Chapter II
A CLASSIC HOST, COOK, AND KITCHEN. APAECIDES SEEKS IONE. THEIR
CONVERSATION.
IT was then the day for Diomed's banquet to the most select of his friends.
The graceful Glaucus, the beautiful Ione, the official Pansa, the high-born
Clodius, the immortal Fulvius, the exquisite Lepidus, the epicurean Sallust,
were not the only honourers of his festival. He expected, also, an invalid
senator from Rome (a man of considerable repute and favor at court), and a
great warrior from Herculaneum, who had fought with Titus against the Jews,
and having enriched himself prodigiously in the wars, was always told by his
friends that his country was eternally indebted to his disinterested
exertions! The party, however, extended to a yet greater number: for
although, critically speaking, it was, at one time, thought inelegant among
the Romans to entertain less than three or more than nine at their banquets,
yet this rule was easily disregarded by the ostentatious. And we are told,
indeed, in history, that one of the most splendid of these entertainers
usually feasted a select party of three hundred. Diomed, however, more
modest, contented himself with doubling the number of the Muses. His party
consisted of eighteen, no unfashionable number in the present day.
It was the morning of Diomed's banquet; and Diomed himself, though he
greatly affected the gentleman and the scholar, retained enough of his
mercantile experience to know that a master's eye makes a ready servant.
Accordingly, with his tunic ungirdled on his portly stomach, his easy
slippers on his feet, a small wand in his hand, wherewith he now directed
the gaze, and now corrected the back, of some duller menial, he went from
chamber to chamber of his costly villa.
He did not disdain even a visit to that sacred apartment in which the
priests of the festival prepare their offerings. On entering the kitchen,
his ears were agreeably stunned by the noise of dishes and pans, of oaths
and commands. Small as this indispensable chamber seems to have been in all
the houses of Pompeii, it was, nevertheless, usually fitted up with all that
amazing variety of stoves and shapes, stew-pans and saucepans, cutters and
moulds, without which a cook of spirit, no matter whether he be an ancient
or a modern, declares it utterly impossible that he can give you anything to
eat. And as fuel was then, as now, dear and scarce in those regions, great
seems to have been the dexterity exercised in preparing as many things as
possible with as little fire. An admirable contrivance of this nature may
be still seen in the Neapolitan Museum, viz., a portable kitchen, about the
size of a folio volume, containing stoves for four dishes, and an apparatus
for heating water or other beverages.
Across the small kitchen flitted many forms which the quick eye of the
master did not recognize.
'Oh! oh!' grumbled he to himself, 'that cursed Congrio hath invited a whole
legion of cooks to assist him. They won't serve for nothing, and this is
another item in the total of my day's expenses. By Bacchus! thrice lucky
shall I be if the slaves do not help themselves to some of the drinking
vessels: ready, alas, are their hands, capacious are their tunics. Me
miserum!'
The cooks, however, worked on, seemingly heedless of the apparition of
Diomed.
'Ho, Euclio, your egg-pan! What, is this the largest? it only holds
thirty-three eggs: in the houses I usually serve, the smallest egg-pan holds
fifty, if need be!'
'The unconscionable rogue!' thought Diomed; 'he talks of eggs as if they
were a sesterce a hundred!'
'By Mercury!' cried a pert little culinary disciple, scarce in his
novitiate; 'whoever saw such antique sweetmeat shapes as these?--It is
impossible to do credit to one's art with such rude materials. Why,
Sallust's commonest sweetmeat shape represents the whole siege of Troy;
Hector and Paris, and Helen... with little Astyanax and the Wooden Horse
into the bargain!'
'Silence, fool!' said Congrio, the cook of the house, who seemed to leave
the chief part of the battle to his allies. 'My master, Diomed, is not one
of those expensive good-for-noughts, who must have the last fashion, cost
what it will!'
'Thou liest, base slave!' cried Diomed, in a great passion--and thou costest
me already enough to have ruined Lucullus himself! Come out of thy den, I
want to talk to thee.'
The slave, with a sly wink at his confederates, obeyed the command.
