Domitia. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “How is that?”

      The prince put his trembling hand to his brow and in his agitation knocked off his hat.

      The freedman picked it up.

      “The customary manner, sire! your neck will be put in the cleft of a forked stick and you will be beaten, lashed, kicked to death. Better take the sword and fall on it.”

      “Oh, Phaon! not yet! I cannot endure pain. I have a spring nail now – and it hurts! it hurts!”

      “Ride on, my lord; at the cypress hedge we will turn our horses loose, and by a path through the fields reach my villa.”

      Half an hour after Nero had left the Servilian palace, where now stands the Lateran, Lamia arrived followed by two servants. He found the secretary in a heap at the door, vainly writhing in his knotted chains. Lamia at once asked him about the prince, whether he was there.

      “I will both answer and show you whither he is fled,” said Epaphroditus, “if you will release me. Otherwise my tongue is tied like my limbs.”

      “Is he here?”

      “Nay, he has been here, but is gone. Whither I alone can say. The price of the information is release.”

      “Tell me where I can find tools.”

      Epaphroditus gave the required information and Lamia despatched a servant to bring hammer and chisel. They were speedily produced; but some time was taken up in cutting through the links.

      This, however, was finally effected, and the secretary gathered up a handful of the broken chain and clenched it in his fist.

      “Now I will lead the way,” said he, stretching himself.

      The wretched, fallen emperor had in the meanwhile scrambled through hedges and waded through a marsh, and had at last found a temporary shelter in a garden tool-house of the villa. Phaon feared to introduce him into his house.

      Wearied out, he cast himself on a sort of bier on which the gardeners carried citron trees to and from the conservatory. The cloak had fallen from him and lay on the soil.

      His feet were muddy and bleeding. He had tried to eat some oat-cake that had been offered him, but was unable to swallow.

      He continued to be teased with, and to pick or bite at his spring nails.

      “I hear steps!” he cried. “They will kill me!”

      “Sire, play the man.”

      Phaon offered him a couple of poniards.

      Nero put the point of one to his breast, shrunk and threw it away.

      “It is too blunt, it will not enter,” he said.

      He tried the other and dropped it.

      “It is over sharp. It cuts,” he said.

      At that moment the door opened and Lamia and Epaphroditus entered.

      Nero cried out and covered his face:

      “Sporus! Phaon! one or both! kill yourselves and show me how to do it.”

      “To do it!” said Lamia sternly. “That is not difficult. Do you need a sword? Here is one – the sword of Corbulo.”

      He extended the weapon to the prince, who accepted it with tremulous hand, looking at Lamia with glassy eyes.

      “Oh! a moment! I feel sick.”

      Then Phaon said: “Sire – at once!”

      Then Nero, with all power going out of his fingers, pointed the blade to his throat.

      “I cannot,” he gasped, “my hand is numb.”

      Immediately, Epaphroditus with his hand full of chain, brought the weighted fist against the haft, and drove the sword into the coward’s throat.

      He sank back on the bier.

      Then Lamia stooped, gathered up the moth-eaten cloak, and threw it over the face of the dying man.

      CHAPTER X.

      UBI FELICITAS?

      “Push, my dear Domitia, Push. Of course. What else would you have, but Push?”

      “But, sweetest mother, that surely cannot give what I ask.”

      “Indeed, my child, it does. It occupies all one’s energies, it exerts all one’s faculties, and it fills the heart.”

      “But – what do you gain?”

      “Gain, child? – everything. The satisfaction of having got further up the ladder; of exciting the envy of your late companions, the admiration of the vulgar, the mistrust of those above you.”

      “Is that worth having?”

      “Of course it is. It is – that very thing you desire, Happiness. It engages all your thoughts, stimulates your abilities. You dress for it; you prepare your table for it, accumulate servants for it, walk, smile, talk, acquire furniture, statuary, bronzes, and so on – for it. It is charming, ravishing. I live for it. I desire nothing better.”

      “But I do, mother. I do not care for this.”

      The girl spoke with her eyes on a painting on the wall of the atrium that represented a young maiden running in pursuit of a butterfly. Beneath it were the words “Ubi Felicitas?”

      “Because you are young and silly, Domitia. When older and wiser, you will understand the value of Push, and appreciate Position. My dear, properly considered, everything can be made use of for the purpose – even widowhood, dexterously dealt with, becomes a vehicle for Push. It really is vexatious that in Rome there should just now be such broils and effervescence of minds, proclamation of emperors, cutting of throats, that I, poor thing, here in Gabii run a chance of being forgotten. It is too provoking. I really wish that this upsetting of Nero, and setting up of Galba, and defection of Otho, and so on, had been postponed till my year of widowhood were at an end. One gets no chance, and it might have been so effective.”

      “And when you have obtained that at which you have aimed?”

      “Then make that the start for another push.”

      “And if you fail?”

      “Then, my dear, you have the gratification of being able to lay the blame on some one else. You have done your utmost.”

      “When you have gained what you aimed at, you are not content.”

      “That is just the beauty of Push. No, always go on to what is beyond.”

      “Look at that running girl, mother, she chases a butterfly, and when she has caught the lovely insect she crushes it in her hand. The glory of its wings is gone, its life is at an end. What then?”

      “She runs after another butterfly.”

      “And despises and rejects each to which she has attained?”

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