by Eugène Sue
“No!” said Mont-Liban jumping back almost alighted. “No! Not that one!”
“Why not?” asked Faustina with a look of somber mistrust.
‘Because, I being the judge of the combat,” stammered Mont-Liban, “to me belongs the right of distributing the weapons.”
Suddenly Syomara, who had paid no attention to the altercation between Mont-Liban and Faustina, seeing that before it was started her eyes had fallen upon the vault of the slaves and she was contemplating them with increased intentness — suddenly Syomara recognized Sylvest. Instantly she ran towards the railing and seizing in her own both the hands of the slave that held the bar, she cried in Gallic with deep tenderness and with tears in her eyes:
“You, brother! You condemned! You here!”
“Yes; I am about to die. May the gods ordain that you die also! Then before morning dawns we shall have rejoined our relatives who have preceded us to the unknown worlds. May Hesus and our parents pardon you, as I have pardoned you, sister!”
“Relying on your promise, I waited for you. Ah! Unhappy me for having put faith in your word! You shall be free and immediately!”
“It is because I wish to escape the shameful liberty offered to me by you, that I have sought death!”
At first moved and even frightened, Syomara’s face immediately beamed with joy. With a smile of happiness she said to her brother:
“Listen — approach your ear to the railing.”
He obeyed mechanically, and she whispered to him: brother, you shall not die! Faustina will fall under my blows, thanks to my sorcery. Diavolus is yonder. With one word he can snatch you from death. He will pronounce that word — after Faustina’s death. Courage, brother. We shall sup together this evening, and you shall be free!”
Syomara thereupon, her face radiant with increased bliss, made a sign of intelligence to her brother, blew a farewell kiss to him from the tips of her fingers and ran back to where Faustina and Mont-Liban were engaged in their wrangle. Just as she did so a murmur of astonishment ran over the tiers of seats above her. The short conversation of the Beautiful Gaul with one of the condemned slaves provoked wonder and comment.
When Syomara returned to her place, Mont-Liban, who now seemed more troubled than before, was holding only one sword in his hand. The man’s stupid face bespoke at once embarrassment, pain and dread.
“My sword!” Syomara said to him.
The gladiator seemed to be undergoing a violent struggle with himself. Despite a flitting but plainly menacing gesture of Faustina, he pushed back the hand that the Gallic woman stretched out towards the sword, and said to her in a broken voice:
“Not this sword — no — no — not this one!”
And with the eye that was left to him the gladiator sought to make himself understood by the courtesan. The latter, however, wholly preoccupied with a very different train of thought, failed to notice the signs that the gladiator was making to her and turned her face towards the gallery where Diavolus was seated. The moment she saw him she saluted him with her eyes, and more plainly yet, with her hands. She pulled one of the blue feathers from the tuft on her casque, held it between two fingers, approached her rosy lips to the feather and with a graceful motion blew the feather in the direction of the gallery while accompanying it aloud with the greeting:
“For you, Diavolus!”
Saying this she cast a covert glance towards her brother.
Sylvest perceived with a shudder that his sister was giving Diavolus earnest money for an infamous bargain in which his own liberty was to be the price paid by the Roman, seeing that a master was free, up to the last moment, to snatch his slave from death. With Faustina killed, the handsome courtesan would utilize the time taken by the combat between Mont-Liban and Bibrix to demand of Diavolus the liberty of Sylvest. She would obtain the favor through a shameful promise, and he would be sent for and taken from the vault of the condemned.
While these thoughts were throwing the slave into despair — he preferred death to such a deliverance — all eyes turned towards Diavolus and a murmur of envy circulated among the seigneurs at the provoking greeting addressed to him by the coveted courtesan, who, until then, had disdained all advances. By that time, Diavolus, as well as the rest of his recent fellow-banqueters, had almost wholly lost their color; their complexion assumed a greenish hue. But whether he did not yet feel the effects of the poison, or whether, intoxicated with pride at the flattering demonstration from the famous courtesan, he forgot the incipient gnawings at his entrails, the dying seigneur leaned over the balustrade beaming with joy, threw into the arena at Syomara’s feet the nosegay of roses that he held in his hands, after passionately pressing the flowers to his lips, and accompanied the act with the cry:
Victory and love to the Beautiful Gaul!”
