The Last Days of Pompeii

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

  Chapter III

  THE CONGREGATION.

  FOLLOWED by Apaecides, the Nazarene gained the side of the Sarnus--thatriver, which now has shrunk into a petty stream, then rushed gaily intothe sea, covered with countless vessels, and reflecting on its waves thegardens, the vines, the palaces, and the temples of Pompeii. From itsmore noisy and frequented banks, Olinthus directed his steps to a pathwhich ran amidst a shady vista of trees, at the distance of a few pacesfrom the river. This walk was in the evening a favorite resort of thePompeians, but during the heat and business of the day was seldomvisited, save by some groups of playful children, some meditative poet,or some disputative philosophers. At the side farthest from the river,frequent copses of box interspersed the more delicate and evanescentfoliage, and these were cut into a thousand quaint shapes, sometimesinto the forms of fauns and satyrs, sometimes into the mimicry ofEgyptian pyramids, sometimes into the letters that composed the name ofa popular or eminent citizen. Thus the false taste is equally ancientas the pure; and the retired traders of Hackney and Paddington, acentury ago, were little aware, perhaps, that in their tortured yews andsculptured box, they found their models in the most polished period ofRoman antiquity, in the gardens of Pompeii, and the villas of thefastidious Pliny.

  This walk now, as the noonday sun shone perpendicularly through thechequered leaves, was entirely deserted; at least no other forms thanthose of Olinthus and the priest infringed upon the solitude. They satthemselves on one of the benches, placed at intervals between the trees,and facing the faint breeze that came languidly from the river, whosewaves danced and sparkled before them--a singular and contrasted pair;the believer in the latest--the priest of the most ancient--worship ofthe world!

  'Since thou leftst me so abruptly,' said Olinthus, 'hast thou beenhappy? has thy heart found contentment under these priestly robes? hastthou, still yearning for the voice of God, heard it whisper comfort tothee from the oracles of Isis? That sigh, that averted countenance,give me the answer my soul predicted.'

  'Alas!' answered Apaecides, sadly, 'thou seest before thee a wretchedand distracted man! From my childhood upward I have idolized the dreamsof virtue! I have envied the holiness of men who, in caves and lonelytemples, have been admitted to the companionship of beings above theworld; my days have been consumed with feverish and vague desires; mynights with mocking but solemn visions. Seduced by the mysticprophecies of an impostor, I have indued these robes;--my nature (Iconfess it to thee frankly)--my nature has revolted at what I have seenand been doomed to share in! Searching after truth, I have become butthe minister of falsehoods. On the evening in which we last met, I wasbuoyed by hopes created by that same impostor, whom I ought already tohave better known. I have--no matter--no matter! suffice it, I haveadded perjury and sin to rashness and to sorrow. The veil is now rentfor ever from my eyes; I behold a villain where I obeyed a demigod; theearth darkens in my sight; I am in the deepest abyss of gloom; I knownot if there be gods above; if we are the things of chance; if beyondthe bounded and melancholy present there is annihilation or anhereafter--tell me, then, thy faith; solve me these doubts, if thou hastindeed the power!'

  'I do not marvel,' answered the Nazarene, 'that thou hast thus erred, orthat thou art thus sceptic. Eighty years ago there was no assurance toman of God, or of a certain and definite future beyond the grave. Newlaws are declared to him who has ears--a heaven, a true Olympus, isrevealed to him who has eyes--heed then, and listen.'

  And with all the earnestness of a man believing ardently himself, andzealous to convert, the Nazarene poured forth to Apaecides theassurances of Scriptural promise. He spoke first of the sufferings andmiracles of Christ--he wept as he spoke: he turned next to the gloriesof the Saviour's Ascension--to the clear predictions of Revelation. Hedescribed that pure and unsensual heaven destined to the virtuous--thosefires and torments that were the doom of guilt.

