A Friend of Caesar Part 34

II

That night the most old-fas.h.i.+oned and sober Roman went to bed at an advanced hour. Men were gathered in little knots along the streets, in the forums, in the porticos and basilicas, arguing, gesticulating, wrangling. Military tribunes and centurions in armour of Pompeius's legions were parading on the _comitium_.[142] Veterans of that leader were jostling about in the crowd, clanking their newly furbished armour and shouting for their old general. If a man spoke for Caesar, a crowd of bystanders was ready to hoot him down. Staid householders locked up their dwellings and stationed trusty slaves at the doors to see that the crowds did not take to riot and pillage. The sailors from the wharves had been drinking heavily in all the taverns, and now roved up and down the crowded streets, seeking opportunity for brawls.

Thieves and cutpurses were plying their most successful work; but no officials had time to direct the efforts of the hara.s.sed and slender police corps. To Pompeius's palace, without the gates, every man whose voice or vote seemed worth the winning had been summoned. All the senators had streamed out thither; and there the Magnus had brought them under the spell of his martial authority and made them as wax in his hand. And all "that majesty that doth hedge about a king," or about a victorious general, exerted its full influence. The senators came into the palace of Pompeius as into the palace of their despot.

He stood before them in his largest hall, wearing the embroidered robe of a triumphator, with the laurel crown of his victories upon his head. At his right hand, as first vizir of his state, stood Lentulus Crus; at his left Lucius Domitius. The senators came to him and bowed low, and said their "_Aves_" and "_Salves_" as though cringing before a Mithridates or Tigranes of the East; and Pompeius, by the cordiality or coolness of his response, indicated which of his va.s.sals had or had not fallen under his disfavour.

[142] a.s.sembly-place in the _Forum Romanum_.

Yes, despotism had come at last for Rome. The oligarchy had by its corrupt incapacity made a tyranny inevitable. They could make choice of masters, but a master they must have. Many were the proud Fabii, Claudii, and Valerii present that night--men whose lines of curule ancestors were as long as the duration of the Republic--who ground their teeth with shame and inward rage the very moment they cried, "_Salve, Magne!_" Yet the recipient of all this adulation was in no enviable frame of mind. He looked hara.s.sed and weary, despite the splendour of his dress and crown. And many were the whispered conversations that pa.s.sed between him and his ministers, or rather custodians, Lentulus and Domitius.

"Ah! poor Julia," sighed Pompeius, whose mind ever reverted to his dead wife, "what misery would have been yours if you had seen this day. Poor Julia; how I loved her; and Caesar, her father, loved her too; and now--"

"Be yourself, Magnus," expostulated the consul at his side; "remember that for the good of the Republic every personal affection is to be put away. Recall Brutus, who put his own sons to death because they committed treason. Remember what Scipio aemilia.n.u.s said when he learned that Tiberius Gracchus, his dear brother-in-law, had been put to death for sedition. He quoted Homer's line:--

"'So perish all who do the like again!'"

"And must I trample down every tie, every affection?" complained wretched Pompeius, who never ceased hoping against hope that something would avert the catastrophe.

"There is no tie, no affection, Magnus," said Domitius, sternly, "that binds you to Caesar. Cast his friends.h.i.+p from your breast as you would a viper. Think only of being justly hailed with Romulus, Camillus, and Marius as the fourth founder of Rome. Strike, and win immortal glory."

And so to the last hour these confederates wrought upon their supple instrument, and bent him to their will; and their tool in turn had all else at his mercy. Pompeius addressed the senators, and, well trained by his guardians, spoke with brutal frankness to those who had dared to advise moderation.

"You, Rufus," he said, pointing a menacing finger, before which that senator cowered in dread, "have been advising the Republic to tolerate the chief of its enemies. You bid me to disarm or withdraw from Italy, as though the lives and property of any good men would be safe the moment Caesar was left unopposed to pour his cohorts of barbarous Gauls and Germans into the country. You, Calidius, have given the same untimely advice. Beware lest you repent the hour when you counselled that I should disarm or quit the neighbourhood of Rome." The two-edged suggestion contained in this last warning was too marked for the reproved men not to turn pale with dread, and slink away trembling behind their a.s.sociates.

"But," continued Pompeius, "I have praise as well as blame; Marcus Cato has not deserted the Republic. He has advised, and advised well, that the proconsul of the Gauls be stripped of his legions." It was Cato's turn now to bite his lips with mortification, for in times past he had foretold that through Pompeius great miseries would come to the state, and in his praetors.h.i.+p had declared that Pompeius ought to go to his province, and not stay at home to stir up tumults and anarchy from which he could emerge as monarch. And such praise from the Magnus's lips, under the present circ.u.mstances, was gall and wormwood to his haughty soul.

"And," continued Pompeius, "I shall not forget to applaud the energetic counsels of Domitius and Lentulus Crus. Let those who wish to preserve life and property," he added, with a menacing significance, "see to it that they do as these gentlemen advise."

