University of Virginia Library

II
FRAGMENTS OF A DRAMA ON THE LIFE OF THE EMPEROR JULIAN

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

• CONSTANCE: THE KING
• EUSEBIA: THE QUEEN
• HELENA: HIS SISTER
• JULIAN: HIS COUSIN
• EUSEBIUS: LORD CHAMBERLAIN
• ARBETIO
• REMIGIUS
• MERCURIUS
• APODEMIUS

Scene: Milan, Como, Milan.

ACT I

The Privy Council hall in the Palace at Milan
EUSEBIUS REMIGIUS ARBETIO MERCURIUS
EUSEBIUS.
Have you the news of't?

ARBETIO.
Rumours, nothing more.

EUS.
And yet by this the Fury should be dead.
They had him.

MERCURIUS.
Oh, had him! perhaps! but well we know,
While yet th' imperial prisoner, hither bound,
At Adrianople tarried, now and again
A soldier, privy officer, detached
From garrisons then wintered thereabouts,
Down the palatial corridors or plain
At the high gate with pleas of business still
Admittance to the Cæsar asked. They say
None saw him, but—

ARB.
None. I have 't too certainly
That we should vex our comfort and belief
With your amused suspicions.

MER.
Often, Sir,
You 're well informed, and oft again too well.

EUS.
I judge Arbetio right. A costly risk
To slip a criminal so superb! Let be,
For newer things press for attention.
This monster dead, as out of doubt I say
He will be or is, one, only one remains
Of the imperial race, this man's half-brother
And cousin to King Constance, Julian.
I make no question (as having darkly, yet
In words sufficient, touched upon this theme
Amongst us all and certain other few
You know of) hereupon the agreement stands:
That he we speak of, newly here arrived
By order, Julian—

MER.
Tush! Some one comes.

[Enter SERVANT.]
SERVANT.
One Apodemius in the Courtyard waits
His Majesty's good pleasure.

EUS.
Looks he glad?

SER.
Dead with his haste and journey, yet withal
A bearer of good news, your Lordship.

EUS.
Let Apodemius appear—or no!
You'll wait an order.
[Exit SERVANT.]
Cæsar's dead. If then
Occasion come to push our scheme, the road
In general direction cleared, it needs
No further counsel to begin, excepting
What special case the future bring to note.
We have our cues.

[Preceded by guards, the KING and QUEEN enter and take their seats.]
KING.
We give you all good morrow.
Has news arrived from Pola?

EUS.
Please you, one
Waits your good order, Apodemius.

KING.
Waits? How is this?

EUS.
This minute just announced.

KING.
Order him 'fore us. Quick!
[EUSEBIUS calls in SERVANT, who goes to fetch APODEMIUS.]
You counsellors,
In such a matter, when the Roman realm
Shudders in earthquake, play a peevish rôle.
Where is this man? It seems we wait! It seems—
[APODEMIUS enters. The guards meanwhile are dismissed.]
Tell him, Eusebius, he may speak to us.

APODEMIUS.
His Majesty 's obeyed, the tyrant dead:
Yet in the extreme of haste so to outstrip
All speed of rumour and uncertain noise,
That first the fact this Royal Highness first
Might fully hold, I not an instant hung
With pen or style my duties to detail,
But straight on the issue, seen participant,
Springing to horse and spurring, here I am
Without a brief and only fit to speak.
Will 't please his Majesty—

KING.
He has our ear.

