Callista : a Tale of the Third Century

by John Henry Newman

  CHAPTER X.

  THE DIVINE CALLISTA.

  The day came which Agellius had fixed for paying his promised visit toAristo. It is not to be denied that, in the interval, the difficulties ofthe business which occasioned his visit had increased upon hisapprehensions. Callista was not yet a Christian, nor was there any reasonfor saying that a proposal of marriage would make her one; and a strangesort of convert she would be, if it did. He would not suffer himself todwell upon difficulties which he was determined never should be realized.No; of course a heathen he could not marry, but a heathen Callista shouldnot be. He did not see the process, but he was convinced she would becomea Christian. Yet somehow so it was, that, if he was able to stultify hisreason, he did not quite succeed to his satisfaction with his conscience.Every morning found him less satisfied with himself, and more disposed torepent of having allowed his uncle to enter on the subject with Aristo.But it was a thing done and over; he must either awkwardly back out, or hemust go on. His middle term, as he hastily had considered it, was nothingelse than siding with his uncle, and committing himself to go all lengths,unless some difficulty rose with the other party. Yet could he really wishthat the step had not been taken? Was it not plain that if he was to putaway Callista from his affections, he must never go near her? And was heto fall back on his drear solitude, and lose that outlet of thought andrelief of mind which he had lately found in the society of his Greekfriends?

  We may easily believe that he was not very peaceful in heart when he setout on that morning to call upon Aristo; yet he would not allow that hewas doing wrong. He recurred to the pleasant imagination that Callistawould certainly become a Christian, and dwelt pertinaciously upon it. Hecould not tell on what it was founded; he knew enough of his religion notto mean that she was too good to be a heathen; so it is to be supposed hemeant that he discerned what he hoped were traces of some supernaturalinfluence operating upon her mind. He had a perception, which he could notjustify by argument, that there was in Callista a promise of somethinghigher than anything she yet was. He felt a strange sympathy with her,which certainly unless he utterly deceived himself, was not based onanything merely natural or human,--a sympathy the more remarkable from thecontrariety which existed between them in matters of religious belief. Andhope having blown this large and splendid bubble, sent it sailing away,and it rose upon the buoyant atmosphere of youth, beautiful to behold.

  And yet, as Agellius ascended the long flight of marble steps which ledthe foot-passenger up into that fair city, while the morning sun wasglancing across them, and surveyed the outline of the many sumptuousbuildings which crested and encircled the hill, did he not know full wellthat iniquity was written on its very walls, and spoke a solemn warning toa Christian heart to go out of it, to flee it, not to take up a home init, not to make alliance with anything in it? Did he not know fromexperience full well that, when he got into it, his glance could no longerbe unrestrained, or his air free; but that it would be necessary for himto keep a control upon his senses, and painfully guard himself againstwhat must either be a terror to him and an abhorrence, or a temptation?Enter in imagination into a town like Sicca, and you will understand thegreat Apostle's anguish at seeing a noble and beautiful city given up toidolatry. Enter it, and you will understand why it was that the poorpriest, of whom Jucundus spoke so bitterly, hung his head, and walked withtimid eyes and clouded brow through the joyous streets of Carthage.Hitherto we have only been conducting heathens through it, boys or men,Jucundus, Arnobius, and Firmian; but now a Christian enters it with aChristian's heart and a Christian's hope.

  Well is it for us, dear reader, that we in this age do not experience--nay,a blessed thing that we cannot even frame to ourselves in imagination--theactual details of evil which hung as an atmosphere over the cities ofPagan Rome. An Apostle calls the tongue "a fire, a world of iniquity,untameable, a restless evil, a deadly poison;" and surely what he saysapplies to hideous thoughts represented to the eye, as well as when theyare made to strike upon the ear. Unfortunate Agellius! what takes you intothe city this morning? Doubtless some urgent, compulsive duty; otherwiseyou would not surely be threading its lanes or taking the circuit of itsporticoes, amid sights which now shock and now allure; fearful sights--nothere and there, but on the stateliest structures and in the meanesthovels, in public offices and private houses, in central spots and at thecorners of the streets, in bazaars and shops and house-doors, in therudest workmanship and in the highest art, in letters or in emblems or inpaintings--the insignia and the pomp of Satan and of Belial, of a reign ofcorruption and a revel of idolatry which you can neither endure norescape. Wherever you go it is all the same; in the police-court on theright, in the military station on the left, in the crowd around thetemple, in the procession with its victims and its worshippers who walk tomusic, in the language of the noisy market-people; wherever you go, youare accosted, confronted, publicly, shamelessly, now as if a precept ofreligion, now as if a homage to nature, by all which, as a Christian, youshrink from and abjure.

