Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 13. Chapter XIII (continued)

Meanwhile Arbaces and the priest were taking their way to that secret chamber whose stores were so vaunted by the Egyptian. They were in a vast subterranean atrium, or hall; the low roof was supported by short, thick pillars of an architecture far remote from the Grecian graces of that luxuriant period. The single and pale lamp, which Arbaces bore, shed but an imperfect ray over the bare and rugged walls, in which the huge stones, without cement, were fitted curiously and uncouthly into each other. The disturbed reptiles glared dully on the intruders, and then crept into the shadow of the walls.

Calenus shivered as he looked around and breathed the damp, unwholesome air.

'Yet,' said Arbaces, with a smile, perceiving his shudder, 'it is these rude abodes that furnish the luxuries of the halls above. They are like the laborers of the world--we despise their ruggedness, yet they feed the very pride that disdains them.'

'And whither goes yon dim gallery to the left asked Calenus; 'in this depth of gloom it seems without limit, as if winding into Hades.'

'On the contrary, it does but conduct to the upper rooms,' answered Arbaces, carelessly: 'it is to the right that we steer to our bourn.'

The hall, like many in the more habitable regions of Pompeii, branched off at the extremity into two wings or passages; the length of which, not really great, was to the eye considerably exaggerated by the sudden gloom against which the lamp so faintly struggled. To the right of these alae, the two comrades now directed their steps.

'The gay Glaucus will be lodged to-morrow in apartments not much drier, and far less spacious than this,' said Calenus, as they passed by the very spot where, completely wrapped in the shadow of the broad, projecting buttress, cowered the Thessalian.

'Ay, but then he will have dry room, and ample enough, in the arena on the following day. And to think,' continued Arbaces, slowly, and very deliberately--'to think that a word of thine could save him, and consign Arbaces to his doom!'