Chapter LXXIII

PETRONIUS was not mistaken. Two days later young Nerva, who had always
been friendly and devoted, sent his freedman to Cumę with news of what
was happening at the court of Cęsar.

The death of Petronius had been determined. On the morning of the
following day they intended to send him a centurion, with the order to
stop at Cumę, and wait there for further instructions; the next
messenger, to follow a few days later, was to bring the death sentence.

Petronius heard the news with unruffled calmness.

"Thou wilt take to thy lord," said he, "one of my vases; say from me
that I thank him with my whole soul, for now I am able to anticipate the
sentence."

And all at once he began to laugh, like a man who has came upon a
perfect thought, and rejoices in advance at its fulfilment.

That same afternoon his slaves rushed about, inviting the Augustians,
who were staying in Cumę, and all the ladies, to a magnificent banquet
at the villa of the arbiter.

He wrote that afternoon in the library; next he took a bath, after which
he commanded the vestiplicę to arrange his dress. Brilliant and stately
as one of the gods, he went to the triclinium, to cast the eye of a
critic on the preparations, and then to the gardens, where youths and
Grecian maidens from the islands were weaving wreaths of roses for the
evening.

Not the least care was visible on his face. The servants only knew that
the feast would be something uncommon, for he had issued a command to
give unusual rewards to those with whom he was satisfied, and some
slight blows to all whose work should not please him, or who had
deserved blame or punishment earlier. To the cithara players and the
singers he had ordered beforehand liberal pay. At last, sitting in the
garden under a beech, through whose leaves the sun-rays marked the earth
with bright spots, he called Eunice.

She came, dressed in white, with a sprig of myrtle in her hair,
beautiful as one of the Graces. He seated her at his side, and,
touching her temple gently with his fingers, he gazed at her with that
admiration with which a critic gazes at a statue from the chisel of a
master.

"Eunice," asked he, "dost thou know that thou art not a slave this long
time?"

She raised to him her calm eyes, as blue as the sky, and denied with a
motion of her head.

"I am thine always," said she.

"But perhaps thou knowest not," continued Petronius, "that the villa,
and those slaves twining wreaths here, and all which is in the villa,
with the fields and the herds, are thine henceforward."

Eunice, when she heard this, drew away from him quickly, and asked in a
voice filled with sudden fear,--

"Why dost thou tell me this?"

Then she approached again, and looked at him, blinking with amazement.
After a while her face became as pale as linen. He smiled, and said
only one word,--

"So!"

A moment of silence followed; merely a slight breeze moved the leaves of
the beech.

Petronius might have thought that before him was a statue cut from white
marble.

"Eunice," said he, "I wish to die calmly."

And the maiden, looking at him with a heart-rending smile, whispered,--

"I hear thee."

In the evening the guests, who had been at feasts given by Petronius
previously, and knew that in comparison with them even Cęsar's banquets
seemed tiresome and barbarous, began to arrive in numbers. To no one
did it occur, even, that that was to be the last "symposium." Many
knew, it is true, that the clouds of Cęsar's anger were hanging over the
exquisite arbiter; but that had happened so often, and Petronius had
been able so often to scatter them by some dexterous act or by a single
bold word, that no one thought really that serious danger threatened
him. His glad face and usual smile, free of care, confirmed all, to the
last man, in that opinion. The beautiful Eunice, to whom he had
declared his wish to die calmly, and for whom every word of his was like
an utterance of fate, had in her features a perfect calmness, and in her
eyes a kind of wonderful radiance, which might have been considered
delight. At the door of the triclinium, youths with hair in golden nets
put wreaths of roses on the heads of the guests, warning them, as the
custom was, to pass the threshold right foot foremost. In the hall
there was a slight odor of violets; the lamps burned in Alexandrian
glass of various colors. At the couches stood Grecian maidens, whose
office it was to moisten the feet of guests with perfumes. At the walls
cithara players and Athenian choristers were waiting for the signal of
their leader.

The table service gleamed with splendor, but that splendor did not
offend or oppress; it seemed a natural development. Joyousness and
freedom spread through the hall with the odor of violets. The guests as
they entered felt that neither threat nor constraint was hanging over
them, as in Cęsar's house, where a man might forfeit his life for
praises not sufficiently great or sufficiently apposite. At sight of
the lamps, the goblets entwined with ivy, the wine cooling on banks of
snow, and the exquisite dishes, the hearts of the guests became joyous.
Conversation of various kinds began to buzz, as bees buzz on an apple-
tree in blossom. At moments it was interrupted by an outburst of glad
laughter, at moments by murmurs of applause, at moments by a kiss placed
too loudly on some white shoulder.

The guests, while drinking wine, spilled from their goblets a few drops
to the immortal gods, to gain their protection, and their favor for the
host. It mattered not that many of them had no belief in the gods.
Custom and superstition prescribed it. Petronius, inclining near
Eunice, talked of Rome, of the latest divorces, of love affairs, of the
races, of Spiculus, who had become famous recently in the arena, and of
the latest books in the shops of Atractus and the Sozii. When he
spilled wine, he said that he spilled it only in honor of the Lady of
Cyprus, the most ancient divinity and the greatest, the only immortal,
enduring, and ruling one.

