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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




'To your chamber!' thundered Numerian, as she knelt, sobbing
convulsively, over those hapless fragments. 'To your chamber! Tomorrow
shall bring this mystery of iniquity to light!'

She rose humbly to obey him, for indignation had no part in the emotions
that shook her gentle and affectionate nature. As she moved towards the
room that no lute was henceforth to occupy, as she thought on the morrow
that no lute was henceforth to enliven, her grief almost overpowered
her. She turned back and looked imploringly at her father, as if
entreating permission to pick up even the smallest of the fragments at
his feet.

'To your chamber!' he reiterated sternly. 'Am I to be disobeyed to my
face?'

Without any repetition of her silent remonstrance, she instantly
retired. As soon as she was out of sight, Ulpius ascended the steps and
stood before the angered father.

'Look, Ulpius,' cried Numerian, 'my daughter, whom I have so carefully
cherished, whom I intended for an example to the world, has deceived me,
even thus!'

He pointed, as he spoke, to the ruins of the unfortunate lute; but
Ulpius did not address to him a word in reply, and he hastily
continued:--

'I will not sully the solemn offices of tonight by interrupting them
with my worldly affairs. To-morrow I will interrogate my disobedient
child. In the meantime, do not imagine, Ulpius, that I connect you in
any way with this wicked and unworthy deception! In you I have every
confidence, in your faithfulness I have every hope.'

Again he paused, and again Ulpius kept silence. Any one less agitated,
less confiding, than his unsuspicious master, would have remarked that a
faint sinister smile was breaking forth upon his haggard countenance.
But Numerian's indignation was still too violent to permit him to
observed, and, spite of his efforts to control himself, he again broke
forth in complaint.


'On this night too, of all others,' cried he, 'when I had hoped to lead
her among my little assembly of the faithful, to join in their prayers,
and to listen to my exhortations--on this night I am doomed to find her
a player on a pagan lute, a possessor of the most wanton of the world's
vanities! God give me patience to worship this night with unwandering
thoughts, for my heart is vexed at the transgression of my child, as the
heart of Eli of old at the iniquities of his sons!'

He was moving rapidly away, when, as if struck with a sudden
recollection, he stopped abruptly, and again addressed his gloomy
companion.

'I will go by myself to the chapel to-night,' said he. 'You, Ulpius,
will stay to keep watch over my disobedient child. Be vigilant, good
friend, over my house; for even now, on my return, I thought that two
strangers were following my steps, and I forebode some evil in store for
me as the chastisement for my sins, even greater than this misery of my
daughter's transgression. Be watchful, good Ulpius--be watchful!'

And, as he hurried away, the stern, serious man felt as overwhelmed at
the outrage that had been offered to his gloomy fanaticism, as the weak,
timid girl at the destruction that had been wreaked upon her harmless
lute.

After Numerian had departed, the sinister smile again appeared on the
countenance of Ulpius. He stood for a short time fixed in thought, and
then began slowly to descend a staircase near him which led to some
subterranean apartments. He had not gone far when a slight noise became
audible at an extremity of the corridor above. As he listened for a
repetition of the sound, he heard a sob, and looking cautiously up,
discovered, by the moonlight, Antonina stepping cautiously along the
marble pavement of the hall.

She held in her hand a little lamp; her small, rosy feet were uncovered;
the tears still streamed over her cheeks. She advanced with the
greatest caution (as if fearful of being overheard) until she gained the
part of the floor still strewn with the ruins of the broken lute. Here
she knelt down, and pressed each fragment that lay before her separately
to her lips. Then hurriedly concealing a single piece in her bosom, she
arose and stole quickly away in the direction by which she had come.

'Be patient till the dawn,' muttered her faithless guardian, gazing
after her from his concealment as she disappeared; 'it will bring to thy
lute a restorer, and to Ulpius an ally!'


CHAPTER 6. AN APPRENTICESHIP TO THE TEMPLE.

The action of our characters during the night included in the last two
chapters has now come to a pause. Vetranio is awaiting his guests for
the banquet; Numerian is in the chapel, preparing for the discourse that
he is to deliver to his friends; Ulpius is meditating in his master's
house; Antonina is stretched upon her couch, caressing the precious
fragment that she had saved from the ruins of her lute. All the
immediate agents of our story are, for the present, in repose.

