One of Cleopatra's Nights (14 page)

The moon illuminated the pale houses with her white beams, dividing the
streets into double-edged lines of silvery white and bluish shadow. This
nocturnal day, with its subdued tints, disguised the degradation of the
buildings. The mutilated columns, the façades streaked with fugitive
lizards, the roofs crumbled in by the eruption, were less noticeable
than when beheld under the clear, raw light of the sun. The lost parts
were completed by the half-tint of shadow, and here and there one
brusque beam of light, like a touch of sentiment in a picture-sketch,
marked where a whole edifice had crumbled away. The silent genii of the
night seemed to have repaired the fossil city for some representation of
fantastic life.

At times Octavian fancied that he saw vague human forms in the shadow,
but they vanished the moment they approached the edge of the lighted
portion of the street. A low whispering, an indefinite hum, floated
through the silence. Our promenader at first attributed them to a
fluttering in his eyes, to a buzzing in his ears; it might even, he
thought, be merely an optical delusion, coupled with the sighing of the
sea-breezes, or the flight of some snake or lizard through the nettles,
for in nature all things live, even death; all things make themselves
heard, even silence. Nevertheless he felt a kind of involuntary terror,
a slight trembling, that might have been caused by the cold night air,
but which made his flesh creep. Could it be that his comrades, actuated
by the same impulses as himself, were seeking him among the ruins? Those
dimly seen forms and those indistinct sounds of footsteps! Might it not
have been only Max and Fabio walking and chatting together, who had just
disappeared round the corner of a cross-road? But Octavian felt to his
dismay that this very natural explanation could not be true, and the
arguments which he made to himself in favor of it were the reverse of
convincing. The solitude and the shadow were peopled with invisible
beings whom he was disturbing. He had fallen into the midst of a
mystery, and it seemed that they were awaiting his departure in order to
commence again. Such were the extravagant ideas that floated through his
brain, and obtained no little verisimilitude from the hour, the place,
and the thousand alarming details which those can well understand who
have ever found themselves alone by night in the midst of some vast
ruin.

Passing before a house which he had attentively observed during the day,
and which the moon shone fully upon, he beheld in perfect integrity a
certain portico whereof he had vainly attempted to restore the design in
fancy. Four Ionic columns—fluted for half their height and their shafts
purple-robed with minium tints—sustained a cymatium adorned with
polychromatic ornaments that the artist seemed only to have completed
the day before. Upon one side wall of the entrance a Laconian molossus,
painted in encaustic, and accompanied by the warning inscription "
Cave
canem
" barked at the moon and the visitor with pictured fury. On the
mosaic threshold the word HAVE, in Oscan and Latin characters, saluted
the guest with its friendly syllables. The outer surfaces of the walls,
tinted with ochre and rubric, were unmarred by a single crack. The house
had grown a story higher; and the tiled roof, now surmounted by a bronze
acroterium, projected an intact outline against the light blue of the
sky, where a few stars were growing pale.

This strange restoration effected between afternoon and evening by some
unknown architect greatly puzzled Octavian, who felt certain of having
the same day seen that very house in a lamentable state of ruin. The
mysterious reconstructor had labored with great despatch, for all the
neighboring dwellings had the same fresh, new look; all the pillars were
coiffed with their capitals; not a single stone, a brick, a pellicle of
stucco or a scale of paint was wanting upon the shining surfaces of the
façades; and through the intervals of the peristyles surrounding the
marble basin of the cavædium one could catch glimpses of white laurels
and bayroses, myrtles and pomegranates. Surely all the historians were
mistaken; the eruption had never taken place, or else the needle of Time
had moved backward twenty secular hours upon the dial of Eternity!

In the climax of his astonishment, Octavian commenced to wonder whether
he might not actually be sleeping upon his feet, and walking in a dream.
He even seriously asked himself whether madness might not be parading
its hallucinations before his eyes; but he soon felt himself compelled
to admit that he was neither asleep nor mad.

A singular change had taken place in the atmosphere. Vague rose-tints
were blending through brightening shades of violet with the faintly
azure tints of moonlight; the sky commenced to glow brightly along its
borders; daylight seemed about to dawn. Octavian took out his watch: it
marked the hour of midnight. Fearing that it might have stopped, he
pressed the spring of the repeating mechanism. It struck twelve times.
It was midnight beyond a doubt, and yet the brightness ever increased.
The moon sank through the azure which became momentarily more and more
luminous. The sun rose!

