Volume II Part 67 (2/2)
”While the eagle is in his nest, the eaglet shall not prevail; Nor shall the eagle be smitten in his eyrie.”
”Azor,” said the warrior, clenching his sword, ”these three times hast thou mocked me, and by the immortal G.o.ds thou diest!”
”Impious one! I could strike thee powerless as the dust thou treadest on. Give me the bauble,” said he, addressing the raven. The bird immediately gave the clasp he had purloined into his master's hand.
”This shall witness between us,” continued he. ”Dare to lift thy hand, the very palace shall bear testimony to thy treason--that thou hast sought me for purposes too horrible even for thy tongue to utter.
Hence! When least expected I may meet thee. If it had not been for thy mother's sake, and for my vow, the emperor ere this had been privy to it.”
Stung with rage and disappointment, he put back his weapon, and with threats and imprecations departed.
On a couch inlaid with ivory and pearl, within a vaulted chamber in the Praetorian Palace of the royal city, lay the emperor, in a coverlid of rich stuff. Disease had crushed his body, but the indomitable spirit was unquenched. Tossing and disturbed, at length he started from his bed. Calling to his chamberlain, he demanded if there had not been footsteps in the apartment. The ruler of the world, whose nod could shake the nations, and whose word was the arbiter of life or death to millions of his fellow-men, lay here--startled at the pa.s.sing of a sound, the falling of a shadow! His face, whose chief characteristic was power--that strength and determination of spirit which all acknowledge, and but few comprehend--was furrowed with deeper marks than care had wrought. Sixty years had moulded the steady and inflexible purpose of his soul in lines too palpable to be misunderstood. His beard was short and grizzled; and a swarthy hue, betraying his African birth, was now become sallow, and even sickly in the extreme; but an eagle eye still beamed in all its fierceness and rapacity from under his scanty brows. His nose was not of the Roman sort, like the beak of that royal bird, but thick and even clumsy, lacking that sharp and predacious intellect generally a.s.sociated with forms of this description.
Such was Septimus Severus, then styled on a coin just struck ”BRITANNICVS MAXIMVS,” in commemoration of a great victory gained over the Caledonians, whom he had driven beyond Adrian's Wall. Though suffering from severe illness, he was carried in a horse-litter; and, marching from York at the head of his troops, penetrated almost to the extremity of the island, where he subdued that fierce and intractable nation the Scots. Returning, he left his son Caracalla to superintend the building of a stone wall across the island in place of the earthen ramparts called Adrian's; a structure, when completed, that effectually resisted the inroads of those barbarians for a considerable period.
He called a third time to Virius Lupus, one, the most confidential of his attendants, to whom many of the most important secrets of the state were entrusted.
”Thrice have I heard it, Virius. Again and again it seems to mock and elude my grasp.” He paused, the officer yet listening with becoming reverence. The emperor continued, more like one whose thoughts had taken utterance than as if he were addressing the individual before him.
”When I led the Pannonian legions to victory; when Rome opened her gates at my command; when I fought my way through blood to the throne--I quailed not then! Now--satiated with power, careless of fame, the prospects of life closed, and for ever--when all that is left for me to do is to die--behold, I tremble at the shaking of a leaf! I start even at the footstep that awakes me!”
”Long live the emperor!” said the cringing secretary. Interrupting him, as he would have proceeded with the customary adulations, the emperor again continued as though hardly noticing his presence--
”Caracalla yet remains with the army. Once I censured the misguided clemency of Marcus, who by an act of justice might have prevented the miseries that his son Caligula brought upon the empire; and yet I, even I,” said the haughty monarch, bitterly, ”nourish the very weakness that in others I despise!”
He dashed away the sweat from his brow, ashamed of the weakness he could not quell.
”He hath sought your life,” said the wily sycophant.
”He hath. Traitor! parricide! the distinctions he would have earned.
But my better genius triumphed, and history hath been spared this infamy. It may be, this temporary exile from our court with the northern army shall tame his spirit to submission. My life or his, once the bitter alternative, may yet be avoided.”
”But may not his presence with the army be impolitic, should he turn the weapon wherewith you have girded him to your own hurt?”
”'Tis an evil choice; whichever way I turn, mischief is before me.”
”Were it not best that he be recalled?”
”What? To plot and practise against my life! To mount upon my reeking body to the throne! He will not reign with Geta. The proud boy disdains a divided empire. And was not mine own soul fas.h.i.+oned in the same mould? When Niger would have ruled in Syria, and Albinus in Britain, I scattered their legions to the winds, and levelled their hopes with their pride. 'Tis nature; and shall I, the author of his being, punish him for mine own gift?”
He raised himself on his couch. The fierce blaze of ambition broke the dark cloud of bodily infirmities, and the monarch and the tyrant again dilated his almost savage features.
The secretary, used to these fiery moods, stood awaiting his commands.
The emperor, as though exhausted, sank down on his pillow, exclaiming--
”I have governed the world, but I cannot govern a wayward heart!”
Thus did he often lament, and provoke himself the more with these vain regrets; forgetting that, if he had exercised the same firmness in his private as public capacity, the government of his own house would have been easy as the government of the world.
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