It is our purpose to take advantage of this interval of inaction, and
direct the reader's attention to a different country from that selected
as the scene of our romance, and to such historical events of past years
as connect themselves remarkably with the early life of Numerian's
perfidious convert. This man will be found a person of great importance
in the future conduct of our story. It is necessary to the
comprehension of his character, and the penetration of such of his
purposes as have been already hinted at, and may subsequently appear,
that the long course of his existence should be traced upwards to its
source.

It was in the reign of Julian, when the gods of the Pagan achieved their
last victory over the Gospel of the Christian, that a decently attired
man, leading by the hand a handsome boy of fifteen years of age, entered
the gates of Alexandria, and proceeded hastily towards the high priest's
dwelling in the Temple of Serapis.


After a stay of some hours at his destination, the man left the city
alone as hastily as he entered it, and was never after seen at
Alexandria. The boy remained in the abode of the high priest until the
next day, when he was solemnly devoted to the service of the temple.

The boy was the young Emilius, afterwards called Ulpius. He was nephew
to the high priest, to whom he had been confided by his father, a
merchant of Rome.

Ambition was the ruling passion of the father of Emilius. It had
prompted him to aspire to every distinction granted to the successful by
the state, but it had not gifted him with the powers requisite to turn
his aspirations in any instance into acquisitions. He passed through
existence a disappointed man, planning but never performing, seeing his
more fortunate brother rising to the highest distinction in the
priesthood, and finding himself irretrievably condemned to exist in the
affluent obscurity ensured to him by his mercantile pursuits.

When his brother Macrinus, on Julian's accession to the imperial throne,
arrived at the pinnacle of power and celebrity as high priest of the
Temple of Serapis, the unsuccessful merchant lost all hope of rivalling
his relative in the pursuit of distinction. His insatiable ambition,
discarded from himself, now settled on one of his infant sons. He
determined that his child should be successful where he had failed. Now
that his brother had secured the highest elevation in the temple, no
calling could offer more direct advantages to a member of his household
that the priesthood. His family had been from their earliest origin
rigid Pagans. One of them had already attained to the most
distinguished honours of his gorgeous worship. He determined that
another should rival his kinsman, and that that other should be his
eldest son.

Firm in this resolution, he at once devoted his child to the great
design which he now held continually in view. He knew well that
Paganism, revived though it was, was not the universal worship that it
had been; that it was now secretly resisted, and might soon be openly
opposed, by the persecuted Christians throughout the Empire; and that if
the young generation were to guard it successfully from all future
encroachments, and to rise securely to its highest honours, more must be
exacted from them than the easy attachment to the ancient religion
require from the votaries of former days. Then, the performance of the
most important offices in the priesthood was compatible with the
possession of military or political rank. Now, it was to the temple,
and to the temple only, that the future servant of the gods should be
devoted. Resolving thus, the father took care that all the son's
occupations and rewards should, from his earliest years, be in some way
connected with the career for which he was intended. His childish
pleasures were to be conducted to sacrifices and auguries; his childish
playthings and prizes were images of the deities. No opposition was
offered on the boy's part to this plan of education. Far different from
his younger brother, whose turbulent disposition defied all authority,
he was naturally docile; and his imagination, vivid beyond his years,
was easily led captive by any remarkable object presented to it. With
such encouragement, his father became thoroughly engrossed by the
occupation of forming him for his future existence. His mother's
influence over him was jealously watched; the secret expression of her
love, of her sorrow, at the prospect of parting with him, was ruthlessly
suppressed whenever it was discovered; and his younger brother was
neglected, almost forgotten, in order that the parental watchfulness
might be entirely and invariably devoted to the eldest son.

When Emilius had numbered fifteen years, his father saw with delight
that the time had come when he could witness the commencement of the
realisation of all his projects. The boy was removed from home, taken
to Alexandria, and gladly left, by his proud and triumphant father,
under the especial guardianship of Macrinus, the high priest.


