Books: Antonina

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Remarkable as was the change in the present appearance of the
banqueting-hall, it was but the feeble reflection of the alteration for
the worse in the aspect of the host and his guests. Vetranio reclined
at the head of the table, dressed in a scarlet mantle. An embroidered
towel with purple tassels and fringes, connected with rings of gold,
fell over his breast, and silver and ivory bracelets were clasped round
his arms. But of the former man the habiliments were all that remained.
His head was bent forward, as if with the weakness of age; his emaciated
arms seemed barely able to support the weight of the ornaments which
glittered on them; his eyes had contracted a wild, unsettled expression;
and a deadly paleness overspread the once plump and jovial cheeks which
so many mistresses had kissed in mercenary rapture in other days. Both
in countenance and manner the elegant voluptuary of our former
acquaintance at the Court of Ravenna was entirely and fatally changed.
Of the other eight patricians who lay on the couches around their
altered host--some wild and reckless, some gloomy and imbecile--all had
suffered in the ordeal of the siege, the famine, and the pestilence,
like him.

Such were the member of the assemblage, represented from the ceiling by
nine of the burning lamps. The tenth and last lamp indicated the
presence of one more guest who reclined a little apart from the rest.

This man was hump-backed; his gaunt, bony features were repulsively
disproportioned to his puny frame, which looked doubly contemptible,
enveloped as it was in an ample tawdry robe. Sprung from the lowest
ranks of the populace, he had gradually forced himself into the favour
of his superiors by his skill in coarse mimicry, and his readiness in
ministering to the worst vices of all who would employ him. Having lost
the greater part of his patrons during the siege, finding himself
abandoned to starvation on all sides, he had now, as a last resource,
obtained permission to participate in the Banquet of Famine, to enliven
it by a final exhibition of his buffoonery, and to die with his masters,
as he had lived with them--the slave, the parasite, and the imitator of
the lowest of their vices and the worst of their crimes.

At the commencement of the orgie, little was audible beyond the clash of
the wine-cups, the low occasional whispering of the revellers, and the
confused voices of the people without, floating through the window from
the street. The desperate compact of the guests, now that its execution
had actually begun, awed them at first in spite of themselves. At
length, when there was a lull of all sounds--when a temporary calm
prevailed over the noises outside--when the wine-cups were emptied, and
left for a moment ere they were filled again--Vetranio feebly rose, and,
announcing with a mocking smile that he was about to speak a funeral
oration over his friends and himself, pointed to the wall immediately
behind him as to an object fitted to awaken the astonishment or the
hilarity of his moody guests.

Against the upper part of the wall were fixed various small statues in
bronze and marble, all representing the owner of the palace, and all
hung with golden plates. Beneath these appeared the rent-roll of his
estates, written in various colours on white vellum, and beneath that,
scratched on the marble in faint irregular characters, was no less an
object than his own epitaph, composed by himself. It may be translated
thus:--

Stop, Spectator!

If thou has reverently cultivated the pleasures of the taste, pause amid
these illustrious ruins of what was once a palace, and peruse with
respect on this stone the epitaph of VETRANIO, a senator. He was the
first man who invented a successful nightingale sauce; his bold and
creative genius added much, and would have added more, to THE ART OF
COOKERY--but, alas for the interests of science! he lived in the days
when the Gothic barbarians besieged THE IMPERIAL CITY; famine left him
no matter for gustatory experiment; and pestilence deprived him of cooks
to enlighten! Opposed at all points by the force of adverse
circumstances, finding his life of no further use to the culinary
interests of Rome, he called his chosen friends together to assist him,
conscientiously drank up every drop of wine remaining in his cellars,
lit the funeral pile of himself and his guests, in the banqueting-hall
of his own palace, and died, as he had lived, the patriotic CATO of his
country's gastronomy!

'Behold!' cried Vetranio, pointing triumphantly to the epitaph--'behold
in every line of those eloquent letters at once the seal of my resolute
adherence to the engagement that unites us here, and the foundation of
my just claim to the reverence of posterity on the most useful of the
arts which I exercised for the benefit of my species! Read, friends,
brethren, fellow-martyrs of glory, and, as you read, rejoice with me
over the hour of our departure from the desecrated arena, no longer
worthy the celebration of the Games of Life! Yet, ere the feast
proceeds, hear me while I speak--I make my last oration as the arbiter
of our funeral sports, as the host of the Banquet of Famine!

