Poppæa even, in her victorious calm
Of conscious power beside him, winced at this
As at slant notice served upon herself;
And poor Drusilla hugged a shudder down.
But Nero rattled on licentiously:
"What was I saying? Aye, 'infallible'"—
And toward Poppæa now his eye he turned—
"We two shall have to be infallible—
I take it so—when they make gods of us.
What a bore that, to be infallible!
Bore to be anything because one must!
Let us take it as a joke and not be bored—
Uproarious joke, my dear, for me and thee
To pose as gods, while we hold both our sides
Lest we split laughing and upset mankind!
"But for the present here is help arrived,
Welcome, while we stay only mortals yet,
To make that old prig of a Seneca
Come down once from his magisterial throne."
Wherewith he to Drusilla spoke once more:
"Madam, we listen, tell us about Paul."
Besides that menace slanted in his words,
The gamesome emperor hurt Drusilla sore
Demonstrating before her thus a firm
Accord and understanding knit between
Himself and this Poppæa; worse to bear,
Poppæa's easy air of affable—
A condescension equal to his own
Toward her, Drusilla, air as of a queen
Deigning her scepter toward a suppliant!
Drusilla would have felt it like a touch
Of tonic to her blood, could she have found
One least hint that Poppæa in her heart
Hated her: but Poppæa far too well
Was mistress of her part; she sweetly smiled
Exquisite discomposure on her foe.
With sheer exertion of her will, or helped
Only with the delight to injure Paul—
Daunted, yet with a front of dauntlessness—
Drusilla entered on her perjury.
By the reaction of her eloquence
Upon herself reflected from the fixed
Admiring heed she won, she plucked up heart
Of buoyance to be brilliant more and more
As she went on and told the emperor,
Him chiefly, and at length not her at all,
How Paul was a disturber everywhere;
He at Jerusalem had raised a mob
And tumult of his outraged countrymen
Against himself; they, out of loyalty,
Would then and there have rent him limb from limb,
But that the chiliarch intervened to save
The wretch from violence—not of the law,
Though well deserved—and under escort thence
Sent him to her lord Felix, governor
At Cæsarea, to be held and judged.
Felix, who was the heart of lenity,
Not bearing to condemn him for his crimes,
Postponed his trial, until Festus came
Successor to her husband dispossessed
Of kingdom for his too much clemency—
Fault, yet a noble fault, and Cæsar-like
('My Otho!' thy word, madam; 'my Felix!' mine)—
Then Festus on the point to sentence him
Was thwarted by the culprit's hardihood;
Desperate hardihood seeking reprieve
At least from doom by refuge in appeal
To Cæsar.
"Aye, a Roman citizen
Paul has devised some scheme of fraud to be—
Gross profanation of a sacred right
Perverted to asylum thus from crime!
Paul is a master mind—no need to swear
Falsely that he is not; wise Seneca
Was not so much to blame for being deceived
In him, so upright-seeming, plausible.
Their best man, sagest, subtlest of them all,
The Jewish councillors picked out to send
Hither with Paul to make his sentence sure.
Alas, the culprit was too deep for him.
One night on shipboard in the voyage hither
He sought to bribe the soldier guarding him
To make away with this Jew Shimei
By tossing him in darkness overboard.
That plot did not succeed; but Paul contrived
To hoodwink the centurion and make him
Believe the scheme to murder was not his,
Paul's, against Shimei, but Shimei's against Paul!
So Shimei was thrown into chains, while Paul
Stalked the deck free, though for form's sake still watched.
This lasted, till the very gods in heaven
Had pity on poor Shimei and with stroke
Of lightning set him free from men by death."
"So, is a stroke of lightning pity then,
Sometimes," said Nero, "with the gods in heaven?
A piquant way to pity! We, my dear"—
The emperor with a frolic feline look
That made Poppæa shiver turned to her—
"When we are gods on earth, may imitate
Those our facetious cousins in the skies
With many a stroke of lightning launched in pity!"
An almost boyish blithesomeness lit up
The handsome face of Nero saying this;
Had it not been for frightful lightning strokes
Too frequent sent in deadly earnest down
From that Olympus of imperial power,
All might have seemed but pranksome playfulness.
