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Title: The Tour
A Story of Ancient Egypt
Author: Louis Couperus
Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Release Date: September 21, 2011 [EBook #37497]
Language: English
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THE TOUR
A Story of Ancient Egypt
By
LOUIS COUPERUS
Translated from the Dutch by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Thornton Butterworth Ltd.
62 St. Martin's Lane London W.C.2
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
I am greatly indebted to my friend John Sargeaunt for a number of
extremely useful comments and suggestions and to my friend Stephen
McKenna for his version of the Hymn to Aphrodite in Chapter VII. and
for assistance in the translation generally.
A. T. de M.
Crowborough, 10 July, 1920.
THE TOUR
CHAPTER I
The night that hung over the sea was windless and blissfully
silver-pure after the glowing splendour of the day; and the great
quadrireme glided evenly and softly, as though upon a lake, under a
wide firmament of stars. The thin horizon was purely outlined around
the oval sea; and on this wide world there was nothing but the stars
and the ship.
But the ship resounded with music. There was the constantly repeated
melodious phrase of the three hundred rowers, soft and monotone,
in a melancholy minor, with ever the same refrain, after which the
boatswain gave out the chant, after which the chorus of rowers
again threw back their long, hushed phrase of melancholy, the
soft, monotonous accompaniment of the wearying work, the musical
encouragement to repeat the same movement of the arms and the same
bending of the body over the loins.
This music rose in a mournful swell from the ship's lower deck and
harmonizing with it was the soft stroke of the oars, which were like
the legs of some graceful sea-animal; the ship herself, with her
swanlike raised prow, suggested an elegant monster swimming through
the lake-calm waters of that silvery night-world, a monster with a
swan's neck and hundreds of slender, evenly-moving legs and winged
with two rose-yellow sails, which rose and bellied gently at the
ship's own motion, but did not swell, because the wind lay still.
While the great, winged navigium glided upon that harmony of slaves'
song and oar-strokes, there came from the rear half-deck the blither
song of the sailors idling after their work. It sounded cheerful with
deep, bass male voices, without the rowers' melancholy; and there
was one sailor who gave the time in a higher voice, for the seamen
were at liberty to sing, but their singing must be artistically led,
because melodious music meant a prosperous voyage and averted evil
chances and did not let the shrill voices of the sirens ring from
under the waters and because the pure sound of the human voice kept
away the rocks drifting under the sea and compelled the sea-serpent
to dive back into the deep.
And through these two choirs, through the melancholy singing of the
rowers and the jubilant seamen's song, a delicate female voice let
fall clear, love-yearning notes, always with a playful and wanton
final phrase. It was--while as it were golden beads tinkled from
twanged harp-strings: those very bright gold beads which tinkle from
the strings of the little four-stringed Lesbian harp--a hymn to the
goddess Aphrodite, whose name constantly rang back, plaintively and
wantonly, in the singer's Greek, exotically soft against the harder
Latin of the men's joy-song and the melodious melancholy phrase of
the lower deck....
Publius Lucius Sabinus lay on the prow in a pavilion of Tyrian
red-silk curtains and listened. The music sounding up from his ship
in the silver-pure, windless night, through the blissful, wide-pure,
star-strewn air, brought him a moment's respite from grief. He lay
calmer now, sated with despair, with his soul of sorrow as it were
bathed in the melodious music. He stared, as though without thinking,
now almost free from grief, at the silver statue of Aphrodite, the
patroness of his ship, in front of which an alabaster lamp burned,
while a light spiral of nard curled around the goddess' feet from
an incense-boat.
It was not possible to feel always, always, the same vehement
grief. To-morrow, nay, in an hour, the sorrow would resume its
violence; now, in this night of coolness and melody, there was just
a brief rest, a moment of annihilation, almost a sense of wistful
well-being. And, in this calmer mood, Lucius felt a need to speak a
friendly word to his old friend and tutor, as he had not done since
the voyage began.
He struck the gong beside his couch; and a little black slave appeared.
