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

her a second time at

the garden cistern, with a freshly plucked reed in her hand, the top of

which she dipped in the water and sprinkled the irises growing around.

Look at my knees. By the shield of Hercules, I tell thee that they did

not tremble when clouds of Parthians advanced on our maniples with

howls, but they trembled before the cistern. And, confused as a youth

who still wears a bulla on his neck, I merely begged pity with my eyes,

not being able to utter a word for a long time.”

 

Petronius looked at him, as if with a certain envy. “Happy man,” said

he, “though the world and life were the worst possible, one thing in

them will remain eternally good,—youth!”

 

After a while he inquired: “And hast thou not spoken to her?”

 

“When I had recovered somewhat, I told her that I was returning from

Asia, that I had disjointed my arm near the city, and had suffered

severely, but at the moment of leaving that hospitable house I saw that

suffering in it was more to be wished for than delight in another place,

that sickness there was better than health somewhere else. Confused too

on her part, she listened to my words with bent head while drawing

something with the reed on the saffron-colored sand. Afterward she

raised her eyes, then looked down at the marks drawn already; once more

she looked at me, as if to ask about something, and then fled on a

sudden like a hamadryad before a dull faun.”

 

“She must have beautiful eyes.”

 

“As the sea—and I was drowned in them, as in the sea. Believe me that

the archipelago is less blue. After a while a little son of Plautius

ran up with a question. But I did not understand what he wanted.”

 

“O Athene!” exclaimed Petronius, “remove from the eyes of this youth the

bandage with which Eros has bound them; if not, he will break his head

against the columns of Venus’s temple.

 

“O thou spring bud on the tree of life,” said he, turning to Vinicius,

“thou first green shoot of the vine! Instead of taking thee to the

Plautiuses, I ought to give command to bear thee to the house of

Gelocius, where there is a school for youths unacquainted with life.”

 

“What dost thou wish in particular?”

 

“But what did she write on the sand? Was it not the name of Amor, or a

heart pierced with his dart, or something of such sort, that one might

know from it that the satyrs had whispered to the ear of that nymph

various secrets of life? How couldst thou help looking on those marks?”

 

“It is longer since I have put on the toga than seems to thee,” said

Vinicius, “and before little Aulus ran up, I looked carefully at those

marks, for I know that frequently maidens in Greece and in Rome draw on

the sand a confession which their lips will not utter. But guess what

she drew!”

 

“If it is other than I supposed, I shall not guess.”

 

“A fish.”

 

“What dost thou say?”

 

“I say, a fish. What did that mean,—that cold blood is flowing in her

veins? So far I do not know; but thou, who hast called me a spring bud

on the tree of life, wilt be able to understand the sign certainly.”

 

“Carissime! ask such a thing of Pliny. He knows fish. If old Apicius

were alive, he could tell thee something, for in the course of his life

he ate more fish than could find place at one time in the bay of

Naples.”

 

Further conversation was interrupted, since they were borne into crowded

streets where the noise of people hindered them.

 

From the Vicus Apollinis they turned to the Boarium, and then entered

the Forum Romanum, where on clear days, before sunset, crowds of idle

people assembled to stroll among the columns, to tell and hear news, to

see noted people borne past in litters, and finally to look in at the

jewellery-shops, the book-shops, the arches where coin was changed,

shops for silk, bronze, and all other articles with which the buildings

covering that part of the market placed opposite the Capitol were

filled.

 

One-half of the Forum, immediately under the rock of the Capitol, was

buried already in shade; but the columns of the temples, placed higher,

seemed golden in the sunshine and the blue. Those lying lower cast

lengthened shadows on marble slabs. The place was so filled with

columns everywhere that the eye was lost in them as in a forest.

 

Those buildings and columns seemed huddled together. They towered some

above others, they stretched toward the right and the left, they climbed

toward the height, and they clung to the wall of the Capitol, or some of

them clung to others, like greater and smaller, thicker and thinner,

white or gold colored tree-trunks, now blooming under architraves,

flowers of the acanthus, now surrounded with Ionic corners, now finished

with a simple Doric quadrangle. Above that forest gleamed colored

triglyphs; from tympans stood forth the sculptured forms of gods; from

the summits winged golden quadrigæ seemed ready to fly away through

space into the blue dome, fixed serenely above that crowded place of

temples. Through the middle of the market and along the edges of it

flowed a river of people; crowds passed under the arches of the basilica

of Julius Cæsar; crowds were sitting on the steps of Castor and Pollux,

or walking around the temple of Vesta, resembling on that great marble

background many-colored swarms of butterflies or beetles. Down immense

steps, from the side of the temple on the Capitol dedicated to Jupiter

Optimus Maximus, came new waves; at the rostra people listened to chance

orators; in one place and another rose the shouts of hawkers selling

fruit, wine, or water mixed with fig-juice; of tricksters; of venders of

marvellous medicines; of soothsayers; of discoverers of hidden

treasures; of interpreters of dreams. Here and there, in the tumult of

conversations and cries, were mingled sounds of the Egyptian sistra, of

the sambuké, or of Grecian flutes. Here and there the sick, the pious,

or the afflicted were bearing offerings to the temples. In the midst of

the people, on the stone flags, gathered flocks of doves, eager for the

grain given them, and like movable many-colored and dark spots, now

rising for a moment with a loud sound of wings, now dropping down again

to places left vacant by people. From time to time the crowds opened

before litters in which were visible the affected faces of women, or the

heads of senators and knights, with features, as it were, rigid and

exhausted from living. The many-tongued population repeated aloud their

names, with the addition of some term of praise or ridicule. Among the

unordered groups pushed from time to time, advancing with measured

tread, parties of soldiers, or watchers, preserving order on the

streets. Around about, the Greek language was heard as often as Latin.

