Chapter IV
THE RIVAL OF GLAUCUS PRESSES ONWARD IN THE RACE.
IONE was one of those brilliant characters which, but once or twice, flash
across our career. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of
earthly gifts--Genius and Beauty. No one ever possessed superior
intellectual qualities without knowing them--the alliteration of modesty and
merit is pretty enough, but where merit is great, the veil of that modesty
you admire never disguises its extent from its possessor. It is the proud
consciousness of certain qualities that it cannot reveal to the everyday
world, that gives to genius that shy, and reserved, and troubled air, which
puzzles and flatters you when you encounter it.
Ione, then, knew her genius; but, with that charming versatility that
belongs of right to women, she had the faculty so few of a kindred genius in
the less malleable sex can claim--the faculty to bend and model her graceful
intellect to all whom it encountered. The sparkling fountain threw its
waters alike upon the strand, the cavern, and the flowers; it refreshed, it
smiled, it dazzled everywhere. That pride, which is the necessary result of
superiority, she wore easily--in her breast it concentred itself in
independence. She pursued thus her own bright and solitary path. She asked
no aged matron to direct and guide her--she walked alone by the torch of her
own unflickering purity. She obeyed no tyrannical and absolute custom. She
moulded custom to her own will, but this so delicately and with so feminine
a grace, so perfect an exemption from error, that you could not say she
outraged custom but commanded it. The wealth of her graces was
inexhaustible--she beautified the commonest action; a word, a look from her,
seemed magic. Love her, and you entered into a new world, you passed from
this trite and commonplace earth. You were in a land in which your eyes saw
everything through an enchanted medium. In her presence you felt as if
listening to exquisite music; you were steeped in that sentiment which has
so little of earth in it, and which music so well inspires--that
intoxication which refines and exalts, which seizes, it is true, the senses,
but gives them the character of the soul.
She was peculiarly formed, then, to command and fascinate the less ordinary
and the bolder natures of men; to love her was to unite two passions, that
of love and of ambition--you aspired when you adored her. It was no wonder
that she had completely chained and subdued the mysterious but burning soul
of the Egyptian, a man in whom dwelt the fiercest passions. Her beauty and
her soul alike enthralled him.
Set apart himself from the common world, he loved that daringness of
character which also made itself, among common things, aloof and alone. He
did not, or he would not see, that that very isolation put her yet more from
him than from the vulgar. Far as the poles--far as the night from day, his
solitude was divided from hers. He was solitary from his dark and solemn
vices--she from her beautiful fancies and her purity of virtue.
If it was not strange that Ione thus enthralled the Egyptian, far less
strange was it that she had captured, as suddenly as irrevocably, the
bright and sunny heart of the Athenian. The gladness of a temperament which
seemed woven from the beams of light had led Glaucus into pleasure. He
obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations of
his time, than the exhilarating voices of youth and health. He threw the
brightness of his nature over every abyss and cavern through which he
strayed. His imagination dazzled him, but his heart never was corrupted.
Of far more penetration than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought
to prey upon his riches and his youth: but he despised wealth save as the
means of enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to
them. He felt, it is true, the impulse of nobler thoughts and higher aims
than in pleasure could be indulged: but the world was one vast prison, to
which the Sovereign of Rome was the Imperial gaoler; and the very virtues,
which in the free days of Athens would have made him ambitious, in the
slavery of earth made him inactive and supine. For in that unnatural and
bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden.
Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the
contest of flattery and craft. Avarice had become the sole ambition--men
desired praetorships and provinces only as the license to pillage, and
government was but the excuse of rapine. It is in small states that glory
is most active and pure--the more confined the limits of the circle, the
more ardent the patriotism. In small states, opinion is concentrated and
strong--every eye reads your actions--your public motives are blended with
your private ties--every spot in your narrow sphere is crowded with forms
familiar since your childhood--the applause of your citizens is like the
caresses of your friends. But in large states, the city is but the court:
the provinces--unknown to you, unfamiliar in customs, perhaps in
language--have no claim on your patriotism, the ancestry of their
inhabitants is not yours. In the court you desire favor instead of glory;
at a distance from the court, public opinion has vanished from you, and
self-interest has no counterpoise.
