CHAPTER X.THE ACCURSED FIELD.

CHAPTER X.THE ACCURSED FIELD.No notice was taken by Domitian of the presence in the palace of the murdered actor’s widow. It concerned him in no way, and he allowed the unfortunate woman to remain there, under the care of his wife, and without making any protest.Domitia found an interest and a delight in the society of the paralyzed woman, so simple in mind, gentle in thought, always cheerful, ever serene, who lived in an atmosphere of love and harbored no resentments.She marvelled at what she saw, but it was to her an unattainable condition. Her own affections were seared, and a gnawing hate against the man who had blighted her life, and to whom she was tied, ever consumed her.She was like a dead plant in the midst of spring vegetation. It looks down on the beautiful life about its feet, but itself puts forth no buds, shows no signs of mounting sap.Every now and then Glyceria approached the topic of the Fish, and the mysteries involved in the symbol, but would not disclose them, for she saw that Domitia, however miserable she felt, however hopeless, was not in a frame of mind to receive and welcome the interpretation. For in her, the one dominating passion washate—a desire to have her wrongs revenged, and a chafing at her powerlessness to do anything to revenge them.Her treatment by Domitian was capricious. At one time he neglected her; then he went sometimes out of his way to offer her a slight; at others he made real efforts to heal the breach between them, and to show her that he loved her still.But he met with not merely a frosty but a contemptuous reception, that sent him away, his vanity hurt, and his blood in a ferment.In her indifference to life, she was able to brave him without fear, and he knew that if he ordered her to execution she would hail death as a welcome means of escape from association with himself.His blundering and brutal tyranny was no match for her keen wit cutting into him, and maddening him. He revenged himself by a coarse insult or by a side blow at her friends. She was without ambition. Many a woman would have endured his treatment without repining, for the sake of the splendor with which she could surround herself, and the towering position which she occupied. But neither had any attraction for Domitia. The one thing she did desire, to be left alone in retirement, in the country, that he could not, he would not accord her.Usually, when he was in his splendid villa at Albanum, she elected to remain in Rome, and when he came to the palace on the Palatine, if permitted, she escaped to Albanum; but he would not always suffer this.Thus a wretched life was dragged on, and the heart of Domitia became harder every day. It would have become as adamant but for the presence of Glyceria,whom the Empress sincerely loved, and who exercised a subtle, softening and purifying influence on the princess.Glyceria saw how the Empress suffered, and she pitied her, saw how hopeless the conditions were for improvement; she saw also what was hidden to other eyes, that circumstances were closing round and drawing towards a crisis.Beyond a certain point Glyceria could effect nothing, once only did she dare to suggest that the Augusta should assume a gentler demeanor towards the sovereign of the world, but she was at once cut back with the words:—“There, Glyceria, I allow no interference. He has wronged me past endurance. I can never forgive. I have but one hope, I make but one prayer—and that for revenge.”When Domitian was at Albanum, the Empress enjoyed greater freedom. She was not compelled when she went out, to journey in state; and she could make excursions into the country as she pleased. The absence of gardens on the Palatine and the throng of servants and officers made it an almost intolerable residence to her, beautiful as the situation was, and splendid as were the edifices on it. Nor was this all. Domitian had not rested content with the palaces already erected and crowding the summit of the rock,—those of Augustus, of Tiberius, and of Caligula, he must build one himself, and to find material, he tore down the golden house of Nero.But the construction of his palace served still further to reduce the privacy of the Palatine, for it was thronged with masons, carpenters and plasterers. Indeed the Palatine hill-top was almost as crowded and as noisy as was the Forum below.From this, then, Domitia was glad to escape to a little villa on the Via Nomentana, on a height above the Anio, commanding a view of the Sacred Mount.On one occasion, when Domitian was away at Albanum, she had been at this modest retreat, where she was surrounded by a few servants, and to which she had conveyed Glyceria, to enjoy the pure air and rest of the country.But she was obliged to return to Rome; and with a small retinue, and without heralds preceding her, she started, and in the morning arrived at the Porta Collina. Then Eboracus, coming to the side of the litter, said:—“Lady, there is a great crowd, and the street is full to choking. What is your good pleasure? shall we announce who you are, and command a passage?”“Nay,”answered the princess,“my good Eboracus, let us draw aside, and the swarm will pass, then we can go our way unconcerned. I am in no precipitate haste, and, in faith, every minute I am outside Rome, the better satisfied am I.”“But, madam, it is an ill spot, we are opposite the Accursed Field.”“That matters not. It is but for a brief while. Go forward, Eboracus, and inquire what this crowd signifies. Methinks the people are marvellously still. I hear no shout, not even a murmur.”“There be priests leading the way.”“It is some religious rite. Run forward, Eboracus, and make inquiries. That boy bears an inverted torch.”The sight was extraordinary. A procession of priestswas advancing in silence, and an enormous crowd followed through the gate, pouring forth like water from a sluice, yet without a word spoken. The only sound was that of the tramp of feet.The place where Domitia had halted was just outside the Collina gateway, where was the wall of Servius Tullius and in its moat, thirty feet deep, but dry, out of which rose the wall of massive blocks to another thirty above the level of the ground.This ditch was a pestilential refuse place into which the carcasses of beasts, foul rags, sometimes even the bodies of men, and all the unmentionable filth of a great city were cast. So foul was the spot, so unwholesome the exhalations that no habitations were near it, and the wide open space before the wall went by the designation of the Accursed Field.And now, through the gateway came a covered hearse, and at each corner walked a youth in mourning garb, one bearing a lamp and oil, another milk in a brass vessel, a third water, and a fourth bread. Now, and now only, with a shudder of horror, did Domitia suspect what was about to take place. She saw how that as the crowd deployed, it thickened about one portion of the bank of the ditch, and she saw also the battlements above crowded with the faces of men and women leaning over to look down into the dyke. And there, at one spot in the fosse stood three men. Instinctively Domitia knew who they were—the executioner and his assistants.But who was to be put to death—and on what charge, and by what means?Now the hearse was slowly brought to the edge of the moat and the curtains were raised.Then Domitia saw how that within, prostrate, lay a woman, bound hand and foot to the posts by leather straps, with her face covered, and her mouth muffled that her cries might not be heard.She saw the attendants of the priests untie the thongs and the unfortunate woman was raised to a sitting posture, yet still her face was veiled, and her hands were held by servants of the pontiff. Now one by one the attendants descended into the moat bearing the lamp and the bread and milk, and each handed what he had borne in the procession to the executioner, who gave each article as received to one of his deputies; and the man immediately disappeared with it.Domitia’s heart beat furiously, she put forth her head to look, and discovered a hole at the base of the wall, and through this hole she discerned the twinkling light of the lamp as it passed within, then it was lost. The bread followed, the milk and the water, all conveyed into some underground cellar.And now the chief pontiff present plucked the veil from the face of the victim, and with a gasp—she could not cry out, the power was taken from her—the Empress recognized Cornelia.She made an effort to escape from her litter, and fly to her friend with outstretched arms, but Eboracus, who with white face had returned, caught and restrained her.“Madam,”he said in a low tone, vibrating with emotion,“I pray you, for the sake of the Gods—do nothing rash. Stay where you are. No power—not that of the Sacred Twelve can save her.”“Ye Gods! But what has she done?”“She has been accused of breach of her vows, andcondemned by the Augustus, as Chief Priest—”in a lower tone, hardly above a whisper,“unheard in her defence.”“I must go to her.”“You must not. Nothing can save her. Pray for a speedy death.”With glazed eyes, with a surging in her ears, and throbbing in the temples—as in some paralyzing nightmare—Domitia looked on.And now the gag was removed, and with dignity the Great Mother of the Vestals descended from the bier. She stood, tall and with nobility in her aspect, and looked round on the crowd, then down into the moat, at the black hole under the roots of the wall.“Citizens, by the sacred fire of Vesta, I swear I am innocent of the charge laid against me, and for which I am sentenced. No witnesses have been called. I have not been suffered to offer any defence. I knew not, citizens, until I was told that I was sentenced, that any accusation had been trumped up against me. Thou, O Eternal God—above all lights in the firmament, Thou, O Sovereign Justice that holdest true balances—I invoke Thee—I summon the Chief Pontiff who has sentenced me, before your just thrones, to answer for what is done unto me this day. I summon him for midnight three days hence.”Then the deputy of the Chief Pontiff, who presided at the execution, Domitian being absent at Albanum (he being Pontifex Maximus), raised his arms to heaven in silent prayer.His prayer ended, he extended his hand to Cornelia, but she refusing his help, unaided descended into the fosse.The vast concourse was as though turned to stone by a magician’s wand—so immovable was it and so hushed. Some swallows swept screaming along the moat, and their shrill cries sent a shudder through the entire concourse, wrought to such a tension, that even the note of the birds was an intolerable addition.The Vestal reached the mouth of the pit—the ends of a ladder could be seen at the threshold of this opening. It was evident that the opening gave access to a vault of some depth.Beside it were stones from the wall piled up, and mortar. As soon as the Abbess reached the opening, she turned, and again declared her innocence.“The Emperor,”said she in clear, firm tones,“has adjudged me guilty, knowing that my prayers have obtained for him victory, triumph and an immortal name. I repeat my summons. I bid him answer before the throne on high, at midnight, three days hence.”Then she looked steadily at the blue sky—then up at the sun,—to take a last view of light. With calmness, with fortitude, she turned, and entering the opening began to disappear, descending the ladder.In so doing her veil caught in one of the ends of the side poles of the ladder. She must have reascended a step or two, for her hand was visible disengaging the white veil, and then—hand and veil disappeared.Immediately stones were caught up, trowels and mortar seized, and with incredible celerity the opening was walled up. The pontiff applied his leaden seal.“Be speedy! Remove her! Run—”shouted Eboracus, for his mistress had fallen back in the litter in a dead faint,—“At once—to the Palace!”CHAPTER XI.AGAIN: THE SWORD OF CORBULO.Eboracus was able to open a way for the litter through the crowd, now clustered on the bank of the dyke, watching as the workmen threw down earth and stones, and buried deep that portion of the wall in which was the vault where the unhappy Abbess Cornelia was buried alive. And now the populace broke forth in sighs and tears, and in murmurings low expressed at the injustice committed in sentencing a woman without allowing her to know that she had been accused, and of saying a word in her own defence. Some of the crowd was drifting back into Rome, and by entering this current, the train of Domitia travelled along.Eboracus returned from the head of the litter repeatedly to the side, to look within and ascertain whether his mistress were recovering. At the first fountain he stopped the convoy and obtained for her water to bathe her face, and at a little tavern, he procured strong Campanian wine, which he entreated her to sip, so as to nerve her.As the litter approached the Forum, the crowd again coagulated and at last remained completely stationary. Again the street was blocked.Eboracus went forward and forced his way through, that he might ascertain the cause, and whether theblock was temporary and would speedily cease. He came back in great agitation, and said hastily to his mistress:—“Lady, you cannot proceed. Suffer me to recommend that you go to the Carinæ and tarry there—with your lady mother for a while, till your strength is restored, and till the streets be more open.”“Eboracus—what is going on? tell me.”“Madam, there is something being transacted in thecomitiumthat causes all the approaches to be packed with people. We might make a circuit—but, lady! I think if you would deign to repose for an hour at your mother’s house, after what you have suffered, it would be advisable.”“Tell me what is taking place in thecomitium.”“I should prefer, lady, not to be asked.”“But I have asked.”“Then, dear mistress, do not require of me to make answer.”“Answer truly. Tell me no lie. What is it?”He hesitated. Then Domitia said:—“Look at my hand, it is firm, it does not tremble. Nothing that I hear can be worse than what I have seen.”“Lady—your strength has already failed.”“And now I have gathered my resolution together, and can bear anything. I adjure you, by your duty to me—answer me, what is taking place in thecomitium, what is it that causes the streets leading thereto to be impassable.”“If I must reply——”“If you do not, I will have you scourged.”“Nay, lady, that is not like thee. It is not fear thatwill make me speak, but because I know that if I do not, the information can be got from another.”“Well—what is it?”“The knight Celer, on the same charge as that which lost the Great Mother Cornelia, is being whipped to death with the scorpion.”15“By the same orders? To my mother’s in the Carinæ.”Hastily Domitia drew the curtains of her litter, and was seen no more, spoke no more till she reached the door of Longa Duilia.Here she descended and entered the house.