Various - Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864

The inspection was satisfactory. Not only was the dress of the captive clean, neat, becoming, and suitable to his station, but his appearance had undergone visible improvement since Ænone had last seen him. The rest and partial composure of even the few intervening days had sufficed to restore tone to his complexion, roundness to his cheeks, and something of the old merry smile to his eyes. And though complete restoration was not yet effected, enough had been accomplished to show that there was much latent beauty which would not fail to develop itself under the stimulant of additional rest and kindly treatment.

'Go in, thither,' said Ænone, pointing to the adjoining room, in which Leta was occupied. 'When you are there, you will—it will be told you what you are to do.'

Cleotos bowed low, and passed through into the other room; and Ænone followed him with a glance which betrayed the longing she felt to enter with him and witness the meeting of the two lovers. But a sense of propriety outweighed her curiosity and restrained her. It was not right, indeed, that she should intrude. Such recognitions should be sacred to the persons directly interested in them. She would therefore remain outside, and there await Cleotos's return. And as she took into her hands a little parchment ode which lay upon her table, and nervously endeavored to interest herself in it, she delightedly pictured the sudden transport of those within the next room, and the beaming joy with which, hand in hand, they would finally emerge to thank her for their newly gained happiness.

In the mean time, Leta, having delivered her message, and received her rebuke for the interruption, had retired to the other room, and there, as usual, resumed her daily task of embroidery. Bending low over the intricate stitches and counting their spaces, her features, at a casual glance, still bore their impress of meek and unconscious humility, so far did her accustomed self-control seem to accompany her even when alone. But a more attentive scrutiny would have detected, half hidden beneath the fringed eyelids, a sparkle of gratified triumph, and, in the slightly bent corners of the mouth, a shade of haughty disdain; and little by little, as the moments progressed, these indications of an inner, irrepressible nature gained in intensity, and, as though her fingers were stayed by a tumult of thought, her work slowly began to slip from her grasp.

At length, lifting her head, and, perhaps, for the first time realizing that she was alone and might indulge her impulses without restraint, she abruptly threw from her the folds of the embroidery, and stood erect. Why should she longer trifle with that weak affair of velvet and dyes? Who was the poor, inanimate, and tearful statue in the next room, to order her to complete those tasks? What to herself were the past deeds of the Vanni, that they should be perpetuated in ill-fashioned tapestry, to be hung around a gilded banquet hall? By the gods! she would from that day make a new history in the family life; and it should be recorded, not with silken threads upon embroidered velvet, but should be engraved deeply and ineffaceably upon human hearts!

Standing motionless in the centre of the room, with one foot upon the half-completed tapestry, she now for the first time, and in a flash of inspiration, gave shape and comeliness to her previously confusedly arranged ideas. Until the present moment she had had but little thought of accomplishing anything beyond skilfully availing herself of her natural attractions so as to climb from her menial position into something a little better and higher. If, in the struggle to raise herself from the degradation of slavery, she were obliged to engage in a rivalry with her mistress, and, by robbing her of the affection naturally belonging to her, were to crush her to the earth, it was a thing to be deplored, but it must none the less be done. She might, perhaps, pity the victim, but the sacrifice must be accomplished all the same.

But now these vague dreams of a somewhat better lot, to be determined by future chance circumstances, rolled away like a shapeless cloud, and left in their place one bright image as the settled object of her ambition. So lofty, so dazzling seemed the prize, that another person would have shrunk in dismay from even the thought of striving for it, and even she, for the moment, recoiled. But she was of too determined a nature to falter long. The higher the object to be attained the fewer would be the competitors, and the greater the chance of success to unwearying determination. And if there were but one chance of success in a thousand, it were still worth the struggle.

This great thought which stimulated her ambition was nothing less than the resolution to become the wife of the imperator Sergius. At first it startled her with its apparent wild extravagance; but little by little, as she weighed the chances, it seemed to become more practicable. There was, indeed, nothing grossly impossible in the idea. Men of high rank had ere now married their slaves, and the corrupted society of Rome had winked at mesalliances which, in the days of the republic, would not have been tolerated. And she was merely a slave from accidental circumstances—being free born, and having, but a month before, been the pride and ornament of a respectable though lowly family. Once let her liberty be restored, and the scarcely perceptible taint of a few weeks' serfdom be removed from her, and she would be, in all social respects, fully the equal of the poor, trembling maid of Ostia, to whom, a few years before, the patrician had not been ashamed to stoop.

This bar of social inequality thus removed, the rest might be in her own hands. Sergius no longer felt for his wife the old affection, under the impulse of which he had wedded her; and the few poor remains of the love which he still cherished, more from habit than otherwise, were fast disappearing. This was already so evident as to have become the common gossip of even the lowliest slaves in the household. And he loved herself instead, for not only his actions, but his words had told her so. A little more craft and plotting, therefore—a little further display of innocent and lowly meekness and timid obedience—a few more well-considered efforts to widen the conjugal breach—a week or two more persistent exercise of those fascinations which men were so feeble to resist—jealousy, recrimination, quarrels, and a divorce—and the whole thing might be accomplished. In those days of laxity, divorce was an easy matter. In this case there was no family influence upon the part of the wife to be set up in opposition—but merely an old centurion, ignorant and powerless. A few writings, for form's sake—and the day that sent the weeping wife from the door might install the manumitted and triumphant slave in her place.

All aglow with the ravishing prospect—her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge—Ænone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge hung, in loose folds, a robe of purple velvet, with an embroidered fringe of pearls—a kind of cloak of state, usually worn by her upon the reception of ceremonious visits. To this lounge Leta strode, threw herself upon it, drew the velvet garment over her shoulders, so that the long folds fell down gracefully and swept the marble pavement at her feet, and there, half sitting, half reclining, assumed an attitude of courtly dignity, as though mistress of the palace.

And it must be confessed that she well suited the place. With her lithe, graceful figure thrown into a position in which the gentle languor of unembarrassed leisure was mingled with the dignity of queenly state—with her burning eyes so tempered in their brilliancy that they seemed ready at the same instant to bid defiance to impertinent intrusion, and to bestow gracious condescension upon suppliant timidity—with every feature glowing with that proper pride which is not arrogance, and that proper kindliness which is not humility—there was probably in all Rome no noble matron who could as well adorn her chair of ceremony. Beside her, the true mistress of the place would have appeared as a timid child dismayed with unaccustomed honors; and in comparison, the empress herself might not fill her throne in the palace of the Cæsars with half the grace and dignity.