Part 9 (1/2)

'In Christianity,' said Fausta; 'this is your panacea. May it prove all you desire; yet methinks it gives small promise, seeing it has already been at work more than two hundred years, and has accomplished no more.'

'A close observer,' replied Julia, 'sees much of the effect of Christianity beside that which appears upon the surface. If I err not greatly, a few years more will reveal what this religion has been doing these two centuries and more. Revolutions which are acted out in a day, have often been years or centuries in preparation. An eye that will see, may see the final issue, a long time foreshadowed in the tendencies and character of a preceding age.'

The princess uttered this with earnestness. I have reflected upon it. And if you, my Curtius, will look around upon the state of the empire, you will find many things to startle you. But of this another time.

a.s.sembled in the evening in the court of the elephant, we were made to forget whatever had proved disagreeable during the day, while we listened to the 'Frogs,' read by Julia and Longinus.

The following day was appointed for the chase, and early in the morning I was waked by the braying of trumpets, and the baying of dogs. I found the Queen already mounted and equipped for the sport, surrounded by Zabdas, Longinus, and a few of the n.o.bles of Palmyra. We were soon joined by Julia and Fausta. In order to insure our sport, a tiger, made fierce by being for some days deprived of food, had the preceding evening been let loose from the royal collection into the neighboring forests. These forests, abounding in game, commence immediately, as it were, in the rear of the palace. They present a boundless continuity of crag, mountain, and wooded plain, offering every variety of ground to those who seek the pleasures of the chase. The sun had not been long above the horizon when we sallied forth from the palace gates, and from the smooth and shaven fields of the royal demesne, plunged at once into the

It was a moment of inexpressible horror. At the same instant, our eyes caught the form of the famished tiger, just in the act to spring from the crag upon the unconscious Queen. But before we had time to alarm Zen.o.bia--which would indeed have been useless--a shaft from an unerring arm arrested the monster midair, whose body then tumbled heavily at the feet of Zen.o.bia's Arab. The horse, rearing with affright, had nearly dashed the Queen against the opposite rocks, but keeping her seat, she soon, by her powerful arm and complete horsemans.h.i.+p, reduced him to his obedience, though trembling like a terrified child through every part of his body. A thrust from my hunting spear quickly despatched the dying beast. We now gathered around the Queen.

Hardly were we arrived at the lawn in front of the palace, when a cloud of dust was observed to rise in the direction of the road to Palmyra, as if caused by a body of horse in rapid movement. 'What may this mean?' said Zen.o.bia: 'orders were strict, that our brief retirement should not be disturbed. This indicates an errand of some urgency.'

'Some emba.s.sy from abroad, perhaps,' said Julia, 'that cannot brook delay. It may be from your great brother at Rome.'

While we, in a sportive humor, indulged in various conjectures, an official of the palace announced the approach of a Roman herald, 'who craved permission to address the Queen of Palmyra.' He was ordered to advance.

In a few moments, upon a horse covered with dust and foam, appeared the Roman herald. Without one moment's hesitancy, he saw in Zen.o.bia the Queen, and taking off his helmet, said, 'that Caius Petronius, and Cornelius Varro, amba.s.sadors of Aurelian, were in waiting at the outer gates of the palace, and asked a brief audience of the Queen of Palmyra, upon affairs of deepest interest, both to Zen.o.bia and the Emperor.'

'It is not our custom,' said Zen.o.bia in reply, 'when seeking repose, as now, from the cares of state, to allow aught to break it. But we will not be selfish nor churlish. Bid the servants of your Emperor draw near, and we will hear them.'

I was not unwilling that the messengers of Aurelian should see Zen.o.bia just as she was now. Sitting upon her n.o.ble Arabian, and leaning upon her hunting spear, her countenance glowing with a higher beauty than ever before, as it seemed to me--her head surmounted with a Parthian hunting-cap, from which drooped a single ostrich feather, springing from a diamond worth a nation's rental, her costume also Parthian, and revealing in the most perfect manner the just proportions of her form--I thought I had never seen even her, when she so filled and satisfied the eye and the mind--and, for that moment, I was almost a traitor to Aurelian. Had Julia filled her seat, I should have been quite so. As it was, I could wors.h.i.+p her who sat her steed with no less grace, upon the left of the Queen, without being guilty of that crime. On Zen.o.bia's right were Longinus and Zabdas, Gracchus, and the other n.o.blemen of Palmyra. I and Fausta were near Julia. In this manner, just as we had come in from the chase, did we await the amba.s.sadors of Aurelian.

Announced by trumpets, and followed by their train, they soon wheeled into the lawn, and advanced toward the Queen.

