Acté by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated) by Alexandre Dumas

Author:Alexandre Dumas [DUMAS, ALEXANDRE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Parts Edition 1 of 43 by Delphi Classics
Publisher: Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
Published: 2017-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

WHEN night arrived, Paul also girded up his loins, made fast his sandals, took his staff, and then turned to Acté, who was quite ready, and still determined on flight. Where she was going mattered little, so long as she got out of reach of Nero. For the moment, the horror and dread she had experienced on the previous evening still urged her to accomplish this project. But she fully realised that if she hesitated for a day, or if she saw this man again who exerted such a powerful influence over her heart, she was lost; that she would have neither courage nor strength to relinquish her love, spite of all that had passed, and that her life would yet be lost in his feverish and overpowering life, as a rivulet is swallowed up by the ocean. For, strange to say, her lover was always Lucius in her eyes, and never Nero; the victor in the Olympic games and the Emperor were two distinct individuals, and her life was divided into two quite different phases — one consisting of her love for Lucius, of the sincerity of which she felt quite sure, entirely convinced; the other, of Nero’s love for her, which seemed to her only like a dream.

On quitting the cottage, her eyes turned towards the bay which had witnessed on the previous evening the terrible catastrophe which we have related; the sea was calm and the air clear, the moon lit up the sky, and the lighthouse of Misenum the land, so that the other side of the gulf was as clearly visible as by daylight. Acté perceived the dark mass of the trees surrounding Bauli, and, thinking that Lucius was there, she stopped and uttered a sigh. Paul waited for a moment, then, taking a few steps towards her, he asked in a sympathetic tone:

“Are you not coming, my child?”

“O my father!” said Acté, not daring to confess to the old man the emotions which had caused her to stop, “yesterday I left Nero, and accompanied his mother Agrippina. The ship which carried us was wrecked, and we both had to swim for our lives, and after the boat took her in, I saw no more of her. I should not like to quit this shore without knowing what has become of her.”

Paul extended his hand towards the villa of Julius Caesar, and pointing out to Acté a bright light rising between that building and the road to Misenum, observed:

“You see that flame?”

“Yes.”

“Well!” continued the old man, “that is the flame of her funeral pyre.”

And he resumed the journey, as though knowing that these few words would form an answer to what was passing in Acté’s mind; and, in point of fact, she followed him without another word or another sigh.

They kept close to the sea for some time, passed through Puteoli, and took the road to Neapolis. On arriving within about a mile of the city, they left it on the right and took a path which lead them into the road to Capua.

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