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<h2> Chapter VIII </h2>
<h3> THE SOLITUDE AND SOLILOQUY OF THE EGYPTIAN. HIS CHARACTER ANALYSED. </h3>
<p>WE must go back a few hours in the progress of our story. At the first
grey dawn of the day, which Glaucus had already marked with white, the
Egyptian was seated, sleepless and alone, on the summit of the lofty and
pyramidal tower which flanked his house. A tall parapet around it served
as a wall, and conspired, with the height of the edifice and the gloomy
trees that girded the mansion, to defy the prying eyes of curiosity or
observation. A table, on which lay a scroll, filled with mystic figures,
was before him. On high, the stars waxed dim and faint, and the shades of
night melted from the sterile mountain-tops; only above Vesuvius there
rested a deep and massy cloud, which for several days past had gathered
darker and more solid over its summit. The struggle of night and day was
more visible over the broad ocean, which stretched calm, like a gigantic
lake, bounded by the circling shores that, covered with vines and foliage,
and gleaming here and there with the white walls of sleeping cities,
sloped to the scarce rippling waves.</p>
<p>It was the hour above all others most sacred to the daring science of the
Egyptian—the science which would read our changeful destinies in the
stars.</p>
<p>He had filled his scroll, he had noted the moment and the sign; and,
leaning upon his hand, he had surrendered himself to the thoughts which
his calculation excited.</p>
<p>'Again do the stars forewarn me! Some danger, then, assuredly awaits me!'
said he, slowly; 'some danger, violent and sudden in its nature. The stars
wear for me the same mocking menace which, if our chronicles do not err,
they once wore for Pyrrhus—for him, doomed to strive for all things,
to enjoy none—all attacking, nothing gaining—battles without
fruit, laurels without triumph, fame without success; at last made craven
by his own superstitions, and slain like a dog by a tile from the hand of
an old woman! Verily, the stars flatter when they give me a type in this
fool of war—when they promise to the ardour of my wisdom the same
results as to the madness of his ambition—perpetual exercise—no
certain goal!—the Sisyphus task, the mountain and the stone!—the
stone, a gloomy image!—it reminds me that I am threatened with
somewhat of the same death as the Epirote. Let me look again. "Beware,"
say the shining prophets, "how thou passest under ancient roofs, or
besieged walls, or overhanging cliffs—a stone hurled from above, is
charged by the curses of destiny against thee!" And, at no distant date
from this, comes the peril: but I cannot, of a certainty, read the day and
hour. Well! if my glass runs low, the sands shall sparkle to the last.
Yet, if I escape this peril—ay, if I escape—bright and clear
as the moonlight track along the waters glows the rest of my existence. I
see honors, happiness, success, shining upon every billow of the dark gulf
beneath which I must sink at last. What, then, with such destinies beyond
the peril, shall I succumb to the peril? My soul whispers hope, it sweeps
exultingly beyond the boding hour, it revels in the future—its own
courage is its fittest omen. If I were to perish so suddenly and so soon,
the shadow of death would darken over me, and I should feel the icy
presentiment of my doom. My soul would express, in sadness and in gloom,
its forecast of the dreary Orcus. But it smiles—it assures me of
deliverance.'</p>
<p>As he thus concluded his soliloquy, the Egyptian involuntarily rose. He
paced rapidly the narrow space of that star-roofed floor, and, pausing at
the parapet, looked again upon the grey and melancholy heavens. The chills
of the faint dawn came refreshingly upon his brow, and gradually his mind
resumed its natural and collected calm. He withdrew his gaze from the
stars, as, one after one, they receded into the depths of heaven; and his
eyes fell over the broad expanse below. Dim in the silenced port of the
city rose the masts of the galleys; along that mart of luxury and of labor
was stilled the mighty hum. No lights, save here and there from before the
columns of a temple, or in the porticoes of the voiceless forum, broke the
wan and fluctuating light of the struggling morn. From the heart of the
torpid city, so soon to vibrate with a thousand passions, there came no
sound: the streams of life circulated not; they lay locked under the ice