Then Octavian, to whom all ideas of time had become hopelessly confused,
was able to convince himself that he was walking, not through a dead
Pompeii, the chill corpse of a city half-shrouded, but through a living,
youthful, intact Pompeii over which the torrents of burning mud from
Vesuvius had never flowed.

An inconceivable prodigy had transported him, a Frenchman of the
nineteenth century, back to the age of Titus, not in spirit only, but in
reality; or else had called up before him from the depths of the past a
desolated city with its vanished inhabitants, for a man clothed in the
antique fashion had just passed out of a neighboring house.

This man wore his hair short, and his face was closely shaven; he was
dressed in a brown tunic and a grayish mantle, the ends of which were
well tucked up so as not to impede his movements. He walked at a rapid
gait, bordering upon a run, and passed by Octavian without perceiving
him. He carried on his arm a basket made of Spanish broom, and
proceeded toward the Forum Nundinarium. He was evidently a slave, some
Davus, going to market beyond a doubt.

The noise of wheels became audible, and an antique wagon, drawn by white
oxen and loaded with vegetables, came along the street. Beside the team
walked a peasant—with legs bare and sunburnt, and feet
sandal-shod—who was clad in a sort of canvas shirt puffed out about the
waist; a conical straw hat hanging at his shoulders, and depending from
his neck by the chin-band, left his face exposed to view—a type of face
unknown in these days—a forehead low and traversed by salient, knotty
lines, hair black and curly, eyes tranquil as those of his oxen, and a
neck like that of the rustic Hercules. As he gravely pricked his animals
with the goad, his statuesque attitudes would have thrown Ingres into
ecstasy.

The peasant perceived Octavian and appeared surprised, but he proceeded
on his way without being able, doubtless, to find any explanation for
the appearance of this strange-looking personage, and in his rustic
simplicity willingly leaving the solution of the enigma to those wiser
than himself.

Campanian peasants also appeared on the scene, driving before them asses
laden with skins of wine, and ringing their brazen bells. Their
physiognomies differed from those of the modern peasants as a medallion
differs from a son.

Gradually the city became peopled, like one of those panoramic pictures
at first desolate, but which by a sudden change of light become animated
with personages previously invisible.

Octavian's feelings had undergone a change. Only a short time before,
amid the deceitful shadows of the night, he had fallen a prey to that
uneasiness from which the bravest are not exempt amid such disquieting
and fantastic surroundings as reason cannot explain. His vague terror
had ultimately yielded to a profound stupefaction. The distinctness of
his perceptions forbade him to doubt the testimony of his senses, yet
what he beheld seemed altogether contrary to reason. Feeling still but
half convinced, he sought by the authentication of minor actual details
to assure himself that he was not the victim of hallucination. Those
figures which passed before his eyes could not be phantoms, for the
living sun shone upon them with unmistakable reality, and their shadows,
elongated in the morning light, fell upon the pavement and the walls.

Without the faintest understanding of what had befallen him, Octavian,
ravished with delight to find one of his most cherished dreams realized,
no longer attempted to resist the fate of his adventure. He abandoned
himself to the mystery of these marvels without any further attempt to
explain them; he averred to himself that since he had been permitted, by
virtue of some mysterious power, to live for a few hours in a vanished
age, he would not waste time in efforts to solve an incomprehensible
problem, and he proceeded fearlessly gazing to right and left upon this
scene at once so old and yet so new to him. But to what epoch of
Pompeiian life had he been transported? An ædile inscription engraved
upon a wall showed him by the names of public personages there recorded,
that it was about the commencement of the reign of Titus, or in the
year 79 of our own era. A sudden thought flashed across Octavian's mind.
The woman whose mould he had seen in the museum at Naples must be
living, inasmuch as the eruption of Vesuvius by which she had perished
took place on the 24th of August in this very year: he might therefore
discover her, behold her, speak to her!... The mad longing which had
seized him at the sight of that mass of cinders moulded upon a divinely
perfect form, was perhaps about to be fully satisfied, for surely naught
could be impossible to a love which had had the strength to make Time
itself recoil, and the same hour to pass twice through the sand-glass of
Eternity!