"Tarrar," said Lucius, "find Thrasyllus for me and tell him that I
await him."
The little Libyan slave, looking like a monkey in his scanty,
many-coloured coat, made a drolly serious movement of reverence,
crept backwards and disappeared. It was not long before he lifted the
hanging and Thrasyllus stepped into the presence of his young master,
Publius Lucius Sabinus.
The pedagogue, or tutor, was an elderly freedman, tall, lean, serious,
grey-haired and grey-bearded. His eyes were kindly; his mouth wore
a fatherly smile.
Lucius, without rising, stretched out his hand to him:
"Thrasyllus," he said, "forgive me if I have been unkind."
This was all that he said. His voice sounded deep, manly and
earnest. The old tutor had taken a seat on a footstool beside his
master's couch. And, holding the other's hand for a moment in his own,
he said:
"Lucius, I thank you for that word. But I have nothing to forgive, dear
young master. You are the master, I am your slave, your slave still,
even though you have given me my freedom. I am your servant, but one
who has fatherly feelings for you. I feel a father's love towards you;
and you have never forbidden it. It is well; and I am content. I serve
you and I love you. But I thank you for that generous word. That is
what you are: generous, just. You are far above all pride. You know how
to admit when you are wrong. And I, on my side, if you think that you
need it, gladly grant you my forgiveness, though the word is unsuited
to my mouth. You were bitter and you were suffering: your sorrow
drove you mad. Your nature is violent in all things: in your love,
in your sorrow, in your hatred, in all your passions and angers...."
"I was not generous and not just, Thrasyllus, and I raised my hand
against you. Forgive me."
The old tutor shrugged his shoulders:
"I forgive you, I forgive you. Your blood flows hotly and the red
cloud sometimes blinds you. Certainly you must control and master
yourself. But I, I am your slave, though I feel for you like a father;
and that you raised your hand against me: what of it? It was a movement
of anger. You are as mettlesome as a young colt. And sorrow drove
you mad."
"It does so still. Sometimes, sometimes it is as though I felt a
fury of frenzy here, inside me, in my breast! Then I must have her,
have her back, have her here, beside me, in my arms, at my breast,
at my lips! O ye gods, ye gods, ye gods!"
He drew a deep breath, moaned and sobbed.
"Be still, dear young master," said the tutor. "Try to forget and try
to be resigned. She is gone. She is not to be found. We have searched
everywhere. You have vainly squandered treasures to find her. Ilia is
gone. It is three months now since she disappeared. She was probably
kidnapped by pirates while bathing. She used often to bathe in the sea,
among the rocks...."
"Is the villa at Baiæ sold? I won't go back to it!... Since she is
no longer there, since she has disappeared, disappeared! She has
disappeared! She has disappeared without a trace! Just one sandal on
the shore. It was a calm sea. She cannot have been drowned!... In
my house she was queen! My Ilia: she was the queen of my house,
though she was a slave! Everything for her and because of her! She
was my slave, but she had slaves herself, male and female: she
had the jewels of an empress, she had the raiment of a goddess! I
worshipped her as I would Venus herself! And she has disappeared,
she has disappeared without a trace, without a trace! Not a thing
of hers has been found save a sandal, a sandal! Where can she be? Is
she dead, is she alive? Did she run away, was she kidnapped, has she
been murdered? Shall I never, never see her again? Here, here"--he
rose suddenly--"here, in my boiling breast, I feel it welling up now,
the fury of frenzy! I want her, I will have her! Ilia, Ilia, Ilia!"
And he uttered a despairing cry, a scream of anguish, and burst
into sobs.
His cry, his scream was heard in the night, throughout the ship.
And suddenly, because of his grief, all the music fell silent: the
melancholy chant of the rowers, the joy-song of the sailors and the
hymn to the goddess, sung to the twanging Lesbian harp.
Only the oars continued to beat the waves. For the rest, silence,
silence, silence ... over all the ship, under the starry dome....
