It was the sixteenth of June, and the first bivouac on the night of the retreat. The army had refused to go farther. Neither prayers, commands, nor threats of the Emperor had brought them to reason. Celts, Romans, Pagans, Christians, brave men and cowards, all had answered in the same words—
"Let us go back to our own country!"
The chiefs rejoiced in secret; the Tuscan augurs openly triumphed. After the burning of the ships there had been a general insurrection. And now not only the Galileans but the Olympians and Hellenists were persuaded that a curse was on the Emperor's head, and that the Furies were pursuing him. When he walked through the camp talk would cease and people edge away from him in fear. Sibylline books and the Book of Revelation, Tuscan wizards, Christian prophecies, gods, and angels, joined forces to crush the common foe. The Emperor then announced that he would lead his men homewards northward through the fertile provinces of Apolloniatis and Adiabene. According to this plan of retreat, while retaining a hope of forming a junction with the troops of Procopius and Sebastian, Julian consoled himself with the thought that he was keeping within the borders of Persia, and that he might still encounter Sapor's army, deliver battle, and win a decisive victory.
The Persians were no longer visible. Desiring to weaken the Romans before a crushing attack, they seton fire their own rich champaigns of barley and wheat, and destroyed every store and granary in the country.
Julian's soldiers marched through a black desert, still smoking with traces of fire.
Famine soon set in.
In order to augment the invaders' distress the Persians had broken the canal-dykes and flooded the fields, being aided in this endeavour by brooks and torrents which had overflowed their courses owing to the melting of the snow on the Armenian mountains. The flood dried up quickly under the burning rays of the June sun, but left the warm soil coated with slimy mud. Asphyxiating vapours and the bitter odour of ashes and of rotting vegetation loaded the air every night, and befouled the drinking water, the food, and even the rags of the soldiers. Myriads of insects rose from corrupted marshes. Mosquitoes, venomous horse-flies, rose in clouds round the beasts of burden and fastened themselves on the men. Their subtle hum went on night and day. Maddened by stings, the horses died or stampeded, the oxen broke their traces and overturned the wagons. After exhausting marches through defiles and fords the soldiers obtained no rest; tents were no refuge against the insects, and to get any sleep the men had to wrap their heads in stifling cloaks, while the bites of a certain small transparent dung-coloured fly produced swellings and boils which gradually became a horrible purulent plague. During the last days of the march the sun was invisible. The low, dense, stifling sky was a white cloth of cloud; and its motionless glare still more painful to the eyes than the naked sun.
And so they kept marching, wasted, weak, with hung head and feeble step, day after day, between the implacable sky and the black, burnt earth.
"Surely," they thought, "Anti-Christ, the man apostate from God, must have intentionally led them into this accursed place, to leave them to their doom." Some murmured, "Curse the generals!" but incoherently, as in a dream. Others kept praying and whining like sick children, begging a crust of bread or a mouthful of wine from their companions. Many from weakness dropped and died on the road.
The Emperor ordered the last rations kept for himself and for his staff to be distributed among the famished rank and file. He contented himself with a thin soup of flour and suet, a fare from which the meanest soldier would have revolted. Thanks to extreme temperance, he felt continually full of nervous excitement, and at the same time a lightness of body, as if he had wings. This lightness sustained him and increased his strength tenfold. He attempted not to think of the future. But to return to Antioch or Tarsus, defeated, and to submit to Galilean ridicule, that he certainly would never endure.
One night the soldiers were resting, the north wind having driven off the flies. Oil, flour, and wine, from the last Imperial supply, had assuaged their hunger. The hope of return gradually revived. The camp became silent. Julian withdrew to his tent. Now he was wont almost to dispense with sleep, or if he slept at all, it was towards daybreak. If by chance profound slumber overtook him, he would wake terrified, with drops of cold sweat on his forehead. He had need of full possession of consciousness to stifle the dull pain gnawing at his soul.
Entering his tent, he trimmed the lamp with a pair of snuffers. Rolls of parchment and the Gospels lay around him on the ground in disorder. He began towrite his favourite work,Against the Christians, begun two months previously at the opening of the campaign. Reclining, with his back turned to the tent door, Julian was re-reading the manuscript, when suddenly he heard a slight noise.
He turned round, uttered a cry, and sprang to his feet. He thought he saw a ghost. On the threshold stood a youth, clothed in a ragged brown garment of camel's hair; a dusty sheepskin, the "melotes" of the Egyptian anchorites, flung over his shoulders. His bare feet were shod in sandals of palmwood.
The Emperor scanned him, waiting, unable to pronounce a word.
"Do you remember," said a well-known voice. "Do you remember, Julian, how you came to me in the convent? Then I repulsed you. But I have not been able to forget you, because we are singularly like each other, singularly near each other...."
The lad threw back his black hood, Julian saw the bright brown hair, and recognised Arsinoë.
"Whence—why have you come? Why are you clad thus?"
He still feared lest this might be some spirit, which would vanish as unexpectedly as it had appeared.
In a few words Arsinoë narrated to him her fortunes since their last parting.
After leaving her guardian Hortensius and giving the greater part of her wealth to the poor, she had long lodged with the anchorites to the south of Lake Mareotis, west of the Nile, among the sterile mountains of Libya, in the terrible Nitrian and Sciathian deserts. She had been accompanied by the young Juventinus, the disciple of old Didimus. They had been taught daily by the ascetics.
"And then," asked Julian, not without a certain apprehension, "and then, girl, did you find among them what you were seeking for?"
She shook her head, and said sadly—
"No. Flashes of light, allusions, hints, as always, elsewhere."
