by Eugène Sue
CHAPTER IX.
BROTHER AND SISTER.
SYLVEST’S SISTER MECHANICALLY followed the direction of Mont-Liban’s arm and for the first time noticed the slave who until now had kept himself hidden in the shadow thrown by one of the pillars in the vestibule.
“Who is that man?” she said walking with quick steps toward Sylvest. She took him angrily by the arm, and made him step forward so that his face was clearly lighted by the lamp that still burned in the vestibule. “Who are you? To whom do you belong?” she asked, fixedly looking at the slave. “What are you doing here?”
The eunuch seemed to await Sylvestre answer with no slight apprehension, while the slave himself still struggling with the mysterious recollections of the previous night, could not find his speech. His brother’s love wrestled in his breast with the horror that Syomara had filled him with. She, on the other hand, after having contemplated the slave for a moment in silence, felt a thrill run over her body, drew him close to the lamp, and proceeded to scan his features with increased intentness and curiosity, holding both her hands upon his shoulders. — Sylvest felt those hands tremble — Syomara asked him:
“Of what country are you?”
Sylvest still hesitated. He was on the point of giving an answer that would throw his sister off the track. But seeing so close to himself the charming face that reminded him of his own mother — feeling on his shoulders the hands that had so often held his own in the happy days of their infancy, Sylvest saw only his sister. She repeated with impatience:
“Do you not understand the Roman language? — I am asking you of what country you are.”
“I am a Gaul.”
“Of what province?” Syomara proceeded in Gallic.
“Of Brittany.”
“Of what tribe?”
“Of the tribe of Karnak.”
“Since when are you a slave?”
“I was sold, when still a little child, after the battle of Vannes.”
“Had you a sister?”
“Yes — she was a year younger than myself. We loved each other tenderly.”
“Was she sold, like yourself, when still in her infancy?”
“Yes; a rich seigneur bought my sister.”
“Did you ever see her again, since?”
“No! — Alas! I never saw her again.”
“Come, follow me,” Syomara said to the slave while the gladiator and the eunuch, the former in anger, the latter in deep concern, stood in the vestibule and heard the conversation, which, however they could not understand. The courtesan stepped towards the door of the inside apartment and seemed to have completely forgotten Mont-Liban. Her eyes fell upon him, however, as she was about to leave the hall. She turned towards him and now addressing him with a kindly smile, said:
“You humbled your forehead under my foot — you, the bravest of the brave! — You may now kiss this hand,” and she extended her arm. “Continue to throw the grand Roman dames into despair, as I do the noble seigneurs. — I do not shut off hope from you. — Do you understand me, lion heart?” The gladiator threw himself down on his knees and pressed the courtesan’s dainty hands to his gross lips. Undoubtedly that savage, brutal and debauched man must have been profoundly enamoured, despite the coarseness of his nature. While he kissed Syomara’s hands with mingled respect and ardor, tears dropped from his subdued eyes. He then rose, and as Syomara made a sign to Sylvest to follow her, the gladiator cried with exaltation:
“By all the throats that I have cut! By the many more that I yet-shall cut! Syomara — you may proclaim to the universe that the heart and the sword of Mont-Liban are wholly yours.”
Leaving the gladiator to declaim his passion, and the eunuch to gulp down the rage that the meeting of the brother and sister undoubtedly kindled in his breast, the courtesan left the vestibule, motioned Sylvest to follow her, and led him to a magnificently furnished chamber, where the two remained alone. Syomara immediately threw her arms around her brother’s neck, and said to him with inexpressible tenderness while she pressed him passionately to her heart: “Sylvest — do you not recognize me? And I recognized you on the spot! I am your sister — sold like yourself eighteen years ago after the battle of Vannes!”
“I also recognized you perfectly—”
“You say it so coldly, brother, — you turn your eyes from me — your face is somber. — Is it thus that one treats the companion of his youth — and after so long a separation? — Ingrate! — And not a day went by without my thinking of you. — Oh! I feel like weeping!”