'Caius Petronius and Cornelius Varro,' said Zen.o.bia, first addressing the amba.s.sadors, and moving toward them a few paces, 'we bid you heartily welcome to Palmyra. If we receive you thus without form, you must take the blame partly to yourselves, who have sought us with such haste. We put by the customary observances, that we may cause you no delay. These whom you see are all friends or counsellors. Speak your errand without restraint.'

'We come,' replied Petronius, 'as you may surmises great Queen, upon no pleasing errand. Yet we cannot but persuade ourselves, that the Queen of Palmyra will listen to the proposals of Aurelian, and preserve the good understanding which has lasted so long between the West and the East. There have been brought already to your ears, if I have been rightly informed, rumors of dissatisfaction on the part of our Emperor, with the affairs of the East, and of plans of an eastern expedition. It is my business now to say, that these rumors have been well founded. I am further to say, that the object at which Aurelian has aimed, in the preparations he has made, is not Persia, but Palmyra.'

'He does us too much honor,' said Zen.o.bia, her color rising, and her eye kindling; 'and what, may I ask, are specifically his demands, and the price of peace?'

'For a long series of years,' replied the amba.s.sador, 'the wealth of Egypt and the East, as you are aware, flowed into the Roman treasury. That stream has been diverted to Palmyra. Egypt, and Syria, and Bithynia, and Mesopotamia, were dependants upon Rome, and Roman provinces. It is needless to say what they now are. The Queen of Palmyra was once but the Queen of Palmyra; she is now Queen of Egypt and of the East--Augusta of the Roman empire--her sons styled and arrayed as Caesars. By whatever consent of former emperors these honors have been won or permitted, it is not, we are required to say, with the consent of Aurelian. By whatever service in behalf of Rome they may, in the judgment of some, be thought to be deserved, in the judgment of Aurelian the reward exceeds greatly the value of the service rendered. But while we would not be deemed insensible to those services, and while he honors the greatness and the genius of Zen.o.bia, he would, he conceives, be unfaithful to the interests of those who have raised him to his high office, if he did not require that in the East, as in the West, the Roman empire should again be restored to the limits which bounded it in the reigns of the virtuous Antonines. This he holds essential to his own honor, and the glory of the Roman world.'

'You have delivered yourself, Caius Petronius,' replied the Queen, in a calm and firm voice, 'as it became a Roman to do, with plainness, and as I must believe, without reserve. So far I honor you. Now hear me, and as you hear, so report to him who sent you. Tell Aurelian that what I am, I have made myself; that the empire which hails me Queen has been moulded into what it is by Odenatus and Zen.o.bia; it is no gift, but an inheritance--a conquest and a possession; it is held, not by favor, but by right of birth and power; and that when he will give away possessions or provinces which he claims as his or Rome's, for the asking, I will give away Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. Tell him that as I have lived a queen, so, the G.o.ds helping, I will die a queen,--that the last moment of my reign and my life shall be the same. If he is ambitious, let him be told that I am ambitious too--ambitious of wider and yet wider empire--of an unsullied fame, and of my people's love. Tell him I do not speak of grat.i.tude on the part of Rome, but that posterity will say, that the Power which stood between Rome and Persia, and saved the empire in the East, which avenged the death of Valerian, and twice pursued the king of kings as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, deserved some fairer acknowledgment than the message you now bring, at the hands of a Roman emperor.'

'Let the Queen,' quickly rejoined Petronius, but evidently moved by what he had heard, 'let the Queen fully take me. Aurelian purposes not to invade the fair region where I now am, and where my eyes are rejoiced by this goodly show of city, plain and country. He hails you Queen of Palmyra! He does but ask again those appendages of your greatness, which have been torn from Rome, and were once members of her body.'

'Your emperor is gracious indeed!' replied the Queen, smiling; 'if he may hew off my limbs, he will spare the trunk!--and what were the trunk without the limbs?'

'And is this,' said Petronius, his voice significant of inward grief, 'that which I must carry back to Rome? Is there no hope of a better adjustment?'

'Will not the Queen of Palmyra delay for a few days her final answer?' added Varro: 'I see, happily, in her train, a n.o.ble Roman, from whom, as well as from us, she may obtain all needed knowledge of both the character and purposes of Aurelian. We are at liberty to wait her pleasure.'

'You have our thanks, Romans, for your courtesy, and we accept your offer; although in what I have said, I think I have spoken the sense of my people.'

'You have indeed, great Queen,' interrupted Zabdas with energy.

'Yet I owe it to my trusty counsellor, the great Longinus,' continued the Queen, 'and who now thinks not with me, to look farther into the reasons--which, because they are his, must be strong ones---by which he supports an opposite judgment.'