The chief of the temple full sympathised in his brother's designs for
the young Emilius. As soon as the boy had entered on his new
occupations, he was told that he must forget all that he had left behind
him at Rome; that he must look upon the high priest as his father, and
upon the temple, henceforth, as his home; and that the sole object of
his present labours and future ambition must be to rise in the service
of the gods. Nor did Macrinus stop here. So thoroughly anxious was he
to stand to his pupil in the place of a parent, and to secure his
allegiance by withdrawing him in every way from the world in which he
had hitherto lived, that he even changed his name, giving to him one of
his own appellations, and describing it as a privilege to stimulate him
to future exertions. From the boy Emilius, he was now permanently
transformed to the student Ulpius.

With such a natural disposition as we have already described, and under
such guardianship as that of the high priest, there was little danger
that Ulpius would disappoint the unusual expectations which had been
formed of him. His attention to his new duties never relaxed; his
obedience to his new masters never wavered. Whatever Macrinus demanded
of him he was sure to perform. Whatever longings he might feel to
return to home, he never discovered them; he never sought to gratify the
tastes naturally peculiar to his age. The high priest and his
colleagues were astonished at the extraordinary readiness with which the
boy himself forwarded their intentions for him. Had they known how
elaborately he had been prepared for his future employments at his
father's house, they would have been less astonished at their pupil's
unusual docility. Trained as he had been, he must have shown a more
than human perversity had he displayed any opposition to his uncle's
wishes. He had been permitted no childhood either of thought or action.
His natural precocity had been seized as the engine to force his
faculties into a perilous and unwholesome maturity; and when his new
duties demanded his attention, he entered on them with the same
sincerity of enthusiasm which his boyish coevals would have exhibited
towards a new sport. His gradual initiation into the mysteries of his
religion created a strange, voluptuous sensation of fear and interest in
his mind. He heard the oracles, and he trembled; he attended the
sacrifices and the auguries, and he wondered. All the poetry of the
bold and beautiful superstition to which he was devoted flowed
overwhelmingly into his young heart, absorbing the service of his fresh
imagination, and transporting him incessantly from the vital realities
of the outer world to the shadowy regions of aspiration and thought.


But his duties did not entirely occupy the attention of Ulpius. The boy
had his peculiar pleasures as well as his peculiar occupations. When
his employments were over for the day, it was a strange, unearthly,
vital enjoyment to him to wander softly in the shade of the temple
porticoes, looking down from his great mysterious eminence upon the
populous and sun-brightened city at his feet; watching the brilliant
expanse of the waters of the Nile glittering joyfully in the dazzling
and pervading light; raising his eyes from the fields and woods, the
palaces and garden, that stretched out before him below, to the lovely
and cloudless sky that watched round him afar and above, and that awoke
all that his new duties had left of the joyfulness, the affectionate
sensibility, which his rare intervals of uninterrupted intercourse with
his mother had implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to
wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in
the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the
edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull,
solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of
those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the
apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for
their amusements and their homes, he would steal into the lofty halls
and wander round the pedestals of the mighty statues, breathing
fearfully the still atmosphere of the temple, and watching the passage
of the cold, melancholy moonbeams through the openings in the roof, and
over the colossal limbs and features of the images of the pagan gods.
Sometimes, when the services of Serapis and the cares attendant on his
communications with the Emperor were concluded, Macrinus would lead his
pupil into the garden of the priests, and praise him for his docility
till his heart throbbed with gratitude and pride. Sometimes he would
convey him cautiously outside the precincts of the sacred place, and
show him, in the suburbs of the city, silent, pale, melancholy men,
gliding suspiciously through the gay, crowded streets. Those fugitive
figures, he would declare, were the enemies of the temple and all that
it contained; conspirators against the Emperor and the gods; wretches
who were to be driven forth as outcasts from humanity; whose appellation
was 'Christian'; and whose impious worship, if tolerated, would deprive
him of the uncle whom he loved, of the temple that he reverenced, and of
the priestly dignity and renown which it should be his life's ambition
to acquire.

Thus tutored in his duties by his guardian, and in his recreations by
himself, as time wore on, the boy gradually lost every remaining
characteristic of his age. Even the remembrance of his mother and his
mother's love grew faint on his memory. Serious, solitary, thoughtful,
he lived but to succeed in the temple; he laboured but to emulate the
high priest. All his feelings and faculties were now enslaved by an
ambition, at once unnatural at his present age, and ominous of
affliction for his future life. The design that Macrinus had
contemplated as the work of years was perfected in a few months. The
hope that his father had scarce dared to entertain for his manhood was
already accomplished in his youth.