'Who would sink ignobly beneath the slow superiority of starvation, or
perish under the quickly glancing steel of the barbarian conqueror's
sword, when such a death as ours is offered to the choice?--when wine
flows bright, to drown sensation in oblivion, and a palace and its
treasures furnish alike the scene of the revel and the radiant funeral
pile? The mighty philosophers of India--the inspired Gymnosophists--
died as we shall die! Calanus before Alexander, Zamarus in the presence
of Augustus, lit the fires that consumed them! Let us follow their
glorious example! No worms will prey upon our bodies, no hired mourners
will howl discordant at our funerals! Purified in the radiance of
primeval fire, we shall vanish triumphant from enemies and friends--a
marvel to the earth, a vision of glory to the gods themselves!

'Is it a day more or a day less of life that is now of importance to us?
No; it is only towards the easiest and the noblest death that our
aspirations can turn! Among our number there is now not one whom the
care of existence can further occupy!

'Here, at my right hand, reclines my estimable comrade of a thousand
former feasts, Furius Balburius Placidus, who, when we sailed on the
Lucrine Lake, was wont to complain of intolerable hardship if a fly
settled on the gilded folds of his umbrella; who languished for a land
of Cimmerian darkness if a sunbeam penetrated the silken awnings of his
garden-terrace; and who now wrangles for a mouthful of horseflesh with
the meanest of his slaves, and would exchange the richest of his country
villas for a basket of dirty bread! O Furius Balburius Placidus, of
what further use is life to thee?

'There, at my left, I discern the changed though still expressive
countenance of the resolute Thascius, he who chastised a slave with a
hundred lashes if his warm water was not brought immediately at his
command; he whose serene contempt for every member of the human species
by himself once ranked him among the greatest of human philosophers;
even he now wanders through his palace unserved, and fawns upon the
plebeian who will sell him a measure of wretched bran! Oh, admired
friend, oh, rightly reasoning Thascius, say, is there anything in Rome
which should delay thee on thy journey to the Elysian Fields?

'Farther onward at the table, drinking largely while I speak, I behold,
O Marcus Moecius Moemmius, thy once plump and jovial form!--thou, in
former days accustomed to rejoice in the length of thy name, because it
enabled thy friends to drink the more in drinking a cup to each letter
of it, tell me what banqueting-hall is now open to thee but this?--and
thus desolate in the city of thy social triumphs, what should disincline
thee to make of our festal solemnity thy last revel on earth?

'Thou, too, facetious hunchback, prince of parasites, unscrupulous
Reburrus, where, but at this banquet of famine, will thy buffoonery now
procure for thee a draught of reviving wine? Thy masters have abandoned
thee to thy native dunghill! No more shalt thou wheedle for them when
they borrow, or bully for them when they pay! No more charges of
poisoning or magic shalt thou forge to imprison their troublesome
creditors! Oh, officious sycophant, thy occupations are no more! Drink
while thou canst, and then resign thy carcass to congenial mire!

'And you, my five remaining friends, whom--little desirous of further
delay--I will collectively address, think on the days when the suspicion
of an infectious malady in any one of your companions was sufficient to
separate you from the dearest of them; when the slaves who came to you
from their palaces underwent long ceremonies of ablution before they
approached your presence; and remembering this, reflect that most,
perhaps all of us, now meet here plague-tainted already; and then say,
of what advantage is it to languish for a life which is yours no longer?

'No, my friends, my brethren of the banquet; feeling that when life is
worthless it is folly to live, you cannot shrink from the lofty
resolution by which we are bound, you cannot pause on our joyful journey
of departure from the scenes of earth--I wrong you even by a doubt! Let
me now, rather, ask your attention for a worthier subject--the
enumeration of the festal ceremonies by which the progress of the
banquet will be marked. That task concluded, that last ceremony of my
last welcome to you these halls duly performed, I join you once more in
your final homage to the deity of our social lives--the God of Wine!

'It is not unknown to you--learned as you are in the jovial antiquities
of the table--that it was, among some of the ancients, a custom for a
master-spirit of philosophy to preside--the teacher as well as the
guest--at their feasts. This usage it has been my care to revive, and,
as this four meeting is unparalleled in its heroic design, so it was my
ambition to bid to it one unparalleled, either as a teacher or a guest.
Fired by an original idea, unobserved of my slaves, aided only by my
singing-boy, the faithful Glyco, I have succeeded in placing behind that
black curtain such an associate of our revels as you have never feasted
with before, whose appearance at the fitting moment must strike you
irresistibly with astonishment, and whose discourse--not of human wisdom
only--will be inspired by the midnight secrets of the tomb. By my side,
on this parchment, lies the formulary of questions to be addressed by
Reburrus, when the curtain is withdrawn, to the Oracle of the Mysteries
of other Spheres.

