The Count of the Saxon Shore; or The Villa in Vectis.<br />A Tale of the Departure of the Romans fro, Church and Putnam [summer beach reads TXT] 📗
- Author: Church and Putnam
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“Yours is a true hospitality,” answered the stranger, with a smile, “but it is right that you should know who I am, and how I came to be here; and I have only been waiting for the good Strabo’s leave to tell you. But may your daughter and her sister be present? I have a sad story to relate, but there is [pg 233]nothing in it which is unfit for them to hear, and they have been good enough to show some interest in an unhappy man.”
“They shall come, if you wish it,” said the Count, “indeed they have been almost dying of curiosity.”
It was to this audience that the stranger told his story.
THE STRANGER’S STORY.
“I have found out that my name is known to these ladies, though they are not aware that it belongs to me. You, sir, have very probably not found time among your many cares to give any thought to the trifles which, if I may say so much of myself, have made me famous. I am Claudius Claudianus.”
“What! the poet!” cried the Count, “the Virgil of these later days?”
The poet blushed with pleasure to hear the compliment, which, extravagant as it may seem to us, did not strike him as being anything out of the way. For had not his statue been set up in Trajan’s Forum at Rome, an honour which none of his predecessors had been thought worthy to receive?
“Ah! sir,” he replied, “you are too good. But it would have been well for me if I had contented myself with following Virgil; unfortunately I must also imitate Juvenal. Praise of the fallen may be for[pg 235]given, but there is no pardon for satire against those that succeed. Enmity lasts longer than friendship, and I have made enemies whom nothing can appease.”
“But what of Stilicho?” said the Count. “Surely he has not ceased to be your friend. Doubtless you owe much to him, but he owes more, I venture to say, to you. He may have given you wealth, but you have given him immortality.”48
[pg 236]“Ah! sir,” said Claudian, “have you not then heard?”
“Heard!” cried the Count; “we hear nothing here. We always were cut off from the rest of the world; but for the last nine months we might as well have been living in the moon, for all that has reached us of what is going on elsewhere.”
“You did not know, then, that Stilicho was dead?”
“Dead! But how?”
“Killed by the order of the Emperor.”
“What! killed? by the Emperor’s orders? It is impossible. The man who saved the Empire, the very best soldier we have had since Cæsar! And you say that the Emperor ordered him to be killed?”
The Count rose from his seat, and walked about in incontrollable emotion.
“So they have killed him! Fools and madmen that they are! There never was such a man. I knew him well. He was always ready, always cheerful, as gay in a battle as at a wedding; as brave as a lion, and yet never doing anything by force that he could contrive by stratagem. But tell me—they had, or pretended to have, some cause. What was it?”
“They said he was a traitor, that he wanted the Empire for himself, or for his son, that he intrigued with the barbarians.”
“Well, he was fond of power; and who can wonder [pg 237]that he was dissatisfied when he saw in what hands it was lodged? But tell me—what do you think?”
“I don’t say,” resumed Claudian, “that he was blameless, but he had an impossible task—he had to save the Empire without soldiers. He did it again and again; he played off one barbarian power against another with consummate skill; and filled his legion one day with the enemies whom he had routed the day before. But this could not be done without intrigues, without devices which, taken by themselves, looked like treason. But it is idle to speak of the past. He lies in a dishonoured grave, and the Empire of Augustus is tottering to its fall.”
“Tell me of his end,” said the Count.
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