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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




A search after the devoted Pagan was immediately commenced. He was
found the same night before a ruined altar, brooding over the entrails
of an animal that he had just sacrificed. Further proof of his guilt
could not be required. He was taken prisoner; led forth the next
morning to be judged, amid the execrations of the very people who had
almost adored him once; and condemned the following day to suffer the
penalty of death.

At the appointed hour the populace assembled to behold the execution.
To their indignation and disappointment, however, when the officers of
the city appeared before the prison, it was only to inform the
spectators that the performance of the fatal ceremony had been
adjourned. After a mysterious delay of some weeks, they were again
convened, not to witness the execution, but the receive the
extraordinary announcement that the culprit's life had been spared, and
that his amended sentence now condemned him to labour as a slave for
life in the copper-mines of Spain.

What powerful influence induced the Prefect to risk the odium of
reprieving a prisoner whose guilt was so satisfactorily ascertained as
that of Ulpius never was disclosed. Some declared that the city
magistrate was still at heart a Pagan, and that he consequently shrunk
from authorising the death of a man who had once been the most
illustrious among the professors of the ancient creed. Others reported
that Ulpius had secured the leniency of his judges by acquainting them
with the position of one of those secret repositories of enormous
treasure supposed to exist beneath the foundations of the dismantled
Temple of Serapis. But the truth of either of these rumours could never
be satisfactorily proved. Nothing more was accurately discovered than
that Ulpius was removed from Alexandria to the place of earthly torment
set apart for him by the zealous authorities, at the dead of night; and
that the sentry at the gate through which he departed heard him mutter
to himself, as he was hurried onward, that his divinations had prepared
him for defeat, but that the great day of Pagan restoration would yet
arrive.

In the year 407, twelve years after the events above narrated, Ulpius
entered the city of Rome.

He had not advanced far, before the gaiety and confusion in the streets
appeared completely to bewilder him. He hastened to the nearest public
garden that he could perceive, and avoiding the frequented paths, flung
himself down, apparently fainting with exhaustion, at the foot of a
tree.


For some time he lay on the shady resting-place which he had chosen,
gasping painfully for breath, his frame ever and anon shaken to its
centre by sudden spasms, and his lips quivering with an agitation which
he vainly endeavoured to suppress. So changed was his aspect, that the
guards who had removed him from Alexandria, wretched as was his
appearance even then, would have found it impossible to recognise him
now as the same man whom they had formerly abandoned to slavery in the
mines of Spain. The effluvia exhaled from the copper ore in which he
had been buried for twelve years had not only withered the flesh upon
his bones, but had imparted to its surface a livid hue, almost death-
like in its dulness. His limbs, wasted by age and distorted by
suffering, bent and trembled beneath him; and his form, once so majestic
in its noble proportions, was now so crooked and misshapen, that whoever
beheld him could only have imagined that he must have been deformed from
his birth. Of the former man no characteristic remained but the
expression of the stern, mournful eyes; and these, the truthful
interpreters of the indomitable mind whose emotions they seemed created
to express, preserved, unaltered by suffering and unimpaired by time,
the same look, partly of reflection, partly of defiance, and partly of
despair, which had marked them in those past days when the temple was
destroyed and the congregations of the Pagans dispersed.

But the repose at this moment demanded by his worn-out body was even yet
denied to it by his untamed, unwearied mind, and, as the voice of his
old delusion spoke within him again, the devoted priest rose from his
solitary resting-place, and looked forth upon the great city, whose new
worship he was vowed to overthrow.

'By years of patient watchfulness,' he whispered to himself, 'have I
succeeded in escaping successfully from my dungeon among the mines. Yet
a little more cunning, a little more endurance, a little more vigilance,
and I shall still live to people, by my own exertions, the deserted
temples of Rome.'

