ON the drive homeward from that unforgettable gladiatorial exhibition Manlia and Gargilia shared the second state coach: in the first sat Brinnaria by Causidiena.
“My child,” Causidiena queried, “what ever made you do it?”
“I don’t know,” Brinnaria replied. “I did it before I thought.”
“Well!” said her elder philosophically. “It is done now and cannot be helped. But please try to remember that a Vestal is expected to control herself at all times, never to act without forethought, to reflect long before she acts, to do nothing unusual, to be very sure in each instance that what she is about to do is wholly becoming to a Vestal.”
“I’ll keep on trying,” Brinnaria replied mutinously, “but I was not constructed to be a Vestal. I always knew it; I know it now and I am afraid I’ll continue my blundering through the conventions. I’m built that way.”
She had to endure a second long lecture from Faltonius Bambilio. She listened submissively enough, but vouchsafed not one word of self-defence, rejoinder or comment; and, when urged to speak, she was obstinately silent.
“My daughter,” Faltonius droned at her, “remember that, since your entrance into the order of Vestals, I stand to you in the relation of parent to his own child. You should confide in me as in your spiritual father.”
“I should do nothing of the kind,” Brinnaria refuted him. “I know the statutes of the order better than that. Up to the days of the Divine Augustus, the Pontifex Maximus inhabited the house next to the house of the Vestals and stood in the closest relation of fatherhood towards them. But since he went to live on the Palatine and made us a present of his house we have occupied all this Atrium which was built in the place of the two houses. Since then no one has been in the same intimate relation of control over us. The Emperors have always held the office of Pontifex Maximus and as such each Emperor has been the spiritual father of the Vestals. The Emperor is my spiritual father and you are not.”
“Your self-opinionated talk does you little credit,” Faltonius retorted. “Since you know so much you must know also that for many years each Emperor has designated some priest as Pontifex of Vesta to be his deputy and to stand in the closest relation of parental oversight towards the members of your consecrated order; I am that deputy.”
“I have no desire to confide in a deputy,” Brinnaria told him, “or to consider the deputy as my real spiritual father. If I feel inclined to confide I’ll make my confidences to my genuine spiritual father, not to his understrapper.”
Bambilio was piqued and spoke sourly.
“The Emperor,” he said, “will be far from pleased with my report of you.”
“It will make no difference to me or to him what you report or whether you make any report or not,” spoke Brinnaria. “I’m going to have a talk with him myself.”
“Doubtless,” Bambilio meditated. “He has sent for you to rebuke you.”
“He has done nothing of the kind,” she retorted vigorously. “He has more sense. And if he had sent for me I should not have gone. I know my rights. If he wanted to talk to me, he’d have to come to me here. But as, in this case, I wanted to talk to him, I have asked for an audience and the day and the hour have been fixed. I am to have an audience to-morrow morning. And now, as I am to talk to him myself, I see no reason why I should spend more time being bored by his deputy. If you please, I should be obliged if you would terminate this interview.”
Astounded and dumb, Faltonius bowed himself out.
Causidiena suggested that she accompany Brinnaria on her visit to the Palace.
“It would be lovely to have you with me,” Brinnaria said, “and I am ever so grateful for your offer. You are a dear and I love you. I shall want you and wish for you all the way there, all the time I am there and all the way back. I shall be scared to death. But I must go alone. In the first place it is my right, if I were only six years old, to have audience with the Emperor alone whenever I ask for it and as often as I ask for it. I am not going to abate an iota of my rights merely for my own comfort. In the second place, I must go through this unhelped and unsupported all by myself. I know it; I must fight it out alone and come through alone. He’ll be sympathetic, if I deserve it. If I don’t deserve sympathy from him I don’t deserve it from you, nor your company and your countenance, either.”
Scared Brinnaria was, but even through her worst qualms of panic she was uplifted by an elating sense of her own importance. Not her encounter with Verus and his retinue, not her having remained seated when Aurelius entered the Colosseum had so poignantly made her realize how exalted was a Vestal. She drove to the Palace alone, not in her light carriage, but in her huge state coach, feeling very small in her white robes amid all that crimson upholstery, but also feeling herself a very great personage.
Her reception at the Palace made her feel even more so. The magnificence of the courtyard in which her coach came to a standstill, the ceremonial of turning out the guard in her honor, the formality with which she was conducted from corridor to corridor and from hail to hail, the immensity and gorgeousness of the vast audience hall in which she was finally left alone with the Emperor; all these did not so much overwhelm her as exalt her. She felt herself indeed a princess.
