Read Ebook: The Chaldean Magician An Adventure in Rome in the Reign of the Emperor Diocletian by Eckstein Ernst Safford Mary J Translator

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Ebook has 305 lines and 22321 words, and 7 pages

Translator: Mary J. Safford

Transcriber's Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics , text enclosed by equal signs is in bold , and ^ encloses superscripted material.

Additional Transcriber's Notes are at the end.

THE CHALDEAN MAGICIAN

FROM THE GERMAN BY MARY J. SAFFORD

NEW YORK WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER 11 MURRAY STREET 1886

THE CHALDEAN MAGICIAN.

A cloudless October day, A. D. 299, was drawing to a close; the western sky behind the crest of Mt. Janiculum still glowed with crimson light, but the population in the streets and squares of the world's capital were already moving in a bluish twilight and yellow-red lamps shone, veiled by smoke, from the taverns of the many-gabled Subura.

A youth with a white toga thrown over his shoulders, coming from the Querquetulanian Gate, turned into the Cyprian Way. His manner of walking was somewhat peculiar. Sometimes he rushed hastily forward, like a man impatiently striving to reach his destination; at others he glanced hesitatingly around or stopped a few seconds as though repenting his design. Passing the Baths of Titus he perceived, only a few yards distant, another youth who had entered the Cyprian Way from a side street on the left and with bowed head was pursuing the same direction over the lava stones of the pavement. Looking more closely, he recognized a friend's countenance in the new-comer's pallid features.

It was nearly six weeks since he had seen pleasant Lucius Rutilius; for the two young men's paths in life were entirely different. While Rutilius, the son of a wealthy senator, was fond of moving in the most select circles of the capital, visiting the theatres, the races and combats in the arena, and during the summer spending his time alternately at his country estate in Etruria, the waterfalls of Tibur, the shore of the gulf of Baiae, or the strand of Antium, Caius Bononius, the son of a knight, led a somewhat secluded existence in the solitude of his study, allowing himself at the utmost a short trip during the hottest months to the world-renowned Diana's Mirror, the lovely secluded lake in the neighboring Alban Hills, where he owned a modest little garden. Spite of this diversity in external circumstances, the two young men cherished a deeply-rooted friendship for each other. Lucius Rutilius valued the comprehensive knowledge, insatiable thirst for information, and proud independence possessed by Caius Bononius; while the latter knew that Rutilius beheld the splendor of life in the great capital, not with the eyes of the coarse man of pleasure, but with those of the poet; that he revelled in the pomp of color, the luxury of eternal Rome, as the creative artist rejoiced in the effects of light and shade in a landscape; that amid this seething whirlpool he had preserved a warm heart, a noble unselfishness of nature.

At Caius' call Lucius Rutilius raised his head, covered with black, curling locks, as though startled from a deep reverie. A crimson flush, visible even in the gathering twilight, mounted to his brow, as if the other had caught him in forbidden paths.

"Is it you, Bononius?" he stammered. "Are you, too, to be met in the crowd of pedestrians? True, it's lonely enough here in the aristocratic Cyprian Way to allow you to indulge your taste for seclusion even while walking."

"I have really avoided all society during the last few weeks," replied Caius Bononius, "strange problems have engrossed my attention. But you--what brings you, without any companion, to this quarter of silence at this hour of the day? You used at this time to be reclining at table--with roses from Paestum in your hair and your glowing lips pressed to an exquisitely-polished murrhine cup, if not on the neck of some radiant young beauty."

Lucius blushed again.

"Things are different now," he replied with his eyes bent on the ground.

"How?" asked Caius Bononius in surprise. "Has my Lucius renounced the delights of the revel and the lustre of flower-wreathed triclinia?"

"Not entirely--but your remark about a young beauty--you needn't smile, Caius! In perfect truth: during the last month a change has taken place in this respect, which--how am I to say...?"

"How are you to speak? As you think! The confusion in your words distinctly shows how hard you are trying to conceal rather than disclose your thoughts. Come, Lucius! Have you so completely forgotten that we did not vow faith and friendship to each other only over the golden Falernian, that our relations have a deeper root? If things have occurred that influence your character, your views of the world, let me know what has affected you; for as a sincere, though half-superfluous friend, I have a right to your implicit confidence. As I live, you give me the impression that some important matter is in question. Speak, my Lucius! Have you, in contradiction to your whole past, thrown yourself into the study of philosophy? Have you come in contact with some saint of the sect of the Nazarenes and thus acquired a taste for the beautiful legends of the East?"

