The Last Days of Pompeii Part 25

'Could that mountain have any connection with the last night's earthquake? They say that, ages ago, almost in the earliest era of tradition, it gave forth fires as AEtna still. Perhaps the flames yet lurk and dart beneath.'

'It is possible,' said Glaucus, musingly.

'Thou sayest thou art slow to believe in magic,' said Nydia, suddenly.

'I have heard that a potent witch dwells amongst the scorched caverns of the mountain, and yon cloud may be the dim shadow of the demon she confers with.'

'Thou art full of the romance of thy native Thessaly,' said Glaucus; 'and a strange mixture of sense and all conflicting superst.i.tions.'

'We are ever superst.i.tious in the dark,' replied Nydia. 'Tell me,' she added, after a slight pause, 'tell me, O Glaucus! do all that are beautiful resemble each other? They say you are beautiful, and Ione also. Are your faces then the same? I fancy not, yet it ought to be so.'

'Fancy no such grievous wrong to Ione,' answered Glaucus, laughing.

'But we do not, alas! resemble each other, as the homely and the beautiful sometimes do. Ione's hair is dark, mine light; Ione's eyes are--what color, Ione? I cannot see, turn them to me. Oh, are they black? no, they are too soft. Are they blue? no, they are too deep: they change with every ray of the sun--I know not their color: but mine, sweet Nydia, are grey, and bright only when Ione s.h.i.+nes on them! Ione's cheek is...'

'I do not understand one word of thy description,' interrupted Nydia, peevishly. 'I comprehend only that you do not resemble each other, and I am glad of it.'

'Why, Nydia?' said Ione.

Nydia colored slightly. 'Because,' she replied, coldly, 'I have always imagined you under different forms, and one likes to know one is right.'

'And what hast thou imagined Glaucus to resemble?' asked Ione, softly.

'Music!' replied Nydia, looking down.

'Thou art right,' thought Ione.

'And what likeness hast thou ascribed to Ione?'

'I cannot tell yet,' answered the blind girl; 'I have not yet known her long enough to find a shape and sign for my guesses.'

'I will tell thee, then,' said Glaucus, pa.s.sionately; 'she is like the sun that warms--like the wave that refreshes.'

'The sun sometimes scorches, and the wave sometimes drowns,' answered Nydia.

'Take then these roses,' said Glaucus; 'let their fragrance suggest to thee Ione.'

'Alas, the roses will fade!' said the Neapolitan, archly.

Thus conversing, they wore away the hours; the lovers, conscious only of the brightness and smiles of love; the blind girl feeling only its darkness--its tortures--the fierceness of jealousy and its woe!

And now, as they drifted on, Glaucus once more resumed the lyre, and woke its strings with a careless hand to a strain, so wildly and gladly beautiful, that even Nydia was aroused from her reverie, and uttered a cry of admiration.

'Thou seest, my child,' cried Glaucus, 'that I can yet redeem the character of love's music, and that I was wrong in saying happiness could not be gay. Listen, Nydia! listen, dear Ione! and hear:

THE BIRTH OF LOVE

I

Like a Star in the seas above, Like a Dream to the waves of sleep-- Up--up--THE INCARNATE LOVE-- She rose from the charmed deep!

And over the Cyprian Isle The skies shed their silent smile; And the Forest's green heart was rife With the stir of the gus.h.i.+ng life-- The life that had leap'd to birth, In the veins of the happy earth!

Hail! oh, hail!

The dimmest sea-cave below thee, The farthest sky-arch above, In their innermost stillness know thee: And heave with the Birth of Love!

Gale! soft Gale!

Thou comest on thy silver winglets, From thy home in the tender west, Now fanning her golden ringlets, Now hush'd on her heaving breast.

And afar on the murmuring sand, The Seasons wait hand in hand To welcome thee, Birth Divine, To the earth which is henceforth thine.

II

Behold! how she kneels in the sh.e.l.l, Bright pearl in its floating cell!

Behold! how the sh.e.l.l's rose-hues, The cheek and the breast of snow, And the delicate limbs suffuse, Like a blush, with a bashful glow.

Sailing on, slowly sailing O'er the wild water; All hail! as the fond light is hailing Her daughter, All hail!

