The Emperor. Complete

No sooner was he alone than a new idea occurred to him. The insolent architect should be taught that he was not the man to be insulted and injured with impunity. So he cut a clean strip of papyrus off a letter that lay in his chest, and wrote upon it the following words:

“Keraunus, the Macedonian, to Claudius Venator, the architect, of Rome:”

“My eldest daughter, Selene, is by your fault, so severely hurt that she is in great danger, is kept to her bed and suffers frightful pain. My other children are no longer safe in their father’s house, and I therefore require you, once more, to chain up your dog. If you refuse to accede to this reasonable demand I will lay the matter before Caesar. I can tell you that circumstances have occurred which will determine Hadrian to punish any insolent person who may choose to neglect the respect due to me and to my daughters.”

When Keraunus had closed this letter with his seal he called the slave and said coldly:

“Take this to the Roman architect, and then fetch two litters; make haste, and while we are out take good care of the children. To-morrow or next day you will be sold. To whom? That must depend on how you behave during the last hours that you belong to us.” The negro gave a loud cry of grief that came from the depth of his heart, and flung himself on the ground at the steward’s feet. His cry did indeed pierce his master’s soul—but Keraunus had made up his mind not to let himself be moved nor to yield. But the negro clung more closely to his knees, and when the children, attracted to the spot by their poor old friend’s lamentation, cried loudly in unison, and little Helios began to pat and stroke the little remains of the negro’s woolly hair, the vain man felt uneasy about the heart, and to protect himself against his own weakness he cried out loudly and violently:

“Now, away with you, and do as you are ordered or I will find the whip.”

With these words he tore himself loose from the miserable—old man who left the room with his head hanging down, and who soon was standing at the door of the Emperor’s rooms with the letter in his hand. Hadrian’s appearance and manner had filled him with terror and respect, and he dared not knock at the door. After he had waited for some time, still with tears in his eyes, Mastor came into the passage with the remains of his master’s breakfast. The negro called to him and held out the steward’s letter, stammering out lamentably:

“From Keraunus, for you master.”

“Lay it here on the tray,” said the Sarmatian. “But what has happened to you, my old friend? you are wailing most pitifully and look miserable. Have you been beaten?”

The negro shook his head and answered, whimpering: “Keraunus is going to sell me.”

“There are better masters than he.”

“But Sebek is old, Sebek is weak—he can no longer lift and pull, and with hard work he will certainly die.”

“Has life been so easy and comfortable then at the steward’s?”

“Very little wine, very little meat, very much hunger,” said the old man.

“Then you must be glad to leave him.”

“No, no,” groaned Sebek.

“You foolish old owl,” said Mastor. “Why do you care then for that grumpy niggard?”

The negro did not answer for some time, then his lean breast heaved and fell, and, as if the dam were broken through that had choked his utterance, he burst out with a mixture of loud sobs:

“The children, the little ones, our little ones. They are so sweet; and our little blind Helios stroked my hair because I was to go away, here—just here he stroked it”—and he put his hand on a perfectly bald place—“and now Sebek must go and never see them all again, just as if they were all dead.”

And the words rolled out and with difficulty, as if carried on in the flood of his tears. They went to Mastor’s heart, rousing the memory of his own lost children and a strong desire to comfort his unhappy comrade.

“Poor fellow!” he said, compassionately. “Aye, the children! they are so small, and the door into one’s heart is so narrow—and they dance in at it a thousand times better and more easily than grown-up folks. I, too, have lost dear children, and they were my own, too. I can teach any one what is meant by sorrow—but I know too now where comfort is to be found.” With these words Mastor held the tray he was carrying on his hip with his right hand, while he put the left on the negro’s shoulder and whispered to him:

“Have you ever heard of the Christians?”

Sebek nodded eagerly as if Mastor were speaking of a matter of which he had heard great things and expected much, and Mastor went on in a low voice “Come early to-morrow before sunrise to the pavement-workers in the ‘court, and there you will hear of One who comforts the weary and heavy-laden.”

The Emperor’s servant once more took his tray in both hands and hurried away, but a faint gleam of hope had lighted up in the old slave’s eyes. He expected no happiness, but perhaps there might be some way of bearing the sorrows of life more easily.