“My dear Domitia! my august daughter! What a pleasure! What an honor!”The lady Duilia started up to embrace the Empress.Domitia received the kiss coldly, and sank silent on a stool.Her mother looked at her with surprise. Domitia was waxen white, her eyes with dark rings about them, and unnaturally large and bright. The color had left her lips and these were leaden in hue.Domitia did not speak, did not move. She remained for some moments like a statue.“As the Gods love me!”exclaimed her mother after a long pause,“you are not going to be ill, surely—nothing dangerous, nothing likely to end unhappily. Ye Gods! and I have so much I want you to do for me. Tell me, I entreat you. Hide nothing from me. You are suffering. Where is it? What is it? Shall I send for a doctor?”“Mother, no doctor can cure me. It is here,”Domitia pressed her hands to her heart—“and here,”to her temples.“I am the most miserable, the most unfortunate of women.”“Ye Gods! He has divorced you?”“No, mother. I would that he had.”“Then what is the matter? Have you eaten what disagrees with you? As the Gods love me! you should not come out such a figure. Who was your face-dresser to-day? she ought to be crucified! Not a particle of paint—white as ivory. Intolerable—and it has given me such a turn.”Domitia made no reply.“But what is it? What has made you look like Parian marble?”“The Great Mother Cornelia—”Domitia could say no more, a lump rose in her throat and choked her. Then all at once she began to shiver as though frost-stricken and her teeth chattered.“Ihave an essence—you must take that,”said the lady Duilia.“My dear, I know all about that. An estimable lady. I mean she was so till the Augustus decreed otherwise. I am sorry, and all that—but you know—well, these things do happen and must, and I dare be bound that some are glad, as it makes an opening for another needy girl, of good family of course. What is one person’s loss is another’s gain. The world is so and we can’t alter it, and a good thing, I say, that it is so.”“Mother—she was innocent.”“Well, well, we know all about that. Of course it was all nonsense what was charged against her, that we quite understand. It would never have done for the real truth to have been advertised.”“And what was the truth?”“My dear Domitia! How can you ask such a silly, infantile question? It was your doing, you must understand that. You threw yourself on her protection, embraced the altar of Vesta, and Cornelia with the assistance of Celer did what she could to further your object in leaving Rome. If people will do donkey-like things they must get a stick across their backs. It is so, and always will be so in this world, and we cannot make it otherwise.”“I thought so. I was sure it was so,”said Domitia gravely. There was an infinity of sadness, of despair in her tone.“Mother, I bring misfortune upon all with whom I have to do.”“Ye Gods! not on me! I hope to be preserved from that! Do not speak such unlucky words—they are of bad omen.”“I cannot help it, mother, it is true. I am the most unfortunate of women myself——”“You speak rank folly. Ye Gods forgive me! saying such a thing to one who is herself divine. But, it is so—you are positively the most fortunate of women. What more do you desire? You are the Augusta, the people swear by your genius and fortune.”“Bymyfortune! Alack poor souls!”“And is it not a piece of good fortune to be raised so high that there is none above you?”“My fortune! The Gods know—if they know anything—that I would gladly exchange my lot with that of a poor woman in a cottage who spins and sings, or of a girl among the mountains who keeps goats and is defended by a boisterous dog. Mother, listen to me. I have brought misfortune on Lucius Lamia, I have caused the death of that harmless actor Paris, I havebeen the occasion of Cornelia being—buried alive—watching the expiring of the one lamp. Ye Gods! Ye Gods! I shall go mad—and of Celer also.—He——”She held her face, rocked herself on the seat and sobbed as if her heart would break.“Yes,”said the old lady, roused to anger at her daughter’s lack of appreciation of the splendor of her position.“Yes, child, and mischief you will work on every one, if you continue in the same course. Do men say that the Augustus is morose? Who made him so?—you by your behavior. Do they say that he is severe in his judgments? Who has hardened him and made him cruel?—You—who have dried up all the springs of tenderness in his breast. He was not so at first. If he be what men think—it is your work. You with your stinging words goaded him to madness and as he cannot or will not beat you, as you deserve, he deals the blows on some one else. Of course he cuts away such as you regard and love—because they obtain that to which he has a right, but which you deny him.”“He—he—a right!”Domitia started up, anger, resentment, hatred flared in her eyes, stiffened the muscles of her whole face, made her hair bristle above her brow.“He a right, mother! he who tore me away from my dear Lamia, to whom I had given my whole heart, to whom I had been united by your sanction and our union blessed by the Gods! He who violated hospitality, the most sacred rights that belong to a house, who repaid your kindness in saving his life—when he was hunted like a wolf, by breaking and destroying, by trampling under his accursed heel, the brittle, innocent heart of the daughter of her who had protectedhim! No, mother, I owed him no love. I have never given him any, because he never had a right to any. Mother—this must have an end.”She sank into silence that continued for some while.Duilia did not speak. She did not desire another such explosion, lest the slaves should hear and betray what had been said. Presently, however, she whisperedcoaxingly:—“My dear Domitia, you are overwrought. You have eaten something that has affected your temper. I find gherkins always disagree with me. There, go and take a little ginger in white wine, and sleep it off.”Domitia rose, stiffly, as though all her joints were wooden.“Yes, mother, I will go. But there is one thing I desire of thee. I have long coveted it, as a remembrancer of my father—may I take it?”“Anything—anything you like.”Domitia went to the wall and took down the sword of Corbulo, there suspended.“It is this, mother. I need it.”Then she departed.“That sword—ah!”said Duilia.“It has been a little overdone. I have caught my guests exchanging winks when I alluded to it, and dropped a tear. O by all means she shall have it. It has ceased to be of use to me.”CHAPTER XII.THE TABLETS.Elymas the sorcerer stood bowing before Domitia, his hands crossed upon his breast.She looked scrutinizingly into his dark face, but could read nothing there. He remained immovable and silent before her, awaiting the announcement of her will.“I have sent for thee,”she said.“How long, I would know, before the sixth veil falls?”“Lady and Augusta,”answered the Magian,“remember that when thou lookest out upon the Sabine Mountains, on one day all is so distinct that thou wouldst 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 must require days of travel to attain their roots. It is so with the Future. We look into its distance and behold forms—but whether near or far we know not. This only do we say with confidence, that we are aware of their succession, 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 anextent it has been managed by such as thyself, that I cannot judge. But of a certainty it was thou who didst contrive that I was carried away from my husband’s house. Then what followed, the Gods know how far thou wast in it, but I have heard it said that the God Titus would not have had his mortal thread cut short but that, when in fever, thou didst persuade him to a bath in snow water. It is very easy to predict what will be, when with our hands we mould the future. And now—I care not whether thou makest or predictest what is to be—but an end there must be, and that a speedy one—for thine own safety hangs thereon.”“How so, lady?”“The Augustus has been greatly alarmed of late at sinister omens and prophesies; and he attributes them to thee. Perhaps,”with a scornful intonation,“he also is aware that fulfilment is assured before a prophesy is given out.”The Magus remained motionless, but his face became pale.“I know, because at supper with his intimates, Messala and Regulus and Carus, he swore by the Gods he would have you cast to savage dogs, and he would make an example of such as filledmen’sminds with expectation of evil.”“Lady——”But Domitia interrupted him.“Thou thinkest that I say this to alarm thee and bend thee to my will. If the Augustus has his spies that watch and repeat to him whatsoever I do, whomsoever I see, almost every word I say—shall not I also have a watch put upon him? Even now, Magus, that I have 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 think this interview bodes him no good.”“When, Lady Augusta, was this said?”“The Emperor is this day returned from Albanum, and the threat was made but yesterday. Who can say but that the order has already been given for thy arrest, and for the gathering together of the dogs that are to rend thee.”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 the Cæsar, that the death of one is the extinction of the other; or that thou holdest so potent a charm that if thou wilt thou canst employ it for his destruction. It is not for me to point out how thou mayest twist out of his grasp—thou art a very eel for slipperiness, and a serpent for contrivance. What I desire to know is—How much longer is this tyranny to last, and how long am I to suffer?”Then the magician looked round the room, to make sure that he was unobserved; he raised the curtain at the door to see that none listened outside, and satisfied that he was neither observed nor overheard, he pointed to a clepsydra.This was an ingenious, but to our minds a clumsy, contrivance for measuring time. It consisted of a silver ball, with a covered opening at the top, through which the interior could be replenished. About the base of the globe were minute perforations through which the liquid that was placed in the vessel slowly oozed, and oozing ran together into a drop at the bottom which fell at intervals into the bucket of a tiny wheel.When the bucket was full, the wheel revolved anddecanted the liquid whilst presenting another bucket to the distilling drops.At each movement of the wheel a connection with it gave motion to the hand of a statuette of Saturn, who with his scythe indicated a number on an arc of metal. The numbers ranged from one to twelve, and the contrivance answered 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, and next moment, the curtain was snatched aside, and Domitian, his face blazing with anger, entered the apartment of his wife.“So?”said he,“you are in league with astrologers and magicians against me! 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 him already. Hey! Magus! knowest thou what will be thy doom, thou who pretendest to read the fate of men in thestars?”“Augustus,”answered the necromancer,“I have read that I should be rent by 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 very night, burned alive. We will see whether his prophecies come true. Here is my order.”Domitian plucked a packet of tablets from his bosom, bound together with a string, drew forth one, and wrote hastily on it, then pressed his seal on the 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 and looked 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 storms everywhere, and lightning falling on all sides—portents they say. So be it! 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 been a conspiracy entered into against my life, and the fools thought to set up Clemens—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 against them 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 no friends; my kinsmen either have been, or hate me; my friends are the most despicable of flatterers, who would betray their own parents to save their own throats; I use them, but I scorn them. You know not what it is to be alone!”“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 done anything—you are against me; you take counsel with aChaldæan how long I have to live; the Senate, the nobles hate me, and by Jupiter, they have good cause, for I cut them with a scythe like ripe wheat. That was a good lesson of Tarquin to his son Sextus to nip off the heads of the tallest poppies. And the people—you have been currying favor with them—against me; the soldiers alone love me, because I have doubled their pay; let another offer 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 the clepsydra.“What said that star-gazer about the twelfth hour?”he asked.“Walls have ears, nothing is said that does not reach me. So, old Saturn, with thy scythe, dost thou threaten? Then I defy thee—ha! I saw the storm was coming 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, maybe to kindle the pyre on which that sorcerer will burn; I care not. Fire of heaven 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 continuous quiver of electric light ran along the horizon. Then the heavens seemed to be 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 he pressed his hands to his eyeballs.“By the Gods!”he exclaimed a moment later,“here comes the rain; it descends in cataracts; it falls with a roar.”He paced the room, halted, stood in front of the clepsydra and looked at the dropping water. The water had been reddened, and it seemed like blood sweated out of the silver globe. At that moment the wheel revolved, and sent a crimson gush into the receiver. With a jerk Saturn raised his scythe 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 expected that I shall love any? my father disliked me, my brother distrusted me—and you—my wife, have ever hated me. I need not ask the cause of that. It is Lamia, always Lamia. Because he has never married you think he still harbors love for you; and you—you hate me because of him. It is hard to be a prince, and to be alone. If I hear a play—I think I catch allusions to me; if it be a comedy—there is a jest aimed at me; if a tragedy, it expresses what men wish may befall me. If I read a historian, he declaims on the glories of a commonwealth before these men, these Cæsars became tyrants, 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 the blue—to show me that they hate me. At the Amphitheatre, if I favor the big shields, then every one else is for the small targets. A prince is ever the most solitary of men. If you had protested that you loved me, hadfondled me, I would have held you in suspicion, mistrusted your every word and look and gesture. Perhaps it is because that you have never given me good word, gentle look, and gesture of respect that I feel you are true—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 would you have?”The mime Latinus appeared.“Well—speak.”“Sire, the rain extinguished the pyre, before that the astrologer was much burnt; then the dogs fell on him, as he was unbound, and they tore him and he is dead.”“Ye Gods!”gasped Domitian, putting up his hand.“His word has come true after 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 the scythe points to Twelve.”Domitian answered not a word, he threw his mantle about his face and left the room.He had left his tablets on the table.

