CHAPTER XII.
THE TABLETS.
Elymas the sorcerer stood bowing before Domitia, his hands crossed uponhis breast.
She looked scrutinizingly into his dark face, but could read nothingthere. He remained immovable and silent before her, awaiting theannouncement of her will.
"I have sent for thee," she said. "How long, I would know, before thesixth veil falls?"
"Lady and Augusta," answered the Magian, "remember that when thou lookestout upon the Sabine Mountains, on one day all is so distinct that thouwouldst suppose a walk of an hour would bring thee to them. On the morrow,the range is so faint and so remote, that thou wouldst consider it mustrequire days of travel to attain their roots. It is so with the Future. Welook into its distance and behold forms--but whether near or far we knownot. This only do we say with confidence, that we are aware of theirsuccession, but not of their nearness or remoteness."
"What! and the stars, will they not help thee?"
"There is at this time an ominous conjuncture of planets."
"I pray thee, spare me the details, and tell me that which they portend."
"Is it thine own future, Augusta, thou desirest to look into?"
"Elymas, my story has been unfolded--to what an extent it has been managedby such as thyself, that I cannot judge. But of a certainty it was thouwho didst contrive that I was carried away from my husband's house. Thenwhat followed, the Gods know how far thou wast in it, but I have heard itsaid that the God Titus would not have had his mortal thread cut short butthat, when in fever, thou didst persuade him to a bath in snow water. Itis very easy to predict what will be, when with our hands we mould thefuture. And now--I care not whether thou makest or predictest what is tobe--but an end there must be, and that a speedy one--for thine own safetyhangs thereon."
"How so, lady?"
"The Augustus has been greatly alarmed of late at sinister omens andprophesies; and he attributes them to thee. Perhaps," with a scornfulintonation, "he also is aware that fulfilment is assured before a prophesyis given out."
The Magus remained motionless, but his face became pale.
"I know, because at supper with his intimates, Messala and Regulus andCarus, he swore by the Gods he would have you cast to savage dogs, and hewould make an example of such as filled men's minds with expectation ofevil."
"Lady----"
But Domitia interrupted him. "Thou thinkest that I say this to alarm theeand bend thee to my will. If the Augustus has his spies that watch andrepeat to him whatsoever I do, whomsoever I see, almost every word Isay--shall not I also have a watch put upon him? Even now, Magus, that Ihave sent for thee, and that thou art closely consulted by me this hasbeen carried to his ears, and as he knows how I esteem him, he will thinkthis interview bodes him no good."
"When, Lady Augusta, was this said?"
"The Emperor is this day returned from Albanum, and the threat was madebut yesterday. Who can say but that the order has already been given forthy arrest, and for the gathering together of the dogs that are to rendthee."
The man became alarmed and moved uneasily.
"Magus," said Domitia, "I cannot save thee, thine own wits must do that.Find it written in the stars that thy life is so bound up with that of theCaesar, that the death of one is the extinction of the other; or that thouholdest so potent a charm that if thou wilt thou canst employ it for hisdestruction. It is not for me to point out how thou mayest twist out ofhis grasp--thou art a very eel for slipperiness, and a serpent forcontrivance. What I desire to know is--How much longer is this tyranny tolast, and how long am I to suffer?"
Then the magician looked round the room, to make sure that he wasunobserved; he raised the curtain at the door to see that none listenedoutside, and satisfied that he was neither observed nor overheard, hepointed to a clepsydra.
This was an ingenious, but to our minds a clumsy, contrivance formeasuring time. It consisted of a silver ball, with a covered opening atthe top, through which the interior could be replenished. About the baseof the globe were minute perforations through which the liquid that wasplaced in the vessel slowly oozed, and oozing ran together into a drop atthe bottom which fell at intervals into the bucket of a tiny wheel.
When the bucket was full, the wheel revolved and decanted the liquidwhilst presenting another bucket to the distilling drops.
At each movement of the wheel a connection with it gave motion to the handof a statuette of Saturn, who with his scythe indicated a number on an arcof metal. The numbers ranged from one to twelve, and the contrivanceanswered for half the twenty-four hours.
"Lady," said the Magus, "before Saturn has pointed to the twelfth hour----"
Steps were heard, approaching the room, along the mosaic-laid passage, andnext moment, the curtain was snatched aside, and Domitian, his faceblazing with anger, entered the apartment of his wife.
"So?" said he, "you are in league with astrologers and magicians againstme! But, by the Gods! I can protect myself."
He clapped his hands, and some of the guard appeared in the doorway.
"Remove him," said the Emperor. "I have given orders concerning himalready. Hey! Magus! knowest thou what will be thy doom, thou whopretendest to read the fate of men in the stars?"
"Augustus," answered the necromancer, "I have read that I should be rentby wild dogs."
"Sayest thou so? Then by Jupiter! I will make thy forecast come to naught.Go, Eulogius!--it is my command that he be at once, mark you, this verynight, burned alive. We will see whether his prophecies come true. Here ismy order."
Domitian plucked a packet of tablets from his bosom, bound together with astring, drew forth one, and wrote hastily on it, then pressed his seal onthe wax that covered the slab and handed it to the officer.
Then the guard surrounded the astrologer, and led him away.
Domitian waved his hand.
