Georg Ebers
The Emperor. Complete
CHAPTER XXI
The steward awoke soon after sunrise. He had slept no less soundly, it is true, in his arm-chair than in his bed, but he did not feel refreshed, and his limbs ached.
In the living-room everything was in the same disorder as on the previous evening, and this annoyed him, for he was accustomed to find his room in order when he entered it in the morning. On the table, surrounded by flies, stood the remains of the children’s supper, and among the bread crusts and plates lay his own ornaments and his daughter’s! Wherever he turned he saw articles of dress and other things out of their place. The old slave-woman came in yawning, her woolly grey hair hung in disorder about her face, and her eyes seemed fixed, her feet carried her unsteadily here and there.
“You are drunk,” cried Keraunus; nor was he mistaken, for when the old woman had waked up, sitting by the house of Pudeus, and had learned from the gate keeper that Arsinoe had quitted the garden, she had gone into a tavern with other slave-women. When her master seized her arm and shook her, she exclaimed with a stupid grin on her wet lips:
“It is the feast-day. Every one is free, to-day is the feast.”
“Roman nonsense!” interrupted the steward. “Is my breakfast ready?”
While the old woman stood muttering some inaudible words, the slave came into the room and said:
“To-day is a general holiday, may I go out too?”
“Oh that would suit me admirably!” cried the steward.
“This monster drunk, Selene sick, and you running about the streets.”
“But no one stops at home to-day,” replied the slave timidly.
“Be off then!” cried Keraunus. “Walk about from now till midnight! Do as you please, only do not expect me to keep you any longer. You are still fit to turn the hand-mill, and I dare say I can find a fool to give me a few drachmae for you.”
“No, no, do not sell me,” groaned the old man, raising his hands in entreaty; Keraunus however would not hear him, but went on angrily:
“A dog at least remains faithful to his master, but you slaves eat him out of house and home, and when he most needs you, you want to run about the streets.”
“But I will stay,” howled the old man.
“Nay, do as you please. You have long been like a lame horse which makes its rider a butt for the laughter of children. When, you go out with me everyone looks round as if I had a stain on my pallium. And then the mangy dog wants to keep holiday, and stick himself up among the citizens!”
“I will stay here, only do not sell me!” whimpered the miserable old man, and he tried to take his master’s hand; but the steward shoved him off, and desired him to go into the kitchen and light a fire, and throw some water on the old woman’s head to sober her. The slave pushed his companion out of the room, while Keraunus went into his daughter’s bedroom to rouse her.
There was no light in Arsinoe’s room but that which could creep in through a narrow opening just below the ceiling; the slanting rays fell directly on the bed up to which Keraunus went. There lay his daughter in sound sleep; her pretty head rested on her uplifted right arm, her unbound brown hair flowed like a stream over her soft round shoulders and over the edge of the little bed. He had never seen the child look so pretty, and the sight of her really touched his heart, for Arsinoe reminded him of his lost wife, and it was not vain pride merely, but a movement of true paternal love, which involuntarily transformed his earnest wish that the gods night leave him this child and let her be happy, into an unspoken but fervent prayer.
He was not accustomed to waking his daughter who was always up and busy before he was, and he could hardly bear to disturb his darling’s sweet sleep; but it had to be done, so he called Arsinoe by her name, shook her arm and said, as at last she sat up and looked at him enquiringly:
“It is I, get up, remember what has to be done today.”
“Yes—yes,” she said yawning, “but it is so early yet!”
“Early,” said Keraunus, smiling. “My stomach says the contrary. The sun is already high, and I have not yet had my porridge.”
“Make the old woman cook it.”
“No, no, my child—you must get up. Have you forgotten whom you are to represent? And my hair is to be curled, and the prefect’s wife, and then your dress.”
“Very well—go; I do not care the least bit about Roxana and all the dressing-up.”
“Because you are not yet quite awake,” laughed the steward. “How did this ivy-leaf get into your hair?” Arsinoe colored, put her hand to the spot indicated by her father, and said reluctantly:
“Out of some bough or another, but now go that I may get up.”
“In a minute—tell me how did you find Selene?”
“Not so very bad—but I will tell you all about that afterwards. Now I want to be alone.”
When, half an hour later, Arsinoe brought her father his porridge he gazed at the child in astonishment. Some extraordinary change seemed to have come over his daughter. Something shone in her eyes that he had never observed before, and that gave her childlike features an importance and significance that almost startled him. While she was making the porridge, Keraunus, with the slave’s help, had taken the children up and dressed them; now they were all sitting at breakfast; Helios among them fresh and blooming. Now, while Arsinoe told her father all about Selene, and the nursing she was having at dame Hannah’s hands, Keraunus kept his eyes fixed on her, and when she noticed this and asked impatiently what there was peculiar in her appearance to-day, he shook his head and answered:
“What strange things are girls! A great honor has been done you. You are to represent the bride of Alexander, and pride and delight have changed you wonder fully in a single night—but I think to your disadvantage.”
