The Angel of Lust

by Maurice Magre

  She was accustomed to wait for him, stark naked, on the crimson cover of the bed. In order that he would not suspect anything, she had not changed that habit. She welcomed him with the same smile and a more lascivious movement of the body, but she never lost sight of two cups that had been prepared, one of which contained the poison. She remembered stories she had heard told in which, in analogous circumstances, by virtue of mistaking the cup, it was the one who wanted to give death who received it, as if divine justice had wanted to punish him.

  In order not to make a mistake, she insisted that Titus drink right away, in spite of the pleasure she would have had in embracing him.

  To her great surprise, the effect of the beverage was not immediate, and before she had had time to reflect, the young man had taken off his clothes and thrown himself upon her. She abandoned herself to him with a furious lust that was full of horror, but without neglecting to protect her mouth from his because of the poison that he might have communicated to her in his saliva.

  She had never yet attained the voluptuousness she experienced. She had never surrendered to it profoundly. She sensed it, and redoubled her ardor, and it seemed to her that her soul was magnified because she was playing the role of divinity for someone. She was the Fate who has marked the inexorable hour of destiny. She was the divine Aphrodite who changes dolor into pleasure, pleasure into joy, and embellishes the last minute of the man who has loved her.

  Titus disengaged himself from her arms and sat down on the bed, bent double, his head almost touching his knees. He did not have time to speak. He gasped several times, as if he could no longer breathe, palpated the air with his hands as if to recapture the life that was fleeing him, and fell to the floor, having suddenly become astonishingly heavy. His face was very red and an immeasurably swollen scarlet tongue emerged from his mouth.

  Tryphene who was listening, heard the noise of his fall. She considered Titus, sniggering, leaned over him, pointed her bony finger at his face and said: “Aha! There it is, the tongue that talked too much.”

  Scarcely had she pronounced those words than Messalina seized a solid gold amphora, half full of wine, and brought it down on her head swiftly. Tryphene having made a movement, the sculpted handle of the amphora, instead of her skull, which it would have broken, collided with her neck at the birth of the shoulder, and she fell, stunned. Messalina leapt upon her, put a knee on her chest, and squeezed her throat. She contemplated the old woman’s face momentarily, rendered more hideous by fear, and then her free hand seized the cup from which Titus had drunk, in which there was still a little wine, and she tried to introduce that wine into Tryphene’s mouth, saying; “You won’t insult anyone with your tongue anymore.”

  The other, understanding her intention, struggled with the strength of desperation, and they both rolled over the dead young man. Messalina, who was still completely naked, sensed the body of her lover, still warm, on her skin.

  Her nudity, the dead man sticking out his tongue, and the old woman who was struggling, suddenly filled her with disgust and fear. She perceived the horror of the situation and released Tryphene, who got up and fled, without crying out but making a noise with her chattering teeth.

  Then, a kind of modesty gripped Messalina. She picked up her stola, which had fallen on the floor, and, as far away as possible from Titus’ body, flattened against the mosaics of the wall, she wrapped herself in the folds of the fabric, her eyes staring at the face from which beauty had fled forever.

  IX. The Friend of Flowers and Trees

  The Gardens of Lucullus were enveloped in mystery. Above the high walls that surrounded them, the foliage could be seen of a singular tree such as had never been seen in Rome. It was said that there were temples to unknown divinities there in which prodigies were accomplished, kiosks whose doors opened and closed of their own accord, and statues that could descend from their pedestals, walk and run.

  At the back, behind an enclosure of centenarian oaks, it was known that there were immense aviaries from which clucking, croaking and chirping emerged incessantly, mingled with the flutter of innumerable wings.

  The gardens enclosed all the essences of plants and flowers that grow on earth. In order to seek out certain seeds and bring back certain cuttings, voyagers had traveled the burning deserts of Africa where lions live in thousands and savage men have never seen the fascia of Rome. Others had traversed Germany, far beyond the region of icy forests.

