CHAPTER XIV.
On a purple couch, her right hand supporting her handsome head, while her left played mechanically with the folds of her robe, lay the Empress Domitia; Polycharma, her favorite slave, sat in silence on the floor, holding in her lap a red and blue bird, which now and then flapped its wings and gave a loud, strange cry. All else was silent, oppressed by sultry gloom and the steamy stillness of the air. In spite of its nearness, the noise of the Forum was dulled to a murmur like that of wind-rocked trees. The marble statue of Venus[281] by the door-way looked sleepily down under her drooping lids; even the little Eros with his lightly-tilted jar, seemed touched with melancholy. Outside, in the corridors and antechambers, there was scarcely a sound. The slaves glided cautiously about on tiptoe, and spoke in whispers or expressed themselves by signs. Their imperial mistress’s melancholy mood seemed to fill the very atmosphere with a subtle malaise and anxious forebodings.
A few hours since, the first meeting had taken place between the reconciled couple. They had met with dignity and a calm semblance of friendly regard on both sides; but between them lay the unspoken but bitter certainty that, after all that had passed, no real reconciliation could ever be possible. Caesar’s suspicious nature recoiled from Domitia’s superiority of intellect and vehement temper—which flashed ominously in her eyes in spite of conventional smiles and smoothness—and from the scathing irony of her proud and revengeful spirit. She, on the other hand, knew the Emperor’s hatred and implacable malice; she knew that, once aggrieved, Domitian had the tenacity of a tiger in ambush, never weary of watching for an opportunity for the fatal spring. Added to this there was the remembrance of her own humiliations—her banishment from the palace, the execution of Paris, and the emperor’s passion for his niece Julia. And now, to be forgiven by him whom she so thoroughly despised—to accept the clemency of Domitian—this was the worst and deepest humiliation of all....
So, listless and silent, she lay on her pillows, reviewing in imagination the events of the last few hours in pictures that seemed to mock her as they passed. The Apollo-like figure of the young patrician, who had fired her fancy at Baiae, seemed to smile at her contemptuously; she sighed and closed her eyes, as though to escape the vision. Till a few hours ago, she had believed that she had conquered that madness. Her spirit had found strength in resolving on revenge, and she had felt like a goddess bent on punishing the presumption of a mortal. But now—in this new mood—she was conscious of a subtle change, the desire for revenge remained, but now there was nothing lofty, no sense of superiority in the feeling—the goddess had given place to a vain, lovesick woman, full of annoyance and petty spite. This change was a result of her altered circumstances; the sight of her husband had reminded her of the fact which she had striven to the utmost to ignore; that one word from that adored youth would have sufficed to make this reconciliation an impossibility. Shame and hatred, rage and passion, seethed in her soul, and her self-tormenting fancy painted alternately the most enchanting and the most horrible pictures. As in some hideous dream, the form and features of Quintus were mixed up with those of her former lover, the executed actor. She saw herself in tears, kneeling wildly at his feet—he raised her, kissed her, her senses reeled. Then he scornfully flung her from him—she shuddered from head to foot, and stabbed him desperately with her poniard....
Then again she recalled the occasion, when Polycharma had returned to her with the little tablet that Quintus had given to the slave-girl in the park, the answer to her last passionate letter—that tablet had been her death-warrant—but no, not hers—his! "He must die!"—she seemed to see the words traced between those fatal lines.
Then everything faded from her vision like a landscape shrouded in mist. Instead of the slave-girl, it was the flute-player, who stood before her with a triumphant sparkle in her eyes, as her cheek flushed under the traitor’s touch—as she had seen her stand, the bold hussy, on the hill at Cumae—happy, no doubt, in the love that she, the Empress, pined for.
The thought was intolerable; the miserable woman writhed under the clutch of the demon of jealousy. She groaned and struggled for breath. Polycharma started to her feet.
“Lady, mistress—what is the matter?” she asked, gazing helplessly at Domitia’s distorted features. But the sound of a voice broke the spell; Domitia controlled herself. Not a soul on earth, not even this trusted slave, should ever know how low she could be brought. She would hold herself proudly and defiantly—aye, though she should suffocate in the effort. Polycharma should suppose that the adventure in the gardens of Lycoris was a mere whim, a comedy; never would she betray the anguish of her unrequited passion and deep humiliation.
She raised herself on the pillows and sighed deeply again, as if to prove that the groan which had escaped her had not been involuntary.