'Man of three letters,' said Diomed, with his face of solemn anger, 'how
didst thou dare to invite all those rascals into my house?--I see thief
written in every line of their faces.'
'Yet, I assure you, master, that they are men of most respectable
character--the best cooks of the place; it is a great favor to get them.
But for my sake...'
'Thy sake, unhappy Congrio!' interrupted Diomed; and by what purloined
moneys of mine, by what reserved filchings from marketing, by what goodly
meats converted into grease, and sold in the suburbs, by what false charges
for bronzes marred, and earthenware broken--hast thou been enabled to make
them serve thee for thy sake?'
'Nay, master, do not impeach my honesty! May the gods desert me if...'
'Swear not!' again interrupted the choleric Diomed, 'for then the gods will
smite thee for a perjurer, and I shall lose my cook on the eve of dinner.
But, enough of this at present: keep a sharp eye on thy ill-favored
assistants, and tell me no tales to-morrow of vases broken, and cups
miraculously vanished, or thy whole back shall be one pain. And hark thee!
thou knowest thou hast made me pay for those Phrygian attagens enough, by
Hercules, to have feasted a sober man for a year together--see that they be
not one iota over-roasted. The last time, O Congrio, that I gave a banquet
to my friends, when thy vanity did so boldly undertake the becoming
appearance of a Melian crane--thou knowest it came up like a stone from
AEtna--as if all the fires of Phlegethon had been scorching out its juices.
Be modest this time, Congrio--wary and modest. Modesty is the nurse of
great actions; and in all other things, as in this, if thou wilt not spare
thy master's purse, at least consult thy master's glory.'
'There shall not be such a coena seen at Pompeii since the days of
Hercules.'
'Softly, softly--thy cursed boasting again! But I say, Congrio, yon
homunculus--yon pigmy assailant of my cranes--yon pert-tongued neophyte of
the kitchen, was there aught but insolence on his tongue when he maligned
the comeliness of my sweetmeat shapes? I would not be out of the fashion,
Congrio.'
'It is but the custom of us cooks,' replied Congrio, gravely, to undervalue
our tools, in order to increase the effect of our art. The sweetmeat shape
is a fair shape, and a lovely; but I would recommend my master, at the first
occasion, to purchase some new ones of a...'
'That will suffice,' exclaimed Diomed, who seemed resolved never to allow
his slave to finish his sentences. 'Now, resume thy
charge--shine----eclipse thyself. Let men envy Diomed his cook--let the
slaves of Pompeii style thee Congrio the great! Go! yet stay--thou hast not
spent all the moneys I gave thee for the marketing?' '"All!" alas! the
nightingales' tongues and the Roman tomacula, and the oysters from Britain,
and sundry other things, too numerous now to recite, are yet left unpaid
for. But what matter? every one trusts the Archimagirus of Diomed the
wealthy!'
'Oh, unconscionable prodigal!--what waste!--what profusion!--I am ruined!
But go, hasten--inspect!--taste!--perform!--surpass thyself! Let the Roman
senator not despise the poor Pompeian. Away, slave--and remember, the
Phrygian attagens.'
The chief disappeared within his natural domain, and Diomed rolled back his
portly presence to the more courtly chambers. All was to his liking--the
flowers were fresh, the fountains played briskly, the mosaic pavements were
as smooth as mirrors.
'Where is my daughter Julia?' he asked.
'At the bath.'
'Ah! that reminds me!--time wanes!--and I must bathe also.'
Our story returns to Apaecides. On awaking that day from the broken and
feverish sleep which had followed his adoption of a faith so strikingly and
sternly at variance with that in which his youth had been nurtured, the
young priest could scarcely imagine that he was not yet in a dream; he had
crossed the fatal river--the past was henceforth to have no sympathy with
the future; the two worlds were distinct and separate--that which had been,
from that which was to be. To what a bold and adventurous enterprise he had
pledged his life!--to unveil the mysteries in which he had participated--to
desecrate the altars he had served--to denounce the goddess whose
ministering robe he wore! Slowly he became sensible of the hatred and the
horror he should provoke amongst the pious, even if successful; if
frustrated in his daring attempt, what penalties might he not incur for an
offence hitherto unheard of--for which no specific law, derived from
experience, was prepared; and which, for that very reason, precedents,
dragged from the sharpest armoury of obsolete and inapplicable legislation,
would probably be distorted to meet! His friends--the sister of his
youth--could he expect justice, though he might receive compassion, from
them? This brave and heroic act would by their heathen eyes be regarded,
perhaps, as a heinous apostasy--at the best as a pitiable madness.
