Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Cæsar accepted the counsel with eagerness; but Seneca when he had thought awhile, said, —

  “It is easy to go, but it would be more difficult to return.”

  “By Heracles!” replied Petronius, “we may return at the head of Asiatic legions.”

  “This will I do!” exclaimed Nero.

  But Tigellinus opposed. He could discover nothing himself, and if the arbiter’s idea had come to his own head he would beyond doubt have declared it the saving one; but with him the question was that Petronius might not be a second time the only man who in difficult moments could rescue all and every one.

  “Hear me, divinity,” said he, “this advice is destructive! Before thou art at Ostia a civil war will break out; who knows but one of the surviving collateral descendants of the divine Augustus will declare himself Cæsar, and what shall we do if the legions take his side?”

  “We shall try,” answered Nero, “that there be no descendants of Augustus. There are not many now; hence it is easy to rid ourselves of them.”

  “It is possible to do so, but is it a question of them alone? No longer ago than yesterday my people heard in the crowd that a man like Thrasea should be Cæsar.”

  Nero bit his lips. After a while he raised his eyes and said: “Insatiable and thankless. They have grain enough, and they have coal on which to bake cakes; what more do they want?”

  “Vengeance!” replied Tigellinus.

  Silence followed. Cæsar rose on a sudden, extended his hand, and began to declaim, —

  “Hearts call for vengeance, and vengeance wants a victim.” Then, forgetting everything, he said, with radiant face: “Give me the tablet and stilus to write this line. Never could Lucan have composed the like. Have ye noticed that I found it in a twinkle?”

  “O incomparable!” exclaimed a number of voices. Nero wrote down the line, and said, —

  “Yes, vengeance wants a victim.” Then he cast a glance on those around him. “But if we spread the report that Vatinius gave command to burn the city, and devote him to the anger of the people?”

  “O divinity! Who am I?” exclaimed Vatmius.

  “True! One more important than thou is demanded. Is it Vitelius?”

  Vitelius grew pale, but began to laugh.

  “My fat,” answered he, “might start the fire again.”

  But Nero had something else on his mind; in his soul he was looking for a victim who might really satisfy the people’s anger, and he found him.

  “Tigellinus,” said he after a while, “it was thou who didst burn Rome!” A shiver ran through those present. They understood that Cæsar had ceased to jest this time, and that a moment had come which was pregnant with events.

  The face of Tigellinus was wrinkled, like the lips of a dog about to bite.

  “I burnt Rome at thy command!” said he.

  And the two glared at each other like a pair of devils. Such silence followed that the buzzing of flies was heard as they flew through the atrium.

  “Tigellinus,” said Nero, “dost thou love me?”

  “Thou knowest, lord.”

  “Sacrifice thyself for me.”

  “O divine Cæsar,” answered Tigellinus, “why present the sweet cup which I may not raise to my lips? The people are muttering and rising; dost thou wish the pretorians also to rise?”

  A feeling of terror pressed the hearts of those present. Tigellinus was pretorian prefect, and his words had the direct meaning of a threat. Nero himself understood this, and his face became pallid.

  At that moment Epaphroditus, Cæsar’s freedman, entered, announcing that the divine Augusta wished to see Tigellinus, as there were people in her apartments whom the prefect ought to hear.

  Tigellinus bowed to Cæsar, and went out with a face calm and contemptuous. Now, when they had wished to strike him, he had shown his teeth; he had made them understand who he was, and, knowing Nero’s cowardice, he was confident that that ruler of the world would never dare to raise a hand against him.

  Nero sat in silence for a moment; then, seeing that those present expected some answer, he said, —

  “I have reared a serpent in my bosom.”

  Petronius shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that it was not difficult to pluck the head from such a serpent.

  “What wilt thou say? Speak, advise!” exclaimed Nero, noticing this motion. “I trust in thee alone, for thou hast more sense than all of them, and thou lovest me.”

  Petronius had the following on his lips: “Make me pretorian prefect, I will deliver Tigellinus to the people, and pacify the city in a day.” But his innate slothfulness prevailed. To be prefect meant to bear on his shoulder’s Cæsar’s person and also thousands of public affairs. And why should he perform that labor? Was it not better to read poetry in his splendid library, look at vases and statues, or hold to his breast the divine body of Eunice, twining her golden hair through his fingers, and inclining his lips to her coral mouth? Hence he said, —

  “I advise the journey to Achæa.”

