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

Chapter LXV

Evening exhibitions, rare up to that period and given only

exceptionally, became common in Nero’s time, both in the Circus and

amphitheatre. The Augustians liked them, frequently because they were

followed by feasts and drinking-bouts which lasted till daylight.

Though the people were sated already with blood-spilling, still, when

the news went forth that the end of the games was approaching, and that

the last of the Christians were to die at an evening spectacle, a

countless audience assembled in the amphitheatre. The Augustians came

to a man, for they understood that it would not be a common spectacle;

they knew that Cæsar had determined to make for himself a tragedy out of

the suffering of Vinicius. Tigellinus had kept secret the kind of

punishment intended for the betrothed of the young tribune; but that

merely roused general curiosity. Those who had seen Lygia at the house

of Plautius told wonders of her beauty. Others were occupied above all

with the question, would they see her really on the arena that day; for

many of those who had heard the answer given Petronius and Nerva by

Cæsar explained it in two ways: some supposed simply that Nero would

give or perhaps had given the maiden to Vinicius; they remembered that

she was a hostage, hence free to worship whatever divinities she liked,

and that the law of nations did not permit her punishment.

 

Uncertainty, waiting, and curiosity had mastered all spectators. Cæsar

arrived earlier than usual; and immediately at his coming people

whispered that something uncommon would happen, for besides Tigellinus

and Vatinius, Cæsar had with him Cassius, a centurion of enormous size

and gigantic strength, whom he summoned only when he wished to have a

defender at his side,—for example, when he desired night expeditions to

the Subura, where he arranged the amusement called “sagatio,” which

consisted in tossing on a soldier’s mantle maidens met on the way. It

was noted also that certain precautions had been taken in the

amphitheatre itself. The pretorian guards were increased; command over

them was held, not by a centurion, but by the tribune Subrius Flavius,

known hitherto for blind attachment to Nero. It was understood, then,

that Cæsar wished in every case to guard himself against an outburst of

despair from Vinicius, and curiosity rose all the more.

 

Every eye was turned with strained gaze to the place where the

unfortunate lover was sitting. He was exceedingly pale, and his

forehead was covered with drops of sweat; he was in as much doubt as

were other spectators, but alarmed to the lowest depth of his soul.

