CHAPTER IX.
Next morning when they met at the jentaculum, or breakfast, there was a marvellous improvement in Agatha's looks. She had been the earliest out of bed; had seen from her window, under a brilliant sunshine, the beautiful landscape unroll itself in the various forms which the landlady had truly though inadequately described; and she then had run down into the garden.
In due time—that is, very soon afterward—she had been chased by the bees, had fled, screaming and laughing, with the hood of her ricinium drawn completely over the head by way of helmet against the terrible darts of her indignant pursuers, and had been received in the arms of Benigna, who had heard the cry of distress and had flown to the rescue, brandishing a long, reedy brush, like the mosquito brushes of modern times. Rallying in a bower of trellis-work covered with ivy, whence a wooden staircase led up to the first floor of the house, by way of a landing or platform, over which rose another bower clad in the same ivy mantle—facing round, I say, upon her enemy at the foot of this staircase, she had soon ventured once more into the garden with Benigna, and the two girls, jabbering and cackling much, had gathered a large nosegay of autumnal flowers. With this booty, which Benigna had made so big that Agatha could hardly hold it in her small and elegant hands, the latter damsel had returned to the bower, had seated herself upon a bench, and had begun to sort the flowers in the relative positions which best showed their tints. Here she relied upon gradation, there upon contrast. Her delicate Greek taste in the performance of this task drew exclamations of delight from Benigna.
"There!" the innkeeper's daughter would cry; "how pretty! That is the way! That so, and then that, and that! They look quite different now! Exactly! I never imagined it!"
When Agatha had finished the arrangement to her own satisfaction, an exploit which was nimbly achieved, "Now, Benigna," said she, with her pretty foreign accent, "sit down here; just do, and tell me all about every thing."
Benigna stared, and Agatha proceeded,
"So you are engaged to become the wife of a very good and handsome youth, who in himself is every thing that can be admired, except that, poor young man! he is not very courageous, I understood you to say. Now, that is not his fault, I suppose. How can he help feeling afraid if he does feel afraid?"
At this moment the voice of Crispina was heard calling her daughter to help in preparing the breakfast, and Benigna, whom Agatha's last words had thrown into some confusion, as the same topic had done the previous evening, made an excuse and ran away, with the light of roses vivid in her cheeks.
Agatha remained, and looked out upon the garden, and beyond it upon the sweet country, with its varied beauty. She remained listening peacefully and dreamingly to the hum of bees, the twittering of birds, the voices and footsteps in the inn, and inhaling the perfumes of the nosegay which she had arranged, and the cool freshness of that pleasant morning hour, when the sun behind her and behind the house was throwing the shadows of buildings, sheds, trees, and cattle in long lines toward the Tyrrhenian Sea. While thus calmly resting, admiring, and musing, a lady in a dark robe of poil, (gausapa,) with a very pallid face and large black eyes, stood suddenly in the doorway of the bower, and blocked out the lovely prospect. The stranger smiled, and, holding out a bunch of flowers, said,
"My pretty young lady, I see that the offering I have been culling for you has lost its value. You are rich already. May I sit down in this pleasant shady place a moment to rest?"
"Yes, you may, certainly," said Agatha.
"I suppose," resumed the stranger, "that you belong to this house, my little friend? I am a stranger, and merely lodging—"
"We are lodging, too, and strangers," answered Agatha.
"From your accent," continued the other, "I judge you to be Greek."
"Mother is," replied Agatha; "but brother calls himself a Roman knight, and even noble."
"I knew it!" cried the lady; "you have it written in your countenance. I, too, am a noble lady; my name is Plancina. Have you ever seen Rome?"
"Never."
"Ah! how you will be enchanted. You must come to see me. I have a house in Rome; such a pretty house, full of such curious things! Ah! when you see Rome, you will hold your breath with wonder and delight. I will make you so happy when you come to see me in my pretty house."
"You are a very kind, good lady, I should think," quoth Agatha, looking up from her flowers, and gazing long at the pallid face and the large black eyes; "and if we go to Rome, I and my mother will visit you, perhaps."
"My house is among the willows and beeches of the Viminal Hill," said the lady. "Remember two things—Viminal Hill, with its beeches and its willows, and the Calpurnian House, where the Piso family have lived for generations. My husband, Piso, has had great losses at dice. I am rich enough to spend a fortune every year for half a century, and we have still at our house all the pleasures that can be thought of. What pains I will take to amuse you! You cannot conceive the splendors, dresses, games, sports, shows, and beauties of Rome; the theatres, the circus, the combats, the great wild beasts of all sorts from all countries, the dances—"
As she pronounced the word "dances," a youthful male voice was heard at a little distance, saying, "While they change horses here, we will stretch our limbs by a stroll in the garden behind the inn. Make haste, worthy innkeeper; order your servants to be brisk."
