A Struggle For Rome Volume I Part 33

"'Sir, a veiled female slave waits in the library.'

"I hurried to the room with a beating heart. It was really the slave whom I had seen yesterday. She threw back her mantle; a handsome coquettish Moor or Carthaginian--I know the sort--looked at me with sly eyes.

"'I claim the reward of a messenger, Kallistratos,' she said; 'I bring you good news.'

"I took her hand and would have patted her cheek--for who desires to win the mistress must kiss the slave--but she laughed and said:

"'No, not Eros; Hermes sends me. My mistress'--I listened eagerly. 'My mistress is--a pa.s.sionate lover of art. She offers you three thousand solidi for the bust of Ares which stands in the niche at the door of your house.'"

The young guests laughed loudly, Cethegus joining in their merriment.

"Well, laugh away!" continued the host, smiling; "but I a.s.sure you I did not laugh. My dreams were dashed to pieces, and I said, greatly vexed, 'I do not sell my busts.' The slave offered five thousand, ten thousand solidi. I turned my back upon her and opened the door. Then the sly puss said, 'I know that Kallistratos is indignant because he expected an adventure, and only found a money-affair. He is a Greek, and loves beauty; he burns with curiosity to see my mistress.' This was so true, that I could only smile. 'Well,' she said, 'you shall see her, and then I will renew my last offer. Should you still refuse, at least you will have had the advantage of satisfying your curiosity.

To-morrow, at the eighth hour, the litter will come again. Then be ready with your Ares.' And she slipped away. I cannot deny that my curiosity was aroused. Quite decided not to give up my Ares, and yet to see this beauteous art-enthusiast, I waited impatiently for the appointed hour. It came, and with it the litter. I stood watching at my open door. The slave descended. 'Come,' she called to me, 'you shall see her.' Trembling with excitement, I stepped forward, the curtain fell, and I saw----"

"Well?" cried Marcus, bending forward, his cup in his hand.

"What I shall never again forget! a face, friends, of unimagined beauty. Cypris and Artemis in one! I was dazzled. But I hurried back, lifted the Ares from its niche, gave it to the Punic slave, refused her money, and staggered into my house as confused as if I had seen a wood-nymph."

"Well, that is wonderful," laughed Ma.s.surius; "you are else no novice in the works of Eros."

"But," asked Cethegus, "how do you know that your charmer was a Goth?"

"She had dark-red hair, and a milk-white skin, and black eyebrows."

"Oh, ye G.o.ds!" thought Cethegus. But he was silent and waited. No one present uttered the name. "They do not know her.--And when was this?"

he asked his host.

"During the last calendars."

"Quite right," thought Cethegus. "She came at that time from Tarentum through Rome to Ravenna. She rested here for three days."

"And so," said Piso, laughing, "you gave your Ares for a look at a beautiful woman! A bad bargain! This time, Mercury and Venus were allies. Poor Kallistratos!"

"Oh," said Kallistratos, "the bust was not worth so very much. It was modern work. Ion of Neapolis made it three years, ago. But I tell you, I would give a Phidias for such a look."

"An ideal head?" asked Cethegus indifferently, and lifted admiringly the bronze mixing-vase which stood before him.

"No; the model was a barbarian--some Gothic earl or other--Watichis or Witichas--who can remember these hyperborean names," said Kalistratos, as he peeled a peach.

Cethegus reflectively sipped his wine from the cup of amber.

CHAPTER XI.

"Well, one might put up with the barbarian women," cried Marcus Licinius, "but may Orcus devour their brothers!" and he tore the faded rose-wreath from his head--the flowers could ill bear the close air of the room--and replaced it by a fresh one. "Not only have they deprived us of liberty--they even beat us upon the field of love, with the daughters of Hesperia. Only lately, the beautiful Lavinia shut the door upon my brother, and received the foxy-haired Aligern."

"Barbaric taste!" observed Lucius, shrugging his shoulders, and taking to his Isis-wine, as if to comfort himself. "You know the Goths too, Furius; is it not an error of taste?"

"I do not know your rival," answered the Corsican; "but there are youths enough among the Goths who might well be dangerous to a woman.

And an adventure occurs to me, which I lately discovered, but of which, certainly, the point is still wanting."

"That does not matter; tell it to us," said Kallistratos, putting his hands into the luke-warm water, which was now handed round in Corinthian bronze vessels; "perhaps we can find the point."

"The hero of my story," began Furius, "is the handsomest of all the Goths."

"Ah, the young Totila," interrupted Piso, and gave his cameo-decorated cup to be filled with iced wine.