APO.
I pass how, to our order prompt, we rode,
Barbatio and I, hence from Milan
The long and wintry way hot-speed across
Venetia's windy plane-land by Trieste
And, rounding Caraganca, east and north.
On the ninth day, sunset, we did dismount
At the inn appointed at Petovio
And straight were ushered 'fore his Majesty's
High cousin Gallus, Cæsar of th' Orient.
Whom first we reassured, then hand to hand—
He tame but twitching, and with sloven eyes
But soft, suspicious, timid, dangerous—
We stripped his regal robes and changing clapped
A soldier's shirt and cloak upon him. “Quick up!”
Barbatio said to the man, and in his eyes
Two sparks grew big and died. Then all of us
With Leontius, Lucillian, Scudilo
(The last at the whip), in public waggon drove.
'T was bitter dark. That night and all the day,
Served by relays and weather, rattling past
Celeja and Emona, late we made
Nauportus; and a carcass to the floor
Could have no dull-or-deader slumped than I.
I slept the matter of a night-watch, then
Sat upright, cold awake, a crazy scream
Fresh in my ear. I crept to Cæsar's door:
Which drawn ajar, I heard about his chamber
The man astir and shuffling, short of breath,
Who in delirium poorly blurted out
Pieces of names and words,
Awful entreaties to a swarm of ghosts
That steeply wading up the dark, said he,
Uncoiled their arms at him. A moment then
Cut by a gasp—their fingers had his throat—
And suddenly over down he fell to ground.
From embers twinkling on the foreroom hearth
I lit a lamp—

KING.
O finish, Sir! be quick.
He was a—Briefer much! I say, be much,
Much briefer. Ho, proceed.

APO.
The morrow come—

KING
[stamping on the ground].
Proceed, I said. You hear me. Eusebius,
Tell this impossible man to say his tale.

MER.
[aside].
He 's very troubled.

APO.
Crossed the chamber where
Snoring upon their straw my fellows lay,
The door then pushing aside which forward sucked
My wretched flame, I entered. On the floor
He sprawled and opened up to mine
Unspeakable bad eyes, his flaxen beard
Red with a gash in falling, and his breath
From hollow nostrils hanging white and full
In the black cold. He staggered on my arm
Back fainting to the truckle-bed. Next day
Close on sunrise we rounded by Trieste
For Pola, slackening to the common pace,
For he was sick. There on the second morn
Arraigned before ourselves 't was asked of him,
In th' Emperor's name and ceremonious, why
All thro' the Roman East and Antioch, why
With such a thrifty hand he countersigned
That world of deaths. Whereat his visage grew
Gray-white and glazen; dizzy to a chair
He sank and, near distorted with dry sobs,
Blubbered the name of Constantina, his wife,
Who 'd pricked him on. Barbatio then pronounced
Death on him. That moment in our council-hall
Especially despatched Serenian came
To urge the royal haste. We seized the caitiff,
Strapping his hands behind him; flung him down
Dead-faint with terror, an unfeeling mass
Lying outstretched, and 'headed him.—I saw,
And mounting spurred away: in proof whereof
Down at the kingly feet I cast his shoes
Of which the purple heels a thousand lives
Ground into anguish.

KING
[after a pause and slowly].
Dead! Gallus is dead;
Our subjects and our kingdom and ourselves
Are rid— [eyeing APODEMIUS and aside]
he 's surely speaking truth—are rid
Of one we nurtured, loved, and lifted up
Beside us: but th' imperial mind and blood
In him grew cancerous, and inch by inch,
Even as I feared of him, of others, of—
[A pause.]
[To APODEMIUS.]
We thank our servants well; a recompense
Remigius from our private fund will pay,
An hundred aurei. [APODEMIUS and REMIGIUS exeunt.]


ARB.
[aside].
H'm! Conscience-money!

MER.
[to ARBETIO].
You say?

ARB.
[to MERCURIUS carefully].
It might, I say, Sir, have been less.

EUS.
If one so private as a servant speak,
This riddance falls a miracle, done to all
By your own Majesty's most reverent self.
More shrewdly planned, more wise in every point
No measure e'er was took, and managed so
Direct from the Imperial Throne, amid
What trouble, care, anxiety!

MER.
Indeed
A friend in office, who like none other knows
That Syrian region where this hydra raged,
Writes how the gladness lighting every face
Blazons you forth in hymns.

EUS.
And nearly now
Your sacred throne in undisturbed repose—

[A pause.]
KING.
Ah, nearly!

EUS.
Nearly! Would the truth were quite.

QUEEN.
Your drift, your meaning, my Lord Chamberlain?