  The gardens were superimposed in stages, they had terraces, staircases, flower-beds that made deigns, impenetrable arbors and paths between old box-trees that intersected so eccentrically that one could wander there for a long time without finding one’s location.

  Valerius Asiaticus, to whom they belonged, had Greek and Egyptian gardeners to cultivate them, and had even brought a family from the banks of the Euphrates who had conserved through the ages a Babylonian tradition for the cultivation of lilies and giving them an extraordinary grandeur. He loved his gardens passionately, as one loves beauty. Sometimes he walked there for entire days, listening to the life of vegetal forms, admiring the lines that he had succeeded in giving them. In the evening he had his ivory bed carried under the portico of his house, and contemplated indefinitely the long rows of yew trees, the sandy pathways that penetrated like silver streams between the dark spindle trees, and, further away, the mass of cedars, plane trees and ebony trees that made a noise like a multiform and multicolored sea, endowed with its own soul.

  He remained there, solitary, long into the night, and after a life agitated by wars and by amour, he was reputed to be detached from all things and no longer to have in his heart anything but the infinite tenderness that his gardens inspired in him.

  The mystery of the gardens, into which Valerius Asiaticus only admitted very rare intimates, only augmented the desire that Messalina had to get closer to the man about whom she now thought incessantly.

  Claudius found Valerius boring, because he ate little and did not drink. He was intimidated by his gravity and refused to invite him to the palace. In vain Messalina had gone to the baths to Baiae hoping to encounter him. Scarcely had she arrived than she learned that Valerius had just left abruptly for Rome, and someone had given, as a reason for that return, a renewal of his amour for the beautiful Poppea, the wife of the old senator Scipio, whom he had once loved.

  She was seized by rage at that idea. It was as if the sea and the sky had faded before her eyes. She went back to her palace on the Palatine rapidly.

  Poppea was one of the most beautiful of Roman women. She was married to an old man who pushed timidity and mildness to the point of imbecility, and who adored her. She was reputed to have lovers and to seek pleasure. Her name alone was a cause of irritation for Messalina because she knew that she was compared to her, when people discussed the perfection of a body and the beauty of a face.

  The slave had scarcely announced to Valerius Asiaticus that the Empress wanted to see him than she was standing before him.

  Introduced into the room that Lucullus had called Terpsichore’s Room, where there were seven pillars whose base was rounded in the form of a lyre, instead of waiting for the slave she had followed him and had reached the terrace behind him.

  She therefore took Valerius by surprise, and she was able to see that he was weeping.

  The pretext that she had chosen for her visit was the recent decision that Valerius had made not to return to the armies in Germany and to disinterest himself henceforth from public affairs. She had come to express an official regret on behalf of the Emperor, but she was no expert at dissimulation. She immediately asked him the cause of his tears.

  And Valerius Asiaticus, his eyes staring far above Messalina’s head, replied: “I’m weeping because I’ve glimpsed the truth too late. I know that I’ve lived until now in error, and I also know that I don’t have time to repair my faults during my life.”

  “What error and what fault?” said Messalina, putting all the warm tenderness into her voice of w
hich she was capable, and making it understood by the creasing of her eyelids and the moue of the lips that in her, everything was forgiveness for him.

  “In the confines of Syria and Persia, and then in Britain, I became illustrious in war. You must know, like everyone in Rome, the extent to which I risked my person. At the head of a century of cavaliers, I departed as a scout, without a breastplate and lifting the vexillum high, which made me the target of arrows. I excelled in striking with the lance and, by an ever-renewed coincidence, I killed at the first stroke. I remember the surprise and delight that the fall of a man gave me, his last cry, and the blood that I saw dripping from my weapon.

