Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 23

"Hear me to the end," he begged, "and you will find that I am talking not treason but patriotism."

I grunted and he went on.

"Many of us are of the opinion that the Republic, which was never as prosperous as within the past eighty years, is in grave danger of losing much of its Empire, so gloriously extended by Trajan, so well maintained by his three successors, if it continues to be neglected and mismanaged as it is. To save the commonwealth and retain its provinces we must have a Caesar competent, diligent, discreet and brave; and not one of these epithets can be properly applied to the autocrat now in power. We feel that he must be removed and that there must be subst.i.tuted for him a ruler who is all that the State needs and has the right to expect."

"Fine words," I said. "Masking a conspiracy to a.s.sa.s.sinate our Emperor."

He looked shocked and pained.

"Hear me out," he pleaded.

"I am curious, I confess," I admitted, "to learn what all this has to do with reconciling Vedius and Satronius and regaining me the good graces of both. I ought to terminate the interview, but I am weak. Go on."

"Naturally," he said, "both Vedius and Satronius resent what the Emperor did and said concerning your entanglement in their feud and they are both infuriated at their humiliation and at the effective means he took to tie their hands as far as concerns you and to ensure your safety, as far as they were concerned."

"Commodus," I interrupted, "is not altogether a bungler when he gives his mind to the duties of his office."

"May I go on?" Capito enquired, mildly, even reproachfully and, I might say, irresistibly. He was a born leader of a conspiracy, for few men could be alone with him and not fall under his influence.

"Go on," I said. "I am consumed with curiosity to discover how their rage at the Emperor could lead to a reconciliation between them."

"It is not obvious, I admit," he said, "but when I explain, you will see how naturally, how inevitably a reconciliation might be expected to result.

"You have seen, perhaps often, a peasant or laborer beating his wife?"

"Everybody has," I replied. "What has that to do with what you were talking of?"

"Be patient!" he pleaded. "You have seen some bystander interfere in such a domestic fracas?"

"Often," I agreed.

"You have also seen," he continued, "not only the husband turn on the outsider, but the wife join her spouse in attacking her would-be rescuer, have seen both trounce the interloper and in their mutual help forget their late antagonism."

"Certainly," I agreed.

"Well," he pursued, "human nature, male or female, low-life or high-life, is the same in essence. Vedius and Satronius are so incensed with Caesar for balking their appet.i.te for revenge on you that they are thirsting for revenge on Caesar and ready to forget all their hereditary animosities and join in abasing him. In fact, they have joined the league of patriots of which I am the leader. And they are so bent on their new purpose that they are ready to be hearty friends to anyone sworn as our confederate. I can arrange to obliterate, even to annihilate forever, all trace of enmity between you and either of them, if you will but agree to let your natural inherent patriotism overcome all other feelings in your heart and aid us to abolish the shame of our Republic and to safeguard the Commonwealth and the Empire."

All this while I had been half listening to him, half occupied in trying to recall where I had seen the man who had stepped through the postern. At this instant, as Capito paused, I suddenly realized that he was the immobile horseman whom we had twice pa.s.sed in the rain by the roadside the morning I had started from my villa for Rome. His hooked nose was unmistakable.

Somehow this realization, along with the recollection of what Tanno had said of the fellow, woke me to a sense of the danger to which I was exposed by being with Capito and also to a sense of the craziness of his ideas and plans.

I felt my face redden.

"You have said enough!" I cut him short. "I perfectly understand. You think yourself the destined savior of Rome and the deviser of priceless plans for Rome's future. You are not so much a conspirator as a lunatic.

Your schemes are half idiocy, half moons.h.i.+ne. I have pledged you my word to be secret as to what you have told me. My pledge holds if you now keep silent, rise from this seat and walk straight out to your litter, by the same way by which you came from it. If you utter another syllable to me, if you do not rise promptly, if you hesitate about going, if you linger on your path, I'll call my litter, I'll go straight to the Palace, I'll ask for a private audience, I'll wait till I get one, I'll tell the Emperor every word you have said to me. If you want protection for yourself from my pledge, leave me. Go!"

He gave one glance at me and went.

