Chapter XXIII
IN the peristyle of a small house not far from the Porta Capena, a little woman sings a happy song as she tends and gathers her flowers. A fountain adds its liquid sound to her pleasing melody. It is near sundown, and the peristyle is bathed in soft light reflected from a clear blue sky. In a corner of the corridor that surrounds the peristyle, a bright-faced lad lies upon a couch. A hunchbacked girl with long arms and slanting but kind face hands him a cup of water and moves silently away. The little woman takes a tuft of mignonette and gives it to the happy-faced lad, saying, “That will refresh thee after thy tired and anxious day.”
“Thou art too kind, my lady.”
“Do thy limbs pain thee less, Aldo?”
“Ay, my lady,” replies the lad, anxious to appear better and stronger than he really is.
“Cruelly did they torture thee, my Aldo.”
“Ay; they were brutal. But they learned not from me my master’s hiding-place.”
“Brave and heroic lad, thy silence saved us all.”
“How I long for the stables at the Circus!” cries Aldo. “The horses my master trained at Casinum are the finest beasts that ever appeared at Rome. He will win the race this day!”
“Thinkest thou so? ’Tis the first race he has run since he fled from the city with thee.”
“Ah, my lady, he was not idle at Casinum. No one can equal my master. The horses may become frightened, but he will be able to hold them.”
“Would that I were less nervous! I cannot look at the Circus without becoming faint. The race must soon be over.”
“Nay, my lady; we have not heard the sound of victory.”
“Ah, Aldo, I fear thy master has lost.”
“Have no fear, my lady; the cheers will come.”
The little woman begins to walk nervously around the corridor. Will he win? Will he lose? These are the questions that torment her mind. He had left her at noonday, filled with cheering hopes. He had kissed her and had said: “Ah, little heart, this night we ought to be far richer. I have the winning horses, and everything is propitious. A fair portion of the prize I will bestow upon Hermes if he but guides mine arms!” As the moments pass by, the little woman tears a flower which she holds in her hand. Shestops again by Aldo and says, “He has lost!” Suddenly a faint sound is heard, gradually increasing, until a violent cheer rends the air. “He has won! he has won!” screams the little woman. “Nana! he has won!”
The good, faithful old Nana comes into the corridor and adds her enthusiasm to that of her mistress.
“By Hermes! said I not so, my lady?” cries Aldo, with tears of joy running down his cheeks.
“Ay, ay, my boy!” replies the little woman, hysterically.
“Never do the other factions make such a noise when they win. ’Tis the Green! Oh that I could have helped my master to harness the horses!”
“The days have been happy since thou didst enter the house, my mistress,” exclaims Nana, appearing in the corridor. “Each day brings added joy.”
The little humpback shyly looks from the door of the kitchen.
“Come, Lupa! Share our happiness. Thy master is again the hero of the Green faction.”
Some time after, a second cheering is heard. This time it appears nearer. The little woman hastens to the door and looks towards the Via Appia. She sees the victor, crowned with olive and with a palm branch in his hand, comingtowards her, escorted by an admiring throng. So filled is she with an indescribable feeling of joy that she rushes towards him, crying, “Gyges, O my Gyges!”
The charioteer, not less excited than the little woman, hastens his steps, and seizing her in his arms and kissing her, exclaims: “O Psyche, my little wife, what intense happiness is ours!”
A new cry of enthusiasm rises from the crowd. At the door of his home Gyges turns to them and says: “Friends, ye are no happier than I am! ’Twas a hard-earned victory. May the Greens always trust me! These muscles are always at their service! At the inn of Furnius I have ordered four thousand cups of wine to be given away. Fare ye well! May Hermes always be gracious towards us, as he has been this day!”
After another prolonged cheer the crowd departs.
In the peristyle, with his arms extended as far as he is able towards his master, Aldo leans from his couch. Gyges takes the extended hands in his. The lad covers those of his master with kisses. “I am so happy! so happy! so happy, my master!” he cries, with large tears gushing from his eyes.
“Ay, my little hero, the horses we trained at Casinum carried me to victory. ’Twas in thismanner, O wife.—Ah, Nana, thine eyes are bright and the poor Lupa is also happy!—My horses were fresh but restless. Finally the signal was given, the doors of thecarcereswere thrown open, and the race began. The pace was unusually fast, but at the fourth turn my horses were nearly as fresh as when they started. The smallest one of the four could not run in the same rhythm with the others.”
“The same old fault, my master,” said Aldo, with his eyes opened wide with excitement.
“Ay, so busy was I trying to get him under control that at the fifth turn the Red and the White succeeded in pocketing me. Instantly I saw my danger, and quickly reining the horses, who were now moving as one, I made a sudden turn to the right. Nothing, my Psyche, nothing, my Aldo, would have won the race for me if there had been the least fault in that quick turn.”
“Ay, ay, my master,” said Aldo, nervously patting the cover of his couch.
