She laughed and shook her finger at him.
"How hopeless a ruin thou art! A Jew speaking of the G.o.ds!" He led her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat. With bright eyes and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.
"It is true!" she cried at last. "And I do not like to see it! Thou art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."
"A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered. "But tell me of thyself, and after that of them that remain in Alexandria."
"No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee. All thy misdeeds are known to me. When I forewarned thee of the various attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks! I have heard how thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a score of merry running courtships in the capital. I see thee, how thou hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women. And thou an Essene! Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the salty desert of En-Gadi--some time! Overshadowing the Herod till in very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the atria to thee! Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"
The young man smiled a little bitterly. Cypros" charge had not been difficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay between him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!
"But Rome enlarges," he protested. "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble of Fortune: and I--having a purpose to be achieved in his success--I speed him--in mine own way. But enough of ourselves. Tell me of Alexandria!"
"But wait! I have not done. The charm of beauty hath lost its potency here in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful.
The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price.
The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion"s son bearing the aegis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the mansions of the ancient Quirites! Wherefore there is only one rare, unpurchasable charm--newness--and Roman society speedily dulls the l.u.s.ter of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially. Beware, my Marsyas!"
He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness, in a strangely unspiritual way. He had heard of upright atheists; somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but irreligious chidings. Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that he had changed.
"Be neither frequent nor democratic. Saith Agricola, the pleb, "Brutus, the senator, is n.o.body; he speaks to me!" By Castor! I had rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small.
Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts.
And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."
"How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" he complained.
"But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity as thine. So thou wilt wait for me. Thou hast been in Rome four months.
Tell me what happened in that time."
Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his head.
"None leads a droning life who a.s.sociates with Agrippa," he said. "I have not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea. Nay, then; hear me. He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had forfeited in twenty years. He came away radiant and under promise to return the following night, and dine with the emperor. But the next morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, livid with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa. One would think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in reporting him. What followed but that the same imperial hand which had been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next, extended in banishment over him."
"What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony.
"Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."
"Hot upon Herrenius" heels came Vitellius" contubernalis, with a warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia.
And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped the information of our whereabouts, in Judea! I repaired to Rome, borrowed three hundred thousand drachmae of Antonia, the _univira_, and despatched messengers to Caesar and Herrenius Capito telling that the debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome.
So we laid the ghost of our debts. But feeling unhappy owing no man, I immediately borrowed a million drachmae of Thallus, Caesar"s freedman, repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the Quirinal. Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions. But--!"
He stopped abruptly.
"O prescient contingent!" she said softly. "Does the Herod dally with his opportunities?"
"Worse: he affronts them! Worse: those opportunities are not alone for him! Part of them are mine!"
Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.
"Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me into narrative. An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end.
Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome looketh two ways for a new Emperor. Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus" son, and there is Caligula, Caesar"s grandnephew. Now Caesar seeth in the little Tiberius a successor. Fatuous dotage! The praetorians are stubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant.
The reason is good enough to be a woman"s! Be it as it may, that lean, sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"
"_Hercle_! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidias was with a stone!"
"Patience! On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the Porta Esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum. Many were going, as many go every day. We had mounted our car, with Eutychus--would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!--as charioteer, when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mounted his. After them directly followed a cohort of praetorians. Their bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened little Tiberius" horses, which backed into Caligula"s chariot and frightened his pair. The four bolted at once; the chariots upset and both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the advancing cohort.
"The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligula were helped to their feet. The lad withdrew to the roadside, but Caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.
"Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to become unruly. Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the charioteer. I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals.
Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways. The boy saw him coming, understood the prince"s intent and handed his cloak to a slave preparatory to mounting Agrippa"s car, when the cohort began to cheer Caligula.
"What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the soldiers" favorite and take him into the car!"
"What! Did that thing openly?"
"Deliberately! The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked back inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to cover Agrippa"s slight. And after him rushed a crowd of senators and aediles--his umbrae--to feed his hate of the Herod!"
"What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.
"He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."
"It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.
"He plays at legerdemain with Caesar"s favor," Marsyas said, annoyed at his own narrative. "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberius to Agrippa"s care and companionship. Caesar will hear of this!"
"Inevitably! Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is its patron. And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros" peril, who gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"
"Cypros" peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.
"Of Flaccus!"
Marsyas" astonishment was not pleasant.
"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
"What! Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long? Dost thou not know that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering it, all but killed Flaccus in a pa.s.sage back of the temple, on the night of the Dance of Flora?"
Marsyas looked at her steadily.
"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
"No!" he answered penitently.
"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
"Tell it me, then!"
"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa. So much he loved her, that twenty years after, when next he met her, his old pa.s.sion was revived--stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his youth. Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to Cypros, in the night."