Then the boatswain's voice made itself heard. The rowers' melodious
phrase rose in a mournful swell, always the same. And the high voice
of the sailor who led the singing set the time. The seamen took up the
chant. And bright, golden beads from the four-stringed harp fell like
clear drops through the night; and the Greek hymn of the songstress
pined away with love and tenderness, to ring out suddenly, imploringly:
"Aphrodite!... Aphrodite!..."
CHAPTER II
Lucius lay on his cushions sobbing like a child. Beside him sat old
Thrasyllus, with his hand on his master's heaving shoulder:
"Lucius, pray control yourself," he said. "Master yourself and yield
piously to Fate. Ilia is gone, she is gone. She is probably gone for
ever. She has disappeared. Pirates must have kidnapped her while
she was bathing.... Do not think of her any more. Life is rich in
promise. Fortune has favoured you not only with untold treasures,
but also with genius and soul. You love beauty and study, every
art and every science. You did well to follow my advice at last
and not to go on languishing with grief in the villa at Baiæ. Yes,
it is sold. We shall never go back there. The villa is sold to
Cæsar. For almost nothing. Tiberius can look upon it as a gift! What
does it matter? Forget the villa and ... forget Ilia.... We are now
sailing towards Egypt, the birthplace of all wisdom, the cradle of
humanity. You did well to follow my advice: you needed distraction,
my dear young master; and this distraction will bring healing to
your sick soul. To-morrow we shall reach Alexandria. The voyage is
auspicious and will probably be completed without storms. Try to
sleep now; and, once again, thank you for your kind word. You are
generous. I had nothing to forgive, but I am grateful that you love me
better than you would a simple slave. Good-night. Good-night, Lucius."
The tutor left the pavilion:
"Draw the curtains close, Tarrar," he said to the Libyan
boy. "Noiselessly."
"Yes, Thrasyllus," said the child.
The tutor walked to the end of the long deck. The sailors' song
was hushed, the hymn was hushed; only the rowers' melancholy phrase
sounded very softly, muffled in undertone.
The old man stopped. On a pile of cushions lay Catullus, Lucius'
penniless uncle, pot-bellied as Silenus and with a bald and shining
pate; and on a low chair sat Cora, the Greek slave from Cos. Her
harp stood like a rounded bow by her side; and she leant her head
against it.
"Well, Thrasyllus," mumbled Catullus, sleepily, "how goes it with
my nephew?"
"He has spoken a kind word to me," replied the tutor, joyfully.
"A kind word?" cried Catullus, raising himself, with his hands still
behind the grey fringe of his cranium. "I shall become jealous! I
have not had a kind word since that wench bolted...."
"Ssh! Be silent, worthy Catullus," said Thrasyllus. "He believes that
she has been kidnapped. Leave him in that belief."
"And every one knows--the steersman told me so himself--that she
ran away with Carus the Cypriote, the sailor! Every one knows it,
all the sailors and rowers...."
"Ssh!" Thrasyllus repeated. "Never tell him! He worshipped the woman
and she was not worth it! She reigned as queen in his house ... and
she ran away with Carus the Cypriote! She left a master like Lucius
for a scoundrel like Carus!"
"And Lucius still believes that Venus watches over him!"
"Why should the goddess not watch over him, my Lord Catullus? Ilia
was not worthy of Lucius: the goddess was in very truth watching
over Lucius when she aroused that mad passion in Ilia. Who knows what
great and high happiness she has in store for him in the future?"
"I don't believe in the gods, Thrasyllus, not even in Bacchus," said
Catullus. "You know I don't. Since the gods ordained that I should
be born as poor as a rat and my nephew surrounded by every earthly
treasure, since ... since I was a babe at the breast, I have not
believed in the gods! And least of all in Venus ... though I could
almost begin to believe in her when Cora sings to her as she has
been doing."
The Greek slave raised her head from the harp on which she was leaning:
"Did I sing well?" she asked. "Thrasyllus, did I sing well?"