  “Ah!” answered Nero, “I looked for something more from thee. The Senate hates me. If I depart, who will guarantee that it will not revolt and proclaim some one else Cæsar? The people have been faithful to me so far, but now they will follow the Senate. By Hades! if that Senate and that people had one head!—”

  “Permit me to say, O divinity, that if thou desire to save Rome, there is need to save even a few Romans,” remarked Petronius, with a smile.

  “What care I for Rome and Romans?” complained Nero. “I should be obeyed in Achæa. Here only treason surrounds me. All desert me, and ye are making ready for treason. I know it, I know it. Ye do not even imagine what future ages will say of you if ye desert such an artist as I am.”

  Here he tapped his forehead on a sudden, and cried, —

  “True! Amid these cares even I forget who I am.”

  Then he turned to Petronius with a radiant face.

  “Petronius,” said he, “the people murmur; but if I take my lute and go to the Campus Martius, if I sing that song to them which I sang during the conflagration, dost thou not think that I will move them, as Orpheus moved wild beasts?”

  To this Tullius Senecio, who was impatient to return to his slave women brought in from Antium, and who had been impatient a long time, replied, —

  “Beyond doubt, O Cæsar, if they permit thee to begin.”

  “Let us go to Hellas!” cried Nero, with disgust.

  But at that moment Poppæa appeared, and with her Tigellinis. The eyes of those present turned to him unconsciously, for never had triumphator ascended the Capitol with pride such as his when he stood before Cæsar. He began to speak slowly and with emphasis, in tones through which the bite of iron, as it were, was heard, —

  “Listen. O Cæsar, for I can say: I have found! The people want vengeance, they want not one victim, but hundreds, thousands. Hast heard, lord, who Christos was, — he who was crucified by Pontius Pilate? And knowest thou who the Christians are? Have I not told thee of their crimes and foul ceremonies, of their predictions that fire would cause the end of the world? People hate and suspect them. No one has seen them in a temple at any time, for they consider our gods evil spirits; they are not in the Stadium, for they despise horse races. Never have the hands of a Christian done thee honor with plaudits. Never has one of them recognized thee as god. They are enemies of the human race, of the city, and of thee. The people murmur against thee; but thou hast given me no command to burn Rome, and I did not burn it. The people want vengeance; let them have it. The people want blood and games; let them have them. The people suspect thee; let their suspicion turn in another direction.”

  Nero listened with amazement at first; but as Tigellinus proceeded, his actor’s face changed, and assumed in succession expressions of anger, sorrow, sympathy, indignation. Suddenly he rose, and, casting off the toga, which dropped at his feet, he raised both hands and stood silent for a time. At last he said, in the tones of a tragedian, —

 
; “O Zeus, Apollo, Here, Athene, Persephone, and all ye immortals! why did ye not come to aid us? What has this hapless city done to those cruel wretches that they burnt it so inhumanly?”

  “They are enemies of mankind and of thee,” said Poppæa.

  “Do justice!” cried others. “Punish the incendiaries! The gods themselves call for vengeance!”

  Nero sat down, dropped his head to his breast, and was silent a second time, as if stunned by the wickedness of which he had heard. But after a while he shook his hands, and said, —

  “What punishments, what tortures befit such a crime? But the gods will inspire me, and, aided by the powers of Tartarus, I will give my poor people such a spectacle that they will remember me for ages with gratitude.”

  The forehead of Petronius was covered with a sudden cloud. He thought of the danger hanging over Lygia and over Vinicius, whom he loved, and over all those people whose religion he rejected, but of whose innocence he was certain. He thought also that one of those bloody orgies would begin which his eyes, those of an æsthetic man, could not suffer. But above all he thought: “I must save Vinicius, who will go mad if that maiden perishes”; and this consideration outweighed every other, for Petronius understood well that he was beginning a game far more perilous than any in his life. He began, however, to speak freely and carelessly, as his wont was when criticising or ridiculing plans of Cæsar and the Augustians that were not sufficiently æsthetic, —