Italy, Italy, while I write, your skies are over me--your seas flow beneath
my feet, listen not to the blind policy which would unite all your crested
cities, mourning for their republics, into one empire; false, pernicious
delusion! your only hope of regeneration is in division. Florence, Milan,
Venice, Genoa, may be free once more, if each is free. But dream not of
freedom for the whole while you enslave the parts; the heart must be the
centre of the system, the blood must circulate freely everywhere; and in
vast communities you behold but a bloated and feeble giant, whose brain is
imbecile, whose limbs are dead, and who pays in disease and weakness the
penalty of transcending the natural proportions of health and vigour.
Thus thrown back upon themselves, the more ardent qualities of Glaucus found
no vent, save in that overflowing imagination which gave grace to pleasure,
and poetry to thought. Ease was less despicable than contention with
parasites and slaves, and luxury could yet be refined though ambition could
not be ennobled. But all that was best and brightest in his soul woke at
once when he knew Ione. Here was an empire, worthy of demigods to attain;
here was a glory, which the reeking smoke of a foul society could not soil
or dim. Love, in every time, in every state, can thus find space for its
golden altars. And tell me if there ever, even in the ages most favorable to
glory, could be a triumph more exalted and elating than the conquest of one
noble heart?
And whether it was that this sentiment inspired him, his ideas glowed more
brightly, his soul seemed more awake and more visible, in Ione's presence.
If natural to love her, it was natural that she should return the passion.
Young, brilliant, eloquent, enamoured, and Athenian, he was to her as the
incarnation of the poetry of her father's land. They were not like
creatures of a world in which strife and sorrow are the elements; they were
like things to be seen only in the holiday of nature, so glorious and so
fresh were their youth, their beauty, and their love. They seemed out of
place in the harsh and every-day earth; they belonged of right to the
Saturnian age, and the dreams of demigod and nymph. It was as if the poetry
of life gathered and fed itself in them, and in their hearts were
concentrated the last rays of the sun of Delos and of Greece.
But if Ione was independent in her choice of life, so was her modest pride
proportionably vigilant and easily alarmed. The falsehood of the Egyptian
was invented by a deep knowledge of her nature. The story of coarseness, of
indelicacy, in Glaucus, stung her to the quick. She felt it a reproach upon
her character and her career, a punishment above all to her love; she felt,
for the first time, how suddenly she had yielded to that love; she blushed
with shame at a weakness, the extent of which she was startled to perceive:
she imagined it was that weakness which had incurred the contempt of
Glaucus; she endured the bitterest curse of noble natures--humiliation! Yet
her love, perhaps, was no less alarmed than her pride. If one moment she
murmured reproaches upon Glaucus--if one moment she renounced, she almost
hated him--at the next she burst into passionate tears, her heart yielded to
its softness, and she said in the bitterness of anguish, 'He despises me--he
does not love me.'
From the hour the Egyptian had left her she had retired to her most secluded
chamber, she had shut out her handmaids, she had denied herself to the
crowds that besieged her door. Glaucus was excluded with the rest; he
wondered, but he guessed not why! He never attributed to his Ione--his
queen--his goddess--that woman--like caprice of which the love-poets of
Italy so unceasingly complain. He imagined her, in the majesty of her
candour, above all the arts that torture. He was troubled, but his hopes
were not dimmed, for he knew already that he loved and was beloved; what
more could he desire as an amulet against fear?
At deepest night, then, when the streets were hushed, and the high moon only
beheld his devotions, he stole to that temple of his heart--her home; and
wooed her after the beautiful fashion of his country. He covered her
threshold with the richest garlands, in which every flower was a volume of
sweet passion; and he charmed the long summer night with the sound of the
Lydian lute: and verses, which the inspiration of the moment sufficed to
weave.
But the window above opened not; no smile made yet more holy the shining air
of night. All was still and dark. He knew not if his verse was welcome and
his suit was heard.
Yet Ione slept not, nor disdained to hear. Those soft strains ascended to
her chamber; they soothed, they subdued her. While she listened, she
believed nothing against her lover; but when they were stilled at last, and
his step departed, the spell ceased; and, in the bitterness of her soul, she
almost conceived in that delicate flattery a new affront.
I said she was denied to all; but there was one exception, there was one
person who would not be denied, assuming over her actions and her house
something like the authority of a parent; Arbaces, for himself, claimed an
exemption from all the ceremonies observed by others. He entered the
threshold with the license of one who feels that he is privileged and at
home. He made his way to her solitude and with that sort of quiet and
unapologetic air which seemed to consider the right as a thing of course.