of sleep. From the huge space of the amphitheatre, with its stony seats
rising one above the other—coiled and round as some slumbering
monster—rose a thin and ghastly mist, which gathered darker, and
more dark, over the scattered foliage that gloomed in its vicinity. The
city seemed as, after the awful change of seventeen ages, it seems now to
the traveler,—a City of the Dead.'</p>
<p>The ocean itself—that serene and tideless sea—lay scarce less
hushed, save that from its deep bosom came, softened by the distance, a
faint and regular murmur, like the breathing of its sleep; and curving
far, as with outstretched arms, into the green and beautiful land, it
seemed unconsciously to clasp to its breast the cities sloping to its
margin—Stabiae, and Herculaneum, and Pompeii—those children
and darlings of the deep. 'Ye slumber,' said the Egyptian, as he scowled
over the cities, the boast and flower of Campania; 'ye slumber!—would
it were the eternal repose of death! As ye now—jewels in the crown
of empire—so once were the cities of the Nile! Their greatness hath
perished from them, they sleep amidst ruins, their palaces and their
shrines are tombs, the serpent coils in the grass of their streets, the
lizard basks in their solitary halls. By that mysterious law of Nature,
which humbles one to exalt the other, ye have thriven upon their ruins;
thou, haughty Rome, hast usurped the glories of Sesostris and Semiramis—thou
art a robber, clothing thyself with their spoils! And these—slaves
in thy triumph—that I (the last son of forgotten monarchs) survey
below, reservoirs of thine all-pervading power and luxury, I curse as I
behold! The time shall come when Egypt shall be avenged! when the
barbarian's steed shall make his manger in the Golden House of Nero! and
thou that hast sown the wind with conquest shalt reap the harvest in the
whirlwind of desolation!'</p>
<p>As the Egyptian uttered a prediction which fate so fearfully fulfilled, a
more solemn and boding image of ill omen never occurred to the dreams of
painter or of poet. The morning light, which can pale so wanly even the
young cheek of beauty, gave his majestic and stately features almost the
colors of the grave, with the dark hair falling massively around them, and
the dark robes flowing long and loose, and the arm outstretched from that
lofty eminence, and the glittering eyes, fierce with a savage gladness—half
prophet and half fiend!</p>
<p>He turned his gaze from the city and the ocean; before him lay the
vineyards and meadows of the rich Campania. The gate and walls—ancient,
half Pelasgic—of the city, seemed not to bound its extent. Villas
and villages stretched on every side up the ascent of Vesuvius, not nearly
then so steep or so lofty as at present. For, as Rome itself is built on
an exhausted volcano, so in similar security the inhabitants of the South
tenanted the green and vine-clad places around a volcano whose fires they
believed at rest for ever. From the gate stretched the long street of
tombs, various in size and architecture, by which, on that side, the city
is as yet approached. Above all, rode the cloud-capped summit of the Dread
Mountain, with the shadows, now dark, now light, betraying the mossy
caverns and ashy rocks, which testified the past conflagrations, and might
have prophesied—but man is blind—that which was to come!</p>
<p>Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the tradition of
the place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, in those smiling plains,
for miles around—to Baiae and Misenum—the poets had imagined
the entrance and thresholds of their hell—their Acheron, and their
fabled Styx: why, in those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they
placed the battles of the gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have
sought the victory of heaven—save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared
and blasted summit, fancy might think to read the characters of the
Olympian thunderbolt.</p>
<p>But it was neither the rugged height of the still volcano, nor the
fertility of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy avenue of tombs, nor
the glittering villas of a polished and luxurious people, that now
arrested the eye of the Egyptian. On one part of the landscape, the
mountain of Vesuvius descended to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated
ridge, broken here and there by jagged crags and copses of wild foliage.