"Very well indeed, Cora," said Thrasyllus.
"Did he say anything about my song?"
"No," said Thrasyllus, "he did not."
"Has he never said anything about my singing?"
"No, Cora; he is suffering too much to take notice of it."
"Poor Cora!" said Catullus. "She has been singing hymns to Aphrodite
for three months now, ever since Ilia went away and since you,
Thrasyllus, bought Cora for her beautiful voice, to divert Lucius
a little; and I believe that Lucius has not even observed that Cora
can sing ... much less realized that she exists!"
"It doesn't matter," said the Greek slave, leaning her head against
the harp again.
Catullus yawned and puffed out his stomach:
"I shall stay and sleep here in my cushions," he said. "I shall not go
to my pavilion. I shall stay and sleep here, under the stars. To-morrow
we shall be at Alexandria! Alexandria! The city with the most exquisite
cooking, so they say! I am tired of Rome and Baiæ; I am really tired
of roast peacock and oysters. Nothing but Rome and roast peacock;
nothing but Baiæ and oysters: I shall end by turning into a peacock or
an oyster! Change of diet is the secret of good health. I was losing
my gaiety and had not a joke left in me to charm an occasional laugh
out of Lucius. He did not even listen to me, Cora, when I was witty
... and you expect him to listen to your song! He listens to nothing
and nobody since Ilia is gone."
"Was she so very beautiful?" asked Cora.
"She was very beautiful," said Thrasyllus, with grave appreciation.
"She was beautiful," Catullus echoed, in airy praise, "but she was
too heavy and too big. Her ankles were not slender. Her wrists were
as thick as a man's."
"She was very beautiful," Thrasyllus repeated. "She was as beautiful
as a goddess."
"That is just where I never agreed," cried Catullus, vehemently,
"either with you or with my nephew. You both said that she was like
a goddess...."
"She was like the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles," Thrasyllus persisted.
"I could never see it!" Catullus persisted, in his turn. "I could
never see it. There may have been something of Praxiteles' Venus in
the lines of her body ... something, perhaps, though much coarser;
but her face certainly lacked the charm, the smile of that divine
statue. Now, though I do not believe in the gods, though I do not
believe in Venus, I do believe in my own correct and sometimes
sober opinion! I was not in love with Ilia as Thrasyllus and Lucius
were! And really, between ourselves, I can understand her bolting,
though she did reign as queen in the house. She was far too much
admired for her divine ankles and wrists and for her big feet and
hands! Did she not sometimes have to turn and turn for a hour, while
Lucius lay looking at her, to turn on a revolving pedestal, which two
slaves under the floor moved round and round and round, and did not
Lucius grow angry if she stirred? 'I can't endure this, uncle!' she
would often declare to me; and I can well understand it. To play at
being a living statue strikes me as wearisome; and I also should say,
'Thank you for nothing,' if my nephew were to take it into his head,
because nature has at least blessed me with a fairly perfect form,
to make me turn and turn on a revolving pedestal as Cupid with his
bow and arrow or as Ganymede with a drinking-cup in his hand! What
do you say, dreamy Cora?"
"I don't know," said Cora. "No one will ask me to pose as the Cnidian
Venus. I have nothing but my voice...."
"And I nothing but a terrible sleepy feeling!" yawned Catullus. "I
shall stay and sleep here, under the stars...."
He stretched himself and heaved his body over; two slaves approached
and covered him carefully with silken sheets and woollen blankets and
pushed pillows under his head, his loins and his feet. He accepted
their attentions like a child. And, when he had turned over, he at
once fell asleep like a child, with not a wrinkle of care in his bald
forehead, which shone like ivory in the soft light of the stars.
Cora had risen to her feet:
"Good-night, Thrasyllus," she said.
"Good-night, Cora," said the tutor, paternally.
The Greek slave, her harp tucked into her arm, moved away slowly. She
lifted the hanging of a cabin which she shared above-deck with some
other slaves. These were sleeping in six or seven narrow beds close
together. A rose-coloured lantern shed a vague glimmer, here over
a hip rounded in sleep, there over a face with shut eyes, framed in
black tresses and white, raised arms.
