One of Cleopatra's Nights (16 page)

"Ah, when you paused in the Studii Museum to contemplate the mass of
hardened clay which still preserves my form," exclaimed Arria Marcella,
turning her long, liquid eyes upon Octavian, "and your thoughts were
ardently directed to me, my spirit felt it in that world where I float,
invisible to vulgar eyes. Faith makes God, and love makes woman. One is
truly dead only when one is no longer loved. Your desire has restored
life to me. The mighty invocation of your heart overcame the dim
distances that separated us."

The idea of amorous invocation which the young woman spoke of entered
into the philosophic beliefs of Octavian, beliefs which we ourselves are
not far from sharing.

In effect, nothing dies; all things are eternal. No power can annihilate
that which once had being. Every action, every word, every thought which
has fallen into the universal ocean of being, therein creates circles
which travel, and increase in travelling, even to the confines of
eternity. To vulgar eyes only do natural forms disappear, and the
spectres which have thence detached themselves people Infinity. Paris,
in some unknown region of space, continues to carry off Helen. The
galley of Cleopatra still floats down with swelling sails of silk upon
the azure current of an ideal Cydnus. A few passionate and powerful
minds have been able to recall before them ages apparently long passed
away, and to restore to life personages dead to all the world beside.
Faust has had for his mistress the daughter of Tyndarus, and conducted
her to his Gothic castle in the depths of the mysterious abysses of
Hades. Octavian had been able to live a day under the reign of Titus,
and to make himself beloved of Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius
Diomedes, she who was at that moment lying upon an antique couch beside
him in a city destroyed for all the rest of the world.

"From my disgust with other women," replied Octavian, "from the
unconquerable reverie which attracted me toward its radiant shapes as to
stars that lure on, I knew that I could never love save beyond the
confines of Time and Space. It was you that I awaited; and that frail
vestige of your being, preserved by the curiosity of men, has by its
secret magnetism placed me in communication with your spirit. I know not
if you be a dream or a reality, a phantom or a woman; if, like Ixion, I
press but a cloud to my cheated breast; if I am only the victim of some
vile spell of sorcery—but what I do truly know is that you will be my
first and my last love."

"May Eros, son of Aphrodite, hear your promise," returned Arria
Marcella, dropping her head upon the shoulder of her lover, who lifted
her in a passionate embrace. "Oh, press me to your young breast! Envelop
me with your warm breath. I am cold through having remained so long
without love." And against his heart Octavian felt that beautiful bosom
rise and fall, whose mould he had that very morning admired through the
glass of a cabinet in the museum. The coolness of that beautiful flesh
penetrated him through his tunic and made him burn. The gold and black
fillet had become detached from Arria's head, passionately thrown back,
and her hair streamed like a black river over the purple pillow.

The slaves had removed the table. A confused sound of sighs and kisses
was alone audible. The pet quails, indifferent to this amorous scene,
plundered the crumbs of the banquet upon the mosaic pavement, uttering
sharp little cries.

Suddenly the brazen rings of the curtain which closed the entrance to
the apartment slided back upon the curtain-rod, and an aged man of stern
demeanor and wrapped in a great brown mantle appeared upon the
threshold. His gray beard was divided into two points after the manner
of the Nazareans. His face seemed furrowed by the suffering of ascetic
mortifications, and a little cross of black wood was suspended from his
neck, leaving no doubt as to his faith. He belonged to the sect, then
new, of the Disciples of Christ.

On perceiving him, Arria Marcella, overwhelmed with confusion, hid her
face in the folds of her mantle, like a bird which puts its head under
its wing at the approach of an enemy from whom it cannot escape, to save
itself at least from the horror of seeing him, while Octavian, rising on
his elbow, stared fixedly at the provoking being who had thus abruptly
interrupted his happiness.

"Arria, Arria!" exclaimed the austere personage in a voice of reproach,
"did not your lifetime suffice for your misconduct, and must your
infamous amours encroach upon centuries to which they do not belong? Can
you not leave the living in their sphere? Have not your ashes cooled
since the day when you perished unrepentant beneath the rain of volcanic
fire? So, then, even two thousand years have not sufficed to calm your
passion, and your voracious arms still draw to your heartless breast of
marble the poor mad-men whom your philters have intoxicated!"

"Arrius, father, mercy! Do not crush me in the name of that morose
religion which was never mine! I believed in our ancient gods, who loved
life and youth and beauty and pleasure. Do not hurl me back into pale
nothingness! Let me enjoy this life that love has given back to me!"

"Silence, impious woman! Speak not to me of your gods, which are demons.
Let this man, whom you have fettered with your impure seductions, depart
hence. Draw him no more beyond the circle of that life which God
measured out for him. Return to the Limbo of paganism with your Asiatic,
Roman, or Greek lovers. Young Christian, forsake that larva, who would
seem to you more hideous than Empousa or Phorkyas, could you but see her
as she is!"

Pale and frozen with horror, Octavian tried to speak, but his voice
clung to his throat, according to the expression of Virgil.

"Will you obey me, Arria?" imperiously cried the tall old man.

"No, never!" responded Arria, with flashing eyes, dilated nostrils, and
passion-trembling lips, as she suddenly encircled the body of Octavian
with her beautiful statuesque arms, cold, hard, and rigid as marble. Her
furious beauty, enhanced by the struggle, shone forth at that supreme
moment with supernatural brightness, as though to leave its imperishable
souvenir with her young lover.

"Then, unhappy woman," exclaimed the old man, "I must needs employ
extreme measures, and render your nothingness palpable and visible to
this fascinated child." And in a voice of command he pronounced a
formula of exorcism that banished from Arria's cheeks the purple tints
with which the black wine from the myrrhine vase had suffused them.