And thereupon there was a great shout of applause from all the more rabid senators, in which the rest thought it safer to join, with simulated heartiness. But Pompeius did not stop here. He brought before the senators tribunes from the two legions taken from Caesar, and these tribunes loudly declaimed--having learned their lesson well--that their troops were ill-affected toward their former commander, and would follow Pompeius to the last. And the Magnus produced veteran officers of his old campaigns, whom hope of reward and promotion had induced to come and declare for their former commander. Late, very late, the informal session of the Senate broke up. The "Fathers of the Republic" went each man to his own dwelling; but there was no longer any doubt as to what was to come of the doings of the day.

Flaccus, the banker, had of course no access to the conference; but he had waited outside the gate of the palace, to learn the issue from an acquaintance in the Senate. His patience was at last rewarded.

"Tell me, friend," was his question, "what will be the outcome of this; shall I risk any loans to-morrow?"

The friendly senator seemed doubtful.

"Caesar is a ruined man. Who imagines his legions will fight? We know Labienus is with Pompeius."

"You are wrong," said Flaccus.

"Wrong? I?" replied the senator. "I know whereof I speak."

"_Phy!"_ cried the banker, "not Caesar, but you are ruined. The legions will fight."

"Don't prophesy," sneered the acquaintance, "seeing that you brokers always keep out of politics."

"You politicians are blind," retorted Flaccus.

The debate raged on. But by law the Senate could not convene on the third and fourth of the month, and the question of setting aside the tribunician veto went over until the fifth. It was the last lull before the outbreak of the great tempest. The little group of Caesarians put forth their final efforts. Drusus went in person to call on Cicero, the great orator, and plead with him to come out from his residence in the suburbs and argue for peace. The destroyer of Catilina had declared that he would not forfeit his rights to a triumph for his Cilician victories by appearing prematurely in the Senate. Besides, he could never antagonize Pompeius. Curio smiled grimly when his colleague reported his fruitless emba.s.sy.

"I think, my friends," said the politician, "we shall soon prove the old saying, 'Whom the G.o.ds would destroy, they first make mad.'"

Chapter XV

The Seventh of January

I

The rapid march of events that week had taken Drusus out of himself, and made him forgetful of personal consequences; but it sobered him when he heard Curio and Caelius, his a.s.sociates, telling Balbus where their wills would be found deposited if anything calamitous were to befall them. After all, life was very sweet to the young Livian. He could not at heart desire to drift off into nothingness--to stop breathing, thinking, feeling. And for the last time he reviewed his position; told himself that it was not an unworthy cause for which he was contending; that it was not treason, but patriotism, to wish to overthrow the great oligarchy of n.o.ble families, who by their federated influence had pulled the wires to every electoral a.s.sembly, so that hardly a man not of their own coterie had been elected to high office for many a long year; while the officials themselves had grown full and wanton on the revenues wrung from the score of unfortunate provinces.

The feeling against the Caesarians was very bitter in the city. Caesar had always been the friend and darling of the populace; but, now that his star seemed setting, hardly a voice was raised, save to cry up the patriotism and determination of the consuls and Pompeius Magnus.

Soldiers of the latter's legions were everywhere. The Senate was to convene the afternoon of the seventh, in the Curia of Pompeius, in the Campus Martius. Lentulus Crus was dragging forth every obscure senator, every retired politician, whose feet almost touched the grave, to swell his majority. All knew that the tribunes' vetoes were to be set aside, and arbitrary power decreed to the consuls. Drusus began to realize that the personal peril was pressing.

"Won't his head look pretty for the crows to pick at?" commented Marcus Laeca to a friend, as the two swept past Drusus on the street.

The Livian heard the loudly muttered words and trembled. It was easy to laud the Decii who calmly sacrificed their lives for the Republic, and many another martyr to patriotism; it was quite another thing to feel the mortal fear of death coursing in one's veins, to reflect that soon perhaps the dogs might be tearing this body which guarded that strange thing one calls self; to reflect that all which soon will be left of one is a bleaching skull, fixed high in some public place, at which the heartless mob would point and gibber, saying, "That is the head of Quintus Livius Drusus, the rebel!"

Drusus wandered on--on to the only place in Rome where he could gain the moral courage to carry him undaunted through that which was before him--to the Atrium of Vesta. He entered the house of the Vestals and sent for his aunt. Fabia came quickly enough, for her heart had been with her nephew all these days that tried men's souls. The n.o.ble woman put her arms around the youth--for he was still hardly more--and pressed him to her breast.

"Aunt Fabia," said Drusus, growing very weak and pale, now that he felt her warm, loving caress, "do you know that in two or three days you will have as nephew a proscribed insurgent, perhaps with a price on his head, who perhaps is speedily to die by the executioner, like the most ign.o.ble felon?"