At the base of this lay a marshy and unwholesome pool; and the intent gaze
of Arbaces caught the outline of some living form moving by the marshes,
and stooping ever and anon as if to pluck its rank produce.</p>
<p>'Ho!' said he, aloud, 'I have then, another companion in these unworldly
night—watches. The witch of Vesuvius is abroad. What! doth she, too,
as the credulous imagine—doth she, too, learn the lore of the great
stars? Hath she been uttering foul magic to the moon, or culling (as her
pauses betoken) foul herbs from the venomous marsh? Well, I must see this
fellow-laborer. Whoever strives to know learns that no human lore is
despicable. Despicable only you—ye fat and bloated things—slaves
of luxury—sluggards in thought—who, cultivating nothing but
the barren sense, dream that its poor soil can produce alike the myrtle
and the laurel. No, the wise only can enjoy—to us only true luxury
is given, when mind, brain, invention, experience, thought, learning,
imagination, all contribute like rivers to swell the seas of SENSE!—Ione!'</p>
<p>As Arbaces uttered that last and charmed word, his thoughts sunk at once
into a more deep and profound channel. His steps paused; he took not his
eyes from the ground; once or twice he smiled joyously, and then, as he
turned from his place of vigil, and sought his couch, he muttered, 'If
death frowns so near, I will say at least that I have lived—Ione
shall be mine!'</p>
<p>The character of Arbaces was one of those intricate and varied webs, in
which even the mind that sat within it was sometimes confused and
perplexed. In him, the son of a fallen dynasty, the outcast of a sunken
people, was that spirit of discontented pride, which ever rankles in one
of a sterner mould, who feels himself inexorably shut from the sphere in
which his fathers shone, and to which Nature as well as birth no less
entitles himself. This sentiment hath no benevolence; it wars with
society, it sees enemies in mankind. But with this sentiment did not go
its common companion, poverty. Arbaces possessed wealth which equalled
that of most of the Roman nobles; and this enabled him to gratify to the
utmost the passions which had no outlet in business or ambition.
Travelling from clime to clime, and beholding still Rome everywhere, he
increased both his hatred of society and his passion for pleasure. He was
in a vast prison, which, however, he could fill with the ministers of
luxury. He could not escape from the prison, and his only object,
therefore, was to give it the character of the palace. The Egyptians, from
the earliest time, were devoted to the joys of sense; Arbaces inherited
both their appetite for sensuality and the glow of imagination which
struck light from its rottenness. But still, unsocial in his pleasures as
in his graver pursuits, and brooking neither superior nor equal, he
admitted few to his companionship, save the willing slaves of his
profligacy. He was the solitary lord of a crowded harem; but, with all, he
felt condemned to that satiety which is the constant curse of men whose
intellect is above their pursuits, and that which once had been the
impulse of passion froze down to the ordinance of custom. From the
disappointments of sense he sought to raise himself by the cultivation of
knowledge; but as it was not his object to serve mankind, so he despised
that knowledge which is practical and useful. His dark imagination loved
to exercise itself in those more visionary and obscure researches which
are ever the most delightful to a wayward and solitary mind, and to which
he himself was invited by the daring pride of his disposition and the
mysterious traditions of his clime. Dismissing faith in the confused
creeds of the heathen world, he reposed the greatest faith in the power of
human wisdom. He did not know (perhaps no one in that age distinctly did)
the limits which Nature imposes upon our discoveries. Seeing that the
higher we mount in knowledge the more wonders we behold, he imagined that
Nature not only worked miracles in her ordinary course, but that she
might, by the cabala of some master soul, be diverted from that course
itself. Thus he pursued science, across her appointed boundaries, into the
land of perplexity and shadow. From the truths of astronomy he wandered
into astrological fallacy; from the secrets of chemistry he passed into
the spectral labyrinth of magic; and he who could be sceptical as to the
power of the gods, was credulously superstitious as to the power of man.</p>
<p>The cultivation of magic, carried at that day to a singular height among
the would-be wise, was especially Eastern in its origin; it was alien to
the early philosophy of the Greeks; nor had it been received by them with
favor until Ostanes, who accompanied the army of Xerxes, introduced,
amongst the simple credulities of Hellas, the solemn superstitions of
Zoroaster. Under the Roman emperors it had become, however, naturalized at
Rome (a meet subject for Juvenal's fiery wit). Intimately connected with
magic was the worship of Isis, and the Egyptian religion was the means by
which was extended the devotion to Egyptian sorcery. The theurgic, or
benevolent magic—the goetic, or dark and evil necromancy—were
alike in pre-eminent repute during the first century of the Christian era;
and the marvels of Faustus are not comparable to those of Apollonius.