While Octavian was abandoning himself to these reflections, beautiful
young girls were passing by on their way to the fountains, all balancing
urns upon their heads with their white finger-tips, and patricians clad
in white togas bordered with purple bands were proceeding toward the
Forum, each followed by an escort of clients. The buyers commenced to
throng about the booths, which were all designated by sculptured or
pictured signs, and recalled by reason of their shape and small
dimensions the moresque booths of Algiers. Over most of them a glorious
phallus of baked and painted clay, together with the inscription,
Hic
habitat Felicitas
, testified to superstitious precautions against the
evil eye. Octavian also noticed an amulet shop, whose shelves were
stocked with horns, bifurcated branches of coral, and little figures of
Priapus in gold, like those worn in Naples even at this day as a
safeguard against the
jettatura
, and he thought to himself that a
superstition often outlives a religion.

Following the sidewalk which borders each street in Pompeii (and
deprives the English of all claim to this invention), Octavian suddenly
found himself face to face with a beautiful young man of about his own
age, clad in a saffron-colored tunic, and a mantle of snowy linen as
supple as cashmere. The sight of Octavian in his frightful modern hat,
girthed about with a scanty black frock-coat, his legs confined in
pantaloons, and his feet cramped in well-polished boots, seemed to
surprise the young Pompeiian in much the same way as one of us would
feel astonished to meet on the Boulevard de Gand some Iowa Indian or
native of Butocudo, bedecked with his feathers, necklace of
bear's-claws, or whimsical tattooing. Nevertheless, being a well-bred
young man, he did not burst out laughing in Octavian's face, and pitying
the poor barbarian who had lost his way, no doubt, in that Græco-Roman
city, he said to him in a soft, clear voice: "
Advena, salve!
"

Nothing could be more natural than that an inhabitant of Pompeii, in the
reign of the divine, most powerful, and most august Emperor Titus,
should speak Latin, yet Octavian started at hearing this dead tongue in
a living mouth. It was then, indeed, that he congratulated himself on
having been proficient in his college studies, and taken the honors at
the annual examinations. The Latin taught him by the University served
him in good stead on that unique occasion, and calling back to mind some
souvenirs of his college course, he returned the salutation of the
Pompeiian after the style of
De viris illustribus
and
Selectæ e
profanis
, in a tolerably intelligible manner, but with a Parisian
accent which forced the young man to smile despite himself.

"Perhaps it will be easier for you to converse in Greek," said the
Pompeiian. "I am also acquainted with that language, for I studied at
Athens."

"I am even less familiar with Greek than with Latin," replied Octavian.
"I am from the land of Gaul—from Paris—from Lutetia."

"I know that country. My grandfather served under the great Julius
Cæsar in the Gallic wars. But what a strange dress you wear! The Gauls
whom I saw at Rome were not thus attired."

Octavian attempted to explain to the young Pompeiian that twenty
centuries had rolled by since the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar, and
that the fashions had changed; but he forgot his Latin, and indeed, to
tell the truth, he had but little to forget.

"My name is Rufus Holconius, and my house is at your service," said the
young man, "unless, indeed, you prefer the freedom of the tavern. It is
hard by the public-house of Albinus, near the gate of the suburb of
Augustus Felix and the Inn of Sarinus, son of Publius, just at the
second turn; but if you wish, I will be your guide through this city, in
which you do not seem to be acquainted. Young barbarian, I like you,
although you endeavored to impose upon my credulity by pretending that
the Emperor Titus, who now reigns, died two thousand years ago, and that
the Nazarean (whose infamous followers were plastered with pitch and
burned to illuminate Nero's gardens) rules sole master of the deserted
heavens whence the great gods have fallen! By Pollux!" he continued as
his eyes fell upon a rubric inscription at a street-corner, "you have
just come in good time. The
Casina
of Plautus, which has quite
recently been put upon the stage, will be played to-day. It is a curious
and laughable comedy which will amuse you, even if you only comprehend
the pantomime of it. Come with me. It is nearly time for the play
already. I will find you a place in the seat set apart for guests and
strangers." And Rufus Holconius led the way toward the little comic
theatre which the three friends had visited during the day.