The slave undressed in silence. Her muslin peplos woven with gold
flowers fell from her. She stood naked. She looked at her wrists,
which were slim, like a patrician's. She stooped and looked at her
ankles. She arched the instep of her narrow, shapely foot. And she
passed her slender fingers over her hips, which were like a virgin's,
and over her waist, round which she could almost make her two hands
meet. Then she took up a metal hand-mirror and looked at herself in
the light of the rose-coloured lantern. She half-closed her big eyes,
which were like gigantic sapphires in mother-o'-pearl shells, very
soft, very bright, very big, with the streak of antimony stretching
to the temples. Then she smiled.
But next she gave a very deep sigh. She lay down on her little narrow
bed between two other beds. A slave had moved slightly in her sleep,
muttering. Cora drew a sheet over herself; and her great eyes stared,
without seeing, into the rose-coloured lantern.
In the windless night the ship glided over the sea, which was calm
as a lake; and there was nothing but the beating of the oars and the
lulling melodious phrase of the rowers....
Sometimes ... a sing-song order from the steersman, up in his look-out
turret....
And then a creaking of heavy ropes over great pulleys....
CHAPTER III
Next morning, the soft, even light of a tea-rose dawn spread over a
magic spectacle, beautiful as a marvellous dream, flimsy as a vision,
compelling as an enchantment. The ship had glided past the monumental,
marble, nine-storeyed Pharos into the Great Harbour; and Alexandria
lay before the eyes of the delighted travellers, Lucius, Thrasyllus,
Catullus, shining pink through diaphanous, mother-o'-pearl gleams and
a slowly-lifting silvery mist, like a city of magic and fairy-tale. A
long, long row of white palaces, with irregular gables, loomed through
the mist and the gleam.
On the left, on the rocks of Lochias, the pillars of the former royal
palace shone magical and fairylike in the silvery mist. Thrasyllus
knew that, since Egypt had become a Roman province, the legate resided
there, surrounded with royal honours. Under the palace the little
square basin of the palace-harbour showed, gay with the purple sails
of the legate's triremes; with the little island of Antirrhodos,
behind which pillars and yet more pillars outlined more and more
clearly the white theatre; with the bight of the Posidium, where stood
the Temple of Poseidon and the great Emporium, the great market of
the merchant shippers, while a pier ran into the harbour on which,
dainty as a marble ornament, stood the villa of the Timoneum, built
by Mark Antony. A riot of luxuriant green gardens, with the stately
crowns of palm-trees and the dreamy-delicate crests of tamarisks,
flung cool, dark nosegays between all those gleaming white buildings,
which began to blink in the ever fiercer sunshine....
Thrasyllus pointed with his finger, along the harbour, the long row of
palaces of the Cæsareum, the huge docks and yards teeming all motley
with people and industry, to the Heptastadium, the promenade-jetty
which stretched out to unite the city with the island of Pharos,
whence the light-house took its name. On the one side of this pier,
with rostra and statues on the marble balustrade and gates, lay the
harbour of Eunostus and the naval docks of Cibotus.
The water on every side was crowded and swarming with vessels: biremes
and triremes, battle-ships and merchant-ships; the masts rose like a
forest of poplars and the sails glowed like the many-coloured wings of
one bird against another; and, as soon as the quadrireme glided in,
she was surrounded by a host of sloops, filled with traders, with
yelling Arabs and Nubians. The Aphrodite heaved to; a pilot came on
board; then she glided on again through the press of the sloops,
the yelling of the traders and with swanlike elegance turned and
lay to beside the great quay, at the place where she was expected,
the place kept open for her.