With all the independence of Ione's character, his heart had enabled him to
obtain a secret and powerful control over her mind. She could not shake it
off; sometimes she desired to do so; but she never actively struggled
against it. She was fascinated by his serpent eye. He arrested, he
commanded her, by the magic of a mind long accustomed to awe and to subdue.
Utterly unaware of his real character or his hidden love, she felt for him
the reverence which genius feels for wisdom, and virtue for sanctity. She
regarded him as one of those mighty sages of old, who attained to the
mysteries of knowledge by an exemption from the passions of their kind. She
scarcely considered him as a being, like herself, of the earth, but as an
oracle at once dark and sacred. She did not love him, but she feared. His
presence was unwelcome to her; it dimmed her spirit even in its brightest
mood; he seemed, with his chilling and lofty aspect, like some eminence
which casts a shadow over the sun. But she never thought of forbidding his
visits. She was passive under the influence which created in her breast,
not the repugnance, but something of the stillness of terror.
Arbaces himself now resolved to exert all his arts to possess himself of
that treasure he so burningly coveted. He was cheered and elated by his
conquests over her brother. From the hour in which Apaecides fell beneath
the voluptuous sorcery of that fete which we have described, he felt his
empire over the young priest triumphant and insured. He knew that there is
no victim so thoroughly subdued as a young and fervent man for the first
time delivered to the thraldom of the senses.
When Apaecides recovered, with the morning light, from the profound sleep
which succeeded to the delirium of wonder and of pleasure, he was, it is
true, ashamed--terrified--appalled. His vows of austerity and celibacy
echoed in his ear; his thirst after holiness--had it been quenched at so
unhallowed a stream? But Arbaces knew well the means by which to confirm
his conquest. From the arts of pleasure he led the young priest at once to
those of his mysterious wisdom. He bared to his amazed eyes the initiatory
secrets of the sombre philosophy of the Nile--those secrets plucked from the
stars, and the wild chemistry, which, in those days, when Reason herself was
but the creature of Imagination, might well pass for the lore of a diviner
magic. He seemed to the young eyes of the priest as a being above
mortality, and endowed with supernatural gifts. That yearning and intense
desire for the knowledge which is not of earth--which had burned from his
boyhood in the heart of the priest--was dazzled, until it confused and
mastered his clearer sense. He gave himself to the art which thus addressed
at once the two strongest of human passions, that of pleasure and that of
knowledge. He was loth to believe that one so wise could err, that one so
lofty could stoop to deceive. Entangled in the dark web of metaphysical
moralities, he caught at the excuse by which the Egyptian converted vice
into a virtue. His pride was insensibly flattered that Arbaces had deigned
to rank him with himself, to set him apart from the laws which bound the
vulgar, to make him an august participator, both in the mystic studies and
the magic fascinations of the Egyptian's solitude. The pure and stern
lessons of that creed to which Olinthus had sought to make him convert, were
swept away from his memory by the deluge of new passions. And the Egyptian,
who was versed in the articles of that true faith, and who soon learned from
his pupil the effect which had been produced upon him by its believers,
sought, not unskilfully, to undo that effect, by a tone of reasoning,
half-sarcastic and half-earnest.
'This faith,' said he, 'is but a borrowed plagiarism from one of the many
allegories invented by our priests of old. Observe,' he added, pointing to
a hieroglyphical scroll--'observe in these ancient figures the origin of the
Christian's Trinity. Here are also three gods--the Deity, the Spirit, and
the Son. Observe, that the epithet of the Son is "Saviour"--observe, that
the sign by which his human qualities are denoted is the cross.' Note here,
too, the mystic history of Osiris, how he put on death; how he lay in the
grave; and how, thus fulfilling a solemn atonement, he rose again from the
dead! In these stories we but design to paint an allegory from the
operations of nature and the evolutions of the eternal heavens. But the
allegory unknown, the types themselves have furnished to credulous nations
the materials of many creeds. They have travelled to the vast plains of
India; they have mixed themselves up in the visionary speculations of the
Greek; becoming more and more gross and embodied, as they emerge farther
from the shadows of their antique origin, they have assumed a human and
palpable form in this novel faith; and the believers of Galilee are but the
unconscious repeaters of one of the superstitions of the Nile!'