And almost at the same moment a brilliantly beautiful, dark, eastern-looking girl, in a Syrian costume, appeared at the entrance of the bower. Behind her came sauntering the youth whose voice had been heard. He was of about Paulus's age, had an olive complexion, was sumptuously dressed, and exhibited a strong family likeness in face to the girl. Last followed a woman in middle life, appareled in costly robes, suited to travel, haughty, languid, and scornful of mien.
Plancina and Agatha looked up and surveyed the new-comers. The brilliant damsel remained at the entrance of the bower examining its occupants with a hardy, unabashed glance; whereupon Plancina, after a moment's pause, occasioned by the interruption, resumed and concluded her sentence thus,
"No, you can form no idea of the gayeties of Rome; the games, the shows, the theatres, the glories, the pleasures, the jests, the dances."
"But all your good dances come from foreign lands—from the east, indeed," interrupted the damsel, nodding her head repeatedly and sneeringly; "you must admit that."
"Not all our good alone," answered Plancina sternly, noticing that the woman in middle life smiled approvingly at the girl who had obtruded the remark; "not all our good alone, but all. The office of the outside world is to try and amuse Rome."
"And what is Rome's office?" asked the damsel.
"To be amused by them, if she can," answered the Roman.
"Come away, Herodias," said the haughty, languid, and scornful-looking woman; and the two strolled down the middle walk of the garden. The youth who had come with them lingered a moment or two behind, standing in the middle of the gravel-walk and gazing straight into the bower, while he flirted a sort of horse-whip around the heads of one or two tall flowers which were growing outside along the border of the walk.
Plancina looked steadily at him, and he at her. The lad withdrew after a few moments, without a change of feature.
"What starers!" muttered Agatha.
"They have a talent for it, indeed," said Plancina. "A hardy family, putting one thing with another. I think I know who they are. The mother, if she were the mother, called the daughter, if she were the daughter, Herodias. My husband thinks of going to Syria, and indeed Tiberius has offered him the procuratorship of Judea; but he would not condescend to go in any smaller capacity than as prefect of Syria. An acquaintance of ours, young Pontius Pilate, wants to get the procuratorship. The minor office would be a great thing for him. But my husband, Piso of the Calpurnians, cannot stoop to that. I may meet yonder family again."
"Those people are looking back," observed Agatha, who had paid very little attention to her companion's speech.
Plancina rose, and, going to the entrance of the bower, honored the strangers with a steady glance. The scornful-looking foreign woman in sumptuous apparel met it for a moment, and then turned away. Her son and daughter turned away at the same time.
"Ah! they are gone," murmured Agatha; "they do not like you to gaze so at them."
"It is but a Roman," returned Plancina, "looking at barbarians. They always shrink in that curious manner. And why this Greek lunacy?" muttered she; "and why this Attic mania?"
"Attic what?" asked the half-Greek girl.
"Nothing, my dear," replied Plancina; "only you are not Greek, you know; your father's race and the name you bear settle that question; your very mother is now, and has long since become, a Roman citizen; you must always prefer Rome to Greece; never forget that rule, or you and yours will perish."
Agatha opened wide the ingenuous young eyes, and seemed to be most seriously alarmed.
Plancina smoothed her pale brows, which had been frowning; and continued with a stern smile,
"I am only giving you a friend's warning. Your mother and brother have a suit to urge at court. There exists a pestilent Greek faction which are all doomed to destruction; tell your mother that you must all beware of being mixed up with them, and you will escape their perdition. A Greek, like your mother, with something to ask, is peculiarly liable to make the mistake of seeking Greek friends. If she do, she is utterly lost, however powerful may seem the prince who patronizes the accursed cabal."
Agatha shrank and trembled, murmuring like an echo Plancina's last adjective—exitiabilis.
"Do not stare at me so, my little dear," continued Plancina. "There is the Prince Germanicus. Only for him—every body knows it, and every body says it; the thing is no secret—Piso, my husband, would be now prefect of Syria; and like Crispus Sallust, when I was a little girl, would have recovered ten times the fortune out of which he has been cheated at dice. I am called a rash, violent, and an untamable woman. The moment, however, that any body gives you any information about court parties and political factions, every thing I am saying will be mentioned. I do not hide my disgust. Foreign barbarians of all sorts swarm; they creep through postern doors; they privately influence all the destinies of that world of which Romans have the name publicly of being masters. We are trodden under the feet of Greeks, Jews, and Chaldeans; the first beat us by genius, by eloquence, and artistic skill, by general intellectual force and subtlety; the second by superstition-inspired obstinacy, by incredible and unspeakable importunity, by steadfastness in sordid servility, by sorcery, divination, necromancy, and delusion; not all delusion, I grant you; for I myself have seen the demons of Thrasyllus, the Babylonish Greek."
