Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📗

opposition. He understood that if she were in the assembly listening

to those words, and if she took them to heart, she must think of him as

an enemy of that teaching and an outcast.

 

Anger seized him at this thought. “What have I heard that is new?”

thought he. “Is this the new religion? Every one knows this, every one

has heard it. The Cynics enjoined poverty and a restriction of

necessities; Socrates enjoined virtue as an old thing and a good one;

the first Stoic one meets, even such a one as Seneca, who has five

hundred tables of lemon-wood, praises moderation, enjoins truth,

patience in adversity, endurance in misfortune,—and all that is like

stale, mouse-eaten grain; but people do not wish to eat it because it

smells of age.”

 

And besides anger, he had a feeling of disappointment, for he expected

the discovery of unknown, magic secrets of some kind, and thought that

at least he would hear a rhetor astonishing by his eloquence; meanwhile

he heard only words which were immensely simple, devoid of every

ornament. He was astonished only by the mute attention with which the

crowd listened.

 

But the old man spoke on to those people sunk in listening,—told them

to be kind, poor, peaceful, just, and pure; not that they might have

peace during life, but that they might live eternally with Christ after

death, in such joy and such glory, in such health and delight, as no one

on earth had attained at any time. And here Vinicius, though

predisposed unfavorably, could not but notice that still there was a

difference between the teaching of the old man and that of the Cynics,

Stoics, and other philosophers; for they enjoin good and virtue as

reasonable, and the only thing practical in life, while he promised

immortality, and that not some kind of hapless immortality beneath the

earth, in wretchednes, emptiness, and want, but a magnificent life,

equal to that of the gods almost. He spoke meanwhile of it as of a

thing perfectly certain; hence, in view of such a faith, virtue acquired

a value simply measureless, and the misfortunes of this life became

incomparably trivial. To suffer temporally for inexhaustible happiness

is a thing absolutely different from suffering because such is the order

of nature. But the old man said further that virtue and truth should be

loved for themselves, since the highest eternal good and the virtue

existing before ages is God; whoso therefore loves them loves God, and

by that same becomes a cherished child of His.

 

Vinicius did not understand this well, but he knew previously, from

words spoken by Pomponia Græcina to Petronius, that, according to the

belief of Christians, God was one and almighty; when, therefore, he

heard now again that He is all good and all just, he thought

involuntarily that, in presence of such a demiurge, Jupiter, Saturn,

Apollo, Juno, Vesta, and Venus would seem like some vain and noisy

rabble, in which all were interfering at once, and each on his or her

own account.

 

But the greatest astonishment seized him when the old man declared that

God was universal love also; hence he who loves man fulfils God’s

supreme command. But it is not enough to love men of one’s own nation,

for the God-man shed his blood for all, and found among pagans such

elect of his as Cornelius the Centurion; it is not enough either to love

those who do good to us, for Christ forgave the Jews who delivered him

to death, and the Roman soldiers who nailed him to the cross, we should

not only forgive but love those who injure us, and return them good for

evil; it is not enough to love the good, we must love the wicked also,

since by love alone is it possible to expel from them evil.

 

Chilo at these words thought to himself that his work had gone for

nothing, that never in the world would Ursus dare to kill Glaucus,

either that night or any other night. But he comforted himself at once

by another inference from the teaching of the old man; namely, that

neither would Glaucus kill him, though he should discover and recognize

him.

 

Vinicius did not think now that there was nothing new in the words of

the old man, but with amazement he asked himself: “What kind of God is

this, what kind of religion is this, and what kind of people are these?”

All that he had just heard could not find place in his head simply. For

him all was an unheard-of medley of ideas. He felt that if he wished,

for example, to follow that teaching, he would have to place on a

burning pile all his thoughts, habits, and character, his whole nature

up to that moment, burn them into ashes, and then fill himself with a

life altogether different, and an entirely new soul. To him the science

or the religion which commanded a Roman to love Parthians, Syrians,

Greeks, Egyptians, Gauls, and Britons, to forgive enemies, to return

them good for evil, and to love them, seemed madness. At the same time

he had a feeling that in that madness itself there was something

mightier than all philosophies so far. He thought that because of its

madness it was impracticable, but because of its impracticability it was

divine. In his soul he rejected it; but he felt that he was parting as

if from a field full of spikenard, a kind of intoxicating incense; when

a man has once breathed of this he must, as in the land of the lotus-eaters, forget all things else ever after, and yearn for it only.