In these preparations for future success passed three years of the life
of Ulpius. At the expiration of that period the death of Julian
darkened the brilliant prospects of the Pagan world. Scarcely had the
priests of Serapis recovered the first shock of astonishment and grief
consequent upon the fatal news of the vacancy in the imperial throne,
when the edict of toleration issued by Jovian, the new Emperor, reached
the city of Alexandria, and was elevated on the walls of the temple.

The first sight of this proclamation (permitting freedom of worship to
the Christians) aroused in the highly wrought disposition of Ulpius the
most violent emotions of anger and contempt. The enthusiasm of his
character and age, guided invariably in the one direction of his
worship, took the character of the wildest fanaticism when he discovered
the Emperor's careless infringement of the supremacy of the temple. He
volunteered in the first moments of his fury to tear down the edict from
the walls, to lead an attack on the meetings of the triumphant
Christians, or to travel to the imperial abode and exhort Jovian to
withdraw his act of perilous leniency ere it was too late. With
difficulty did his more cautious confederates restrain him from the
execution of his impetuous designs. For two days he withdrew himself
from his companions, and brooded in solitude over the injury offered to
his beloved superstition, and the prospective augmentation of the
influence of the Christian sect.

But the despair of the young enthusiast was destined to be further
augmented by a private calamity, at once mysterious in its cause and
overwhelming in its effect. Two days after the publication of the edict
the high priest Macrinus, in the prime of vigour and manhood, suddenly
died.

To narrate the confusion and horror within and without the temple on the
discovery of this fatal even; to describe the execrations and tumults of
the priests and the populace, who at once suspected the favoured and
ambitious Christians of causing, by poison, the death of their spiritual
ruler, might be interesting as a history of the manners of the times,
but is immaterial to the object of this chapter. We prefer rather to
trace the effect on the mind of Ulpius of his personal and private
bereavement; of this loss--irretrievable to him--of the master whom he
loved and the guardian whom it was his privilege to revere.


An illness of some months, during the latter part of which his
attendants trembled for his life and reason, sufficiently attested the
sincerity of the grief of Ulpius for the loss of his protector. During
his paroxysms of delirium the priests who watched round his bed drew
from his ravings many wise conclusions as to the effects that his
seizure and its causes were likely to produce on his future character;
but, in spite of all their penetration, they were still far from
appreciating to a tithe of its extent the revolution that his
bereavement had wrought in his disposition. The boy himself, until the
moment of the high priest's death, had never been aware of the depth of
his devotion to his second father. Warped as they had been by his
natural parent, the affectionate qualities that were the mainspring of
his nature had never been entirely destroyed; and they seized on every
kind word and gentle action of Macrinus as food which had been grudged
them since their birth. Morally and intellectually, Macrinus had been
to him the beacon that pointed the direction of his course, the judge
that regulated his conduct, the Muse that he looked to for inspiration.
And now, when this link which had connected every ramification of his
most cherished and governing ideas was suddenly snapped asunder, a
desolation sunk down upon his mind which at once paralysed its
elasticity and withered its freshness. He glanced back, and saw nothing
but a home from whose pleasures and affections his father's ambition had
exiled him for ever. He looked forward, and as he thought of his
unfitness, both from character and education, to mix in the world as
others mixed in it, he saw no guiding star of social happiness for the
conduct of his existence to come. There was now no resource left for
him but entirely to deliver himself up to those pursuits which had made
his home as a strange place to him, which were hallowed by their
connection with the lost object of his attachment, and which would
confer the sole happiness and distinction that he could hope for in the
wide world on his future life.