EUS.
Not without counsel 'fore your Majesties
I broach a thing yourselves and (God knows) we
Distressed consider. Nothing now were said
And my mistaken thought forgot and gone,
But that a question haply put, a word
Here dropped and there, a gesture, showed,
Alas! not only I, but others, nay
Many the same in secret had revolved.
I mean the dead man's brother, Julian.

KING.
And—what of him?

EUS.
What say you, Arbetio?

ARB.
A studious man.

MER.
If only studious!
For study then he left Macellum?

KING.
Left?

EUS.
This I'd not heard.

MER.
Your Majesties remember
By their good pleasure certain years ago
These cousins, then but youths, both were removed
To Cappadocia. There with retinue,
Tutors and priests and whatsoever goes
For princely education, they abode
In the imperial palace at Macellum,
Free surely, but too young, no doubt too young
To roam at pleasure and—enough!—

QUEEN.
My Lord,
Think you in private here this matter needs
A language so obscure?

MER.
Believe me, I mean—
[To the KING.]
Well, in religion did your Majesty's
Blest father Constantine, and, following him,
Did not your sacred self edict and write
Yourselves and all the imperial realm of Rome
Christians, followers of the crucified?
In the which spirit these cousins of your blood
With care were tutored. Certain still it is
Incognito this very Julian,
Seen in Nicomedeia, heard and loved
The pagan Greeks; nor only churches there,
But elsewhere temples oft he visited
With friends, with many friends.

EUS.
A virtue this
That nature richly gave him. A mere boy,
He wore misfortune prettily, as tho'
Knowing the popular heart; and walked abroad
With modest ways. But mine is harder news.
When the man Gallus, treasonable and
A prisoner by the common judgment damned,
Still unsuspecting here from Syria
Journeyed upon these summons, and awhile
Within Constantinople played the King,
This brother of his there met, conferred with him—

KING.
Where had you this?

EUS.
Your Majesty—

KING.
Where had you this?
Around my throne I feel a sea of snakes
Rocking their heads, and struck I each new day
A score of them, the tide still hisses in
Snapping its poisoned whips. To keep alive
And steer this kingdom forward into time,
It needs a thousand eyes, and in the skull
Brains like an ant-hill. So then Julian
Talked with this madman and, you say, conspired—

EUS.
Conferred—

KING.
And Gallus came—he surely knew 't—
To answer justice.

EUS.
Oh, very like, altho'
It appears he knew not.

KING.
I know a thousand things:
Rancorous memories, present ills and fears,
And wicked calculations yet to be,
They talked of, whispering, this tricky pair.

MER.
They 're now no more a pair, your Majesty.

QUEEN
[to EUSEBIUS].
'T was in Constantinople—how long ago
Say you, my Lord, this happened?

EUS.
Of the day,
Tho' my report in nothing specifies,
'T were easy reckoning—if't be true or false.

QUEEN.
I 'd somehow thought the prince about those days
Half way to Milan here.

ARB.
Indeed.

QUEEN.
My Liege,
Rather than hang in this uneasy thought
And catch suspicion, say, we heard the man
Here now himself—

KING.
Not now.

QUEEN.
For ne'er as yet
Yourself have seen him; scarcely at court have we
Noticed his figure, consecrate it seems
To dusty books and dead philosophies.
From his apartments, neighbour tho' he be,
He goes abroad affrighted, gloomy, shy,
And blinking in the royal light. A word
Might lure him to us, or at least disclose
His deeper thought.

KING.
Not now, not here.

QUEEN.
Methinks
It ill befits our Selves and ministers
To make gossip of justice; and yourself
Are in this thing distinguished that you dealt
Only the large inevitable Fate.

KING.
As far as in us lies.

QUEEN.
In whom lies all,
Whom all regards, of whom does all depend.

KING.
And so, alas, we were eternity.

QUEEN.
Now worthily yourself—as one who sees
The heart of things—a moment here admit
This man before you. Maybe he 's a thing
Unfit your use: well, then away with him.
Your purpose lies across the world too swift
For mean distinction: so, away with him.
But if he 've stuff to serve, obey you and
Receive your orders, here a moment lost
Is wisdom, justice, prudence and yourself.