'Before you, behold in those vases all that remains of my once well-
stocked cellars, and all that is provided for the palates of my guests!
We sit at the Banquet of Famine, and no coarser sustenance than
inspiring wine finds admittance at the Bacchanalian board. Yet, should
any among us, in his last moments, be feeble enough to pollute his lips
with nourishment alone worthy of the vermin of the earth, let him seek
the wretched and scanty table, type of the wretched and scanty food that
covers it, placed yonder in obscurity behind me. There will he find (in
all barely sufficient for one man's poorest meal) the last morsels of
the vilest nourishment left in the palace. For me, my resolution is
fixed--it is only the generous wine-cup that shall now approach my lips!

'Above me are the ten lamps, answering to the number of my friends here
assembled. One after another, as the wine overpowers us, those burning
images of life will be extinguished in succession by the guests who
remain proof against our draughts; and the last of these, lighting this
torch at the last lamp, will consummate the banquet, and celebrate its
glorious close, by firing the funeral pile of my treasures heaped yonder
against my palace walls! If my powers fail me before yours, swear to me
that whoever among you is able to lift the cup to his lips after it has
dropped from the hands of the rest, will fire the pile! Swear it by
your lost mistresses, your lost friends, your lost treasures!--by your
own lives, devoted to the pleasures of wine and the purification of
fire!'

As, with flashing eyes and flushed countenance, Vetranio sank back on
his couch, his companions, inflamed with the wine they had already
drunk, arose cup in hand, and turned towards him. Their voices,
discordantly mingled, pronounced the oath together; then, as they
resumed their former positions, their eyes all turned towards the black
curtain in ardent expectation.

They had observed the sinister and sarcastic expression of Vetranio's
eye as he spoke of his concealed guest; they knew that the hunchback
Reburrus possessed, among his other powers of buffoonery, the art of
ventriloquism; and they suspected the presence of some hideous or
grotesque image of a heathen god or demon in the hidden recess, which
the jugglery of the parasite was to gift with the capacity of speech.
Blasphemous comments upon life, death, and immortality were eagerly
awaited. The general impatience for the withdrawal of the curtain was
perceived by Vetranio, who, waving his hand for silence, authoritatively
exclaimed--

'The hour has not yet arrived. More draughts must be drunk, more
libations poured out, ere the mystery of the curtain is revealed! Ho,
Glyco!' he continued, turning towards the singing-boy, who had silently
entered the room, 'the moment is yours! Tune your lyre, and recite my
last ode, which I have addressed to you! Let the charms of Poetry
preside over the feast of Death!'

The boy advanced, trembling; his once ruddy face was colourless and
haggard; his eyes were fixed with a look of rigid terror on the black
curtain; his features palpably expressed the presence within him of some
secret and overwhelming recollection which had crushed all his other
faculties and perceptions. Steadily, almost guiltily, averting his face
from his master's countenance, he stood by Vetranio's couch, a frail and
fallen being, a mournful spectacle of perverted docility and degraded
youth.

Still true, however, to the duties of his vocation, he ran his thin,
trembling fingers over the lyre, and mechanically preluded the
commencement of the ode. But during the silence of attention which now
prevailed, the confused noises from the people in the street penetrated
more distinctly into the banqueting-room; and at this moment, high above
them all--hoarse, raving, terrible, rose the voice of one man.

'Tell me not,' it cried, 'of perfumes wafted from the palace!--foul
vapours flow from it!--see, they sink, suffocating over me!--they bathe
sky and earth, and men who move around us, in fierce, green light!'

Then other voices of men and women, shrill and savage, broke forth in
interruption together:--'Peace, Davus! you awake the dead about you!'
'Hide in the darkness; you are plague-struck; your skin is shrivelled;
your gums are toothless!' 'When the palace is fired you shall be flung
into the flames to purify your rotten carcass!'

'Sing!' cried Vetranio furiously, observing the shudders that ran over
the boy's frame and held him speechless. 'Strike the lyre, as Timotheus
struck it before Alexander! Drown in melody the barking of the curs who
wait for our offal in the street!'