He dared, he renounced, everything in this world, in the hope of securing
that eternity in the next, which had so suddenly been revealed to him.
While these thoughts on the one hand invaded his breast, on the other hand
his pride, his courage, and his virtue, mingled with reminiscences of
revenge for deceit, of indignant disgust at fraud, conspired to raise and to
support him.
The conflict was sharp and keen; but his new feelings triumphed over his
old: and a mighty argument in favor of wrestling with the sanctities of old
opinions and hereditary forms might be found in the conquest over both,
achieved by that humble priest. Had the early Christians been more
controlled by 'the solemn plausibilities of custom'--less of democrats in
the pure and lofty acceptation of that perverted word--Christianity would
have perished in its cradle!
As each priest in succession slept several nights together in the chambers
of the temple, the term imposed on Apaecides was not yet completed; and when
he had risen from his couch, attired himself, as usual, in his robes, and
left his narrow chamber, he found himself before the altars of the temple.
In the exhaustion of his late emotions he had slept far into the morning,
and the vertical sun already poured its fervid beams over the sacred place.
'Salve, Apaecides!' said a voice, whose natural asperity was smoothed by
long artifice into an almost displeasing softness of tone. 'Thou art late
abroad; has the goddess revealed herself to thee in visions?'
'Could she reveal her true self to the people, Calenus, how incenseless
would be these altars!'
'That,' replied Calenus, 'may possibly be true; but the deity is wise enough
to hold commune with none but priests.'
'A time may come when she will be unveiled without her own acquiescence.'
'It is not likely: she has triumphed for countless ages. And that which has
so long stood the test of time rarely succumbs to the lust of novelty. But
hark ye, young brother! these sayings are indiscreet.'
'It is not for thee to silence them,' replied Apaecides, haughtily.
'So hot!--yet I will not quarrel with thee. Why, my Apaecides, has not the
Egyptian convinced thee of the necessity of our dwelling together in unity?
Has he not convinced thee of the wisdom of deluding the people and enjoying
ourselves? If not, oh, brother! he is not that great magician he is
esteemed.'
'Thou, then, hast shared his lessons?' said Apaecides, with a hollow smile.
'Ay! but I stood less in need of them than thou. Nature had already gifted
me with the love of pleasure, and the desire of gain and power. Long is the
way that leads the voluptuary to the severities of life; but it is only one
step from pleasant sin to sheltering hypocrisy. Beware the vengeance of the
goddess, if the shortness of that step be disclosed!'
'Beware, thou, the hour when the tomb shall be rent and the rottenness
exposed,' returned Apaecides, solemnly. 'Vale!'
With these words he left the flamen to his meditations. When he got a few
paces from the temple, he turned to look back. Calenus had already
disappeared in the entry room of the priests, for it now approached the hour
of that repast which, called prandium by the ancients, answers in point of
date to the breakfast of the moderns. The white and graceful fane gleamed
brightly in the sun. Upon the altars before it rose the incense and bloomed
the garlands. The priest gazed long and wistfully upon the scene--it was
the last time that it was ever beheld by him!
He then turned and pursued his way slowly towards the house of Ione; for
before possibly the last tie that united them was cut in twain--before the
uncertain peril of the next day was incurred, he was anxious to see his last
surviving relative, his fondest as his earliest friend.
He arrived at her house, and found her in the garden with Nydia.
'This is kind, Apaecides,' said Ione, joyfully; 'and how eagerly have I
wished to see thee!--what thanks do I not owe thee? How churlish hast thou
been to answer none of my letters--to abstain from coming hither to receive
the expressions of my gratitude! Oh! thou hast assisted to preserve thy
sister from dishonour! What, what can she say to thank thee, now thou art
come at last?'