The Emperor greeted Brinnaria kindly, was as sympathetic as possible and put her at her ease at once. He soothed her, made her seat herself comfortably and said:
“Don’t worry about what you have done. You are certainly the most startling Vestal since Gegania, but you have really done nothing actually wrong. So do not agitate yourself about what cannot be altered. The question which concerns me is, what will you do next?”
“I think,” said Brinnaria, “that the next thing I shall do will be to procure a good strong rope and hang myself.”
“My child,” the shocked Emperor exclaimed, “you really should not speak so flippantly of so dreadful an idea!”
“I’m not a particle flippant this time,” Brinnaria declared. “I know I am often flippant, but not now, not a bit. I am just as serious as life and death. I have thought of nothing but suicide since Trebellius conducted me back to my seat. I can’t get the idea out of my head and that is why I have come to you.”
“Tell me all about it from the beginning,” the Emperor said, comfortingly. “What put the notion into your head?”
“In the beginning,” said Brinnaria, “you know that I didn’t want to be a Vestal.”
“Yes, I know,” he assured her.
“Well,” she went on, “now I am a Vestal and must serve out my thirty years, I’m really trying to do my best to be all I ought to be. I really am. I’ve tried hard to be sedate and grave and collected and reticent and slow-spoken, and all the rest of it. And I think I haven’t done badly most of the time. But after all, I’m myself and I can’t be changed. Every once in a while myself boils up in me under the scum of convention I’ve spread on top of the cauldron, so to speak. I don’t mean to let go and be natural and spontaneous. I’ve done the awful thing before I know I’m going to do it. I didn’t mean to pour the pork gravy over old Gubba’s head; but she looked so funny I just did it without knowing what I was going to do. I didn’t mean to throw Manlia’s pet monkey out of the window on to Moccilo’s head. But her shock of red curls looked to be just the place on which to drop little Dito, and I dropped Dito before I thought. It’s just the same way about all the other dreadful things I do. I don’t mean to do them, but I do do them.”
“Don’t worry,” the Emperor said, “you’ll outgrow all that.”
“I trust I may,” Brinnaria sighed, “but how about the harm I’m doing as I go along?”
“You haven’t done any harm, not any harm that matters,” the Emperor soothed her.
“Are you perfectly sure of that?” she persisted. “If you could make me perfectly sure of that, I should feel a great deal better. Are you sure?”
“I can’t see any real harm in your pranks,” the Emperor said. “I certainly should not encourage you to continue or repeat such conduct or to revert to it, but I see no real harm in it.”
“You think I have not unfitted myself for my duties?”
The Emperor meditated.
“To a certainty,” he said, “if your conduct was intentional, if you thought up these pranks of yours and perpetrated them, with deliberate consciousness of what you were about to do, I should hold you gravely unfitted for your position. But you are manifestly sincere in your efforts to be all you ought to be and are trying genuinely to overcome your tendencies and to outgrow your coltishness. I am of the opinion that, if you curb yourself from now on, you have done no harm.”
“Do you think,” Brinnaria insisted, “that if you called a meeting of all the colleges of pontiffs and put the question to them, that they would make the same answer you have made?”
“You amazing child!” Aurelius exclaimed. “Why should you assume the attitude of advocate against yourself? Why suggest a synod to discuss your conduct and express an official opinion on it? Is not my opinion enough? Even if I saw fit to call a synod and all the members of it held the same views and expressed them never so cogently, do you not realize that, if my views were contrary to theirs, it would be my view that would prevail; that it would not only be my privilege and my right but my imperative duty to override any opposition and to enforce my decision? Are you not satisfied with the opinions of the man who is at once Emperor and Chief Pontifex of Rome?”
“But,” Brinnaria persisted, “I am not at all sure that you are speaking as Emperor and Chief Pontifex. To me you seem to speak as a kindly husband and father very sympathetic towards another man’s little daughter who comes to you in deep trouble of spirit.”
“You amazing child!” the Emperor repeated. “You talk as if you were forty years old. Tell me precisely what is troubling you, for I must have failed to fathom it, and be sure I shall reply officially as Emperor and Pontifex.”