Drusilla—with profound obeisance bowed—
After due deferent pause if it should please
His majesty to be facetious farther,
Her weaving at her loom of lies resumed:
"Thou wouldst in vain, O emperor, inquire
Of that centurion Julius for the truth;
He himself fell a helpless prey to Paul.
Why, on the wretched island where our ship
Was stranded, lost, and where all winter we
Were cooped up waiting for reluctant spring,
Day after day did that oblivious man
Attend upon his prisoner and a crew,
That prisoner's dupes about him clustering ever,
To hear long tales which seemed to cast a spell
On whoso heard them and bewitch his sense.
I grieve to say a Roman knight was found
There, Sergius Paulus, to lend countenance—
A name proconsular so much defiled!
Yea, and the Roman governor of the isle,
Publius, fell openly into Paul's snare.
"No very serious matter it might seem,
So far, but hearken what a sequel came.
A worthy member of our court abroad,
Who loyally our fortune followed still,
And follows—O Sire, in this degenerate age,
Happy if ancient loyalty survives!—
Simon, a man of merit and device,
Saw when, one morning on an open hill
Withdrawn, Paul made a demonstration dire
Before all these assembled to behold
Whom I have named, what he could do, and would,
With practice of his wicked magic arts.
He smote a woman of his company
Who had offended him dead at a stroke
Of incantation that his lips let fall.
Simon will tell thee, that thou hear first-hand.
"But to crown all"—and here Drusilla's voice
Faltered, and her eyes, eloquent before
With fine indignant passion, now with tears
Dimmed, pathos tenfold eloquent took on—
"Aye, to crown all, no doubt my Felix fell
A victim to his ingrate wickedness.
Our slave-boy Syrus bore his lord a drink
Pretended as of virtue to bring sleep—
Which my poor Felix long had needed sore!—
It brought sleep, but the sleep it brought was death.
Alas, my Felix! And, last infamy,
That slave lad had been primed by Paul to lay
Her consort's murder at his spouse's door!
The frontless varlet had the face to tell
His mistress to her very teeth that she
Had herself sent that sleeping-draught by him
To Felix as he took his evening bath.
It was Paul's sorcery made the boy believe,
Against his own right senses, what was false.
I should have told thee how in lesser sort,
That is, in matter of estate—light thing
Indeed in contrast of such harm to life—
We had before this suffered from Paul's hands;
For he beguiled away a slave of ours—
By name Onesimus, a Phrygian lad—
Through whom perverted first himself from faith
This other servant Syrus was seduced.
No end to that wretch Paul's devices evil!
Let him go free, nay, let him only live,
Though in a prison, the emperor has a foe
Cannot indeed unfix him from his throne—
Where he sits firm as on Olympus Jove
(If thus a faithful Jew may fit her speech)—
But will the quick seeds of sedition sow
To fill the empire with their harvest wild.
Paul teaches all men of another king
Than Cæsar whose sole right it is to reign."
While thus Drusilla at the emperor's ear
Artfully wove false witness against Paul,
Paul in his chains was beating out his heart
In throbbing letters of such strain as this:
If any consolation, then, in Christ
There be, if any comfort sweet of love,
If in the Spirit any fellowship,
If any moving of compassion even,
Make my joy full, belovéd, that ye be
Like-minded each with other, the same love
Within you all, one spirit, one accord;
Far be contention, and vainglory far,
But all in lowly-mindedness esteem
Each one his fellow better than himself.
Look not each man toward his own things alone,
But each man also toward the other's look.
This mind be in you which in Jesus was:
He, in His right, was of the form of God,
Yet thought not his equality with God
A thing to be held fast to as His spoil;
But freely made himself of no repute,
Taking upon Him the bond-servant's form
And entering the similitude of men.
Nor yet was this enough; He, being found
In fashion as a man, humbled Himself
Still farther and became obedient,
To the degree of dying—not a death
Such as befalls the common lot of men,
But that most dreadful death upon the cross
This is the reason why the righteous God
Exalted Him so highly and the name
Gave Him that over every name prevails,
That in the name of Jesus every knee
Should bow, of beings in heaven, of beings on earth,
Of beings under earth, and every tongue
Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of all
Unto the glory of the Father God.