"Speak on! Tell me all," implored the Emperor, his eyes brilliant with hope and gratitude.
"How can I?" she answered slowly. "For, my friend, I was seeking the freedom of the soul; but it has no existence here!"
"Yes, yes! is not that true?" cried Julian, exultant. "That was what I told you, Arsinoë."
She seated herself on a stool covered with a leopardskin, and continued her tale calmly, with the same sad smile, Julian listening in an avidity of joy....
"Tell me, how did you leave those unhappy desert-folk?" demanded Julian.
"I was tempted once," replied Arsinoë; "once in the desert among the rocks I found a fragment of white marble. I picked it up and long wondered at it, sparkling in the sun, and suddenly I remembered Athens, my youth, my art, and you! I awoke, and I decided to return to the world, to live and die as God had created me; as an artist. At that moment the old Didimus had a vision in which I was the means of reconciling you with the Galilean...."
"With the Galilean!" ejaculated the Emperor.
His face darkened, his eyes lost their fire, the triumphant laugh died on his lips.
"Curiosity, too, drew me again towards you," continued Arsinoë. "I wished to know if you had attained truth in the way you pursued, and what summityou had reached. I resumed the habit of a monk. Brother Juventinus and I descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; then a ship took us to Antioch; and we have journeyed with a great Syrian caravan through Apamea, Epiphania, and Edessa to the frontier. After a thousand dangers, we crossed the Mesopotamian desert, abandoned by the Persians, and not far from the village of Abuzat, after the victory at Ctesiphon, we saw your camp. And so I am here!... And you, Julian?"
He sighed, and hung his head without answering. Then scanning her, he demanded—
"And now you too detest Him, Arsinoë?"
"No; why?" she answered simply. "Why detest Him? Did not the sages of Hellas come near, in their teaching, to the message of the Galilean? Those who in the desert martyrise soul and body are far from the humble Son of Mary. He used to love children, freedom, cheerfulness, and the fair white lilies of the field. He loved beauty, Julian!... We have wandered from Him and become entangled and embittered. All call you the Apostate, ... but it is they who are the apostates...."
The Emperor knelt down before Arsinoë and raised upon her eyes full of prayer; tears coursed slowly down his lean cheeks.
"It must not be," he murmured. "Do not speak. Why? Why? Let be what has been!... Do not again become mine enemy!"
"No, no! I must say it all to you," exclaimed Arsinoë. "Listen! I know that you love Him! It is so, and that is the fatality upon you. Against whom have you revolted? What kind of enemy are you for Him? When your lips are cursing the Crucified,your heart is aspiring after Him. When you are struggling against His name, you are closer to Him, closer to His spirit, than those who repeat with dead lips, 'Lord, Lord'!... And it is they who are your enemies, and not He. Ah! why do you torture yourself more than the Galilean monks?"
The Emperor tore himself from the clasp of Arsinoë, and stood up, pale as one dead. His face again grew restless, and in his eyes shone the old hatred. He muttered with sorrowful irony—
"Away with you! Go from me! I know the devices of the Galileans!"
Arsinoë gazed at him in fear and despair, as at one insane—
"Julian!... Julian, what is the matter? Is it possible that a mere name...."
But he had regained cold self-possession. His eyes were lustreless, his air indifferent, almost contemptuous; the Roman Emperor was speaking to a Galilean.
"Depart, Arsinoë. Forget all that I have said. It was a moment of weakness which is over. I am tranquil. You see, we must remain strangers. The shadow of the Crucified is always between us. You have not renounced Him, and he who is not His enemy cannot be my friend...."
She fell on her knees before him—
"Why? why? What are you doing? Have pity on me; have pity on yourself, before it is too late! For this is madness. Return, or you must...."
She paused, and he completed the sentence for her with a haughty smile—
"Or I must perish, you mean, Arsinoë? Be it so. I shall follow my road to the end, lead where it may! If, as you say, I have been unjust toward the wisdomof the Galileans, remember what I have borne at their hands. How numberless, how despicable were my enemies!... The other day some Roman soldiers found before my eyes, in a Mesopotamian marsh, a lion tortured by flies. They had buried themselves in his throat, in his ears, in his nostrils, choking his breath, sealing his eyes, and in their stinging myriads had mastered even his powers at last! Such shall my death be, and such the victory of the Galileans over Cæsar!"
The girl still held out towards him her pale hands; but without a word, without a hope, like a friend towards a friend who is dead. Between the two lay still that abyss which is not to be crossed by the living.
Towards the twentieth of July the Roman army, after a long journey across burnt plains, found a little grass which had escaped from the devastators in the deep valley of the river Durous.
A field of ripe wheat was found hard by. The soldiers reaped it and rested in the valley three days. Unspeakably happy, the legionaries threw themselves down on the verdure, breathing the delightful moisture of the earth, and brushing the cool blades of grass against their dusty faces.
On the morning of the fourth day the Roman sentinels perceived a cloud of smoke or dust. Some supposed it to be the wild asses, which usually roamed in herds for safety against the attack of lions. Others affirmed that it was Saracens, attracted by the news of the siege of Ctesiphon. A few expressed their fears lest it should prove to be the principal army of King Sapor.
The Emperor ordered the call to arms to be soundedon the bugles. The cohorts in strict defensive order, sheltered by their locked shields, as by walls of metal, formed a camp half-circlewise on the river bank. The cloud of smoke or dust remained on the horizon until evening, nor could any divine with certainty what lurked behind it. The night was dark and still, with not a star in the sky.
The Romans did not sleep. They stood round huge bivouac-fires in mute restlessness, awaiting the dawn.