第130章

The hall, like many in the more habitable regions of Pompeii, branched off at the extremity into two wings or passages; the length of which, not really great, was to the eye considerably exaggerated by the sudden gloom against which the lamp so faintly struggled. To the right of these alae, the two comrades now directed their steps.

'The gay Glaucus will be lodged to-morrow in apartments not much drier, and far less spacious than this,' said Calenus, as they passed by the very spot where, completely wrapped in the shadow of the broad, projecting buttress, cowered the Thessalian.

'Ay, but then he will have dry room, and ample enough, in the arena on the following day. And to think,' continued Arbaces, slowly, and very deliberately--'to think that a word of thine could save him, and consign Arbaces to his doom!'

'That word shall never be spoken,' said Calenus.

'Right, my Calenus! it never shall,' returned Arbaces, familiarly leaning his arm on the priest's shoulder: 'and now, halt--we are at the door.'

The light trembled against a small door deep set in the wall, and guarded strongly by many plates and bindings of iron, that intersected the rough and dark wood. From his girdle Arbaces now drew a small ring, holding three or four short but strong keys. Oh, how beat the griping heart of Calenus, as he heard the rusty wards growl, as if resenting the admission to the treasures they guarded!

'Enter, my friend,' said Arbaces, 'while I hold the lamp on high, that thou mayst glut thine eyes on the yellow heaps.'

The impatient Calenus did not wait to be twice invited; he hastened towards the aperture.

Scarce had he crossed the threshold, when the strong hand of Arbaces plunged him forwards.

'The word shall never be spoken!' said the Egyptian, with a loud exultant laugh, and closed the door upon the priest.

Calenus had been precipitated down several steps, but not feeling at the moment the pain of his fall, he sprung up again to the door, and beating at it fiercely with his clenched fist, he cried aloud in what seemed more a beast's howl than a human voice, so keen was his agony and despair: 'Oh, release me, release me, and I will ask no gold!'

The words but imperfectly penetrated the massive door, and Arbaces again laughed. Then, stamping his foot violently, rejoined, perhaps to give vent to his long-stifled passions:

'All the gold of Dalmatia,' cried he, 'will not buy thee a crust of bread.

Starve, wretch! thy dying groans will never wake even the echo of these vast halls; nor will the air ever reveal, as thou gnawest, in thy desperate famine, thy flesh from thy bones, that so perishes the man who threatened, and could have undone, Arbaces! Farewell!'

'Oh, pity--mercy! Inhuman villain; was it for this...'

The rest of the sentence was lost to the ear of Arbaces as he passed backward along the dim hall. A toad, plump and bloated, lay unmoving before his path; the rays of the lamp fell upon its unshaped hideousness and red upward eye. Arbaces turned aside that he might not harm it.

'Thou art loathsome and obscene,' he muttered, 'but thou canst not injure me; therefore thou art safe in my path.'

The cries of Calenus, dulled and choked by the barrier that confined him, yet faintly reached the ear of the Egyptian. He paused and listened intently.

'This is unfortunate,' thought he; 'for I cannot sail till that voice is dumb for ever. My stores and treasures lie, not in yon dungeon it is true, but in the opposite wing. My slaves, as they move them, must not hear his voice. But what fear of that? In three days, if he still survive, his accents, by my father's beard, must be weak enough, then!--no, they could not pierce even through his tomb. By Isis, it is cold!--I long for a deep draught of the spiced Falernian.'

With that the remorseless Egyptian drew his gown closer round him, and resought the upper air.