This was the last argument which completely subdued the priest. It was
necessary to him, as to all, to believe in something; and undivided and, at
last, unreluctant, he surrendered himself to that belief which Arbaces
inculcated, and which all that was human in passion--all that was flattering
in vanity--all that was alluring in pleasure, served to invite to, and
contributed to confirm.
This conquest, thus easily made, the Egyptian could now give himself wholly
up to the pursuit of a far dearer and mightier object; and he hailed, in his
success with the brother, an omen of his triumph over the sister.
He had seen Ione on the day following the revel we have witnessed; and which
was also the day after he had poisoned her mind against his rival. The next
day, and the next, he saw her also: and each time he laid himself out with
consummate art, partly to confirm her impression against Glaucus, and
principally to prepare her for the impressions he desired her to receive.
The proud Ione took care to conceal the anguish she endured; and the pride
of woman has an hypocrisy which can deceive the most penetrating, and shame
the most astute. But Arbaces was no less cautious not to recur to a subject
which he felt it was most politic to treat as of the lightest importance.
He knew that by dwelling much upon the fault of a rival, you only give him
dignity in the eyes of your mistress: the wisest plan is, neither loudly to
hate, nor bitterly to contemn; the wisest plan is to lower him by an
indifference of tone, as if you could not dream that he could be loved.
Your safety is in concealing the wound to your own pride, and imperceptibly
alarming that of the umpire, whose voice is fate! Such, in all times, will
be the policy of one who knows the science of the sex--it was now the
Egyptian's.
He recurred no more, then, to the presumption of Glaucus; he mentioned his
name, but not more often than that of Clodius or of Lepidus. He affected to
class them together as things of a low and ephemeral species; as things
wanting nothing of the butterfly, save its innocence and its grace.
Sometimes he slightly alluded to some invented debauch, in which he declared
them companions; sometimes he adverted to them as the antipodes of those
lofty and spiritual natures, to whose order that of Ione belonged. Blinded
alike by the pride of Ione, and, perhaps, by his own, he dreamed not that
she already loved; but he dreaded lest she might have formed for Glaucus the
first fluttering prepossessions that lead to love. And, secretly, he ground
his teeth in rage and jealousy, when he reflected on the youth, the
fascinations, and the brilliancy of that formidable rival whom he pretended
to undervalue.
It was on the fourth day from the date of the close of the previous book,
that Arbaces and Ione sat together.
'You wear your veil at home,' said the Egyptian; 'that is not fair to those
whom you honour with your friendship.'
'But to Arbaces,' answered Ione, who, indeed, had cast the veil over her
features to conceal eyes red with weeping--'to Arbaces, who looks only to
the mind, what matters it that the face is concealed?'
'I do look only to the mind,' replied the Egyptian: 'show me then your
face--for there I shall see it.'
'You grow gallant in the air of Pompeii,' said Ione, with a forced tone of
gaiety.
'Do you think, fair Ione, that it is only at Pompeii that I have learned to
value you?' The Egyptian's voice trembled--he paused for a moment, and then
resumed.
'There is a love, beautiful Greek, which is not the love only of the
thoughtless and the young--there is a love which sees not with the eyes,
which hears not with the ears; but in which soul is enamoured of soul. The
countryman of thy ancestors, the cave-nursed Plato, dreamed of such a
love--his followers have sought to imitate it; but it is a love that is not
for the herd to echo--it is a love that only high and noble natures can
conceive--it hath nothing in common with the sympathies and ties of coarse
affection--wrinkles do not revolt it--homeliness of feature does not deter;
it asks youth, it is true, but it asks it only in the freshness of the
emotions; it asks beauty, it is true, but it is the beauty of the thought
and of the spirit. Such is the love, O Ione, which is a worthy offering to
thee from the cold and the austere. Austere and cold thou deemest me--such
is the love that I venture to lay upon thy shrine--thou canst receive it
without a blush.'
'And its name is friendship!' replied Ione: her answer was innocent, yet it
sounded like the reproof of one conscious of the design of the speaker.
