Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz [e book reader android .TXT] 📗

Chapter LXXIII

PETRONIUS was not mistaken. Two days later young Nerva, who had always

been friendly and devoted, sent his freedman to Cumæ with news of what

was happening at the court of Cæsar.

 

The death of Petronius had been determined. On the morning of the

following day they intended to send him a centurion, with the order to

stop at Cumæ, and wait there for further instructions; the next

messenger, to follow a few days later, was to bring the death sentence.

 

Petronius heard the news with unruffled calmness.

 

“Thou wilt take to thy lord,” said he, “one of my vases; say from me

that I thank him with my whole soul, for now I am able to anticipate the

sentence.”

 

And all at once he began to laugh, like a man who has came upon a

perfect thought, and rejoices in advance at its fulfilment.

 

That same afternoon his slaves rushed about, inviting the Augustians,

who were staying in Cumæ, and all the ladies, to a magnificent banquet

at the villa of the arbiter.

 

He wrote that afternoon in the library; next he took a bath, after which

he commanded the vestiplicæ to arrange his dress. Brilliant and stately

as one of the gods, he went to the triclinium, to cast the eye of a

critic on the preparations, and then to the gardens, where youths and

Grecian maidens from the islands were weaving wreaths of roses for the

evening.

 

Not the least care was visible on his face. The servants only knew that

the feast would be something uncommon, for he had issued a command to

give unusual rewards to those with whom he was satisfied, and some

slight blows to all whose work should not please him, or who had

deserved blame or punishment earlier. To the cithara players and the

singers he had ordered beforehand liberal pay. At last, sitting in the

garden under a beech, through whose leaves the sun-rays marked the earth

with bright spots, he called Eunice.

 

She came, dressed in white, with a sprig of myrtle in her hair,

beautiful as one of the Graces. He seated her at his side, and,

touching her temple gently with his fingers, he gazed at her with that

admiration with which a critic gazes at a statue from the chisel of a

master.

 

“Eunice,” asked he, “dost thou know that thou art not a slave this long

time?”

 

She raised to him her calm eyes, as blue as the sky, and denied with a

motion of her head.

 

“I am thine always,” said she.

 

“But perhaps thou knowest not,” continued Petronius, “that the villa,

and those slaves twining wreaths here, and all which is in the villa,

with the fields and the herds, are thine henceforward.”

 

Eunice, when she heard this, drew away from him quickly, and asked in a

voice filled with sudden fear,—

 

“Why dost thou tell me this?”

 

Then she approached again, and looked at him, blinking with amazement.

After a while her face became as pale as linen. He smiled, and said

only one word,—

 

“So!”

 

A moment of silence followed; merely a slight breeze moved the leaves of

the beech.

 

Petronius might have thought that before him was a statue cut from white

marble.

 

“Eunice,” said he, “I wish to die calmly.”

 

And the maiden, looking at him with a heart-rending smile, whispered,—

 

“I hear thee.”

 

In the evening the guests, who had been at feasts given by Petronius

previously, and knew that in comparison with them even Cæsar’s banquets

seemed tiresome and barbarous, began to arrive in numbers. To no one

did it occur, even, that that was to be the last “symposium.” Many

knew, it is true, that the clouds of Cæsar’s anger were hanging over the

exquisite arbiter; but that had happened so often, and Petronius had

been able so often to scatter them by some dexterous act or by a single

bold word, that no one thought really that serious danger threatened

him. His glad face and usual smile, free of care, confirmed all, to the

last man, in that opinion. The beautiful Eunice, to whom he had

declared his wish to die calmly, and for whom every word of his was like

an utterance of fate, had in her features a perfect calmness, and in her

eyes a kind of wonderful radiance, which might have been considered

delight. At the door of the triclinium, youths with hair in golden nets

put wreaths of roses on the heads of the guests, warning them, as the

custom was, to pass the threshold right foot foremost. In the hall

there was a slight odor of violets; the lamps burned in Alexandrian

glass of various colors. At the couches stood Grecian maidens, whose

office it was to moisten the feet of guests with perfumes. At the walls

cithara players and Athenian choristers were waiting for the signal of

their leader.

 

The table service gleamed with splendor, but that splendor did not

offend or oppress; it seemed a natural development. Joyousness and

freedom spread through the hall with the odor of violets. The guests as

they entered felt that neither threat nor constraint was hanging over

them, as in Cæsar’s house, where a man might forfeit his life for

praises not sufficiently great or sufficiently apposite. At sight of

the lamps, the goblets entwined with ivy, the wine cooling on banks of

snow, and the exquisite dishes, the hearts of the guests became joyous.

