The Roman Traitor, Vol. 1

by Henry William Herbert

Accepting the first offer, partly perhaps from a sort of pardonable hypocrisy, desiring to make a favourable impression on the great man, with whom he had for the first time spoken, Arvina followed the intelligent and civil freedman to the library, which was indeed the favourite apartment of the studious magistrate. And, if he half repented, as he went by the chamber wherein several youths of patrician birth, one or two of whom nodded to him as he passed, were assembled, conversing merrily and jesting around a well spread board, he ceased immediately to regret the choice he had made, when the door was thrown open, and he was ushered into the shrine of Cicero's literary leisure.

The library was a small square apartment; for it must be remembered that books at this time being multiplied by manual labor only, and the art being comparatively rare and very costly, the vast collections of modern times were utterly beyond the reach of individuals; and a few scores of volumes were more esteemed than would be as many thousands now, in these days of multiplying presses and steam power. But although inconsiderable in size, not being above sixteen feet square, the decorations of the apartment were not to be surpassed or indeed equalled by anything of modern splendor; for the walls,[4] divided into compartments by mouldings, exquisitely carved and overlaid with burnished gilding, were set with panels of thick plate glass glowing in all the richest hues of purple, ruby, emerald, and azure, through several squares of which the light stole in, gorgeously tinted, from the peristyle, there being no distinction except in this between the windows and the other compartments of the wainscot, if it [pg 63]may be so styled; and of the ceiling, which was finished in like manner with slabs of stained glass, between the intersecting beams of gilded scroll work.

The floor was of beautiful mosaic, partially covered by a foot-cloth woven from the finest wool, and dyed purple with the juice of the cuttle-fish; and all the furniture corresponded, both in taste and magnificence, to the other decorations of the room. A circular table of cedar wood, inlaid with ivory and brass, so that its value could not have fallen far short of ten thousand sesterces[5], stood in the centre of the floor-cloth; with a bisellium, or double settle, wrought in bronze, and two beautiful chairs of the same material not much dissimilar in form to those now used. And, to conclude, a bookcase of polished maple wood, one of the doors of which stood open, displayed a rare collection of about three hundred volumes, each in its circular case of purple parchment, having the name inscribed in letters of gold, silver, or vermilion.

A noble bust in bronze of the Phidian Jupiter, with the sublime expanse of brow, the ambrosian curls and the beard loosely waving, as when he shook Olympus by his nod, and the earth trembled and the depth of Tartarus, stood on a marble pedestal facing the bookcase; and on the table, beside writing materials, leaves of parchment, an ornamental letter-case, a double inkstand and several reed pens, were scattered many gems and trinkets; signets and rings engraved in a style far surpassing any effort of the modern graver, vases of onyx and cut glass, and above all, the statue of a beautiful boy, holding a lamp of bronze suspended by a chain from his left hand, and in his right the needle used to refresh the wick.

Nurtured as he had been from his youth upward among the magnates of the land, accustomed to magnificence and luxury till he had almost fancied that the world had nothing left of beautiful or new that he had not witnessed, Paul stood awhile, after the freedman had departed, gazing with mute admiration on the richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the [pg 64]cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene protection on the pursuits of the blameless consul, inspired him with a sense of awful veneration, that did not easily or quickly pass away.

For some moments, as he gradually recovered the elasticity of his spirits, he amused himself by examining the exquisitely wrought gems on the table; but after a little while, when Cicero came not, he crossed the room quietly to the bookshelves, and selecting a volume of Homer, drew it forth from its richly embossed case, and seating himself on the bronze settle with his back toward the door, had soon forgotten where he was, and the grave business which brought him thither, in the sublime simplicity of the blind rhapsodist.

An hour or more elapsed thus; yet Paul took no note of time, nor moved at all except to unroll with his right hand the lower margin of the parchment as he read, while with the left he rolled up the top; so that nearly the same space of the manuscript remained constantly before his eyes, although the reader was continually advancing in the poem.

At length the door opened noiselessly, and with a silent foot, shod in the light slippers which the Romans always wore when in the house, Cicero entered the apartment.

The consul was at this time in the very prime of intellectual manhood, it having been decreed[6] about a century before, that no person should be elected to that highest office of the state, who should not have attained his forty-third year. He was a tall and elegantly formed man, with nothing especially worthy of remark in his figure, if it were not that his neck was unusually long and slender, though not so much so as to constitute any drawback to his personal appearance, which, without being what would exactly be termed handsome, was both elegant and graceful. [pg 65]His features were not, indeed, very bold or striking; but intellect was strongly and singularly marked in every line of the face; and the expression,—calm, thoughtful, and serene,—though it had not the quick and restless play of ever-varying lights and shadows which belongs to the quicker and more imaginative temperaments among men of the highest genius,—could not fail to impress any one with the conviction, that the mind which informed it must be of eminent capacity, and depth, and power.

He entered, as I have said, silently; and although there was nothing of stealthiness in his gait, which being very light and slow was yet both firm and springy, nor any of that cunning in his manner which is so often coupled to a prowling footstep, he yet advanced so noiselessly over the soft floor-cloth, that he stood at Arvina's elbow, and overlooked the page in which he was reading, before the young man was aware of his vicinity.