  The doubts which spring up to the mind of later reasoners, in theimmensity of the sacrifice of God to man, were not such as would occurto an early heathen. He had been accustomed to believe that the godshad lived upon earth, and taken upon themselves the forms of men; hadshared in human passions, in human labours, and in human misfortunes.What was the travail of his own Alcmena's son, whose altars now smokedwith the incense of countless cities, but a toil for the human race?Had not the great Dorian Apollo expiated a mystic sin by descending tothe grave? Those who were the deities of heaven had been the lawgiversor benefactors on earth, and gratitude had led to worship. It seemedtherefore, to the heathen, a doctrine neither new nor strange, thatChrist had been sent from heaven, that an immortal had indued mortality,and tasted the bitterness of death. And the end for which He thus toiledand thus suffered--how far more glorious did it seem to Apaecides thanthat for which the deities of old had visited the nether world, andpassed through the gates of death! Was it not worthy of a God to,descend to these dim valleys, in order to clear up the clouds gatheredover the dark mount beyond--to satisfy the doubts of sages--to convertspeculation into certainty--by example to point out the rules oflife--by revelation to solve the enigma of the grave--and to prove thatthe soul did not yearn in vain when it dreamed of an immortality? Inthis last was the great argument of those lowly men destined to convertthe earth. As nothing is more flattering to the pride and the hopes ofman than the belief in a future state, so nothing could be more vagueand confused than the notions of the heathen sages upon that mysticsubject. Apaecides had already learned that the faith of thephilosophers was not that of the herd; that if they secretly professed acreed in some diviner power, it was not the creed which they thought itwise to impart to the community. He had already learned, that even thepriest ridiculed what he preached to the people--that the notions of thefew and the many were never united. But, in this new faith, it seemedto him that philosopher, priest, and people, the expounders of thereligion and its followers, were alike accordant: they did not speculateand debate upon immortality, they spoke of as a thing certain andassured; the magnificence of the promise dazzled him--its consolationssoothed. For the Christian faith made its early converts among sinners!many of its fathers and its martyrs were those who had felt thebitterness of vice, and who were therefore no longer tempted by itsfalse aspect from the paths of an austere and uncompromising virtue.All the assurances of this healing faith invited to repentance--theywere peculiarly adapted to the bruised and sore of spirit! the veryremorse which Apaecides felt for his late excesses, made him incline toone who found holiness in that remorse, and who whispered of the joy inheaven over one sinner that repenteth.

  'Come,' said the Nazarene, as he perceived the effect he had produced,'come to the humble hall in which we meet--a select and a chosen few;listen there to our prayers; note the sincerity of our repentant tears;mingle in our simple sacrifice--not of victims, nor of garlands, butoffered by white-robed thoughts upon the altar of the heart. Theflowers that we lay there are imperishable--they bloom over us when weare no more; nay, they accompany us beyond the grave, they spring upbeneath our feet in heaven, they delight us with an eternal odor, forthey are of the soul, they partake of its nature; these offerings aretemptations overcome, and sins repented. Come, oh come! lose not anothermoment; prepare already for the great, the awful journey, from darknessto light, from sorrow to bliss, from corruption to immortality! This isthe day of the Lord the Son, a day that we have set apart for ourdevotions. Though we meet usually at night, yet some amongst us aregathered together even now. What joy, what triumph, will be with usall, if we can bring one stray lamb into the sacred fold!'

  There seemed to Apaecides, so naturally pure of heart, somethingineffably generous and benign in that spirit of conversation whichanimated Olinthus--a spirit that found its own bliss in the happiness ofothers--that sought in its wide sociality to make companions foreternity. He was touched, softened, and subdued. He was not in thatmood which can bear to be left alone; curiosity, too, mingled with hispurer stimulants--he was anxious to see those rites of which
so manydark and contradictory rumours were afloat. He paused a moment, lookedover his garb, thought of Arbaces, shuddered with horror, lifted hiseyes to the broad brow of the Nazarene, intent, anxious, watchful--butfor his benefits, for his salvation! He drew his cloak round him, so aswholly to conceal his robes, and said, 'Lead on, I follow thee.'

  Olinthus pressed his hand joyfully, and then descending to the riverside, hailed one of the boats that plyed there constantly; they enteredit; an awning overhead, while it sheltered them from the sun, screenedalso their persons from observation: they rapidly skimmed the wave.From one of the boats that passed them floated a soft music, and itsprow was decorated with flowers--it was gliding towards the sea.

