bloodshot eyes with which (prægrandibus oculis) the historian tells us he could see even in the night-time.10 Habitual intemperance had inflamed his complexion, and disfigured his skin with disgusting eruptions; while his body, naturally robust in its proportions, had become bloated with the indolence of confirmed gluttony. A garment (the toga virilis) of virgin whiteness covered his limbs; along the edge of the garment was the broad hem of Tyrian purple indicative of the imperial dignity; and around the hoary brow of the epicurean, was woven a chaplet of roses and aloe-leaves.
Cagliostro recoiled in abhorrence before a spectacle at once so austere and lascivious. His spirit quailed at the sight of a visage in which appeared to be concentrated the infamy of many centuries. His soul revolted at the sinister and ferocious expression pervading every lineament, and lurking in every wrinkle. As he gazed, however, a blithe sound startled him from the umbrage of the boughs. Quick, lively, jocund, to the clashing of her cymbals, there bounded forth an Italian maiden in the garb of a Bacchante. Her feet agile as the roe's, her eyes lustrous and defiant, her hair dishevelled, her bosom heaving, her arms symmetrical as sculpture, but glowing with the roseate warmth of youth, the virgin still rejoiced, as it were, in the tumult of the dance. Grapes of a golden-green relieved by the ruddy-brown of their foliage, clustered in a garland about her temples, and leaped in unison with her movements. Around! with her raven tresses streaming abroad in ringlets—around! with her sandals clinking on the gravel to the capricious beat of her cymbals—around! with her light robes flowing back from a jewelled brooch above the knee—singing, sparkling, undulating, circling, rustling, the Bacchante entranced the heart of the Rosicrucian. She gleamed before him like the embodiment of enthusiasm. She was the genius of motion, the divinity of the dance; she was Terpsichore in the grace of her movements, Euterpe in the ravishing sweetness of her voice. A thrill of admiration suffused with a deeper tint even the abhorred cheek of the voluptuary.
By an almost imperceptible degree, the damsel abated the ardour of her gyrations, her cymbals clashed less frequently, the song faded from her lip, the flutter of her garments ceased, the vine-fruit drooped upon her forehead. She stood before the couch palpitating with emotion, and radiant with a divine beauty. In another instant, she had prostrated herself upon the earth, for in the decrepit monster of Capreæ, she recognised the lord of the whole world—Tiberius.
"Arise, maiden of Apulia," he said, with an immediate sense that he beheld another of those innocent damsels, who were stolen from their pastoral homes on the Peninsula to become the victims of his depravity. "Arise, and slake my thirst from yonder goblet. The tongue of Tiberius is dry with the avidity of his passion."
An indescribable loathing entered into the imagination of the Bacchante even as she lay upon the grass; yet she rose with precipitation and filled a chalice to the brim with Falernian. Tiberius grasped it with an eager hand, and his mouth pressed the lip of the cup as if to drain its ruby vintage to the bottom. Suddenly, however, the eyes of the old man blazed with a raging light; the scowl of lust was forgotten; the vindictiveness of a fiend shone in his dilated eyeballs, and, with a yell of fury, he cast the goblet into the air, crying out that the wine boiled like the bowl of Pluto. He was writhing in one of those paroxysms of rage, which justified posterity in regarding him as a madman. The howling of Tiberius resounded among the verdure, as the rattle of a snake might do when it raises its deadly crest from its lair among the flowers. Quick as thought at the first sound of those inexorable accents, the grove was thronged with the revellers. They jostled each other in their solicitude to minister to the cruelty of the despot; and that cruelty was as ruthless, and as hell-born, as it was ingenious and appalling.
Obedient to a gesture of Tiberius, the Bacchante was placed upon a pedestal. For a moment, she stood before them an exquisite statue Of despair—exquisite even in the excess of her bewilderment. For a moment, she stood there stunned by the suddenness of the commotion, and frantic with the consciousness of her peril. For a moment she gazed about her for aid, wildly but, alas! vainly. No pity beamed upon her in that more horrible Gomorrah. The marble trembled under her feet—a sulphurous stench shot through its crevices—the virgin shrieked and fell forwards, scorched and blackened to a cinder. She was blasted, as if by a thunderbolt.11 Cagliostro looked with horror upon the ashes of the Bacchante. He had seen youth stricken down by age; he had seen virtue annihilated, so to speak, at the mandate of vice; he had seen—and even his callous heart exulted at the thought—he had seen innocence snatched from pollution, when upon the very threshold of an earthly hell. While rejoicing in this reflection, he was aroused by the stertorous breathing of the emperor. The crowned demon of the island was being borne away to his palace upon the shoulders of his attendants. Although maddened by an insatiable thirst, and by a gloom that was becoming habitual, the monster lay upon his cushions as impotent as a child, in the midst of his diseases and iniquities.12
At the feet of the Rosicrucian were huddled the bones of the virgin of Apulia; and the babbling of the fountains was alone audible in the solitude.