Conversation of various kinds began to buzz, as bees buzz on an apple

tree in blossom. At moments it was interrupted by an outburst of glad

laughter, at moments by murmurs of applause, at moments by a kiss placed

too loudly on some white shoulder.

 

The guests, while drinking wine, spilled from their goblets a few drops

to the immortal gods, to gain their protection, and their favor for the

host. It mattered not that many of them had no belief in the gods.

Custom and superstition prescribed it. Petronius, inclining near

Eunice, talked of Rome, of the latest divorces, of love affairs, of the

races, of Spiculus, who had become famous recently in the arena, and of

the latest books in the shops of Atractus and the Sozii. When he

spilled wine, he said that he spilled it only in honor of the Lady of

Cyprus, the most ancient divinity and the greatest, the only immortal,

enduring, and ruling one.

 

His conversation was like sunlight which lights up some new object every

instant, or like the summer breeze which stirs flowers in a garden. At

last he gave a signal to the leader of the music, and at that signal the

citharæ began to sound lightly, and youthful voices accompanied. Then

maidens from Kos, the birthplace of Eunice, danced, and showed their

rosy forms through robes of gauze. Finally, an Egyptian soothsayer told

the guests their future from the movement of rainbow colors in a vessel

of crystal.

 

When they had enough of these amusements, Petronius rose somewhat on his

Syrian cushion, and said with hesitation,—

 

“Pardon me, friends, for asking a favor at a feast. Will each man

accept as a gift that goblet from which he first shook wine in honor of

the gods and to my prosperity?”

 

The goblets of Petronius were gleaming in gold, precious stones, and

the carving of artists; hence, though gift giving was common in Rome,

delight filled every heart. Some thanked him loudly: others said that

Jove had never honored gods with such gifts in Olympus; finally, there

were some who refused to accept, since the gifts surpassed common

estimate.

 

But he raised aloft the Myrrhene vase, which resembled a rainbow in

brilliancy, and was simply beyond price.

 

“This,” said he, “is the one out of which I poured in honor of the Lady

of Cyprus. The lips of no man may touch it henceforth, and no hand may

ever pour from it in honor of another divinity.”

 

He cast the precious vessel to the pavement, which was covered with

lily-colored saffron flowers; and when it was broken into small pieces,

he said, seeing around him astonished faces,—

 

“My dear friends, be glad and not astonished. Old age and weakness are

sad attendants in the last years of life. But I will give you a good

example and good advice: Ye have the power, as ye see, not to wait for

old age; ye can depart before it comes, as I do.”

 

“What dost thou wish?” asked a number of voices, with alarm.

 

“I wish to rejoice, to drink wine, to hear music, to look on those

divine forms which ye see around me, and fall asleep with a garlanded

head. I have taken farewell of Cæsar, and do ye wish to hear what I

wrote him at parting?”

 

He took from beneath the purple cushion a paper, and read as follows:—

 

“I know, O Cæsar, that thou art awaiting my arrival with impatience,

that thy true heart of a friend is yearning day and night for me. I

know that thou art ready to cover me with gifts, make me prefect of the

pretorian guards, and command Tigellinus to be that which the gods made

him, a mule-driver in those lands which thou didst inherit after

poisoning Domitius. Pardon me, however, for I swear to thee by Hades,

and by the shades of thy mother, thy wife, thy brother, and Seneca, that

I cannot go to thee. Life is a great treasure. I have taken the most

precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things

which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am

offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother;

that thou didst burn Rome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy

dominions. No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man;

from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy

one’s ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a

Domitius on slim legs whirled about in Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music,

thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs,—is

a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die.

Rome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can

blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of

Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for

I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of

his howling. Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no

verses; poison people, but dance not; be an incendiary, but play not on

a cithara. This is the wish and the last friendly counsel sent thee by

the—Arbiter Elegantiæ.”

 

The guests were terrified, for they knew that the loss of dominion would

have been less cruel to Nero than this blow. They understood, too, that

the man who had written that paper must die; and at the same time pale

fear flew over them because they had heard such a paper.

 

But Petronius laughed with sincere and gladsome joy, as if it were a

question of the most innocent joke; then he cast his eyes on all

present, and said,—

 

“Be joyous, and drive away fear. No one need boast that he heard this

letter. I will boast of it only to Charon when I am crossing in the

boat with him.”

 

He beckoned then to the Greek