CHAPTER VIII.
"Let us show her the marble likeness," suggested Paulus, in an eager whisper, with the air of a child devising mischief.
While they were discussing this topic, a gentle knock was heard at the door, and then a very pretty girl of about fifteen, with an open, sweet countenance, and a remarkably modest, cheerful bearing, presented herself, carrying a sort of tray with various articles for supper arranged thereon.
"May I come in? I am Benigna," said the girl, courtesying.
"Come in, Benigna," said the Greek lady.
"Come in," added Agatha, in Latin, but by no means with so good an accent as her mother's. "You seem like your name; you seem to be Benigna."
The girl looked at the beautiful child with a sweet, grateful smile, and immediately proceeded to prepare a table and three covers for supper.
"Do you know Greek?"[60] asked Aglais.
"No, lady," replied the daughter of the house. "My father is quite a scholar; he was one of the secretary slaves in the great house before he got his freedom, and my mother has learnt much from him; but I have been brought up to help mother in the inn, and never had time to learn high things."
Agatha clapped her hands, and exclaimed,
"Then I'll talk my bad Latin to Benigna, and she shall make it good."
The girl paused in her operations at the table, and said,
"I thought Latin came naturally to one, like the rain, and that it was Greek which had to be worked out, and made, just as wine is."
The landlady, carrying various articles, entered as her daughter uttered this valuable observation, and she joined heartily in the laugh with which it was greeted. Benigna gazed round for a moment in amazement, and then resumed her work, laughing through sympathy, but very red from the forehead to the dimples round her pretty mouth.
The supper-table was soon ready.
Paulus, at whom the hostess had frequently looked wistfully, now remarked that they all felt much gratitude for the kindness they were receiving, and never could forget it. Crispina, who was going out at the moment, did not reply, but lingered with her hand upon the door; the other hand she passed once across her eyes.
Then the Greek lady observed,
"Good hostess, these are the apartments you intended for some barbarian queen, I believe?"
"Yes, my lady; for Queen Berenice, daughter-in-law of King Herod the Idumæan, called Herod the Great, with her son Herod Agrippa, a wild youth, I understand, about eighteen years old, and her daughter Herodias."
"I heard the tribune quæstor, who commands the prætorians, plead for us with your husband," continued Aglais; "and I suppose that the quæstor's generous eloquence is the cause of our being received into your house at all. But this does not account for your extraordinary kindness to us. We expected to be barely tolerated as inconvenient and unwelcome guests, who kept better customers away."
"Inconvenient and unwelcome!" said Crispina, who seemed ready to cry, as, looking around the little group, her glance rested again upon Paulus.
"Whereas," resumed Aglais, "you treat my dear children as if you were their mother. Why are we so fortunate as to find these feelings in a stranger?"
The hostess paused a moment. "Honored lady," said she, "the reason is, that I once was the nurse of a youth whom I loved as if he were my own child; and it seemed to me as if I saw my brave, beautiful, affectionate nursling again when I saw your son; but so long a time had passed, I nearly fell with fright and astonishment."
Agatha went to the bust of Tiberius, lifted it, and, pointing to the marble image, said in a low, tender voice,
"You nursed him?"
A little cry of dismay escaped the lips of our hostess.
"No one ever thought of looking beneath," said she. "My daughter and I arrange and dust the room. I must remove my poor boy's image. He is indeed forgotten by most people now; but it might harm us, and alas! alas! could not help him, if this silent face, that never smiles at me, never talks to me any more, were to be discovered. Do not speak of this to any body, I beg of you, good lady, and my pretty one. You will not?" added she, smiling, but with tears in her eyes as she looked at Paulus. "I feel as though I had reared you."
They said they would take care not to allude to the subject at all, except among themselves, and then Aglais remarked,
"You speak in sorrow of the youth whom you nursed. Is he then dead?"
"Eheu! lady, he is dead nearly twenty years; but he was just about your son's age when they put him to death."
"Put him to death? Why was he put to death, and by whom?" asked Aglais.
"Hush! Mæcenas and the emperor ordered it to be done. Oh! do take care. The whole world swarms with spies, and you may be sure an inn is not free from them. Things have been more quiet of late years. When I was young, I felt as if my head was but glued to my shoulders, and would fall off every day. As for Crispus, did I not make him cautious how he spake?"
"But your foster-son?"
"Ah poor boy! Poor young knight! He was mad about the ancient Roman liberties; a great student, always reading Tully."
"Was that his crime?" demanded Aglais.
The hostess wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her stola manicata, and said, in a tone little above a whisper, looking round timidly, and closing the door fast,
"Why, Augustus came suddenly one day into a triclinium, where he caught a nephew of his trying to hide under a cushion some book which he had been reading. Augustus took the book, and found that it was one of Tully's. The nephew thought he was lost, remembering that it was Augustus who had given up Cicero to Mark Antony to be murdered. There the emperor stood, fastened to the page, and continued reading and reading till at last he heaved a great breath, and, rolling up the book on its roller, laid it softly down, and said, 'A great mind, a very great mind, my nephew;' and so he left the room."
"Then it was not your foster-son's admiration of Cicero that caused his death?"
"My foster-son was not Augustus's nephew, you see; but eheu! how different a case!—the nephew of a former rival of Augustus. Nor used the emperor's nephew to talk as my poor child would talk. My foster-son used to say that for Augustus to have given up Tully, his friend and benefactor, to be murdered by Mark Antony, in order that he, Augustus, might be allowed to murder somebody else, and then to discover that neither he nor the human race could enjoy justice, nor see peace, nor have safety, till this very same Antony should be himself destroyed, was not a pretty tale. Cicero had sided against, and had resisted Julius Cæsar; yet Julius had given back his life to a man of whom Rome and the civilized world were proud. The same Tully had sided with, not against, Augustus, and had been the making of him; yet the life which a noble enemy had spared and left shining like a star, a base friend stole, and suffered to be quenched; and this for the sake of a monster who, for the sake of mankind, had to be very soon himself destroyed. This was not a nice tale, my poor Paulus used to say."