CHAPTER X.THE ACCURSED FIELD.No notice was taken by Domitian of the presence in the palace of the murdered actor’s widow. It concerned him in no way, and he allowed the unfortunate woman to remain there, under the care of his wife, and without making any protest.Domitia found an interest and a delight in the society of the paralyzed woman, so simple in mind, gentle in thought, always cheerful, ever serene, who lived in an atmosphere of love and harbored no resentments.She marvelled at what she saw, but it was to her an unattainable condition. Her own affections were seared, and a gnawing hate against the man who had blighted her life, and to whom she was tied, ever consumed her.She was like a dead plant in the midst of spring vegetation. It looks down on the beautiful life about its feet, but itself puts forth no buds, shows no signs of mounting sap.Every now and then Glyceria approached the topic of the Fish, and the mysteries involved in the symbol, but would not disclose them, for she saw that Domitia, however miserable she felt, however hopeless, was not in a frame of mind to receive and welcome the interpretation. For in her, the one dominating passion washate—a desire to have her wrongs revenged, and a chafing at her powerlessness to do anything to revenge them.Her treatment by Domitian was capricious. At one time he neglected her; then he went sometimes out of his way to offer her a slight; at others he made real efforts to heal the breach between them, and to show her that he loved her still.But he met with not merely a frosty but a contemptuous reception, that sent him away, his vanity hurt, and his blood in a ferment.In her indifference to life, she was able to brave him without fear, and he knew that if he ordered her to execution she would hail death as a welcome means of escape from association with himself.His blundering and brutal tyranny was no match for her keen wit cutting into him, and maddening him. He revenged himself by a coarse insult or by a side blow at her friends. She was without ambition. Many a woman would have endured his treatment without repining, for the sake of the splendor with which she could surround herself, and the towering position which she occupied. But neither had any attraction for Domitia. The one thing she did desire, to be left alone in retirement, in the country, that he could not, he would not accord her.Usually, when he was in his splendid villa at Albanum, she elected to remain in Rome, and when he came to the palace on the Palatine, if permitted, she escaped to Albanum; but he would not always suffer this.Thus a wretched life was dragged on, and the heart of Domitia became harder every day. It would have become as adamant but for the presence of Glyceria,whom the Empress sincerely loved, and who exercised a subtle, softening and purifying influence on the princess.Glyceria saw how the Empress suffered, and she pitied her, saw how hopeless the conditions were for improvement; she saw also what was hidden to other eyes, that circumstances were closing round and drawing towards a crisis.Beyond a certain point Glyceria could effect nothing, once only did she dare to suggest that the Augusta should assume a gentler demeanor towards the sovereign of the world, but she was at once cut back with the words:—“There, Glyceria, I allow no interference. He has wronged me past endurance. I can never forgive. I have but one hope, I make but one prayer—and that for revenge.”When Domitian was at Albanum, the Empress enjoyed greater freedom. She was not compelled when she went out, to journey in state; and she could make excursions into the country as she pleased. The absence of gardens on the Palatine and the throng of servants and officers made it an almost intolerable residence to her, beautiful as the situation was, and splendid as were the edifices on it. Nor was this all. Domitian had not rested content with the palaces already erected and crowding the summit of the rock,—those of Augustus, of Tiberius, and of Caligula, he must build one himself, and to find material, he tore down the golden house of Nero.But the construction of his palace served still further to reduce the privacy of the Palatine, for it was thronged with masons, carpenters and plasterers. Indeed the Palatine hill-top was almost as crowded and as noisy as was the Forum below.From this, then, Domitia was glad to escape to a little villa on the Via Nomentana, on a height above the Anio, commanding a view of the Sacred Mount.On one occasion, when Domitian was away at Albanum, she had been at this modest retreat, where she was surrounded by a few servants, and to which she had conveyed Glyceria, to enjoy the pure air and rest of the country.But she was obliged to return to Rome; and with a small retinue, and without heralds preceding her, she started, and in the morning arrived at the Porta Collina. Then Eboracus, coming to the side of the litter, said:—“Lady, there is a great crowd, and the street is full to choking. What is your good pleasure? shall we announce who you are, and command a passage?”“Nay,”answered the princess,“my good Eboracus, let us draw aside, and the swarm will pass, then we can go our way unconcerned. I am in no precipitate haste, and, in faith, every minute I am outside Rome, the better satisfied am I.”“But, madam, it is an ill spot, we are opposite the Accursed Field.”“That matters not. It is but for a brief while. Go forward, Eboracus, and inquire what this crowd signifies. Methinks the people are marvellously still. I hear no shout, not even a murmur.”“There be priests leading the way.”“It is some religious rite. Run forward, Eboracus, and make inquiries. That boy bears an inverted torch.”The sight was extraordinary. A procession of priestswas advancing in silence, and an enormous crowd followed through the gate, pouring forth like water from a sluice, yet without a word spoken. The only sound was that of the tramp of feet.The place where Domitia had halted was just outside the Collina gateway, where was the wall of Servius Tullius and in its moat, thirty feet deep, but dry, out of which rose the wall of massive blocks to another thirty above the level of the ground.This ditch was a pestilential refuse place into which the carcasses of beasts, foul rags, sometimes even the bodies of men, and all the unmentionable filth of a great city were cast. So foul was the spot, so unwholesome the exhalations that no habitations were near it, and the wide open space before the wall went by the designation of the Accursed Field.And now, through the gateway came a covered hearse, and at each corner walked a youth in mourning garb, one bearing a lamp and oil, another milk in a brass vessel, a third water, and a fourth bread. Now, and now only, with a shudder of horror, did Domitia suspect what was about to take place. She saw how that as the crowd deployed, it thickened about one portion of the bank of the ditch, and she saw also the battlements above crowded with the faces of men and women leaning over to look down into the dyke. And there, at one spot in the fosse stood three men. Instinctively Domitia knew who they were—the executioner and his assistants.But who was to be put to death—and on what charge, and by what means?Now the hearse was slowly brought to the edge of the moat and the curtains were raised.Then Domitia saw how that within, prostrate, lay a woman, bound hand and foot to the posts by leather straps, with her face covered, and her mouth muffled that her cries might not be heard.She saw the attendants of the priests untie the thongs and the unfortunate woman was raised to a sitting posture, yet still her face was veiled, and her hands were held by servants of the pontiff. Now one by one the attendants descended into the moat bearing the lamp and the bread and milk, and each handed what he had borne in the procession to the executioner, who gave each article as received to one of his deputies; and the man immediately disappeared with it.Domitia’s heart beat furiously, she put forth her head to look, and discovered a hole at the base of the wall, and through this hole she discerned the twinkling light of the lamp as it passed within, then it was lost. The bread followed, the milk and the water, all conveyed into some underground cellar.And now the chief pontiff present plucked the veil from the face of the victim, and with a gasp—she could not cry out, the power was taken from her—the Empress recognized Cornelia.She made an effort to escape from her litter, and fly to her friend with outstretched arms, but Eboracus, who with white face had returned, caught and restrained her.“Madam,”he said in a low tone, vibrating with emotion,“I pray you, for the sake of the Gods—do nothing rash. Stay where you are. No power—not that of the Sacred Twelve can save her.”“Ye Gods! But what has she done?”“She has been accused of breach of her vows, andcondemned by the Augustus, as Chief Priest—”in a lower tone, hardly above a whisper,“unheard in her defence.”“I must go to her.”“You must not. Nothing can save her. Pray for a speedy death.”With glazed eyes, with a surging in her ears, and throbbing in the temples—as in some paralyzing nightmare—Domitia looked on.And now the gag was removed, and with dignity the Great Mother of the Vestals descended from the bier. She stood, tall and with nobility in her aspect, and looked round on the crowd, then down into the moat, at the black hole under the roots of the wall.“Citizens, by the sacred fire of Vesta, I swear I am innocent of the charge laid against me, and for which I am sentenced. No witnesses have been called. I have not been suffered to offer any defence. I knew not, citizens, until I was told that I was sentenced, that any accusation had been trumped up against me. Thou, O Eternal God—above all lights in the firmament, Thou, O Sovereign Justice that holdest true balances—I invoke Thee—I summon the Chief Pontiff who has sentenced me, before your just thrones, to answer for what is done unto me this day. I summon him for midnight three days hence.”Then the deputy of the Chief Pontiff, who presided at the execution, Domitian being absent at Albanum (he being Pontifex Maximus), raised his arms to heaven in silent prayer.His prayer ended, he extended his hand to Cornelia, but she refusing his help, unaided descended into the fosse.The vast concourse was as though turned to stone by a magician’s wand—so immovable was it and so hushed. Some swallows swept screaming along the moat, and their shrill cries sent a shudder through the entire concourse, wrought to such a tension, that even the note of the birds was an intolerable addition.The Vestal reached the mouth of the pit—the ends of a ladder could be seen at the threshold of this opening. It was evident that the opening gave access to a vault of some depth.Beside it were stones from the wall piled up, and mortar. As soon as the Abbess reached the opening, she turned, and again declared her innocence.“The Emperor,”said she in clear, firm tones,“has adjudged me guilty, knowing that my prayers have obtained for him victory, triumph and an immortal name. I repeat my summons. I bid him answer before the throne on high, at midnight, three days hence.”Then she looked steadily at the blue sky—then up at the sun,—to take a last view of light. With calmness, with fortitude, she turned, and entering the opening began to disappear, descending the ladder.In so doing her veil caught in one of the ends of the side poles of the ladder. She must have reascended a step or two, for her hand was visible disengaging the white veil, and then—hand and veil disappeared.Immediately stones were caught up, trowels and mortar seized, and with incredible celerity the opening was walled up. The pontiff applied his leaden seal.“Be speedy! Remove her! Run—”shouted Eboracus, for his mistress had fallen back in the litter in a dead faint,—“At once—to the Palace!”CHAPTER XI.AGAIN: THE SWORD OF CORBULO.Eboracus was able to open a way for the litter through the crowd, now clustered on the bank of the dyke, watching as the workmen threw down earth and stones, and buried deep that portion of the wall in which was the vault where the unhappy Abbess Cornelia was buried alive. And now the populace broke forth in sighs and tears, and in murmurings low expressed at the injustice committed in sentencing a woman without allowing her to know that she had been accused, and of saying a word in her own defence. Some of the crowd was drifting back into Rome, and by entering this current, the train of Domitia travelled along.Eboracus returned from the head of the litter repeatedly to the side, to look within and ascertain whether his mistress were recovering. At the first fountain he stopped the convoy and obtained for her water to bathe her face, and at a little tavern, he procured strong Campanian wine, which he entreated her to sip, so as to nerve her.As the litter approached the Forum, the crowd again coagulated and at last remained completely stationary. Again the street was blocked.Eboracus went forward and forced his way through, that he might ascertain the cause, and whether theblock was temporary and would speedily cease. He came back in great agitation, and said hastily to his mistress:—“Lady, you cannot proceed. Suffer me to recommend that you go to the Carinæ and tarry there—with your lady mother for a while, till your strength is restored, and till the streets be more open.”“Eboracus—what is going on? tell me.”“Madam, there is something being transacted in thecomitiumthat causes all the approaches to be packed with people. We might make a circuit—but, lady! I think if you would deign to repose for an hour at your mother’s house, after what you have suffered, it would be advisable.”“Tell me what is taking place in thecomitium.”“I should prefer, lady, not to be asked.”“But I have asked.”“Then, dear mistress, do not require of me to make answer.”“Answer truly. Tell me no lie. What is it?”He hesitated. Then Domitia said:—“Look at my hand, it is firm, it does not tremble. Nothing that I hear can be worse than what I have seen.”“Lady—your strength has already failed.”“And now I have gathered my resolution together, and can bear anything. I adjure you, by your duty to me—answer me, what is taking place in thecomitium, what is it that causes the streets leading thereto to be impassable.”“If I must reply——”“If you do not, I will have you scourged.”“Nay, lady, that is not like thee. It is not fear thatwill make me speak, but because I know that if I do not, the information can be got from another.”“Well—what is it?”“The knight Celer, on the same charge as that which lost the Great Mother Cornelia, is being whipped to death with the scorpion.”15“By the same orders? To my mother’s in the Carinæ.”Hastily Domitia drew the curtains of her litter, and was seen no more, spoke no more till she reached the door of Longa Duilia.Here she descended and entered the house.“My dear Domitia! my august daughter! What a pleasure! What an honor!”The lady Duilia started up to embrace the Empress.Domitia received the kiss coldly, and sank silent on a stool.Her mother looked at her with surprise. Domitia was waxen white, her eyes with dark rings about them, and unnaturally large and bright. The color had left her lips and these were leaden in hue.Domitia did not speak, did not move. She remained for some moments like a statue.“As the Gods love me!”exclaimed her mother after a long pause,“you are not going to be ill, surely—nothing dangerous, nothing likely to end unhappily. Ye Gods! and I have so much I want you to do for me. Tell me, I entreat you. Hide nothing from me. You are suffering. Where is it? What is it? Shall I send for a doctor?”“Mother, no doctor can cure me. It is here,”Domitia pressed her hands to her heart—“and here,”to her temples.“I am the most miserable, the most unfortunate of women.”“Ye Gods! He has divorced you?”“No, mother. I would that he had.”“Then what is the matter? Have you eaten what disagrees with you? As the Gods love me! you should not come out such a figure. Who was your face-dresser to-day? she ought to be crucified! Not a particle of paint—white as ivory. Intolerable—and it has given me such a turn.”Domitia made no reply.“But what is it? What has made you look like Parian marble?”“The Great Mother Cornelia—”Domitia could say no more, a lump rose in her throat and choked her. Then all at once she began to shiver as though frost-stricken and her teeth chattered.“Ihave an essence—you must take that,”said the lady Duilia.“My dear, I know all about that. An estimable lady. I mean she was so till the Augustus decreed otherwise. I am sorry, and all that—but you know—well, these things do happen and must, and I dare be bound that some are glad, as it makes an opening for another needy girl, of good family of course. What is one person’s loss is another’s gain. The world is so and we can’t alter it, and a good thing, I say, that it is so.”“Mother—she was innocent.”“Well, well, we know all about that. Of course it was all nonsense what was charged against her, that we quite understand. It would never have done for the real truth to have been advertised.”“And what was the truth?”“My dear Domitia! How can you ask such a silly, infantile question? It was your doing, you must understand that. You threw yourself on her protection, embraced the altar of Vesta, and Cornelia with the assistance of Celer did what she could to further your object in leaving Rome. If people will do donkey-like things they must get a stick across their backs. It is so, and always will be so in this world, and we cannot make it otherwise.”“I thought so. I was sure it was so,”said Domitia gravely. There was an infinity of sadness, of despair in her tone.“Mother, I bring misfortune upon all with whom I have to do.”“Ye Gods! not on me! I hope to be preserved from that! Do not speak such unlucky words—they are of bad omen.”“I cannot help it, mother, it is true. I am the most unfortunate of women myself——”“You speak rank folly. Ye Gods forgive me! saying such a thing to one who is herself divine. But, it is so—you are positively the most fortunate of women. What more do you desire? You are the Augusta, the people swear by your genius and fortune.”“Bymyfortune! Alack poor souls!”“And is it not a piece of good fortune to be raised so high that there is none above you?”“My fortune! The Gods know—if they know anything—that I would gladly exchange my lot with that of a poor woman in a cottage who spins and sings, or of a girl among the mountains who keeps goats and is defended by a boisterous dog. Mother, listen to me. I have brought misfortune on Lucius Lamia, I have caused the death of that harmless actor Paris, I havebeen the occasion of Cornelia being—buried alive—watching the expiring of the one lamp. Ye Gods! Ye Gods! I shall go mad—and of Celer also.—He——”She held her face, rocked herself on the seat and sobbed as if her heart would break.“Yes,”said the old lady, roused to anger at her daughter’s lack of appreciation of the splendor of her position.“Yes, child, and mischief you will work on every one, if you continue in the same course. Do men say that the Augustus is morose? Who made him so?—you by your behavior. Do they say that he is severe in his judgments? Who has hardened him and made him cruel?—You—who have dried up all the springs of tenderness in his breast. He was not so at first. If he be what men think—it is your work. You with your stinging words goaded him to madness and as he cannot or will not beat you, as you deserve, he deals the blows on some one else. Of course he cuts away such as you regard and love—because they obtain that to which he has a right, but which you deny him.”“He—he—a right!”Domitia started up, anger, resentment, hatred flared in her eyes, stiffened the muscles of her whole face, made her hair bristle above her brow.“He a right, mother! he who tore me away from my dear Lamia, to whom I had given my whole heart, to whom I had been united by your sanction and our union blessed by the Gods! He who violated hospitality, the most sacred rights that belong to a house, who repaid your kindness in saving his life—when he was hunted like a wolf, by breaking and destroying, by trampling under his accursed heel, the brittle, innocent heart of the daughter of her who had protectedhim! No, mother, I owed him no love. I have never given him any, because he never had a right to any. Mother—this must have an end.”She sank into silence that continued for some while.Duilia did not speak. She did not desire another such explosion, lest the slaves should hear and betray what had been said. Presently, however, she whisperedcoaxingly:—“My dear Domitia, you are overwrought. You have eaten something that has affected your temper. I find gherkins always disagree with me. There, go and take a little ginger in white wine, and sleep it off.”Domitia rose, stiffly, as though all her joints were wooden.“Yes, mother, I will go. But there is one thing I desire of thee. I have long coveted it, as a remembrancer of my father—may I take it?”“Anything—anything you like.”Domitia went to the wall and took down the sword of Corbulo, there suspended.“It is this, mother. I need it.”Then she departed.“That sword—ah!”said Duilia.“It has been a little overdone. I have caught my guests exchanging winks when I alluded to it, and dropped a tear. O by all means she shall have it. It has ceased to be of use to me.”CHAPTER XII.THE TABLETS.Elymas the sorcerer stood bowing before Domitia, his hands crossed upon his breast.She looked scrutinizingly into his dark face, but could read nothing there. He remained immovable and silent before her, awaiting the announcement of her will.“I have sent for thee,”she said.“How long, I would know, before the sixth veil falls?”“Lady and Augusta,”answered the Magian,“remember that when thou lookest out upon the Sabine Mountains, on one day all is so distinct that thou wouldst 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 must require days of travel to attain their roots. It is so with the Future. We look into its distance and behold forms—but whether near or far we know not. This only do we say with confidence, that we are aware of their succession, 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 anextent it has been managed by such as thyself, that I cannot judge. But of a certainty it was thou who didst contrive that I was carried away from my husband’s house. Then what followed, the Gods know how far thou wast in it, but I have heard it said that the God Titus would not have had his mortal thread cut short but that, when in fever, thou didst persuade him to a bath in snow water. It is very easy to predict what will be, when with our hands we mould the future. And now—I care not whether thou makest or predictest what is to be—but an end there must be, and that a speedy one—for thine own safety hangs thereon.”“How so, lady?”“The Augustus has been greatly alarmed of late at sinister omens and prophesies; and he attributes them to thee. Perhaps,”with a scornful intonation,“he also is aware that fulfilment is assured before a prophesy is given out.”The Magus remained motionless, but his face became pale.“I know, because at supper with his intimates, Messala and Regulus and Carus, he swore by the Gods he would have you cast to savage dogs, and he would make an example of such as filledmen’sminds with expectation of evil.”“Lady——”But Domitia interrupted him.“Thou thinkest that I say this to alarm thee and bend thee to my will. If the Augustus has his spies that watch and repeat to him whatsoever I do, whomsoever I see, almost every word I say—shall not I also have a watch put upon him? Even now, Magus, that I have 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 think this interview bodes him no good.”“When, Lady Augusta, was this said?”“The Emperor is this day returned from Albanum, and the threat was made but yesterday. Who can say but that the order has already been given for thy arrest, and for the gathering together of the dogs that are to rend thee.”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 the Cæsar, that the death of one is the extinction of the other; or that thou holdest so potent a charm that if thou wilt thou canst employ it for his destruction. It is not for me to point out how thou mayest twist out of his grasp—thou art a very eel for slipperiness, and a serpent for contrivance. What I desire to know is—How much longer is this tyranny to last, and how long am I to suffer?”Then the magician looked round the room, to make sure that he was unobserved; he raised the curtain at the door to see that none listened outside, and satisfied that he was neither observed nor overheard, he pointed to a clepsydra.This was an ingenious, but to our minds a clumsy, contrivance for measuring time. It consisted of a silver ball, with a covered opening at the top, through which the interior could be replenished. About the base of the globe were minute perforations through which the liquid that was placed in the vessel slowly oozed, and oozing ran together into a drop at the bottom which fell at intervals into the bucket of a tiny wheel.When the bucket was full, the wheel revolved anddecanted the liquid whilst presenting another bucket to the distilling drops.At each movement of the wheel a connection with it gave motion to the hand of a statuette of Saturn, who with his scythe indicated a number on an arc of metal. The numbers ranged from one to twelve, and the contrivance answered 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, and next moment, the curtain was snatched aside, and Domitian, his face blazing with anger, entered the apartment of his wife.“So?”said he,“you are in league with astrologers and magicians against me! 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 him already. Hey! Magus! knowest thou what will be thy doom, thou who pretendest to read the fate of men in thestars?”“Augustus,”answered the necromancer,“I have read that I should be rent by 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 very night, burned alive. We will see whether his prophecies come true. Here is my order.”Domitian plucked a packet of tablets from his bosom, bound together with a string, drew forth one, and wrote hastily on it, then pressed his seal on the 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 and looked 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 storms everywhere, and lightning falling on all sides—portents they say. So be it! 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 been a conspiracy entered into against my life, and the fools thought to set up Clemens—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 against them 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 no friends; my kinsmen either have been, or hate me; my friends are the most despicable of flatterers, who would betray their own parents to save their own throats; I use them, but I scorn them. You know not what it is to be alone!”“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 done anything—you are against me; you take counsel with aChaldæan how long I have to live; the Senate, the nobles hate me, and by Jupiter, they have good cause, for I cut them with a scythe like ripe wheat. That was a good lesson of Tarquin to his son Sextus to nip off the heads of the tallest poppies. And the people—you have been currying favor with them—against me; the soldiers alone love me, because I have doubled their pay; let another offer 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 the clepsydra.“What said that star-gazer about the twelfth hour?”he asked.“Walls have ears, nothing is said that does not reach me. So, old Saturn, with thy scythe, dost thou threaten? Then I defy thee—ha! I saw the storm was coming 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, maybe to kindle the pyre on which that sorcerer will burn; I care not. Fire of heaven 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 continuous quiver of electric light ran along the horizon. Then the heavens seemed to be 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 he pressed his hands to his eyeballs.“By the Gods!”he exclaimed a moment later,“here comes the rain; it descends in cataracts; it falls with a roar.”He paced the room, halted, stood in front of the clepsydra and looked at the dropping water. The water had been reddened, and it seemed like blood sweated out of the silver globe. At that moment the wheel revolved, and sent a crimson gush into the receiver. With a jerk Saturn raised his scythe 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 expected that I shall love any? my father disliked me, my brother distrusted me—and you—my wife, have ever hated me. I need not ask the cause of that. It is Lamia, always Lamia. Because he has never married you think he still harbors love for you; and you—you hate me because of him. It is hard to be a prince, and to be alone. If I hear a play—I think I catch allusions to me; if it be a comedy—there is a jest aimed at me; if a tragedy, it expresses what men wish may befall me. If I read a historian, he declaims on the glories of a commonwealth before these men, these Cæsars became tyrants, 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 the blue—to show me that they hate me. At the Amphitheatre, if I favor the big shields, then every one else is for the small targets. A prince is ever the most solitary of men. If you had protested that you loved me, hadfondled me, I would have held you in suspicion, mistrusted your every word and look and gesture. Perhaps it is because that you have never given me good word, gentle look, and gesture of respect that I feel you are true—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 would you have?”The mime Latinus appeared.“Well—speak.”“Sire, the rain extinguished the pyre, before that the astrologer was much burnt; then the dogs fell on him, as he was unbound, and they tore him and he is dead.”“Ye Gods!”gasped Domitian, putting up his hand.“His word has come true after 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 the scythe points to Twelve.”Domitian answered not a word, he threw his mantle about his face and left the room.He had left his tablets on the table.

