At the further end of the hall, upon a biclinium, or double couch, reclined Arria Marcella in an attitude which recalled the reclining woman of Phidias, upon the pediment of the Parthenon. Her pearl-embroidered shoes lay at the foot of the couch, and her beautiful bare foot, purer and whiter than marble, extended from beneath the light covering of byssus which had been thrown over her.
Two earrings, fashioned in the form of balance-scales, and bearing pearls in either scale, trembled in the light against her pale cheeks. A necklace of golden balls, with pear-shaped pendants attached, hung down upon her bosom, which the negligent folds of a straw-colored peplum, with a Greek border in black lines, had left half uncovered; a gold and black fillet passed and glittered here and there through her ebon tresses, for she had changed her dress upon returning from the theatre, and around her arm, like the asp about the arm of Cleopatra, a golden serpent with jewelled eyes entwined itself in many folds and sought to bite its own tail.
Close by the double couch had been placed a little table, supported upon griffins' paws, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and freighted with different viands served upon dishes of silver and gold, or of earthenware enamelled with costly paintings. A Phasian bird, cooked in its plumage, was visible, and also various fruits which are seldom seen together in any one season.
Everything seemed to indicate that a guest was expected. The floor had been strewn with fresh flowers, and the amphoræ of wine were plunged into urns filled with snow.
*
Arria Marcella made a sign to Octavian to lie down upon the biclinium beside her and share her repast. Half-maddened with astonishment and love, the young man took at random a few mouthfuls from the plates extended to him by little curly-haired Asiatic slaves, who wore short tunics. Arria did not eat, but she frequently raised to her lips an opal-tinted myrrhine vase filled with a wine darkly purple like thickened blood. As she drank an imperceptible rosy vapor mounted to her cheeks from her heart, the heart that had never throbbed for so many centuries; nevertheless, her bare arm, which Octavian lightly touched in the act of raising his cup, was cold as the skin of a serpent or the marble of a tomb.
"Ah, when you paused in the Studii Museum to contemplate the mass of hardened clay which still preserves my form," exclaimed Arria Marcella, turning her long, liquid eyes upon Octavian, "and your thoughts were ardently directed to me, my spirit felt it in that world where I float, invisible to vulgar eyes. Faith makes God, and love makes woman. One is truly dead only when one is no longer loved. Your desire has restored life to me. The mighty invocation of your heart overcame the dim distances that separated us."
The idea of amorous invocation which the young woman spoke of entered into the philosophic beliefs of Octavian, beliefs which we ourselves are not far from sharing.
In effect, nothing dies; all things are eternal. No power can annihilate that which once had being. Every action, every word, every thought which has fallen into the universal ocean of being, therein creates circles which travel, and increase in travelling, even to the confines of eternity. To vulgar eyes only do natural forms disappear, and the spectres which have thence detached themselves people Infinity. Paris, in some unknown region of space, continues to carry off Helen. The galley of Cleopatra still floats down with swelling sails of silk upon the azure current of an ideal Cydnus. A few passionate and powerful minds have been able to recall before them ages apparently long passed away, and to restore to life personages dead to all the world beside. Faust has had for his mistress the daughter of Tyndarus, and conducted her to his Gothic castle in the depths of the mysterious abysses of Hades. Octavian had been able to live a day under the reign of Titus, and to make himself beloved of Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes, she who was at that moment lying upon an antique couch beside him in a city destroyed for all the rest of the world.
"From my disgust with other women," replied Octavian, "from the unconquerable reverie which attracted me toward its radiant shapes as to stars that lure on, I knew that I could never love save beyond the confines of Time and Space. It was you that I awaited; and that frail vestige of your being, preserved by the curiosity of men, has by its secret magnetism placed me in communication with your spirit. I know not if you be a dream or a reality, a phantom or a woman; if, like Ixion, I press but a cloud to my cheated breast; if I am only the victim of some vile spell of sorcery—but what I do truly know is that you will be my first and my last love."
"May Eros, son of Aphrodite, hear your promise," returned Arria Marcella, dropping her head upon the shoulder of her lover, who lifted her in a passionate embrace. "Oh, press me to your young breast! Envelop me with your warm breath. I am cold through having remained so long without love." And against his heart Octavian felt that beautiful bosom rise and fall, whose mould he had that very morning admired through the glass of a cabinet in the museum. The coolness of that beautiful flesh penetrated him through his tunic and made him burn. The gold and black fillet had become detached from Arria's head, passionately thrown back, and her hair streamed like a black river over the purple pillow.
The slaves had removed the table. A confused sound of sighs and kisses was alone audible. The pet quails, indifferent to this amorous scene, plundered the crumbs of the banquet upon the mosaic pavement, uttering sharp little cries.
