Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

  The infuriated elephant was holding aloft in the coils of his trunk a young slave who could not be above fifteen years of age, and who writhed in the air uttering fearful shrieks. Twice in his rage the elephant violently beat the wall surrounding the arena with the bruised and almost dislocated body of the lad; after the mammoth animal had thus broken the slave’s palpitating members, it threw him down at its feet, sought for a moment to gore him with its tusks, but desisted and finally irately trampled him into a shapeless mass. While thus venting his maddened fury upon the bleeding remains, that were no longer but a pulp of human flesh and ground bones, the elephant moved backward and accidentally struck with one of his hind legs a slave who was fleeing before a tiger and who at that moment passed between the elephant’s crupper and the crocodile’s tank. The shock imparted to him by the elephant’s hind legs flung the distracted slave, as happened to several others before him, into the muddy basin of the reptile. Sylvest immediately thereupon heard the shrieks of the luckless being whom the saw-like jaws of the crocodile cut into pieces.

  The carnage lasted until of all the slaves who were delivered to the wild animals, there remained nothing but bones, from which the flesh was almost wholly gnawed off, or human remnants without shape or name.

  From start to finish that Roman feast was accompanied with cheers and acclamations from the crowd, intoxicated with the spectacle of the wholesale butchery.

  Finally, the almost burnt out and nearly extinguished torches cast but a flickering light about the amphitheater.

  The lions and tigers, now gorged with human flesh, spread themselves silent and heavy upon the blood-soaked sand of the arena; they yawned, gasped for breath, or licked their huge paws which they passed over their crimson muzzles.

  Sylvest heard the receding noise of the crowd leaving the circus.

  Presently, cautiously entering through the north and south gates, and picking their way by the light of the expiring torches, the keepers of the animals stepped into the arena. They were clad in thick iron armor that was proof against the teeth of the beasts, and carried in their hands long tridents whose red-hot prongs were freshly drawn from the furnace. Tired, glutted, and accustomed to the voice of their keepers, above all, well acquainted with the sting of the tridents, the animals were driven without difficulty into their corresponding cages under the vault from which they had issued. By means of a wheel turned by other circus attendants, the railings rose again on their underground grooves, the vaults were again closed; and the movable flooring was replaced over the crocodile’s tank. The torches that still glimmered were then put out, and keepers and attendants left the arena precipitately and saying in low and frightened voices:

  “This is the hour of the witches!”

  The profoundest silence reigned thereupon in the gloom of the vast amphitheater.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  THE FLIGHT.

  SAVED FROM DEATH by a miraculous accident, because, had not the screams of anguish — emitted by Diavolus and his expiring friends, upon whom the poison administered by Pour-Spices took revenge for their iniquities — drawn away the eyes of the whole assemblage from the arena, it would have been impossible, even if partly screened by the elephant, for Sylvest to reach unperceived the niche in which he blotted himself from sight — thus miraculously saved from death, Sylvest gave thanks to Hesus; and, as if on that night the gods were to show themselves especially merciful to him, the remembrance flashed through his mind that, at their last interview, his wife Loyse promised to meet him four days later in Faustina’s park, at night, near the end of the canal. Faustina’s last words to Mont-Liban as she carried away Syomara fainting in her arms also occurred to him:

  “Mont-Liban, I shall wait for you at the temple near the canal, in the rotunda dedicated to Priapus!”

  A sad presentiment told the slave that, with Syomara in her power, and, perhaps, still alive, the Roman dame would subject his sister to all the tortures that a depraved, jealous and fiendish woman could conceive of in her hatred for a rival. In such an event, the temple near the canal would certainly be the place chosen for Syomara’s punishment. Sylvest decided to hasten to the park of Faustina’s villa. With his ear on the alert, he finally stepped out of his hiding place. Odd fears came over him at that moment. As he crossed the arena, he heard the flight of large nocturnal birds, who silently hovered close over the ground; more than once he felt with a shiver the breeze produced by their wings on his face; several times he was even struck and almost thrown to the ground by hairy bodies that flitted past him. It must surely have been the magicians who now hastened by in unknown forms in search of the bloody human remnants that they needed for their witchcraft and sorceries.

  Stepping upon a sword that one of the gladiators must have dropped, the slave picked it up. It was short and sharp. He armed himself with it, finally reached the northern exit, followed a long vault, and soon found himself outside of the amphitheater, that was located on the outskirts of Orange. Only half an hour’s walk lay between him and Faustina’s park. He quickened his steps, arrived at the wall, scaled it, and ran towards the extremity of the canal, where, in view of the lateness of the hour, he almost feared not to meet Loyse.

  Thanks to the gods! A poor slave also has his moments of joy. Sylvest had barely taken a few steps on the terrace of the canal when he recognized the voice of his wife, who called out:

  “Sylvest! Sylvest! Is that you?”

  The slave did not answer. He threw himself sobbing with happiness into Loyse’s arms, and held her long embraced, while he covered her face with kisses and tears.