And, indeed, her eyes filled with tears.
“Listen, Syomara — with one word you can render me the most wretched of men, or the happiest of brothers!”
“Oh! Speak!”
“With one word you can summon from my heart to my lips all the treasures of affection that for these many years I have stored up for you!—”
“Speak! — Speak quickly!”
“In short, one word from you, and we shall continue this conversation, that, but yesterday, I would have gladly paid for with my blood; otherwise I shall instantly leave the house and never more see you.”
“Never more see me! — And why? What have I done to you? In what have I offended you?”
“Syomara, the gods of our fathers are my witnesses. — When I learned that the ‘Beautiful Gaul,’ the celebrated courtesan was yourself, my grief and my shame were profound, sister! — But I bethought me how slavery almost always and perforce debases us, especially when it seizes a being from childhood. — I kept in mind that the master who bought you at the tender age of eight, was named Trymalcion. — Accordingly, I felt profound pity for you. — That is the sentiment that brought me to your house — last evening, towards nightfall—”
“You have been here since last evening?” asked Syomara, looking at her brother with alarm. “You spent the night here?”
“Yes — yes, my sister.”
“Impossible!”
“As I said to you before, Syomara, with one word you shall decide the question whether I am to cherish while pitying you, or whether I must quit you in horror!—”
“I, inspire you with horror!” she exclaimed in a tone of ingenuous astonishment and of such kind reproach that Sylvest was deeply affected. “Why, brother, should you have a horror of me?”
And the young courtesan looked with her beautiful large eyes into those of her brother. The slave felt shaken in his resolution; his doubts and his misgivings alternately gained the ascendency over him.
“Listen! Last evening I knocked at your door, and it was opened to me by your eunuch. I told him that I was your brother—”
“Did you reveal that to him?” she cried, and then seemed to muse.
“He looked disturbed and angry at my revelation. He then said to me: ‘Do you wish to see your sister? I shall show her to you. Come.’ He led me through a narrow passage. After a little while he put out his lamp and told me to walk on. — I obeyed him until I struck against a wall. At the same time a pit opened behind me at my feet. The eunuch then told me not to budge from where I stood at the peril of my life, and to look at the wall—”
“How is that!” she observed again with as much astonishment as candor, while a slight smile of incredulity played around her lips. “In order to see me, he told you to look at the wall — Are you talking seriously, my good and dear brother?”
“I speak so seriously, Syomara, that at this moment I am laboring under a terrible agony — because you are about to utter the fateful word I have been demanding. — Listen — I followed the eunuch’s instructions; I concentrated my attention upon the wall; and—”
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“And?”
“By I know not what prodigy the wall became transparent — and I saw a woman in a vaulted chamber. — She looked like you. — Now, Syomara, was that woman you? was it you or a specter? Was it yourself, yes — or no?”
And trembling at every limb, Sylvest awaited his sister’s answer.
“I
— in a vaulted chamber?” she repeated as if her brother had said something incredible, or even absurd. “Me — seen through the transparency of a wall?”
A second later she carried both her little hands to her forehead as if suddenly reminded of some forgotten fact, and broke out into a peal of laughter, but a laughter so naive and frank that her enchanting face grew fiery red and her eyes filled with the tears that excessive mirth often provokes. The slave looked at her astonished, but also happy. — Oh! He was happy and his happiness deepened as he felt his suspicions abating. When Syomara’s mirth subsided, she drew closer to her brother who sat beside her, laid one of her arms upon his shoulder and said to him in her sweet voice: “Do you remember, in our rustic Karnak home, to the left of the sheep-fold, looking on the pasture of the little heifers! Do you remember at the foot of a large oak-tree a little lodge made of sea-furze and—”
“I do,” answered Sylvest, surprised at the question, but despite himself allowing his mind to wander back to the dear memories that his sister conjured up; “I constructed the lodge for you!”
