The Emperor. Complete

“He was a mere talker!” said the Emperor, with a frown.

“But,” asked Phlegon, “would it not be fair that if the horoscopes cast for Cneius or Caius, let us say, were alike, to expect that Cneius or Caius must have the same temperament and the same destiny through life if they had happened to be born in the same hour?”

“Always the old commonplaces, the old silly objections!” interrupted Hadrian, vexed to the verge of rage. “Speak when you are spoken to, and do not trouble yourself about things you do not understand and which do not concern you. Is there anything of importance among these papers?”

Antinous gazed at his sovereign in astonishment; why should Phlegon’s objections make him so furious when he had answered his so kindly?

Hadrian paid no farther heed to him, but read the despatches one after another, hastily but attentively, wrote brief notes on the margins, signed a decree with a firm hand, and, when his work was finished desired the Greek to leave him. Hardly was he alone with Antinous when the loud cries and jovial shouting of a large multitude came to their ears through the open window.

“What does this mean?” he asked Mastor, and as soon as he had been informed that the workmen and slaves had just been let out to give themselves up to the pleasures of their holiday, he muttered to himself:

“These creatures can riot, shout, dress themselves with garlands, forget themselves in a debauch—and I, I whom all envy—I spoil my brief span of life with vain labors, let myself be tormented with consuming cares—I—” here he broke off and cried in quite an altered tone:

“Ha! ha! Antinous, you are wiser than I. Let us leave the future to the future. The feast-day is ours too; let us take advantage of this day of freedom. We too will throw ourselves into the holiday whirlpool disguised, I as a satyr, and you as a young faun or something of the kind; we will drain cups, wander round the city and enjoy all that is enjoyable.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Antinous, joyfully clapping his hands.

“Evoe Bacche!” cried Hadrian, tossing up his cup that stood on his table. “You are free till this evening, Mastor, and you my boy, go and talk to Pollux, the sculptor. He shall be our guide and he will provide us with wreaths and some mad disguise. I must see drunken men, I must laugh with the jolliest before I am Caesar again. Make haste, my friend, or new cares will come to spoil my holiday mood.”

CHAPTER XXII

Antinous and Mastor at once quitted the Emperor’s room; in the corridor the lad beckoned the slave to him and said in a low voice:

“You can hold your tongue I know, will you do me a favor?”

“Three sooner than one,” replied the Sarmatian.

“You are free to-day—are you going into the city?”

“I think so.”

“You are not known here, but that does not matter. Take these gold pieces and in the flower-market buy with one of them the most beautiful bunch of flowers you can find, with another you may make merry, and out of the remainder spend a drachma in hiring an ass. The driver will conduct you to the garden of Pudeus’ widow where stands the house of dame Hannah; you remember the name?”

“Dame Hannah and the widow of Pudeus.”

“And at the little house, not the big one, leave the flowers for the sick Selene.”

“The daughter of the fat steward, who was attacked by our big dog?” asked Mastor, curiously.

“She or another,” said Antinous, impatiently, “and when they ask you who sent the flowers, say ‘the friend at Lochias,’ nothing more. You understand.”

The slave nodded and said to himself: “What! you too-oh! these women.”

Antinous signed to him to be silent, impressed on him in a few hasty words that he was to be discreet and to pick out the very choicest flowers, and then betook himself into the hall of the Muses to seek Pollux. From him he had learnt where to find the suffering Selene, of whom he could not help thinking incessantly and wherever he might be. He did not find the sculptor in his screened-off nook; prompted by a wish to speak to his mother, Pollux had gone down to the gatehouse where he was now standing before her and frankly narrating, with many eager gestures of his long arms, all that had occurred on the previous night. His story flowed on like a song of triumph, and when he described how the holiday procession had carried away Arsinoe and himself, the old woman jumped up from her chair and clapping her fat little hands, she exclaimed:

“Ah! that is pleasure, that is happiness! I remember flying along with your father in just the same way thirty years ago.”

“And since thirty years,” Pollux interposed. “I can still remember very well how at one of the great Dionysiac festivals, fired by the power of the god, you rushed through the streets with a deer-skin over your shoulders.”

