The Last Days of Pompeii Part 37

Chapter II

A CLa.s.sIC HOST, COOK, AND KITCHEN. APAECIDES SEEKS IONE. THEIR CONVERSATION.

IT was then the day for Diomed's banquet to the most select of his friends. The graceful Glaucus, the beautiful Ione, the official Pansa, the high-born Clodius, the immortal Fulvius, the exquisite Lepidus, the epicurean Sall.u.s.t, were not the only honourers of his festival. He expected, also, an invalid senator from Rome (a man of considerable repute and favor at court), and a great warrior from Herculaneum, who had fought with t.i.tus against the Jews, and having enriched himself prodigiously in the wars, was always told by his friends that his country was eternally indebted to his disinterested exertions! The party, however, extended to a yet greater number: for although, critically speaking, it was, at one time, thought inelegant among the Romans to entertain less than three or more than nine at their banquets, yet this rule was easily disregarded by the ostentatious. And we are told, indeed, in history, that one of the most splendid of these entertainers usually feasted a select party of three hundred. Diomed, however, more modest, contented himself with doubling the number of the Muses. His party consisted of eighteen, no unfas.h.i.+onable number in the present day.

It was the morning of Diomed's banquet; and Diomed himself, though he greatly affected the gentleman and the scholar, retained enough of his mercantile experience to know that a master's eye makes a ready servant.

Accordingly, with his tunic ungirdled on his portly stomach, his easy slippers on his feet, a small wand in his hand, wherewith he now directed the gaze, and now corrected the back, of some duller menial, he went from chamber to chamber of his costly villa.

He did not disdain even a visit to that sacred apartment in which the priests of the festival prepare their offerings. On entering the kitchen, his ears were agreeably stunned by the noise of dishes and pans, of oaths and commands. Small as this indispensable chamber seems to have been in all the houses of Pompeii, it was, nevertheless, usually fitted up with all that amazing variety of stoves and shapes, stew-pans and saucepans, cutters and moulds, without which a cook of spirit, no matter whether he be an ancient or a modern, declares it utterly impossible that he can give you anything to eat. And as fuel was then, as now, dear and scarce in those regions, great seems to have been the dexterity exercised in preparing as many things as possible with as little fire. An admirable contrivance of this nature may be still seen in the Neapolitan Museum, viz., a portable kitchen, about the size of a folio volume, containing stoves for four dishes, and an apparatus for heating water or other beverages.

Across the small kitchen flitted many forms which the quick eye of the master did not recognize.

'Oh! oh!' grumbled he to himself, 'that cursed Congrio hath invited a whole legion of cooks to a.s.sist him. They won't serve for nothing, and this is another item in the total of my day's expenses. By Bacchus!

thrice lucky shall I be if the slaves do not help themselves to some of the drinking vessels: ready, alas, are their hands, capacious are their tunics. Me miserum!'

The cooks, however, worked on, seemingly heedless of the apparition of Diomed.

'Ho, Euclio, your egg-pan! What, is this the largest? it only holds thirty-three eggs: in the houses I usually serve, the smallest egg-pan holds fifty, if need be!'

'The unconscionable rogue!' thought Diomed; 'he talks of eggs as if they were a sesterce a hundred!'

'By Mercury!' cried a pert little culinary disciple, scarce in his novitiate; 'whoever saw such antique sweetmeat shapes as these?--It is impossible to do credit to one's art with such rude materials. Why, Sall.u.s.t's commonest sweetmeat shape represents the whole siege of Troy; Hector and Paris, and Helen... with little Astyanax and the Wooden Horse into the bargain!'

'Silence, fool!' said Congrio, the cook of the house, who seemed to leave the chief part of the battle to his allies. 'My master, Diomed, is not one of those expensive good-for-noughts, who must have the last fas.h.i.+on, cost what it will!'

'Thou liest, base slave!' cried Diomed, in a great pa.s.sion--and thou costest me already enough to have ruined Lucullus himself! Come out of thy den, I want to talk to thee.'