His conversation was like sunlight which lights up some new object every
instant, or like the summer breeze which stirs flowers in a garden. At
last he gave a signal to the leader of the music, and at that signal the
citharę began to sound lightly, and youthful voices accompanied. Then
maidens from Kos, the birthplace of Eunice, danced, and showed their
rosy forms through robes of gauze. Finally, an Egyptian soothsayer told
the guests their future from the movement of rainbow colors in a vessel
of crystal.

When they had enough of these amusements, Petronius rose somewhat on his
Syrian cushion, and said with hesitation,--

"Pardon me, friends, for asking a favor at a feast. Will each man
accept as a gift that goblet from which he first shook wine in honor of
the gods and to my prosperity?"

The goblets of Petronius were gleaming in gold, precious stones, anti
the carving of artists; hence, though gift giving was common in Rome,
delight filled every heart. Some thanked him loudly: others said that
Jove had never honored gods with such gifts in Olympus; finally, there
were some who refused to accept, since the gifts surpassed common
estimate.

But he raised aloft the Myrrhene vase, which resembled a rainbow in
brilliancy, and was simply beyond price.

"This," said he, "is the one out of which I poured in honor of the Lady
of Cyprus. The lips of no man may touch it henceforth, and no hand may
ever pour from it in honor of another divinity."

He cast the precious vessel to the pavement, which was covered with
lily-colored saffron flowers; and when it was broken into small pieces,
he said, seeing around him astonished faces,--

"My dear friends, be glad and not astonished. Old age and weakness are
sad attendants in the last years of life. But I will give you a good
example and good advice: Ye have the power, as ye see, not to wait for
old age; ye can depart before it comes, as I do."

"What dost thou wish?" asked a number of voices, with alarm.

"I wish to rejoice, to drink wine, to hear music, to look on those
divine forms which ye see around me, and fall asleep with a garlanded
head. I have taken farewell of Cęsar, and do ye wish to hear what I
wrote him at parting?"

He took from beneath the purple cushion a paper, and read as follows:--

"I know, O Cęsar, that thou art awaiting my arrival with impatience,
that thy true heart of a friend is yearning day and night for me. I
know that thou art ready to cover me with gifts, make me prefect of the
pretorian guards, and command Tigellinus to be that which the gods made
him, a mule-driver in those lands which thou didst inherit after
poisoning Domitius. Pardon me, however, for I swear to thee by Hades,
and by the shades of thy mother, thy wife, thy brother, and Seneca, that
I cannot go to thee. Life is a great treasure. I have taken the most
precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things
which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am
offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother;
that thou didst burn Rome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy
dominions. No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man;
from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy
one's ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a
Domitius on slim legs whirled about in Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music,
thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs,--is
a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die.
Rome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can
blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of
Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for
I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of
his howling. Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no
verses; poison people, but dance not; be an incendiary, but play not on
a cithara. This is the wish and the last friendly counsel sent thee by
the--Arbiter Elegantię."

The guests were terrified, for they knew that the loss of dominion would
have been less cruel to Nero than this blow. They understood, too, that
the man who had written that paper must die; and at the same time pale
fear flew over them because they had heard such a paper.

But Petronius laughed with sincere and gladsome joy, as if it were a
question of the most innocent joke; then he cast his eyes on all
present, and said,--

"Be joyous, and drive away fear. No one need boast that he heard this
letter. I will boast of it only to Charon when I am crossing in the
boat with him."

He beckoned then to the Greek physician, and stretched out his arm. The
skilled Greek in the twinkle of an eye opened the vein at the bend of
the arm. Blood spurted on the cushion, and covered Eunice, who,
supporting the head of Petronius, bent over him and said,--

"Didst thou think that I would leave thee? If the gods gave me
immortality, and Cęsar gave me power over the earth, I would follow thee
still."

Petronius smiled, raised himself a little, touched her lips with his,
and said,--

"Come with me."

She stretched her rosy arm to the physician, and after a while her blood
began to mingle and be lost in his blood.

Then he gave a signal to the leader of the music, and again the voices
and citharię were heard. They sang "Harmodius"; next the song of
Anacreon resounded,--that song in which he complained that on a time he
had found Aphrodite's boy chilled and weeping under trees; that he
brought him in, warmed him, dried his wings, and the ungrateful child
pierced his heart with an arrow,--from that moment peace had deserted
the poet.

Petronius and Eunice, resting against each other, beautiful as two
divinities, listened, smiling and growing pale. At the end of the song
Petronius gave directions to serve more wine and food; then he conversed
with the guests sitting near him of trifling but pleasant things, such
as are mentioned usually at feasts. Finally, he called to the Greek to
bind his arm for a moment; for he said that sleep was tormenting him,
and he wanted to yield himself to Hypnos before Thanatos put him to
sleep forever.

In fact, he fell asleep. When he woke, the head of Eunice was lying on
his breast like a white flower. He placed it on the pillow to look at
it once more. After that his veins were opened again.

At his signal the singers raised the song of Anacreon anew, and the
citharę accompanied them so softly as not to drown a word. Petronius
grew paler and paler; but when the last sound had ceased, he turned to
his guests again and said,-

"Friends, confess that with us perishes--"

But he had not power to finish; his arm with its last movement embraced
Eunice, his head fell on the pillow, and he died.

The guests looking at those two white forms, which resembled two
wonderful statues, understood well that with them perished all that was
left to their world at that time,--poetry and beauty.