Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis (1897 Curtin translation).djvu/81

Rh given by Aulus's guests and the servants; she had heard that statues to her had been thrown down in the night in the city; she had heard of inscriptions, the writers of which had been condemned to severest punishment, but which still appeared every morning on the walls of the city. Yet at sight of the notorious Poppaea, considered by the confessors of Christ as the incarnation of crime and evil, it seemed to her that angels or spirits of heaven might look like her. She was unable simply to take her eyes from Poppaea; and from her lips was wrested involuntarily the question,

"Ah, Marcus, can it be possible?"

But he, roused by wine, and as it were impatient that so many things had scattered her attention, and taken her from him and his words, said, "Yes, she is beautiful, but thou art a hundred times more beautiful. Thou dost not know thyself, or thou wouldst be in love with thyself, as Narcissus was; she bathes in asses' milk, but Venus bathed thee in her own milk. Thou dost not know thyself, Ocelle mi! Look not at her. Turn thy eyes to me, Ocelle mi! Touch this goblet of wine with thy lips, and I will put mine on the same place."

And he pushed up nearer and nearer, and she began to withdraw towards Acte. But at that moment silence was enjoined because Caesar had risen. The singer Diodorus had given him a lute of the kind called delta; another named Terpnos, who had to accompany him in playing, approached with an instrument called the nablium. Nero, resting the delta on the table, raised his eyes; and for a moment silence reigned in the triclinium, broken only by a rustle, as the roses fell continually from the ceiling.

Then he began to sing, or rather to declaim, singingly and rhythmically, to the accompaniment of the two lutes, his own hymn to Venus. Neither the voice, though somewhat injured, nor the verses were bad, so that reproaches of conscience took possession of Lygia again; for the hymn, though glorifying the impure pagan Venus, seemed to her more than beautiful, and Caesar himself, with his laurel crown on his head and his uplifted eyes, nobler, much less terrible, and less repulsive than at the beginning of the feast.

The guests answered with a thunder of applause. Cries of, "Oh, heavenly voice!" were heard round about; some of the women raised their hands, and held them thus, as a sign of delight, even after the end of the hymn; others