  'So,' said Olinthus, sadly, 'unconscious and mirthful in theirdelusions, sail the votaries of luxury into the great ocean of storm andshipwreck! we pass them, silent and unnoticed, to gain the land.'

  Apaecides, lifting his eyes, caught through the aperture in the awning aglimpse of the face of one of the inmates of that gay bark--it was theface of Ione. The lovers were embarked on the excursion at which wehave been made present. The priest sighed, and once more sunk back uponhis seat. They reached the shore where, in the suburbs, an alley ofsmall and mean houses stretched towards the bank; they dismissed theboat, landed, and Olinthus, preceding the priest, threaded the labyrinthof lanes, and arrived at last at the closed door of a habitationsomewhat larger than its neighbors. He knocked thrice--the door wasopened and closed again, as Apaecides followed his guide across thethreshold.

  They passed a deserted atrium, and gained an inner chamber of moderatesize, which, when the door was closed, received its only light from asmall window cut over the door itself. But, halting at the threshold ofthis chamber, and knocking at the door, Olinthus said, 'Peace be withyou!' A voice from within returned, 'Peace with whom?' 'The Faithful!'answered Olinthus, and the door opened; twelve or fourteen persons weresitting in a semicircle, silent, and seemingly absorbed in thought, andopposite to a crucifix rudely carved in wood.

  They lifted up their eyes when Olinthus entered, without speaking; theNazarene himself, before he accosted them, knelt suddenly down, and byhis moving lips, and his eyes fixed steadfastly on the crucifix,Apaecides saw that he prayed inly. This rite performed, Olinthus turnedto the congregation--'Men and brethren,' said he, 'start not to beholdamongst you a priest of Isis; he hath sojourned with the blind, but theSpirit hath fallen on him--he desires to see, to hear, and tounderstand.'

  'Let him,' said one of the assembly; and Apaecides beheld in the speakera man still younger than himself, of a countenance equally worn andpallid, of an eye which equally spoke of the restless and fieryoperations of a working mind.

  'Let him,' repeated a second voice, and he who thus spoke was in theprime of manhood; his bronzed skin and Asiatic features bespoke him ason of Syria--he had been a robber in his youth.

  'Let him,' said a third voice; and the priest, again turning to regardthe speaker, saw an old man with a long grey beard, whom he recognizedas a slave to the wealthy Diomed.

  'Let him,' repeated simultaneously the rest--men who, with twoexceptions, were evidently of the inferior ranks. In these exceptions,Apaecides noted an officer of the guard, and an Alexandrian merchant.

  'We do not,' recommenced Olinthus--'we do not bind you to secrecy; weimpose on you no oaths (as some of our weaker brethren would do) not tobetray us. It is true, indeed, that there is no absolute law against us;but the multitude, more savage than their rulers, thirst for our lives.So, my friends, when Pilate would have hesitated, it was the people whoshouted "Christ to the cross!" But we bind you not to our safety--no!Betray us to the crowd--impeach, calumniate, malign us if you will--weare above death, we should walk cheerfully to the den of the lion, orthe rack of the torturer--we can trample down the darkness of the grave,and what is death to a criminal is eternity to the Christian.'

  A low and applauding murmur ran through the assembly.

  'Thou comest amongst us as an examiner, mayest thou remain a convert!Our religion? you behold it! Yon cross our sole image, yon scroll themysteries of our Caere and Eleusis! Our morality? it is in ourlives!--sinners we all have been; who now can accuse us of a crime? wehave baptized ourselves from the past. Think not that this is of us, itis of God. Approach, Medon,' beckoning to the old slave who had spokenthird for the admission of Apaecides, 'thou art the sole man amongst uswho is not free. But in heaven, the last shall be first: so with us.Unfold your scroll, read and explain.'

  Useless would it be for us to accompany the lecture of Medon, or thecomments of the congregation. Familiar now are those doctrines, thenstrange and new. Eighteen centuries have left us little to expound uponthe lore of Scripture or the life of Christ. To us, too, there wouldseem little congenial in the doubts that occurred to a heathen priest,and little learned in the answers they receive from men uneducated,rude, and simple, possessing only the knowledge that they were greaterthan they seemed.