  It is no accident of the season or of the day; it is the continuoustradition of some thousands of years; it is the very orthodoxy of themyriads who have lived and died there. There was a region once, in anearly age, lying upon the Eastern Sea, which is said at length to havevomited out its inhabitants for their frightful iniquity. They, thus castforth, took ship, and passed over to the southern coast; and then,gradually settling and spreading into the interior, they peopled the woodyplains and fertile slopes of Africa, and filled it with their cities.Sicca is one of these set up in sin; and at the time of which we writethat sin was basking under the sun, and rioting and extending itself toits amplest dimensions, like some glittering serpent or spotted pard ofthe neighbourhood, without interposition from heaven or earth incorrection of so awful a degradation. In such scenes of unspeakablepollution, our Christian forefathers perforce lived; through such a scene,though not taking part in it, Agellius, blessed with a country home, isunnecessarily passing.

  He has reached the house, or rather the floor, to which he has been makinghis way. It is at the back of the city, where the rock is steep; and itlooks out upon the plain and the mountain range to the north. Its inmates,Aristo and Callista, are engaged in their ordinary work of moulding orcarving, painting or gilding the various articles which the temples or theprivate shrines of the established religion required. Aristo has receivedfrom Jucundus the overtures which Agellius had commissioned him to make,and finds, as he anticipated, that they are no great news to his sister.She perfectly understands what is going on, but does not care to speakmuch upon it, till Agellius makes his appearance. As they sit at work,Aristo speaks:--

  "Agellius will make his appearance here this morning. I say, Callista,what can he be coming for?"

  "Why, if your news be true, that the Christians are coming into trouble,of course he means to purchase, as a blessing on him, some of these bitsof gods."

  "You are sharp enough, my little sister," answered Aristo, "to knowperfectly well who is the goddess he is desirous of purchasing."

  Callista laughed carelessly, but made no reply.

  "Come, child," Aristo continued, "don't be cruel to him. Wreath a garlandfor him by the time he comes. He's well to do, and modest withal, andneeds encouragement."

  "He's well enough," said Callista.

  "I say he's a fellow too well off to be despised as a lover," proceededher brother, "and it would be a merit with the gods to rid him of hissuperstition."

  "Not much of a Christian," she made answer, "if he is set upon me."

  "For whose sake has he been coming here so often, mine or yours,Callista?"

  "I am tired of such engagements," she replied. She went on with herpainting, and several times seemed as if she would have spoken, but didnot. Then, without interrupting her work, she said calmly, "Time was, itgratified my conceit and my feelings to have hangers on. Indeed, withoutthem, how should we have had means to come here? But th
ere's a wearinessin all things."

  "A weariness! Where is this bad humour to end?" cried Aristo; "it has beena long fit; shake it off while you can, or it will be too much for you.What can you mean? a weariness! You are over young to bid youth farewell.Aching hearts for aching bones. So young and so perverse! We must takethings as the gods give them. You will ask for them in vain when you areold. One day above, another day beneath; one while young, another whileold. Enjoy life while you have it in your hand." He had said this as heworked. Then he stopped, and turned round to her, with his graving-tool inhis hand. "Recollect old Lesbia, how she used to squeak out to me, withher nodding head and trembling limbs"--here he mimicked the old crone--" 'Myboy, take your pleasure while you can. I can't take pleasure--my day isover; but I don't reproach myself. I had a merry time of it while itlasted. Time stops for no one, but I did my best; I don't reproachmyself.' There's the true philosopher, though a slave; more outspoken thanAEsop, more practical than Epictetus."

  Callista began singing to herself:--

  "I wander by that river's brink Which circles Pluto's drear domain; I feel the chill night breeze, and think Of joys which ne'er shall be again.

  "I count the weeds that fringe the shore, Each sluggish wave that rolls and rolls; I hear the ever-splashing oar Of Charon, ferryman of souls.

  "Heigho!" she continued, "little regret, but much dread. The young have tofear more than the old have to mourn over. The future outweighs the past.Life is not so sweet as death is bitter. It is hard to quit the light, thelight of heaven."

  "Callistidion!" he said, impatiently; "my girl, this is preposterous. Howlong is this to go on? We must take you to Carthage; there is more tradethere, if we can get it; and it will be on the bright, far-resounding sea.And I will turn rhetorician, and you shall feed my classes."