"The same. I have known him for years, and like him exceedingly, as all must who have ever looked into his sunny face; not to speak of the fact"--and here the shadow of some grave remembrance flitted across the Corsican's face, as he hesitated--"that I am under an obligation to him."

"It seems that you are in love with the fair-haired youth," said Ma.s.surius sarcastically, and throwing to the slave he had brought with him a kerchief full of Picentinian biscuits, to take home with him.

"No; but he has been very friendly to me, as he is to every one with whom he comes into contact; and very often he had the harbour-watch in the Italian ports where I landed."

"Yes, he has rendered great services to the Gothic navy," said Lucius Licinius.

"As well as to their cavalry," concurred Marcus. "The slender youth is the best rider in his nation."

"Well, I met him last in Neapolis. We were well-pleased to meet, but it was in vain that I pressed him to share our merry suppers on board my s.h.i.+p."

"Oh, those suppers are both celebrated and ill-famed," observed Balbus; "you have always the most fiery wines."

"And the most fiery girls," added Ma.s.surius.

"However that may be, Totila always pleaded business, and was not to be persuaded. Imagine that! business after the eighth hour in Neapolis, when the most industrious are lazy! Naturally, it was only an excuse. I promised myself to find out his pranks, and, at evening, loitered near his house in the Via Lata. And truly, the very first evening he came out, looking carefully about him, and, to my surprise, in disguise. He was dressed like a gardener, with a travelling-cap well drawn down over his face, and a cloak folded closely about him. I dogged his footsteps.

He went straight through the town to the Porta Capuana. Close to the gate stands a large tower, inhabited by the gate-keeper, an old patriarchal Jew, whom King Theodoric, on account of his great fidelity, entrusted with the office of warder. My Goth stood still before the house, and gently clapped his hands. A little side-door, which I had not remarked before, opened noiselessly, and Totila slipped in like an eel."

"Ho, ho!" interrupted Piso eagerly, "I know both the Jew and his child Miriam--a splendid large-eyed girl! The most beautiful daughter of Israel, the pearl of the East! Her lips are red as pomegranates, her eyes are deep sea-blue, her cheeks have the rosy bloom of the peach."

"Well done, Piso," said Cethegus, smiling; "your poem is very beautiful."

"No," he answered, "Miriam herself is living poetry."

"The Jewess is proud," grumbled Ma.s.surius, "she scorned my gold with a look as if no one had ever bought a woman before."

"So the haughty Goth," said Lucius Licinius, "who walks with an air as if he earned all heaven's stars upon his curly head, has condescended to a Jewess."

"So I thought, and I determined, at the next opportunity, to laugh at the youth for his predilection for musk. But nothing of the sort! A few days later, I was obliged to go to Capua. I started before daybreak to avoid the heat. I drove out of the town through the Porta Capuana, just as it was dawning, and as I rattled over the hard stones before the Jews' tower, I thought with envy of Totila, and said to myself that he was then lying in the embrace of two white arms. But at the second milestone from the gate, walking towards the town, with two empty flower-baskets hanging over his breast and back, dressed in a gardener's costume, just as before, whom should I meet but Totila!

Therefore he was not lying in Miriam's arms; the Jewess was not his sweetheart, but perhaps his confidante; and who knows where the flower that this gardener cherishes blooms? The lucky fellow! Only consider that on the Via Capuana stand all the villas and pleasure-houses of the first families of Neapolis, and that in these gardens flourish and bloom the loveliest of women."

"By my genius!" cried Lucius Licinius, lifting his wreathed goblet, "in that region live the most beautiful women of Italia--cursed be the Goths!"

"No," shouted Ma.s.surius, glowing with wine, "cursed be Kallistratos and the Corsican! who offer us strange love-stories, as the stork offered the fox food from narrow-necked flasks. Now, O mine host, let your girls in, if you have ordered any. You need not excite our expectation any further."

"Yes, yes! the girls! the dancers! the players!" cried the young guests all together.

"Hold!" said the host. "When Aphrodite comes, she must tread upon flowers. This gla.s.s I dedicate to thee, Flora!"

He sprang up, and dashed a costly crystal cup against the tabled ceiling, so that it broke with a loud ring. As soon as the gla.s.s struck the ceiling, the whole of it opened like a trap-door, and a thick rain of flowers of all kinds fell upon the heads of the astonished guests; roses from Paestum, violets from Thurii, myrtles from Tarentum; covering with scented bunches the tesselated floor, the tables, the cus.h.i.+ons, and the heads of the drinkers.