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

>Chrysothemis have not restrained me. Well, I give her to thee; take her

for thyself!”

 

When the golden-haired Eunice heard this, she grew pale in one moment,

and, looking with frightened eyes on Vinicius, seemed to wait for his

answer without breath in her breast.

 

But he sprang up suddenly, and, pressing his temples with his hands,

said quickly, like a man who is tortured by disease, and will not hear

anything,—“No, no! I care not for her! I care not for others! I

thank thee, but I do not want her. I will seek that one through the

city. Give command to bring me a Gallic cloak with a hood. I will go

beyond the Tiber—if I could see even Ursus.”

 

And he hurried away. Petronius, seeing that he could not remain in one

place, did not try to detain him. Taking, however, his refusal as a

temporary dislike for all women save Lygia, and not wishing his own

magnanimity to go for naught, he said, turning to the slave,—“Eunice,

thou wilt bathe and anoint thyself, then dress: after that thou wilt go

to the house of Vinicius.”

 

But she dropped before him on her knees, and with joined palms implored

him not to remove her from the house. She would not go to Vinicius, she

said. She would rather carry fuel to the hypocaustum in his house than

be chief servant in that of Vinicius. She would not, she could not go;

and she begged him to have pity on her. Let him give command to flog

her daily, only not send her away.

 

And trembling like a leaf with fear and excitement, she stretched her

hands to him, while he listened with amazement. A slave who ventured to

beg relief from the fulfilment of a command, who said “I will not and I

cannot,” was something so unheard-of in Rome that Petronius could not

believe his own ears at first. Finally he frowned. He was too refined

to be cruel. His slaves, especially in the department of pleasure, were

freer than others, on condition of performing their service in an

exemplary manner, and honoring the will of their master, like that of a

god. In case they failed in these two respects, he was able not to

spare punishment, to which, according to general custom, they were

subject. Since, besides this, he could not endure opposition, nor

anything which ruffled his calmness, he looked for a while at the

kneeling girl, and then said,—“Call Tiresias, and return with him.”

 

Eunice rose, trembling, with tears in her eyes, and went out; after a

time she returned with the chief of the atrium, Tiresias, a Cretan.

 

“Thou wilt take Eunice,” said Petronius, “and give her five-and-twenty

lashes, in such fashion, however, as not to harm her skin.”

 

When he had said this, he passed into the library, and, sitting down at

a table of rose-colored marble, began to work on his “Feast of

Trimalchion.” But the flight of Lygia and the illness of the infant

Augusta had disturbed his mind so much that he could not work long.

That illness, above all, was important. It occurred to Petronius that

were Cæsar to believe that Lygia had cast spells on the infant, the

responsibility might fall on him also, for the girl had been brought at

his request to the palace. But he could reckon on this, that at the

first interview with Cæsar he would be able in some way to show the

utter absurdity of such an idea; he counted a little, too, on a certain

weakness which Poppæa had for him,—a weakness hidden carefully, it is

true, but not so carefully that he could not divine it. After a while

he shrugged his shoulders at these fears, and decided to go to the

triclinium to strengthen himself, and then order the litter to bear him

once more to the palace, after that to the Campus Martius, and then to

Chrysothemis.

 

But on the way to the triclinium at the entrance to the corridor

assigned to servants, he saw unexpectedly the slender form of Eunice

standing, among other slaves, at the wall; and forgetting that he had

given Tiresias no order beyond flogging her, he wrinkled his brow again,

and looked around for the atriensis. Not seeing him among the servants,

he turned to Eunice.

 

“Hast thou received the lashes?”

 

She cast herself at his feet a second time, pressed the border of his

toga to her lips, and said,—“Oh, yes, lord, I have received them! Oh,

yes, lord!” In her voice were heard, as it were, joy and gratitude. It

was clear that she looked on the lashes as a substitute for her removal

from the house, and that now she might stay there. Petronius, who

understood this, wondered at the passionate resistance of the girl; but

he was too deeply versed in human nature not to know that love alone

could call forth such resistance.

 

“Dost thou love some one in this house?” asked he.

 

She raised her blue, tearful eyes to him, and answered, in a voice so

low that it was hardly possible to hear her,—“Yes, lord.”

 

And with those eyes, with that golden hair thrown back, with fear and

hope in her face, she was so beautiful, she looked at him so

entreatingly, that Petronius, who, as a philosopher, had proclaimed the

might of love, and who, as a man of æsthetic nature, had given homage to

all beauty, felt for her a certain species of compassion.

 

“Whom of those dost thou love?” inquired he, indicating the servants

with his head.

 

There was no answer to that question. Eunice inclined her head to his

feet and remained motionless.

 

Petronius looked at the slaves, among whom were beautiful and stately

youths. He could read nothing on any face; on the contrary, all had

certain strange smiles. He looked then for a while on Eunice lying at

his feet, and went in silence to the triclinium.

 

After he had eaten, he gave command to bear him to the palace, and then

to Chrysothemis, with whom he remained till late at night. But when he

returned, he gave command to call Tiresias.

 

“Did Eunice receive the flogging?” inquired he.

 

“She did, lord. Thou didst not let the skin be cut, however.”

 

“Did I give no other command touching her?”

 

“No, lord,” answered the atriensis with alarm.

 

“That is well. Whom of the slaves does she love?”

 

“No one, lord.”

 

“What dost thou know of her?”

 

Tiresias began to speak in a somewhat uncertain voice:

 

“At night Eunice never leaves the cubiculum in which she lives with old

Acrisiona and Ifida; after thou art dressed she never goes to the

bath-rooms. Other slaves ridicule her, and call her Diana.”

 

“Enough,” said Petronius. “My relative, Vinicius, to whom I offered her

to-day, did not accept her; hence she may stay in the house. Thou art

free to go.”

 

“Is it permitted me to speak more of Eunice, lord?”

 

“I have commanded thee to say all thou knowest.”

 

“The whole familia are speaking of the flight of the maiden who was to

dwell in the house of the noble Vinicius. After thy departure, Eunice

came to me and said that she knew a man who could find her.”

 

“Ah! What kind of man is he?”

 

“I know not, lord; but I thought that I ought to inform thee of this

matter.”

 

“That is well. Let that man wait tomorrow in my house for the arrival

of the tribune, whom thou wilt request in my name to meet me here.”

 

The atriensis bowed and went out. But Petronius began to think of

Eunice. At first it seemed clear to him that the young slave wished

Vinicius to find Lygia for this reason only, that she would not be

forced from his house. Afterward, however, it occurred to him that the

man whom Eunice was pushing forward might be her lover, and all at once

that thought seemed to him disagreeable. There was, it is true, a

simple way of learning the truth, for it was enough to summon Eunice;

but the hour was late, Petronius felt tired after his long visit with

Chrysothemis, and was in a hurry to sleep. But on the way to the

cubiculum he remembered—it is unknown why—that he had noticed

wrinkles, that day, in the corners of Chrysothemis’s eyes. He thought,

also, that her beauty was more celebrated in Rome than it deserved; and

that Fonteius Capiton, who had offered him three boys from Clazomene for

Eunice, wanted to buy her too cheaply.