"Nor was it; but your Paulus?" cried Aglais. The travellers all held their breath in surprise and suspense.
"Yes."
"What! the youth whom that bust represents, and whom Augustus put to death, was called Paulus?"
"Yes. They said he had engaged in some conspiracy, the foolish dear! But now, lady, I have been led, bit by bit, into many disclosures, and I beseech you—"
"Fear not," interrupted Aglais; "I cannot but cherish a fellow-feeling with you; for, although I have something to ask of the emperor, it is justice only. I, too, look back to experiences which are akin to yours. My son yonder, whom the marble image of your foster-son so strikingly resembles, bears the same name, Paulus; and the name of his father was that which headed the first list of those who, the Triumvirate agreed, should die."
"Permit me, now, to ask once more who you are, lady?" said Crispina. "I know well the names upon that list."
"My husband," replied the Greek widow, "was brother of the triumvir Lepidus."
"The triumvir was our master," answered the landlady; "and alas! it is too true that he, the triumvir, was timid and weak, and his son, about whose image you have asked me, knew not, poor youth, when he so bitterly blamed Augustus for sacrificing Tully to Mark Antony, that his own father had given up a brother—that brother whom you married—in the same terrible days, and just in the same kind of way."
"Whose bust, then, do you say is this which is so like my son?" asked Aglais.
"The bust of your son's first cousin, lady. My foster-son's father was your husband's brother."
"No wonder," cried Agatha, "that my brother should be like his own first cousin!"
"No," said Aglais; "but it is as surprising as it is fortunate that we should have come to this house, and have fallen among kind persons disposed to be friends, like our hostess, her good husband, and little Benigna yonder."
"There is nothing which my husband and I would not do," said Crispina, "for the welfare of all belonging to the great Æmilian family, in whose service we both were born and spent our childhood; the family which gave us our freedom in youth, and our launch in life as a married couple. As for me, you know now how I must feel when I look upon the face of your son."
A pause ensued, and then Aglais said,
"Your former master, the triumvir, wrote to my husband asking forgiveness for having consented to let his name appear in the list of the proscribed, and explaining how he got it erased. Therefore, let not that subject trouble you."
"I happen, on my side, to know for a fact," answered the hostess, "that the one circumstance to which you refer has been the great remorse of the triumvir's life. The old man still mumbles and maunders, complaining that he never received a reply to that letter. He would die happy if he could but see you, and learn that all had been forgiven."
Before Aglais had time to make any answer, the landlord appeared, carrying a small cadus, or cask, marked in large black letters—
L. CARNIFICIO
S. POMPEIO
COS.
Benigna had previously set upon a separate mensa, or table, according to custom, fruits, and fictile or earthen cups.
"I thought so!" cried good Crispus. "Women (excuse me, lady, I mean my wife and daughter) will jabber and cackle even when ladies may be tired, and, as I sincerely hope, hungry. Do, Crispina, let me see the ladies and this young knight enjoy their little supper. This Alban wine, my lady, is nearly fifty years old, I do assure you; look at the consul's name on the cask. Benigna, young as she is, might drink ten cyathi of it without hurt. By the by, I have forgotten the measure. Run, Benigna, and fetch a cyathus (a ladle-cup) to help out the wine."
"Jabber and cackle!" said the hostess. "Crispus, this lady is the widow, and these are the son and daughter of Paulus Æmilius Lepidus."
The landlord, in the full career of his own jabber, was stricken mute for a moment. He gazed at each of our three travellers in turn, looking very fixedly at Paulus. At last he said,
"This, then, accounts for the wonderful likeness. My lady, I will never take one brass coin from you or yours; not an as, so help me! You must command in this house. Do not think otherwise."
And, apparently to prevent Aglais from answering him, he drew his wife hastily out of the room, and closed the door.
Benigna was left behind, and, with winning smiles and a flutter of attentions, the young girl now placed the chairs, and began to cackle, as Crispus would have expressed himself, and to entreat the wanderers to take that refreshment of which they stood so much in need. They all had the delicate and graceful tact to feel that compliance with the kindness which they had so providentially found was the only way to return it which they at present possessed.
It is historical to add that appetite gave the same advice. Their hunger was as keen as their tact. During supper the mother and son spoke little; but Agatha, both during the repast and for some time afterward, kept up a brisk conversation with Benigna, for whom the child had taken an inexpressible liking, and from whom she drew, with unconscious adroitness, the fact that she was engaged to be married. That sudden affection of sympathy which knit the soul of David to that of Jonathan seemed to have bound these two together. The landlady's considerate daughter at length advised Agatha to defer further communications until she should have a good night's rest. Paulus seconded the recommendation, and left his mother and sister with their Greek slave Melena and with Benigna, and retired to his own bedroom. This chamber overlooked the impluvium, or inner court, whence the incessant plash of the fountain was heard soothingly through his lattice-window, the horn slide of which he left open. The bedroom of the ladies, on the other hand, overlooked the garden and bee-hives, to which Crispina had alluded. The sitting apartments, opening into each other, in one of which they had supped, stood between; all these rooms being situated in the projecting west wing, which they entirely filled. Thus closed the day which had carried to their destination the travellers from Thrace.