At the same moment the distant bell of one of those hamlets which border
the sea-coast, or lie hidden in the mountain hollows, rang out the first
peal of the angelus.

A sob of agony burst from the broken heart of the young woman at that
sound. Octavian felt her encircling arms untwine, the draperies which
covered her sank fold on fold, as though the contours which sustained
them had suddenly given way, and the wretched night-walker beheld on the
banquet-couch beside him only a handful of cinders mingled with a few
fragments of calcined bones, among which gold bracelets and jewelry
glittered, together with such other shapeless remains as were found in
excavating the villa of Arrius Diomedes.

He uttered one fearful cry and became insensible.

The old man had disappeared, the sun rose, and the hall, so brilliantly
decorated but a short time before, became only a dismantled ruin.

After a heavy slumber, inspired by the libations of the previous
evening, Max and Fabio started from their sleep, and at once called
their comrade, whose room adjoined their own, with one of those
burlesque rallying cries which are so commonly made use of by
travellers. Octavian, for the best of reasons, returned no answer. Fabio
and Max, hearing no response, entered their friend's chamber and
perceived that the bed had not been disturbed.

"He must have fallen asleep in some chair," said Fabio, "without being
able to get to bed, for our good Octavian cannot bear much liquor; and
most likely he is taking an early walk to dissipate the fumes of the
wine in the fresh morning air."

"But he did not drink much," returned Max, in a thoughtful manner. "All
this seems very strange to me. Let us go and find him!"

Accompanied by the cicerone, the two friends searched all the streets,
squares, cross-roads, and alleys of Pompeii, entering every curious
building where they thought Octavian might be occupied in copying a
painting or taking down an inscription, and finally discovered him lying
insensible upon the disjointed mosaic pavement of a small ruined
chamber. They had much difficulty in restoring him to consciousness, and
on reviving, his only explanation of the circumstance was that he had
taken a fancy to see Pompeii by moonlight, and had been seized with a
sudden faintness, which would doubtless result in nothing serious.

The little party returned by rail to Naples, as they had come, and the
same evening, from their private box at the San Carlo, Max and Fabio
watched through their opera glasses a troupe of nymphs dancing in a
ballet, under the leadership of Amalia Ferraris, the
danseuse
then in
vogue, all wearing under their gauzy skirts frightful green drawers,
which made them look like so many frogs stung by a tarantula. Pale, with
woful eyes, and the general air of one crushed by suffering, Octavian
seemed to doubt the reality of what transpired upon the stage, so
difficult did he find it to resume the sentiments of real life after the
marvellous adventures of the night.

From the time of that visit to Pompeii Octavian fell into a dismal
melancholy, which the good-humored pleasantry of his companions rather
aggravated than soothed. The image of Arria Marcella haunted him
incessantly, and the sad termination of his fantastic good fortune had
never destroyed its charm.

Unable to contain his misery, he returned secretly to Pompeii, and once
again wandered among the ruins by moonlight as before, his heart
palpitating with maddening hope; but the hallucination never returned.
He saw only the lizards fleeing over the stones, he heard only the
screams of the startled night-birds. He met his friend Rufus Holconius
no more, Tyche came not to lay her supple hand upon his arm, Arria
Marcella obstinately slumbered in her dust.

Abandoning all hope, Octavian finally married a charming young English
girl, who is madly in love with him. He is perfectly well behaved to his
wife, yet Ellen, with that subtle instinct of the heart which nothing
can deceive, feels that her husband is enamored of another. But of whom?
That is a mystery which the most unflagging watchfulness cannot enable
her to unravel. Octavian never entertains actresses. In society he
addresses to women only the most commonplace gallantries. He even
returned with the greatest coldness the marked advances of a certain
Russian princess celebrated for her beauty and her coquetry. A secret
drawer, opened during her husband's absence, afforded no confirmation of
infidelity to Ellen's suspicions. But how could she permit herself to be
jealous of Arria Marcella, daughter of Arrius Diomedes, the freedman of
Tiberius?

I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity
venders who are called
marchands de bric-à-brac
in that Parisian
argot
which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France.

You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of
these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to
buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker thinks he
must have his
chambre au moyen âge
.

There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer in
old iron, the ware-room of the tapestry maker, the laboratory of the
chemist, and the studio of the painter: in all those gloomy dens where a
furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters the most
manifestly ancient thing is dust. The cobwebs are more authentic than
the guimp laces, and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition is
actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from
America.

The warehouse of my bric-à-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum. All
ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there. An
Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels,
brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of
Louis XV. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table
of the time of Louis XIII., with heavy spiral supports of oak, and
carven designs of chimeras and foliage intermingled.

Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered immense
Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching,
side by side with enamelled works by Bernard Palissy, representing
serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.

From disembowelled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese
silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with
luminous beads, while portraits of every era, in frames more or less
tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.

The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor glittered
in one corner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese grotesques, vases
of
céladon
and crackle-ware, Saxon and old Sèvres cups encumbered the
shelves and nooks of the apartment.

The dealer followed me closely through the tortuous way contrived
between the piles of furniture, warding off with his hand the hazardous
sweep of my coat-skirts, watching my elbows with the uneasy attention of
an antiquarian and a usurer.

It was a singular face, that of the merchant; an immense skull, polished
like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair, which
brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the more
strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal
bonhomie
,
counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes
which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d'or upon quicksilver. The
curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the
Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which
projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with
claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile
trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than
steel pincers or lobsters' claws when they lifted any precious
article—an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal.
This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical and
cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of his
face three centuries ago.