KING.
Arbetio, here, approach us.

EUS.
[to MERCURIUS aside].
The—the Queen
About this thing behaves a shade—what say you?

MER.
'T is said she pities him; and then, and then
A woman, childless, young—but not in youth.

EUS.
You knew her fancy?

MER.
I? And you?

KING
[to ARBETIO].
And say
We ask our cousin here before us, on
A matter of high concern.

[Exit ARBETIO.]
EUS.
Your Majesty
No doubt in this is well-advised; we pray
That somehow rumour wrongs him, and somehow
He will assure us, being a different man
Than was his fearful brother.

QUEEN.
Step-brothers
Are oft alike in name, nay, brothers even!
Yet in our cousin 't is not himself, the man,
Concerns us, but the manner of his use.
For were he, as 't appears, a student merely,
To us he goes for nothing; and therefor
We see him, to choose amongst his qualities.

MER.
Your Highnesses alone
Can judge their servants, or if any such
They wish. Nay, for the matter of his faith
He might indeed be pagan, might as 't were
Repudiate th' imperial creed—

KING.
Is this
So certain?

MER.
Your Majesty mistakes; I say:
He might so be, yet none the less subserve
The public interest. Further, if't be true
As 't is reported, he in private held
With the dead criminal his brother, why,
It matters less, much less it matters than
[Enter ARBETIO and JULIAN.]
When Gallus was alive.

JULIAN
[aside].
Was—said he was?
To sting me. Four, five vultures! Many behind
Fly croaking up. Beware! It 's full of eyes.
[To the KING.]
Your Majesty has been pleased—your—
[As he bows at the throne he sees the Cæsar's shoes.]
Pardon me—
Is—is he dead?

[Looks at ARBETIO, who gives a sign of assent; guards are just visible at the door.]
KING.
My cousin Julian,
We have summoned you to learn—

JUL.
[aside].
My hour is come!

KING.
First how the Cæsar Gallus, time ago
Complained of and accused day after day
In Syria, Palestine, in Egypt; cursed
Here at my throne so oft, so bitterly,
By soldier and civilian, multitudes,
It seemed it rained his crimes; and finally
Howled out of Asia by the hungry mobs
He had harried into frenzy: him, say I,
Our court sitting in judgment heard, and damned
By his own sentence.

JUL.
[aside].
They 're in ambush here
To choke me with his blood.

QUEEN.
My cousin, come!
You 're dizzy, sit you down. The dreadful news
Has left you sick.

JUL.
[aside].
A woman to sweeten it!

QUEEN.
Recover, recollect: your better mind,
Your truer mind will be, like us, severe.
It is the parent's pain, it is the ruler's
That mercy fails and in the larger end
Justice alone is good. Bethink you now,
This man your brother and our cousin, raised
To sit beside us on the Roman throne:
How can your love in him obliterate
The thing he was, or rescue even his grave
From all those visitors—

JUL.
[starting up].
Yes, Madam, yes!
Out of the dark a wiry pair of hands
Upon their victim fastened either side
Shake the breath out of him, and hoisting high
His pitiable skeleton in the wind
Drop it away on some black shore where Ocean
Shouts a damnation on 't for evermore.

KING
[muttering].
Take him away, he is a spy of Night,
Take him away.

EUS.
Your Majesty desires?

[Motions to the guards.]
JUL.
[aside.]
Their grips contract. O God, tear out my soul!

QUEEN.
My Liege, we lose our purpose. Had we not
Some questions here to clear?

JUL.
[aside].
Questions, oho!

KING.
'T was in Constantinople you last beheld
This man of wrath?

JUL.
Even as you say.
[The KING starts. EUSEBIUS smiles. JULIAN continues aside.]
He smiles.
They've trapped me—a deadly point—what was 't I said?

KING.
Often alone you saw him? Around him you had
Friends or a party? What! Th' appointed guard
Approved your intercourse? Answer me, Sir,
Your money oiled the locks, and you with Gallus
Compared your secrecies?

