Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 6. Chapter VI (continued)

'Egyptian, were even I to consent, my sister loathes the very air thou breathest: but I have my own wrongs to forgive--I may pardon thee that thou hast made me a tool to thy deceits, but never that thou hast seduced me to become the abettor of thy vices--a polluted and a perjured man. Tremble!--even now I prepare the hour in which thou and thy false gods shall be unveiled. Thy lewd and Circean life shall be dragged to day--thy mumming oracles disclosed--the fane of the idol Isis shall be a byword and a scorn--the name of Arbaces a mark for the hisses of execration! Tremble!'

The flush on the Egyptian's brow was succeeded by a livid paleness. He looked behind, before, around, to feel assured that none were by; and then he fixed his dark and dilating eye on the priest, with such a gaze of wrath and menace, that one, perhaps, less supported than Apaecides by the fervent daring of a divine zeal, could not have faced with unflinching look that lowering aspect. As it was, however, the young convert met it unmoved, and returned it with an eye of proud defiance.

'Apaecides,' said the Egyptian, in a tremulous and inward tone, 'beware! What is it thou wouldst meditate? Speakest thou--reflect, pause before thou repliest--from the hasty influences of wrath, as yet divining no settled purpose, or from some fixed design?'

'I speak from the inspiration of the True God, whose servant I now am,' answered the Christian, boldly; 'and in the knowledge that by His grace human courage has already fixed the date of thy hypocrisy and thy demon's worship; ere thrice the sun has dawned, thou wilt know all! Dark sorcerer, tremble, and farewell!'

All the fierce and lurid passions which he inherited from his nation and his clime, at all times but ill concealed beneath the blandness of craft and the coldness of philosophy, were released in the breast of the Egyptian. Rapidly one thought chased another; he saw before him an obstinate barrier to even a lawful alliance with Ione--the fellow-champion of Glaucus in the struggle which had baffled his designs--the reviler of his name--the threatened desecrator of the goddess he served while he disbelieved--the avowed and approaching revealer of his own impostures and vices. His love, his repute, nay, his very life, might be in danger--the day and hour seemed even to have been fixed for some design against him. He knew by the words of the convert that Apaecides had adopted the Christian faith: he knew the indomitable zeal which led on the proselytes of that creed. Such was his enemy; he grasped his stilus--that enemy was in his power! They were now before the chapel; one hasty glance once more he cast around; he saw none near--silence and solitude alike tempted him.