“The Flaminian Way!” repeated Valeria. “He must go round by the Great Gate and the Triumphal Arches to get home. Myrrhina, if we make haste, we shall yet be in time.”
In less than ten minutes the two women had crossed the wide pleasure-grounds which skirted Valeria’s mansion, and had let themselves out by a pass-key into the street. So complete, however, was their transformation that the most intimate friend would have failed to recognise in these shrouded, hurrying figures, the fashionable Roman lady and her attendant. A wig of curling yellow hair covered Valeria’s nut-brown tresses, and the lower part of her face was concealed by a mask, whilst Myrrhina, closely-veiled and wrapped in a dark-coloured mantle, stained and threadbare with many a winter’s storm, looked like some honest child of poverty, bound on one of the humble errands of daily plebeian life. As they tripped rapidly along a narrow and little frequented street,—one of the many inconvenient thoroughfares which Nero’s great fire had spared, and which still intersected the magnificence of the Imperial City,—they had to pass a miserable-looking house, with a low shabby doorway, which was yet secured by strong fastenings of bolts and bars, as though its tenant had sufficient motives for affecting privacy and retirement. The women looked meaningly at each other while they approached it, for the dwelling of Petosiris the Egyptian was too well known to all who led a life of pleasure or intrigue in Rome. He it was who provided potions, love philtres, charms of every description, and whom the superstitious of all classes, no trifling majority, [pg 180]young and old, rich and poor, male and female, consulted in matters of interest and affection; the supplanting of a rival, the acquisition of a heart, and the removal of those who stood in the way either of a fortune or a conquest. It is needless to observe that the Egyptian’s wealth increased rapidly; and that humbler visitors had to turn from his door disappointed, day after day, waiting the leisure of the celebrated magician.
But if Valeria hurried breathlessly through the dirty and ill-conditioned street, she stopped transfixed when she reached its farthest extremity, and beheld the tribune’s chariot, standing empty in the shade, as though waiting for its master. The white horses beguiled their period of inaction in the heat, by stamping, snorting, and tossing their heads, while Automedon, now nodding drowsily, now staring vacantly about him, scarcely noticed the figures of the two women, so well were they disguised.
“What can he be doing there?” whispered Valeria anxiously; and Myrrhina replied in the same cautious tones, “If Placidus be trafficking for philtres with the Egyptian, take my word for it, madam, there will be less of love than murder in the draught!”
Then they hurried on faster than before, as if life and death hung upon the rapidity of their footsteps.
Far back, up a narrow staircase, in a dark and secluded chamber, sat Petosiris, surrounded by the implements of his art. Enormous as his wealth was supposed to be, he suffered no symptoms of it to appear, either in his dwelling or his apparel. The walls of his chamber were bare and weather-stained, totally devoid of ornament, save for a mystic figure traced here and there on their surface, while the floor was scorched, and the ceiling blackened, with the burning liquids that had fallen on the one, and the heavy aromatic vapours that clung about the other. The magician’s own robe, though once of costly materials, and surrounded with a broad border, on which cabalistic signs and numerals were worked in golden thread, now sadly frayed, was worn to the last degree of tenuity, and his linen head-dress, wound in a multiplicity of folds, till it rose into a peak some two feet high, was yellow with dirt and neglect. Under this grotesque covering peered forth a pair of shrewd black eyes, set in a grave emaciated face. They denoted cunning, audacity, and that restless vigilance which argued some deficiency or warping of the brain, a tendency, however remote, to insanity, from which, with all their mental powers, these impostors are seldom free. There was nothing else remarkable about the man. He had [pg 181]the deep yellow tint with the supple figure and peculiar nostril of the Egyptian, and when he rose in compliment to his visitor, his low stature afforded a quaint contrast to his trailing robes and real dignity of bearing.
The tribune—for he it was whose entrance disturbed the calculations on which the magician was engaged—accosted the latter with an air of abrupt and almost contemptuous familiarity. It was evident that Placidus was a good customer, one who bought largely while he paid freely; and Petosiris, throwing aside all assumption of mystery or preoccupation, laughed pleasantly as he returned the greeting. Yet was there something jarring in his laugh, something startling in his abrupt transition to the profoundest gravity; and though his small glittering eyes betrayed a schoolboy’s love of mischief, gleams shot from them at intervals which expressed a diabolical malice, and love of evil for evil’s sake.
“Despatch, my man of science!” said the tribune, scarcely noticing the obeisance and expressions of regard lavished on him by his host. “As usual I have little time to spare, and less inclination to enter into particulars. Give me what I want—you have it here in abundance—and let me begone out of this atmosphere, which is enough to stifle the lungs of an honest man!”
“My lord! my illustrious patron! my worthiest friend!” replied the other, with evident enjoyment of his customer’s impatience, “you have but to command, you know it well, and I obey. Have I not served you faithfully in all my dealings? Was not the horoscope right to a minute? Did not the charm protect from evil? and the love philtre ensure success? Have I ever failed, my noble employer? Speak, mighty tribune; thy slave listens to obey.”
“Words! words!” replied the other impatiently. “You know what I require. Produce it, there is the price!”