'Friendship!' said Arbaces, vehemently. 'No; that is a word too often
profaned to apply to a sentiment so sacred. Friendship! it is a tie that
binds fools and profligates! Friendship! it is the bond that unites the
frivolous hearts of a Glaucus and a Clodius! Friendship! no, that is an
affection of earth, of vulgar habits and sordid sympathies; the feeling of
which I speak is borrowed from the stars'--it partakes of that mystic and
ineffable yearning, which we feel when we gaze on them--it burns, yet it
purifies--it is the lamp of naphtha in the alabaster vase, glowing with
fragrant odorous, but shining only through the purest vessels. No; it is
not love, and it is not friendship, that Arbaces feels for Ione. Give it no
name--earth has no name for it--it is not of earth--why debase it with
earthly epithets and earthly associations?'
Never before had Arbaces ventured so far, yet he felt his ground step by
step: he knew that he uttered a language which, if at this day of affected
platonisms it would speak unequivocally to the ears of beauty, was at that
time strange and unfamiliar, to which no precise idea could be attached,
from which he could imperceptibly advance or recede, as occasion suited, as
hope encouraged or fear deterred. Ione trembled, though she knew not why;
her veil hid her features, and masked an expression, which, if seen by the
Egyptian, would have at once damped and enraged him; in fact, he never was
more displeasing to her--the harmonious modulation of the most suasive voice
that ever disguised unhallowed thought fell discordantly on her ear. Her
whole soul was still filled with the image of Glaucus; and the accent of
tenderness from another only revolted and dismayed; yet she did not conceive
that any passion more ardent than that platonism which Arbaces expressed
lurked beneath his words. She thought that he, in truth, spoke only of the
affection and sympathy of the soul; but was it not precisely that affection
and that sympathy which had made a part of those emotions she felt for
Glaucus; and could any other footstep than his approach the haunted adytum
of her heart?
Anxious at once to change the conversation, she replied, therefore, with a
cold and indifferent voice, 'Whomsoever Arbaces honors with the sentiment of
esteem, it is natural that his elevated wisdom should color that sentiment
with its own hues; it is natural that his friendship should be purer than
that of others, whose pursuits and errors he does not deign to share. But
tell me, Arbaces, hast thou seen my brother of late? He has not visited me
for several days; and when I last saw him his manner disturbed and alarmed
me much. I fear lest he was too precipitate in the severe choice that he
has adopted, and that he repents an irrevocable step.'
'Be cheered, Ione,' replied the Egyptian. 'It is true that, some little
time since he was troubled and sad of spirit; those doubts beset him which
were likely to haunt one of that fervent temperament, which ever ebbs and
flows, and vibrates between excitement and exhaustion. But he, Ione, he
came to me his anxieties and his distress; he sought one who pitied me and
loved him; I have calmed his mind--I have removed his doubts--I have taken
him from the threshold of Wisdom into its temple; and before the majesty of
the goddess his soul is hushed and soothed. Fear not, he will repent no
more; they who trust themselves to Arbaces never repent but for a moment.'
'You rejoice me,' answered Ione. 'My dear brother! in his contentment I am
happy.'
The conversation then turned upon lighter subjects; the Egyptian exerted
himself to please, he condescended even to entertain; the vast variety of
his knowledge enabled him to adorn and light up every subject on which he
touched; and Ione, forgetting the displeasing effect of his former words,
was carried away, despite her sadness, by the magic of his intellect. Her
manner became unrestrained and her language fluent; and Arbaces, who had
waited his opportunity, now hastened to seize it.
'You have never seen,' said he, 'the interior of my home; it may amuse you
to do so: it contains some rooms that may explain to you what you have often
asked me to describe--the fashion of an Egyptian house; not indeed, that you
will perceive in the poor and minute proportions of Roman architecture the
massive strength, the vast space, the gigantic magnificence, or even the
domestic construction of the palaces of Thebes and Memphis; but something
there is, here and there, that may serve to express to you some notion of
that antique civilization which has humanized the world. Devote, then, to
the austere friend of your youth, one of these bright summer evenings, and
let me boast that my gloomy mansion has been honored with the presence of
the admired Ione.'
Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger that awaited
her, Ione readily assented to the proposal. The next evening was fixed for
the visit; and the Egyptian, with a serene countenance, and a heart beating
with fierce and unholy joy, departed. Scarce had he gone, when another
visitor claimed admission.... But now we return to Glaucus.