“But the very thing we trained them for at Casinum, O Aldo, was the trick that saved the day. Never before have I seen horses turn so quickly. In all my experience never have I seen such beautiful movement. The White was taken back with surprise. He tried to cut me out; but one word, one toss of the reins, one long cheer to the horses that know my every whisper, succeededin bringing me clear of the rest. Oh the speed with which we made the sixth turn! The Red had the inside track and we were even. With the cracking of the whips, the hoof-beats of the horses, and the cheering of the sanguine Greens all ringing in mine ears, I made my supreme effort. I called each horse by name. I steadied them with the last bit of strength in my body. As we reached the final stretch, I was slightly in the lead. Oh, the cries of the people were deafening! Every one of the charioteers was exerting himself to the utmost. By some invisible power I succeeded in instilling into my horses my own enthusiasm. O my lad, on, on, on, we went towards the final goal! The enthusiasm of the vast crowd now passed all bounds, my Psyche. ‘He has it! he has it!’ were the words that rent the air when, a full chariot’s length ahead of them all, I passed the stand of the judges!”
“Said I not my master would win, my lady?” asks Aldo, trembling with excitement.
“Ay, my lad,” replies Psyche.
“How feelest thou?” asks Gyges, turning kindly to Aldo.
“A few days more and I shall be able to help thee, my master.”
“The physician has been here, my husband. He says that Aldo will be able to walk with crutches two weeks hence. He has so bandagedthe lad’s limbs that the boy can scarcely move.”
“Not two weeks hence, my lady?”
“Ay, Aldo.”
“Spartans must have been thine ancestors, Aldo. Thou wert a true hero to have kept silence under torture. ’Twas that silence, brave lad, that gives us our present happiness. I will not only make thee free, but I share with thee my winnings of this day!”
“Nay, my master; I wish for nothing. I am content if I may live with thee.”
“Come, dear heart,” says Gyges, taking Psyche’s hand, “let us sit together in our favorite place in the peristyle and watch the play of the fountain as the evening dies away.”
Seated on the same stone bench where they passed their happy afternoon before Psyche’s arrest, the loving couple lose themselves in meditation. The fountain plays its old joyful air.
“The months we were separated, O sweet wife, were bitter ones; but now in happy matrimonial bonds we live a new life of peace.”
“True, O Gyges; it seems as if my mind had been meanwhile in dense obscurity. Often does my memory revert to the sufferer with whom I passed the last months of my imprisonment.”
“Ay, tyranny did not end with the death of Sejanus,” replies Gyges.
“Ah, she was a living Niobe. Never shall I forget her expression when I told her that Drusus had been starved to death—O poor, poor Agrippina!” she exclaims, her eyes filling with tears. “But we are now happy,” she adds after a pause. “My life in our new home is a continuous song of joy.”
“Thou art the same happy Psyche.”
“Thou art the same brave Gyges.”
“Braver than my sweet wife, who has struggled so heroically?”
“Without the sustaining hope of thy love, my husband, the dancing-girl would have succumbed under her afflictions. The golden necklace was a great solace. Each stone sparkled with recollections of thee, joined together with golden links of love.”
“Thou, sweet wife, wert all in all to me. At Casinum ’twas Psyche who ruled my thoughts. ’Twas Psyche whose name was carried on my prayers. ’Twas thy love that sustained me in my hiding-place. This day, while making the last turn, ’twas the thought of thee that gave me the necessary stimulation to carry me on to glorious victory. Coming from the Circus, I felt as one of the victorious youths must have felt when he left the Olympian Games. The cheers of the people fell upon mine ears like prophetic songs of future victories. When I saw thee atthe door of our house, my heart throbbed with supreme joy. O my love, we have reached the summit of our happiness!”
At this point their happy reveries are checked by a knock at the door. Lupa quickly answers the call. Alcmaeon and Hera enter. At the sound of her parents’ voices Psyche rushes to meet them.
“We have heard the happy news, O Psyche. Hail to thee, victorious son!” exclaims Alcmaeon.
“’Twas a glorious day, my father! Come, sit thou in the peristyle! The evening meal is not yet ready. Thou, O mother, may sit with Psyche. We can be two lovers and rest at their feet, my father! Come!”
“We are proud of thee, my son!” says Hera. “Again the Greek has conquered. How is the lad Aldo?”
“Ah, my mother, he frets under the restraint of his bandages.”
“He is sleeping, O Psyche,” whispers Lupa, timidly.
“The prize this day, my father, was a large one,” says Gyges to Alcmaeon, as they gather around the stone bench in the peristyle. “When the racing-season is over, we will all go to Corinth.”
“A schoolmaster cannot leave his duties.”
“Ay; Macro will find another position for thee when thou returnest.”
“Ah! shall we all really see the city of our ancestors?” asked Alcmaeon. “Shall we again see Corinth, the eye of Greece, old, ’tis true, but still undimmed in lustre? Breathing the divine air from the sublime heights of Corinth, shall we see the living words of the Iliad? Shall we see the country that stirred the sainted soul of Homer?”
“I shall be glad to lose the sight of cruel Rome,” says Hera.