The quay, between the obelisks, was alive with a maddening concourse
of people: sailors and merchants, vendors of fruit and water and
vegetables, chattering women, screaming children, Ethiopian beggars,
Greek students, priests of Serapis and Isis, Roman soldiers; and
all pointed at the ship and streamed in unison to gaze at her in
wide-eyed and open-mouthed admiration. For, though numbers of vessels
entered the Great Harbour of Alexandria daily, it was not every day
that the quay was visited by so impressive a quadrireme as this;
and the beautiful ship aroused curiosity.
The three travellers stood on the prow, beside the silver figure of
Aphrodite, and Catullus said, in an appreciative tone:
"It's not half bad. Just look at that row of palaces! It is as though
Alexandria were one great palace, opening on its harbour! And what
people, white, dark and black, all mixed! And what a noise they make,
what a noise! We are much calmer in Italy!... Do look, Lucius, at all
those ibises walking about on the quay, quiet and tame, pecking here
and there, upon my word as though they were at home! Do you see the
ibises, Thrasyllus? I thought that they just stood and dreamed on one
leg, beside the Nile, like poetic birds ... and, the moment I arrive,
I see great flocks of them actually walking on the quay of Alexandria's
harbour! White ibises, black ibises, piebald ibises! What a crowd of
ibises! What a crowd of them! And so dignified, much more dignified
than the people! Ye gods, what a noisy crew the Alexandrians are!"
The gangway was slung from the ship to the quay; and the master was
receiving the port-authorities, to whom he had to show his papers,
when two men came hurrying across the gangway, which was hedged in by
a guard of sailors to protect it against any intrusion of the gaping
populace. One of them was an obvious Latin, the other a dark-skinned
Sabæan.
"Well, Vettius!" said Lucius, welcoming the Latin, who was his
steward. "I am glad to see you again and I hope that your voyage was
as prosperous as ours!"
Vettius the steward bowed low before his young master, bowed
ceremoniously before fat Uncle Catullus. He had travelled ahead of
his master to seek suitable lodgings at Alexandria and he seemed very
well pleased with what he had found, for he pointed joyfully to the
dark-skinned Sabæan, who had kept behind and now bobbed down with
many salaams and respectful assurances, uttered in a language that
fluctuated between Latin, Greek, Phoenician and Arabic.
"This is Master Ghizla, a native of Saba, my lord," said Vettius,
presenting him, "the owner of the largest guest-house in Alexandria;
and he has at your disposal a row of three suites, standing in their
own gardens, with spacious annexes, near the guest-house proper;
and I am convinced that, when we have put in our own furniture, they
will afford a fit residence for you and the honourable Catullus. Of
course, when travelling, all conveniences are but temporary and not
to be compared with your insula at Rome or your villa at Baiæ, now
the property of our gracious Emperor Tiberius."
"It is well, it is well, Vettius," said Lucius. "We shall not be too
hard to please. Are there baths attached to them?"
"There are most comfortable baths attached to them, my lord," declared
Master Ghizla, bobbing down twice and thrice in salaams. "And there
are taps with very cold water and taps with very hot water. They are
suites which I let only to princely nobles like your lordship; and I
have had the honour of lodging in them the Persian Prince Kardusi,
whom you surely know, and Baabab, Satrap of Mesopotamia, whom you
also surely know, my lords, as princely nobles."
"Certainly, certainly," replied Lucius, trying to jest. "Kardusi and
Baabab, I know them well."
"We are even related to them and call them by their names," Uncle
Catullus broke in, airily, with a bow and puffing out his stomach. "But
there is something that I want to ask you, Master Ghizla, something
that neither his lordship nor Master Vettius will care so much about:
are there kitchens to the suites, kitchens where our trusty cook can
prepare us this or that simple fare?"
"There are most comfortable kitchens to these princely suites, my
lord," Master Ghizla assured him. "His Highness the Satrap Baabab
often gave very sumptuous banquets and would invite his excellency
the legate to his table every other day; and near the kitchens there
is a well of water clear as crystal."
"I don't drink much water," said Uncle Catullus.