"What!" cried Agatha, "seen demons? And what does a Babylonish Greek mean?"
"A Greek initiated in the Babylonish mysteries."
"And who is Thrasyllus?"
"A magician."
"What is that?"
"A man who calls demons and spirits of the air, as you would call your pet birds, and they come to him."
"May the unknown God love me!" cried Agatha, shuddering. "What are the demons like?"
"Not like our sculptures, believe me," answered Plancina. "I dare not tell you; I have seen what no words can say."
She paused, shrugged her shoulders, and then added,
"Some forms were like the human, with red fire in the veins instead of blood, and white fire in the bones instead of marrow; eyes they possessed that had no comfort in them. They had the air of being utterly without interest in any thing, only that their eyes were filled with fear; yet it seemed to me with knowledge, too: unspeakable fear, immense knowledge; wells and pools they appeared, full of fear and knowledge. When they glanced upon you, there were pale rays of hatred strangely combined with an expression of indifference, fear, knowledge, and hatred. If you looked at the eyes, when they looked not at you, you saw nothing but an expression of fear and knowledge; but when they did look at you, you saw fear, knowledge, and hatred too. All these faces mocked without smiling, and scoffed without enjoyment. Something, I thought, was dripping down the wan cheeks, and there was a look of fixed surprise long ago, of long-past astonishment—the trace left, and the feeling gone. The emotion of boundless amazement had once been there; the signs of it were left all over the countenance, but, if I may so speak, petrified—an immedicable scar, an ineffaceable vestige. The character of the countenance was that of a dead astonishment—the astonishment was dead; it was no longer an active sentiment. It had been some boundless wonder; the greatest which that creature had ever experienced, and the event which had caused it had apparently been the most serious which that being had ever known."
"What a truly tremendous description!" exclaimed Agatha.
The other made no reply; and before any further conversation could occur between them, a young man, in the dark-brown habiliments of a slave, entered the garden from the inn, and after a hasty glance in various directions, approached the bower. His features were very good; he was well made, of a pleasing address, and had a look of uncommon intelligence. He possessed, in a small degree, and a humble way, that undefinable air of elegance which mental culture sheds over the countenance; but with this advantage he betrayed certain symptoms of awkwardness and timidity. Standing at a little distance from the door of the arbor, he made a low bow to Plancina, and said he was the bearer of some commands.
"Commands from whom?" she demanded.
He answered, bowing low again, by merely stating that his name was Claudius.
Plancina instantly rose, and took leave of Agatha, enjoining her not to forget the warnings and counsels she had given. Agatha then saw her hastily reënter the hotel, followed by the handsome slave. Thereupon, buoyantly recovering her spirits, which the presence and the words of this woman had depressed, she ascended the staircase to the landing overhead, where she was joined by her mother from the room within.
Agatha immediately told Aglais every thing which had passed between her and Plancina.
"I don't think, my dear child, we shall be likely to trouble her in her nice house among the willows and beeches of the Viminal Hill," said Aglais; and as Paulus now came out upon the landing, a second edition of the narrative was produced for his information.
"Germanicus," said he, "is more like the last of the Romans than in any sense reprehensible or degenerate in his tastes. His love for Greece and his admiration for Athens are an honor to his understanding. They are nothing else. This has nothing to do with preferring barbarians and barbarous influences. My education, edepol! has to be completed; but I am educated enough to know that Rome goes for schooling to Greece as much as ever she did. Was not Julius Cæsar himself what they call a Græculus? I rather think he was even deeper than Germanicus in Greek lore; but, therefore, all the more fitted for Roman command. The Romans continued to be barbarians long after the Greeks had become the teachers of the world; and were it not for Greece, they would be barbarians still. As for warning us not to dare to make friends for ourselves of this person or that, or of any who appreciate intellect—for this means to appreciate Greeks—it is like warning us to remain friendless, in order that we may the more easily be crushed. It is the wolf's advice to the sheep, to send away her dogs; but I am more dog than that myself. This pale, beetle-browed lady ought to have enjoined those to be timid who know how. Dare do this! Dare do that! For my part, I am not afraid to do any thing that I think right."
His mother pressed Paulus's hand affectionately, and his sister's high spirit, which had cowered under the dreadful conversation of Plancina, shone in her eyes as she smiled at him.