cannot pass, sir,” said the captain of that party which intercepted his exit. “The chief priestess hath ordered that thou appear before the god in his cella and then do worship and submit thyself to his will.”
“And how is that will to be declared?” asked the young man, jestingly.
“Sir! thou must eat one of the dedicated placenta.”
“I have heard of these same cakes and have no stomach for them.”
“Nevertheless eat thou must.”
“What if I will not?”
“Then constraint will be used. The prefect has given his consent. Who is to deliver thee?”
“Who! Here come my deliverers!”
A tramp of feet was audible.
Instantly Æmilius ran back to the balustrade, leaped upon it, and, waving his arm, shouted:
“To my aid, Utriculares! But use no violence.”
Instantly with a shout a dense body of men that had rolled into the gardens dashed itself against the ring of Cultores Nemausi. They brandished marlin spikes and oars to which were attached inflated goat-skins and bladders. These they whirled around their heads and with them they smote to the left and to the right. The distended skins clashed against such as stood in opposition, and sent them reeling backward; whereat the lusty men wielding the wind-bags thrust their way as a wedge through their ranks. The worshippers of Nemausus swore, screamed, remonstrated, but were unable to withstand the onslaught. They were beaten back and dispersed by the whirling bladders.
The general mob roared with laughter and cheered the boatmen who formed the attacking party. Cries of “Well done, Utriculares! That is a fine delivery, Wind-bag-men! Ha, ha! A hundred to five on the Utriculares! You are come in the nick of time, afore your patron was made to nibble the poisoned cakes.”
The men armed with air-distended skins did harm to none. Their weapons were calculated to alarm and not to injure. To be banged in the face with a bladder was almost as disconcerting as to be smitten with a cudgel, but it left no bruise, it broke no bone, and the man sent staggering by a wind-bag was received in the arms of those in rear with jibe or laugh and elicited no compassion.
The Utriculares speedily reached Æmilius, gave vent to a cheer; they lifted him on their shoulders, and, swinging the inflated skins and shouting, marched off, out of the gardens, through the Forum, down the main street of the lower town unmolested, under the conduct of Callipodius.
CHAPTER V
THE LAGOONS
The men who carried and surrounded Æmilius proceeded in rapid march, chanting a rhythmic song, through the town till they emerged on a sort of quay beside a wide-spreading shallow lagoon. Here were moored numerous rafts.
“Now, sir,” said one of the men, as Æmilius leaped to the ground, “if you will take my advice, you will allow us to convey you at once to Arelate. This is hardly a safe place for you at present.”
“I must thank you all, my gallant fellows, for your timely aid. But for you I should have been forced to eat of the dedicated cakes, and such as are out of favor with the god – or, rather, with the priesthood that lives by him, as cockroaches and black beetles by the baker – such are liable to get stomach aches, which same stomach aches convey into the land where are no aches and pains. I thank you all.”
“Nay, sir, we did our duty. Are not you patron of the Utriculares?”
“I am your patron assuredly, as you did me the honor to elect me. If I have lacked zeal to do you service in time past, henceforward be well assured I will devote my best energies to your cause.”
“We are beholden to you, sir.”
“I to you – the rather.”
Perhaps the reader will desire to understand who the wind-bag men were who had hurried to the rescue of Æmilius. For the comprehension of this particular, something must be said relative to the physical character of the country.
The mighty Rhône that receives the melted snows of the southern slope of the Bernese Oberland and the northern incline of the opposed Pennine Alps receives also the drain of the western side of the Jura, as well as that of the Graian and Cottian Alps. The Durance pours in its auxiliary flood below Avignon.
After a rapid thaw of snow, or the breaking of charged rain clouds on the mountains, these rivers increase in volume, and as the banks of the Rhône below the junction of the Durance and St. Raphael are low, it overflows and spreads through the flat alluvial delta. It would be more exact to say that it was wont to overflow, rather than that it does so now. For at present, owing to the embankments thrown up and maintained at enormous cost, the Rhône can only occasionally submerge the low-lying land, whereas anciently such floods were periodical and as surely expected as those of the Nile.
The overflowing Rhône formed a vast region of lagoons that extended from Tarascon and Beaucaire to the Gulf of Lyons, and spread laterally over the Crau on one side to Nîmes on the other. Nîmes itself stood on its own river, the Vistre, but this fed marshes and “broads” that were connected with the tangle of lagoons formed by the Rhône.
Arelate, the great emporium of the trade between Gaul and Italy, occupied a rocky islet in the midst of water that extended as far as the eye could reach. This tract of submerged land was some sixty miles in breadth by forty in depth, was sown with islets of more or less elevation and extent. Some were bold, rocky eminences, others were mere rubble and sand-banks formed by the river. Arelate or Arles was accessible by vessels up and down the river or by rafts that plied the lagoons, and by the canal constructed by Marius, that traversed them from Fossoe Marino. As the canal was not deep, and as the current of the river was strong, ships were often unable to ascend to the city through these arteries, and had to discharge their merchandise on the coast upon rafts that conveyed it to the great town, and when the floods permitted, carried much to Nemausus.
As the sheets of water were in places and at periods shallow, the rafts were made buoyant, though heavily laden, by means of inflated skins and bladders placed beneath them.
As the conveyance of merchandise engaged a prodigious number of persons, the raftsmen had organized themselves into the guild of Utriculares, or Wind-bag men, and as they became not infrequently involved in contests with those whose interests they crossed, and on whose privileges they infringed, they enlisted the aid of lawyers to act as their patrons, to bully their enemies, and to fight their battles against assailants. Among the numerous classic monumental inscriptions that remain in Provence, there are many in which a man of position is proud to have it recorded that he was an honorary member of the club of the inflated-skin men.
Nemausus owed much of its prosperity to the fact that it was the trade center for wool and for skins. The Cevennes and the great limestone plateaux that abut upon them nourished countless herds of goats and flocks of sheep, and the dress of everyone at the period being of wool the demand for fleeces was great; consequently vast quantities of wool were brought from the mountains of Nîmes, whence it was floated away on rafts sustained by the skins that came from the same quarter.
The archipelago that studded the fresh-water sea was inhabited by fishermen, and these engaged in the raft-carriage. The district presented a singular contrast of high culture and barbarism. In Arles, Nîmes, Narbonne there was a Greek element. There was here and there an infusion of Phœnician blood. The main body of the people consisted of the dusky Ligurians, who had almost entirely lost their