“What troubles me,” said Brinnaria, “is the dread that my wild and tomboyish behavior may be as displeasing to the Goddess as coquettishness or wantonness. I am in terror for fear my ministrations may be unpleasant to her, may be sacrilegious, may not only fail to win her blessing upon Rome but may draw down her curse upon all of us. I never thought of that until I stood there all alone out in the arena, astraddle of that beautiful boy whom I just had to save, feeling all of a sudden horribly naked in my one thin, clinging undergarment, with two hundred thousand eyes staring at me. It came over me with a rush that I was not only never going to be fit for a Vestal but that I wasn’t fit for a Vestal and I hadn’t been fit for a Vestal; that I not only was going to do harm, not only was doing harm, but had done harm. If the Parthians are devastating the frontier along the Euphrates and the Marcommani and the Quadi are storming the outposts along the Danube and the Rhine, perhaps that is because my presence in the Atrium is an offence in the eyes of Vesta, my prayers an affront to my Goddess, my care of her altar-fire an insult to her. I tremble to think of it. And I cannot get it out of my head. I wake up in the dark and think of it and it keeps me awake, sometimes, longer than I ever lay awake in the dark in my life. It scares me. I am a Vestal to bring prosperity and glory to the Empire, to pray prayers that will surely be answered. Suppose the Goddess is deaf to my prayers because I am unworthy to pray to her? Suppose that my prayers infuriate her because I am vile in her sight? Suppose I am causing disaster to the Empire? I keep thinking all that. Do you wonder that I think of suicide, of hanging myself, like the two Oculatas?”
“My child!” Aurelius cut in. “You have not done anything that justifies your comparing yourself to the Oculata sisters.”
“We’ll come back to that later,” Brinnaria replied. “Just now let us stick to the point. Do you think my fears justified or not?”
“Decidedly not,” the Emperor rejoined, without an instant’s hesitation, “and I speak not as a soft-hearted parent who sees the soul of his own daughter looking at him out of the eyes of every little girl whose heart troubles her, I speak as the guardian of the interests of the Empire, as the warder of the destinies of Rome.
“Your misbehavior has certainly been grave, I admit; and, if done maliciously, would entail all the harm you imagine. But the Goddess can see not only your actions but your thoughts. Your scruples do you high credit. I will not say you are as pleasing to the Goddess as would be a grave and sedate ministrant, but I do solemnly decide and declare that you need have no further dread of any past, present or future harm to the Empire or to Rome from your past behavior, if you honestly try to err no more. This is my official decision. Be at peace in your heart.”
Brinnaria drew a deep breath.
“You certainly comfort me,” she said, “but I just know I’ll boil over again and not once, but many times.”
“Vesta will comprehend,” he said, “if your derelictions are less and less frequent and less and less violent; if you succeed a little better from month to month and from year to year. She will not be pleased with your lapses, if you lapse again, but she will be pleased at your struggles with yourself and with your good intentions. She will smile upon your ministrations and hearken to your petitions. Be comforted.”
“I am,” said Brinnaria, “as far as that trifle goes, but now we come to my real and chief concern. Suppose I am as detestable in the sight of my Goddess as the Oculata sisters were, and for a similar reason; suppose I ought to hang myself as dead as they hanged themselves. Oughtn’t I, then, to hang myself?”
“You incredible creature!” Aurelius cried. “I’ve met women by the thousand, by the tens of thousands, but never a girl like you. What do you mean? What can you mean? You cannot mean what you seem to mean. Explain yourself. Be explicit. Tell me all about what is troubling you. I’ll understand and put your mind at ease.”
“I trust you may,” Brinnaria sighed, “but I dread that you cannot. I mean just what I seem to mean.”
“Impossible!” the Emperor cried, “a child of ten, but a few months out of her mother’s care and those few months in the care of Causidiena! And I wouldn’t believe it of you if you were twice your age.”
“Oh,” said Brinnaria, “I haven’t acted like Caparronia and the two Oculatas, and I shouldn’t if I were never so much left to myself. But you said yourself that Vesta can read my thoughts and I knew that without your telling me so. Suppose that my thoughts are as abominable in the sight of my Goddess as was the behavior of those three unfortunates? Oughtn’t I to hang myself and be done with myself?”
“Indubitably,” said the Emperor, “if the facts were as your words imply. But you are just frightening yourself to death with vapors like a child afraid of its own shadow. Be explicit, be definite, and I can put you at peace with yourself at once and permanently.”
Brinnaria drew a deep breath.
“To begin with,” she said, “you know that, before I was taken for a Vestal, I was plighted to Caius Segontius Almo.”
“Certainly, I knew that,” Aurelius replied. “All Rome knew of his ride from Falerii and of his arriving just too late.”
“You knew I was in love with him?”
“I assumed that,” the Emperor told her.
“Well,” she said, a pathetic break in her voice, “I can’t make myself stop loving Almo. I always have loved him, I always shall, I love him now.”
“I assumed that too,” the Emperor said. “All Rome knows of his resolve to remain unmarried, to wait thirty years for you, to marry you the very day you are free. I assumed that he would not be so constant unless he believed you equally constant. No harm in that! You have a right to marry at the end of your service and a right to look forward to it.”
