A Struggle For Rome Volume I Part 10

"What then? Freedom would have conquered!"

"Folly would have conquered!" broke out Cethegus in a thundering voice, which startled his accusers. "Well for us that your hands were bound; you would have strangled Hope for ever. Look here, and thank me upon your knees!"

He took some records from another casket, and gave them to his astonished companions.

"There; read! The enemy had been warned, and had thrown the noose round the neck of Rome in a masterly manner. If I had not acted as I did, Earl Witichis would be standing at this moment before the Salarian Gate in the north with ten thousand Goths; to-morrow young Totila would have blockaded the mouth of the Tiber on the south with the fleet from Neapolis; and Duke Thulun would have been approaching the Tomb of Hadrian and the Aurelian Gate from the west, with twenty thousand men.

If, this morning early, you had touched a hair of a Goth's head, what would have happened?"

Silverius breathed again. The others were ashamed and silent. But Licinius took heart.

"We should have defied the Goths behind our walls," he said, with a toss of his handsome head.

"Yes, when these walls are restored as I will restore them--for eternity, my Licinius: as they are now--not for a day."

"Then we had died as free citizens," said Scaevola.

"You might have done that in the Curie three hours ago," laughed Cethegus, shrugging his shoulders.

Silverius stepped forward with open arms, as if to embrace him--Cethegus drew back.

"You have saved us all, you have saved Church and fatherland! I never doubted you!" exclaimed the priest.

But Licinius grasped the hand of the Prefect, who willingly abandoned it to him.

"I _did_ doubt you," he said with charming frankness. "Forgive me, you great Roman! This sword, with which I would have penetrated into your very heart, is henceforward at your service. And when the day of freedom dawns, then no consul, then _salve_, Dictator Cethegus!"

He hurried out with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. The Prefect cast a satisfied glance after him.

"Dictator, yes; but only until the Republic is in full security," said the jurist, and followed Licinius.

"To be sure," said Cethegus, with a smile; "then we will wake up Camillus and Brutus, and take up the Republic from the point at which they left it a thousand years ago. Is it not so, Silverius?"

"Prefect of Rome," said the priest, "you know that I was ambitious to conduct the affairs of the fatherland as well as of the Church. After this, I am so no more. You shall lead, I will follow. Swear to me only one thing: the freedom of the Roman Church--free choice of a Pope."

"Certainly," said Cethegus; "but first Silverius must have become Pope.

So be it."

The priest departed with a smile upon his lips, but with a weight upon his mind.

"Go," said Cethegus, after a pause, looking in the direction taken by his three visitors. "You will never overthrow a tyrant--you need one!"

This day and hour were decisive for Cethegus. Almost against his will, he was driven by circ.u.mstances to entertain new views, feelings, and plans, which he had never, until now, put to himself so clearly, or confessed to be more than mere dreams. He acknowledged that at this moment he was sole master of the situation. He had the two great parties of the period--the Gothic Government and its enemies--completely in his power. And the princ.i.p.al motive-power in the heart of this powerful man, which he had for years thought paralysed, was suddenly aroused to the greatest activity. The unlimited desire--yes, the necessity--to _govern_, made itself all at once serviceable to all the powers of his rich nature, and excited them to violent emotion.

Cornelius Cethegus Caesarius was the descendant of an old and immensely rich family, whose ancestor had founded the splendour of his house as a general and statesman under Caesar during the civil wars; it was even rumoured that he was the son of the great Dictator.

Our hero had received from nature various talents and violent pa.s.sions, and his immense riches gave him the means to develop the first and satisfy the last to the fullest extent. He had received the most careful education that was then possible for a young Roman n.o.ble. He practised the fine arts under the best teachers; he studied law, history, and philosophy in the famous schools of Berytus, Alexandria, and Athens with brilliant success. But all this did not satisfy him. He felt the breath of decay in all the art and science of his time. In particular, his study of philosophy had only the effect of destroying the last traces of belief in his soul, without affording him any results. When he returned home from his studies, his father, according to the custom of the time, introduced him to political life, and his brilliant talents raised him quickly from office to office.

But all at once he abandoned his career. As soon as he had made himself master of the affairs of state, he would no longer be a wheel in the great machine of a kingdom from which freedom was excluded, and which, besides, was subject to a barbarian King.

His father died, and Cethegus, being now his own master and possessor of an immense fortune, rushed into the vortex of life, enjoyment, and luxury with all the pa.s.sion of his nature.

He soon exhausted Rome, and travelled to Byzantium, into Egypt, and even as far as India.

There was no luxury, no innocent or criminal pleasure, in which he did not revel; only a well-steeled frame could have borne the adventures, privations, and dissipations of these journeys.

