He rose quickly, and while he supported her as she attempted to rise and stand upon her feet, he said:
"The gods be praised that you are still alive. Our big hound threw you down-and he has terrible teeth." Selene was now standing up, and face to face with the boy at whose last words she shuddered again.
"Do, you feel any pain?" asked Antinous, anxiously.
"Yes," she said, dully.
"Did he bite you?"
"I think not—pick up that pin, it has fallen out of my dress."
The Bithynian obeyed her behest, and while the girl re-fastened her peplum over her shoulders she asked him again:
"Who are you? How came the dog in our palace?"
"He belongs—he belongs to us. We arrived late last night, and Pontius put us—"
"Then you are with the architect from Rome?"
"Yes, but who are you?"
"Selene is my name, I am the daughter of the palace-steward."
"And who is Pollux, whom you were calling to help you when you recovered your senses?"
"What does that matter to you?"
Antinous colored, and answered in confusion:
"I was startled when you suddenly roused up, with his name so loudly on your lips, when I brought you back to life with water and this essence."
"Well, I was roused—and now I can walk again. People who bring furious dogs into a strange place, should know how to take better care of them. Tie the dog up safely, for the children—my little brothers and sisters— come this way when they want to go out. Thank you for your help—and my pitcher?"
As she spoke she looked down on the remains of the pretty jar, which was one her mother had particularly valued. When she saw the fragments lying on the ground, she gave a deep sob, but she shed no tears. Then she exclaimed angrily: "It is infamous!"
With these words she turned her back on Antinous and returned to her father's room, using her left foot, however, with caution, for it was very painful.
The young Bithynian gazed in silence at Selene's tall, slight form, he felt prompted to follow her, to say to her how very sorry he was for the mischance that had befallen her, and that the hound belonged not to him but to another man; but he dared not. Long after she had disappeared from sight he stood on the same spot. At last he collected his senses, and slowly went back to his room, where he sat on his couch with his eyes fixed dreamily on the ground, till the Emperor's call roused him from his reverie.
Selene had hardly vouchsafed Antinous a glance. She was in pain not merely in her left foot, but also in the back of her head where she found there was a deep cut; but her thick hair had staunched the blood that flowed from the wound. She felt very tired, and the loss of her pretty jug, which must also be replaced by another, vexed her far more than the beauty of the favorite had charmed her.
She slowly and wearily entered the sitting-room, where her father was by this time waiting for her and his water. He was accustomed to have it regularly at the same hour, and as Selene was absent longer than usual, he could think of no better way of filling up the time than by grumbling and scolding to himself; when, at last, his daughter appeared on the threshold, he at once perceived that she had no jug, and said crossly:
"And am I to have no water to-day?"
Selene shook her head, sank into a seat, and began to cry softly.
"What is the matter?" asked her father.
"The pitcher is broken," she said sadly.
You should take better care of such expensive things," scolded her father. "You are always complaining of want of money, and at the same time you break half our belongings."
"I was thrown down," answered Selene, drying her eyes.
"Thrown down! by whom?" asked the steward, slowly rising.
"By the architect's big dog—the architect who came last night from Rome, and to whom we gave that meat and salt in the middle of the night. He slept here, at Lochias."
"And he set his clog on my child!" shouted Keraunus, with an angry glare.
"The hound was alone in the passage when I went there."
"Did it bite you?"
"No, but it pulled me down, and stood over me, and gnashed its teeth—oh! it was horrible."
"The cursed, vagabond scoundrel!" growled the steward, "I will teach him how to behave in a strange house!"
"Let him be," said Selene, as she saw her father about to don the saffron cloak.
"What is done cannot be undone, and if quarrels and dissentions come of it, it will make you ill."
"Vagabonds! impudent rascals! who fill my palace with quarrelsome curs," muttered Keraunus without listening to his daughter, and as he settled the folds of his pallium he growled "Arsinoe! why is it that girl never hears me."
When she appeared he desired her to heat the irons to curl his hair.
"They are ready by the fire," answered Arsinoe. "Come into the kitchen with me."
Keraunus followed her, and had his locks curled and scented, while his younger children stood round him waiting for the porridge which Selene usually prepared for them at this hour.
Keraunus responded to their morning greetings with nods as friendly as Arsinoe's tongs, which held his head tightly by the hair, would allow. It was only the blind Helios, a pretty boy of six, that he drew to his side and gave a kiss on his cheek. He loved this child, who, though deprived of the noblest of the senses, was always merry and contented, with peculiar tenderness. Once he even laughed aloud when the child clung to his sister, as she brandished the tongs, and said:
"Father, do you know why I am sorry I cannot see?"
"Well?" said his father.
"Because I should so like to see you for once with the beautiful curls which Arsinoe makes with the irons." But the steward's mirth was checked when his daughter, pausing in her labors, said half in jest, but half in earnest:
"Have you thought any more about the Emperor's arrival, father? I smarten and dress you so fine every day—but to-day you ought to think of dressing me."