JUL.
Money—and guards?
Foolish or mad—I nothing understand.
'T was in Constantinople—so much I know—
Three years ago, as many a man may tell—
[The KING is satisfied.]
Arbetio, you were there.

ARB.
My Lord, I was.

EUS.
In days more recent nor so long ago
As three years since, no doubt your Lordship knows
Cæsar lay in the city?

JUL.
Perhaps. I know
It seems a thousandfold more years than three
Since last I saw his face.

EUS.
Not, then, two months?

JUL.
Gods of Heaven! The patience of the sea and wind
Would crack like glass and starting up the air
Draw blood from heaven. Can I go diving down
The muddy fathoms of your thought? What is 't?
My eyes are here: why, then, look into them.—
I'm lost:
The sun there sputters on the verge and goes
Whirled off in ashes; the earth swells after it;
It 's night, and cruel things, talons and beaks,
Dash criss-cross in the dark.

EUS.
He 's wandering.

QUEEN.
Open the window. Spring and morning soon
Will charm the frightened brain. It 's o'er.—My cousin,
We wish you nothing ill. A rumour told
You and the Cæsar in Constantinople,
Where marked for punishment he there abode,
Two months ago conferred.

JUL.
Then rumour lies,
And for all petty mention and regard
Of time and place and thought and day and hour
I speak the rough, short truth: I was not there.
No one but knows, or might if know they would,
The places of my dwelling,—the better know,
That not my fancy chooses, but the will
Of mine imperial cousin and master: whom
Never at all in aught I disobeyed.

KING.
So we believe, approve, and do expect
As from a Christian subject.

JUL.
[aside].
Christian!

MER.
[to EUSEBIUS].
He sticks at Christian.

KING.
It had on us devolved,
Child that you were, to rear you and to instruct;
And at Macellum where those your boyish years
In good seclusion passed, well you remember
We appointed to you prelates and divines
Of that True Faith whereof blest Constantine,
My august father, champion first arose.
For he, we after him, and with us you,
Abjure the foolish gods: our throne adores
Christ Jesus: Rome and Christendom.

MER.
[to EUSEBIUS].
He frowns.

EUS.
[to MERCURIUS].
This man we called a bookworm hides
I' the scabbard of his mind a fearful thought.
I'll not believe it stands for him in earnest
With baubles of religion.

MER.
[to EUSEBIUS].
So say I.

EUS.
[aside].
'T is passing strange.

KING.
You 're silent, answer us.

JUL.
Of me was nothing asked.

KING.
You 're trifling, Sir.
Of old it seems you knew Nicomedeia
And from Macellum wandered oft, a boy,
In her downfalling temples.

JUL.
[aside].
Desperation!
The Christians on the scent: I stand at bay.

KING.
Is 't true?

JUL.
Macellum ne'er I left at all
But by your order. It grates me to repeat
I speak the truth; and, good or bad, my witness
I cannot better, not I. Am I a skulk,
A beast that steals at evening slyly abroad?
All they can see who will, [aside]
and many watch.

KING.
You visit oft and travel far to see
The ruined shrines.

JUL.
[quickly, then dreaming].
In this was no restriction
Upon me made. My study long has lain
In things forgot, or nearly; and of them
The shadows lengthening at later day
And spiritual out of the sun's great heart
In violet, in crimson, and in gold
Walk the forlorn campanias, to the sound
Of Homer's hymns in order filing on
Between Ionian columns— [MERCURIUS smiles.]
Mercurius,
Did ever you see an ape?

MER.
My Lord, I did.

JUL.
They grin, they chuckle: think you they understand?

MER.
No doubt your Lordship speaks
Of the philosophers and pagan priests
That in the gardens of Nicomedeia—
Edesius, Chrysanthius, Maximus—

JUL.
Poor courtier, you blaspheme.

KING.
What are these men?