 

Vinicius, who had not been in the city for a long time, looked with a

certain curiosity on that swarm of people and on that Forum Romanum,

which both dominated the sea of the world and was flooded by it, so that

Petronius, who divined the thoughts of his companion, called it “the

nest of the Quirites—without the Quirites.” In truth, the local

element was well-nigh lost in that crowd, composed of all races and

nations. There appeared Ethiopians, gigantic light-haired people from

the distant north, Britons, Gauls, Germans, sloping-eyed dwellers of

Lericum; people from the Euphrates and from the Indus, with beards dyed

brick color; Syrians from the banks of the Orontes, with black and mild

eyes; dwellers in the deserts of Arabia, dried up as a bone; Jews, with

their flat breasts; Egyptians, with the eternal, indifferent smile on

their faces; Numidians and Africans; Greeks from Hellas, who equally

with the Romans commanded the city, but commanded through science, art,

wisdom, and deceit; Greeks from the islands, from Asia Minor, from

Egypt, from Italy, from Narbonic Gaul. In the throng of slaves, with

pierced ears, were not lacking also freemen,—an idle population, which

Cæsar amused, supported, even clothed,—and free visitors, whom the ease

of life and the prospects of fortune enticed to the gigantic city; there

was no lack of venal persons. There were priests of Serapis, with palm

branches in their hands; priests of Isis, to whose altar more offerings

were brought than to the temple of the Capitoline Jove; priests of

Cybele, bearing in their hands golden ears of rice; and priests of nomad

divinities; and dancers of the East with bright head-dresses, and

dealers in amulets, and snake-tamers, and Chaldean seers; and, finally,

people without any occupation whatever, who applied for grain every week

at the storehouses on the Tiber, who fought for lottery-tickets to the

Circus, who spent their nights in rickety houses of districts beyond the

Tiber, and sunny and warm days under covered porticos, and in foul

eating-houses of the Subura, on the Milvian bridge, or before the

“insulæ” of the great, where from time to time remnants from the tables

of slaves were thrown out to them.

 

Petronius was well known to those crowds. Vinicius’s ears were struck

continually by “Hic est!” (Here he is). They loved him for his

munificence; and his peculiar popularity increased from the time when

they learned that he had spoken before Cæsar in opposition to the

sentence of death issued against the whole “familia,” that is, against

all the slaves of the prefect Pedanius Secundus, without distinction of

sex or age, because one of them had killed that monster in a moment of

despair. Petronius repeated in public, it is true, that it was all one

to him, and that he had spoken to Cæsar only privately, as the arbiter

elegantiarum whose æsthetic taste was offended by a barbarous slaughter

befitting Scythians and not Romans. Nevertheless, people who were

indignant because of the slaughter loved Petronius from that moment

forth. But he did not care for their love. He remembered that that

crowd of people had loved also Britannicus, poisoned by Nero; and

Agrippina, killed at his command; and Octavia, smothered in hot steam at

the Pandataria, after her veins had been opened previously; and Rubelius

Plautus, who had been banished; and Thrasea, to whom any morning might

bring a death sentence. The love of the mob might be considered rather

of ill omen; and the sceptical Petronius was superstitious also. He had

a twofold contempt for the multitude,—as an aristocrat and an æsthetic

person. Men with the odor of roast beans, which they carried in their

bosoms, and who besides were eternally hoarse and sweating from playing

mora on the street-corners and peristyles, did not in his eyes deserve

the term “human.” Hence he gave no answer whatever to the applause, or

the kisses sent from lips here and there to him. He was relating to

Marcus the case of Pedanius, reviling meanwhile the fickleness of that

rabble which, next morning after the terrible butchery, applauded Nero

on his way to the temple of Jupiter Stator. But he gave command to halt

before the book-shop of Avirnus, and, descending from the litter,

purchased an ornamented manuscript, which he gave to Vinicius.

 

“Here is a gift for thee,” said he.

 

“Thanks!” answered Vinicius. Then, looking at the title, he inquired,

“‘Satyricon’? Is this something new? Whose is it?”

 

“Mine. But I do not wish to go in the road of Rufinus, whose history I

was to tell thee, nor of Fabricius Veiento; hence no one knows of this,

and do thou mention it to no man.”

 

“Thou hast said that thou art no writer of verses,” said Vinicius,

looking