Suddenly the brazen rings of the curtain which closed the entrance to the apartment slided back upon the curtain-rod, and an aged man of stern demeanor and wrapped in a great brown mantle appeared upon the threshold. His gray beard was divided into two points after the manner of the Nazareans. His face seemed furrowed by the suffering of ascetic mortifications, and a little cross of black wood was suspended from his neck, leaving no doubt as to his faith. He belonged to the sect, then new, of the Disciples of Christ.
On perceiving him, Arria Marcella, overwhelmed with confusion, hid her face in the folds of her mantle, like a bird which puts its head under its wing at the approach of an enemy from whom it cannot escape, to save itself at least from the horror of seeing him, while Octavian, rising on his elbow, stared fixedly at the provoking being who had thus abruptly interrupted his happiness.
"Arria, Arria!" exclaimed the austere personage in a voice of reproach, "did not your lifetime suffice for your misconduct, and must your infamous amours encroach upon centuries to which they do not belong? Can you not leave the living in their sphere? Have not your ashes cooled since the day when you perished unrepentant beneath the rain of volcanic fire? So, then, even two thousand years have not sufficed to calm your passion, and your voracious arms still draw to your heartless breast of marble the poor mad-men whom your philters have intoxicated!"
"Arrius, father, mercy! Do not crush me in the name of that morose religion which was never mine! I believed in our ancient gods, who loved life and youth and beauty and pleasure. Do not hurl me back into pale nothingness! Let me enjoy this life that love has given back to me!"
"Silence, impious woman! Speak not to me of your gods, which are demons. Let this man, whom you have fettered with your impure seductions, depart hence. Draw him no more beyond the circle of that life which God measured out for him. Return to the Limbo of paganism with your Asiatic, Roman, or Greek lovers. Young Christian, forsake that larva, who would seem to you more hideous than Empousa or Phorkyas, could you but see her as she is!"
Pale and frozen with horror, Octavian tried to speak, but his voice clung to his throat, according to the expression of Virgil.
"Will you obey me, Arria?" imperiously cried the tall old man.
"No, never!" responded Arria, with flashing eyes, dilated nostrils, and passion-trembling lips, as she suddenly encircled the body of Octavian with her beautiful statuesque arms, cold, hard, and rigid as marble. Her furious beauty, enhanced by the struggle, shone forth at that supreme moment with supernatural brightness, as though to leave its imperishable souvenir with her young lover.
"Then, unhappy woman," exclaimed the old man, "I must needs employ extreme measures, and render your n
othingness palpable and visible to this fascinated child." And in a voice of command he pronounced a formula of exorcism that banished from Arria's cheeks the purple tints with which the black wine from the myrrhine vase had suffused them.
At the same moment the distant bell of one of those hamlets which border the sea-coast, or lie hidden in the mountain hollows, rang out the first peal of the angelus.
A sob of agony burst from the broken heart of the young woman at that sound. Octavian felt her encircling arms untwine, the draperies which covered her sank fold on fold, as though the contours which sustained them had suddenly given way, and the wretched night-walker beheld on the banquet-couch beside him only a handful of cinders mingled with a few fragments of calcined bones, among which gold bracelets and jewelry glittered, together with such other shapeless remains as were found in excavating the villa of Arrius Diomedes.
He uttered one fearful cry and became insensible.
The old man had disappeared, the sun rose, and the hall, so brilliantly decorated but a short time before, became only a dismantled ruin.
After a heavy slumber, inspired by the libations of the previous evening, Max and Fabio started from their sleep, and at once called their comrade, whose room adjoined their own, with one of those burlesque rallying cries which are so commonly made use of by travellers. Octavian, for the best of reasons, returned no answer. Fabio and Max, hearing no response, entered their friend's chamber and perceived that the bed had not been disturbed.
"He must have fallen asleep in some chair," said Fabio, "without being able to get to bed, for our good Octavian cannot bear much liquor; and most likely he is taking an early walk to dissipate the fumes of the wine in the fresh morning air."
"But he did not drink much," returned Max, in a thoughtful manner. "All this seems very strange to me. Let us go and find him!"
Accompanied by the cicerone, the two friends searched all the streets, squares, cross-roads, and alleys of Pompeii, entering every curious building where they thought Octavian might be occupied in copying a painting or taking down an inscription, and finally discovered him lying insensible upon the disjointed mosaic pavement of a small ruined chamber. They had much difficulty in restoring him to consciousness, and on reviving, his only explanation of the circumstance was that he had taken a fancy to see Pompeii by moonlight, and had been seized with a sudden faintness, which would doubtless result in nothing serious.
The little party returned by rail to Naples, as they had come, and the same evening, from their private box at the San Carlo, Max and Fabio watched through their opera glasses a troupe of nymphs dancing in a ballet, under the leadership of Amalia Ferraris, the danseuse then in vogue, all wearing under their gauzy skirts frightful green drawers, which made them look like so many frogs stung by a tarantula. Pale, with woful eyes, and the general air of one crushed by suffering, Octavian seemed to doubt the reality of what transpired upon the stage, so difficult did he find it to resume the sentiments of real life after the marvellous adventures of the night.