The courtesan picked up the nosegay, pressed it in turn to her lips, laid it at the foot of one of the colossal marble statues that decorated the deep niches of the wall surrounding the arena, cast one more look in the direction of her brother, walked up to Mont-Liban and said impatiently:
“My sword! My sword!”
This time the gladiator did not refuse the weapon to the courtesan. On the contrary, with a smile that betokened infernal joy he handed her the sword.
Sylvest now understood it all. What he had seen were the protestations of love that Mont-Liban addressed to Syomara. But when, striving to secure her brother’s freedom, Syomara threw herself so scandalously at Diavolus, Mont-Liban’s features that until then expressed deep concern and tenderness, suddenly became frightful to see, deformed as they grew with jealousy and hatred, while Faustina, motionless as a specter, her left hand on her hip, and the point of her sword rested on the tip of her sandal, smiled with an air of sinister triumph.
Sylvest no longer had any doubts. One of the two swords that the gladiator tendered to the two women was enchanted by Syomara’s witchcraft. Mont-Liban as well as she knew the magic weapon; but his perturbation having thrown Faustina on the alert, she had refused the sword that he tendered her, and despite his endeavors to thwart her, had seized the other. In the measure that Faustina’s choice at first terrified the gladiator for Syomara’s sake, he was later bound to rejoice at it when furious jealousy against Diavolus transformed his love for the courtesan into inveterate hatred.
Immediately after Syomara took the sword she turned to Faustina, saying in a low voice:
“Are you ready?”
“I am ready,” answered the Roman dame, who, likewise in a low voice, but loud enough for Sylvest to overhear, added. “You remember our conditions?”
“It is agreed, noble Faustina!”
“Mont-Liban shall be yours if you kill me, mine if I kill you!”
“Yes — accepted.”
“Dead or alive, you shall be mine, Syomara, if you can not continue the combat after the first wound.”
“And if I kill you, Faustina, none but myself shall enter your tomb for the death watch?”
“None but you — I have given orders to that effect, and I forwarded to you the keys of my family vault.”
“Set on, noble Faustina!”
“Set on, Syomara!”
Upon a signal given by Mont-Liban the two young women rushed at each other with raised weapons, Syomara ever smiling as if confident of victory, Faustina with the demeanor of a fury but also confident. Indeed, at the first clash of the two swords the courtesan’s weapon broke off, close to the handle.
Sylvest could not at that moment repress a cry. He heard the Roman dame utter a wild shout of joy, and saw her plunge her sword into Syomara’s bosom with the shout: “Down! False Thessalian witch!”
The wound was grave, perhaps mortal. The courtesan dropped the handle of her weapon, fell upon her knees, cast a last glance in the direction of Sylvest, and cried in a fainting and hardly audible voice:
“Poor brother!”
She then rolled over upon her face. Her casque fell from her head and left her beautiful blonde head
bare, while the blood flowed profusely from her wound, and crimsoned the silver net-work that served her as a cuirass.
Purple with delight, Faustina threw herself upon her rival like a tigress upon her prey; rage and hatred redoubling her strength, she put her arms around Syomara, raised her from the ground, and carried her off as she would have carried a child, while she addressed these last words to the gladiator in a voice that resounded over the whole circus:
“Mont-Liban, I shall await you at the temple near the canal — in the rotunda dedicated to Priapus!”
And Faustina disappeared with her victim in the shadow of the northern vault amidst the frenzied acclamations of the spectators.
CHAPTER XV.
THE WILD BEASTS’ REVEL.
