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Updated: May 4, 2025
No sooner had Apaecides been received by the rites of baptism into the bosom of the Church, than the Nazarene hastened to make him conscious of the impossibility to retain the office and robes of priesthood. He could not, it was evident, profess to worship God, and continue even outwardly to honour the idolatrous altars of the Fiend.
In Naples, Arbaces had known the parents of Ione and her brother Apaecides, and it was under his guardianship that they had come to Pompeii. The confidence which, before their death, their parents had reposed in the Egyptian was in turn fully given to him by lone and her brother.
'Let him, repeated simultaneously the rest men who, with two exceptions, were evidently of the inferior ranks. In these exceptions, Apaecides noted an officer of the guard, and an Alexandrian merchant. It is true, indeed, that there is no absolute law against us; but the multitude, more savage than their rulers, thirst for our lives.
'Is it he? No it is a dead man? 'It is the priest Calenus, said the praetor, gravely. 'What hast thou to say? 'Arbaces of Egypt is the murderer of Apaecides, the priest of Isis; these eyes saw him deal the blow. It is from the dungeon into which he plunged me it is from the darkness and horror of a death by famine that the gods have raised me to proclaim his crime!
'Art thou mad, O Sallust! said the praetor, rising from his seat. 'What means this raving? 'Remove the Athenian! Quick! or his blood be on your head. Praetor, delay, and you answer with your own life to the emperor! I bring with me the eye-witness to the death of the priest Apaecides. Room there! stand back! give way! People of Pompeii, fix every eye upon Arbaces there he sits!
'Alas! answered Apaecides, sadly, 'thou seest before thee a wretched and distracted man! From my childhood upward I have idolized the dreams of virtue! I have envied the holiness of men who, in caves and lonely temples, have been admitted to the companionship of beings above the world; my days have been consumed with feverish and vague desires; my nights with mocking but solemn visions.
I believe in mine own knowledge, and that has revealed to me but no matter. Now to earthlier and more inviting themes. If I thus fulfilled my object with Apaecides, what was my design for Ione? Thou knowest already I intend her for my queen my bride my heart's Isis. Never till I saw her knew I all the love of which my nature is capable.
Apaecides was in the spring of his years, yet he seemed to have exhausted even more of life than the Egyptian; his delicate and regular features were worn and colorless; his eyes were hollow, and shone with a brilliant and feverish glare: his frame bowed prematurely, and in his hands, which were small to effeminacy, the blue and swollen veins indicated the lassitude and weakness of the relaxed fibres.
'I will talk to thee then of our early years, said Ione. 'Shall yon blind girl sing to thee of the days of childhood? Her voice is sweet and musical, and she hath a song on that theme which contains none of those allusions it pains thee to hear. 'Dost thou remember the words, my sister? asked Apaecides. 'Methinks yes; for the tune, which is simple, fixed them on my memory.
'Ione, said Apaecides, drawing her towards him, and regarding her tenderly, 'can I think that this beautiful form, this kind heart, may be destined to an eternity of torment? 'Dii meliora! the gods forbid! said Ione, in the customary form of words by which her contemporaries thought an omen might be averted. The words, and still more the superstition they implied, wounded the ear of Apaecides.
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