As, with flashing eyes and flushed countenance, Vetranio sank back on his couch, his companions, inflamed with the wine they had already drunk, arose cup in hand, and turned towards him. Their voices, discordantly mingled, pronounced the oath together; then, as they resumed their former positions, their eyes all turned towards the black curtain in ardent expectation.
They had observed the sinister and sarcastic expression of Vetranio’s eye as he spoke of his concealed guest; they knew that the hunchback Reburrus possessed, among his other powers of buffoonery, the art of ventriloquism; and they suspected the presence of some hideous or grotesque image of a heathen god or demon in the hidden recess, which the jugglery of the parasite was to gift with the capacity of speech. Blasphemous comments upon life, death, and immortality were eagerly awaited. The general impatience for the withdrawal of the curtain was perceived by Vetranio, who, waving his hand for silence, authoritatively exclaimed-
‘The hour has not yet arrived. More draughts must be drunk, more libations poured out, ere the mystery of the curtain is revealed! Ho, Glyco!’ he continued, turning towards the singing-boy, who had silently entered the room, ‘the moment is yours! Tune your lyre, and recite my last ode, which I have addressed to you! Let the charms of Poetry preside over the feast of Death!’
The boy advanced, trembling; his once ruddy face was colourless and haggard; his eyes were fixed with a look of rigid terror on the black curtain; his features palpably expressed the presence within him of some secret and overwhelming recollection which had crushed all his other faculties and perceptions. Steadily, almost guiltily, averting his face from his master’s countenance, he stood by Vetranio’s couch, a frail and fallen being, a mournful spectacle of perverted docility and degraded youth.
Still true, however, to the duties of his vocation, he ran his thin, trembling fingers over the lyre, and mechanically preluded the commencement of the ode. But during the silence of attention which now prevailed, the confused noises from the people in the street penetrated more distinctly into the banqueting-room; and at this moment, high above them all–hoarse, raving, terrible, rose the voice of one man.
‘Tell me not,’ it cried, ‘of perfumes wafted from the palace!–foul vapours flow from it!–see, they sink, suffocating over me!–they bathe sky and earth, and men who move around us, in fierce, green light!’
Then other voices of men and women, shrill and savage, broke forth in interruption together:–‘Peace, Davus! you awake the dead about you!’ ‘Hide in the darkness; you are plague-struck; your skin is shrivelled; your gums are toothless!’ ‘When the palace is fired you shall be flung into the flames to purify your rotten carcass!’
‘Sing!’ cried Vetranio furiously, observing the shudders that ran over the boy’s frame and held him speechless. ‘Strike the lyre, as Timotheus struck it before Alexander! Drown in melody the barking of the curs who wait for our offal in the street!’
Feebly and interruptedly the terrified boy began; the wild continuous noises of the moaning voices from without sounding their awful accompaniment to the infidel philosophy of his song as he breathed it forth in faint and faltering accents. It ran thus:-
TO GLYCO
Ah, Glyco! why in flow’rs array’d? Those festive wreaths less quickly fade Than briefly-blooming joy! Those high-prized friends who share your mirth Are counterfeits of brittle earth, False coin’d in Death’s alloy!
The bliss your notes could once inspire, When lightly o’er the god-like lyre Your nimble fingers pass’d, Shall spring the same from others’ skill–When you’re forgot, the music still The player shall outlast!
The sun-touch’d cloud that mounts the sky, That brightly glows to warm the eye, Then fades we know not where, Is image of the little breath Of life–and then, the doom of Death That you and I must share!
Helpless to make or mar our birth, We blindly grope the ways of earth, And live our paltry hour; Sure, that when life has ceased to please, To die at will, in Stoic ease, Is yielded to our pow’r!
Who, timely wise, would meanly wait The dull delay of tardy Fate, When Life’s delights are shorn? No! When its outer gloss has flown, Let’s fling the tarnish’d bauble down As lightly as ’twas worn.
