Chapter VIII
THE SOLITUDE AND SOLILOQUY OF THE EGYPTIAN. HIS CHARACTER ANALYSED.
WE must go back a few hours in the progress of our story. At the first grey
dawn of the day, which Glaucus had already marked with white, the Egyptian
was seated, sleepless and alone, on the summit of the lofty and pyramidal
tower which flanked his house. A tall parapet around it served as a wall,
and conspired, with the height of the edifice and the gloomy trees that
girded the mansion, to defy the prying eyes of curiosity or observation. A
table, on which lay a scroll, filled with mystic figures, was before him.
On high, the stars waxed dim and faint, and the shades of night melted from
the sterile mountain-tops; only above Vesuvius there rested a deep and massy
cloud, which for several days past had gathered darker and more solid over
its summit. The struggle of night and day was more visible over the broad
ocean, which stretched calm, like a gigantic lake, bounded by the circling
shores that, covered with vines and foliage, and gleaming here and there
with the white walls of sleeping cities, sloped to the scarce rippling
waves.
It was the hour above all others most sacred to the daring science of the
Egyptian--the science which would read our changeful destinies in the stars.
He had filled his scroll, he had noted the moment and the sign; and, leaning
upon his hand, he had surrendered himself to the thoughts which his
calculation excited.
'Again do the stars forewarn me! Some danger, then, assuredly awaits me!'
said he, slowly; 'some danger, violent and sudden in its nature. The stars
wear for me the same mocking menace which, if our chronicles do not err,
they once wore for Pyrrhus--for him, doomed to strive for all things, to
enjoy none--all attacking, nothing gaining--battles without fruit, laurels
without triumph, fame without success; at last made craven by his own
superstitions, and slain like a dog by a tile from the hand of an old woman!
Verily, the stars flatter when they give me a type in this fool of war--when
they promise to the ardour of my wisdom the same results as to the madness
of his ambition--perpetual exercise--no certain goal!--the Sisyphus task,
the mountain and the stone!--the stone, a gloomy image!--it reminds me that
I am threatened with somewhat of the same death as the Epirote. Let me look
again. "Beware," say the shining prophets, "how thou passest under ancient
roofs, or besieged walls, or overhanging cliffs--a stone hurled from above,
is charged by the curses of destiny against thee!" And, at no distant date
from this, comes the peril: but I cannot, of a certainty, read the day and
hour. Well! if my glass runs low, the sands shall sparkle to the last. Yet,
if I escape this peril--ay, if I escape--bright and clear as the moonlight
track along the waters glows the rest of my existence. I see honors,
happiness, success, shining upon every billow of the dark gulf beneath which
I must sink at last. What, then, with such destinies beyond the peril,
shall I succumb to the peril? My soul whispers hope, it sweeps exultingly
beyond the boding hour, it revels in the future--its own courage is its
fittest omen. If I were to perish so suddenly and so soon, the shadow of
death would darken over me, and I should feel the icy presentiment of my
doom. My soul would express, in sadness and in gloom, its forecast of the
dreary Orcus. But it smiles--it assures me of deliverance.'
As he thus concluded his soliloquy, the Egyptian involuntarily rose. He
paced rapidly the narrow space of that star-roofed floor, and, pausing at
the parapet, looked again upon the grey and melancholy heavens. The chills
of the faint dawn came refreshingly upon his brow, and gradually his mind
resumed its natural and collected calm. He withdrew his gaze from the
stars, as, one after one, they receded into the depths of heaven; and his
eyes fell over the broad expanse below. Dim in the silenced port of the
city rose the masts of the galleys; along that mart of luxury and of labor
was stilled the mighty hum. No lights, save here and there from before the
columns of a temple, or in the porticoes of the voiceless forum, broke the
wan and fluctuating light of the struggling morn. From the heart of the
torpid city, so soon to vibrate with a thousand passions, there came no
sound: the streams of life circulated not; they lay locked under the ice of
sleep. From the huge space of the amphitheatre, with its stony seats rising
one above the other--coiled and round as some slumbering monster--rose a
thin and ghastly mist, which gathered darker, and more dark, over the
scattered foliage that gloomed in its vicinity. The city seemed as, after
the awful change of seventeen ages, it seems now to the traveler,--a City of
the Dead.'