  There was one thing that greatly touched the Neapolitan: when thelecture was concluded, they heard a very gentle knock at the door; thepassword was given, and replied to; the door opened, and two youngchildren, the eldest of whom might have told its seventh year, enteredtimidly; they were the children of the master of the house, that darkand hardy Syrian, whose youth had been spent in pillage and bloodshed.The eldest of the congregation (it was that old slave) opened to themhis arms; they fled to the shelter--they crept to his breast--and hishard features smiled as he caressed them. And then these bold andfervent men, nursed in vicissitude, beaten by the rough winds oflife--men of mailed and impervious fortitude, ready to affront a world,prepared for torment and armed for death--men, who presented allimaginable contrast to the weak nerves, the light hearts, the tenderfragility of childhood, crowded round the infants, smoothing theirrugged brows and composing their bearded lips to kindly and fosteringsmiles: and then the old man opened the scroll and he taught the infantsto repeat after him that beautiful prayer which we still dedicate to theLord, and still teach to our children; and then he told them, in simplephrase, of God's love to the young, and how not a sparrow falls but Hiseye sees it. This lovely custom of infant initiation was long cherishedby the early Church, in memory of the words which said, 'Suffer littlechildren to come unto me, and forbid them not'; and was perhaps theorigin of the superstitious calumny which ascribed to the Nazarenes thecrime which the Nazarenes, when victorious, attributed to the Jew, viz.the decoying children to hideous rites, at which they were secretlyimmolated.

  And the stern paternal penitent seemed to feel in the innocence of hischildren a return into early life--life ere yet it sinned: he followedthe motion of their young lips with an earnest gaze; he smiled as theyrepeated, with hushed and reverent looks, the holy words: and when thelesson was done, and they ran, released, and gladly to his knee, heclasped them to his breast, kissed them again and again, and tearsflowed fast down his cheek--tears, of which it would have beenimpossible to trace the source, so mingled they were with joy andsorrow, penitence and hope--remorse for himself and love for them!

  Something, I say, there was in this scene which peculiarly affectedApaecides; and, in truth, it is difficult to conceive a ceremony moreappropriate to the religion of benevolence, more appealing to thehousehold and everyday affections, striking a more sensitive chord inthe human breast.

  It was at this time that an inner door opened gently, and a very old manentered the chamber, leaning on a staff. At his presence, the wholecongregation rose; there was an expression of deep, affectionate respectupon every countenance; and Apaecides, gazing on his countenance, feltattracted towards him by an irresistible sympathy. No man ever lookedupon that face without love; for there had dwelt the smile of the Deity,the incarnation of divinest love--and the glory of the smile had neverpassed away.

  'My children, God be with you!' said the old man, stretching his arms;and as he spoke the infants ran to his knee. He sat down, and theynestled fondly to his bosom. It was beautiful to see t
hat mingling ofthe extremes of life--the rivers gushing from their early source--themajestic stream gliding to the ocean of eternity! As the light ofdeclining day seems to mingle earth and heaven, making the outline ofeach scarce visible, and blending the harsh mountain-tops with the sky,even so did the smile of that benign old age appear to hallow the aspectof those around, to blend together the strong distinctions of varyingyears, and to diffuse over infancy and manhood the light of that heaveninto which it must so soon vanish and be lost.

  'Father,' said Olinthus, 'thou on whose form the miracle of the Redeemerworked; thou who wert snatched from the grave to become the livingwitness of His mercy and His power; behold! a stranger in our meeting--anew lamb gathered to the fold!'

  'Let me bless him,' said the old man: the throng gave way. Apaecidesapproached him as by an instinct: he fell on his knees before him--theold man laid his hand on the priest's head, and blessed him, but notaloud. As his lips moved, his eyes were upturned, and tears--thosetears that good men only shed in the hope of happiness toanother--flowed fast down his cheeks.

  The children were on either side of the convert; his heart wastheirs--he had become as one of them--to enter into the kingdom ofHeaven.