presently,” said Domitia; “I am just now too troubled in mind. You, child, tell me, where is the physician, Luke?”

“Lady, I do not know; he quitted us on reaching Rome.”

“Stay, Euphrosyne. Thine is a cheerful spirit. Where is felicity to be found?”

“My gracious mistress, I find mine in serving thee – in my duty.”

“Ah, child! That is the sort of reply my father might have made. In the discharge of what he considered his duty, he was of a wondrous sweet and equable temper. Is it so, that Felicity is only to be found in the discharge of duty? And those torpid flies, the young loafers of our noble families, whose only occupation is to play ball, and whose amusements are vicious; they have it not because none has set them tasks. The ploughman whistles as he drives his team; the vineyard rings with laughter at the gathering of the grapes. The galley-slaves chant as they bend over the oar, and the herdboy pipes as he tends the goats. So each is set a task, and is content in discharge thereof, and each sleeps sweetly at night, when the task is done. But what! is happiness reserved to the bondsman, and not for the master? And only then for the former when the duty imposed is reasonable and honest? – For there is none when such an order comes as to fall on the sword or to open the veins. How about us great ladies? And the noble loafers? No task is set us and them.”

“Surely, lady, to all God has given duties!”

“Nay – when, where, how? Look at me, Euphrosyne. When I was a little child here, we had a neighbor, Lentulus. He was a lie-abed, and a sot. He let his servants do as they liked, make love, quarrel, fight, the one lord it over the other, and all idle, because on none was imposed any duty. It was a villainous household, and the estate went to the hammer. It seems to me, Euphrosyne, as if this whole world were the estate of Lentulus on a large scale, where all the servants squabbled, and one by sheer force tyrannizes over the others, and none know why they are placed there, and what is their master’s will, and what they have to do. There is no day-table of work. There is either no master over such a household, or he is an Olympian Lentulus.”

“But, mistress, is that not impossible?”

“It would seem so, and yet – Where is the Day-Table? Show me that – and, by the Gods! it will be new life to me. I shall know my duty – and see Happiness.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE VEILS OF ISHTAR

Domitia did not go into the house, as desired, to receive Lamia.

She was well aware that he would come to her into the garden, if she did not present herself within, and she preferred to speak with him away from her mother.