We are thine, all thine evermore: Not a leaf on the laughing sh.o.r.e, Not a wave on the heaving sea, Nor a single sigh In the boundless sky, But is vow'd evermore to thee!

III

And thou, my beloved one--thou, As I gaze on thy soft eyes now, Methinks from their depths I view The Holy Birth born anew; Thy lids are the gentle cell Where the young Love blus.h.i.+ng lies; See! she breaks from the mystic sh.e.l.l, She comes from thy tender eyes!

Hail! all hail!

She comes, as she came from the sea, To my soul as it looks on thee; She comes, she comes!

She comes, as she came from the sea, To my soul as it looks on thee!

Hail! all hail!

Chapter III

THE CONGREGATION.

FOLLOWED by Apaecides, the Nazarene gained the side of the Sarnus--that river, which now has shrunk into a petty stream, then rushed gaily into the sea, covered with countless vessels, and reflecting on its waves the gardens, the vines, the palaces, and the temples of Pompeii. From its more noisy and frequented banks, Olinthus directed his steps to a path which ran amidst a shady vista of trees, at the distance of a few paces from the river. This walk was in the evening a favorite resort of the Pompeians, but during the heat and business of the day was seldom visited, save by some groups of playful children, some meditative poet, or some disputative philosophers. At the side farthest from the river, frequent copses of box interspersed the more delicate and evanescent foliage, and these were cut into a thousand quaint shapes, sometimes into the forms of fauns and satyrs, sometimes into the mimicry of Egyptian pyramids, sometimes into the letters that composed the name of a popular or eminent citizen. Thus the false taste is equally ancient as the pure; and the retired traders of Hackney and Paddington, a century ago, were little aware, perhaps, that in their tortured yews and sculptured box, they found their models in the most polished period of Roman antiquity, in the gardens of Pompeii, and the villas of the fastidious Pliny.

This walk now, as the noonday sun shone perpendicularly through the chequered leaves, was entirely deserted; at least no other forms than those of Olinthus and the priest infringed upon the solitude. They sat themselves on one of the benches, placed at intervals between the trees, and facing the faint breeze that came languidly from the river, whose waves danced and sparkled before them--a singular and contrasted pair; the believer in the latest--the priest of the most ancient--wors.h.i.+p of the world!

'Since thou leftst me so abruptly,' said Olinthus, 'hast thou been happy? has thy heart found contentment under these priestly robes? hast thou, still yearning for the voice of G.o.d, heard it whisper comfort to thee from the oracles of Isis? That sigh, that averted countenance, give me the answer my soul predicted.'

'Alas!' answered Apaecides, sadly, 'thou seest before thee a wretched and distracted man! From my childhood upward I have idolized the dreams of virtue! I have envied the holiness of men who, in caves and lonely temples, have been admitted to the companions.h.i.+p of beings above the world; my days have been consumed with feverish and vague desires; my nights with mocking but solemn visions. Seduced by the mystic prophecies of an impostor, I have indued these robes;--my nature (I confess it to thee frankly)--my nature has revolted at what I have seen and been doomed to share in! Searching after truth, I have become but the minister of falsehoods. On the evening in which we last met, I was buoyed by hopes created by that same impostor, whom I ought already to have better known. I have--no matter--no matter! suffice it, I have added perjury and sin to rashness and to sorrow. The veil is now rent for ever from my eyes; I behold a villain where I obeyed a demiG.o.d; the earth darkens in my sight; I am in the deepest abyss of gloom; I know not if there be G.o.ds above; if we are the things of chance; if beyond the bounded and melancholy present there is annihilation or an hereafter--tell me, then, thy faith; solve me these doubts, if thou hast indeed the power!'

'I do not marvel,' answered the Nazarene, 'that thou hast thus erred, or that thou art thus sceptic. Eighty years ago there was no a.s.surance to man of G.o.d, or of a certain and definite future beyond the grave. New laws are declared to him who has ears--a heaven, a true Olympus, is revealed to him who has eyes--heed then, and listen.'

And with all the earnestness of a man believing ardently himself, and zealous to convert, the Nazarene poured forth to Apaecides the a.s.surances of Scriptural promise. He spoke first of the sufferings and miracles of Christ--he wept as he spoke: he turned next to the glories of the Saviour's Ascension--to the clear predictions of Revelation. He described that pure and unsensual heaven destined to the virtuous--those fires and torments that were the doom of guilt.