The ocean itself--that serene and tideless sea--lay scarce less hushed, save
that from its deep bosom came, softened by the distance, a faint and regular
murmur, like the breathing of its sleep; and curving far, as with
outstretched arms, into the green and beautiful land, it seemed
unconsciously to clasp to its breast the cities sloping to its
margin--Stabiae, and Herculaneum, and Pompeii--those children and darlings
of the deep. 'Ye slumber,' said the Egyptian, as he scowled over the
cities, the boast and flower of Campania; 'ye slumber!--would it were the
eternal repose of death! As ye now--jewels in the crown of empire--so once
were the cities of the Nile! Their greatness hath perished from them, they
sleep amidst ruins, their palaces and their shrines are tombs, the serpent
coils in the grass of their streets, the lizard basks in their solitary
halls. By that mysterious law of Nature, which humbles one to exalt the
other, ye have thriven upon their ruins; thou, haughty Rome, hast usurped
the glories of Sesostris and Semiramis--thou art a robber, clothing thyself
with their spoils! And these--slaves in thy triumph--that I (the last son
of forgotten monarchs) survey below, reservoirs of thine all-pervading power
and luxury, I curse as I behold! The time shall come when Egypt shall be
avenged! when the barbarian's steed shall make his manger in the Golden
House of Nero! and thou that hast sown the wind with conquest shalt reap the
harvest in the whirlwind of desolation!'
As the Egyptian uttered a prediction which fate so fearfully fulfilled, a
more solemn and boding image of ill omen never occurred to the dreams of
painter or of poet. The morning light, which can pale so wanly even the
young cheek of beauty, gave his majestic and stately features almost the
colors of the grave, with the dark hair falling massively around them, and
the dark robes flowing long and loose, and the arm outstretched from that
lofty eminence, and the glittering eyes, fierce with a savage gladness--half
prophet and half fiend!
He turned his gaze from the city and the ocean; before him lay the vineyards
and meadows of the rich Campania. The gate and walls--ancient, half
Pelasgic--of the city, seemed not to bound its extent. Villas and villages
stretched on every side up the ascent of Vesuvius, not nearly then so steep
or so lofty as at present. For, as Rome itself is built on an exhausted
volcano, so in similar security the inhabitants of the South tenanted the
green and vine-clad places around a volcano whose fires they believed at
rest for ever. From the gate stretched the long street of tombs, various in
size and architecture, by which, on that side, the city is as yet
approached. Above all, rode the cloud-capped summit of the Dread Mountain,
with the shadows, now dark, now light, betraying the mossy caverns and ashy
rocks, which testified the past conflagrations, and might have
prophesied--but man is blind--that which was to come!
Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the tradition of the
place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, in those smiling plains, for
miles around--to Baiae and Misenum--the poets had imagined the entrance and
thresholds of their hell--their Acheron, and their fabled Styx: why, in
those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they placed the battles of the
gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have sought the victory of
heaven--save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted summit, fancy
might think to read the characters of the Olympian thunderbolt.
But it was neither the rugged height of the still volcano, nor the fertility
of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy avenue of tombs, nor the
glittering villas of a polished and luxurious people, that now arrested the
eye of the Egyptian. On one part of the landscape, the mountain of Vesuvius
descended to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated ridge, broken here and
there by jagged crags and copses of wild foliage. At the base of this lay a
marshy and unwholesome pool; and the intent gaze of Arbaces caught the
outline of some living form moving by the marshes, and stooping ever and
anon as if to pluck its rank produce.
'Ho!' said he, aloud, 'I have then, another companion in these unworldly
night--watches. The witch of Vesuvius is abroad. What! doth she, too, as
the credulous imagine--doth she, too, learn the lore of the great stars?