  “Ye have found victims! That is true. Ye may send them to the arena, or array them in ‘painful tunics.’ That is true also. But hear me! Ye have authority, ye have pretorians, ye have power; then be sincere, at least, when no one is listening! Deceive the people, but deceive not one another. Give the Christians to the populace, condemn them to any torture ye like; but have courage to say to yourselves that it was not they who burnt Rome. Phy! Ye call me ‘arbiter elegantiarum’; hence I declare to you that I cannot endure wretched comedies! Phy! how all this reminds me of the theatrical booths near the Porta Asinaria, in which actors play the parts of gods and kings to amuse the suburban rabble, and when the play is over wash down onions with sour wine, or get blows of clubs! Be gods and kings in reality; for I say that ye can permit yourselves the position! As to thee, O Cæsar, thou hast threatened us with the sentence of coming ages; but think, those ages will utter judgment concerning thee also. By the divine Clio! Nero, ruler of the world, Nero, a god, burnt Rome, because he was as powerful on earth as Zeus on Olympus, — Nero the poet loved poetry so much that he sacrificed to it his country! From the beginning of the world no one did the like, no one ventured on the like. I beseech thee in the name of the double-crowned Libethrides, renounce not such glory, for songs of thee will sound to the end of ages! What will Priam be when compared with thee; what Agamenmon; what Achilles; what the gods themselves? We need not say that the burning of Rome was good, but it was colossal and uncommon. I tell thee, besides, that the people will raise no hand against thee! It is not true that they will. Have courage; guard thyself against acts unworthy of thee, — for this alone threatens thee, that future ages may say, ‘Nero burned Rome; but as a timid Cæsar and a timid poet he denied the great deed out of fear, and cast the blame of it on the innocent!’”

  The arbiter’s words produced the usual deep impression on Nero; but Petronius was not deceived as to this, that what he had said was a desperate means which in a fortunate event might save the Christians, it is true, but might still more easily destroy himself. He had not hesitated, however, for it was a question at once of Vinicius whom he loved, and of hazard with which he amused himself. “The dice are thrown,” said he to himself, “and we shall see how far fear for his own life outweighs in the monkey his love of glory.”

  And in his soul he had no doubt that fear would outweigh.

  Meanwhile silence fell after his words. Poppæa and all present were looking at Nero’s eyes as at a rainbow. He began to raise his lips, drawing them to his very nostrils, as was his custom when he knew not what to do; at last disgust and trouble were evident on his features.

  “Lord,” cried Tigellinus, on noting this, “permit me to go; for when people wish to expose thy person to destruction, and call thee, besides, a cowardly Cæsar, a cowardly poet, an incendiary, and a comedian, my ears cannot suffer such expressions!”

  “I have lost,” thought Petronius. But turning to Tigellinus, he measured him with a glance in which was that contempt for a ruffian which is felt by a great lord who is an exquisite.

  “Tigellinus,” said he, “it was thou whom I called a comedian; for thou art one at this very moment.”

  “Is it because I will not listen to thy insults?”

  “It is because thou art feigning boundless love for Cæsar, — thou who a short while since wert threatening him with pretorians, which we all understood as did he!”

  Tigellinus, who had not thought Petronius sufficiently daring to throw dice such as those on the table, turned pale, lost his head, and was speechless. This was, however, the last victory of the arbiter over his rival, for that moment Poppæa said, —

  “Lord, how permit that such a thought should even pass through the head of any one, and all the more that any one should venture to express it aloud in thy presence!”

  “Punish the insolent!” exclaimed Vitelius.

  Nero raised his lips again to his nostrils, and, turning his near-sighted, glassy eyes on Petronius, said, —

  “Is this the way thou payest me for the friendship which I had for thee?”

  “If I am mistaken, show me my error,” said Petronius; “but know that I speak that which love for thee dictates.”

  “Punish the insolent!” repeated Vitelius.

  “Punish!” called a number of voices.

  In the atrium there was a murmur and a movement, for people began to withdraw from Petronius. Even Tullius Senecio, his constant companion at the court, pushed away, as did young Nerva, who had shown him hitherto the greatest friendship. After a while Petronius was alone on the left side of the atrium, with a smile on his lips; and gathering with his hands the folds of his toga, he waited yet for what Cæsar would say or do.