The doubts which spring up to the mind of later reasoners, in the immensity of the sacrifice of G.o.d to man, were not such as would occur to an early heathen. He had been accustomed to believe that the G.o.ds had lived upon earth, and taken upon themselves the forms of men; had shared in human pa.s.sions, in human labours, and in human misfortunes.

What was the travail of his own Alcmena's son, whose altars now smoked with the incense of countless cities, but a toil for the human race?

Had not the great Dorian Apollo expiated a mystic sin by descending to the grave? Those who were the deities of heaven had been the lawgivers or benefactors on earth, and grat.i.tude had led to wors.h.i.+p. It seemed therefore, to the heathen, a doctrine neither new nor strange, that Christ had been sent from heaven, that an immortal had indued mortality, and tasted the bitterness of death. And the end for which He thus toiled and thus suffered--how far more glorious did it seem to Apaecides than that for which the deities of old had visited the nether world, and pa.s.sed through the gates of death! Was it not worthy of a G.o.d to, descend to these dim valleys, in order to clear up the clouds gathered over the dark mount beyond--to satisfy the doubts of sages--to convert speculation into certainty--by example to point out the rules of life--by revelation to solve the enigma of the grave--and to prove that the soul did not yearn in vain when it dreamed of an immortality? In this last was the great argument of those lowly men destined to convert the earth. As nothing is more flattering to the pride and the hopes of man than the belief in a future state, so nothing could be more vague and confused than the notions of the heathen sages upon that mystic subject. Apaecides had already learned that the faith of the philosophers was not that of the herd; that if they secretly professed a creed in some diviner power, it was not the creed which they thought it wise to impart to the community. He had already learned, that even the priest ridiculed what he preached to the people--that the notions of the few and the many were never united. But, in this new faith, it seemed to him that philosopher, priest, and people, the expounders of the religion and its followers, were alike accordant: they did not speculate and debate upon immortality, they spoke of as a thing certain and a.s.sured; the magnificence of the promise dazzled him--its consolations soothed. For the Christian faith made its early converts among sinners!

many of its fathers and its martyrs were those who had felt the bitterness of vice, and who were therefore no longer tempted by its false aspect from the paths of an austere and uncompromising virtue.

All the a.s.surances of this healing faith invited to repentance--they were peculiarly adapted to the bruised and sore of spirit! the very remorse which Apaecides felt for his late excesses, made him incline to one who found holiness in that remorse, and who whispered of the joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.

'Come,' said the Nazarene, as he perceived the effect he had produced, 'come to the humble hall in which we meet--a select and a chosen few; listen there to our prayers; note the sincerity of our repentant tears; mingle in our simple sacrifice--not of victims, nor of garlands, but offered by white-robed thoughts upon the altar of the heart. The flowers that we lay there are imperishable--they bloom over us when we are no more; nay, they accompany us beyond the grave, they spring up beneath our feet in heaven, they delight us with an eternal odor, for they are of the soul, they partake of its nature; these offerings are temptations overcome, and sins repented. Come, oh come! lose not another moment; prepare already for the great, the awful journey, from darkness to light, from sorrow to bliss, from corruption to immortality! This is the day of the Lord the Son, a day that we have set apart for our devotions. Though we meet usually at night, yet some amongst us are gathered together even now. What joy, what triumph, will be with us all, if we can bring one stray lamb into the sacred fold!'

There seemed to Apaecides, so naturally pure of heart, something ineffably generous and benign in that spirit of conversation which animated Olinthus--a spirit that found its own bliss in the happiness of others--that sought in its wide sociality to make companions for eternity. He was touched, softened, and subdued. He was not in that mood which can bear to be left alone; curiosity, too, mingled with his purer stimulants--he was anxious to see those rites of which so many dark and contradictory rumours were afloat. He paused a moment, looked over his garb, thought of Arbaces, shuddered with horror, lifted his eyes to the broad brow of the Nazarene, intent, anxious, watchful--but for his benefits, for his salvation! He drew his cloak round him, so as wholly to conceal his robes, and said, 'Lead on, I follow thee.'