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

was

unknown why, and Vestinius received applause.

 

The court was innumerable. It seemed that all that was richest, most

brilliant and noted in Rome, was migrating to Antium. Nero never

travelled otherwise than with thousands of vehicles; the society which

acompanied him almost always exceeded the number of soldiers in a

legion. [In the time of the Cæsars a legion was always 12,000 men.]

Hence Domitius Afer appeared, and the decrepit Lucius Saturninus; and

Vespasian, who had not gone yet on his expedition to Judea, from which

he returned for the crown of Cæsar, and his sons, and young Nerva, and

Lucan, and Annius Gallo, and Quintianus, and a multitude of women

renowned for wealth, beauty, luxury, and vice.

 

The eyes of the multitude were turned to the harness, the chariots, the

horses, the strange livery of the servants, made up of all peoples of

the earth. In that procession of pride and grandeur one hardly knew

what to look at; and not only the eye, but the mind, was dazzled by such

gleaming of gold, purple, and violet, by the flashing of precious

stones, the glitter of brocade, pearls, and ivory. It seemed that the

very rays of the sun were dissolving in that abyss of brilliancy. And

though wretched people were not lacking in that throng, people with

sunken stomachs, and with hunger in their eyes, that spectacle inflamed

not only their desire of enjoyment and their envy, but filled them with

delight and pride, because it gave a feeling of the might and

invincibility of Rome, to which the world contributed, and before which

the world knelt. Indeed there was not on earth any one who ventured to

think that that power would not endure through all ages, and outlive all

nations, or that there was anything in existence that had strength to

oppose it.

 

Vinicius, riding at the end of the retinue, sprang out of his chariot at

sight of the Apostle and Lygia, whom he had not expected to see, and,

greeting them with a radiant face, spoke with hurried voice, like a man

who has no time to spare,—“Hast thou come? I know not how to thank

thee, O Lygia! God could not have sent me a better omen. I greet thee

even while taking farewell, but not farewell for a long time. On the

road I shall dispose relays of horses, and every free day I shall come

to thee till I get leave to return.—Farewell!”

 

“Farewell, Marcus!” answered Lygia; then she added in a lower voice:

“May Christ go with thee, and open thy soul to Paul’s word.”

 

He was glad at heart that she was concerned about his becoming a

Christian soon; hence he answered,—

 

“Ocelle mi! let it be as thou sayest. Paul prefers to travel with my

people, but he is with me, and will be to me a companion and master.

Draw aside thy veil, my delight, let me see thee before my journey. Why

art thou thus hidden?”

 

She raised the veil, and showed him her bright face and her wonderfully

smiling eyes, inquiring,—

 

“Is the veil bad?”

 

And her smile had in it a little of maiden opposition; but Vinicius,

while looking at her with delight, answered,—

 

“Bad for my eyes, which till death would look on thee only.”

 

Then he turned to Ursus and said,—

 

“Ursus, guard her as the sight in thy eye, for she is my domina as well

as thine.”

 

Seizing her hand then, he pressed it with his lips, to the great

astonishment of the crowd, who could not understand signs of such honor

from a brilliant Augustian to a maiden arrayed in simple garments,

almost those of a slave.

 

“Farewell!”

 

Then he departed quickly, for Cæsar’s whole retinue had pushed forward

considerably. The Apostle Peter blessed him with a slight sign of the

cross; but the kindly Ursus began at once to glorify him, glad that his

young mistress listened eagerly and was grateful to him for those

praises.

 

The retinue moved on and hid itself in clouds of golden dust; they gazed

long after it, however, till Demas the miller approached, he for whom

Ursus worked in the night-time. When he had kissed the Apostle’s hand,

he entreated them to enter his dwelling for refreshment, saying that it

was near the Emporium, that they must be hungry and wearied since they

had spent the greater part of the day at the gate.

 

They went with him, and, after rest and refreshment in his house,

returned to the Trans-Tiber only toward evening. Intending to cross the

river by the Æmilian bridge, they passed through the Clivus Publicus,

going over the Aventine, between the temples of Diana and Mercury. From

that height the Apostle looked on the edifices about him, and on those

vanishing in the distance. Sunk in silence he meditated on the

immensity and dominion of that city, to which he had come to announce

the word of God. Hitherto he had seen the rule of Rome and its legions

in various lands through which he had wandered, but they were single

members as it were of the power, which that day for the first time he

had seen impersonated in the form of Nero. That city, immense,

predatory, ravenous, unrestrained, rotten to the marrow of its bones,

and unassailable in its preterhuman power; that Cæsar, a fratricide, a

matricide, a wife-slayer, after him dragged a retinue of bloody spectres

no less in number than his court. That profligate, that buffoon, but

also lord of thirty legions, and through them of the whole earth; those

courtiers covered with gold and scarlet, uncertain of the morrow, but

mightier meanwhile than kings,—all this together seemed a species of

hellish kingdom of wrong and evil. In his simple heart he marvelled

that God could give such inconceivable almightiness to Satan, that He

could yield the earth to him to knead, overturn, and trample it, to

squeeze blood and tears from it, to twist it like a whirlwind, to storm

it like a tempest, to consume it like a flame. And his Apostle-heart

was alarmed by those thoughts, and in spirit he spoke to the Master: “O

Lord, how shall I begin in this city, to which Thou hast sent me? To it

belong seas and lands, the beasts of the field, and the creatures of the

water; it owns other kingdoms and cities, and thirty legions which guard

them; but I, O Lord, am a fisherman from a lake! How shall I begin, and

how shall I conquer its malice?”

 

Thus speaking he raised his gray, trembling head toward heaven, praying

and exclaiming from the depth of his heart to his Divine Master, himself

full of sadness and fear.

 

Meanwhile his prayer was interrupted by Lygia.

 

“The whole city is as if on fire,” said she.

 

In fact the sun went down that day in a marvellous manner. Its immense

shield had sunk half-way behind the Janiculum, the whole expanse of

heaven was filled with a red gleam. From the place on which they were

standing, Peter’s glance embraced large expanses. Somewhat to the right

they saw the long extending walls of the Circus Maximus; above it the

towering palaces of the Palatine; and directly in front of them, beyond

the Forum Boarium and the Velabrum, the summit of the Capitol, with the

temple of Jupiter. But the walls and the columns and the summits of the

temples were as if sunk in that golden and purple gleam. The parts of

the river visible from afar flowed as if in blood; and as the sun sank

moment after moment behind the mountain, the gleam became redder and

redder, more and more like a conflagration, and it increased and

extended till finally it embraced the seven hills, from which it

extended to the whole region about.

 

“The whole city seems on fire!” repeated Lygia.

 

Peter shaded his eyes with his hand, and said—

 

“The wrath of God is upon it.”