‘A health to Glyco! A deep draught to a singer from heaven come down upon earth!’ cried the guests, seizing their wine-cups, as the ode was concluded, and draining them to the last drop. But their drunken applause fell noiseless upon the ear to which it was addressed. The boy’s voice, as he sang the final stanza of the ode, had suddenly changed to a shrill, almost an unearthly tone, then suddenly sank again as he breathed forth the last few notes; and now as his dissolute audience turned towards him with approving glances, they saw him standing before them cold, rigid, and voiceless. The next instant his fixed features were suddenly distorted, his whole frame collapsed as if torn by an internal spasm–he fell back heavily to the floor. Those around approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms. His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it; the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the great despot, Crime–‘Be free!’
‘We have heard the note of the swan singing its own funeral hymn!’ said the patrician Placidus, looking in maudlin pity from the corpse of the boy to the face of Vetranio, which presented for the moment an involuntary expression of grief and remorse.
‘Our miracle of beauty and boy-god of melody has departed before us to the Elysian fields!’ muttered the hunchback Reburrus, in harsh, sarcastic accents.
Then, during the short silence that ensued, the voices from the street, joined on this occasion to a noise of approaching footsteps on the pavement, became again distinctly audible in the banqueting-hall. ‘News! news!’ cried these fresh auxiliaries of the horde already assembled before the palace. ‘Keep together, you who still care for your lives! Solitary citizens have been lured by strange men into desolate streets, and never seen again! Jars of newly salted flesh, which there were no beasts left in the city to supply, have been found in a butcher’s shop! Keep together! Keep together!’
‘No cannibals among the mob shall pollute the body of my poor boy!’ cried Vetranio, rousing himself from his short lethargy of grief. ‘Ho! Thascius! Marcus! you who can yet stand! let us bear him to the funeral pile! He has died first–his ashes shall be first consumed!’
The two patricians arose as the senator spoke, and aided him in carrying the body to the lower end of the room, where it was laid across the table, beneath the black curtain, and between the heaps of drapery and furniture piled up against each of the walls. Then, as his guests reeled back to their places, Vetranio, remaining by the side of the corpse, and seizing in his unsteady hands a small vase of wine, exclaimed in tones of fierce exultation: ‘The hour has come–the Banquet of Famine has ended–the Banquet of Death has begun! A health to the guest behind the curtain! Fill–drink–behold!’
He drank deeply from the vase as he ceased, and drew aside the black drapery above him. A cry of terror and astonishment burst from the intoxicated guests as they beheld in the recess now disclosed to view the corpse of an aged woman, clothed in white, and propped up on a high, black throne, with the face turned towards them, and the arms (artificially supported) stretched out as if in denunciation over the banqueting-table. The lamp of yellow glass, which burnt high above the body, threw over it a lurid and flickering light; the eyes were open, the jaw had fallen, the long grey tresses drooped heavily on either side of the white hollow cheeks.
‘Behold!’ cried Vetranio, pointing to the corpse–‘Behold my secret guest! Who so fit as the dead to preside at the Banquet of Death? Compelling the aid of Glyco, shrouded by congenial night, seizing on the first corpse exposed before me in the street, I have set up there, unsuspected by all, the proper idol of our worship, and philosopher at our feast! Another health to the queen of the fatal revels–to the teacher of the mysteries of worlds unseen–rescued from rotting unburied, to perish in the consecrated flames with the senators of Rome! A health!–a health to the mighty mother, ere she begin the mystic revelations! Fill–drink!’
Fired by their host’s example, recovered from their momentary awe, already inflamed by the mad recklessness of debauchery, the guests started from their couches, and with Bacchanalian shouts answered Vetranio’s challenge. The scene at this moment approached the supernatural. The wild disorder of the richly laden tables; the wine flowing over the floor from overthrown vases; the great lamps burning bright and steady over the confusion beneath; the fierce gestures, the disordered countenances of the revellers, as they waved their jewelled cups over their heads in frantic triumph; and then the gloomy and terrific prospect at the lower end of the hall–the black curtain, the light burning solitary on its high pole, the dead boy lying across the festal table, the living master standing by his side, and, like an evil spirit, pointing upward in mockery to the white-robed corpse of the woman, as it towered above all in its unnatural position, with its skinny arms stretched forth, with its ghastly features appearing to move as the faint and flickering light played over them,–produced together such a combination of scarce-earthly objects as might be painted, but cannot be described. It was an embodiment of a sorcerer’s vision–an apocalypse of sin triumphing over the world’s last relics of mortality in the vaults of death.