  "O beautiful, divine light," she continued, "what a loss! O, to think thatone day I must lose you for ever! At home I used to lie awake at nightlonging for the morning, and crying out for the god of day. It was likechoice wine to me, a cup of Chian, the first streaks of the Aurora, and Icould hardly bear his bright coming, when he came to me like Semele, forrapture. How gloriously did he shoot over the hills! and then anon herested awhile on the snowy summit of Olympus, as in some luminous shrine,gladdening the Phrygian plain. Fair, bright-haired god! thou art myworship, if Callista worships aught: but somehow I worship nothing now. Iam weary."

  "Well," said her brother in a soothing tone, "it is a change. That light,elastic air, that transparent heaven, that fresh temperate breeze, thatmajestic sea! Africa is not Greece; O, the difference! That's it,Callista; it is the _nostalgia_; you are home-sick."

  "It may be so," she said; "I do not well know what I would have. Yes, thepoisonous dews, the heavy heat, the hideous beasts, the greenfever-gendering swamps. This vast thickly-wooded plain, like somemysterious labyrinth, oppresses and disquiets me with its very richness.The luxuriant foliage, the tall, rank plants, the deep, close lanes, I donot see my way through them, and I pant for breath. I only breathe freelyon this hill. O, how unlike Greece, with the clear, soft, delicatecolouring of its mountains, and the pure azure or the purple of itswaters!"

  "But, my dear Callista," interrupted her brother, "recollect you are notin those oppressive, gloomy forests, but in Sicca, and no one asks you topenetrate them. And if you want mountains, I think those on the horizonare bare enough."

  "And the race of man," she continued, "is worse than all. Where is thegenius of our bright land? where its intelligence, playfulness, grace, andnoble bearing? Here hearts are as black as brows, and smiles astreacherous as the adders of the wood. The natives are crafty andremorseless; they never relax; they have no cheerfulness or mirth; theirvery love is a furnace, and their sole ecstasy is revenge."

  "No country like home to any of us," said Aristo; "yet here you are. Habitwould be a second nature if you were here long enough; your feelings wouldbecome acclimated, and would find a new home. People get to like thedarkness of the extreme north in course of time. The painted Britons, theCimmerians, the Hyperboreans, are content never to see the sun at all,which is your god. Here your own god reigns; why quarrel with him?"

  "The sun of Greece is light," answered Callista; "the sun of Africa isfire. I am no fire-worshipper."

  "I suspect even Styx and Phlegethon are tolerable, at length," said herbrother, "if Phlegethon and Styx there be, as the poets tell us."

  "The cold, foggy Styx is the north," said Callista, "and the south is thescorching, blasting Phlegethon, and Greece, clear, sweet, and sunny, isthe Elysian fields." And she continued her improvisations:--

  "Where are the islands of the blest? They stud the AEgean sea; And where the deep Elysian rest? It haunts the vale where Peneus strong Pours his incessant stream along, While craggy ridge and mountain bare Cut keenly through the liquid air, And, in their own pure tints arrayed, Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade, And stand in beauty undecayed, Guards of the bold and free."

  "A lower flight, if you please, just now," said Aristo, interrupting her."I do really wish a serious word with you about Agellius. He's a fellow Ican't help liking, in spite of his misanthropy. Let me plead his cause.Like him or not yourself, still he has a full purse; and you will do aservice to yourself and to the gods of Greece, and to him too, if you willsmile on him. Smile on him at least for a time; we will go to Carthagewhen you are tired. His looks have very little in them of a Christianleft; you may blow it away with your breath."

  "One might do worse than be a Christian," she answered slowly, "if all istrue that I have heard of them."

  Aristo started up in irritation. "By all the gods of Olympus," he said,"this is intolerable! If a man wants a tormentor, I commend him to a girllike you. What has ailed thee some time past, you silly child? What have Idone to you that you should have got so cross and contrary and so hard toplease?"

  "I mean," she said, "if I were a Christian, life would be more bearable."

  "Bearable!" he echoed; "bearable! ye gods! more bearable to have Styx andTartarus, the Furies and their snakes, in this world as well as in thenext? to have evil within and without, to hate one's self and to be hatedof all men! to live the life of an ass, and to die the death of a dog!Bearable! But hark! I hear Agellius's step on the staircase. Callista,dear Callista, be yourself. Listen to reason."

  But Callista would not listen to reason, if her brother was itsembodiment; but went on with her singing:--

  "For what is Afric but the home Of burning Phlegethon? What the low beach and silent gloom, And chilling mists of that dull river, Along whose bank the thin ghosts shiver, The thin, wan ghosts that once were men, But Tauris, isle of moor and fen; Or, dimly traced by seaman's ken, The pale-cliffed Albion?"

  Here she stopped, looked down, and busied herself with her work.