“Yes; and when the sun burned too hot, or the spring showers came down, we would shelter ourselves, do you remember? under the shade or the protection of the retreat—”
“We were there so comfortable! Above us towered the tall oak; before us stretched the beautiful pasture of the young heifers — and further away ran the pretty little stream on whose banks stood, the fine willow tree under which the newly woven cloth was stretched—”
“Brother, do you remember that in that retreat we loved to play at what we called Spoken games’?”
“Yes, yes — I remember that.”
“Do you remember that we gave one of those games the name of ‘conditions’?”
“I do!”
“Very well, brother; let us play that game now — now as we used to when we were children.”
“What is it you mean?”
Syomara replied with charming grace:
“First condition: Little Sylvest, who sees Syomaras through walls, will ask his sister no more questions on that subject, because, notwithstanding the profound respect that she entertains for her elder brother, she would not be able to keep from laughing at him. — Second condition: Little Sylvest will answer the questions that his sister will put to him. When these conditions are fulfilled, little Sylvest will learn all that he wishes to know, including even the subject of the transparent wall,” added Syomara, seemingly hardly able to repress a fresh outburst of laughter. “And then little Sylvest will find only one trouble — the trouble to express his tender love with sufficient warmth to the poor little sister, whom he just threatened never again to see, — the wicked little brother.”
Many years have elapsed between the day of that conversation and the one on which Sylvest writes its account. But he still seems to hear Syomara’s voice, her tone of naïve mirthfulness while recalling to her brother the memories of their childhood; — he still seems to see the adorable face that bore the stamp of sincerity and candor. He believed his sister. His confidence in her was confirmed. He felt assured that what he had seen were but visions, and that his reason had been duped. Agreeable to her promise, Syomara was about to clear up the mystery and prove to her brother that she was nowise unworthy of his affection. Sylvest yielded to the delightful craving for the reminiscences of the only years of happiness that he ever knew, and that he shared with his sister in the bosom of his family, then happy and free! Drawing nearer to Syomara he took her two hands in his, and endeavoring to smile as did she at the recollections of their infantine games, he said:
“Sylvest accepts the conditions of little Syomara. — He will put no more questions. — Let his sister interrogate him. He will answer.”
Pressing her brother’s hands no less tenderly than he did hers, Syomara said to him in a touching and tearful voice as if prepared for a sad answer:
“Sylvest — what of our father?”
“Dead — he died a frightful death!”
Large tears rolled down from the courtesan’s eyes. After a mournful silence she proceeded:
“And is it long since our father was put to death?”
“Three years after he was made a slave like ourselves, after the battle of Vannes.”
“I remember our grief, when we were separated from each other, at the sight of our father loaded with chains, making a superhuman effort to come to our help. — But you, brother, what became of you? You were not separated from him, were you?”
“No. His master bought me also. He bought me for very little, at least I think so. Our father having shown himself of an intractable disposition, they feared the whelp might grow into a wolf.”
“And whither were you both taken?”
“Back to our tribe — there to cultivate under a master’s whip the land of our very fathers.”
“Indeed?”
“After the battle of Vannes, Caesar distributed the land among his invalid officers. To one of them fell our house and a part of our field.”
“Poor father — Poor brother! — How painful must it not have been to you to see our house and fields in the hands of the stranger! But, at least, you were not separated from our father?”
“At night, he and the other slaves were huddled into an underground vault that was dug out for them, while the Roman officer, his female slaves and our warders occupied our house, where I also was lodged, locked up in a sort Of cage.”
“In a cage? And why such barbarity towards so young a child?”
“The day after our arrival at our house, our master said to my father, pointing at me: ‘Every day that your work is not satisfactory to me a tooth will be pulled out from your child’s head; if you resist my orders, a nail will be drawn from his fingers; if you try to run away he shall lose a foot or a hand, or his nose, or an ear — a limb for each attempt; if you succeed in escaping, both his eyes will be put out, and he will be either thrown into the oven, or smeared over with honey and then exposed to the wasps, or burned alive over a slow fire in a tar gown. It now lies wholly with you whether your son shall keep a calendar by the mutilations on his body and close the score with his death.’”