  “You weep,” she asked, affrighted. “Some misfortune threatens you!”

  “No! Oh! no, Loyse! The gods have been merciful to us. But we have not an instant to lose. It will soon be day. Will you take the chances of flight? They are terrible! But we shall brave them together—”

  “Sylvest, more than once did I propose to you that we flee — you always refused.”

  “Yes — but now I accept. Will you have the strength to accompany me, my beloved wife?”

  “My love for you and for our child will give me the necessary strength. But whither shall we flee? In what direction shall we turn our steps?”

  “If we start at once we shall be able to arrive before daybreak at a desert valley where I know a cavern. I have been there before, to attend some nocturnal meetings. We shall hide there for a while — on our way we shall gather some fruit and roots from the gardens that border our route. There is a stream not far from the cavern. We shall not need to fear for lack of water, or, for several days, for lack of food. We shall later consider what next to do. The gods, or, perhaps, men will have pity upon us—”

  A piercing cry — a prolonged cry of pain, that seemed not to proceed from a human breast — a cry that, though distinct, came from a distance, smote at this moment the ear of Sylvest and his wife. With a shudder that ran through her whole frame the latter said:

  “Oh! Those cries — they seem not to end!”

  “Did you hear them before?”

  “Several times, since I came here to wait for you. They cease at intervals — and then they are renewed, more frightful than before. Faustina is punishing some female slave to death.”

  “Faustina!” cried Sylvest stupefied; only at that moment did he recall Syomara. “Do these cries proceed from the temple on the canal?”

  “Yes — and yet I heard this evening that our mistress intended to go to the circus. But at the hour when I left the factory, a manumitted slave on horseback, who came from the amphitheater, rode at full tilt through the garden to the temple, to announce, as he said, the death of Mont-Liban to Faustina.

  “There can be no doubt any longer!” cried Sylvest. “It is Syomara. She must have been taken to the cursed temple. Oh! Malediction! Malediction! Come, come, Loyse!”

  “Where are you going?” asked Sylvest’s wife holding him back by the arm, as he made to dash towards the temple. “Do you not hear those cries? Fau
stina is there! To approach the temple is to risk our immediate death!”

  But Sylvest did not hear Loyse. The nearer he came to the rotunda, all the more distinct did the cries sound that the victim was emitting. They presently became so distinct that he recognized his sister’s voice, drowned though it was ever and anon by chants and the sound of lyres, flutes and cymbals.

  The frightened Loyse followed her husband and no longer sought to retain him. Both arrived near the circular portico that surrounded the temple. A brilliant light escaped from within through the airholes, through which four days before he had been an invisible witness of monstrous mysteries. A last cry, a cry more blood-curdling than any that had preceded it, but an expiring cry, suddenly resounded through the silence of the night, and was followed by the words — a supreme appeal made by a voice still distinct, although coming from the throes of death:

  “Sylvest! My mother! My father!”

  Taking his sword between his teeth, the slave rushed towards one of the pillars of the portico, intending to climb it, as he had done once before. What was he to do when he reached the airholes above? He does not know. At that instant only one absorbing and controlling thought possessed his mind — to rush to Syomara’s help and to avenge her by Faustina’s immediate death. Loyse, however, more and more terrified by her husband’s exaltation, clung with all her might to his arm and prevented him from climbing the pillar, while she said to him in a low voice, with heart-rending accents:

  “We shall be lost! Think of our child!”

  Sylvest strove to disengage himself of his wife’s grasp, and, deaf to her prayers, was about to persist in his insane project, when he suddenly heard the triumphant voice of Faustina breaking in upon the deathly silence:

  “Dead! Dead! You predicted it yourself, beautiful magician, that Syomara, my rival, would fall into my power, and would expire between my hands under frightful tortures! Your prediction is fulfilled! There you lie! Dead! Stone dead! Aye, dead as Mont-Liban. By Hercules!” added the monster accompanying her words with a dismal peal of laughter, “Mont-Liban is dead — long live Bibrix! Evoë! Evoë! Cheer all with me! Evoë! Come! Bring me wine, songs, music and flowers! Dead is my rival! Wine! Songs! Wine and all other delights!”

  The musical instruments resounded: obscene chants struck up: the shouts of the orgy grew frantic and marked the cadence of that infernal reel, the bare sight of which had nearly driven Sylvest crazy with horror only four nights before!

  Syomara was dead. There was nothing left to the slave but to flee with Loyse. It was with difficulty that, his head like a volcano and his breast heaving for breath, he succeeded in finding his way through the dark to the wall of the park. He raised his wife over it, and both ran in haste towards the deserted valley.

  EPILOGUE.

  I, Fergan, who close this narrative of my grandfather — I am the son of Pearon who was the son of Sylvest — have not much to add.

  My grandfather Sylvest died at the advanced age of eighty-six years.