CHAPTER X.THE ACCURSED FIELD.No notice was taken by Domitian of the presence in the palace of the murdered actor’s widow. It concerned him in no way, and he allowed the unfortunate woman to remain there, under the care of his wife, and without making any protest.Domitia found an interest and a delight in the society of the paralyzed woman, so simple in mind, gentle in thought, always cheerful, ever serene, who lived in an atmosphere of love and harbored no resentments.She marvelled at what she saw, but it was to her an unattainable condition. Her own affections were seared, and a gnawing hate against the man who had blighted her life, and to whom she was tied, ever consumed her.She was like a dead plant in the midst of spring vegetation. It looks down on the beautiful life about its feet, but itself puts forth no buds, shows no signs of mounting sap.Every now and then Glyceria approached the topic of the Fish, and the mysteries involved in the symbol, but would not disclose them, for she saw that Domitia, however miserable she felt, however hopeless, was not in a frame of mind to receive and welcome the interpretation. For in her, the one dominating passion washate—a desire to have her wrongs revenged, and a chafing at her powerlessness to do anything to revenge them.Her treatment by Domitian was capricious. At one time he neglected her; then he went sometimes out of his way to offer her a slight; at others he made real efforts to heal the breach between them, and to show her that he loved her still.But he met with not merely a frosty but a contemptuous reception, that sent him away, his vanity hurt, and his blood in a ferment.In her indifference to life, she was able to brave him without fear, and he knew that if he ordered her to execution she would hail death as a welcome means of escape from association with himself.His blundering and brutal tyranny was no match for her keen wit cutting into him, and maddening him. He revenged himself by a coarse insult or by a side blow at her friends. She was without ambition. Many a woman would have endured his treatment without repining, for the sake of the splendor with which she could surround herself, and the towering position which she occupied. But neither had any attraction for Domitia. The one thing she did desire, to be left alone in retirement, in the country, that he could not, he would not accord her.Usually, when he was in his splendid villa at Albanum, she elected to remain in Rome, and when he came to the palace on the Palatine, if permitted, she escaped to Albanum; but he would not always suffer this.Thus a wretched life was dragged on, and the heart of Domitia became harder every day. It would have become as adamant but for the presence of Glyceria,whom the Empress sincerely loved, and who exercised a subtle, softening and purifying influence on the princess.Glyceria saw how the Empress suffered, and she pitied her, saw how hopeless the conditions were for improvement; she saw also what was hidden to other eyes, that circumstances were closing round and drawing towards a crisis.Beyond a certain point Glyceria could effect nothing, once only did she dare to suggest that the Augusta should assume a gentler demeanor towards the sovereign of the world, but she was at once cut back with the words:—“There, Glyceria, I allow no interference. He has wronged me past endurance. I can never forgive. I have but one hope, I make but one prayer—and that for revenge.”When Domitian was at Albanum, the Empress enjoyed greater freedom. She was not compelled when she went out, to journey in state; and she could make excursions into the country as she pleased. The absence of gardens on the Palatine and the throng of servants and officers made it an almost intolerable residence to her, beautiful as the situation was, and splendid as were the edifices on it. Nor was this all. Domitian had not rested content with the palaces already erected and crowding the summit of the rock,—those of Augustus, of Tiberius, and of Caligula, he must build one himself, and to find material, he tore down the golden house of Nero.But the construction of his palace served still further to reduce the privacy of the Palatine, for it was thronged with masons, carpenters and plasterers. Indeed the Palatine hill-top was almost as crowded and as noisy as was the Forum below.From this, then, Domitia was glad to escape to a little villa on the Via Nomentana, on a height above the Anio, commanding a view of the Sacred Mount.On one occasion, when Domitian was away at Albanum, she had been at this modest retreat, where she was surrounded by a few servants, and to which she had conveyed Glyceria, to enjoy the pure air and rest of the country.But she was obliged to return to Rome; and with a small retinue, and without heralds preceding her, she started, and in the morning arrived at the Porta Collina. Then Eboracus, coming to the side of the litter, said:—“Lady, there is a great crowd, and the street is full to choking. What is your good pleasure? shall we announce who you are, and command a passage?”“Nay,”answered the princess,“my good Eboracus, let us draw aside, and the swarm will pass, then we can go our way unconcerned. I am in no precipitate haste, and, in faith, every minute I am outside Rome, the better satisfied am I.”“But, madam, it is an ill spot, we are opposite the Accursed Field.”“That matters not. It is but for a brief while. Go forward, Eboracus, and inquire what this crowd signifies. Methinks the people are marvellously still. I hear no shout, not even a murmur.”“There be priests leading the way.”“It is some religious rite. Run forward, Eboracus, and make inquiries. That boy bears an inverted torch.”The sight was extraordinary. A procession of priestswas advancing in silence, and an enormous crowd followed through the gate, pouring forth like water from a sluice, yet without a word spoken. The only sound was that of the tramp of feet.The place where Domitia had halted was just outside the Collina gateway, where was the wall of Servius Tullius and in its moat, thirty feet deep, but dry, out of which rose the wall of massive blocks to another thirty above the level of the ground.This ditch was a pestilential refuse place into which the carcasses of beasts, foul rags, sometimes even the bodies of men, and all the unmentionable filth of a great city were cast. So foul was the spot, so unwholesome the exhalations that no habitations were near it, and the wide open space before the wall went by the designation of the Accursed Field.And now, through the gateway came a covered hearse, and at each corner walked a youth in mourning garb, one bearing a lamp and oil, another milk in a brass vessel, a third water, and a fourth bread. Now, and now only, with a shudder of horror, did Domitia suspect what was about to take place. She saw how that as the crowd deployed, it thickened about one portion of the bank of the ditch, and she saw also the battlements above crowded with the faces of men and women leaning over to look down into the dyke. And there, at one spot in the fosse stood three men. Instinctively Domitia knew who they were—the executioner and his assistants.But who was to be put to death—and on what charge, and by what means?Now the hearse was slowly brought to the edge of the moat and the curtains were raised.Then Domitia saw how that within, prostrate, lay a woman, bound hand and foot to the posts by leather straps, with her face covered, and her mouth muffled that her cries might not be heard.She saw the attendants of the priests untie the thongs and the unfortunate woman was raised to a sitting posture, yet still her face was veiled, and her hands were held by servants of the pontiff. Now one by one the attendants descended into the moat bearing the lamp and the bread and milk, and each handed what he had borne in the procession to the executioner, who gave each article as received to one of his deputies; and the man immediately disappeared with it.Domitia’s heart beat furiously, she put forth her head to look, and discovered a hole at the base of the wall, and through this hole she discerned the twinkling light of the lamp as it passed within, then it was lost. The bread followed, the milk and the water, all conveyed into some underground cellar.And now the chief pontiff present plucked the veil from the face of the victim, and with a gasp—she could not cry out, the power was taken from her—the Empress recognized Cornelia.She made an effort to escape from her litter, and fly to her friend with outstretched arms, but Eboracus, who with white face had returned, caught and restrained her.“Madam,”he said in a low tone, vibrating with emotion,“I pray you, for the sake of the Gods—do nothing rash. Stay where you are. No power—not that of the Sacred Twelve can save her.”“Ye Gods! But what has she done?”“She has been accused of breach of her vows, andcondemned by the Augustus, as Chief Priest—”in a lower tone, hardly above a whisper,“unheard in her defence.”“I must go to her.”“You must not. Nothing can save her. Pray for a speedy death.”With glazed eyes, with a surging in her ears, and throbbing in the temples—as in some paralyzing nightmare—Domitia looked on.And now the gag was removed, and with dignity the Great Mother of the Vestals descended from the bier. She stood, tall and with nobility in her aspect, and looked round on the crowd, then down into the moat, at the black hole under the roots of the wall.“Citizens, by the sacred fire of Vesta, I swear I am innocent of the charge laid against me, and for which I am sentenced. No witnesses have been called. I have not been suffered to offer any defence. I knew not, citizens, until I was told that I was sentenced, that any accusation had been trumped up against me. Thou, O Eternal God—above all lights in the firmament, Thou, O Sovereign Justice that holdest true balances—I invoke Thee—I summon the Chief Pontiff who has sentenced me, before your just thrones, to answer for what is done unto me this day. I summon him for midnight three days hence.”Then the deputy of the Chief Pontiff, who presided at the execution, Domitian being absent at Albanum (he being Pontifex Maximus), raised his arms to heaven in silent prayer.His prayer ended, he extended his hand to Cornelia, but she refusing his help, unaided descended into the fosse.The vast concourse was as though turned to stone by a magician’s wand—so immovable was it and so hushed. Some swallows swept screaming along the moat, and their shrill cries sent a shudder through the entire concourse, wrought to such a tension, that even the note of the birds was an intolerable addition.The Vestal reached the mouth of the pit—the ends of a ladder could be seen at the threshold of this opening. It was evident that the opening gave access to a vault of some depth.Beside it were stones from the wall piled up, and mortar. As soon as the Abbess reached the opening, she turned, and again declared her innocence.“The Emperor,”said she in clear, firm tones,“has adjudged me guilty, knowing that my prayers have obtained for him victory, triumph and an immortal name. I repeat my summons. I bid him answer before the throne on high, at midnight, three days hence.”Then she looked steadily at the blue sky—then up at the sun,—to take a last view of light. With calmness, with fortitude, she turned, and entering the opening began to disappear, descending the ladder.In so doing her veil caught in one of the ends of the side poles of the ladder. She must have reascended a step or two, for her hand was visible disengaging the white veil, and then—hand and veil disappeared.Immediately stones were caught up, trowels and mortar seized, and with incredible celerity the opening was walled up. The pontiff applied his leaden seal.“Be speedy! Remove her! Run—”shouted Eboracus, for his mistress had fallen back in the litter in a dead faint,—“At once—to the Palace!”