THE ENTRANCE OF Syomara and Faustina into the arena, the hurried conversation with his sister, the exchange of amorous tokens between her and Diavolus, the scene between Mont-Liban and the Roman dame on the subject of the swords, and finally the duel, the defeat of Syomara, and her disappearance, wounded and bleeding, in the arms of her triumphant and implacable rival — the whole scene was enacted with such swiftness that Sylvest believed it was a dream — another vision. His head felt dizzy. But he was speedily recalled to his senses by the rumbling noise of the chains that the jailors and armed soldiers were striking from the limbs of his companions. The hour had come to unfetter the slaves condemned to the wild beasts, whose roars were now heard ever louder from the opposite side of the circus.
Standing motionless near the railing, Sylvest looked without seeing. Two jailors took him in hand and struck the chains off his limbs. His eyes filled with tears, despite himself, at his sister’s fate, and notwithstanding he had wished death to overtake her, he sat down on the stone floor of the vault with his head in his hands, wholly indifferent to what was taking place in the arena where Bibrix and Mont-Liban were engaged in mortal combat. From time to time loud outcries among the spectators announced the varying shifts of the combat.
“Courage, Mont-Liban!” cried some. “Courage!”
“Courage, Bibrix!” cried others. “Courage!”
Finally, after a long struggle, a tremendous shout of “Victory to Bibrix!” shook the walls of the amphitheater.
Mont-Liban had succumbed in the mortal combat.
Suddenly Sylvest felt himself violently crowded up and trampled under the feet of his companions who seemed to flee pell-mell towards the iron railing. The slave had difficulty in rising to his feet in order to avoid being trampled to death. From the distance he could now see rapidly approaching from the depths of the vault a sort of burning barrier of a man’s height and extending clean across from wall to wall.
The huge sheet of bronze, that was heated red-hot over rolling braziers, drove the condemned slaves before it. The railing that until then barred them from the circus had sunk under ground. It glided down along a concealed groove. The unhappy slaves, driven forward by the incandescent metal sheet, could escape being burned alive only by precipitating themselves into the arena, into which, from the opposite side, the wild animals bounded at the same time, and from which Plutos, Mercuries, heralds-at-arms and trumpeters had vanished after removing the corpse of Mont-Liban, and closed the two entrances, north and south, with iron-barred gates.
The hour of their martyrdom having arrived, Sylvest decided to die bravely with his companions, and cried out to them:
“Sons of the Mistletoe! Let us die like worthy sons of old Gaul! Brothers, intone with me in the face of death the song:
“Oh, flow, flow, thou blood of the captive!
Drop, drop, thou dew of gore!
Germinate, sprout up, thou avenging harvest!”
And the Sons of the Mistletoe, in chorus with the other Gallic slaves and led by Sylvest, rushed into the arena chanting in their native tongue in sonorous voice the thrilling refrain of the song.
The loud song, together with the spectacle presented by these men seemed at first to intimidate the animals. Profiting by this flitting moment of indecision and recollecting the advice given him by the jailor, Sylvest, noticing that the elephant had backed up against one of the nearby niches ornamented with large marble statues that were interspersed along the wall of the arena, addressed one last adieu to his wife Loyse and also to his sister Syomara, ran straight towards the elephant, and, hoping to be speedily trampled and crushed to death by the animal, threw himself down upon his face, and crept under the towering brute in order to seize one of its monstrous feet in both his arms.
At that moment, and proceeding from the gallery where Diavolus and his friends were seated, a great commotion was heard. The screams were at first muffled, but they speedily grew in intensity. He distinguished his master’s voice uttering loud and piercing yells of pain. The cries from the gallery were joined by an indescribable tumult throughout the amphitheater. Instantly a thought flashed like lightning through Sylvest’s mind. It was a cowardly thought, he admits; he meant to endeavor to escape the death that his other doomed companions were about to undergo, and many of Whom were undergoing at that very instant. But the thought came to him with the remembrance of Loyse and his child.