"Nothing of the sort," sighed Lucius, taking his friend by the arm and drawing him slowly along with him in the direction of the Subura. "You will laugh at me when you learn how your invincible Epicurean has fared at last.... Yes, you are right, Caius; it would be foolish if I wished to conceal from you, my faithful friend, what your penetration would nevertheless discover.... So know--but don't accuse me of weakness--I am desperately in love, not only with my eyes, as before, but body and soul, a second Troilus, a Leander who would breast the surges of every sea to at last clasp his Hero in his arms."

"You have often talked so," said Caius smiling.

"Talked, but never felt. The best proof of the genuineness of my emotions--to myself--is the ardor with which I long to lead the beloved maiden across my threshold as my wife. You know 'marriage' used to be a terrible word to me, Caius: now, since I have seen Hero--her name is really Hero, and she is the daughter of an aristocratic Sicilian--since that time I have known nothing sweeter than Hymen's torch, and longingly await the moment which, spite of all difficulties and disasters, must at last unite us."

"Difficulties?" repeated Bononius, pausing. "Does Hero deny her Leander the ardently-desired love? Has the handsome Rutilius for the first time wooed in vain?"

Lucius Rutilius gazed at the western sky as if he were examining the position of the stars.

"There is still time," he murmured, then turning to Bononius, added:

"Wooed in vain? No--yet it is almost the same thing. Does this contradiction seem to you an enigma? If you wish, you shall learn all--only not here, where the passers-by are growing more numerous and a listener might misuse my words. I have business on the northern slope of the Quirinal in about an hour--until then let us stay in my uncle Publius Calpurnius' house, here on the right of the Patrician Way. He is Caius Decius' guest to-day: we can walk up and down the portico undisturbed--and to be frank, I long to pour out my heart to you, receive your counsel."

Bononius hesitated. He seemed to be secretly making a hasty calculation.

"Well," he said at last, "if it won't occupy too much time.... You won't take it amiss, if I tell you that I, too, in an hour at latest...."

"Oh--I can explain everything in ten minutes."

Turning to the right, he drew his friend along with him, and a short time after they knocked at the door of a spacious mansion. The porter drew back the bolt, bowed, and ushered the two youths through the passage into the atrium.

The residence of Publius Calpurnius was one of the huge, luxurious edifices, which seemed to vie in extent with the immense palaces erected by the emperor Diocletian in Salona and Nicomedia. Of no unusual external magnificence and with a moderate fa?ade, it developed directly behind the atrium the most surprising size, stretching on the right and left over the ground naturally belonging to the neighboring houses and spreading towards the slope of the hill. Caius Bononius, who almost intentionally avoided the homes of Roman grandees, often as Lucius--at least in former days--had endeavored to draw his friend into the life and bustle of the capital, scanned with surprise and curiosity the magnificently-decorated structure, the halls of the two court-yards where a dozen gaily-clad slaves were just lighting the candelabra, the brilliant-hued paintings on the walls, the portrait-statues--men in somewhat un-Roman sleeved garments, and women with extremely realistic styles of hair-dressing which looked as if the latest coiffure of a fashionable visitor to the circus had served the sculptor for a model.

In fact, Lucius asserted that these styles of arranging the hair were removable, and could be taken from the statues' heads and exchanged for modern ones as fashion required--a triumph of the plastic art, as he ironically added.

So they walked through the second pillared court-yard to the garden. The dusky avenues of trees, whose spreading boughs still permitted enough of the fading daylight to enter to reveal the box-bordered gravelled paths, invited thoughtful, pleasant strolls, and the watchman at the back of the house afforded a sufficient guarantee that no intruder would steal after the youths.

"At the end of last month," Lucius Rutilius began, "Hero had firmly resolved to unite her life with mine. I made her acquaintance at Tibur, where her father had purchased Junius' Gellius' villa--it adjoins my own, you know--after the death of its first owner. Wandering through the park, I saw the bewitching girlish figure on the opposite side of the wall that divides Gellius' grounds from mine. Hero was standing in the shade of a laurel-bush, her fair hair adorned simply with a rose, scattering with her dainty little hands crumbs or corn, which she held gathered in her robe, to a fluttering cloud of sparrows. Concealed behind the pedestal of a goddess of autumn, I could watch her quietly without having my presence suspected.

"Ah, my dear Caius, I should vainly try to describe the subtle charm, childlike innocence, and enchanting grace revealed to me in that quarter of an hour! How she chatted with her prot?g?s, repelled the bold and encouraged the timid ones, how she jested and laughed, how her loose tunic slipped from her snowy shoulder--it was bewitching! In short, those fifteen minutes decided my fate. For the first time during a life of twenty-six years I experienced at the sight of a girl who charmed me a feeling of sacred reserve, a sort of reverence that made any wanton thought seem a crime. In my ardent dreams, which instantly twined with eager longing around this lovely apparition, I saw her only as the presiding mistress of my house, the ruler of my life...."

"It really appears to be a serious matter," murmured Caius Bononius. "Does the night-breeze rustling through the boughs deceive me, or what is it that makes your voice tremble so?"

