Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 7. Chapter VII (continued)

'Such scandal should be prevented.'

'I trust I have taken precautions to that effect. I am her lawful guardian, and have just succeeded in obtaining permission to escort her, after the funeral of Apaecides, to my own house; there, please the gods! she will be secure.'

'You have done well, sage Arbaces. And, now, yonder is the house of Sallust. The gods keep you! Yet, hark you, Arbaces--why so gloomy and unsocial? Men say you can be gay--why not let me initiate you into the pleasures of Pompeii?--I flatter myself no one knows them better.'

'I thank you, noble Clodius: under your auspices I might venture, I think, to wear the philyra: but, at my age, I should be an awkward pupil.'

'Oh, never fear; I have made converts of fellows of seventy. The rich, too, are never old.'

'You flatter me. At some future time I will remind you of your promise.'

'You may command Marcus Clodius at all times--and so, vale!'

'Now,' said the Egyptian, soliloquising, 'I am not wantonly a man of blood; I would willingly save this Greek, if, by confessing the crime, he will lose himself for ever to Ione, and for ever free me from the chance of discovery; and I can save him by persuading Julia to own the philtre, which will be held his excuse. But if he do not confess the crime, why, Julia must be shamed from the confession, and he must die!--die, lest he prove my rival with the living--die, that he may be my proxy with the dead! Will he confess?--can he not be persuaded that in his delirium he struck the blow? To me it would give far greater safety than even his death. Hem! we must hazard the experiment.'

Sweeping along the narrow street, Arbaces now approached the house of Sallust, when he beheld a dark form wrapped in a cloak, and stretched at length across the threshold of the door.