As he spoke he emerged from the grove into the street. The joyous
sunlight--a stranger to him for years--shone warmly down upon his face,
as if to welcome him to liberty and the world. The sounds of gay
laughter rang in his ears, as if to woo him back to the blest enjoyments
and amenities of life; but Nature's influence and man's example were now
silent alike to his lonely heart. Over its dreary wastes still reigned
the ruthless ambition which had exiled love from his youth, and
friendship from his manhood, and which was destined to end its mission
of destruction by banishing tranquility from his age. Scowling fiercely
at all around and above him, he sought the loneliest and shadiest
streets. Solitude had now become a necessity to his heart. The 'great
gulph' of his unshared aspirations had long since socially separated him
for ever from his fellow-men. He thought, laboured, and suffered for
himself alone.

To describe the years of unrewarded labour and unalleviated hardship
endured by Ulpius in the place of his punishment; to dwell on the day
that brought with it--whatever the season in the world above--the same
unwearying inheritance of exertion and fatigue; to chronicle the history
of night after night of broken slumber one hour, of wearying thought the
next, would be to produce a picture from the mournful monotony of which
the attention of the reader would recoil with disgust. It will be here
sufficient to observe, that the influence of the same infatuation which
had nerved him to the defence of the assaulted temple, and encouraged
him to attempt his ill-planned restoration of Paganism, had preserved
him through sufferings under which stronger and younger men would have
sunk for ever; had prompted his determination to escape from his
slavery, and had now brought him to Rome--old, forsaken, and feeble as
he was--to risk new perils and suffer new afflictions for the cause to
which, body and soul, he had ruthlessly devoted himself for ever.


Urged, therefore, by his miserable delusion, he had now entered a city
where even his name was unknown, faithful to his frantic project of
opposing himself, as a helpless, solitary man, against the people and
government of an Empire. During his term of slavery, regardless of his
advanced years, he had arranged a series of projects, the gradual
execution of which would have demanded the advantages of a long and
vigorous life. He no more desired, as in his former attempt at
Alexandria, to precipitate at all hazards the success of his designs.
He was now prepared to watch, wait, plot, and contrive for years on
years; he was resigned to be contented with the poorest and slowest
advancement--to be encouraged by the smallest prospect of ultimate
triumph. Acting under this determination, he started his project by
devoting all that remained of his enfeebled energies to cautiously
informing himself, by every means in his power, of the private,
political, and religious sentiments of all men of influence in Rome.
Wherever there was a popular assemblage, he attended it to gather the
scandalous gossip of the day; wherever there was a chance of overhearing
a private conversation, he contrived to listen to it unobserved. About
the doors of taverns and the haunts of discharged servants he lurked
noiseless as a shadow, attentive alike to the careless revelations of
intoxication or the scurrility of malignant slaves. Day after day
passed on, and still saw him devoted to his occupation (which, servile
as it was in itself, was to his eyes ennobled by its lofty end), until
at the expiration of some months he found himself in possession of a
vague and inaccurate fund of information, which he stored up as a
priceless treasure in his mind. He next discovered the name and abode
of every nobleman in Rome suspected even of the most careless attachment
to the ancient form of worship. He attended Christian churches,
mastered the intricacies of different sects, and estimated the
importance of contending schisms; gaining this collection of
heterogeneous facts under the combined disadvantages of poverty,
solitude, and age; dependent for support on the poorest public
charities, and for shelter on the meanest public asylums. Every
conclusion that he drew from all he learned partook of the sanguine
character of the fatal self-deception which had embittered his whole
life. He believed that the dissensions which he saw raging in the
Church would speedily effect the destruction of Christianity itself;
that, when such a period should arrive, the public mind would require
but the guidance of some superior intellect to return to its old
religious predilections; and that to lay the foundation for effecting in
such a manner the desired revolution, it was necessary for him--
impossible though it might seem in his present degraded condition--to
gain access to the disaffected nobles of Rome, and discover the secret
of acquiring such an influence over them as would enable him to infect
them with his enthusiasm, and fire them with his determination. Greater
difficulties even than these had been overcome by other men. Solitary
individuals had, ere this, originated revolutions. The gods would
favour him; his own cunning would protect him. Yet a little more
patience, a little more determination, and he might still, after all his
misfortunes, be assured of success.