After twelve years of absence, he returned to Rome.

It was said that he would build magnificent edifices. People expected that he would lead a luxurious life in his houses and villas. They were sadly deceived.

Cethegus only built for himself the convenient little house at the foot of the Capitol, which he decorated in the most tasteful manner; and there he lived in populous Rome like a hermit.

He unexpectedly published a description of his travels, characterising the people and countries which he had visited. The book had an unheard-of success. Ca.s.siodorus and Boethius sought his friends.h.i.+p, and the great King invited him to his court.

But on a sudden he disappeared from Rome.

What had happened remained a mystery, in spite of all malicious, curious, or sympathetic inquiries.

People told each other that one morning a poor fisherman had found Cethegus unconscious, almost dead, on the sh.o.r.es of the Tiber, outside the gates of the city.

A few weeks later he again was heard of on the north-east frontier of the kingdom, in the inhospitable regions of the Danube, where a b.l.o.o.d.y war with the Gepidae, Avari, and Sclavonians was raging. There he fought the savage barbarians with death-despising courage, and followed them with a few chosen troops, paid from his private means, into their rocky fortresses, sleeping every night upon the frozen ground. And once, when the Gothic general entrusted to him a larger detachment of troops in order to make an inroad, instead of doing this, he attacked and took Sirmium, the enemy's fortified capital, displaying no less good generals.h.i.+p than courage.

After the conclusion of peace, he travelled into Gaul, Spain, and again to Byzantium; returned thence to Rome, and lived for years in an embittered idleness and retirement, refusing all the military, civil, or scientific offices and honours which Ca.s.siodorus pressed, upon him.

He appeared to take no interest in anything but his studies.

A few years before the period at which our story commences, he had brought with him from Gaul a handsome youth, to whom he showed Rome and Italy, and whom he treated with fatherly love and care. It was said that he would adopt him. As long as his young guest was with him he ceased his lonely life, invited the aristocratic youth of Rome to brilliant feasts in his villas, and, accepting all invitations in return, proved himself the most amiable of guests.

But as soon as he had sent young Julius Monta.n.u.s, with a stately suite of pedagogues, freedmen, and slaves, to the learned schools of Alexandria, he suddenly broke off all social ties, and retired into impenetrable solitude, seemingly at war with G.o.d and the whole world.

Silverius and Rusticiana had, with the greatest difficulty, persuaded him to sacrifice his repose, and join in the conspiracy of the Catacombs. He told them that he only became a patriot from tedium. And, in fact, until the death of the King, he had taken part in the conspiracy--the conduct of which, however, was wholly in his and the archdeacon's hands--almost with dislike.

It was now otherwise.

Until now, the inmost sentiment of his being--the desire to test himself in all possible fields of intellectual effort; to overcome all difficulties; to outdo all rivals; to govern, alone and without resistance, every circle that he entered; and, when he had won the crown of victory, carelessly to cast it aside and seek for new tasks--all this had never permitted him to find full satisfaction in any of his aims.

Art, science, luxury, office, fame. Each of these had charmed him. He had excelled in all to an unusual degree, and yet all had left a void in his soul.

To govern, to be the first, to conquer opposing circ.u.mstances with all his means of superior power and wisdom, and then to rule crouching men with a rod of iron; this, consciously and unconsciously, had always been his aim. In this alone could he find contentment.

Therefore he now breathed proudly and freely. His icy heart glowed at the thought that he ruled over the two great inimical powers of the time, over both Goths and Romans, with a mere glance of his eye; and from this exquisite feeling of mastery, the conviction arose with demonic force, that there remained but one goal for him and his ambition that was worth living for; but one goal, distant as the sun, and out of the reach of every other man. He believed in his descent from Julius Caesar, and felt the blood rush through his veins at the thought--Caesar, Emperor of the West, ruler of the Roman Empire!

A few months ago, when this thought first flashed across his mind--not even a thought, not a wish, only a shadow, a dream--he was startled, and could not help smiling at his own boundless a.s.surance.

_He_, Emperor and regenerator of the Empire! And Italy trembled under the footsteps of three hundred thousand Goths! And the greatest of all barbarian kings, whose fame filled the earth, sat on his powerful throne in Ravenna!

Even if the power of the Goths were broken, the Franks and Byzantines would stretch their greedy hands over the Alps and across the sea to seize the Italian booty. Two great kingdoms against a single man! For, truly, he stood alone amid his people. How well he knew, how utterly he despised his countrymen, the unworthy descendants of great ancestors!

How he laughed at the enthusiasm of a Licinius or a Scaevola, who thought to renew the days of the Republic with these degenerate Romans!

He stood alone.