Kings, courtiers, and sages, all trembled before the professors of the
dread science. And not the least remarkable of his tribe was the most
formidable and profound Arbaces. His fame and his discoveries were known
to all the cultivators of magic; they even survived himself. But it was
not by his real name that he was honored by the sorcerer and the sage: his
real name, indeed, was unknown in Italy, for 'Arbaces' was not a genuinely
Egyptian but a Median appellation, which, in the admixture and
unsettlement of the ancient races, had become common in the country of the
Nile; and there were various reasons, not only of pride, but of policy
(for in youth he had conspired against the majesty of Rome), which induced
him to conceal his true name and rank. But neither by the name he had
borrowed from the Mede, nor by that which in the colleges of Egypt would
have attested his origin from kings, did the cultivators of magic
acknowledge the potent master. He received from their homage a more mystic
appellation, and was long remembered in Magna Graecia and the Eastern
plain by the name of 'Hermes, the Lord of the Flaming Belt'. His subtle
speculations and boasted attributes of wisdom, recorded in various
volumes, were among those tokens 'of the curious arts' which the Christian
converts most joyfully, yet most fearfully, burnt at Ephesus, depriving
posterity of the proofs of the cunning of the fiend.</p>
<p>The conscience of Arbaces was solely of the intellect—it was awed by
no moral laws. If man imposed these checks upon the herd, so he believed
that man, by superior wisdom, could raise himself above them. 'If (he
reasoned) I have the genius to impose laws, have I not the right to
command my own creations? Still more, have I not the right to control—to
evade—to scorn—the fabrications of yet meaner intellects than
my own?' Thus, if he were a villain, he justified his villainy by what
ought to have made him virtuous—namely, the elevation of his
capacities.</p>
<p>Most men have more or less the passion for power; in Arbaces that passion
corresponded exactly to his character. It was not the passion for an
external and brute authority. He desired not the purple and the fasces,
the insignia of vulgar command. His youthful ambition once foiled and
defeated, scorn had supplied its place—his pride, his contempt for
Rome—Rome, which had become the synonym of the world (Rome, whose
haughty name he regarded with the same disdain as that which Rome herself
lavished upon the barbarian), did not permit him to aspire to sway over
others, for that would render him at once the tool or creature of the
emperor. He, the Son of the Great Race of Rameses—he execute the
orders of, and receive his power from, another!—the mere notion
filled him with rage. But in rejecting an ambition that coveted nominal
distinctions, he but indulged the more in the ambition to rule the heart.
Honoring mental power as the greatest of earthly gifts, he loved to feel
that power palpably in himself, by extending it over all whom he
encountered. Thus had he ever sought the young—thus had he ever
fascinated and controlled them. He loved to find subjects in men's souls—to
rule over an invisible and immaterial empire!—had he been less
sensual and less wealthy, he might have sought to become the founder of a
new religion. As it was, his energies were checked by his pleasures.
Besides, however, the vague love of this moral sway (vanity so dear to
sages!) he was influenced by a singular and dreamlike devotion to all that
belonged to the mystic Land his ancestors had swayed. Although he
disbelieved in her deities, he believed in the allegories they represented
(or rather he interpreted those allegories anew). He loved to keep alive
the worship of Egypt, because he thus maintained the shadow and the
recollection of her power. He loaded, therefore, the altars of Osiris and
of Isis with regal donations, and was ever anxious to dignify their
priesthood by new and wealthy converts. The vow taken—the priesthood
embraced—he usually chose the comrades of his pleasures from those
whom he made his victims, partly because he thus secured to himself their
secrecy—partly because he thus yet more confirmed to himself his
peculiar power. Hence the motives of his conduct to Apaecides,
strengthened as these were, in that instance, by his passion for Ione.</p>
<p>He had seldom lived long in one place; but as he grew older, he grew more
wearied of the excitement of new scenes, and he had sojourned among the
delightful cities of Campania for a period which surprised even himself.