  “I organized the ballistas and scorpions personally before besieged towns, I place the first of the ladders against the ramparts, and when I fought with the sword, each of my thrusts carried. By virtue of negligence and fatigue, I did not prevent my legionaries from burning innocent women and children along with houses; by virtue of ennui I witnessed tortures of prisoners so cruel that pain made a visible aureole around their bodies, like the one seen around the priests of Eleusis at dawn when the mysteries have just been celebrated.

  “But now, all the actions of which I was proud are a subject of remorse. I’m ashamed of having struck men and having taken their lives, and I feel as different from the man I was then as water differs from stone and a forest from a sandy expanse.”

  “There is a legitimate joy in killing one’s enemies, and I don’t see why you regret having done so,” aid Messalina, drawing closer to him and smiling at Valerius’ puerility. “I was raised in the fear of the gods, but every time I have heard philosophers in dispute. I remember that they always concluded that the pleasure we obtain on earth is the only certainty. I love pleasure. One can only attain it with two, and there are so few men with whom I would like to attempt that pursuit!”

  They had advanced, while talking, as far as the balustrade of the terrace. Messalina leaned on it. She seemed to be dreaming, and placed her hand negligently on Valerius’ shoulder, as if that familiarity were unconscious.

  But Valerius, following his own thought, said: “It’s in Asia that I received the truth, as one receives a precious stone of which one does not know the value, and which one carries on one’s person believing it to be a vulgar pebble, until the moment when one looks at it in the sunlight and its light dazzles you. With my legions, I had surpassed the Euphrates and attained the confines of Mesopotamia. An old man was brought to me who walked stark naked, leaning on a staff, and whom the majesty of the Roman camp had not frightened. He claimed that there were certain men, marked with an invisible sign, who had been charged with announcing certain verities, and he affirmed that he recognized me as one of them. I only listened to him because I liked to learn about the mores of barbaric peoples, and one can even learn those mores by talking to madmen.

  “His words seemed to me to be vain absurdities. But afterwards, like seeds that have been sown and that flourish, they reappeared in my soul, imposed themselves upon me and became the conduct of my life. I was seized by the desire to develop my spirit and reestablish it in its purity. Now, it is in the contemplation of trees, in the constant observation of the changes of their color and form, their burgeoning, that the human spirit finds its own wisdom. I have always loved these gardens that you see unfurling before us, passionately, and that love has caused me to be nicknamed, in Rome, the friend of flowers and trees. But when I saw them again on returning from my lat campaign in Britain, they spoke to me in a new language. I remembered the words of the old ascetic that came to me in Mesopotamia: ‘Watch the trees grow, and in the end, you will see your spirit.’

  “I have watched for days and nights, and a new man has been born in me. Everything that had agitated me once, the love of women, the pleasures of the senses, the satisfaction of pride, appeared futile and vain to me. I am not ambitious for a greater happiness than leaning over the young shoots that swell in spring, seeing the color of flowers and the outline of foliage agitated by the wind.”

  Messalina started to laugh, only taking Valerius’ words for poetic imaginations. She even thought that he was trying to say in a roundabout manner that no woman occupied him.

  “Do you remember,” she said, “the supper at the house of Simon Magus? It was the first time that I saw you, and immediately, my youthful thoughts went toward you. But I’m a woman now and I find that sympathy is so beautiful and so rare that one owes it frankness. I have not yet encountered a man who has understood me. Oh, if you wished, Valerius, what great things there are to accomplish in the Empire for two individuals like us!”

  She was speaking to him very closely now. She strove to lean her breasts, which were palpitating, against his chest, and her extended leg brushed his. She moved her head in order that gusts of aroma would escape from her hair, and he had the warmth of her breath on his cheek.

  In spite of the effort she made, however, she could not succeed in plunging her gaze into his, in order to test the effect on him of the sexual magnetism that she emitted via the eyes, and whose power she had often verified. In the end, as he remained silent and even drew away gently, impatiently, she seized his head in both hands and drew it close to hers, to the point that they were almost touching. She plunged the green light of her eyes into Valerius’ pupils in order finally to possess the gaze that he refused to surrender to her.