  I was then fourteen years old. My birth cost my mother’s life. Shortly after her decease, my father Pearon was accidentally killed. He was crushed to death in the wheels of a mill that he was turning.

  Of the several accounts of his own life that my grandfather Sylvest was to bequeath to me, two have been lost. He transmitted to me, together with the other parchments of our family annals, only the preceding story concerning his own experience as a slave of seigneur Diavolus in the city of Orange. Having escaped by nothing short of a prodigy the death that was decreed to him in the circus, my grandfather immediately repaired to the garden of Faustina, where he met my grandmother Loyse, and whence he fled with her after the last dying cries of Syomara, who was tortured to death by the grand Roman dame.

  I remember that in my infancy my grandfather related to me how, after his flight, he kept a long time in hiding with his wife Loyse, first in the cavern of the Sons of the Mistletoe, and later in a still profounder solitude, where they lived cm fruits and roots that my grandfather fetched over night often at great peril and from long distances.

  The season was beautiful and mild. In the seclusion of their retreat, the two poor slaves enjoyed the delight of the only days of freedom that either had known for many a long year. Nevertheless, summer passed, and then autumn. The winter was approaching, and with it the cold weather and the lack of fruits and roots. Besides, the time was near when my grandmother was to be delivered of my father. Her clothes fell in tatters off her body and her health was declining. In view of this, my grandfather resigned himself once more to the idea of slavery, rather than see his wife die of hunger a death, moreover, that the child that she carried would have had to, share.

  The fugitive slaves who were taken far away from their master’s residence, or who refused to give the name of their owners, when; as happened with my grandfather and his wife they succeeded in ridding themselves of their collar where their masters’ names were engraved — such slaves belonged to the Roman fisc, and were either sold and their proceeds turned into the treasury, or were employed in such public works as the building of roads and highways or the construction of public buildings.

  After a march of several days through the woods my grandfather and his wife arrived almost dead with fatigue and hunger at the suburbs of Marseilles. There they asked for the residence of the agent of the fisc, confessed that they had fled from their master’s house, and surrendered at discretion.

  The gods willed it that the agent of the fisc at Marseilles was a kind-hearted man. He took pity on my grandfather and his wife, and promised them that, instead of being sold back, again; they should remain slaves of the fisc, and would be given work — my grandfather on the aqueduct that was then under construction near the city, his wife in the agent’s house as a nurse for the children. The Roman could not, however, spare my grandfather and his poor wife the pain and shame of being, obedient to the law, branded on the forehead as fugitive slaves.

  For many years my grandfather’s life was supportable, although subject to arduous toil. Employed at first in the construction of the aqueduct, he was made to transport, sometimes on his back, sometimes harnessed to a wagon, the stones that were needed for the structure. In the evening he returned home exhausted. But, at least, instead of sleeping in the ergastula, like the rest of his companions in bondage, he returned to his wife and child, a favor that my grandmother won, through her gentleness and zeal, from the wife of the agent of the fisc.

  Years passed in this way. My grandfather having aged and declined in strength by reason of the heavy work that he had to perform, was unable, to continue at work on the aqueduct, and was charged by the Roman with the cultivation of his garden. My grandmother died shortly before my father - was of marriageable age, to contract the marriage that slaves contract; and my mother lost her life in giving me mine.

  I was eight years old when my father, who remained a slave of the fisc and was assigned to field labor, was crushed by the wheel of an oil mill while at work. The son of the agent had succeeded his father in his office. Upon the latter’s recommendation, his son kept my grandfather near him as a gardener. Although he was now very old, he was able to attend to his duties.

  At my mother’s death another Gallic slave woman attached to the household nursed me together with her own child, a girl named Genevieve, who thus became my fostersister in bondage. From our tenth year we were both employed in domestic work. A few years later, however, our master, who, like his father, was charged with the superintendence of the slaves of the fisc, made me learn the weavers’ trade for the purpose of hiring me out and having me produce revenue for the treasury. My foster-sister Genevieve learned the trade of washerwoman.

  I was fifteen years old when, feeling himself growing weaker, my grandfather foresaw his approaching end. He occupied a hut in our master’s garden. During my apprenticeship I was from time to time allowed to visit my grandfather at the close of the day’s work. On one of those evenings I found him lying on his couch
in the hut. He made a great effort to rise, had me close the door carefully, climbed on his stool, and took a long belt of thick cloth out of a concealed place among the thatch of the roof. Out of that kind of sheath he drew long strips of tanned skin, resembling those on which people write in my country. These strips, that were twice as wide as the palm of a man’s hand, were covered with our Gallic handwriting, close and fine, and were sewn together. To these strips there were attached a little gold sickle, a little brass bell and a fragment of the iron collar that my grandfather wore when he escaped from the circus and the city of Orange, and which, with the aid of Loyse, his wife, he had succeeded in filing off with wet sand and the sword that he took along in his flight. On that fragment of his collar could still be seen, engraved in the iron, the Latin words “Servus sum—”— “I am the slave — .”