Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 8

"Well," said Muso, "I take it that any one of the dogs you saw run at Hedulio was affected by him just as was the bull this afternoon; each began by acting towards him as he would have towards any other man; each was cowed and tendered mild by the nearer sight of him. That is the way Hedulio affects all animals whatever."

"Tell us some cases you have seen yourself," Tanno suggested.

"I fear your skepticism, even your derision," Muso demurred.

"I haven't a trace of either left in me by now," Tanno declared. "What you say has knocked the mental wind out of me, so to speak, and I see that the others feel as you do and seem to have similar ideas to express. I vow I believe you, gentlemen, though something inside me is still numb with amazement. Tell us, Juventius, the biggest story you know of these alleged powers of our Caius."

"I told you so," said Muso. "In spite of your disclaimers you slip in that 'alleged.' I don't like that 'alleged' of yours, Opsitius."

"That wasn't mine." Tanno laughed. "That was the numb something inside me talking in its sleep. I'm all sympathetic interest, with no admixture of unbelief. I can see you have startling anecdotes to tell. Tell the most startling."

"The most startling," Juventius began, "I most solemnly aver is literally true. Hedulio and I were once riding along a woodcutters' road through the forests on the Aemilian estate, in the wildest portion of it. The road forms a part of a good short-cut from Villa Aemilia to this valley. It was hot weather and very dry. We were both thirsty. There is a cool and abundant spring not many paces up a steep path on the left of that road.

At the path we tethered our horses and walked to the spring. When we had quenched our thirst and had started down the little glade below the spring we saw the head of a big gray wolf appear among some ferns at the lower end of the glade by the path on our left. I stopped, for we had no weapons. Hedulio, however, went on, never altering his easy saunter. The wolf came out of the ferns and paced up to Hedulio like a house dog.

Hedulio patted his head, pulled his ears and the wolf not only did not attack him nor snap at him, nor even snarl, but showed his pleasure as plainly as any pet dog. When Hedulio had stopped petting him, I reached them. We two went on as if we were alone, leaving the wolf standing looking after us as if he were watch-dog at the house of an intimate friend."

"Rome," said Tanno, when Muso paused, "is rated the most wonderful place on earth. Rome is my home. Rome rates Sabinum low, except for olives, wines, oaks, sheep and mules. Wonders are not named among the staple products of Sabinum. Yet I come to Sabinum for the first time and hear wonders such as I never dreamed of at Rome."

"And you are only at the beginning of such wonders," spoke up Entedius Hirnio. "That tale of Muso's is mild to one I can tell and I take oath in advance to every word of my story."

"Begin it then, in the name of Hercules," Tanno urged him. "If it is what you herald we cannot have it too quickly."

"When Hedulio and I were hardly more than boys," Hirnio began, "we bird- nested and fished and hunted and roamed the woods like any pair of country lads. Parts of our woodland hereabouts are wilder than anything on the Aemilian estate, and we liked the wildest parts best. I had an uncle at Amiternum and it happened that Hedulio's uncle allowed him to go with me once when my father visited his brother. My uncle had a farm high up in the mountains east of Amiternum and Hedulio and I there revelled in wildness wilder than anything hereabouts. We had no fear and ranged the hillsides, ravines and pine-woods eager and unafraid.

"High up the mountains we blundered on a bear's den with two cubs in it.

They were old enough to be playful and young enough not to be fierce or dangerous. I was for carrying them off, but Hedulio said that if the mother returned before we were well on our way home she would certainly catch us before we could reach a place of safety and we should certainly be killed.

"'We had better stop playing with these fascinating little brutes,' he said, 'and be as far off as possible before she comes back.'

"Just as he said it we heard twigs snapping, the crash of rent underbrush, and I looked up and saw the bear coming.

"I had never seen a wild bear till then. She looked to me as big as a half grown calf, and as fat as a six-year-old sow. She came like a race-horse.

Besides my instantaneous sense of her size, weight and speed, I saw only her great red mouth, wide-open, set round with gleaming white teeth, from which came a snarl like the roar of a cataract.

"I sprang to the nearest tree which promised a refuge, caught the lowest boughs and scrambled up, the angry snarls of the bear filling my ears. As I reached the first strong branch the snarls stopped.

"I settled myself and looked down.

"The bear was standing still, some paces from her den, peering at it and snuffing the air, working her nose it seemed to me, and moving her head from side to side.

"Hedulio had not moved. He stood just where I had left him, one cub in his arms, the other cuddled at his feet.

"The bear, growling very short, almost inaudible growls, approached him slowly, moving only one foot at a time and pausing before she lifted another foot. She sniffed at the cub on the ground, sniffed at Hedulio's legs, and looked up at the cub in his arms. She made a sound more like a whine than a growl. Hedulio lowered the cub and she sniffed at it. Then Hedulio caught her by the back of the neck. She did not snarl but yielded to his pull and rolled over on her side. He picked up the cub on the ground and laid both by her nipples. They went to, nursing avidly, almost like little pigs, yet also somewhat like puppies. Hedulio sauntered away and to my tree, beckoned me down and we strolled away as if there were no bear near: she in fact paying no attention to either of us after the cubs began nursing her."

Tanno looked wildly about.

"Boys," he said, "forgive me if I am dazed, and don't be insulted. I recall that Entedius prefaced his narrative with an oath to its veracity.