It was about this period that he first heard, while pursuing his
investigations, of an obscure man who had suddenly arisen to undertake a
reformation in the Christian Church, whose declared aim was to rescue
the new worship from that very degeneracy on the fatal progress of which
rested all his hopes of triumph. It was reported that this man had been
for some time devoted to his reforming labours, but that the
difficulties attendant on the task that he had appointed for himself had
hitherto prevented him from attaining all the notoriety essential to the
satisfactory prosecution of his plans. On hearing this rumour, Ulpius
immediately joined the few who attended the new orator's discourses, and
there heard enough to convince him that he listened to the most
determined zealot for Christianity in the city of Rome. To gain this
man's confidence, to frustrate every effort that he might make in his
new vocation, to ruin his credit with his hearers, and to threaten his
personal safety by betraying his inmost secrets to his powerful enemies
in the Church, were determinations instantly adopted by the Pagan as
duties demanded by the exigencies of his creed. From that moment he
seized every opportunity of favourably attracting the new reformer's
attention to himself, and, as the reader already knows, he was at length
rewarded for his cunning and perseverance by being received into the
household of the charitable and unsuspicious Numerian as a pious convert
to the Christianity of the early Church.


Once installed under Numerian's roof, the treacherous Pagan saw in the
Christian's daughter an instrument admirably adapted, in his
unscrupulous hands, for forwarding his wild project of obtaining the ear
of a Roman of power and station who was disaffected to the established
worship. Among the patricians of whose anti-Christian predilections
report had informed him, was Numerian's neighbour, Vetranio the senator.
To such a man, renowned for his life of luxury, a girl so beautiful as
Antonina would be a bribe rich enough to enable him to extort any
promise required as a reward for betraying her while under the
protection of her father's house. In addition to this advantage to be
drawn from her ruin, was the certainty that her loss would so affect
Numerian as to render him, for a time at least, incapable of pursuing
his labours in the cause of Christianity. Fixed then in his detestable
purpose, the ruthless priest patiently awaited the opportunity of
commencing his machinations. Nor did he watch in vain. The victim
innocently fell into the very trap that he had prepared for her when she
first listened to the music of Vetranio's lute, and permitted her
treacherous guardian to become the friend who concealed her disobedience
from her father's ear. After that first fatal step every day brought
the projects of Ulpius nearer to success. The long-sought interview
with the senator was at length obtained; the engagement imperatively
demanded on the one side was, as we have already related, carelessly
accepted on the other; the day that was to bring success to the schemes
of the betrayer, and degradation to the honour of the betrayed, was
appointed; and once more the cold heart of the fanatic warmed to the
touch of joy. No doubts upon the validity of his engagement with
Vetranio ever entered his mind. He never imagined that powerful senator
could with perfect impunity deny him the impracticable assistance he had
demanded as his reward, and thrust him as an ignorant madman from his
palace gates. Firmly and sincerely he believed that Vetranio was so
satisfied with his readiness in pandering to his profligate designs, and
so dazzled by the prospect of the glory which would attend success in
the great enterprise, that he would gladly hold to the performance of
his promise whenever it should be required of him. In the meantime the
work was begun. Numerian was already, through his agency, watched by
the spies of a jealous and unscrupulous Church. Feuds, schisms,
treacheries, and dissensions marched bravely onward through the
Christian ranks. All things combined to make it certain that the time
was near at hand when, through his exertions and the friendly senator's
help, the restoration of Paganism might be assured.

With the widest diversity of pursuit and difference of design, there was
still a strange and mysterious analogy between the temporary positions
of Ulpius and Numerian. One was prepared to be a martyr for the temple;
the other to be a martyr for the Church. Both were enthusiasts in an
unwelcome cause; both had suffered more than a life's wonted share of
affliction; and both were old, passing irretrievably from their fading
present on earth to the eternal future awaiting them in the unknown
spheres beyond.

But here--with their position--the comparison between them ends. The
Christian's principle of action, drawn from the Divinity he served, was
love; the Pagan's, born of the superstition that was destroying him, was
hate. The one laboured for mankind; the other for himself. And thus
the aspirations of Numerian, founded on the general good, nourished by
offices of kindness, and nobly directed to a generous end, might lead
him into indiscretion, but could never degrade him into crime--might
trouble the serenity of his life, but could never deprive him of the
consolation of hope. While, on the contrary, the ambition of Ulpius,
originating in revenge and directed to destruction, exacted cruelty from
his heart and duplicity from his mind; and, as the reward for his
service, mocked him alternately throughout his whole life with delusion
and despair.