In fact, his pride somewhat crippled his choice of residence. His
unsuccessful conspiracy excluded him from those burning climes which he
deemed of right his own hereditary possession, and which now cowered,
supine and sunken, under the wings of the Roman eagle. Rome herself was
hateful to his indignant soul; nor did he love to find his riches rivalled
by the minions of the court, and cast into comparative poverty by the
mighty magnificence of the court itself. The Campanian cities proffered to
him all that his nature craved—the luxuries of an unequalled climate—the
imaginative refinements of a voluptuous civilization. He was removed from
the sight of a superior wealth; he was without rivals to his riches; he
was free from the spies of a jealous court. As long as he was rich, none
pried into his conduct. He pursued the dark tenour of his way undisturbed
and secure.</p>
<p>It is the curse of sensualists never to love till the pleasures of sense
begin to pall; their ardent youth is frittered away in countless desires—their
hearts are exhausted. So, ever chasing love, and taught by a restless
imagination to exaggerate, perhaps, its charms, the Egyptian had spent all
the glory of his years without attaining the object of his desires. The
beauty of to-morrow succeeded the beauty of to-day, and the shadows
bewildered him in his pursuit of the substance. When, two years before the
present date, he beheld Ione, he saw, for the first time, one whom he
imagined he could love. He stood, then, upon that bridge of life, from
which man sees before him distinctly a wasted youth on the one side, and
the darkness of approaching age upon the other: a time in which we are
more than ever anxious, perhaps, to secure to ourselves, ere it be yet too
late, whatever we have been taught to consider necessary to the enjoyment
of a life of which the brighter half is gone.</p>
<p>With an earnestness and a patience which he had never before commanded for
his pleasures, Arbaces had devoted himself to win the heart of Ione. It
did not content him to love, he desired to be loved. In this hope he had
watched the expanding youth of the beautiful Neapolitan; and, knowing the
influence that the mind possesses over those who are taught to cultivate
the mind, he had contributed willingly to form the genius and enlighten
the intellect of Ione, in the hope that she would be thus able to
appreciate what he felt would be his best claim to her affection: viz, a
character which, however criminal and perverted, was rich in its original
elements of strength and grandeur. When he felt that character to be
acknowledged, he willingly allowed, nay, encouraged her, to mix among the
idle votaries of pleasure, in the belief that her soul, fitted for higher
commune, would miss the companionship of his own, and that, in comparison
with others, she would learn to love herself. He had forgot, that as the
sunflower to the sun, so youth turns to youth, until his jealousy of
Glaucus suddenly apprised him of his error. From that moment, though, as
we have seen, he knew not the extent of his danger, a fiercer and more
tumultuous direction was given to a passion long controlled. Nothing
kindles the fire of love like the sprinkling of the anxieties of jealousy;
it takes then a wilder, a more resistless flame; it forgets its softness;
it ceases to be tender; it assumes something of the intensity—of the
ferocity—of hate.</p>
<p>Arbaces resolved to lose no further time upon cautious and perilous
preparations: he resolved to place an irrevocable barrier between himself
and his rivals: he resolved to possess himself of the person of Ione: not
that in his present love, so long nursed and fed by hopes purer than those
of passion alone, he would have been contented with that mere possession.
He desired the heart, the soul, no less than the beauty, of Ione; but he
imagined that once separated by a daring crime from the rest of mankind—once
bound to Ione by a tie that memory could not break, she would be driven to
concentrate her thoughts in him—that his arts would complete his
conquest, and that, according to the true moral of the Roman and the
Sabine, the empire obtained by force would be cemented by gentler means.
This resolution was yet more confirmed in him by his belief in the
prophecies of the stars: they had long foretold to him this year, and even
the present month, as the epoch of some dread disaster, menacing life
itself. He was driven to a certain and limited date. He resolved to crowd,
monarch-like, on his funeral pyre all that his soul held most dear. In his
own words, if he were to die, he resolved to feel that he had lived, and
that Ione should be his own.</p>
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