Feebly and interruptedly the terrified boy began; the wild continuous
noises of the moaning voices from without sounding their awful
accompaniment to the infidel philosophy of his song as he breathed it
forth in faint and faltering accents. It ran thus:--

TO GLYCO

Ah, Glyco! why in flow'rs array'd? Those festive wreaths less quickly
fade Than briefly-blooming joy! Those high-prized friends who share your
mirth Are counterfeits of brittle earth, False coin'd in Death's alloy!

The bliss your notes could once inspire, When lightly o'er the god-like
lyre Your nimble fingers pass'd, Shall spring the same from others'
skill--When you're forgot, the music still The player shall outlast!

The sun-touch'd cloud that mounts the sky, That brightly glows to warm
the eye, Then fades we know not where, Is image of the little breath Of
life--and then, the doom of Death That you and I must share!

Helpless to make or mar our birth, We blindly grope the ways of earth,
And live our paltry hour; Sure, that when life has ceased to please, To
die at will, in Stoic ease, Is yielded to our pow'r!

Who, timely wise, would meanly wait The dull delay of tardy Fate, When
Life's delights are shorn? No! When its outer gloss has flown, Let's
fling the tarnish'd bauble down As lightly as 'twas worn.

'A health to Glyco! A deep draught to a singer from heaven come down
upon earth!' cried the guests, seizing their wine-cups, as the ode was
concluded, and draining them to the last drop. But their drunken
applause fell noiseless upon the ear to which it was addressed. The
boy's voice, as he sang the final stanza of the ode, had suddenly
changed to a shrill, almost an unearthly tone, then suddenly sank again
as he breathed forth the last few notes; and now as his dissolute
audience turned towards him with approving glances, they saw him
standing before them cold, rigid, and voiceless. The next instant his
fixed features were suddenly distorted, his whole frame collapsed as if
torn by an internal spasm--he fell back heavily to the floor. Those
around approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms.
His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it;
the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the great despot,
Crime--'Be free!'

'We have heard the note of the swan singing its own funeral hymn!' said
the patrician Placidus, looking in maudlin pity from the corpse of the
boy to the face of Vetranio, which presented for the moment an
involuntary expression of grief and remorse.

'Our miracle of beauty and boy-god of melody has departed before us to
the Elysian fields!' muttered the hunchback Reburrus, in harsh,
sarcastic accents.

Then, during the short silence that ensued, the voices from the street,
joined on this occasion to a noise of approaching footsteps on the
pavement, became again distinctly audible in the banqueting-hall.
'News! news!' cried these fresh auxiliaries of the horde already
assembled before the palace. 'Keep together, you who still care for your
lives! Solitary citizens have been lured by strange men into desolate
streets, and never seen again! Jars of newly salted flesh, which there
were no beasts left in the city to supply, have been found in a
butcher's shop! Keep together! Keep together!'

'No cannibals among the mob shall pollute the body of my poor boy!'
cried Vetranio, rousing himself from his short lethargy of grief. 'Ho!
Thascius! Marcus! you who can yet stand! let us bear him to the funeral
pile! He has died first--his ashes shall be first consumed!'

The two patricians arose as the senator spoke, and aided him in carrying
the body to the lower end of the room, where it was laid across the
table, beneath the black curtain, and between the heaps of drapery and
furniture piled up against each of the walls. Then, as his guests
reeled back to their places, Vetranio, remaining by the side of the
corpse, and seizing in his unsteady hands a small vase of wine,
exclaimed in tones of fierce exultation: 'The hour has come--the
Banquet of Famine has ended--the Banquet of Death has begun! A health
to the guest behind the curtain! Fill--drink--behold!'

He drank deeply from the vase as he ceased, and drew aside the black
drapery above him. A cry of terror and astonishment burst from the
intoxicated guests as they beheld in the recess now disclosed to view
the corpse of an aged woman, clothed in white, and propped up on a high,
black throne, with the face turned towards them, and the arms
(artificially supported) stretched out as if in denunciation over the
banqueting-table. The lamp of yellow glass, which burnt high above the
body, threw over it a lurid and flickering light; the eyes were open,
the jaw had fallen, the long grey tresses drooped heavily on either side
of the white hollow cheeks.