Hath she been uttering foul magic to the moon, or culling (as her pauses
betoken) foul herbs from the venomous marsh? Well, I must see this
fellow-laborer. Whoever strives to know learns that no human lore is
despicable. Despicable only you--ye fat and bloated things--slaves of
luxury--sluggards in thought--who, cultivating nothing but the barren sense,
dream that its poor soil can produce alike the myrtle and the laurel. No,
the wise only can enjoy--to us only true luxury is given, when mind, brain,
invention, experience, thought, learning, imagination, all contribute like
rivers to swell the seas of SENSE!--Ione!'
As Arbaces uttered that last and charmed word, his thoughts sunk at once
into a more deep and profound channel. His steps paused; he took not his
eyes from the ground; once or twice he smiled joyously, and then, as he
turned from his place of vigil, and sought his couch, he muttered, 'If death
frowns so near, I will say at least that I have lived--Ione shall be mine!'
The character of Arbaces was one of those intricate and varied webs, in
which even the mind that sat within it was sometimes confused and perplexed.
In him, the son of a fallen dynasty, the outcast of a sunken people, was
that spirit of discontented pride, which ever rankles in one of a sterner
mould, who feels himself inexorably shut from the sphere in which his
fathers shone, and to which Nature as well as birth no less entitles
himself. This sentiment hath no benevolence; it wars with society, it sees
enemies in mankind. But with this sentiment did not go its common
companion, poverty. Arbaces possessed wealth which equalled that of most of
the Roman nobles; and this enabled him to gratify to the utmost the passions
which had no outlet in business or ambition. Travelling from clime to
clime, and beholding still Rome everywhere, he increased both his hatred of
society and his passion for pleasure. He was in a vast prison, which,
however, he could fill with the ministers of luxury. He could not escape
from the prison, and his only object, therefore, was to give it the
character of the palace. The Egyptians, from the earliest time, were
devoted to the joys of sense; Arbaces inherited both their appetite for
sensuality and the glow of imagination which struck light from its
rottenness. But still, unsocial in his pleasures as in his graver pursuits,
and brooking neither superior nor equal, he admitted few to his
companionship, save the willing slaves of his profligacy. He was the
solitary lord of a crowded harem; but, with all, he felt condemned to that
satiety which is the constant curse of men whose intellect is above their
pursuits, and that which once had been the impulse of passion froze down to
the ordinance of custom. >From the disappointments of sense he sought to
raise himself by the cultivation of knowledge; but as it was not his object
to serve mankind, so he despised that knowledge which is practical and
useful. His dark imagination loved to exercise itself in those more
visionary and obscure researches which are ever the most delightful to a
wayward and solitary mind, and to which he himself was invited by the daring
pride of his disposition and the mysterious traditions of his clime.
Dismissing faith in the confused creeds of the heathen world, he reposed the
greatest faith in the power of human wisdom. He did not know (perhaps no one
in that age distinctly did) the limits which Nature imposes upon our
discoveries. Seeing that the higher we mount in knowledge the more wonders
we behold, he imagined that Nature not only worked miracles in her ordinary
course, but that she might, by the cabala of some master soul, be diverted
from that course itself. Thus he pursued science, across her appointed
boundaries, into the land of perplexity and shadow. From the truths of
astronomy he wandered into astrological fallacy; from the secrets of
chemistry he passed into the spectral labyrinth of magic; and he who could
be sceptical as to the power of the gods, was credulously superstitious as
to the power of man.
The cultivation of magic, carried at that day to a singular height among the
would-be wise, was especially Eastern in its origin; it was alien to the
early philosophy of the Greeks; nor had it been received by them with favor
until Ostanes, who accompanied the army of Xerxes, introduced, amongst the
simple credulities of Hellas, the solemn superstitions of Zoroaster. Under
the Roman emperors it had become, however, naturalized at Rome (a meet
subject for Juvenal's fiery wit). Intimately connected with magic was the
worship of Isis, and the Egyptian religion was the means by which was
extended the devotion to Egyptian sorcery. The theurgic, or benevolent
magic--the goetic, or dark and evil necromancy--were alike in pre-eminent
repute during the first century of the Christian era; and the marvels of
Faustus are not comparable to those of Apollonius. Kings, courtiers, and
sages, all trembled before the professors of the dread science. And not the
least remarkable of his tribe was the most formidable and profound Arbaces.
