Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 12. Chapter XII (continued)

'Because I had learned the conversion of Apaecides to the Christian faith--because I knew that on that spot he was to meet the fierce Olinthus--because they were to meet there to discuss plans for unveiling the sacred mysteries of our goddess to the people--and I was there to detect, in order to defeat them.'

'Hast thou told living ear what thou didst witness?'

'No, my master: the secret is locked in thy servant's breast.'

'What! even thy kinsman Burbo guesses it not! Come, the truth!'

'By the gods...'

'Hush! we know each other--what are the gods to us?'

'By the fear of thy vengeance, then--no!'

'And why hast thou hitherto concealed from me this secret? Why hast thou waited till the eve of the Athenian's condemnation before thou hast ventured to tell me that Arbaces is a murderer? And having tarried so long, why revealest thou now that knowledge?'

'Because--because...' stammered Calenus, coloring and in confusion.

'Because,' interrupted Arbaces, with a gentle smile, and tapping the priest on the shoulder with a kindly and familiar gesture--'because, my Calenus (see now, I will read thy heart, and explain its motives)--because thou didst wish thoroughly to commit and entangle me in the trial, so that I might have no loophole of escape; that I might stand firmly pledged to perjury and to malice, as well as to homicide; that having myself whetted the appetite of the populace to blood, no wealth, no power, could prevent my becoming their victim: and thou tellest me thy secret now, ere the trial be over and the innocent condemned, to show what a desperate web of villainy thy word to-morrow could destroy; to enhance in this, the ninth hour, the price of thy forbearance; to show that my own arts, in arousing the popular wrath, would, at thy witness, recoil upon myself; and that if not for Glaucus, for me would gape the jaws of the lion! Is it not so?'