I am ready to believe all this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent.

Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me, for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is doubly on me. As I am the b.u.t.t, either way, don't be too hard on me: Please set me right."

They chorused at him that they had all heard the story, most of them soon after the marvel took place; that they had always believed it, and believed it then. I corroborated Hirnio's exact.i.tude as to all the details.

CHAPTER IV

HOROSCOPES AND MARVELS

Tanno looked about again, less wildly, but still like a man in a daze.

"But," he cried, "if you do such wonders, how do you do them, Caius?"

"I don't know now," I said, "any more than I knew the first time I gentled a fierce strange dog. It came natural then, it always has come natural."

"Naturally," said Lisius Naepor, "since it is part of your nature from before birth. Do you mean to tell us, Opsitius, that Hedulio has never shown you his horoscope?"

"Never!" said Tanno, "and he never spoke of it to me. I'm Spanish, you know, by ancestry, and Spaniards are not Syrians or Egyptians. Horoscopes don't figure largely in Spanish life. I never bothered about horoscopes, I suppose. So I never mentioned horoscopes to Hedulio nor he to me."

"Nor he to you of course," said Neponius Pomplio, "he is too modest."

"In fact," said Naepor. "I should never have known of Hedulio's horoscope if his uncle had not shown me a copy. Caius has never mentioned it, unless one of us talked of it first."

"What's the point of the horoscope?" Tanno queried.

"Why you see," Naepor explained. "Hedulio was born in the third watch of the night on the Ides of September.

"Now it is well known that persons are likely to be competent trainers of animals if they are born under the influence of the Whale or of the Centaur or the Lion or the Scorpion or when the Lesser Bear rises at dawn or in those watches of the night when the Great Bear, after swinging low in the northern sky, is again beginning to swing upwards, or at those hours of the day when, as it can be established by calculations, the Great Bear, though invisible in the glow of the sunlight, is in that part of its circle round the northern pole.

"It is disputed which of these constellations has the most powerful influence, but it is generally reckoned that the Whale is most influential, next the Centaur, next the Lion, and the Scorpion least of all, while the dawn rising of the Lesser Bear and the beginning of the upward motion of the Great Bear are held to have merely auxiliary influence when the other signs are favorable. If two or more of these are at one and the same time powerful in the sky at the moment of any one's birth, he will be an unusually capable animal-tamer, the more puissant according as more of the potent stars s.h.i.+ne upon his birth.

"It is manifest that, at no day and hour, will all of these signs conspire at their greatest potency. For clearly, for instance, the Lion and the Scorpion, being both in the Zodiac, and being separated in the Zodiac by the interposition of two entire constellations, can never be in the ascendant at one and the same time, nor can one be near the ascendant when the other is in that position. Yet there are times when a majority of them all exert their most potent or nearly their most potent influence, there are some moments when their possible combination of influences is nearly at its maximum potency.

"Now the day, hour, and moment of Hedulio's birth is, as astrologers agree, precisely that instant of the entire year when the stars combine their magic powers with their most puissant force to produce their greatest possible effect on the nature of a child born at that instant, in order that he may have irresistible sway over the wills of all fierce, wild and ferocious animals.

"Such, from his birth and by the divine might of his birth-stars, is our Hedulio."

"After all that," said Tanno, "I should believe anything. I believe the tale of the she-bear. Who has another to tell?"

"Before anyone begins another anecdote," said Neponius Pomplio, "I want to state my opinion that Hedulio's habitual and instantaneous subjugation of vicious dogs which have never before set eyes on him and his miraculous powers of similarly pacifying such wild animals as bears and wolves, while inexpressibly marvellous, is no more wonderful, if, in fact, as wondrous as his power to attract to him, even from a great distance, creatures naturally solitary, or timorous."

"It is strange," said Juventius Muso, "that I should have begun by telling the story of the wolf at the spring, an occurrence of which I was the only witness, instead of mentioning first Hedulio's power over deer, something known to all of us, and many miracles which everyone of us has seen. I suppose we each thought of the most spectacular example of Hedulio's powers known to us, whereas he had so generally handled and gentled deer that we instinctively regarded that as commonplace."

"I think you are right," said Lisius Naepor, "for Hedulio's ability to approach a doe with fawns and to handle the young in sight of the mother without her showing any sign of alarm or concern, is, to my mind, quite as marvellous as his dealings with the she-bear. It seems to me as miraculous to overcome the timidity of the doe as the ferocity of the bear. And we have all seen him play with fawns, fawns so young that they had barely begun to follow their dam. We have all seen a herd of deer stand placidly and let him approach them, move about among them, handle them. We have all seen him handle and gentle stags, even old stags in the rutting season.

There is no gainsaying our Hedulio's power over animals, it is a matter of too general and too common knowledge."

"I have seen a mole," said Fisevius Rusco, "come out of its burrow at dusk and eat earth worms out of Hedulio's hand."

"I," said Naepor, "have watched him catch a b.u.t.terfly and, holding it uncrushed, walk into a wood, and have seen a woodthrush flutter down to him, take the b.u.t.terfly from his fingers, speed away with it to feed its young and presently return to his empty hand, as if expecting another insect, perch on his hand, peck at it and remain some time; and there is no song-bird more fearful of mankind, more aloof, more retiring, more secret than a wood-thrush."