The Emperor. Complete

“When circumstances allow it, yes.”

“And will they allow it here?”

“I should suppose so.”

“Then answer me truly. Did you come here for Julia’s sake, or did you come—”

“Well?”

“Or did you expect to find the fair Roxana with the prefect’s wife?”

“Roxana?” asked Verus, with a cunning smile. “Roxana! Why she was the wife of Alexander the Great, and is long since dead, but I care only for the living, and when I left the merry tumult in the streets it was simply and solely—”

“You excite my curiosity.”

“Because my prophetic heart promised me, fairest Balbilla, that I should find you here.”

“And that you call honest!” cried the poetess, hitting the praetor a blow with the stick of the ostrich-feather fan she held in her hand. “Only listen, Lucilla, your husband declares he came here for my sake.” The praetor looked reproachfully at the speaker, but she whispered:

“Due punishment for a dishonest man.” Then, raising her voice, she said:

“Do you know, Lucilla, that if I remain unmarried, your husband is not wholly innocent in the matter.”

“Alas! yes, I was born too late for you,” interrupted Verus, who knew very well what the poetess was about to say.

“Nay—no misunderstanding!” cried Balbilla. “For how can a woman venture upon wedlock when she cannot but fear the possibility of getting such a husband as Verus.”

“And what man,” retorted the praetor, “would ever be so bold as to court Balbilla, could he hear how cruelly she judges an innocent admirer of beauty?”

“A husband ought not to admire beauty—only the one beauty who is his wife.”

“Ah Vestal maiden,” laughed Verus. “I am meanwhile punishing you by withholding from you a great secret which interests us all. No, no, I am not going to tell—but I beg you my lady wife to take her to task, and teach her to exercise some indulgence so that her future husband may not have too hard a time of it.”

“No woman can learn to be indulgent,” replied Lucilla. “Still we practise indulgence when we have no alternative, and the criminal requires us to make allowance for him in this thing or the other.”

Verus made his wife a bow and pressed his lips on her arm, then he asked. “And where is dame Julia?”

“She is saving the sheep from the wolf,” replied Balbilla.

“Which means—?”

“That as soon as you were announced she carried off little Roxana to a place of safety.”

“No, no,” interrupted Lucilla. “The tailor was waiting in an inner room to arrange the charming child’s costume. Only look at the lovely nosegay she brought to Julia. And do you deny my right to share your secret?”

“How could I?” replied Verus.

“He is very much in need of your making allowances!” laughed Balbilla, while the praetor went up to, his wife and told her in a whisper what he had learnt from Mastor. Lucilla clasped her hands in astonishment, and Verus cried to the poetess:

“Now you see what a satisfaction your cruel tongue has deprived you of?”

“How can you be so revengeful most estimable Verus,” said the lady coaxingly. “I am dying of curiosity.”

“Live but a few days longer fair Balbilla, for my sake,” replied the Roman, “and the cause of your early death will be removed.”

“Only wait, I will be revenged!” cried the girl threatening him with her finger, but Lucilla led her away saying:

“Come now, it is time we should give Julia the benefit of our advice.”

“Do so,” said Verus. “Otherwise I am afraid my visit to-day would seem opportune to no one.—Greet Julia from me.”

As he went away he cast a glance at the nosegay which Arsinoe had given away as soon as she had received it from him, and he sighed: “As we grow old we have to learn wisdom.”

BOOK 2

CHAPTER I

Dame Hannah had watched by Selene till sunrise and indefatigably cooled both her injured foot and the wound in her head. The old physician was not dissatisfied with the condition of his patient, but ordered the widow to lie down for a time and to leave the care of her for a few hours to her young friend. When Mary was alone with the sick girl and had laid the fresh cold handkerchief in its place, Selene turned her face towards her and said:

“Then you were at Lochias yesterday. Tell me how you found them all there. Who guided you to our lodgings and did you see my little brother and sisters?”

“You are not yet quite free of fever, and I do not know how much I ought to talk to you—but I would with all my heart.”

The words were spoken kindly and there was a deep loving light in the eyes of the deformed girl as she said them. Selene excited not merely her sympathy and pity, but her admiration too, for she was so beautiful, so totally different from herself, and in every little service she rendered her, she felt like some despised beggar whom a prince might have permitted to wait upon him. Her hump had never seemed to her so bent, nor her brown skin so ugly at any other time as it did to-day, when side by side with this symmetrical and delicate girlish form, rounded to such tender contours.

But Mary felt not the smallest movement of envy. She only felt happy to help Selene, to serve her, to be allowed to gaze at her although she was a heathen. During the night too, she had prayed fervently that the Lord might graciously draw to himself this lovely, gentle creature, that He might permit her to recover, and fill her soul with the same love for the Saviour that gave joy to her own. More than once she had longed to kiss her, but she dared not, for it seemed to her as though the sick girl were made of finer stuff than she herself.

Selene felt tired, very tired, and as the pain diminished, a comfortable sense stole over her of peace and respite in the silent and loving homeliness of her surroundings; a feeling that was new and very soothing, though it was interrupted, now and again, by her anxiety for those at home. Dame Hannah’s presence did her good, for she fancied she recognized in her voice something that had been peculiar to her mother’s, when she had played with her and pressed her with special affection to her heart.

In the papyrus factory, at the gumming-table, the sight of the little hunchback had disgusted Selene, but here she observed what good eyes she had, and how kind a voice, and the care with which Mary lifted the compress from her foot—as softly, as if in her own hands she felt the pain that Selene was suffering—and then laid another on the broken ankle, aroused her gratitude. Her sister Arsinoe was a vain and thorough Alexandrian girl, and she had nicknamed the poor thing after the ugliest of the Hellenes who had besieged Troy. “Dame Thersites,” and Selene herself had often repeated it. Now she forgot the insulting name altogether, and met the objections of her nurse by saying:

“The fever cannot be much now; if you tell me something I shall not think so constantly of this atrocious pain. I am longing to be at home. Did you see the children?”

“No, Selene. I went no farther than the entrance of your dwelling, and the kind gate-keeper’s wife told me at once that I should find neither your father nor your sister, and that your slave-woman was gone out to buy cakes for the children.”

“To buy them!” exclaimed Selene in astonishment. “The old woman told me too that the way to your apartments led through several rooms in which slaves were at work, and that her son, who happened to be with her, should accompany me, and so he did, but the door was locked, and he told me I might entrust his mother with my commission. I did so, for she looked as if she were both judicious and kind.”

“That she is.”

“And she is very fond of you, for when I told her of your sufferings the bright tears rolled down her cheeks, and she praised you as warmly, and was as much troubled as if you had been her own daughter.”

“You said nothing about our working in the factory?” asked Selene anxiously.

“Certainly not, you had desired me not to mention it. I was to say everything that was kind to you from the old lady.”

For several minutes the two girls were silent, then Selene asked:

“Did the gate-keeper’s son who accompanied you also hear of the disaster that had befallen me?