CHAPTER IX

THE SQUALL OF THE LEOPARD

When he was gone, when I had seen the postern door shut behind him, I felt suddenly weak and faint. I was amazed to find how exhausted I was left by the ebbing of the hot wave of indignation and rage which had surged through me as I revolted from his absurd and contemptible proposals. I felt flaccid and limp.

At this instant Agathemer brought me a tray of food. My impulse was to burst out at him with reproaches for having, without consulting me, presumed to arrange for me an interview with a man not among my intimates.

But I was so enraged that I dreaded the effect on me, in my weakened state, if I let myself go in respect to rebuking my slave. I kept silent and was mildly surprised to find myself tempted by the food. I ate and drank all that was on the tray, and Agathemer vanished noiselessly, without a word.

I sat there, revived by the food and wine, feeling the weakness caused by my rage gradually pa.s.sing off and meditating on the sudden change in my condition. Before Capito accosted me I had felt perfectly well and was looking forward to resuming my normal life next day, to going to the Palace Levee, to enjoying a bath with my acquaintances at the Thermae of t.i.tus. Since Capito had left me I had felt so overcome that I was ready to look forward to some days yet of strict regimen and isolation.

Thus meditating I was again aware of footsteps on the walk.

I looked up and was more amazed than when I had caught sight of Capito.

Approaching me, but a few paces from me, was one of the most detestable bores in Rome, a man whom I sedulously avoided, Faltonius Bambilio. His father, the Pontifex of Vesta, was an offensively and absurdly unctuous and pompous man. His son, who had already held several minor offices in the City Government, had been one of the quaestors the year before, and so was now a senator. But he was, as he always had been, as he remained, a b.o.o.by. I do not believe that there was any man in Rome I detested so heartily.

He greeted me as if he had a right to my notice and said:

"I was told that Egnatius Capito was in this garden."

"He was," I replied curtly, "but he has left it."

"I certainly am disappointed," he said, seating himself by me, uninvited.

"I particularly wanted to speak to Capito at once."

"You might find him at his house," I suggested.

But Bambilio was impervious to suggestions.

"I wanted to talk to him and you together," he said, "but that can be managed some other time."

I was about to reply tartly, but I remembered how my irritation with Capito had affected me and recalled Galen's injunction that I must avoid all causes of excitement and emotion. I held my peace.

Bambilio, as if he had been an intimate and had been specially invited, lolled comfortably on the bench and gazed approvingly about.

"Fine garden, Andivius," he said. "Fine trees, fine flowers and I say, what a jewel of a slave-girl, eh! Hedulio!"

I could have hit him, I was so incensed at his familiarity, I was already choking with internal rage at Agathemer for having let anyone in to talk to me in that garden, still more at his having done so without consulting me and most of all that after doing so he had not made sure that no one but Capito could pa.s.s the postern door. But I almost exploded into voluble wrath when I looked where he indicated, saw a pretty, shapely young woman in the scanty attire of a slave-girl picking flag-flowers into a basket she carried, and recognized Vedia. That Agathemer's presumption should have spoiled the interview with Vedia which she and Nemestronia had manifestly arranged for us, that it should have exposed Vedia in her undignified disguise to recognition by the greatest a.s.s and blatherskite in the senate, this infuriated me till I felt internally like Aetna or Vesuvius on the verge of eruption.

Vedia, for it was she, had evidently been approaching me circuitously, hoping to be noticed and hailed from afar. Now when she was near enough for not merely a lover but for any acquaintance to recognize her, she looked up at me over her basket as she laid a flower-stalk in it.

Instantly her face flamed, she turned away and went on picking flowers diligently. After she had moved a few steps she sprang into the path and scampered off like a child, her basket swinging, vanis.h.i.+ng through a door in the upper wall on my left.

"Neat little piece!" Bambilio commented. "Taking, and every part of her pretty. Fine calves, especially."

I was by this time in a condition which, had I been old and fat, must have brought on an apoplexy. But my hot rage cooled to an icy haughtiness, and, though it took a weary, tedious long time, I kept my temper and my demeanor, look, tone and word, managed to convey to him, even through the thick armor of his self-conceit, that he was not welcome. He rose, said farewell and waddled off to the postern. As soon as he was outside, more rapidly than I had moved since I was felled in the roadside affray, I walked to that door and made sure that it was bolted.