  Then she had a clear consciousness of the fact that Valerius’ gaze did not pause either on the beautiful lines of the face not the grain of the mat skin, nor the curve of the eyebrows, nor the velvet of the eyelids, nor the green gleam of the irises, but that it passed through her without seeing what her form was, to contemplate the arborescent syringas, the prostrate willows, the upright yews, and the entire landscape of the beloved garden that was unfurling behind her.

  She suddenly sensed the indifference that she inspired in him, that she had always inspired in him. She recoiled. She would have liked to have a weapon with which to strike him. A savage hatred warmed her blood, against that pale and calm man who, at that crepuscular moment, resembled even more the Tiber boatman she had seen in a dream and whose image haunted her. She looked around; she would have liked to demolish that house, because he lived in it, and those gardens, because he delighted in their beauty.

  A flood of filthy words came to her lips. It was because of Poppea that he disdained her. She knew full well that they were both coupled by a community of debauchery, an equal amour of young boys that drained the brothels of Suburra on their account. The Petra brothers lent their house for their rendezvous, but Poppea was an insatiable woman. She had other lovers of whom Valerius was unaware. While he watched his trees grow, she prostituted herself to gladiators. All Rome knew that. He was an object of mirth, and a subject of indignation at the same time, because he was making a fool of the noble Cornelius Scipio, who was his friend.

  Valerius raised his slender hand slowly. He would have liked to respond to her and calm her down; but a light wind rose and agitated the foliage with a profound undulation. Coming from far away, from the infinite Orient, he thought he could distinguish mysterious words, scarcely formulated.

  He remained silent before Messalina.

  To the right and the left almost everywhere on the terrace, white birds settled. They smoothed their plumage. They were not afraid. They advanced almost to Valerius’ feet.

  At that moment, a slave appeared, carrying a mass of breadcrumbs on a silver tray. Valerius took a handful and threw it toward the birds.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s the hour of the doves.”

  Then, with a shrug of the shoulders, without looking back, Messalina went away.

  X. The Death of Valerius

  There was then in Rome a certain Suilius who, in exchange for money, took responsibility for carrying an accusation to the magistrates. He thus made a commerce of false testimony. For five thousand sesterces, he had been witness to an adultery, and for twenty thousand he had seen a murder with his own eyes.


  It was with him and with Lucius Vitellius that Messalina organized her vengeance.

  She thought at first that she would only have to open Cornelius Scipio’s eyes for him to repudiate his wife, but the old man, very gentle, had always been clear-sighted. He was illuminated by Poppea’s presence around him, and had pardoned everything in advance to such a beautiful creature; he would have given his fortune, and even his life, for her to be happy. He knew that Valerius Asiaticus had loved Poppea shortly after he had married her, but he also knew that the loyal man had departed for Asia in order to forget that amour, and that, exceptionally, Poppea had not given herself to him, perhaps for lack of opportunity and perhaps because women who have many lovers do not like to become the mistresses of those who love them too much.

  To Suilius, who had come to find him to expose the scandal to him and to speak to him about the honor of his name, Cornelius Scipio simply replied that he was careful above all of the honor of his soul.

  Messalina therefore thought of addressing herself to Claudius in order to doom Valerius and Poppea at the same time. But it was difficult to talk to him about anything whatsoever. That was the moment when, after having abandoned literature for a long time, which he had cultivated before being Emperor, he returned to it with passion. He was writing a history of the Carthaginians, and, under the pretext of profiting from the inspiration that was within in, he was doing so almost without stopping. The freedman Evodus, to whom he dictated, scarcely quit him, even by night. A slave was also required to be beside the Emperor during his hours of inspiration, in order to tickle his nose with a feather, for he fell asleep while dictating. Apart from the Punic Wars, he did not want to hear mention of anything. His cook had orders only to serve him dishes whose recipes came from Hannibal’s cooks, for he thought that would enable him to obtain a Carthaginian soul.