CHAPTER 7. THE BED-CHAMBER.

It is now time to resume our chronicle of the eventful night which
marked the destruction of Antonina's lute and the conspiracy against
Antonina's honour.


The gates of Vetranio's palace were closed, and the noises in it were
all hushed; the banquet was over, the triumph of the Nightingale Sauce
had been achieved, and the daybreak was already glimmering in the
eastern sky, when the senator's favoured servant, the freedman Carrio,
drew back the shutter of the porter's lodge, where he had been dozing
since the conclusion of the feast, and looked out lazily into the
street. The dull, faint light of dawn was now strengthening slowly over
the lonely roadway and on the walls of the lofty houses. Of the groups
of idlers of the lowest class who had assembled during the evening in
the street to snuff the fragrant odours which steamed afar from
Vetranio's kitchens, not one remained; men, women, and children had long
since departed to seek shelter wherever they could find it, and to
fatten their lean bodies on what had been charitable bestowed on them of
the coarser relics of the banquet. The mysterious solitude and
tranquility of daybreak in a great city prevailed over all things.
Nothing impressed, however, by the peculiar and solemn attraction of the
scene at this moment, the freedman apostrophised the fresh morning air,
as it blew over him, in strong terms of disgust, and even ventured in
lowered tones to rail against his master's uncomfortable fancy for being
awakened after a feast at the approach of dawn. Far too well aware,
nevertheless, of the necessity of yielding the most implicit obedience
to the commands he had received to resign himself any longer to the
pleasant temptations of repose, Carrio, after yawning, rubbing his eyes,
and indulging for a few moments more in the luxury of complaint, set
forth in earnest to follow the corridors leading to the interior of the
palace, and to awaken Vetranio without further delay.

He had not advanced more than a few steps when a proclamation, written
in letters of gold on a blue-coloured board, and hung against the wall
at his side, attracted his attention. This public notice, which delayed
his progress at the very outset, and which was intended for the special
edification of all the inhabitants of Rome, was thus expressed:--

'ON THIS DAY, AND FOR TEN DAYS FOLLOWING, THE AFFAIRS OF OUR PATRON
OBLIGE HIM TO BE ABSENT FROM ROME.'

Here the proclamation ended, without descending to particulars. It had
been put forth, in accordance with the easy fashion of the age, to
answer at once all applications at Vetranio's palace during the
senator's absence. Although the colouring of the board, the writing of
the letters, and the composition of the sentence were the work of his
own ingenuity, the worthy Carrio could not prevail upon himself to pass
the proclamation without contemplating is magnificence anew. For some
time he stood regarding it with the same expression of lofty and
complacent approbation which we see in these modern days illuminating
the countenance of a connoisseur before one of his own old pictures
which he has bought as a great bargain, or dawning over the bland
features of a linen-draper as he surveys from the pavement his morning's
arrangement of the window of the shop. All things, however, have their
limits, even a man's approval of an effort of his own skill.
Accordingly, after a prolonged review of the proclamation, some faint
ideas of the necessity of immediately obeying his master's commands
revived in the mind of the judicious Carrio, and counselled him to turn
his steps at once in the direction of the palace sleeping apartments.

Greatly wondering what new caprice had induced the senator to
contemplate leaving Rome at the dawn of day--for Vetranio had divulged
to no one the object of his departure--the freedman cautiously entered
his master's bed-chamber. He drew aside the ample silken curtains
suspended around and over the sleeping couch, from the hands of Graces
and Cupids sculptured in marble; but the statues surrounded an empty
bed. Vetranio was not there. Carrio next entered the bathroom; the
perfumed water was steaming in its long marble basin, and the soft
wrapping-cloths lay ready for use; the attendant slave, with his
instruments of ablution, waited, half asleep, in his accustomed place;
but here also no signs of the master's presence appeared. Somewhat
perplexed, the freedman examined several other apartments. He found
guests, dancing girls, parasites, poets, painters--a motley crew--
occupying every kind of dormitory, and all peacefully engaged in
sleeping off the effects of the wine they had drunk at the banquet; but
the great object of his search still eluded him as before. At last it
occurred to him that the senator, in an excess of convivial enthusiasm
and jovial hospitality, might yet be detaining some favoured guest at
the table of the feast.

