The road by which he travelled was varied in its beauties. Sometimes it wound along the banks of the Liris, gay with villas and cottages. Then it plunged into a miniature ravine, in the skirts of the Apennines, walled in by rocks, matted with myrtle, aloes, and the wild vine, amidst which white goats shone like spots of snow; while beside the path, gurgled and wriggled on, a tiny brook, that seemed to have worked itself into the bright conceit that it was a mountain torrent; so great was the bustle and noise with which it pushed on, and pretended to foam, and appeared to congratulate itself loudly on having achieved a waterfall by leaping down two stones at a time, and plunging into an abyss concealed by a wide acanthus-leaf. Then the road emerged, to enjoy a wide prospect of the vast garden of Campania, with the blue bay of Cajeta in the background, speckled by the white sails of its craft, that looked at that distance like flocks of bright-plumed waterfowl, basking and fluttering on a lake.
What were the traveller’s thoughts amidst these shifting scenes of a new act in his life’s drama? did they amuse him? did they delight him? did they elevate him, or did they depress? His eye scarcely noted them. It had run on far beyond them, to the shady porticoes and noisy streets of the
Interior of a Roman Theatre.
capital. The dusty garden and the artificial fountain, the marble bath and the painted vault, were more beautiful in his eyes than fresh autumn vineyards, pure streams, purple ocean, and azure sky. He did not, of course, for a moment turn his thoughts towards its foul deeds and impious practices, its luxury, its debauchery, its profaneness, its dishonesties, its calumnies, its treacheries, its uncleannesses. Oh, no! what would he, a Christian, have again to do with these? Sometimes, as his mind became abstracted, it saw, in a dark nook of a hall in the Thermæ, a table, round which moody but eager gamesters were casting their knuckle-bone dice; and he felt a quivering creep over him of an excitement long suppressed; but a pair of mild eyes, like Polycarp’s, loomed on him from behind the table, and aroused him. Then he caught himself, in fancy, seated at a maple board, with a ruby gem of Falernian wine, set in the rim of a golden goblet, and discourse, ungirded by inebriety, going round with the cup; when the reproving countenance of Chromatius would seem placed opposite, repelling with a scowl the approach of either.
Hall in the Baths of Caracalla.
He was, in fact, returning only to the innocent enjoyments of the imperial city, to its walks, its music, its paintings, its magnificence, its beauty. He forgot that all these were but the accessories to a living and panting mass of human beings, whose passions they enkindled, whose evil desires they inflamed, whose ambition they fanned, whose resolutions they melted, and whose minds they enervated. Poor youth! he thought he could walk through that fire and not be scorched! Poor moth! he imagined he could fly through that flame, and have his wings unscathed!
It was in one of his abstracted moods that he journeyed through a narrow overhung defile, when suddenly he found himself at its opening, with an inlet of the sea before him, and in it one solitary and motionless skiff. The sight at once brought to his memory a story of his childhood, true or false, it mattered not; but he almost fancied its scene was before him.
Once upon a time there was a bold young fisherman living on the coast of southern Italy. One night, stormy and dark, he found that his father and brothers would not venture out in their tight and strong smack; so he determined, in spite of every remonstrance, to go alone in the little cockle-shell attached to it. It blew a gale, but he rode it out in his tiny buoyant bark, till the sun rose, warm and bright, upon a placid, glassy sea. Overcome by fatigue and heat, he fell asleep; but, after some time, was awakened by a loud shouting at a distance. He looked round and saw the family-boat, the crew of which were crying aloud, and waving their hands to invite him back; but they made no effort to reach him. What could they want? what could they mean? He seized his oars, and began to pull lustily towards them; but he was soon amazed to find that the fishing-boat, towards which he had turned the prow of his skiff, appeared upon his quarter; and soon, though he righted his craft, it was on the opposite side. Evidently he had been making a circle; but the end came within its beginning, in a spiral curve, and now he was commencing another and a narrower one. A horrible suspicion flashed upon his mind: he threw off his tunic and pulled like a madman at his oars. But though he broke the circle a bit here and a bit there, still round he went, and every time nearer to the centre, in which he could see a downward funnel of hissing and foaming water. Then, in despair, he threw down his oars, and standing he flung up his arms frantically; and a sea-bird screaming near, heard him cry out as loud as itself, “Charibdis!”[69] And now the circle his boat went spinning round was only a few times longer than itself, and he cast himself flat down, and shut his ears and eyes with his hands, and held his breath, till he felt the waters gurgling above him, and he was whirled down into the abyss.