No notice was taken by Domitian of the presence in the palace of the murdered actor’s widow. It concerned him in no way, and he allowed the unfortunate woman to remain there, under the care of his wife, and without making any protest.

Domitia found an interest and a delight in the society of the paralyzed woman, so simple in mind, gentle in thought, always cheerful, ever serene, who lived in an atmosphere of love and harbored no resentments.

She marvelled at what she saw, but it was to her an unattainable condition. Her own affections were seared, and a gnawing hate against the man who had blighted her life, and to whom she was tied, ever consumed her.

She was like a dead plant in the midst of spring vegetation. It looks down on the beautiful life about its feet, but itself puts forth no buds, shows no signs of mounting sap.

Every now and then Glyceria approached the topic of the Fish, and the mysteries involved in the symbol, but would not disclose them, for she saw that Domitia, however miserable she felt, however hopeless, was not in a frame of mind to receive and welcome the interpretation. For in her, the one dominating passion washate—a desire to have her wrongs revenged, and a chafing at her powerlessness to do anything to revenge them.

Her treatment by Domitian was capricious. At one time he neglected her; then he went sometimes out of his way to offer her a slight; at others he made real efforts to heal the breach between them, and to show her that he loved her still.

But he met with not merely a frosty but a contemptuous reception, that sent him away, his vanity hurt, and his blood in a ferment.

In her indifference to life, she was able to brave him without fear, and he knew that if he ordered her to execution she would hail death as a welcome means of escape from association with himself.

His blundering and brutal tyranny was no match for her keen wit cutting into him, and maddening him. He revenged himself by a coarse insult or by a side blow at her friends. She was without ambition. Many a woman would have endured his treatment without repining, for the sake of the splendor with which she could surround herself, and the towering position which she occupied. But neither had any attraction for Domitia. The one thing she did desire, to be left alone in retirement, in the country, that he could not, he would not accord her.

Usually, when he was in his splendid villa at Albanum, she elected to remain in Rome, and when he came to the palace on the Palatine, if permitted, she escaped to Albanum; but he would not always suffer this.

Thus a wretched life was dragged on, and the heart of Domitia became harder every day. It would have become as adamant but for the presence of Glyceria,whom the Empress sincerely loved, and who exercised a subtle, softening and purifying influence on the princess.

Glyceria saw how the Empress suffered, and she pitied her, saw how hopeless the conditions were for improvement; she saw also what was hidden to other eyes, that circumstances were closing round and drawing towards a crisis.