"Every one out of earshot," ordered he, and he walked to the window andlooked forth.
It was already night; to the south the sky was quivering with lightning,summer flashes, without thunder.
"A storm, a storm is coming on," said the Emperor; "there'll be stormseverywhere, and lightning falling on all sides--portents they say. So beit! as the sword of heaven smites, so does mine. But it falls not on me,but on my enemies. Domitia," said he, leaving the window, "there has beena conspiracy entered into against my life, and the fools thought to set upClemens--he, that weakling, that coward; but I have sent him to his death,and those who were associated with him, the sentence is gone forth againstthem also."
"I marvel only that any in Rome are suffered to live."
"Minerva gives me wisdom--to defend myself."
"Any wild beast can employ teeth and claws."
"Domitia," he came close to her, "I am the most lonely of men. I have nofriends; my kinsmen either have been, or hate me; my friends are the mostdespicable of flatterers, who would betray their own parents to save theirown throats; I use them, but I scorn them. You know not what it is to bealone!"
"I! I have been alone ever since you tore me from Lamia."
"Lamia!" he ground his teeth; "still Lamia! But by the Gods! not for long.And you--you my wife whom I have loved, for whom I would have doneanything--you are against me; you take counsel with a Chaldaean how long Ihave to live; the Senate, the nobles hate me, and by Jupiter, they havegood cause, for I cut them with a scythe like ripe wheat. That was a goodlesson of Tarquin to his son Sextus to nip off the heads of the tallestpoppies. And the people--you have been currying favor with them--against me;the soldiers alone love me, because I have doubled their pay; let anotheroffer to treble it and, to a man, they will desert me. By the Immortals!it is terrible to be alone--and to be plotted against, even by one's wife."
He walked the room, flourishing his tablets, then halted in front of theclepsydra.
"What said that star-gazer about the twelfth hour?" he asked. "Walls haveears, nothing is said that does no
t reach me. So, old Saturn, with thyscythe, dost thou threaten? Then I defy thee--ha! I saw the storm wascoming up over Rome."
A long-drawn growl of thunder muttered through the passages of the palace.
"I saw no flash," said the prince, "yet lightning falls somewhere, maybeto kindle the pyre on which that sorcerer will burn; I care not. Fire ofheaven fall and strike where and whom thou wilt!"
He went again to the window and looked forth. The air was still and close.The sky was enveloped in vapor and not a star could be seen. A continuousquiver of electric light ran along the horizon. Then the heavens seemed tobe rent asunder and a blaze of lightning shot forth, blinding to the eyes.
Domitian turned away, and laid the tablets on the marble sideboard as hepressed his hands to his eyeballs.
"By the Gods!" he exclaimed a moment later, "here comes the rain; itdescends in cataracts; it falls with a roar."
He paced the room, halted, stood in front of the clepsydra and looked atthe dropping water. The water had been reddened, and it seemed like bloodsweated out of the silver globe. At that moment the wheel revolved, andsent a crimson gush into the receiver. With a jerk Saturn raised hisscythe and indicated the hour ten.
The Emperor turned away, and came in front of Domitia.
"None have ever loved me," he said bitterly, "how then can it be expectedthat I shall love any? my father disliked me, my brother distrusted me--andyou--my wife, have ever hated me. I need not ask the cause of that. It isLamia, always Lamia. Because he has never married you think he stillharbors love for you; and you--you hate me because of him. It is hard to bea prince, and to be alone. If I hear a play--I think I catch allusions tome; if it be a comedy--there is a jest aimed at me; if a tragedy, itexpresses what men wish may befall me. If I read a historian, he declaimson the glories of a commonwealth before these men, these Caesars becametyrants, and as for your philosophers--away with them, they are wind-bags,but the wind is poisonous, it is malarious to me. When I am at the circus,because I back green--you, the entire hoop of spectators cheer, bet on theblue--to show me that they hate me. At the Amphitheatre, if I favor the bigshields, then every one else is for the small targets. A prince is everthe most solitary of men. If you had protested that you loved me, hadfondled me, I would have held you in suspicion, mistrusted your every wordand look and gesture. Perhaps it is because that you have never given megood word, gentle look, and gesture of respect that I feel you aretrue--cruelly true, and I have loved you as the only true person I know.Now answer me--you asked after my death?"
"Yes," answered Domitia.
"I knew it."
"And," said she, in cold, hard tones, looking straight into his agitated,twitching countenance, "I bear to you a message."
"From whom?"
"From Cornelia, the Great Mother."
"Well, and what----" he stopped, some one approached the door. "What wouldyou have?"
The mime Latinus appeared.
"Well--speak."
"Sire, the rain extinguished the pyre, before that the astrologer was muchburnt; then the dogs fell on him, as he was unbound, and they tore him andhe is dead."
"Ye Gods!" gasped Domitian, putting up his hand. "His word has come trueafter all."
Domitia signed to the actor to withdraw.
"You have not heard the message of Cornelia."
He did not speak.
"She has summoned you, the Augustus, the Chief Pontiff, the unjust Judge,to answer before the All-righteous Supreme Justice, above--before thescythe points to Twelve."
Domitian answered not a word, he threw his mantle about his face and leftthe room.
He had left his tablets on the table.