In addition to this motive for labour in his vocation, there existed in
the mind of Ulpius a deep and settled feeling that animated him with
unceasing ardour for the prosecution of his cherished occupations. This
governing principle was detestation of the Christian sect. The
suspicion that others had entertained regarding the death of the high
priest was to his mind a certainty. He rejected every idea which
opposed his determined persuasion that the jealousy of the Christians
had prompted them to the murder, by poison, of the most powerful and
zealous of the Pagan priests. To labour incessantly until he attained
the influence and position formerly enjoyed by his relative, and to use
that influence and position, when once acquired, as the means of
avenging Macrinus, by sweeping every vestige of the Christian faith from
the face of the earth, were now the settled purposes of his heart.
Inspired by his determination with the deliberate wisdom which is in
most men the result only of the experience of years, he employed the
first days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing his future plans,
and impartially calculating his chances of success. This self-
examination completed, he devoted himself at once and for ever to his
life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing discouraged, nothing
impeded him. Outward events passed by him unnoticed; the city's
afflictions and the city's triumphs spoke no longer to his heart. Year
succeeded to year, but Time had no tongue for him. Paganism gradually
sank, and Christianity imperceptibly rose, but change spread no picture
before his eyes. The whole outward world was a void to him, until the
moment arrived that beheld him successful in his designs. His
preparations for the future absorbed every faculty of his nature, and
left him, as to the present, a mere automaton, reflecting no principle,
and animated by no event--a machine that moved, but did not perceive--a
body that acted, without a mind that thought.

Returning for a moment to the outward world, we find that on the death
of Jovian, in 364, Valentinian, the new Emperor, continued the system of
toleration adopted by his predecessor. On his death, in 375, Gratian,
the successor to the imperial throne, so far improved on the example of
the two former potentates as to range himself boldly on the side of the
partisans of the new faith. Not content with merely encouraging, both
by precept and by example, the growth of Christianity, the Emperor
further testified to his zeal for the rising religion by inflicting
incessant persecutions upon the rapidly decreasing advocates of the
ancient worship; serving, by these acts of his reign, as pioneer to his
successor, Theodosius the Great, in the religious revolution which that
illustrious opponent of Paganism was destined to effect.


The death of Gratian, in 383, saw Ulpius enrolled among the chief
priests of the temple, and pointed out as the next inheritor of the
important office once held by the powerful and active Macrinus.
Beholding himself thus secure of the distinction for which he had
laboured, the aspiring priest found leisure, at length, to look forth
upon the affairs of the passing day. From every side desolation
darkened the prospect that he beheld. Already, throughout many
provinces of the Empire, the temples of the gods had been overthrown by
the destructive zeal of the triumphant Christians. Already hosts of the
terrified people, fearing that the fate of their idols might ultimately
be their own, finding themselves deserted by their disbanded priests,
and surrounded by the implacable enemies of the ancient faith, had
renounced their worship for the sake of saving their lives and securing
their property. On the wide field of Pagan ruin there now rose but one
structure entirely unimpaired. The Temple of Serapis still reared its
head--unshaken, unbending, unpolluted. Here the sacrifice still
prospered and the people still bowed in worship. Before this monument of
the religious glories of ages, even the rising power of Christian
supremacy quailed in dismay. Though the ranks of its once multitudinous
congregations were now perceptibly thinned, though the new churches
swarmed with converts, though the edicts from Rome denounced it as a
blot on the face of the earth, its gloomy and solitary grandeur was
still preserved. No unhallowed foot trod its secret recesses; no
destroying hand was raised as yet against its ancient and glorious
walls.

Indignation, but not despondency, filled the heart of Ulpius as he
surveyed the situation of the Pagan world. A determination nourished as
his had been by the reflections of years, and matured by incessant
industry of deliberation, is above all those shocks which affect a hasty
decision or destroy a wavering intention. Impervious to failure,
disasters urge it into action, but never depress it to repose. Its
existence is the air that preserves the vitality of the mind--the spring
that moves the action of the thoughts. Never for a moment did Ulpius
waver in his devotion to his great design, or despair of its ultimate
execution and success. Though every succeeding day brought the news of
fresh misfortunes for the Pagans and fresh triumphs for the Christians,
still, with a few of his more zealous comrades, he persisted in
expecting the advent of another Julian, and a day of restoration for the
dismantled shrines of the deities that he served. While the Temple of
Serapis stood uninjured, to give encouragement to his labours and refuge
to his persecuted brethren, there existed for him such an earnest of
success as would spur him to any exertion, and nerve him against any
peril.