“Ah, my wife,” exclaims the happy father, with his old enthusiasm for his wonderful country, “the Greek has conquered the Roman this day. The Greek has thrown Sejanus from his lofty seat. Did I not say, my children, that physical strength is overmatched by intellectual power? Have we accomplished our ends with blaring trumpets? In the silence of Aldo there was more power than in all the vaunted greatness of the infamous Sejanus. If the lad had uttered but a word at that crucial moment, the history of Rome would have been changed.”
“Thou speakest truly, O father,” says Gyges.
“The Greeks are thought to be weak, O my son, but they were once the greatest nation that ever lived. Ay, in the shadows of divine mountains, in the soft light of sacred valleys, has the truth entered into the souls of our countrymen.While our ancestors were clanging their swords against the sacred ones suspended over the doors of our columned temples, in order to make themselves invincible in battle; while the seeds of our heroes were ripening on Iliadic plains; while the words of Aeschylus—the heroic Son of a Divinity—were being sung in white theatres to the Hellenes, frenzied with religious dithyrambics,—what were the Romans doing? They were worshipping terra-cotta figures; they were living in huts; they knew neither poetry nor philosophy.”
“Thou fillest our souls with love for our Fatherland, O my sire,” exclaims Psyche, moved by the words of Alcmaeon.
“Fatherland!” continues Alcmaeon. “Ay, in the minds of the Greeks have originated the truths of the world. The divine spirit of our Fatherland shone in a glorious, effulgent day. Having long warmed the world with celestial rays, the spirit now sleeps. There will be a morrow, my loved ones, when the harvest grown under that heat will be garnered. Ah, shall we ever see the day when triumphant Athene shall take the spear and shield from restless and impetuous Ares and crown his head with the olive-wreath of peace?”
Alcmaeon pauses. His voice is trembling. He seems to be gathering fresh thoughts from the profoundest depths of his mind. The evening has now fallen, and the peristyle is shrouded indarkness. So impressive is the effect of Alcmaeon’s words that his pensive hearers are stirred to the very radicles of their souls.
“Fatherland! Fatherland!” he continues, “we shall see the quiet fields of Greece in the pacific radiance of her glorious religion. We shall see our noble temples. We shall encircle with our arms the pure columns,—beautiful sisters of holy hymns. We shall feel in our veins the pulsations of that inspiration which moved the God of Poetry to sing the immortal Iliad. In our Fatherland, where tremble every mountain, every river, every fountain, every grove, every laurel and myrtle, all trembling like a single leaf, all twinkling like a single star, with the fervor of infinite Goodness, infinite Beauty, and infinite Truth,—there, my beloved ones, we shall breathe in the aroma of future incense! We shall feel the Titanic throb of our past greatness! We shall see with prophetic eyes the final triumph of Greek thought over the world!”
From out the darkness, while Alcmaeon spoke these last words, the enraptured listeners hear a clear soprano voice singing a cradle-song. It seems like a voice from another world. It is Aldo, who, moved by his happy dreams, half awake, sings the song that is dearest to him. Alcmaeon starts, and when the song dies away, he asks Gyges, “Where did Aldo learn that song?”
“I know not, O father.”
“’Tis a song that is sung only by those who come from Corinth.”
Alcmaeon rises and goes towards Aldo’s couch. He gently touches him and asks, “Where didst thou learn that song?”
The lad awakes and drowsily asks, “What—what song?”
“Wert thou asleep?”
“Ay. Did I sing in my sleep?”
“Ay, thou didst,” replies Alcmaeon; “and ’twas a song that only we who come from Corinth sing.”
“I know only one song,” says Aldo, “and if I sang, ’twas the one my parents taught me.”
“Who were thy parents, my lad?”
“They were Greeks, slaves.”
“What was thy father’s name, Aldo?”
“Gannon.”
“Of a truth?” exclaims Alcmaeon, greatly surprised.
“Ay; my name was Alcmaeon, but my Roman master called me Aldo.”
“Verily do I believe that thou art one of the family of Alcmaeons. Where is thy bulla?”
Nana interrupts the conversation with the announcement that the evening meal is served.
“Bring me a light, my Nana. Come hither, all!” commands Alcmaeon.
When a light is handed him, he reads on the little copper bulla that hangs on a string around Aldo’s neck the words, in Greek, “a child of the Alcmaeons.”
“Ah, my lad, thou art a true descendant of the Alcmaeons!” cries the happy schoolmaster. “Here, here is the kiss of relationship. Behold, Hera, Psyche, and Gyges, we have found a hero in our family.”
“Am I truly thy kinsman?” asks the wondering lad.
“Ah, Aldo, thou art no longer a slave,” cries Gyges. “Thou art free!”
“And I will adopt thee as my son,” exclaims Alcmaeon, with tender emotion.
A year rolls by. Meantime the promised visit to Corinth has been made and the family have now returned to Rome. In the house of Gyges there is great excitement. Hera and Psyche are in the cubiculum. Gyges, accompanied by Psyche’s father and her foster-brother Aldo, called now Alcmaeon, proudly leaves the house and walks towards the Temple of Juno on the Aventine Hill. He goes to register the birth of a son.