"We will see about it," said Keraunus evasively. "Do you know," said Arsinoe, after a short pause, as she twisted the last lock in the freshly-heated tongs, "I thought it all over last night again. If we cannot succeed any way in scraping together the money for my dress, we can still—"
"Well?"
"Even Selene can say nothing against it."
"Against what?"
"But, you will be angry!"
"Speak out."
"You pay taxes like the rest of the citizens."
"What has that to do with it?"
"Well then, we are justified in expecting something from the city."
"What for?"
"To pay for my dress for the festival which is got up for the Emperor, not by an individual, but by the citizens as a body. We could not accept alone, but it is folly to refuse what a rich municipality offers. That is neither more nor less than making them a present."
"You be silent," cried Keraunus, really furious, and trying in vain to remember the argument with which, only yesterday, he had refused the same suggestion. "Be silent, and wait till I begin to talk about such matters."
Arsinoe flung the tongs on the hearth with so much annoyance that they fell on the stone with a loud clatter; but her father quitted the kitchen and returned to the sitting-room. There he found Selene lying on a couch, and the old slave-woman, who had tied a wet handkerchief round the girl's head, pressing another to her bare left foot.
"Wounded!" cried Keraunus, and his eyes rolled slowly from right to left and from left to right.
"Look at the swelling!" cried the old woman in broken Greek, raising Selene's snow-white foot in her black hands for her father to see. "Thousands of fine ladies have hands that are not so small. Poor, poor little foot," and as she spoke the old woman pressed it to her lips.
Selene pushed her aside, and said, turning to her father:
"The cut on my head is nothing to speak of, but the muscles and veins here at the ancle are swelled and my leg hurts me rather when I tread. When the dog threw me down I must have hit it against the stone step."
"It is outrageous!" cried Keraunus, the blood again mounting to his head, "only wait and I will show them what I think of their goings on."
"No, no," entreated Selene, "only beg them politely to shut up the dog, or to chain it, so that it may not hurt the children."
Her voice trembled with anxiety as she spoke the words, for the dread, which, she knew not why, had so long been tormenting her lest her father should lose his place, seemed to affect her more than ever to-day.
"What! civil words after what has now happened?" cried Keraunus indignantly, and as if something quite unheard of had been suggested to him.
"Nay, nay, say what you mean," shrieked the old woman. "If such a thing had occurred to your father he would have fallen on the strange builder with a good thrashing."
"And his son Keraunus will not let him off," declared the steward, quitting the room without heeding Selene's entreaty not to let himself be provoked.
In the ante-chamber he found his old slave whom he ordered to take a stick and go before him to announce him to Pontius' guest, the architect, who was lodging in the rooms in the wing near the fountain. This was the elegant thing to do, and by this means the black slave would meet the big dog before his master who held him and all dogs in the utmost abhorrence. As he approached his destination he found himself quite in the humor to speak his mind to the stranger who had come here with a ferocious hound to tear the members of his family.
CHAPTER XIV
Hadrian had slept most comfortably; only a few hours it is true, but they had sufficed to refresh his spirit. He was now in his sitting-room and had gone to the window, which took up more than half the extent of the long west wall of the room, and opened on the sea. The wide opening, which extended downwards to within a few spans of the floor, was finished at either side by a tall pillar of fine reddish-brown porphyry, flecked with white, and crowned with gilt Corinthian capitals.
Against one of these the Emperor was leaning stroking the blood-hound, whose prompt and vigorous watchfulness had pleased him greatly. What did he care for the terrors the dog might have caused a mere girl?
By the other pillar stood Antinous; he had placed his right foot on the low window-sill, and with his chin resting on his hand and his elbow on his knee, his figure was well within the room.
"This, Pontius, is really a first-rate man," said Hadrian, pointing to a tapestry hanging across the narrow end of the room. "This hanging was copied from a fruit-piece that I painted some time since, and had executed here in mosaic. Yesterday this room was not even intended for my use, thus the hanging must have been put up between our arrival and this morning. And how many other beautiful things I see around me! The whole place looks habitable, and the eye finds an abundance of objects on which it can rest with pleasure."
"Have you examined that magnificent cushion?" asked Antinous; "and the bronze figures, there in the corner, look to me far from bad."
"They are admirable works," said Hadrian. "Still, I would do without them with pleasure rather than miss this window. Which is the bluer, the sky or the sea? And what a delicious spring breeze fans us here, in the middle of December. Which are the more delightful to contemplate, the innumerable ships in the harbor, which communicate between this flowery land and other countries, and bless it with wealth, or the buildings which attract the eye in whichever direction it turns. It is difficult to know whether most to admire their stately dimensions or the beauty of their forms."
"And what is that long, huge dyke, which connects the island with the mainland? Only look! There is a huge trireme passing under one of the wide arches, on which it is supported—and there comes another."