Beyond a certain point Glyceria could effect nothing, once only did she dare to suggest that the Augusta should assume a gentler demeanor towards the sovereign of the world, but she was at once cut back with the words:—

“There, Glyceria, I allow no interference. He has wronged me past endurance. I can never forgive. I have but one hope, I make but one prayer—and that for revenge.”

When Domitian was at Albanum, the Empress enjoyed greater freedom. She was not compelled when she went out, to journey in state; and she could make excursions into the country as she pleased. The absence of gardens on the Palatine and the throng of servants and officers made it an almost intolerable residence to her, beautiful as the situation was, and splendid as were the edifices on it. Nor was this all. Domitian had not rested content with the palaces already erected and crowding the summit of the rock,—those of Augustus, of Tiberius, and of Caligula, he must build one himself, and to find material, he tore down the golden house of Nero.

But the construction of his palace served still further to reduce the privacy of the Palatine, for it was thronged with masons, carpenters and plasterers. Indeed the Palatine hill-top was almost as crowded and as noisy as was the Forum below.

From this, then, Domitia was glad to escape to a little villa on the Via Nomentana, on a height above the Anio, commanding a view of the Sacred Mount.

On one occasion, when Domitian was away at Albanum, she had been at this modest retreat, where she was surrounded by a few servants, and to which she had conveyed Glyceria, to enjoy the pure air and rest of the country.

But she was obliged to return to Rome; and with a small retinue, and without heralds preceding her, she started, and in the morning arrived at the Porta Collina. Then Eboracus, coming to the side of the litter, said:—

“Lady, there is a great crowd, and the street is full to choking. What is your good pleasure? shall we announce who you are, and command a passage?”

“Nay,”answered the princess,“my good Eboracus, let us draw aside, and the swarm will pass, then we can go our way unconcerned. I am in no precipitate haste, and, in faith, every minute I am outside Rome, the better satisfied am I.”

“But, madam, it is an ill spot, we are opposite the Accursed Field.”

“That matters not. It is but for a brief while. Go forward, Eboracus, and inquire what this crowd signifies. Methinks the people are marvellously still. I hear no shout, not even a murmur.”

“There be priests leading the way.”

“It is some religious rite. Run forward, Eboracus, and make inquiries. That boy bears an inverted torch.”

The sight was extraordinary. A procession of priestswas advancing in silence, and an enormous crowd followed through the gate, pouring forth like water from a sluice, yet without a word spoken. The only sound was that of the tramp of feet.

The place where Domitia had halted was just outside the Collina gateway, where was the wall of Servius Tullius and in its moat, thirty feet deep, but dry, out of which rose the wall of massive blocks to another thirty above the level of the ground.

This ditch was a pestilential refuse place into which the carcasses of beasts, foul rags, sometimes even the bodies of men, and all the unmentionable filth of a great city were cast. So foul was the spot, so unwholesome the exhalations that no habitations were near it, and the wide open space before the wall went by the designation of the Accursed Field.

And now, through the gateway came a covered hearse, and at each corner walked a youth in mourning garb, one bearing a lamp and oil, another milk in a brass vessel, a third water, and a fourth bread. Now, and now only, with a shudder of horror, did Domitia suspect what was about to take place. She saw how that as the crowd deployed, it thickened about one portion of the bank of the ditch, and she saw also the battlements above crowded with the faces of men and women leaning over to look down into the dyke. And there, at one spot in the fosse stood three men. Instinctively Domitia knew who they were—the executioner and his assistants.

But who was to be put to death—and on what charge, and by what means?

Now the hearse was slowly brought to the edge of the moat and the curtains were raised.

Then Domitia saw how that within, prostrate, lay a woman, bound hand and foot to the posts by leather straps, with her face covered, and her mouth muffled that her cries might not be heard.

She saw the attendants of the priests untie the thongs and the unfortunate woman was raised to a sitting posture, yet still her face was veiled, and her hands were held by servants of the pontiff. Now one by one the attendants descended into the moat bearing the lamp and the bread and milk, and each handed what he had borne in the procession to the executioner, who gave each article as received to one of his deputies; and the man immediately disappeared with it.

Domitia’s heart beat furiously, she put forth her head to look, and discovered a hole at the base of the wall, and through this hole she discerned the twinkling light of the lamp as it passed within, then it was lost. The bread followed, the milk and the water, all conveyed into some underground cellar.

And now the chief pontiff present plucked the veil from the face of the victim, and with a gasp—she could not cry out, the power was taken from her—the Empress recognized Cornelia.

She made an effort to escape from her litter, and fly to her friend with outstretched arms, but Eboracus, who with white face had returned, caught and restrained her.

“Madam,”he said in a low tone, vibrating with emotion,“I pray you, for the sake of the Gods—do nothing rash. Stay where you are. No power—not that of the Sacred Twelve can save her.”

“Ye Gods! But what has she done?”

“She has been accused of breach of her vows, andcondemned by the Augustus, as Chief Priest—”in a lower tone, hardly above a whisper,“unheard in her defence.”

“I must go to her.”

“You must not. Nothing can save her. Pray for a speedy death.”

With glazed eyes, with a surging in her ears, and throbbing in the temples—as in some paralyzing nightmare—Domitia looked on.

And now the gag was removed, and with dignity the Great Mother of the Vestals descended from the bier. She stood, tall and with nobility in her aspect, and looked round on the crowd, then down into the moat, at the black hole under the roots of the wall.

“Citizens, by the sacred fire of Vesta, I swear I am innocent of the charge laid against me, and for which I am sentenced. No witnesses have been called. I have not been suffered to offer any defence. I knew not, citizens, until I was told that I was sentenced, that any accusation had been trumped up against me. Thou, O Eternal God—above all lights in the firmament, Thou, O Sovereign Justice that holdest true balances—I invoke Thee—I summon the Chief Pontiff who has sentenced me, before your just thrones, to answer for what is done unto me this day. I summon him for midnight three days hence.”

Then the deputy of the Chief Pontiff, who presided at the execution, Domitian being absent at Albanum (he being Pontifex Maximus), raised his arms to heaven in silent prayer.

His prayer ended, he extended his hand to Cornelia, but she refusing his help, unaided descended into the fosse.

The vast concourse was as though turned to stone by a magician’s wand—so immovable was it and so hushed. Some swallows swept screaming along the moat, and their shrill cries sent a shudder through the entire concourse, wrought to such a tension, that even the note of the birds was an intolerable addition.

The Vestal reached the mouth of the pit—the ends of a ladder could be seen at the threshold of this opening. It was evident that the opening gave access to a vault of some depth.

Beside it were stones from the wall piled up, and mortar. As soon as the Abbess reached the opening, she turned, and again declared her innocence.“The Emperor,”said she in clear, firm tones,“has adjudged me guilty, knowing that my prayers have obtained for him victory, triumph and an immortal name. I repeat my summons. I bid him answer before the throne on high, at midnight, three days hence.”

Then she looked steadily at the blue sky—then up at the sun,—to take a last view of light. With calmness, with fortitude, she turned, and entering the opening began to disappear, descending the ladder.

In so doing her veil caught in one of the ends of the side poles of the ladder. She must have reascended a step or two, for her hand was visible disengaging the white veil, and then—hand and veil disappeared.

Immediately stones were caught up, trowels and mortar seized, and with incredible celerity the opening was walled up. The pontiff applied his leaden seal.

“Be speedy! Remove her! Run—”shouted Eboracus, for his mistress had fallen back in the litter in a dead faint,—“At once—to the Palace!”

CHAPTER XI.AGAIN: THE SWORD OF CORBULO.Eboracus was able to open a way for the litter through the crowd, now clustered on the bank of the dyke, watching as the workmen threw down earth and stones, and buried deep that portion of the wall in which was the vault where the unhappy Abbess Cornelia was buried alive. And now the populace broke forth in sighs and tears, and in murmurings low expressed at the injustice committed in sentencing a woman without allowing her to know that she had been accused, and of saying a word in her own defence. Some of the crowd was drifting back into Rome, and by entering this current, the train of Domitia travelled along.Eboracus returned from the head of the litter repeatedly to the side, to look within and ascertain whether his mistress were recovering. At the first fountain he stopped the convoy and obtained for her water to bathe her face, and at a little tavern, he procured strong Campanian wine, which he entreated her to sip, so as to nerve her.As the litter approached the Forum, the crowd again coagulated and at last remained completely stationary. Again the street was blocked.Eboracus went forward and forced his way through, that he might ascertain the cause, and whether theblock was temporary and would speedily cease. He came back in great agitation, and said hastily to his mistress:—“Lady, you cannot proceed. Suffer me to recommend that you go to the Carinæ and tarry there—with your lady mother for a while, till your strength is restored, and till the streets be more open.”“Eboracus—what is going on? tell me.”“Madam, there is something being transacted in thecomitiumthat causes all the approaches to be packed with people. We might make a circuit—but, lady! I think if you would deign to repose for an hour at your mother’s house, after what you have suffered, it would be advisable.”“Tell me what is taking place in thecomitium.”“I should prefer, lady, not to be asked.”“But I have asked.”“Then, dear mistress, do not require of me to make answer.”“Answer truly. Tell me no lie. What is it?”He hesitated. Then Domitia said:—“Look at my hand, it is firm, it does not tremble. Nothing that I hear can be worse than what I have seen.”“Lady—your strength has already failed.”“And now I have gathered my resolution together, and can bear anything. I adjure you, by your duty to me—answer me, what is taking place in thecomitium, what is it that causes the streets leading thereto to be impassable.”“If I must reply——”“If you do not, I will have you scourged.”“Nay, lady, that is not like thee. It is not fear thatwill make me speak, but because I know that if I do not, the information can be got from another.”“Well—what is it?”“The knight Celer, on the same charge as that which lost the Great Mother Cornelia, is being whipped to death with the scorpion.”15“By the same orders? To my mother’s in the Carinæ.”Hastily Domitia drew the curtains of her litter, and was seen no more, spoke no more till she reached the door of Longa Duilia.Here she descended and entered the house.“My dear Domitia! my august daughter! What a pleasure! What an honor!”The lady Duilia started up to embrace the Empress.Domitia received the kiss coldly, and sank silent on a stool.Her mother looked at her with surprise. Domitia was waxen white, her eyes with dark rings about them, and unnaturally large and bright. The color had left her lips and these were leaden in hue.Domitia did not speak, did not move. She remained for some moments like a statue.“As the Gods love me!”exclaimed her mother after a long pause,“you are not going to be ill, surely—nothing dangerous, nothing likely to end unhappily. Ye Gods! and I have so much I want you to do for me. Tell me, I entreat you. Hide nothing from me. You are suffering. Where is it? What is it? Shall I send for a doctor?”“Mother, no doctor can cure me. It is here,”Domitia pressed her hands to her heart—“and here,”to her temples.“I am the most miserable, the most unfortunate of women.”“Ye Gods! He has divorced you?”“No, mother. I would that he had.”“Then what is the matter? Have you eaten what disagrees with you? As the Gods love me! you should not come out such a figure. Who was your face-dresser to-day? she ought to be crucified! Not a particle of paint—white as ivory. Intolerable—and it has given me such a turn.”Domitia made no reply.“But what is it? What has made you look like Parian marble?”“The Great Mother Cornelia—”Domitia could say no more, a lump rose in her throat and choked her. Then all at once she began to shiver as though frost-stricken and her teeth chattered.“Ihave an essence—you must take that,”said the lady Duilia.“My dear, I know all about that. An estimable lady. I mean she was so till the Augustus decreed otherwise. I am sorry, and all that—but you know—well, these things do happen and must, and I dare be bound that some are glad, as it makes an opening for another needy girl, of good family of course. What is one person’s loss is another’s gain. The world is so and we can’t alter it, and a good thing, I say, that it is so.”“Mother—she was innocent.”“Well, well, we know all about that. Of course it was all nonsense what was charged against her, that we quite understand. It would never have done for the real truth to have been advertised.”“And what was the truth?”“My dear Domitia! How can you ask such a silly, infantile question? It was your doing, you must understand that. You threw yourself on her protection, embraced the altar of Vesta, and Cornelia with the assistance of Celer did what she could to further your object in leaving Rome. If people will do donkey-like things they must get a stick across their backs. It is so, and always will be so in this world, and we cannot make it otherwise.”“I thought so. I was sure it was so,”said Domitia gravely. There was an infinity of sadness, of despair in her tone.“Mother, I bring misfortune upon all with whom I have to do.”“Ye Gods! not on me! I hope to be preserved from that! Do not speak such unlucky words—they are of bad omen.”“I cannot help it, mother, it is true. I am the most unfortunate of women myself——”“You speak rank folly. Ye Gods forgive me! saying such a thing to one who is herself divine. But, it is so—you are positively the most fortunate of women. What more do you desire? You are the Augusta, the people swear by your genius and fortune.”“Bymyfortune! Alack poor souls!”“And is it not a piece of good fortune to be raised so high that there is none above you?”“My fortune! The Gods know—if they know anything—that I would gladly exchange my lot with that of a poor woman in a cottage who spins and sings, or of a girl among the mountains who keeps goats and is defended by a boisterous dog. Mother, listen to me. I have brought misfortune on Lucius Lamia, I have caused the death of that harmless actor Paris, I havebeen the occasion of Cornelia being—buried alive—watching the expiring of the one lamp. Ye Gods! Ye Gods! I shall go mad—and of Celer also.—He——”She held her face, rocked herself on the seat and sobbed as if her heart would break.“Yes,”said the old lady, roused to anger at her daughter’s lack of appreciation of the splendor of her position.“Yes, child, and mischief you will work on every one, if you continue in the same course. Do men say that the Augustus is morose? Who made him so?—you by your behavior. Do they say that he is severe in his judgments? Who has hardened him and made him cruel?—You—who have dried up all the springs of tenderness in his breast. He was not so at first. If he be what men think—it is your work. You with your stinging words goaded him to madness and as he cannot or will not beat you, as you deserve, he deals the blows on some one else. Of course he cuts away such as you regard and love—because they obtain that to which he has a right, but which you deny him.”“He—he—a right!”Domitia started up, anger, resentment, hatred flared in her eyes, stiffened the muscles of her whole face, made her hair bristle above her brow.“He a right, mother! he who tore me away from my dear Lamia, to whom I had given my whole heart, to whom I had been united by your sanction and our union blessed by the Gods! He who violated hospitality, the most sacred rights that belong to a house, who repaid your kindness in saving his life—when he was hunted like a wolf, by breaking and destroying, by trampling under his accursed heel, the brittle, innocent heart of the daughter of her who had protectedhim! No, mother, I owed him no love. I have never given him any, because he never had a right to any. Mother—this must have an end.”She sank into silence that continued for some while.Duilia did not speak. She did not desire another such explosion, lest the slaves should hear and betray what had been said. Presently, however, she whisperedcoaxingly:—“My dear Domitia, you are overwrought. You have eaten something that has affected your temper. I find gherkins always disagree with me. There, go and take a little ginger in white wine, and sleep it off.”Domitia rose, stiffly, as though all her joints were wooden.“Yes, mother, I will go. But there is one thing I desire of thee. I have long coveted it, as a remembrancer of my father—may I take it?”“Anything—anything you like.”Domitia went to the wall and took down the sword of Corbulo, there suspended.“It is this, mother. I need it.”Then she departed.“That sword—ah!”said Duilia.“It has been a little overdone. I have caught my guests exchanging winks when I alluded to it, and dropped a tear. O by all means she shall have it. It has ceased to be of use to me.”