"We have old Mareotis wine in our cellars, my lord, wine thick as
ink, dark-purple as molten princely sealing-wax and fragrant as the
own lotus of our Lady Isis, blessed be her name! We have also the
rose-coloured date-wine of Meroe and the fine topaz-yellow liqueur
of Napata: we have all the Ethiopian liqueurs...."
"That's better than water," said Uncle Catullus, smacking his
lips. "What say you, my dear Lucius?"
Lucius had made a great effort that morning to control his grief;
together with his uncle and the tutor, he had stared with interest at
the splendid panorama that unrolled itself before their eyes as they
entered the Great Harbour; he had welcomed his steward Vettius with
a kind word; he had interested himself in the apartments which he was
to occupy. Now, however, tired and listless, he had sunk into a seat,
beside the silver image of the goddess, and sat looking disconsolately
in front of him. He was a tall, comely fellow, with an athletic
frame developed by wrestling exercise; and his dark eyes, though
now veiled with melancholy and longing, gleamed with a deep spark
of intelligence. Immensely rich, the sole heir of various relatives
who had died childless, he had joined for but a short time in the mad
orgies of the young Romans of his own rank and had soon devoted himself
to many branches of science, to astronomy in particular, philosophy,
magic, the favourite passion of that period; he amused himself
with modelling and sculpture; as a collector, he loved everything
that was beautiful: pictures and statues, old coins and old glass;
and his Etruscan antiquities were famous all over Rome. Certainly,
he had always desired to see Egypt, to travel through Egypt; and the
sight of the marble palaces of Alexandria had already charmed him
for a moment. But his grief and longing returned to him immediately
after; red anger awoke in him once more and impotent fury that Ilia,
his best-beloved slave, had vanished, one inauspicious morning,
from his villa at Baiæ, without leaving a trace behind her.
"Come, Lucius," said Catullus, "we're going on shore now, my dear
fellow. There are our litters waiting for us, prepared by Master
Ghizla's care...."
"With excellent, powerful Libyan bearers, my lord, bearers whom I
reserve exclusively for princely nobles like you...."
"And, if you care first to take a turn through the city, sir,"
Vettius proffered, "I will see to it that the furniture and baggage
are conveyed from the ships to your apartments, so that you will find
everything arranged in time for luncheon."
Although Lucius of course travelled with his own litters and his
own bearers, Ghizla and Vettius had judged that two Alexandrian
litters, with twelve Libyan bearers, would serve his purpose better
at Alexandria, especially because here they were accustomed to
move quicker, at a trot, than in Rome, where the pace was statelier
and slower. Master Ghizla, therefore, who would not fail to charge
the litters and bearers in his bill at double the price and more,
had quickly and slyly set out his litters in front of the gangway,
before Rufus, the under-steward, had even thought of preparing his
master's own litter.
"Very well, Vettius," said Lucius, making an effort and rising. "I
see two litters: those are for Uncle Catullus and me. And how is our
good Thrasyllus to accompany us? For he knows the city already from
the writings of Eratosthenes and Strabo; he can tell us much that
is interesting on the way; and the tour would not afford us half the
same pleasure without him."
"I have had a good donkey saddled for Master Thrasyllus," said Master
Ghizla, with a salaam.
In fact, an ass, held by a boy on a leading-rein, stood waiting behind
the litters, among the open-mouthed populace.
"And if," the Sabæan hinted, suavely, "if I might entrust the noble
lords to the conduct of my younger brother Caleb, he will go in front
of the noble lords and act as a guide with whom they will doubtless
be no less satisfied than were the Prince of Persia and the Satrap
of Mesopotamia...."
"Kardusi and Baabab," Uncle Catullus completed, mischievously. "Two
pleasant, simple fellows: I'm sorry they're gone."
But Ghizla pointed to Caleb, who now came up with a flourish of salaams
and bowed. As against Ghizla, who was tall, lean and dignified, Caleb,
the younger man, was vivacious and sparkling, with dark eyes, flashing
teeth and a gay, smiling mouth. He wore wide striped trousers of many
colours, a white burnous, a red turban and large rings in his ears;
and he spoke better Latin than his brother, with now and then a few
sentences of Greek.