Petronius knew not what would happen; he was silent, except that, while

turning from Nerva, he asked Vinicius whether he was ready for

everything, and next, whether he would remain at the spectacle. To both

questions Vinicius answered “Yes,” but a shudder passed through his

whole body; he divined that Petronius did not ask without reason. For

some time he had lived with only half his life,—he had sunk in death,

and reconciled himself to Lygia’s death, since for both it was to be

liberation and marriage; but he learned now that it was one thing to

think of the last moment when it was distant as of a quiet dropping

asleep, and another to look at the torment of a person dearer to one

than life. All sufferings endured formerly rose in him anew. Despair,

which had been set at rest, began again to cry in his soul; the former

desire to save Lygia at any price seized him anew. Beginning with the

morning, he had tried to go to the cunicula to be sure that she was

there; but the pretorians watched every entrance, and orders were so

strict that the soldiers, even those whom he knew, would not be softened

by prayers or gold. It seemed to the tribune that uncertainty would

kill him before he should see the spectacle. Somewhere at the bottom of

his heart the hope was still throbbing, that perhaps Lygia was not in

the amphitheatre, that his fears were groundless. At times he seized on

this hope with all his strength. He said in his soul that Christ might

take her to Himself out of the prison, but could not permit her torture

in the Circus. Formerly he was resigned to the divine will in

everything; now, when repulsed from the doors of the cunicula, he

returned to his place in the amphitheatre, and when he learned, from the

curious glances turned on him, that the most dreadful suppositions might

be true, he began to implore in his soul with passionateness almost

approaching a threat. “Thou canst!” repeated he, clenching his fists

convulsively, “Thou canst!” Hitherto he had not supposed that that

moment when present would be so terrible. Now, without clear

consciousness of what was happening in his mind, he had the feeling that

if he should see Lygia tortured, his love for God would be turned to

hatred, and his faith to despair. But he was amazed at the feeling, for

he feared to offend Christ, whom he was imploring for mercy and

miracles. He implored no longer for her life; he wished merely that she

should die before they brought her to the arena, and from the abyss of

his pain he repeated in spirt: “Do not refuse even this, and I will

love Thee still more than hitherto.” And then his thoughts raged as a

sea torn by a whirlwind. A desire for blood and vengeance was roused in

him. He was seized by a mad wish to rush at Nero and stifle him there

in presence of all the spectators; but he felt that desire to be a new

offence against Christ, and a breach of His command. To his head flew

at times flashes of hope that everything before which his soul was

trembling would be turned aside by an almighty and merciful hand; but

they were quenched at once, as if in measureless sorrow that He who

could destroy that Circus with one word and save Lygia had abandoned

her, though she trusted in Him and loved Him with all the strength of

her pure heart. And he thought, moreover, that she was lying there in

that dark place, weak, defenceless, deserted, abandoned to the whim or

disfavor of brutal guards, drawing her last breath, perhaps, while he

had to wait, helpless, in that dreadful amphitheatre, without knowing

what torture was prepared for her, or what he would witness in a moment.

Finally, as a man falling over a precipice grasps at everything which

grows on the edge of it, so did he grasp with both hands at the thought

that faith of itself could save her. That one method remained! Peter

had said that faith could move the earth to its foundations.

 

Hence he rallied; he crushed doubt in himself, he compressed his whole

being into the sentence, “I believe,” and he looked for a miracle.

 

But as an overdrawn cord may break, so exertion broke him. The pallor

of death covered his face, and his body relaxed. He thought then that

his prayer had been heard, for he was dying. It seemed to him that

Lygia must surely die too, and that Christ would take them to Himself in

that way. The arena, the white togas, the countless spectators, the

light of thousands of lamps and torches, all vanished from his vision.

 

But his weakness did not last long. After a while he roused himself, or

rather the stamping of the impatient multitude roused him.

 

“Thou art ill,” said Petronius; “give command to bear thee home.”

 

And without regard to what Cæsar would say, he rose to support Vinicius

and go out with him. His heart was filled with pity, and, moreover, he

was irritated beyond endurance because Cæsar was looking through the

emerald at Vinicius, studying his pain with satisfaction, to describe it

afterwards, perhaps, in pathetic strophes, and win the applause of

hearers.

 

Vinicius shook his head. He might die in that amphitheatre, but he

could not go out of it. Moreover the spectacle might begin any moment.

 

In fact, at that very instant almost, the prefect of the city waved a

red handkerchief, the hinges opposite Cæsar’s podium creaked, and out of

the dark gully came Ursus into the brightly lighted arena.

 

The giant blinked, dazed evidently by the glitter of the arena; then he

pushed into the centre, gazing around as if to see what he had to meet.

It was known to all the Augustians and to most of the spectators that he

was the man who had stifled Croton; hence at sight of him a murmur

passed along every bench. In Rome there was no lack of gladiators

larger by far than the common measure of man, but Roman eyes had never

seen the like of Ursus. Cassius, standing in Cæsar’s podium, seemed

puny compared with that Lygian. Senators, vestals, Cæsar, the

Augustians, and the people gazed with the delight of experts at his

mighty limbs as large as tree-trunks, at his breast as large as two

shields joined together, and his arms of a Hercules. The murmur rose

every instant. For those multitudes there could be no higher pleasure

than to look at those muscles in play in the exertion of a struggle.

The murmur rose to shouts, and eager questions were put: “Where do the

people live who can produce such a giant?” He stood there, in the

middle of the amphitheatre, naked, more like a stone colossus than a

man, with a collected expression, and at the same time the sad look of a

barbarian; and while surveying the empty arena, he gazed wonderingly

with his blue childlike eyes, now at the spectators, now at Cæsar, now

at the grating of the cunicula, whence, as he thought, his executioners

would come.

 

At the moment when he stepped into the arena his simple heart was

beating for the last time with the hope that perhaps a cross was waiting

for him; but when he saw neither the cross nor the hole in which it

might be put, he thought that he was unworthy of such favor,—that he

would find death in another way, and