Eboracus was able to open a way for the litter through the crowd, now clustered on the bank of the dyke, watching as the workmen threw down earth and stones, and buried deep that portion of the wall in which was the vault where the unhappy Abbess Cornelia was buried alive. And now the populace broke forth in sighs and tears, and in murmurings low expressed at the injustice committed in sentencing a woman without allowing her to know that she had been accused, and of saying a word in her own defence. Some of the crowd was drifting back into Rome, and by entering this current, the train of Domitia travelled along.

Eboracus returned from the head of the litter repeatedly to the side, to look within and ascertain whether his mistress were recovering. At the first fountain he stopped the convoy and obtained for her water to bathe her face, and at a little tavern, he procured strong Campanian wine, which he entreated her to sip, so as to nerve her.

As the litter approached the Forum, the crowd again coagulated and at last remained completely stationary. Again the street was blocked.

Eboracus went forward and forced his way through, that he might ascertain the cause, and whether theblock was temporary and would speedily cease. He came back in great agitation, and said hastily to his mistress:—

“Lady, you cannot proceed. Suffer me to recommend that you go to the Carinæ and tarry there—with your lady mother for a while, till your strength is restored, and till the streets be more open.”

“Eboracus—what is going on? tell me.”

“Madam, there is something being transacted in thecomitiumthat causes all the approaches to be packed with people. We might make a circuit—but, lady! I think if you would deign to repose for an hour at your mother’s house, after what you have suffered, it would be advisable.”

“Tell me what is taking place in thecomitium.”

“I should prefer, lady, not to be asked.”

“But I have asked.”

“Then, dear mistress, do not require of me to make answer.”

“Answer truly. Tell me no lie. What is it?”

He hesitated. Then Domitia said:—

“Look at my hand, it is firm, it does not tremble. Nothing that I hear can be worse than what I have seen.”

“Lady—your strength has already failed.”

“And now I have gathered my resolution together, and can bear anything. I adjure you, by your duty to me—answer me, what is taking place in thecomitium, what is it that causes the streets leading thereto to be impassable.”

“If I must reply——”

“If you do not, I will have you scourged.”

“Nay, lady, that is not like thee. It is not fear thatwill make me speak, but because I know that if I do not, the information can be got from another.”

“Well—what is it?”

“The knight Celer, on the same charge as that which lost the Great Mother Cornelia, is being whipped to death with the scorpion.”15

“By the same orders? To my mother’s in the Carinæ.”

Hastily Domitia drew the curtains of her litter, and was seen no more, spoke no more till she reached the door of Longa Duilia.

Here she descended and entered the house.

“My dear Domitia! my august daughter! What a pleasure! What an honor!”

The lady Duilia started up to embrace the Empress.

Domitia received the kiss coldly, and sank silent on a stool.

Her mother looked at her with surprise. Domitia was waxen white, her eyes with dark rings about them, and unnaturally large and bright. The color had left her lips and these were leaden in hue.

Domitia did not speak, did not move. She remained for some moments like a statue.

“As the Gods love me!”exclaimed her mother after a long pause,“you are not going to be ill, surely—nothing dangerous, nothing likely to end unhappily. Ye Gods! and I have so much I want you to do for me. Tell me, I entreat you. Hide nothing from me. You are suffering. Where is it? What is it? Shall I send for a doctor?”

“Mother, no doctor can cure me. It is here,”Domitia pressed her hands to her heart—“and here,”to her temples.“I am the most miserable, the most unfortunate of women.”

“Ye Gods! He has divorced you?”

“No, mother. I would that he had.”

“Then what is the matter? Have you eaten what disagrees with you? As the Gods love me! you should not come out such a figure. Who was your face-dresser to-day? she ought to be crucified! Not a particle of paint—white as ivory. Intolerable—and it has given me such a turn.”

Domitia made no reply.

“But what is it? What has made you look like Parian marble?”

“The Great Mother Cornelia—”Domitia could say no more, a lump rose in her throat and choked her. Then all at once she began to shiver as though frost-stricken and her teeth chattered.

“Ihave an essence—you must take that,”said the lady Duilia.“My dear, I know all about that. An estimable lady. I mean she was so till the Augustus decreed otherwise. I am sorry, and all that—but you know—well, these things do happen and must, and I dare be bound that some are glad, as it makes an opening for another needy girl, of good family of course. What is one person’s loss is another’s gain. The world is so and we can’t alter it, and a good thing, I say, that it is so.”

“Mother—she was innocent.”

“Well, well, we know all about that. Of course it was all nonsense what was charged against her, that we quite understand. It would never have done for the real truth to have been advertised.”

“And what was the truth?”

“My dear Domitia! How can you ask such a silly, infantile question? It was your doing, you must understand that. You threw yourself on her protection, embraced the altar of Vesta, and Cornelia with the assistance of Celer did what she could to further your object in leaving Rome. If people will do donkey-like things they must get a stick across their backs. It is so, and always will be so in this world, and we cannot make it otherwise.”

“I thought so. I was sure it was so,”said Domitia gravely. There was an infinity of sadness, of despair in her tone.“Mother, I bring misfortune upon all with whom I have to do.”

“Ye Gods! not on me! I hope to be preserved from that! Do not speak such unlucky words—they are of bad omen.”

“I cannot help it, mother, it is true. I am the most unfortunate of women myself——”

“You speak rank folly. Ye Gods forgive me! saying such a thing to one who is herself divine. But, it is so—you are positively the most fortunate of women. What more do you desire? You are the Augusta, the people swear by your genius and fortune.”

“Bymyfortune! Alack poor souls!”

“And is it not a piece of good fortune to be raised so high that there is none above you?”

“My fortune! The Gods know—if they know anything—that I would gladly exchange my lot with that of a poor woman in a cottage who spins and sings, or of a girl among the mountains who keeps goats and is defended by a boisterous dog. Mother, listen to me. I have brought misfortune on Lucius Lamia, I have caused the death of that harmless actor Paris, I havebeen the occasion of Cornelia being—buried alive—watching the expiring of the one lamp. Ye Gods! Ye Gods! I shall go mad—and of Celer also.—He——”

She held her face, rocked herself on the seat and sobbed as if her heart would break.

“Yes,”said the old lady, roused to anger at her daughter’s lack of appreciation of the splendor of her position.“Yes, child, and mischief you will work on every one, if you continue in the same course. Do men say that the Augustus is morose? Who made him so?—you by your behavior. Do they say that he is severe in his judgments? Who has hardened him and made him cruel?—You—who have dried up all the springs of tenderness in his breast. He was not so at first. If he be what men think—it is your work. You with your stinging words goaded him to madness and as he cannot or will not beat you, as you deserve, he deals the blows on some one else. Of course he cuts away such as you regard and love—because they obtain that to which he has a right, but which you deny him.”

“He—he—a right!”

Domitia started up, anger, resentment, hatred flared in her eyes, stiffened the muscles of her whole face, made her hair bristle above her brow.

“He a right, mother! he who tore me away from my dear Lamia, to whom I had given my whole heart, to whom I had been united by your sanction and our union blessed by the Gods! He who violated hospitality, the most sacred rights that belong to a house, who repaid your kindness in saving his life—when he was hunted like a wolf, by breaking and destroying, by trampling under his accursed heel, the brittle, innocent heart of the daughter of her who had protectedhim! No, mother, I owed him no love. I have never given him any, because he never had a right to any. Mother—this must have an end.”

She sank into silence that continued for some while.

Duilia did not speak. She did not desire another such explosion, lest the slaves should hear and betray what had been said. Presently, however, she whisperedcoaxingly:—

“My dear Domitia, you are overwrought. You have eaten something that has affected your temper. I find gherkins always disagree with me. There, go and take a little ginger in white wine, and sleep it off.”

Domitia rose, stiffly, as though all her joints were wooden.

“Yes, mother, I will go. But there is one thing I desire of thee. I have long coveted it, as a remembrancer of my father—may I take it?”

“Anything—anything you like.”

Domitia went to the wall and took down the sword of Corbulo, there suspended.

“It is this, mother. I need it.”

Then she departed.

“That sword—ah!”said Duilia.“It has been a little overdone. I have caught my guests exchanging winks when I alluded to it, and dropped a tear. O by all means she shall have it. It has ceased to be of use to me.”