JUL.
They 're—woe to them!—this gentleman has said it:
Merely philosophers and pagan priests,
Who in the brain's high nonsense are embarked
On seas of error, wastes of speculation,
After the quest and mirage of the truth.
Pity for them, my Lords! Had they been able,
They 'd vowed their vulgar lives to better ends,
To court and office, manners, money, and
The brilliant business of ambition;
Also, they 'd long abandoned the ancient creed,
Abandoned long ago beliefs that—they 'd
Been converts to the new, but that their souls,
Saturate and all kneaded up in one
With dull ideals of an extinguished world,
Live in them and go like drunken mariners
Bows-on for folly and th' enormous night.
Nevertheless in them I keep some interest—
Pardon me, all!—I stand not much ashamed
Of talking idly, now a little and then,
With these poor people. Alas, your Majesty!
Let me go back! I beg: let me go back!
I nothing ask of life, nothing at all
But what in the divine disposal lies
Obscurely measured to the simple man.
I do not look to climb the dizzy rungs
Of power and victory; suspicion
Loses her time about my lonely life;
I have no skill with men; the worldly art
Crazes and irritates me, and the sight
Of all this complication and design
Rubs an acid into my brain that makes me—
A pantomime.

KING.
We'll further talk of this
Another time. The charges laid against you—
As kindly we foresaw—are things to warn
Your farther life. You leave us.

[Exit JULIAN slowly.]
EUS.
[to MERCURIUS].
Of two things
This man is one: a viper that belief
Gasps to conceive of, or else a simpleton
Fast going mad.

MER.
[to EUSEBIUS].
He may be what he seems.

KING.
Your presences we later shall require.
From our infinite realm at various points
Bad news of war and insurrection crowds
So thick I doubt myself. A single man,
Whoe'er he be and at his own self's best,
Recoils, and weakening pitiably cries
He 's but a man.

EUS.
This cannot here be said,
And Fortune bows to Genius on a throne.

KING.
You'll find our counsellors assembled: they
With you await our pleasure.
[Exeunt EUSEBIUS, MERCURIUS, and ARBETIO.]
Eusebius
Alone deserves our sum of royal trust.

QUEEN.
As for this Julian—

KING.
Of him—

QUEEN.
His brain
With study and solitude is all o'erwrought.
He 's a mad child; only a little rest
And looking leisurely in human eyes
Would quite restore him. The stuff and fibre is there
That you should use, and in your thoughts alone
Of all the cunning men 't was plain to see
You guessed him out.

KING.
I did, no doubt I did.

QUEEN.
The Spring 's far gone and Summer comes apace:
We leave for Como. What say you, my Liege?
Your sister Helena and myself can take
This madcap with us; we'll have Mercurius
To advise our action. Near us he'll betray
His way of life, his nature and his hope.
We'll make him ours or—What character had his father?

KING.
I knew him little; speak not of him.

QUEEN.
Or else
What is to 'come of him?

KING.
Accursed thought.

QUEEN.
Then trust us with him.

KING.
Take him away,
But hold, but—understand me—day and night
Held fast. I think he should not ever escape.

ACT II

FRAGMENTS

I

JULIAN.
... there singing mends
His tackles on the shore—

REMIGIUS.
I'll bid him stop
To trouble you with his noise.

QUEEN.
... but that it's youth,
We all had youth, but not all sang it thro'.

II

QUEEN
The rarer gift
Is in the uses of imagination.
Many a poet or philosopher
Above his private ecstasy has seen
Venus and Truth, but from the sacred mount
With inward glory silently descended
Too selfish or too poor to speak a word.
Some very few have spoken, and by them
Humanity reminded to herself
More truly lives. But fewer, oh, how much fewer
Are they who crowning inspiration gave
The proof and grace of a majestic life,
And in the sordid world, the press of men,
Greed, pleasure, crime, abandon, passion, death,
Still armoured in their visionary gold
Did human deeds.
Rather in this they fail; and by how much
The flame rolls whiter thro' their mortal heart,
Their brain more terrible, their open eyes
Quicker and more fantastic, and their souls
Strung for a brighter flight among the stars,
So their relapse outdoes disaster—as if
Genius were a debt of Man to Nature
Paid alive on itself.

JUL.
You know not what it is to be alone;
You know it not.

EUS.
Oh, God forgive you this.