Syomara shuddered and hid her face in her hands.
“‘You will ‘have no more docile and industrious a slave than I,’ father answered his master; ‘all I ask is that you promise to let me see my son from time to time if you are satisfied with my work.” Behave well, and I shall see’, answered the Roman. Our father kept his promise, thinking only of sparing me. He proved himself the most industrious and most docile of all the slaves.”
“He, the most docile of slaves!” exclaimed Syomara, her eyes wet with tears. “He! Our father! He, so proud of our family’s freedom! — He, Guilhem, the son of Joel! Oh! Never could a father have given his son a stronger proof of his affection!”
“Only a mother — only a father can be such a hero! And yet, despite his submissiveness, it was long before our master allowed him to approach or even see me. Occasionally I saw him at a distance either in the morning or in the evening when he was led in or out of the ergastvla. In order that I might have some little exercise my master allowed me at those hours to leave the cage, but never without first yoking me to a large and ferocious dog that always kept watch over me.”
“You, my brother? — Treated so cruelly?”
“Yes, sister. I wore a little iron collar around my neck. A chain that was fastened to the collar was on such occasions also fastened to the dog’s collar, and thus coupled me to him. Encouraged by the promise that he would occasionally receive in the morning to see me that evening, father performed some days labors that were above human strength. The first time after our common slavery that he was allowed to speak to me, he owed the favor to his having hoed seven acres on one day, from sunrise to sunset. Even when in his full strength and enjoying full health, when free and happy, he could not have performed so heavy a task in less than two days’ hard work. On that evening, burned by the sun,
dripping with sweat, and still panting for breath, our father was brought to my cage by one of the warders. As an additional precaution, besides the chain that he carried on his legs, his hands were manacled. The warder did not take his eyes off us. — Oh, sister! — I broke down in tears at the aspect of our father. Until then I had seen him only at a distance. But seen closely, I saw his head shaven, his face worn and furrowed with deep lines, and the rags in which he was clad.”
“And he was so handsome! So proud! So mirthful! Do you remember, Sylvest, how on holy days, or the days of the military exercises, he would ride at full gallop over the meadow on his spirited grey stallion with his red housings and bridle, while our uncle Mikael the armorer followed with him on foot as if hanging from the horse’s mane?”
“And yet, sister, the first time that our father was permitted to see me and to speak with me, his face beamed with as much joy as during our happiest days of yore. Hardly had he come within reach of my cage when he cried out to me in a voice choked with joy: ‘Your cheek, my poor boy! your cheek!’ I pressed my cheek against the iron bars and he tried to kiss it through the rails. But notwithstanding our happiness at seeing each other again, we wept a good deal. He dried his tears so as to console me, and sought to encourage me by reciting the manly deeds of our ancestors and the precepts of our gods. We also spoke of you, my dear sister. Finally, after we had exchanged many words of affection, the warder took him back to the underground slave-pen. These meetings were, however, few and far between. But every time that they took place they inspired our father with new fortitude, and afforded him a few minutes of unutterable happiness.”
“And you, dear brother, remained all this time a prisoner?”
“All the time. It was the only guarantee our master could find for father’s docility. — Three years passed in this manner. Having some correspondence to carry on with the Gauls of England for the sale of some grain, the Roman assigned that duty to father. It was through this circumstance that, following the last orders of our grandfather Joel, he could furtively now and then put down in writing the account of his life that he left me. He hid in the hollow of a tree, which he designated to me, the narratives left by Joel and Albinik, together with the little gold sickle of our aunt Hena and one of the little brass bells that our bulls wore at the battle of Vannes; he hid his own narrative in the same place. I have with me, sister, these pious relics of our family. I brought them to you, in order to prove, if need be, that I was your brother. Alas I the last lines that father wrote preceded his death by only a few days—”