CHAPTER XII.THE TABLETS.Elymas the sorcerer stood bowing before Domitia, his hands crossed upon his breast.She looked scrutinizingly into his dark face, but could read nothing there. He remained immovable and silent before her, awaiting the announcement of her will.“I have sent for thee,”she said.“How long, I would know, before the sixth veil falls?”“Lady and Augusta,”answered the Magian,“remember that when thou lookest out upon the Sabine Mountains, on one day all is so distinct that thou wouldst 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 must require days of travel to attain their roots. It is so with the Future. We look into its distance and behold forms—but whether near or far we know not. This only do we say with confidence, that we are aware of their succession, 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 anextent it has been managed by such as thyself, that I cannot judge. But of a certainty it was thou who didst contrive that I was carried away from my husband’s house. Then what followed, the Gods know how far thou wast in it, but I have heard it said that the God Titus would not have had his mortal thread cut short but that, when in fever, thou didst persuade him to a bath in snow water. It is very easy to predict what will be, when with our hands we mould the future. And now—I care not whether thou makest or predictest what is to be—but an end there must be, and that a speedy one—for thine own safety hangs thereon.”“How so, lady?”“The Augustus has been greatly alarmed of late at sinister omens and prophesies; and he attributes them to thee. Perhaps,”with a scornful intonation,“he also is aware that fulfilment is assured before a prophesy is given out.”The Magus remained motionless, but his face became pale.“I know, because at supper with his intimates, Messala and Regulus and Carus, he swore by the Gods he would have you cast to savage dogs, and he would make an example of such as filledmen’sminds with expectation of evil.”“Lady——”But Domitia interrupted him.“Thou thinkest that I say this to alarm thee and bend thee to my will. If the Augustus has his spies that watch and repeat to him whatsoever I do, whomsoever I see, almost every word I say—shall not I also have a watch put upon him? Even now, Magus, that I have 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 think this interview bodes him no good.”“When, Lady Augusta, was this said?”“The Emperor is this day returned from Albanum, and the threat was made but yesterday. Who can say but that the order has already been given for thy arrest, and for the gathering together of the dogs that are to rend thee.”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 the Cæsar, that the death of one is the extinction of the other; or that thou holdest so potent a charm that if thou wilt thou canst employ it for his destruction. It is not for me to point out how thou mayest twist out of his grasp—thou art a very eel for slipperiness, and a serpent for contrivance. What I desire to know is—How much longer is this tyranny to last, and how long am I to suffer?”Then the magician looked round the room, to make sure that he was unobserved; he raised the curtain at the door to see that none listened outside, and satisfied that he was neither observed nor overheard, he pointed to a clepsydra.This was an ingenious, but to our minds a clumsy, contrivance for measuring time. It consisted of a silver ball, with a covered opening at the top, through which the interior could be replenished. About the base of the globe were minute perforations through which the liquid that was placed in the vessel slowly oozed, and oozing ran together into a drop at the bottom which fell at intervals into the bucket of a tiny wheel.When the bucket was full, the wheel revolved anddecanted the liquid whilst presenting another bucket to the distilling drops.At each movement of the wheel a connection with it gave motion to the hand of a statuette of Saturn, who with his scythe indicated a number on an arc of metal. The numbers ranged from one to twelve, and the contrivance answered 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, and next moment, the curtain was snatched aside, and Domitian, his face blazing with anger, entered the apartment of his wife.“So?”said he,“you are in league with astrologers and magicians against me! 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 him already. Hey! Magus! knowest thou what will be thy doom, thou who pretendest to read the fate of men in thestars?”“Augustus,”answered the necromancer,“I have read that I should be rent by 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 very night, burned alive. We will see whether his prophecies come true. Here is my order.”Domitian plucked a packet of tablets from his bosom, bound together with a string, drew forth one, and wrote hastily on it, then pressed his seal on the 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 and looked 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 storms everywhere, and lightning falling on all sides—portents they say. So be it! 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 been a conspiracy entered into against my life, and the fools thought to set up Clemens—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 against them 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 no friends; my kinsmen either have been, or hate me; my friends are the most despicable of flatterers, who would betray their own parents to save their own throats; I use them, but I scorn them. You know not what it is to be alone!”“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 done anything—you are against me; you take counsel with aChaldæan how long I have to live; the Senate, the nobles hate me, and by Jupiter, they have good cause, for I cut them with a scythe like ripe wheat. That was a good lesson of Tarquin to his son Sextus to nip off the heads of the tallest poppies. And the people—you have been currying favor with them—against me; the soldiers alone love me, because I have doubled their pay; let another offer 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 the clepsydra.“What said that star-gazer about the twelfth hour?”he asked.“Walls have ears, nothing is said that does not reach me. So, old Saturn, with thy scythe, dost thou threaten? Then I defy thee—ha! I saw the storm was coming 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, maybe to kindle the pyre on which that sorcerer will burn; I care not. Fire of heaven 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 continuous quiver of electric light ran along the horizon. Then the heavens seemed to be 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 he pressed his hands to his eyeballs.“By the Gods!”he exclaimed a moment later,“here comes the rain; it descends in cataracts; it falls with a roar.”He paced the room, halted, stood in front of the clepsydra and looked at the dropping water. The water had been reddened, and it seemed like blood sweated out of the silver globe. At that moment the wheel revolved, and sent a crimson gush into the receiver. With a jerk Saturn raised his scythe 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 expected that I shall love any? my father disliked me, my brother distrusted me—and you—my wife, have ever hated me. I need not ask the cause of that. It is Lamia, always Lamia. Because he has never married you think he still harbors love for you; and you—you hate me because of him. It is hard to be a prince, and to be alone. If I hear a play—I think I catch allusions to me; if it be a comedy—there is a jest aimed at me; if a tragedy, it expresses what men wish may befall me. If I read a historian, he declaims on the glories of a commonwealth before these men, these Cæsars became tyrants, 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 the blue—to show me that they hate me. At the Amphitheatre, if I favor the big shields, then every one else is for the small targets. A prince is ever the most solitary of men. If you had protested that you loved me, hadfondled me, I would have held you in suspicion, mistrusted your every word and look and gesture. Perhaps it is because that you have never given me good word, gentle look, and gesture of respect that I feel you are true—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 would you have?”The mime Latinus appeared.“Well—speak.”“Sire, the rain extinguished the pyre, before that the astrologer was much burnt; then the dogs fell on him, as he was unbound, and they tore him and he is dead.”“Ye Gods!”gasped Domitian, putting up his hand.“His word has come true after 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 the scythe points to Twelve.”Domitian answered not a word, he threw his mantle about his face and left the room.He had left his tablets on the table.

Elymas the sorcerer stood bowing before Domitia, his hands crossed upon his breast.

She looked scrutinizingly into his dark face, but could read nothing there. He remained immovable and silent before her, awaiting the announcement of her will.

“I have sent for thee,”she said.“How long, I would know, before the sixth veil falls?”

“Lady and Augusta,”answered the Magian,“remember that when thou lookest out upon the Sabine Mountains, on one day all is so distinct that thou wouldst 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 must require days of travel to attain their roots. It is so with the Future. We look into its distance and behold forms—but whether near or far we know not. This only do we say with confidence, that we are aware of their succession, 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 anextent it has been managed by such as thyself, that I cannot judge. But of a certainty it was thou who didst contrive that I was carried away from my husband’s house. Then what followed, the Gods know how far thou wast in it, but I have heard it said that the God Titus would not have had his mortal thread cut short but that, when in fever, thou didst persuade him to a bath in snow water. It is very easy to predict what will be, when with our hands we mould the future. And now—I care not whether thou makest or predictest what is to be—but an end there must be, and that a speedy one—for thine own safety hangs thereon.”

“How so, lady?”

“The Augustus has been greatly alarmed of late at sinister omens and prophesies; and he attributes them to thee. Perhaps,”with a scornful intonation,“he also is aware that fulfilment is assured before a prophesy is given out.”

The Magus remained motionless, but his face became pale.

“I know, because at supper with his intimates, Messala and Regulus and Carus, he swore by the Gods he would have you cast to savage dogs, and he would make an example of such as filledmen’sminds with expectation of evil.”

“Lady——”

But Domitia interrupted him.“Thou thinkest that I say this to alarm thee and bend thee to my will. If the Augustus has his spies that watch and repeat to him whatsoever I do, whomsoever I see, almost every word I say—shall not I also have a watch put upon him? Even now, Magus, that I have 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 think this interview bodes him no good.”

“When, Lady Augusta, was this said?”

“The Emperor is this day returned from Albanum, and the threat was made but yesterday. Who can say but that the order has already been given for thy arrest, and for the gathering together of the dogs that are to rend thee.”

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 the Cæsar, that the death of one is the extinction of the other; or that thou holdest so potent a charm that if thou wilt thou canst employ it for his destruction. It is not for me to point out how thou mayest twist out of his grasp—thou art a very eel for slipperiness, and a serpent for contrivance. What I desire to know is—How much longer is this tyranny to last, and how long am I to suffer?”

Then the magician looked round the room, to make sure that he was unobserved; he raised the curtain at the door to see that none listened outside, and satisfied that he was neither observed nor overheard, he pointed to a clepsydra.

This was an ingenious, but to our minds a clumsy, contrivance for measuring time. It consisted of a silver ball, with a covered opening at the top, through which the interior could be replenished. About the base of the globe were minute perforations through which the liquid that was placed in the vessel slowly oozed, and oozing ran together into a drop at the bottom which fell at intervals into the bucket of a tiny wheel.

When the bucket was full, the wheel revolved anddecanted the liquid whilst presenting another bucket to the distilling drops.

At each movement of the wheel a connection with it gave motion to the hand of a statuette of Saturn, who with his scythe indicated a number on an arc of metal. The numbers ranged from one to twelve, and the contrivance answered 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, and next moment, the curtain was snatched aside, and Domitian, his face blazing with anger, entered the apartment of his wife.

“So?”said he,“you are in league with astrologers and magicians against me! 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 him already. Hey! Magus! knowest thou what will be thy doom, thou who pretendest to read the fate of men in thestars?”

“Augustus,”answered the necromancer,“I have read that I should be rent by 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 very night, burned alive. We will see whether his prophecies come true. Here is my order.”

Domitian plucked a packet of tablets from his bosom, bound together with a string, drew forth one, and wrote hastily on it, then pressed his seal on the 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 and looked 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 storms everywhere, and lightning falling on all sides—portents they say. So be it! 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 been a conspiracy entered into against my life, and the fools thought to set up Clemens—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 against them 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 no friends; my kinsmen either have been, or hate me; my friends are the most despicable of flatterers, who would betray their own parents to save their own throats; I use them, but I scorn them. You know not what it is to be alone!”

“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 done anything—you are against me; you take counsel with aChaldæan how long I have to live; the Senate, the nobles hate me, and by Jupiter, they have good cause, for I cut them with a scythe like ripe wheat. That was a good lesson of Tarquin to his son Sextus to nip off the heads of the tallest poppies. And the people—you have been currying favor with them—against me; the soldiers alone love me, because I have doubled their pay; let another offer 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 the clepsydra.

“What said that star-gazer about the twelfth hour?”he asked.“Walls have ears, nothing is said that does not reach me. So, old Saturn, with thy scythe, dost thou threaten? Then I defy thee—ha! I saw the storm was coming 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, maybe to kindle the pyre on which that sorcerer will burn; I care not. Fire of heaven 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 continuous quiver of electric light ran along the horizon. Then the heavens seemed to be 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 he pressed his hands to his eyeballs.

“By the Gods!”he exclaimed a moment later,“here comes the rain; it descends in cataracts; it falls with a roar.”

He paced the room, halted, stood in front of the clepsydra and looked at the dropping water. The water had been reddened, and it seemed like blood sweated out of the silver globe. At that moment the wheel revolved, and sent a crimson gush into the receiver. With a jerk Saturn raised his scythe 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 expected that I shall love any? my father disliked me, my brother distrusted me—and you—my wife, have ever hated me. I need not ask the cause of that. It is Lamia, always Lamia. Because he has never married you think he still harbors love for you; and you—you hate me because of him. It is hard to be a prince, and to be alone. If I hear a play—I think I catch allusions to me; if it be a comedy—there is a jest aimed at me; if a tragedy, it expresses what men wish may befall me. If I read a historian, he declaims on the glories of a commonwealth before these men, these Cæsars became tyrants, 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 the blue—to show me that they hate me. At the Amphitheatre, if I favor the big shields, then every one else is for the small targets. A prince is ever the most solitary of men. If you had protested that you loved me, hadfondled me, I would have held you in suspicion, mistrusted your every word and look and gesture. Perhaps it is because that you have never given me good word, gentle look, and gesture of respect that I feel you are true—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 would you have?”

The mime Latinus appeared.

“Well—speak.”

“Sire, the rain extinguished the pyre, before that the astrologer was much burnt; then the dogs fell on him, as he was unbound, and they tore him and he is dead.”

“Ye Gods!”gasped Domitian, putting up his hand.“His word has come true after 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 the scythe points to Twelve.”

Domitian answered not a word, he threw his mantle about his face and left the room.

He had left his tablets on the table.

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