Domitia. Baring-Gould Sabine

when I asked you a question, and then you were forced to admit that all your science was built up on conjecture, and that there was no certainty underlying it. But a guess is better than nothing, and a guess that carries the moral sense with it in approval, may come near to the truth. I recall all you then said. Do not repeat it, but answer my question, Ubi Felicitas? I asked it of my mother, and she said that it was to be found in Push. If I asked Senecio, he would say in Equanimity. Where say you that it is to be found?”

      “The soul of man is a ray out of the Godhead,” answered the Magus, “it is enveloped, depressed, smothered by matter; and the straining of the spirit in man after happiness is the striving of his divine nature to emancipate itself from the thraldom of matter and return to Him from whom the ray emanated.”

      “Then felicity is to be found – ?”

      “In the disengagement of the good in man from matter, which presses it down, and which is evil.”

      “Evil!” exclaimed Domitia, looking through one of the gaps in the arcade, at the lake; on a balustrade above the water stood a dreaming peacock, whilst below it grew bright flowers. Beyond, as clouds, hung the blue Sabine hills.

      “The Divine ray,” said the girl, “seems rarely to delight in its incorporation in Matter, and to find therein its expression, much as do our thoughts in words. May it not be that Primordial Idea is inarticulate without Matter in which to utter itself?”

      “Felicity,” continued the Chaldæan, disregarding the objection, “is sought by many in the satisfying of their animal appetites, in pleasing eye and ear and taste and smell. But in all is found the after-taste of satiety that gluts. True happiness is to be sought in teaching the mind to dispense with sensuous delights, and to live in absorption in itself.”

      “Why, Elymas!” said Domitia. “In fine, you arrive by another method at that Apathy which Senecio the Stoic advocates. I grant you give a reason – which seems to me lame – but it is a reason, whereas he supplies none. But I like not your goal – Apathy is the reverse from Felicity. Leave me.”

      The Magus retired, mortified at his doctrine being so ill received.

      Then Euphrosyne approached timidly.

      Domitia, who was in moody thought, looked up. The girl could not venture to speak till invited to do so by her mistress.

      “Your lady mother has desired me to announce to you that Lucius Ælius Lamia hath ridden over from Rome.”

      “I will come presently,” said Domitia; “I am just now too troubled in mind. You, child, tell me, where is the physician, Luke?”

      “Lady, I do not know; he quitted us on reaching Rome.”

      “Stay, Euphrosyne. Thine is a cheerful spirit. Where is felicity to be found?”

      “My gracious mistress, I find mine in serving thee – in my duty.”

      “Ah, child! That is the sort of reply my father might have made. In the discharge of what he considered his duty, he was of a wondrous sweet and equable temper. Is it so, that Felicity is only to be found in the discharge of duty? And those torpid flies, the young loafers of our noble families, whose only occupation is to play ball, and whose amusements are vicious; they have it not because none has set them tasks. The ploughman whistles as he drives his team; the vineyard rings with laughter at the gathering of the grapes. The galley-slaves chant as they bend over the oar, and the herdboy pipes as he tends the goats. So each is set a task, and is content in discharge thereof, and each sleeps sweetly at night, when the task is done. But what! is happiness reserved to the bondsman, and not for the master? And only then for the former when the duty imposed is reasonable and honest? – For there is none when such an order comes as to fall on the sword or to open the veins. How about us great ladies? And the noble loafers? No task is set us and them.”

      “Surely, lady, to all God has given duties!”

      “Nay – when, where, how? Look at me, Euphrosyne. When I was a little child here, we had a neighbor, Lentulus. He was a lie-abed, and a sot. He let his servants do as they liked, make love, quarrel, fight, the one lord it over the other, and all idle, because on none was imposed any duty. It was a villainous household, and the estate went to the hammer. It seems to me, Euphrosyne, as if this whole world were the estate of Lentulus on a large scale, where all the servants squabbled, and one by sheer force tyrannizes over the others, and none know why they are placed there, and what is their master’s will, and what they have to do. There is no day-table of work. There is either no master over such a household, or he is an Olympian Lentulus.”

      “But, mistress, is that not impossible?”

      “It would seem so, and yet – Where is the Day-Table? Show me that – and, by the Gods! it will be new life to me. I shall know my duty – and see Happiness.”

      CHAPTER XI.

      THE VEILS OF ISHTAR

      Domitia did not go into the house, as desired, to receive Lamia.

      1

      Double-dyed Tyrian wool cost over £40 in English money per lb.

      2

      The term used of St. Paul by the wise men of Athens. It means a picker up of unconsidered trifles which he strings together into an unintelligible system.

      3

      A laurel on the Palatine, planted by the wife of Augustus. It died suddenly just before the end of Nero.