The slave, with a sly wink at his confederates, obeyed the command.

'Man of three letters,' said Diomed, with his face of solemn anger, 'how didst thou dare to invite all those rascals into my house?--I see thief written in every line of their faces.'

'Yet, I a.s.sure you, master, that they are men of most respectable character--the best cooks of the place; it is a great favor to get them.

But for my sake...'

'Thy sake, unhappy Congrio!' interrupted Diomed; and by what purloined moneys of mine, by what reserved filchings from marketing, by what goodly meats converted into grease, and sold in the suburbs, by what false charges for bronzes marred, and earthenware broken--hast thou been enabled to make them serve thee for thy sake?'

'Nay, master, do not impeach my honesty! May the G.o.ds desert me if...'

'Swear not!' again interrupted the choleric Diomed, 'for then the G.o.ds will smite thee for a perjurer, and I shall lose my cook on the eve of dinner. But, enough of this at present: keep a sharp eye on thy ill-favored a.s.sistants, and tell me no tales to-morrow of vases broken, and cups miraculously vanished, or thy whole back shall be one pain.

And hark thee! thou knowest thou hast made me pay for those Phrygian attagens enough, by Hercules, to have feasted a sober man for a year together--see that they be not one iota over-roasted. The last time, O Congrio, that I gave a banquet to my friends, when thy vanity did so boldly undertake the becoming appearance of a Melian crane--thou knowest it came up like a stone from AEtna--as if all the fires of Phlegethon had been scorching out its juices. Be modest this time, Congrio--wary and modest. Modesty is the nurse of great actions; and in all other things, as in this, if thou wilt not spare thy master's purse, at least consult thy master's glory.'

'There shall not be such a coena seen at Pompeii since the days of Hercules.'

'Softly, softly--thy cursed boasting again! But I say, Congrio, yon homunculus--yon pigmy a.s.sailant of my cranes--yon pert-tongued neophyte of the kitchen, was there aught but insolence on his tongue when he maligned the comeliness of my sweetmeat shapes? I would not be out of the fas.h.i.+on, Congrio.'

'It is but the custom of us cooks,' replied Congrio, gravely, to undervalue our tools, in order to increase the effect of our art. The sweetmeat shape is a fair shape, and a lovely; but I would recommend my master, at the first occasion, to purchase some new ones of a...'

'That will suffice,' exclaimed Diomed, who seemed resolved never to allow his slave to finish his sentences. 'Now, resume thy charge--s.h.i.+ne----eclipse thyself. Let men envy Diomed his cook--let the slaves of Pompeii style thee Congrio the great! Go! yet stay--thou hast not spent all the moneys I gave thee for the marketing?' '"All!" alas!

the nightingales' tongues and the Roman tomacula, and the oysters from Britain, and sundry other things, too numerous now to recite, are yet left unpaid for. But what matter? every one trusts the Archimagirus of Diomed the wealthy!'

'Oh, unconscionable prodigal!--what waste!--what profusion!--I am ruined! But go, hasten--inspect!--taste!--perform!--surpa.s.s thyself!

Let the Roman senator not despise the poor Pompeian. Away, slave--and remember, the Phrygian attagens.'

The chief disappeared within his natural domain, and Diomed rolled back his portly presence to the more courtly chambers. All was to his liking--the flowers were fresh, the fountains played briskly, the mosaic pavements were as smooth as mirrors.

'Where is my daughter Julia?' he asked.

'At the bath.'

'Ah! that reminds me!--time wanes!--and I must bathe also.'