From the time of that visit to Pompeii Octavian fell into a dismal melancholy, which the good-humored pleasantry of his companions rather aggravated than soothed. The image of Arria Marcella haunted him incessantly, and the sad termination of his fantastic good fortune had never destroyed its charm.
Unable to contain his misery, he returned secretly to Pompeii, and once again wandered among the ruins by moonlight as before, his heart palpitating with maddening hope; but the hallucination never returned. He saw only the lizards fleeing over the stones, he heard only the screams of the startled night-birds. He met his friend Rufus Holconius no more, Tyche came not to lay her supple hand upon his arm, Arria Marcella obstinately slumbered in her dust.
Abandoning all hope, Octavian finally married a charming young English girl, who is madly in love with him. He is perfectly well behaved to his wife, yet Ellen, with that subtle instinct of the heart which nothing can deceive, feels that her husband is enamored of another. But of whom? That is a mystery which the most unflagging watchfulness cannot enable her to unravel. Octavian never entertains actresses. In society he addresses to women only the most commonplace gallantries. He even returned with the greatest coldness the marked advances of a certain Russian princess celebrated for her beauty and her coquetry. A secret drawer, opened during her husband's absence, afforded no confirmation of infidelity to Ellen's suspicions. But how could she permit herself to be jealous of Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes, the freedman of Tiberius?
The Mummy's Foot
*
I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity venders who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France.
You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker thinks he must have his chambre au moyen âge.
There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer in old iron, the ware-room of the tapestry maker, the laboratory of the chemist, and the studio of the painter: in all those gloomy dens where a furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters the most manifestly ancient thing is dust. The cobwebs are more authentic than the guimp laces, and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition is actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from America.
The warehouse of my bric-à-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum. All ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there. An Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis XV. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table of the time of Louis XIII., with heavy spiral supports of oak, and carven designs of chimeras and foliage intermingled.
Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered immense Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching, side by side with enamelled works by Bernard Palissy, representing serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.
From disembowelled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads, while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.
The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor glittered in one corner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese grotesques, vases of céladon and crackle-ware, Saxon and old Sèvres cups encumbered the shelves and nooks of the apartment.
The dealer followed me closely through the tortuous way contrived between the piles of furniture, warding off with his hand the hazardous sweep of my coat-skirts, watching my elbows with the uneasy attention of an antiquarian and a usurer.
It was a singular face, that of the merchant; an immense skull, polished like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair, which brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the more strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal bonhomie, counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d'or upon quicksilver. The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters' claws when they lifted any precious article—an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal. This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical and cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of his face three centuries ago.
"Will you not buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a Malay kreese with a blade undulating like flame. Look at those grooves contrived for the blood to run along, those teeth set backward so as
to tear out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon. It is a fine character of ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection. This two-handed sword is very beautiful. It is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this colichemarde, with its fenestrated guard—what a superb specimen of handicraft!"
"No; I have quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage. I want a small figure, something which will suit me as a paper-weight, for I cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found on everybody's desk."
The old gnome foraged among his ancient wares, and finally arranged before me some antique bronzes, so-called at least; fragments of malachite, little Hindoo or Chinese idols, a kind of poussah-toys in jade-stone, representing the incarnations of Brahma or Vishnoo, and wonderfully appropriate to the very undivine office of holding papers and letters in place.
I was hesitating between a porcelain dragon, all constellated with warts, its mouth formidable with bristling tusks and ranges of teeth, and an abominable little Mexican fetich, representing the god Vitziliputzili au naturel, when I caught sight of a charming foot, which I at first took for a fragment of some antique Venus.
It had those beautiful ruddy and tawny tints that lend to Florentine bronze that warm living look so much preferable to the gray-green aspect of common bronzes, which might easily be mistaken for statues in a state of putrefaction. Satiny gleams played over its rounded forms, doubtless polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries, for it seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era of art, perhaps moulded by Lysippus himself.
"That foot will be my choice," I said to the merchant, who regarded me with an ironical and saturnine air, and held out the object desired that I might examine it more fully.
I was surprised at its lightness. It was not a foot of metal, but in sooth a foot of flesh, an embalmed foot, a mummy's foot. On examining it still more closely the very grain of the skin, and the almost imperceptible lines impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages, became perceptible. The toes were slender and delicate, and terminated by perfectly formed nails, pure and transparent as agates. The great toe, slightly separated from the rest, afforded a happy contrast, in the antique style, to the position of the other toes, and lent it an ærial lightness—the grace of a bird's foot. The sole, scarcely streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence that it had never touched the bare ground, and had only come in contact with the finest matting of Nile rushes and the softest carpets of panther skin.
One of Cleopatra's Nights Page 12
