Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 2. Chapter II (continued)

'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 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!--surpass 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 participated--to desecrate the altars he had served--to denounce the goddess 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 compassion, 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.