Our story returns to Apaecides. On awaking that day from the broken and feverish sleep which had followed his adoption of a faith so strikingly and sternly at variance with that in which his youth had been nurtured, the young priest could scarcely imagine that he was not yet in a dream; he had crossed the fatal river--the past was henceforth to have no sympathy with the future; the two worlds were distinct and separate--that which had been, from that which was to be. To what a bold and adventurous enterprise he had pledged his life!--to unveil the mysteries in which he had partic.i.p.ated--to desecrate the altars he had served--to denounce the G.o.ddess whose ministering robe he wore! Slowly he became sensible of the hatred and the horror he should provoke amongst the pious, even if successful; if frustrated in his daring attempt, what penalties might he not incur for an offence hitherto unheard of--for which no specific law, derived from experience, was prepared; and which, for that very reason, precedents, dragged from the sharpest armoury of obsolete and inapplicable legislation, would probably be distorted to meet! His friends--the sister of his youth--could he expect justice, though he might receive compa.s.sion, from them? This brave and heroic act would by their heathen eyes be regarded, perhaps, as a heinous apostasy--at the best as a pitiable madness.

He dared, he renounced, everything in this world, in the hope of securing that eternity in the next, which had so suddenly been revealed to him. While these thoughts on the one hand invaded his breast, on the other hand his pride, his courage, and his virtue, mingled with reminiscences of revenge for deceit, of indignant disgust at fraud, conspired to raise and to support him.

The conflict was sharp and keen; but his new feelings triumphed over his old: and a mighty argument in favor of wrestling with the sanct.i.ties of old opinions and hereditary forms might be found in the conquest over both, achieved by that humble priest. Had the early Christians been more controlled by 'the solemn plausibilities of custom'--less of democrats in the pure and lofty acceptation of that perverted word--Christianity would have perished in its cradle!

As each priest in succession slept several nights together in the chambers of the temple, the term imposed on Apaecides was not yet completed; and when he had risen from his couch, attired himself, as usual, in his robes, and left his narrow chamber, he found himself before the altars of the temple.

In the exhaustion of his late emotions he had slept far into the morning, and the vertical sun already poured its fervid beams over the sacred place.

'Salve, Apaecides!' said a voice, whose natural asperity was smoothed by long artifice into an almost displeasing softness of tone. 'Thou art late abroad; has the G.o.ddess revealed herself to thee in visions?'

'Could she reveal her true self to the people, Calenus, how incenseless would be these altars!'

'That,' replied Calenus, 'may possibly be true; but the deity is wise enough to hold commune with none but priests.'

'A time may come when she will be unveiled without her own acquiescence.'

'It is not likely: she has triumphed for countless ages. And that which has so long stood the test of time rarely succ.u.mbs to the l.u.s.t of novelty. But hark ye, young brother! these sayings are indiscreet.'

'It is not for thee to silence them,' replied Apaecides, haughtily.

'So hot!--yet I will not quarrel with thee. Why, my Apaecides, has not the Egyptian convinced thee of the necessity of our dwelling together in unity? Has he not convinced thee of the wisdom of deluding the people and enjoying ourselves? If not, oh, brother! he is not that great magician he is esteemed.'

'Thou, then, hast shared his lessons?' said Apaecides, with a hollow smile.

'Ay! but I stood less in need of them than thou. Nature had already gifted me with the love of pleasure, and the desire of gain and power.

Long is the way that leads the voluptuary to the severities of life; but it is only one step from pleasant sin to sheltering hypocrisy. Beware the vengeance of the G.o.ddess, if the shortness of that step be disclosed!'

'Beware, thou, the hour when the tomb shall be rent and the rottenness exposed,' returned Apaecides, solemnly. 'Vale!'

With these words he left the flamen to his meditations. When he got a few paces from the temple, he turned to look back. Calenus had already disappeared in the entry room of the priests, for it now approached the hour of that repast which, called prandium by the ancients, answers in point of date to the breakfast of the moderns. The white and graceful fane gleamed brightly in the sun. Upon the altars before it rose the incense and bloomed the garlands. The priest gazed long and wistfully upon the scene--it was the last time that it was ever beheld by him!

He then turned and pursued his way slowly towards the house of Ione; for before possibly the last tie that united them was cut in twain--before the uncertain peril of the next day was incurred, he was anxious to see his last surviving relative, his fondest as his earliest friend.