“That was delightful—lovely!” cried Doris with sparkling eyes. “But thirty years since it was all different, very different. I have told you before now how I went with our maid-servant into the Canopic way to the house of my aunt Archidike to look on at the great procession. I had not far to go for we lived near the Theatre, my father was stage-manager and yours was one of the chief singers in the chorus. We hurried along, but all sorts of people stopped us, and drunken men wanted to joke with me.”

“Ah, you were as sweet as a rose-bud then,” her son interrupted.

“As a rose-bud, yes, but not like your lovely rose,” said the old woman. “At any rate I looked nice enough for the men in disguise—fauns and satyrs and were the cynic hypocrites in their ragged cloaks, to think it worth while to look at me and to take a rap on the knuckles when they tried to put an arm round me or to steal a kiss, I did not care for the handsomest of them, for Euphorion had done for me with his fiery glances—not with words for I was very strictly kept and he had never been able to get a chance to speak to me. At the corner of the Canopic way and the Market street we could get no farther, for the crowd had blocked the way and were howling and storming as they stared at a party of Klodones and other Maenads, who in their sacred fury were tearing a goat to pieces with their teeth. I shuddered at the spectacle, but I must need stare with the rest and shout and halloo as they did. My maid, who I held on to tightly, was seized with the frenzy and dragged me into the middle of the circle close up to the bleeding sacrifice. Two of the possessed women sprang upon us, and I felt one clasping me tightly and trying to throw me down. It was a horrible moment but I defended myself bravely and had succeeded in keeping on my feet when your father sprang forward, set me free and led me away. What happened after I could not tell you now; it was one of those wild happy dreams in which you must hold your heart with both hands for fear it should crack with joy, or fly out and away up to the sky and in the very eye of the sun. Late in the evening I got home and a week after I was Euphorion’s wife.”

“We have exactly followed your example,” said Pollux, “and if Arsinoe grows to be like my dear old woman I shall be quite satisfied.”

“Happy and contented,” replied Doris. “Keep you health, snap your fingers at care and sorrow, do your duty on work-days and drink till you are jolly in honor of the god on holidays, and then all will be well. Those who do all they are able and enjoy as much as they can get, make good use of their lives and need feel no remorse in their last hours. What is past is done for, and when Atropos cuts our thread some one else will stand in our place and joys will begin all over again. May the gods bless you!”

“You are right,” said Pollux embracing his mother, “and two together can turn the work out of hand more lightly and enjoy the pleasures of existence better than each alone—can they not?”

“I am sure of it; and you have chosen the right mate,” cried the old woman. “You are a sculptor and used to simple things; you need no riches, only a sweet face which may every day rejoice your heart, and that you have found.”

“There is nowhere a sweeter or a lovelier,” said Pollux.

“No, that there is not,” continued Doris. “First I cast my eyes on Selene. She need not be ashamed to show herself either, and she is a pattern for girls; but then as Arsinoe grew older, whenever she passed this way I thought to myself: ‘that girl is growing up for my boy,’ and now that you have won her I feel as if I were once more as young as your sweetheart herself. My old heart beats as happily as if the little Loves were touching it with their wings and rosy fingers. If my feet had not grown so heavy with constantly standing over the hearth and at washing—really and truly I could take Euphorion by the arm and dance through the streets with him to-day.”

“Where is father?”

“Out singing.”

“In the morning! where?”

“There is some sect that are celebrating their mysteries. They pay well and he had to sing dismal hymns for them behind a curtain; the wildest stuff, in which he does not follow a word, and that I do not understand a half of.”

“It is a pity for I wanted to speak to him.”

“He will not be back till late.”

“There is plenty of time.”

“So much the better, otherwise I might have told him what you had to say.”

“Your advice is as good as his. I think of giving up working under Papias and standing on my own feet.”

“You are quite right; the Roman architect told me yesterday that a great future was open to you.”

“There are only my poor sister and the children to be considered. If, during the first few months I should find myself falling short—”

“We will manage to pull through. It is high time that you yourself should reap from what you sow.”

“So it seems to me, for my own sake and Arsinoe’s; if only Keraunus—”

“Aye—there will be a battle to fight with him.”

“A hard one, a hard one,” sighed Pollux.

“The thought of the old man troubles my happiness.”