'My sweet Ione, thou owest me no gratitude, for thy cause was mine. Let us
avoid that subject, let us recur not to that impious man--how hateful to
both of us! I may have a speedy opportunity to teach the world the nature
of his pretended wisdom and hypocritical severity. But let us sit down, my
sister; I am wearied with the heat of the sun; let us sit in yonder shade,
and, for a little while longer, be to each other what we have been.'
Beneath a wide plane-tree, with the cistus and the arbutus iclustering round
them, the living fountain before, the greensward beneath their feet; the gay
cicada, once so dear to Athens, rising merrily ever and anon amidst the
grass; the butterfly, beautiful emblem of the soul, dedicated to Psyche, and
which has continued to furnish illustrations to the Christian bard, rich in
the glowing colors caught from Sicilian skies, hovering about the sunny
flowers, itself like a winged flower--in this spot, and this scene, the
brother and the sister sat together for the last time on earth. You may
tread now on the same place; but the garden is no more, the columns are
shattered, the fountain has ceased to play. Let the traveler search amongst
the ruins of Pompeii for the house of Ione. Its remains are yet visible; but
I will not betray them to the gaze of commonplace tourists. He who is more
sensitive than the herd will discover them easily: when he has done so, let
him keep the secret.
They sat down, and Nydia, glad to be alone, retired to the farther end of
the garden.
'Ione, my sister,' said the young convert, 'place your hand upon my brow;
let me feel your cool touch. Speak to me, too, for your gentle voice is
like a breeze that hath freshness as well as music. Speak to me, but forbear
to bless me! Utter not one word of those forms of speech which our
childhood was taught to consider sacred!'
'Alas! and what then shall I say? Our language of affection is so woven
with that of worship, that the words grow chilled and trite if I banish from
them allusion to our gods.'
'Our gods!' murmured Apaecides, with a shudder: 'thou slightest my request
already.'
'Shall I speak then to thee only of Isis?'
'The Evil Spirit! No, rather be dumb for ever, unless at least thou
canst--but away, away this talk! Not now will we dispute and cavil; not now
will we judge harshly of each other. Thou, regarding me as an apostate! and
I all sorrow and shame for thee as an idolater. No, my sister, let us avoid
such topics and such thoughts. In thy sweet presence a calm falls over my
spirit. For a little while I forget. As I thus lay my temples on thy
bosom, as I thus feel thy gentle arm embrace me, I think that we are
children once more, and that the heaven smiles equally upon both. For oh!
if hereafter I escape, no matter what peril; and it be permitted me to
address thee on one sacred and awful subject; should I find thine ear closed
and thy heart hardened, what hope for myself could countervail the despair
for thee? In thee, my sister, I behold a likeness made beautiful, made
noble, of myself. Shall the mirror live for ever, and the form itself be
broken as the potter's clay? Ah, no--no--thou wilt listen to me yet! Dost
thou remember how we went into the fields by Baiae, hand in hand together,
to pluck the flowers of spring? Even so, hand in hand, shall we enter the
Eternal Garden, and crown ourselves with imperishable asphodel!'
Wondering and bewildered by words she could not comprehend, but excited even
to tears by the plaintiveness of their tone, Ione listened to these
outpourings of a full and oppressed heart. In truth, Apaecides himself was
softened much beyond his ordinary mood, which to outward seeming was usually
either sullen or impetuous. For the noblest desires are of a jealous
nature--they engross, they absorb the soul, and often leave the splenetic
humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things
around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the
diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. For as there is no
chimera vainer than the hope that one human heart shall find sympathy in
another, so none ever interpret us with justice; and none, no, not our
nearest and our dearest ties, forbear with us in mercy! When we are dead
and repentance comes too late, both friend and foe may wonder to think how
little there was in us to forgive!
'I will talk to thee then of our early years,' said Ione. 'Shall yon blind
girl sing to thee of the days of childhood? Her voice is sweet and musical,
and she hath a song on that theme which contains none of those allusions it
pains thee to hear.'
'Dost thou remember the words, my sister?' asked Apaecides.