"Such," said the mournful Voice, as Cagliostro again felt himself carried through the darkness—"such, Balsamo, are the miseries of a debauched appetite."
AGRIPPA
In another instant, the impostor was standing upon the floor of a gigantic amphitheatre in Palestine. The whole air was refulgent with the light of a summer morning, and through the loopholes of the structure, the eye caught the blue shimmer of the Mediterranean. Banners, emblazoned with the ciphers of Rome, fluttered from the walls of the amphitheatre. Its internal circumference was thronged with a vast concourse of citizens; and, immediately about the Rosicrucian, groups of foreign traders, habited as if for some unusual ceremony, were scattered over the arena. Expectation was evinced in every movement of the assemblage, in every murmur that floated round the benches. The worshippers were there, it seemed, and were awaiting the high-priest. That high-priest was approaching, and more than a high-priest; for Herod Agrippa, the tetrarch of Judea had descended from Jerusalem to Cæsarea, for the celebration of warlike games in honour of the Emperor Claudius, and, on the completion of those festivities, the deputed sovereign had consented, at the intercession of Blastus, to receive a deputation of certain Phenician ambassadors who were solicitous for an assurance of his clemency. Those envoys—the merchant princes of Tyre and Sidon—were tarrying in the public theatre of the city for the promised interview in the presence of the people of Samaria.
Cagliostro marvelled, as he scanned the scene before him, whether it were all a reality or a delusion of his fancy; but the lapping of the surge upon the adjacent beach, and the perfume of Oriental spices which impregnated the breezes from the Levant, and even the motes that swarmed about him like phosphoric atoms, proved that it was no juggle of a distempered imagination.
Suddenly the air was rent with acclamations; the crowd rose as if by a single impulse; trumpets sounded in the seven porches of the amphitheatre; again the plaudits shook the air like the concussion of enthusiasm, and the deputation in the arena prostrated themselves in the dust. Balsamo saw, at once, the reason of this rejoicing; he saw the tetrarch of Judea seated upon a throne of ivory. The crown of Agrippa glittered upon his forehead with an unnatural brightness—it was of the purest gold, radiating from the brow in spikes, and flecked with pearls of an uncommon size. Silent—erect—inflated with pride at his own grandeur, and the adulation of the rabble, sate the King of Palestine. Silent—awe-stricken—uncovered before the majesty of the representative of Claudius, stood the people of Samaria and Phenicia. Extreme beauty of an elevated and heroic character shone upon the features of Herod, although his beard was grizzled with the passage of fifty-four winters. In the midst of the silence of the populace, the morning sun rose, almost abruptly, above the topmost arches of the edifice, and darted his beams full upon the glorious garments of Agrippa. It played in sparkles of intense lustre upon the jewels of his diadem; and upon the outer robe, which was of silver tissue woven with consummate skill and powdered with diamonds,
Thus writes Suetonius—"prægrandibus oculis, qui, quod mirum esset, noctu etiam et in tenebris, viderent, sed ad breve, et quum primum a somno patuissent; deinde rursum hebescebant."—
Those who are familiar with the classic historians, will see in this description no exaggeration whatever. Instruments for the destruction of life yet more awful and mysterious, were employed by many of the predecessors, and many of the successors of Tiberius, as well as by Tiberius himself: and modern science has shown that these devices, instead of being, as was originally conjectured, the result of black-magic, were, in reality, the effect of hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical contrivances. Even the most marvellous feats of the Egyptian sorcerers have been latterly explained by the revelations of natural philosophy, and a multitude of these explanations may be found by the reader in the learned work "Des Sciences Occultes," &c. written by M. Eusebe Salverte, and published in Paris as recently as 1843. In that remarkable volume, M. Salverte proves that natural phenomena are more startling than necromantic tricks, and that, in the words of Roger Bacon, "
Suetonius assures us (cap. lxviii.), that the muscular strength of Tiberius Claudius Nero was, in the prime of his manhood, almost as supernatural as his crimes; that he could with his outstretched finger bore a hole through a sound apple (