'Behold!' cried Vetranio, pointing to the corpse--'Behold my secret
guest! Who so fit as the dead to preside at the Banquet of Death?
Compelling the aid of Glyco, shrouded by congenial night, seizing on the
first corpse exposed before me in the street, I have set up there,
unsuspected by all, the proper idol of our worship, and philosopher at
our feast! Another health to the queen of the fatal revels--to the
teacher of the mysteries of worlds unseen--rescued from rotting
unburied, to perish in the consecrated flames with the senators of Rome!
A health!--a health to the mighty mother, ere she begin the mystic
revelations! Fill--drink!'

Fired by their host's example, recovered from their momentary awe,
already inflamed by the mad recklessness of debauchery, the guests
started from their couches, and with Bacchanalian shouts answered
Vetranio's challenge. The scene at this moment approached the
supernatural. The wild disorder of the richly laden tables; the wine
flowing over the floor from overthrown vases; the great lamps burning
bright and steady over the confusion beneath; the fierce gestures, the
disordered countenances of the revellers, as they waved their jewelled
cups over their heads in frantic triumph; and then the gloomy and
terrific prospect at the lower end of the hall--the black curtain, the
light burning solitary on its high pole, the dead boy lying across the
festal table, the living master standing by his side, and, like an evil
spirit, pointing upward in mockery to the white-robed corpse of the
woman, as it towered above all in its unnatural position, with its
skinny arms stretched forth, with its ghastly features appearing to move
as the faint and flickering light played over them,--produced together
such a combination of scarce-earthly objects as might be painted, but
cannot be described. It was an embodiment of a sorcerer's vision--an
apocalypse of sin triumphing over the world's last relics of mortality
in the vaults of death.

'To your task, Reburrus!' cried Vetranio, when the tumult was lulled;
'to your questions without delay! Behold the teacher with whom you are
to hold commune! Peruse carefully the parchment in your hand; question,
and question loudly--you speak to the apathetic dead!'

For some time before the disclosure of the corpse, the hunchback had
been seated apart at the end of the banqueting-hall opposite the black-
curtained recess, conning over the manuscript containing the list of
questions and answers which formed the impious dialogue he was to hold,
by the aid of his powers of ventriloquism, with the violated dead. When
the curtain was withdrawn he had looked up for a moment, and had greeted
the appearance of the sight behind it with a laugh of brutal derision,
returning immediately to the study of his blasphemous formulary which
had been confided to his care. At the moment when Vetranio's commands
were addressed to him he arose, reeled down the apartment towards the
corpse, and, opening the dialogue as he approached it, began in loud
jeering tones: 'Speak, miserable relict of decrepit mortality!'

He paused as he uttered the last word, and gaining a point of view from
which the light of the lamp fell full upon the solemn and stony features
of the corpse, looked up defiantly at it. In an instant a frightful
change passed over him, the manuscript dropped from his hand, his
deformed frame shrank and tottered, a shrill cry of recognition burst
from his lips, more like the yell of a wild beast than the voice of a
man.

The next moment, when the guests started up to question or deride him,
he turned slowly and faced them. Desperate and drunken as they were,
his look awed them into utter silence. His face was deathlike in hue,
as the face of the corpse above him--thick drops of perspiration
trickled down it like rain--his dry glaring eyes wandered fiercely over
the startled countenances before him, and, as he extended towards them
his clenched hands, he muttered in a deep gasping whisper: 'Who has
done this? MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'

As these few words--of awful import though of simple form--fell upon the
ears of those whom he addressed, such of them as were not already sunk
in insensibility looked round on each other almost sobered for the
moment, and all speechless alike. Not even the clash of the wine-cups
was now heard at the banqueting-table--nothing was audible but the
sound, still fitfully rising and falling, of the voices of terror,
ribaldry, and anguish from the street; and the hoarse convulsive accents
of the hunchback, still uttering at intervals his fearful identification
of the dead body above him: 'MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'

At length Vetranio, who was the first to recover himself, addressed the
terrified and degraded wretch before him, in tones which, in spite of
himself, betrayed, as he began, an unwonted tremulousness and restraint.
'What, Reburrus!' he cried, 'are you already drunken to insanity, that
you call the first dead body which by chance I encountered in the
street, and by chance brought hither, your mother?
Was it to talk of your mother, whom dead or alive we neither know nor
care for, that you were admitted here? Son of obscurity and inheritor
of rags, what are your plebeian parents to us!' he continued, refilling
his cup, and lashing himself into assumed anger as he spoke. 'To your
dialogue without delay, or you shall be flung from the windows to mingle
with your rabble-equals in the street!'

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