Instead of being turned upon the arena, the eyes of all the spectators were centered at that moment upon Diavolus and his friends, who were then in the agonies and convulsions of the death produced by the violent poison that Four-Spices had administered to them. The amazed mass of people looked in stupor at the spectacle presented in his master’s gallery. The hulky body of the elephant that stood backed up against the niche, partly covered the cavity. Sylvest took his chances, even at the risk of being later discovered. After creeping under the animal’s body, instead of gripping one of its hind legs, he glided between them, clambered up the foot of the niche and succeeded in completely blotting himself from sight behind the large marble statue that was placed therein, a statue twice as high as himself, and that fortunately represented a woman with ample flowing robes.
Sylvest was not long ensconced in his hiding place when, during a lull in the tumult, he heard voices crying:
“There are physicians outside. Carry those dying men out. Their convulsions and death agony are disturbing the feast.” Diavolus and his expiring friends must have been carried out of the gallery, because by degrees silence was restored, a silence, however, that was soon broken into by the increasing roar of the wild animals who had recovered from their first surprise.
The carnage was in full blast. In the midst of the howls of the animals, the cries of pain emitted by the slaves who fell under the fangs of the tigers and lions, the imprecations uttered by the victims who were not yet seized, and some of whom were so crazed by terror that they implored mercy from the furious beasts themselves, now and then rose snatches of the chant quavering from the throats of the Sons of the Mistletoe, who, even under the very claws of the ferocious beasts continued to sing:
“Oh, flow, flow, thou blood of the captive!
Drop, drop, thou dew of gore!
Germinate, sprout up, thou avenging harvest!”
From behind the statue that concealed him — the elephant’s hulk no longer masked the niche, the animal having moved towards the center of the arena — Sylvest caught ever and anon a glimpse of a tiger or lion bounding in pursuit of some slave, whom the beast would forthwith knock down and pin to the ground with its paws, the sharp claws of which, sinking in the victim’s flesh, caused jets of blood to spurt forth. The animal would then either crouch beside or stretch itself upon its prey and devour or tear its flesh to shreds.
Among the sights that presented themselves to Sylvest, one still haunts his memory as a horrible recollection of that night. An enormous and exceptionally ferocious lion, with an almost black mane, leaped upon the Gaul who was the friend of Four-Spices. In order to die quickly, the unhappy man threw himself upon his knees, but in his fright he covered his face with his two hands, evidently to escape the horror of seeing the diabolical monster. With a blow of its paw on the slave’s head the anima
l threw him face down on the ground, held him under with one paw, dug the claws of the other paw into his flank, drew him transversely towards itself, and seemed to settle down for a leisurely meal. Breathing hard, the lion stretched himself at full length on his belly on the sand and for a moment rested on the slave’s body his monstrously large head, whose drooping jaw and hanging tongue dripped with froth and blood. The Gaul was not yet dead. He uttered inarticulate cries. His arms and legs beat the ground convulsively. The contortions of his whole body denoted that he was striving to escape an atrocious torture. Suddenly the lion’s mane bristled up; he angrily lashed the sand with his tail, raised his heavy rump from the ground without, however, quitting his hold upon the Gaul with his front paws; lowered his head abruptly; bit his prey in the middle of the spine, and emitted angry growls while he ground the bones between his tusks. A black and yellow striped tiger, as enormous an animal as the lion himself, approached to contest the latter’s prey. Without taking his teeth from his victim’s body, the lion raised the paw that was battering the back of the slave’s head and sank its claws into the tiger’s muzzle. Despite the wound thus inflicted upon him, the tiger opened wide his jaws and seized between them the head of the slave whom the lion held down with his other paw. With his rump high, his muzzle down, and arching his body on his front legs, the tiger tugged violently at the head and shook the air with his growls, while the lion, without removing his jaws from the middle of the slave’s body, sank his fangs deeper into the flesh and tugged in the opposite direction. From their original crouching posture, the two beasts presently rose on all fours and continued the struggle over the body. The slave still gave signs of life. Raised from the ground by the now infuriated animals, that contended for his possession, his arms and legs were from time to time seen to twitch convulsively. At this point the enormous hulk of the elephant passed between Sylvest and the grewsome scene that was enacting before him.