“That is what troubles me,” Brinnaria said. “I cannot feel that I have a right to look forward to it.”
“Now listen to me,” said the Emperor. “Few Vestals have left the Atrium at the end of their thirty years. Not every one that has left has married, the third Terentia withdrew at the end of her term and did not marry, nor did the only Licinia who ever completed her service. But Appellasia married and so did Quetonia and Seppia. Others have married after their service, though it is thought unlucky. The right to leave the order implies the right to marry after leaving. The right to leave implies the right to mean to leave, to plan to leave, to look forward to leaving and marrying. You have that right, like any other Vestal. Does that satisfy you?”
“It does not,” Brinnaria asserted. “I know a Vestal has a right to leave and marry and to plan to leave and marry. But, after thirty years of service, or nearly thirty years of service, to plan to leave and marry and to look forward to it for a few days or months appear to me very different from looking forward to it from the first hour of my service, and knowing not only that I mean to marry, but just the man I mean to marry, and loving him all the time, and longing for him. I can’t help it; I feel that way, and I dread that I am not an acceptable ministrant and I tremble for fear of the consequences to you and to Rome. I think I ought to hang myself and be done with it. You haven’t comforted me a bit.”
The Emperor stood up.
“Sit still!” he commanded, sharply.
He paced up and down the huge audience hail; paced its full length three times each way.
Then he reseated himself.
“Do you sleep soundly?” he queried.
“Like a top, mostly,” said Brinnaria. “I go to sleep the instant I put my head on the pillow. Generally I sleep all night long until my maid wakes me up in the morning. Many nights, but not every night, nor most nights, I wake up with a dreadful start, as if I had had a nightmare, and lie there quaking for fear I am ruining Rome. But even then I generally go to sleep again pretty quick.”
“Do you think of Almo when you wake up in the dark?” he pursued.
“Mighty little,” she declared. “In the dark all I can think of is Rome and my duty. I often reflect how immediately and how greatly being taken for a Vestal changes a girl and alters, not only her outlook on life and her ways of thinking, but also her feelings. It has cooled and steadied me more than I could have believed. When Daddy quarrelled with Segontius and told me he would not let me marry Caius I used to feel as if I were going to suffocate, used to feel that way sometimes for hours at a time, used to suffer horribly, used to wake up in the dark and feel as if, if I could not get to Almo right then, at once, I should die, as if I should be choked to death by the thumping of my heart. I used to feel that way at dinner, when out visiting any time of day, for hours. I never feel that way now. And after Daddy and Segontius made up their quarrel and it was arranged that I was to marry Almo, I used to feel as if it would kill me to wait four years, I used to grit my teeth to think of it, of waiting four years for him; used to think of it an day long, no matter what I was doing. And I used to wake up in the dark and roll round in bed and bite the bed-clothes with rage at the thought of the long waiting ahead of me. I wanted Almo the way you want a drink, just before noon of a hot day, when you have been travelling since before sunrise and the carriage creaks and jolts and the road is all dusty and there is no wind and you feel as if you would rather die than go any longer without a drink. I used to want that way to be married to Almo.
“I never feel that way now. I want him and I want to be married to him, but I look forward to it as I look forward to the next race-day at the Circus or the next fight of gladiators at the Colosseum, as a desirable and delightful time sure to come but by no means to be hurried, as something I can very well do without until the time comes. The thought of Almo is always somewhere back in my mind ready to come forward when I have nothing else to think of. But I think of him placidly and calmly and never when on duty nor when at my lessons nor when at meals. And at night, never.”
“My daughter,” said Aurelius, smiling at her, “listen well to me. I speak as Chief Pontifex and as Emperor of Rome. I command you to forget your qualms and to banish your fears. Officially as Chief Pontifex I judge you a ministrant most acceptable to your Goddess, as a most fit and suitable Vestal. I judge that no girl naturally austere, frigid and self-contained could be half so pleasing to Vesta as a tempestuous child like you who curbs her temper and schools her outward behavior all she can in the effort to be all she ought to be; whose feelings even tame themselves without any effort of hers in the holy atmosphere of the Atrium.
“Manifestly you are telling the truth about your acts, your impulses and your thoughts, I judge you a pure-minded, clean-hearted Vestal, most suitable for her duties. Vesta understands and is glad of your good intentions and pleased with your struggles to master yourself. You are most acceptable to her. You will bring no curses on Rome, but your prayers will be heard and you will bring many blessings on the Empire. Be comforted!”
“I am,” said Brinnaria simply, “and I shall stay comforted.”
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