Mastor as soon he had given his tray to the kitchen slaves—who were now busy again in the palace at Lochias—returned to his lord and gave him the steward’s letter. It was an ill-chosen hour for Keraunus, for the Emperor was in a gloomy mood. He had sat up till morning, had rested scarcely three hours, and now, with knitted brows, was comparing the results of his night’s observation of the starry sky with certain astronomical tables which lay spread out before him. Over this work he frequently shook his head which was covered with crisp waves of hair; nay—he once flung the pencil, with which he was working his calculations, down on the table, leaned back in his seat and covered his eyes with both hands. Then again he began to write fresh numbers, but his new results seemed to be no more satisfactory than the former one.

The steward’s letter had been for a long time lying before him when at last it again caught his attention as he put out his hand for another document. Needing some change of ideas he tore it open, read it and flung it from him with annoyance. At any other time he would have expressed some sympathy with the suffering girl, have laughed at the ridiculous man, and have thought out some trick to tease or to terrify; but just now the steward’s threats made him angry and increased his dislike for him.

Tired of the silence around him he called to Antinous, who sat gazing dreamily down on the harbor; the youth immediately approached his master. Hadrian looked at him and said, shaking his head:

“Why you too look as if some danger were threatening you. Is the sky altogether overcast?”

“No my lord, it is blue over the sea, but towards the south the black clouds are gathering.”

“Towards the south?” said Hadrian thoughtfully. “Any thing serious can hardly threaten us from that quarter.—But it comes, it is near, it is upon us before we suspect it.”

“You sat up too long, and that has put you out of tune.”

“Out of tune?” muttered Hadrian to himself. “And what is tune? That subtle harmony or discord is a condition which masters all the emotions of the soul at once; and not without reason—to-day my heart is paralyzed with anxiety.”

“Then you have seen evil signs in the heavens?”

“Direful signs!”

“You wise men believe in the stars,” replied Antinous. “No doubt you are right, but my weak head cannot understand what their regular courses have to do with my inconstant wanderings.”

“Grow gray,” replied the Emperor, “learn to comprehend the universe with your intellect, and not till then speak of these things for not till then will you discern that every atom of things created, and the greatest as well as the least, is in the closest bonds with every other; that all work together, and each depends on all. All that is or ever will be in nature, all that we men feel, think or do, all is dependent on eternal and immutable causes; and these causes have each their Daimon who interposes between us and the divinity and is symbolized in golden characters on the vault of heaven. The letters are the stars, whose orbits are as unchanging and everlasting as are the first causes of all that exists or happens.”

“And are you quite sure that you never read wrongly in this great record?” asked Antinous.

“Even I may err,” replied Hadrian. “But this time I have not deceived myself. A heavy misfortune threatens me. It is a strange, terrible and extraordinary coincidence!”

“What?”

“From that accursed Antioch—whence nothing good has ever come to me—I have received the saying of an oracle which foretells that, that—why should I hide it from you—in the middle of the year now about to begin some dreadful misfortune shall fall upon me, as lightning strikes the traveller to the earth; and tonight—look here. Here is the house of Death, here are the planets—but what do you know of such things? Last night—the night in which once before such terrors were wrought, the stars confirmed the fatal oracle with as much naked plainness, as much unmistakable certainty as if they had tongues to shout the evil forecast in my ear. It is hard to walk on with such a goal in prospect. What may not the new year bring in its course?”

Hadrian sighed deeply, but Antinous went close up to him, fell on his knees before him and asked in a tone of childlike humility:

“May I, a poor foolish lad, teach a great and wise man how to enrich his life with six happy months?” The Emperor smiled, as though he knew what was coming, but his favorite felt encouraged to proceed.

“Leave the future to the future,” he said. “What must come will come, for the gods themselves have no power against Fate. When evil is approaching it casts its black shadow before it; you fix your gaze on it and let it darken the light of day. I saunter dreamily on my way and never see misfortune till it runs up against me and falls upon me unawares—”

“And so you are spared many a gloomy day,” interrupted Hadrian.

“That is just what I would have said.”

“And your advice is excellent, for you and for every other loiterer through the gay fair-time of an idle life,” replied the Emperor, “but the man whose task it is to bear millions in safety and over abysses, must watch the signs around him, look out far and near, and never dare close his eyes, even when such terrors loom as it was my fate to see during the past night.”

As he spoke, Phlegon, the Emperor’s private secretary, came in with letters just received from Rome, and approached his master. He bowed low, and taking up Hadrian’s last words he said:

“The stars disquiet you, Caesar?”

“Well, they warn me to be on my guard,” replied Hadrian.

“Let us hope that they be,” cried the Greek, with cheerful vivacity. “Cicero was not altogether wrong when he doubted the arts of Astrology.”