"Do not doubt!" replied Rutilius. "What I feel for Hero is sacred enough to fill my heart with the emotions that seize devout worshippers at the presence of the goddess. Now hear the rest. Wholly absorbed by one thought, I returned to the house and pondered in solitude over the problem how I might succeed in reaching the desired goal. Usually--as you know--I was not embarrassed when in the society of beautiful girls and women; but here the often-tested art of crafty plans seemed to leave me in the lurch. After twenty absurdly tasteless ideas I resolved to ask Agathon--who also lived at Tibur--to take me with him as an uninvited guest to the next banquet given by her father, Heliodorus. A pretended desire to talk with him about the sale of a small grove would serve for an excuse. Agathon cast a strange glance at me when I informed him of my wish. Perhaps this sort of introduction was not the best, though I thought it so; for you, too, will some day learn, spite of all the wisdom that now fills your soul, that love makes even the most experienced people unskilful."

"On the contrary," replied Bononius, "I believe great passions render us inventive."

"We won't argue the point. Inventive perhaps in what is decisive, but foolish in every other respect.--Agathon consented, and on the third day the opportunity offered. Heliodorus received me with the manners of a polished man of the world, greeting me as a neighbor whose acquaintance he had long desired to make. As to the grove, about which I incoherently stammered a few words, he would consider the matter, and if he could really oblige me, would willingly make a sacrifice.

"The banquet passed without my even obtaining a glimpse of the object of my ardent longing; yet I might well be satisfied. From this hour the wall between our two estates was as it were demolished; an intercourse began, which after a short time developed into friendly relations, and now of course Hero, who had retired from the sight of the guests at the noisy drinking-bout, was visible at any hour of the day to the neighbor who came as it were clad in a tunic, to see her father.

"Let me say nothing about how it all happened. A hundred details gradually wove the certainty that the worthy Sicilian's daughter favored me, and one evening in the park, on the very spot under the laurel-bush where I had first beheld her, I kissed the words of consent from her quivering lips.

"Those were happy days, Bononius! We still kept our love concealed; not that we had reason to doubt her father's consent, but there was an indescribable charm in this mystery; I might say: we feared to profane our happiness, if we should draw aside the veil too soon. True, our relations did not wholly escape the excellent Heliodorus' notice. More than once, while wandering by Hero's side through the colonnades of the peristyle, I met his sympathizing smile, which seemed to say: 'Friend, I see through you, but am not angered by your secret suit.'

"The two girls were walking in the grounds just after sunrise, as they usually did in the morning. Suddenly a hideously-ugly old woman, dressed in rags, stood before the unsuspecting maidens, called three times in a shrill voice, with the expression of a Gorgon, a prophetic 'woe!', threw a roll at my trembling Hero's feet, and hastily vanished.

"'Olbasanus the Chaldean, the investigator of the future and warner of blinded humanity, writes this to Hero, the daughter of Heliodorus. The gods have announced to us that, inflamed with love for Lucius Rutilius, you cherish the design of accepting him for a husband. Olbasanus warns you against this intention, for his eye has read in the stars what horrible misfortunes threaten you and yours, especially Lucius Rutilius himself, if you carry out your resolve. As you might not believe my warning, I send you with this letter a sacred leaf from the book of the god Amun. Carry the page to the hearth, lay it on the stone flags, but so that the flames cannot reach it; bow thrice with clasped hands and await the divine revelation. Amun himself, with invisible finger, will write upon this page from his book and announce what is impending if you despise his sacred will.'

During the last few moments Caius Bononius had pressed his friend's arm more closely and showed other tokens of increasing interest.

"Olbasanus?" he now asked, as Lucius Rutilius paused a moment to take breath. "The Chaldean on the Quirinal?"

"The same. His name had already reached my ears, but I now learned for the first time his ghost-like influence and his power."

"Go on! go on!" urged Bononius.

"Well," continued the other, "this paper had been enough to throw the two girls into the utmost excitement. Lydia--an exception to her sex--had hitherto made no attempt to pry into her friend's secret, although she, too, had long since perceived our relations. Now, when the affair was so suddenly and unexpectedly revealed, she forgot the usual questions, amazement, congratulations. In her heartfelt anxiety she pressed into the rooms occupied by the head cook, impetuously sent away all the slaves, and told her friend to do what Olbasanus had directed. Hero, almost bereft of her senses, bowed thrice over the mysterious page and, after a few seconds, perceived with mysterious horror the black characters that were to announce what barred her happiness. She read: 'To the father, madness, to the daughter, blindness, to Lucius Rutilius, death.'"

"Unprecedented!" cried Caius Bononius. "And a strange coincidence!"

"What do you mean by that?" asked Rutilius.

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