"That is the great viaduct, called by the Alexandrians the Heptastadion, because it is said to be seven stadia in length; and in the upper portion it carries a stone water-course—as an elder tree has in it a vein of pith-which supplies water to the island of Pharos."
"What a pity it is," said Antinous, "that we cannot overlook from here the whole of the structure with the men and the vehicles that swarm upon it like busy ants. That little island and the narrow tongue of land that runs out into the harbor with the tall slender building at the end of it, half hide it."
"But they serve to vary the picture," replied the Emperor. "Cleopatra often dwelt in the little castle on the island with its harbor, and in that tall tower on the northern side of the peninsula, round which, just now, the blue waves are playing, while the gulls and pigeons fly happily over it—there Antony retreated after the fight of Actium."
"To forget his disgrace!" exclaimed Antinous.
"He named it his Timonareum, because he hoped there to remain unmolested by other human beings, like the wise misanthrope of Athens. How would it be if I called Lochias my Timonareum?"
"No man need try to hide fame and greatness."
"Who told you that it was shame that led Antony to hide himself in that place?" asked the imperial sophist; "he proved often enough, at the head of his cavalry, that he was a brave soldier; and though at Actium, when all was still going well, he let his ship be turned, it was out of no fear of swords and spears, but because Fate compelled him to subjugate his strong will to the wishes of a woman with whose destiny his was linked."
"Then do you excuse his conduct?"
"I only seek to account for it, and never, for a moment, could allow myself to believe that shame ever prompted a single act in Antony. I— do you suppose I could ever blush? Nay, we cease to feel shame when we have lived to feel such profound contempt for the world."
"But why then should Marc Antony have shut himself up, in yonder sea- washed prison?"
"Because, to every true man, who has dissipated whole years of his life with women, jesters and flatterers, a moment comes of satiety and loathing. In such an hour he feels that of all the men under the lights of heaven, he, himself, is the only one with whom it is worth his while to commune. After Actium, this was what Antony felt, and he quitted the society of men in order to find himself for once in good company."
"It is that, no doubt, which drives you now and again into solitude."
"No doubt-but you are always allowed to follow me."
"Then you regard me as better than others," exclaimed Antinous joyfully.
"As more beautiful at any rate," replied Hadrian kindly. "Ask me some more questions."
But Antinous needed a few minutes pause before he could comply with this desire. At last he recollected himself and proceeded to inquire why most of the vessels were moored in the harbor beyond the Heptastadion, known as Eunostus. The entrance there was less dangerous than that between the Pharos and the point of Lochias which led into the eastern landing- places. And then Hadrian could give him information as to every building in the city about which his companion evinced any curiosity. But when the Emperor had pointed out the Soma, under which rested the remains of Alexander the Great, he became thoughtful, and said, as if to himself:
"The Great—We may well envy the young Macedonian; not the mere name of Great, for many of small worth have had it bestowed on them, but because he really earned it!"
There was not a question put by the handsome Bithynian that Hadrian could not answer; Antinous followed all his explanations with growing astonishment, exclaiming at last:
"How perfectly well you know this place—and yet you never were here before."
"It is one of the greatest pleasures of travelling," replied Hadrian, "that on our journeys we come to know many things in their actuality of which we have formed an idea from books and narratives. This requires us to compare the reality with the pictures in our own minds, seen with the inward eye, before we saw the reality. It is to me a far smaller pleasure to be surprised by something new and unexpected than to make myself more closely acquainted with something I know already sufficiently to deem it worthy to be known better. Do you understand what I mean?"
"To be sure I do. We hear of a thing, and when we afterwards see it we ask ourselves whether we have conceived of it rightly. But I always picture people or places which I hear much praised, as much more beautiful than I ever find the reality."
"The balance of difference, which is to the disadvantage of reality," answered Hadrian, "stands not so much to its discredit, as to the credit of the eager and beautifying power of your youthful imagination. I—I—" and the Emperor stroked his beard and gazed out into the distance. "I learn by experience that the older I grow, the more often I find it possible so to imagine men, places, and things that I have not seen as that when I meet them in real life for the first time, I feel justified in fancying that I have known them long since, visited them, and beheld them with my bodily eyes. Here, for instance, I feel as if I saw nothing new, but only gazed once more at what has long been familiar. But that is no wonder, for I know my Strabo, and have heard and read a hundred accounts of this city. Still there are many things which are quite strange to me, and yet as they come before me make me feel as if I had seen or known them long ago."
"I have felt something like that," said Antinous. "Can our souls have ever lived in other bodies, and sometimes recall the impressions made in that former existence?
"Favorinus once told me that some great philosopher, Plato, I think, asserts that before we are born our souls are wafted about in the firmament that they may contemplate the earth on which they are destined subsequently to dwell. Favorinus says too—"
"Favorinus!" cried Hadrian, evasively. "That graceful elocutionist has plenty of skill in giving new and captivating forms to the thoughts of the great philosophers; but he has not been able to surprise the secret of his own soul—besides, he talks too much, and he cannot dispense with the excitement of life."