  “Ye wish me to punish him” said Cæsar; “but he is my friend and comrade. Though he has wounded my heart, let him know that for friends this heart has naught but forgiveness.”

  “I have lost, and am ruined,” thought Petronius.

  Meanwhile Cæsar rose, and the consultation was ended.

  Chapter XLIX

  PETRONIUS went home. Nero and Tigellinus went to Poppæa’s atrium, where they were expected by people with whom the prefect had spoken already.

  There were two Trans-Tiber rabbis in long solemn robes and mitred, a young copyist, their assistant, together with Chilo. At sight of Cæsar the priests grew pale from emotion, and, raising their hands an arm’s length, bent their heads to his hands.

  “Be greeted, O ruler of the earth, guardian of the chosen people, and Cæsar, lion among men, whose reign is like sunlight, like the cedar of Lebanon, like a spring, like a palm, like the balsam of Jericho.”

  “Do ye refuse to call me god?” inquired Nero.

  The priests grew still paler. The chief one spoke again, —

  “Thy words, O lord, are as sweet as a cluster of grapes, as a ripe fig, — for Jehovah filled thy heart with goodness! Thy father’s predecessor, Cæsar Caius, was stern; still our envoys did not call him god, preferring death itself to violation of the law.”

  “And did not Caligula give command to throw them to the lions?”

  “No, lord; Cæsar Caius feared Jehovah’s anger.”

  And they raised their heads, for the name of the powerful Jehovah gave them courage; confident in his might, they looked into Nero’s eyes with more boldness.

  “Do ye accuse the Christians of burning Rome?” inquired Cæsar. “We, lord, accuse them of this alone, — that they are enemies of the law, of the human race, of Rome, and of thee; that long since they have threatened the city and the wo
rld with fire! The rest will be told thee by this man, whose lips are unstained by a lie, for in his mother’s veins flowed the blood of the chosen people.”

  Nero turned to Chilo: “Who art thou?”

  “One who honors thee, O Cyrus; and, besides, a poor Stoic-”

  “I hate the Stoics,” said Nero. “I hate Thrasea; I hate Musonius and Cornutus. Their speech is repulsive to me; their contempt for art, their voluntary squalor and filth.”

  “O lord, thy master Seneca has one thousand tables of citrus wood. At thy wish I will have twice as many. I am a Stoic from necessity. Dress my stoicism, O Radiant One, in a garland of roses, put a pitcher of wine before it; it will sing Anacreon in such strains as to deafen every Epicurean.”

  Nero, who was pleased by the title “Radiant,” smiled and said,-”Thou dost please me.”

  “This man is worth his weight in gold!” cried Tigellinus.

  “Put thy liberality with my weight,” answered Chilo, “or the wind will blow my reward away.”

  “He would not outweigh Vitelius,” put in Cæsar.

  “Eheu! Silver-bowed, my wit is not of lead.”

  “I see that thy faith does not hinder thee from calling me a god.”

  “O Immortal! My faith is in thee; the Christians blaspheme against that faith, and I hate them.”

  “What dost thou know of the Christians?”

  “Wilt thou permit me to weep, O divinity?”

  “No,” answered Nero; “weeping annoys me.”

  “Thou art triply right, for eyes that have seen thee should be free of tears forever. O lord, defend me against my enemies.”

  “Speak of the Christians,” said Poppæa, with a shade of impatience.

  “It will be at thy command, O Isis,” answered Chilo. “From youth I devoted myself to philosophy, and sought truth. I sought it among the ancient divine sages, in the Academy at Athens, and in the Serapeum at Alexandria. When I heard of the Christians, I judged that they formed some new school in which I could find certain kernels of truth; and to my misfortune I made their acquaintance. The first Christian whom evil fate brought near me was one Glaucus, a physician of Naples. From him I learned in time that they worship a certain Chrestos, who promised to exterminate all people and destroy every city on earth, but to spare them if they helped him to exterminate the children of Deucalion. For this reason, O lady, they hate men, and poison fountains; for this reason in their assemblies they shower curses on Rome, and on all temples in which our gods are honored. Chrestos was crucified; but he promised that when Rome was destroyed by fire, he would come again and give Christians dominion over the world.”