"Yes," said Fabia, also very pale, yet smiling with a sweet, grave smile--the smile of a G.o.ddess who grieves at the miseries of mortal men, yet with divine omniscience glances beyond, and sees the happiness evolved from pain. "Yes, I have heard of all that is pa.s.sing in the Senate. And I know, too, that my Quintus will prove himself a Fabian and a Livian, to whom the right cause and the good of the Republic are all--and the fear of shame and death is nothing." And then she sat down with him upon a couch, and took his head in her lap, and stroked him as if she were his mother. "Ah! my Quintus," she said, "you are still very young, and it is easy for one like you to enlist with all your ardour in a cause that seems righteous; yes, and in the heat of the moment to make any sacrifice for it; but it is not so easy for you or any other man calmly to face shame and annihilation, when the actual shadow of danger can be seen creeping up hour by hour. I know that neither you nor many another man wise and good believes that there are any G.o.ds. And I--I am only a silly old woman, with little or no wisdom and wit--"

"Not silly and not old, carissima!" interrupted Drusus, smiling at her self-depreciation.

"We won't argue," said Fabia, in a bit lighter vein. "But--as I would say--I believe in G.o.ds, and that they order all things well."

"Why, then," protested the young man, "do we suffer wrong or grief? If G.o.ds there are, they are indifferent; or, far worse, malevolent, who love to work us woe."

Again Fabia shook her head.

"If we were G.o.ds," said she, "we would all be wise, and could see the good to come out of every seeming evil. There! I am, as I said, silly and old, and little enough comfort can words of mine bring a bright young man whose head is crammed with all the learned lore of the schools of Athens. But know this, Quintus, so long as I live, you shall live in my heart--living or dead though you be. And believe me, the pleasure of life is but a very little thing; it is sweet, but how quickly it pa.s.ses! And the curses or praises of men--these, too, only a few mouldy rolls of books keep for decay! What profits it to Miltiades this hour, that a few marks on a papyrus sheet ascribe to him renown; or how much is the joy of s.e.xtus Tarquinius darkened because a group of other marks cast reproach upon his name? If so be death is a sleep, how much better to feel at the end, 'I die, but I die self-approved, and justified by self!' And if death is not all a sleep; if, as Socrates tells us, there are hopes that we but pa.s.s from a base life to another with less of dross, then how do pleasures and glories, griefs and dishonours, of this present life touch upon a man whose happiness or woe will be found all within?"

And so the good woman talked, giving to Drusus her own pure faith and hope and courage; and when the intellectual philosopher within him revolted at some of her simple premises and guileless sophistries, against his will he was persuaded by them, and was fain to own to himself that the heart of a good woman is past finding out; that its impulses are more genuine, its intuitions truer, its promptings surer, than all the fine-spun intellectuality of the most subtle metaphysician. When at last Drusus rose to leave his aunt, his face was glowing with a healthy colour, his step was elastic, his voice resonant with a n.o.ble courage. Fabia embraced him again and again.

"Remember, whatever befalls," were her parting words, "I shall still love you." And when Drusus went out of the house he saw the dignified figure of the Vestal gazing after him. A few minutes later he pa.s.sed no less a personage than the consular Lucius Domitius on his way to some political conference. He did not know what that dignitary muttered as he swept past in spotless toga, but the gloomy ferocity of his brow needed no interpreter. Drusus, however, never for a moment gave himself disquietude. He was fortified for the best and the worst, not by any dumb resignation, not by any cant of philosophy, but by an inward monitor which told him that some power in some way would lead him forth out of all dangers in a manner whereof man could neither ask nor think.

On the sixth of January the debate, as already said, drew toward its end. All measures of conciliation had been voted down; the crisis was close at hand. On the seventh, after his interview with Fabia, Drusus went back to his own lodgings, made a few revisions in his will, and in the presence of two or three friends declared Cappadox manumitted,[143] lest he, by some chance, fall into the clutches of a brutal master. The young man next wrote a long letter to Cornelia for Agias to forward to Baiae, and put in it such hope as he could glean from the dark words of the philosophers; that even if destruction now overtook him, death perhaps did not end all; that perhaps they would meet beyond the grave. Then he took leave of his weeping freedmen and slaves, and strolled out into the city, and wandered about the Forum and the Sacred Way, to enjoy, perchance, a last view of the sites that were to the Roman so dear. Then finally he turned toward the Campus Martius, and was strolling down under the long marble-paved colonnade of the Portico of Pompeius. Lost in a deep reverie, he was forgetful of all present events, until he was roused by a quick twitch at the elbow; he looked around and found Agias before him.

[143] _Manumissio inter amicos_ was less formal than the regular ceremony before the praetor.

"_A!_ domine," cried the young Greek, "I have friends in the house of Lentulus. I have just been told by them that the consul has sworn that he will begin to play Sulla this very day. Neither you, nor Antonius, Ca.s.sius, Curio, nor the other supporters of Caesar will be alive to-night. Do not go into the Curia. Get away, quickly! Warn your friends, and leave Rome, or to-night you will all be strangled in the Tullianum!"