Roads from Rome | Page 9

had introduced him, which would add piquancy to her letting the din of
the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian streams. Suddenly she
laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought struck her. How furious and
how impotent Cicero would be! If she could play with this disciple of
his, and then divest him of every shred of reputation, she might feel
that at last she was avenged on the man whom she had meant to marry
(after they had sloughed off Metellus and Terentia) and who had
escaped her. Calling back her secretary she ordered writing materials
and with her own hand wrote the following note:
"Does Caelius know that Clodia's roses are loveliest at dusk, when the
first stars alone keep watch?"
III
About seven o'clock on a clear evening of early November Catullus
arrived in Rome. With the passage of the weeks his jealous grief had
learned to dwell with other emotions, and a longing to be with Lesbia,
once more admitted, had reassumed its habitual sway. Coming first in
guise of the need of comfort, it had impelled him to leave Verona, and
on the journey it had grown into a lover's exclusive frenzy. To-morrow
he might examine the structure of his familiar life which had been
beaten upon by the storm of sorrow. To-night his ears rang and his eyes
were misty with the desire to see Lesbia. He had written her that he
would call the following morning, but he could not wait. Stopping only
to dress after his journey, fitting himself, he shyly thought, to take her
loveliness into his arms, he started for the Palatine. The full moon
illumined the city, but he had no eyes for the marvel wrought upon
temples and porticoes. Clodia's house stood at the farther end of the hill,
her gardens stretching towards the Tiber and offering to her intimates a
pleasanter approach than the usual thoroughfare. To-night he found the
entrance gate still open and made his way through the long avenue of

cypress trees, hearing his own heart beat in the shadowed silence. The
avenue ended in a wide, open space, dominated by a huge fountain. The
kindly moonlight lent an unwonted grace to the coarse workmanship of
the marble Nymphs which sprawled in the waters of the central basin,
their shoulders and breasts drenched in silvered spray. Upon the night
air hung the faint scent of late roses. It had been among summer roses
under a summer moon that Catullus had once drunk deepest of Lesbia's
honeyed cup. This autumn night seemed freighted with the same
warmth and sweetness. He was hurrying forward when he caught sight
of two figures turning the corner of a tall box hedge. His heart leaped
and then stood still. A woman and a man walked to the fountain and sat
down upon the carved balustrade. The woman unfastened her white
cloak. The man laughed low and bent and kissed her white throat where
it rose above soft silken folds. Clodia loosened the folds. Caelius
laughed again.
Catullus never remembered clearly what happened to him that night
after he had plunged down the cypress avenue, his feet making no
sound on the green turf. In the mad hours he found his first way into
haunts of the Subura which later became familiar enough to him, and at
dawn he came home spent. Standing at his window, he watched the
pitiless, grey light break over Rome. The magic city of the moonlit
night, the creation of fragile, reflected radiance, had evanished in bricks
and mortar. The city of his heart, also, built of gossamer dreams and
faiths, lay before him, reduced to the hideous realities of impure love
and lying friendship. In the chaos substituted for his accustomed world
he recognised only a grave in Troy.
His servant found him in a delirium and for a week his fever ran high.
In it were consumed the illusions of which it had been born. As he
gained strength again, he found that his anger against Caelius was more
contemptuous than regretful; he discovered a sneering desire for
Lesbia's beauty divorced from a regard for her purity. The ashes of his
old love for her, the love that Valerius had understood, in the dusk,
coming home from Mantua, were hidden away in their burial urn.
Should he hold out his cold hands to this new fire? Should he go to her
as a suppliant and pay in reiterated torture for Clytemnestra's embrace

and for Juno's regilded favours? He was unaccustomed to weighing
impulses, to resisting emotions. For the first time in his life slothful
reason arose and fought with desire.
The issue of the conflict was still in the balance when, a few days later,
a little gold box was brought to him without name or