“Folly,” said Arsinoe reddening, and stretching herself with fatigue she threw herself back on a couch. She did not feel weary exactly, for the lassitude she felt in every limb had a peculiar pleasure in it. She felt as if she had come out of a hot bath, and since her father had roused her she seemed to hear, again and again, the sound of the inspiriting music which she had followed arm in arm with Pollux. Now and again she smiled, now and again she gazed straight before her, and at the same time she said to herself that if at this very moment her lover were to ask her, she would not lack strength to fling herself at once, with him, once more into the mad whirl. Yes—she felt perfectly fresh! only her eyes burned a little; and if Keraunus fancied he saw anything new in his daughter it must be the glowing light which now lurked in them along with the playful sparkle he had always seen there.
When breakfast was over the slave took the children out, and Arsinoe had begun to curl her father’s hair, when Keraunus put on his most dignified attitude and said ponderously.
“My child.”
The girl dropped the heated tongs and calmly asked. “Well”—fully prepared to hear one of the wonderful propositions which Selene was wont to oppose.
“Listen to me attentively.”
Now, what Keraunus was about to say had only occurred to him an hour since when he had spoiled his slave’s desire to go out; but as he said it he pressed his hand to his forehead assuming the expression of a meditative philosopher.
“For a long time I have been considering a very important matter. Now I have come to a decision and I will confide it to you. We must buy a new manslave.”
“But father!” cried Arsinoe, “think what it will cost you. If we have another man to feed—”
“There is no question of that,” replied Keraunus. “I will exchange the old one for a younger one that I need not be ashamed to be seen with. Yesterday I told you that henceforth we shall attract greater attention than hitherto, and really if we appear with that black scarecrow at our heels in the streets or elsewhere—”
“Certainly we cannot make much show Sebek,” interrupted Arsinoe, “but we can leave him at home for the future.”
“Child, child!” exclaimed Keraunus reproachfully, “will you never remember who and what we are. How would it beseem us to appear in the streets without a slave?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders, and put it to her father that Sebek was an old piece of family property, that the little ones were fond of him because he cared for them like a nurse, that a new slave would cost a great deal and would only be driven by force to many services which the old one was always ready and willing to fulfil.
But Arsinoe preached to deaf ears. Selene was not there; secure from her reproaches and as anxious as a spoiled boy for the thing that was denied him, Keraunus adhered to his determination to exchange the faithful old fellow for a new and more showy slave. Not for a moment did he think of the miserable fate that threatened the decrepit creature, who had grown old in his house, if he were to sell him; but he still had a feeling that it was not quite right to spend the last money that had chanced to come into the house, on a thing that really and truly was not in any way necessary. The more justifiable Arsinoe’s doubts seemed to be and the more loudly did an inward voice warn him not to offer this fresh sacrifice to his vain-gloriousness, the more firmly and desperately did he defend his wish to do so; and as he fought for the thing he desired, it acquired in his eyes a semblance of necessity and a number of reasons suggested themselves which made it appear both justifiable and easy of attainment.
There was money in hand; after Arsinoe’s being chosen for the part of Roxana he might expect to be able to borrow more; it was his duty to appear with due dignity that he might not scare off the illustrious son-in-law of whom he dreamed, and in the extremity of need he could still fall back on his collection of rarities. The only thing was to find the right purchaser; for, if the sword of Antony had brought him so much, what would not some amateur give him for the other, far more valuable, objects.
Arsinoe turned red and white as her father referred again and again to the bargain she had made; but she dared not confess the truth, and she rued her falsehood all the more bitterly the more clearly she saw with her own sound sense, that the Honor which had fallen upon her yesterday, threatened to develop all her father’s weaknesses in an absolutely fatal manner.
To-day she would have been amply satisfied with pleasing Pollux, and she would, without a regret have transferred to another her part with all the applause and admiration it would procure her, and which, only yesterday, had seemed to her so inestimably precious. This she said; but Keraunus would not take the assertion in earnest, laughed in her face, went off into mysterious allusions to the wealth which could not fail to come into the house and—since an obscure consciousness told him that it would be becoming him to prove that it was not solely personal vanity and self-esteem that influenced all his proceedings—he explained that he had made up his mind to a great sacrifice and would be content on the coming occasion to wear his gilt fillet and not buy a pure gold one. By this act of self-denial he fancied he had acquired a full right to devote a very pretty little sum to the acquisition of a fine-looking slave. Arsinoe’s entreaties were unheeded, and when she began to cry with grief at the prospect of losing her old house-mate he forbid her crossly to shed a tear for such a cause, for it was very childish, and he would not be pleased to conduct her with red eyes to meet the prefect’s wife.
During the course of this argument his hair had got itself duly curled, and he now desired Arsinoe to arrange her own hair nicely and then to accompany him.
They would buy a new dress and peplum, go to see Selene, and then be carried to the prefect’s.
Only yesterday he had thought it too bold a step to use a litter, and to-day he was already considering the propriety of hiring a chariot.
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.”
“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.”