 

It seemed to him that there was nothing real in that religion, but that

reality in presence of it was so paltry that it deserved not the time

for thought. Expanses of some kind, of which hitherto he had not had a

suspicion, surrounded him,—certain immensities, certain clouds. That

cemetery began to produce on him the impression of a meeting-place for

madmen, but also of a place mysterious and awful, in which, as on a

mystic bed, something was in progress of birth the like of which had not

been in the world so far. He brought before his mind all that, which

from the first moment of his speech, the old man had said touching life,

truth, love, God; and his thoughts were dazed from the brightness, as

the eyes are blinded from lightning flashes which follow each other

unceasingly.

 

As is usual with people for whom life has been turned into one single

passion, Vinicius thought of all this through the medium of his love for

Lygia; and in the light of those flashes he saw one thing distinctly,

that if Lygia was in the cemetery, if she confessed that religion,

obeyed and felt it, she never could and never would be his mistress.

 

For the first time, then, since he had made her acquaintance at Aulus’s,

Vinicius felt that though now he had found her he would not get her.

Nothing similar had come to his head so far, and he could not explain it

to himself then, for that was not so much an express understanding as a

dim feeling of irreparable loss and misfortune. There rose in him an

alarm, which was turned soon into a storm of anger against the

Christians in general, and against the old man in particular. That

fisherman, whom at the first cast of the eye he considered a peasant,

now filled him with fear almost, and seemed some mysterious power

deciding his fate inexorably and therefore tragically.

 

The quarrymen again, unobserved, added torches to the fire; the wind

ceased to sound in the pines; the flame rose evenly, with a slender

point toward the stars, which were twinkling in a clear sky. Having

mentioned the death of Christ, the old man talked now of Him only. All

held the breath in their breasts, and a silence set in which was deeper

than the preceding one, so that it was possible almost to hear the

beating of hearts. That man had seen! and he narrated as one in whose

memory every moment had been fixed in such a way that were he to close

his eyes he would see yet. He told, therefore, how on their return from

the Cross he and John had sat two days and nights in the supper-chamber,

neither sleeping nor eating, in suffering, in sorrow, in doubt, in

alarm, holding their heads in their hands, and thinking that He had

died. Oh, how grievous, how grievous that was! The third day had

dawned and the light whitened the walls, but he and John were sitting in

the chamber, without hope or comfort. How desire for sleep tortured

them (for they had spent the night before the Passion without sleep)!

They roused themselves then, and began again to lament. But barely had

the sun risen when Mary of Magdala, panting, her hair dishevelled,

rushed in with the cry, “They have taken away the Lord!” When they

heard this, he and John sprang up and ran toward the sepulchre. But

John, being younger, arrived first; he saw the place empty, and dared

not enter. Only when there were three at the entrance did he, the

person now speaking to them, enter, and find on the stone a shirt with a

winding sheet; but the body he found not.

 

Fear fell on them then, because they thought that the priests had borne

away Christ, and both returned home in greater grief still. Other

disciples came later and raised a lament, now in company, so that the

Lord of Hosts might hear them more easily, and now separately and in

turn. The spirit died within them, for they had hoped that the Master

would redeem Israel, and it was now the third day since his death; hence

they did not understand why the Father had deserted the Son, and they

preferred not to look at the daylight, but to die, so grievous was the

burden.

 

The remembrance of those terrible moments pressed even then from the

eyes of the old man two tears, which were visible by the light of the

fire, coursing down his gray beard. His hairless and aged head was

shaking, and the voice died in his breast.

 

“That man is speaking the truth and is weeping over it,” said Vinicius

in his soul. Sorrow seized by the throat the simple-hearted listeners

also. They had heard more than once of Christ’s sufferings, and it was

known to them that joy succeeded sorrow; but since an apostle who had

seen it told this, they wrung their hands under the impression, and

sobbed or beat their breasts.

 

But they calmed themselves gradually, for the wish to hear more gained

the mastery. The old man closed his eyes, as if to see distant things

more distinctly in his soul, and continued,—“When the disciples had

lamented in this way, Mary of Magdala rushed in a second time, crying

that she had seen the Lord. Unable to recognize him, she thought him

the gardener: but He said, ‘Mary!’ She cried ‘Rabboni!’ and fell at his

feet. He commanded her to go to the disciples, and vanished. But they,

the disciples, did not believe her; and when she wept for joy, some

upbraided her, some thought that sorrow had disturbed her mind, for she

said, too, that she had seen angels at the grave, but they, running

thither a second time, saw the grave empty. Later in the evening

appeared Cleopas, who had come with another from Emmaus, and they

returned quickly, saying: ‘The Lord has indeed risen!’ And they

discussed with closed doors, out of fear of the Jews. Meanwhile He

stood among them, though the doors had made no sound, and