His fame and his discoveries were known to all the cultivators of magic;
they even survived himself. But it was not by his real name that he was
honored by the sorcerer and the sage: his real name, indeed, was unknown in
Italy, for 'Arbaces' was not a genuinely Egyptian but a Median appellation,
which, in the admixture and unsettlement of the ancient races, had become
common in the country of the Nile; and there were various reasons, not only
of pride, but of policy (for in youth he had conspired against the majesty
of Rome), which induced him to conceal his true name and rank. But neither
by the name he had borrowed from the Mede, nor by that which in the colleges
of Egypt would have attested his origin from kings, did the cultivators of
magic acknowledge the potent master. He received from their homage a more
mystic appellation, and was long remembered in Magna Graecia and the Eastern
plain by the name of 'Hermes, the Lord of the Flaming Belt'. His subtle
speculations and boasted attributes of wisdom, recorded in various volumes,
were among those tokens 'of the curious arts' which the Christian converts
most joyfully, yet most fearfully, burnt at Ephesus, depriving posterity of
the proofs of the cunning of the fiend.
The conscience of Arbaces was solely of the intellect--it was awed by no
moral laws. If man imposed these checks upon the herd, so he believed that
man, by superior wisdom, could raise himself above them. 'If (he reasoned) I
have the genius to impose laws, have I not the right to command my own
creations? Still more, have I not the right to control--to evade--to
scorn--the fabrications of yet meaner intellects than my own?' Thus, if he
were a villain, he justified his villainy by what ought to have made him
virtuous--namely, the elevation of his capacities.
Most men have more or less the passion for power; in Arbaces that passion
corresponded exactly to his character. It was not the passion for an
external and brute authority. He desired not the purple and the fasces, the
insignia of vulgar command. His youthful ambition once foiled and defeated,
scorn had supplied its place--his pride, his contempt for Rome--Rome, which
had become the synonym of the world (Rome, whose haughty name he regarded
with the same disdain as that which Rome herself lavished upon the
barbarian), did not permit him to aspire to sway over others, for that would
render him at once the tool or creature of the emperor. He, the Son of the
Great Race of Rameses--he execute the orders of, and receive his power from,
another!--the mere notion filled him with rage. But in rejecting an
ambition that coveted nominal distinctions, he but indulged the more in the
ambition to rule the heart. Honoring mental power as the greatest of
earthly gifts, he loved to feel that power palpably in himself, by extending
it over all whom he encountered. Thus had he ever sought the young--thus
had he ever fascinated and controlled them. He loved to find subjects in
men's souls--to rule over an invisible and immaterial empire!--had he been
less sensual and less wealthy, he might have sought to become the founder of
a new religion. As it was, his energies were checked by his pleasures.
Besides, however, the vague love of this moral sway (vanity so dear to
sages!) he was influenced by a singular and dreamlike devotion to all that
belonged to the mystic Land his ancestors had swayed. Although he
disbelieved in her deities, he believed in the allegories they represented
(or rather he interpreted those allegories anew). He loved to keep alive
the worship of Egypt, because he thus maintained the shadow and the
recollection of her power. He loaded, therefore, the altars of Osiris and
of Isis with regal donations, and was ever anxious to dignify their
priesthood by new and wealthy converts. The vow taken--the priesthood
embraced--he usually chose the comrades of his pleasures from those whom he
made his victims, partly because he thus secured to himself their
secrecy--partly because he thus yet more confirmed to himself his peculiar
power. Hence the motives of his conduct to Apaecides, strengthened as these
were, in that instance, by his passion for Ione.
