It was the morning of Diomed's banquet; and Diomed himself, though he greatly 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 ungirdled on his portly stomach, his easy 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 to chamber of his .
He did not 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 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 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 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 for heating water or other .
Across the small kitchen flitted many forms which the quick eye of the master did not recognize.
'Oh! oh!' he to himself, 'that cursed Congrio hath invited a whole legion of cooks to assist 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 : ready, , are their hands, capacious are their . Me miserum!'
The cooks, however, worked on, seemingly heedless of the 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 !' thought Diomed; 'he talks of eggs as if they were a sesterce a hundred!'
'By Mercury!' cried a pert little culinary , 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, Sallust'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 fashion, cost what it will!'
'Thou liest, base slave!' cried Diomed, in a great passion—and thou costest me already enough to have ruined Lucullus himself! Come out of thy , I want to talk to thee.'
The slave, with a sly 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 into my house?—I see thief written in every line of their faces.'
'Yet, I assure 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 moneys of mine, by what reserved filchings from , by what goodly meats converted into grease, and sold in the suburbs, by what false charges for bronzes , and broken—hast thou been enabled to make them serve thee for thy sake?'
', master, do not my honesty! May the gods desert me if...'
'Swear not!' again interrupted the Diomed, 'for then the gods will thee for a , 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 assistants, and tell me no tales to-morrow of vases broken, and cups 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 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 out its juices. Be modest this time, Congrio—wary and modest. is the nurse of great actions; and in all other things, as in this, if thou 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 assailant of my cranes—yon pert-tongued of the kitchen, was there aught but on his tongue when he the of my sweetmeat shapes? I would not be out of the fashion, 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—shine——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 from Britain, and other things, too numerous now to recite, are yet left for. But what matter? every one trusts the Archimagirus of Diomed the wealthy!'
'Oh, unconscionable !—what waste!—what !—I am ruined! But go, hasten—inspect!—taste!—perform!—surpass thyself! Let the Roman senator not despise the poor Pompeian. Away, slave—and remember, the Phrygian attagens.'
The chief disappeared within his natural , and Diomed rolled back his portly presence to the more courtly . All was to his liking—the flowers were fresh, the fountains played briskly, the pavements were as smooth as mirrors.
'Where is my daughter Julia?' he asked.
'At the bath.'
'Ah! that reminds me!—time !—and I must bathe also.'
Our story returns to Apaecides. On awaking that day from the broken and sleep which had followed his of a faith so strikingly and sternly at with that in which his youth had been , 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 enterprise he had pledged his life!—to unveil the mysteries in which he had participated—to the altars he had served—to denounce the goddess whose ministering robe he wore! Slowly he became sensible of the and the horror he should provoke amongst the , even if successful; if in his daring attempt, what penalties might he not for an offence hitherto unheard of—for which no specific law, from experience, was prepared; and which, for that very reason, , dragged from the sharpest armoury of and inapplicable legislation, would probably be distorted to meet! His friends—the sister of his youth—could he expect justice, though he might receive , from them? This brave and heroic act would by their heathen eyes be regarded, perhaps, as a apostasy—at the best as a pitiable madness.
He dared, he , everything in this world, in the hope of securing that 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 , with reminiscences of revenge for deceit, of indignant disgust at fraud, to raise and to support him.
The conflict was sharp and keen; but his new feelings triumphed over his old: and a argument in favor of wrestling with the sanctities of old opinions and forms might be found in the conquest over both, achieved by that priest. Had the early been more controlled by 'the solemn plausibilities of custom'—less of in the pure and lofty acceptation of that 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, himself, as usual, in his robes, and left his narrow chamber, he found himself before the altars of the temple.
In the of his late emotions he had slept far into the morning, and the sun already poured its beams over the sacred place.
'Salve, Apaecides!' said a voice, whose natural was smoothed by long into an almost softness of tone. 'Thou art late abroad; has the goddess 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 is wise enough to hold commune with none but priests.'
'A time may come when she will be unveiled without her own .'
'It is not likely: she has triumphed for ages. And that which has so long stood the test of time rarely to the of novelty. But hark ye, young brother! these sayings are indiscreet.'
'It is not for thee to silence them,' replied Apaecides, .
'So hot!—yet I will not quarrel with thee. Why, my Apaecides, has not the Egyptian convinced thee of the necessity of our together in ? Has he not convinced thee of the wisdom of the people and enjoying ourselves? If not, oh, brother! he is not that great magician he is .'
'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 . Beware the of the goddess, 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 . When he got a few paces from the temple, he turned to look back. Calenus had already disappea............