Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz (read after .TXT) 📗

Vinicius, who was superstitious also, looked at Petronius with sudden and great fear.

“If Ursus could not have men to help him, and was not able to take her alone, who could take her?”

Petronius began to laugh.

“See,” said he, “they will believe, since thou art half a believer thyself. Such is our society, which ridicules the gods. They, too, will believe, and they will not look for her. Meanwhile we shall put her away somewhere far off from the city, in some villa of mine or thine.”

“But who could help her?”

“Her coreligionists,” answered Petronius.

“Who are they? What deity does she worship? I ought to know that better than thou.”

“Nearly every woman in Rome honors a different one. It is almost beyond doubt that Pomponia reared her in the religion of that deity which she herself worships; what one she worships I know not. One thing is certain, that no person has seen her make an offering to our gods in any temple. They have accused her even of being a Christian; but that is not possible; a domestic tribunal cleared her of the charge. They say that Christians not only worship an ass’s head, but are enemies of the human race, and permit the foulest crimes. Pomponia cannot be a Christian, as her virtue is known, and an enemy of the human race could not treat slaves as she does.”

“In no house are they treated as at Aulus’s,” interrupted Vinicius.

“Ah! Pomponia mentioned to me some god, who must be one powerful and merciful. Where she has put away all the others is her affair; it is enough that that Logos of hers cannot be very mighty, or rather he must be a very weak god, since he has had only two adherents⁠—Pomponia and Lygia⁠—and Ursus in addition. It must be that there are more of those adherents, and that they assisted Lygia.”

“That faith commands forgiveness,” said Vinicius. “At Acte’s I met Pomponia, who said to me: ‘May God forgive thee the evil which thou hast done to us and to Lygia.’ ”

“Evidently their God is some curator who is very mild. Ha! let him forgive thee, and in sign of forgiveness return thee the maiden.”

“I would offer him a hecatomb tomorrow! I have no wish for food, or the bath, or sleep. I will take a dark lantern and wander through the city. Perhaps I shall find her in disguise. I am sick.”

Petronius looked at him with commiseration. In fact, there was blue under his eyes, his pupils were gleaming with fever, his unshaven beard indicated a dark strip on his firmly outlined jaws, his hair was in disorder, and he was really like a sick man. Iras and the golden-haired Eunice looked at him also with sympathy; but he seemed not to see them, and he and Petronius took no notice whatever of the slave women, just as they would not have noticed dogs moving around them.

“Fever is tormenting thee,” said Petronius.

“It is.”

“Then listen to me. I know not what the doctor has prescribed to thee, but I know how I should act in thy place. Till this lost one is found I should seek in another that which for the moment has gone from me with her. I saw splendid forms at thy villa. Do not contradict me. I know what love is; and I know that when one is desired another cannot take her place. But in a beautiful slave it is possible to find even momentary distraction.”

“I do not need it,” said Vinicius.

But Petronius, who had for him a real weakness, and who wished to soften his pain, began to meditate how he might do so.

“Perhaps thine have not for thee the charm of novelty,” said he, after a while (and here he began to look in turn at Iras and Eunice, and finally he placed his palm on the hip of the golden-haired Eunice). “Look at this grace! for whom some days since Fonteius Capito the younger offered three wonderful boys from Clazomenae. A more beautiful figure than hers even Skopas himself has not chiseled. I myself cannot tell why I have remained indifferent to her thus far, since thoughts of Chrysothemis have not restrained me. Well, I give her to thee; take her for thyself!”

When the golden-haired Eunice heard this, she grew pale in one moment, and, looking with frightened eyes on Vinicius, seemed to wait for his answer without breath in her breast.

But he sprang up suddenly, and, pressing his temples with his hands, said quickly, like a man who is tortured by disease, and will not hear anything⁠—“No, no! I care not for her! I care not for others! I thank thee, but I do not want her. I will seek that one through the city. Give command to bring me a Gallic cloak with a hood. I will go beyond the Tiber⁠—if I could see even Ursus.”

And he hurried away. Petronius, seeing that he could not remain in one place, did not try to detain him. Taking, however, his refusal as a temporary dislike for all women save Lygia, and not wishing his own magnanimity to go for naught, he said, turning to the slave⁠—“Eunice, thou wilt bathe and anoint thyself, then dress: after that thou wilt go to the house of Vinicius.”

But she dropped before him on her knees, and with joined palms implored him not to remove her from the house. She would not go to Vinicius, she said. She would rather carry fuel to the hypocaustum in his house than be chief servant in that of Vinicius. She would not, she could not go; and she begged him to have pity on her. Let him give command to flog her daily, only not send her away.

And trembling like a leaf with fear and excitement, she stretched her hands to him, while he listened with amazement. A slave who ventured to beg relief from the fulfillment of a command, who said “I will not and I cannot,” was something