'Methinks yes; for the tune, which is simple, fixed them on my memory.'
'Sing to me then thyself. My ear is not in unison with unfamiliar voices;
and thine, Ione, full of household associations, has ever been to me more
sweet than all the hireling melodies of Lycia or of Crete. Sing to me!'
Ione beckoned to a slave that stood in the portico, and sending for her
lute, sang, when it arrived, to a tender and simple air, the following
verses:-
REGRETS FOR CHILDHOOD
I
It is not that our earlier Heaven
Escapes its April showers,
Or that to childhood's heart is given
No snake amidst the flowers.
Ah! twined with grief
Each brightest leaf,
That's wreath'd us by the Hours!
Young though we be, the Past may sting,
The present feed its sorrow;
But hope shines bright on every thing
That waits us with the morrow.
Like sun-lit glades,
The dimmest shades
Some rosy beam can borrow.
II
It is not that our later years
Of cares are woven wholly,
But smiles less swiftly chase the tears,
And wounds are healed more slowly.
And Memory's vow
To lost ones now,
Makes joys too bright, unholy.
And ever fled the Iris bow
That smiled when clouds were o'er us.
If storms should burst, uncheered we go,
A drearier waste before us--
And with the toys
Of childish joys,
We've broke the staff that bore us!
Wisely and delicately had Ione chosen that song, sad though its burthen
seemed; for when we are deeply mournful, discordant above all others is the
voice of mirth: the fittest spell is that borrowed from melancholy itself,
for dark thoughts can be softened down when they cannot be brightened; and
so they lose the precise and rigid outline of their truth, and their colors
melt into the ideal. As the leech applies in remedy to the internal sore
some outward irritation, which, by a gentler wound, draws away the venom of
that which is more deadly, thus, in the rankling festers of the mind, our
art is to divert to a milder sadness on the surface the pain that gnaweth at
the core. And so with Apaecides, yielding to the influence of the silver
voice that reminded him of the past, and told but of half the sorrow born to
the present, he forgot his more immediate and fiery sources of anxious
thought. He spent hours in making Ione alternately sing to, and converse
with him; and when he rose to leave her, it was with a calmed and lulled
mind.
'Ione,' said he, as he pressed her hand, 'should you hear my name blackened
and maligned, will you credit the aspersion?'
'Never, my brother, never!'
'Dost thou not imagine, according to thy belief, that the evil-doer is
punished hereafter, and the good rewarded?'
'Can you doubt it?'
'Dost thou think, then, that he who is truly good should sacrifice every
selfish interest in his zeal for virtue?'
'He who doth so is the equal of the gods.'
'And thou believest that, according to the purity and courage with which he
thus acts, shall be his portion of bliss beyond the grave?'
'So we are taught to hope.'
'Kiss me, my sister. One question more. Thou art to be wedded to Glaucus:
perchance that marriage may separate us more hopelessly--but not of this
speak I now--thou art to be married to Glaucus--dost thou love him? Nay, my
sister, answer me by words.'
'Yes!' murmured Ione, blushing.
'Dost thou feel that, for his sake, thou couldst renounce pride, brave
dishonour, and incur death? I have heard that when women really love, it is
to that excess.'
'My brother, all this could I do for Glaucus, and feel that it were not a
sacrifice. There is no sacrifice to those who love, in what is borne for
the one we love.'
'Enough! shall woman feel thus for man, and man feel less devotion to his
God?'
He spoke no more. His whole countenance seemed instinct and inspired with a
divine life: his chest swelled proudly; his eyes glowed: on his forehead was
writ the majesty of a man who can dare to be noble! He turned to meet the
eyes of Ione--earnest, wistful, fearful--he kissed her fondly, strained her
warmly to his breast, and in a moment more he had left the house.
Long did Ione remain in the same place, mute and thoughtful. The maidens
again and again came to warn her of the deepening noon, and her engagement
to Diomed's banquet. At length she woke from her reverie, and prepared, not
with the pride of beauty, but listless and melancholy, for the festival: one
thought alone reconciled her to the promised visit--she should meet
Glaucus--she could confide to him her alarm and uneasiness for her brother.