He had seldom lived long in one place; but as he grew older, he grew more
wearied of the excitement of new scenes, and he had sojourned among the
delightful cities of Campania for a period which surprised even himself. In
fact, his pride somewhat crippled his choice of residence. His unsuccessful
conspiracy excluded him from those burning climes which he deemed of right
his own hereditary possession, and which now cowered, supine and sunken,
under the wings of the Roman eagle. Rome herself was hateful to his
indignant soul; nor did he love to find his riches rivalled by the minions
of the court, and cast into comparative poverty by the mighty magnificence
of the court itself. The Campanian cities proffered to him all that his
nature craved--the luxuries of an unequalled climate--the imaginative
refinements of a voluptuous civilization. He was removed from the sight of
a superior wealth; he was without rivals to his riches; he was free from the
spies of a jealous court. As long as he was rich, none pried into his
conduct. He pursued the dark tenour of his way undisturbed and secure.
It is the curse of sensualists never to love till the pleasures of sense
begin to pall; their ardent youth is frittered away in countless
desires--their hearts are exhausted. So, ever chasing love, and taught by a
restless imagination to exaggerate, perhaps, its charms, the Egyptian had
spent all the glory of his years without attaining the object of his
desires. The beauty of to-morrow succeeded the beauty of to-day, and the
shadows bewildered him in his pursuit of the substance. When, two years
before the present date, he beheld Ione, he saw, for the first time, one
whom he imagined he could love. He stood, then, upon that bridge of life,
from which man sees before him distinctly a wasted youth on the one side,
and the darkness of approaching age upon the other: a time in which we are
more than ever anxious, perhaps, to secure to ourselves, ere it be yet too
late, whatever we have been taught to consider necessary to the enjoyment of
a life of which the brighter half is gone.
With an earnestness and a patience which he had never before commanded for
his pleasures, Arbaces had devoted himself to win the heart of Ione. It did
not content him to love, he desired to be loved. In this hope he had watched
the expanding youth of the beautiful Neapolitan; and, knowing the influence
that the mind possesses over those who are taught to cultivate the mind, he
had contributed willingly to form the genius and enlighten the intellect of
Ione, in the hope that she would be thus able to appreciate what he felt
would be his best claim to her affection: viz, a character which, however
criminal and perverted, was rich in its original elements of strength and
grandeur. When he felt that character to be acknowledged, he willingly
allowed, nay, encouraged her, to mix among the idle votaries of pleasure, in
the belief that her soul, fitted for higher commune, would miss the
companionship of his own, and that, in comparison with others, she would
learn to love herself. He had forgot, that as the sunflower to the sun, so
youth turns to youth, until his jealousy of Glaucus suddenly apprised him of
his error. From that moment, though, as we have seen, he knew not the
extent of his danger, a fiercer and more tumultuous direction was given to a
passion long controlled. Nothing kindles the fire of love like the
sprinkling of the anxieties of jealousy; it takes then a wilder, a more
resistless flame; it forgets its softness; it ceases to be tender; it
assumes something of the intensity--of the ferocity--of hate.
Arbaces resolved to lose no further time upon cautious and perilous
preparations: he resolved to place an irrevocable barrier between himself
and his rivals: he resolved to possess himself of the person of Ione: not
that in his present love, so long nursed and fed by hopes purer than those
of passion alone, he would have been contented with that mere possession.
He desired the heart, the soul, no less than the beauty, of Ione; but he
imagined that once separated by a daring crime from the rest of
mankind--once bound to Ione by a tie that memory could not break, she would
be driven to concentrate her thoughts in him--that his arts would complete
his conquest, and that, according to the true moral of the Roman and the
Sabine, the empire obtained by force would be cemented by gentler means.
This resolution was yet more confirmed in him by his belief in the
prophecies of the stars: they had long foretold to him this year, and even
the present month, as the epoch of some dread disaster, menacing life
itself. He was driven to a certain and limited date. He resolved to crowd,
monarch-like, on his funeral pyre all that his soul held most dear. In his
own words, if he were to die, he resolved to feel that he had lived, and
that Ione should be his own.