Pausing, therefore, at some carved doors which stood ajar at one
extremity of a spacious hall, he pushed them open, and hurriedly entered
the banqueting-room beyond.


A soft, dim, luxurious light reigned over this apartment, which now
presented, as far as the eye could discern, an aspect of confusion that
was at once graceful and picturesque. Of the various lamps, of every
variety of pattern, hanging from the ceiling, but few remained alight.
From those, however, which were still unextinguished there shone a mild
brightness, admirably adapted to display the objects immediately around
them. The golden garlands and the alabaster pots of sweet ointment
which had been suspended before the guests during the banquet, still
hung from the painted ceiling. On the massive table, composed partly of
ebony and partly of silver, yet lay, in the wildest confusion, fragments
of gastronomic delicacies, grotesque dinner services, vases of flowers,
musical instruments, and crystal dice; while towering over all rose the
glittering dish which had contained the nightingales consumed by the
feasters, with the four golden Cupids which had spouted over them that
illustrious invention--the Nightingale Sauce. Around the couches, of
violet and rose colour, ranged along the table, the perfumed and gaily-
tinted powders that had been strewn in patterns over the marble floor
were perceptible for a few yards; but beyond this point nothing more was
plainly distinguishable. The eye roved down the sides of the glorious
chamber, catching dim glimpses of gorgeous draperies, crowded statues,
and marble columns, but discerning nothing accurately, until it reached
the half-opened windows, and rested upon the fresh dewy verdure now
faintly visible in the shady gardens without. There--waving in the
morning breezes, charged on every leaf with their burden of pure and
welcome moisture--rose the lofty pine-trees, basking in the recurrence
of the new day's beautiful and undying youth, and rising in reproving
contrast before the exhausted allurements of luxury and the perverted
creations of art which burdened the tables of the hall within.

After a hasty survey of the apartment, the freedman appeared to be on
the point of quitting it in despair, when the noise of a falling dish,
followed by several partly suppressed and wholly confused exclamations
of affright, caught his ear. He once more approached the banqueting-
table, retrimmed a lamp that hung near him, and taking it in his hand,
passed to the side of the room whence the disturbance proceeded. A
hideous little negro, staring in ludicrous terror at a silver oven, half
filled with bread, which had just fallen beside him, was the first
object he discovered. A few paces beyond the negro reposed a beautiful
boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, still sleeping by the side of his
lyre; and farther yet, stretched in an uneasy slumber on a silken couch,
lay the identical object of the freedman's search--the illustrious
author of the Nightingale Sauce.

Immediately above the sleeping senator hung his portrait, in which he
was modestly represented as rising by the assistance of Minerva to the
top of Parnassus, the nine Muses standing round him rejoicing. At his
feet reposed a magnificent white cat, whose head rested in all the
luxurious laziness of satiety on the edge of a golden saucer half filled
with dormice stewed in milk. The most indubitable evidences of the
night's debauch appeared in Vetranio's disordered dress and flushed
countenance as the freedman regarded him. For some minutes the worthy
Carrio stood uncertain whether to awaken his master or not, deciding
finally, however, on obeying the commands he had received, and
disturbing the slumbers of the wearied voluptuary before him. To effect
this purpose, it was necessary to call in the aid of the singing-boy;
for, by a refinement of luxury, Vetranio had forbidden his attendants to
awaken him by any other method than the agency of musical sounds.

With some difficulty the boy was sufficiently aroused to comprehend the
service that was required of him. For a short time the notes of the
lyre sounded in vain. At last, when the melody took a louder and more
martial character, the sleeping patrician slowly opened his eyes and
stared vacantly around him.

'My respected patron,' said the polite Carrio in apologetic tones,
'commanded that I should awaken him with the dawn; the daybreak has
already appeared.'