Lucius accepted Caleb as his guide; and they went on shore; and Lucius
and Uncle Catullus took their seats in their litters. Thrasyllus
mounted his quiet donkey; but Caleb flung himself with a swagger on to
a jet-black, gaily-caparisoned Sabæan mare, who neighed when she felt
the red heels of Caleb's sandals in her flanks. So the procession
started: first three ebon-black outrunners, with whips which they
cracked right and left to make room, to drive barking dogs away and
to keep beggars at a distance; then Caleb, proudly sitting his horse
like a young conqueror, always smiling and sparkling with black eyes
and white teeth; then the two litters, with Thrasyllus at the side
on his donkey; and round the three travellers a number of guards,
armed with whips and sticks.
They pressed through the crowd along the quay, where everybody looked
and pointed at the distinguished foreigners; they went at a quick
trot, for the outrunners went at a trot, cracking their whips;
Caleb, on his Sabæan mare, showed off his equestrian powers and
pranced elegantly along upon his steed; the litter-bearers followed
at a short, steady quick-trot; even Thrasyllus' donkey, as sober as
a philosopher, trotted blithely on; and behind trotted the guards,
shaking their sticks and flourishing their long whips. They trotted
along the middle of the broad street, over the great stone flags;
and it seemed as though everything were trotting in a quick rhythm,
including all the other litters, the carts and horsemen, who with
their outrunners and outriders also strove to make their way through
the bustle.
So the cavalcade trotted on; and the street-boys scattered and the
ibises scattered with outstretched necks and wide-flapping wings.
"What crowds of ibises!" Catullus cried. "Thrasyllus, isn't it
comical to see so many ibises walking and fluttering through the
streets of Alexandria?"
"My lord," cried Thrasyllus, from the back of his dancing donkey,
"the ibises are Alexandria's scavengers."
"I dare say, but they are unclean birds themselves for all
that! And they are counted among the sacred animals!" cried Uncle
Catullus. "Whoosh! Whoosh!"
And he drove them away, with a flourish of his arm from the litter,
for the whips of the runners trotting behind circled, it is true,
around the street-boys but ever spared the sacred ibises, one of
which would sometimes stray, fluttering wildly, among the bearers.
Meanwhile Caleb continued to give a graceful equestrian performance
on his snorting mare beside Lucius' litter:
"My lord!" cried Caleb. "Do you see the Heptastadium? The great
bridge leading to the Pharos? Do you see that tall-masted ships are
able to sail under it? It is an interesting walk there of an evening,
my lord: all the beauties of Alexandria go there; and a great nobleman
like yourself need but make his choice and any hetaira in Alexandria
will fall at his feet! This is the Moon Gate, my lord! And this is
the High Street: behind it lies the Rhacotis quarter, which is very
interesting at night, my lord, most interesting for any one like your
lordship to roam through in disguise. But now we are going through
the High Street; and here, you see, is the Square, where the High
Street crosses the Museum Street and the Avenue of Pillars."
Lucius looked around him with enjoyment. They were still going at
a trot, a trot of mare and runners and bearers and donkey, a noisy
trotting between shouting and laughing voices and cracking whips,
while in the streets and squares the hucksters also shouted and laughed
and swore, while the street-boys cheered and screamed for an obolus
and the ibises, flapping their wings, darted away, to alight again
elsewhere and act as scavengers to Alexandria.
"It is very different from Rome in every way," thought Lucius. "It
is the east."
Yes, it was the east. It was Egypt, it was Alexandria. Never
in the Forum at Rome, lively and busy though it was, never in
the basilicas had Lucius beheld this ever trotting, ever hurrying
tumult. It was as though every one were pressed for time and hurrying
feverishly. Processions of priests hurried; the Roman guards even,
returning from the Palace after being relieved, marched with an
accelerated step; and yet the numerous litters never struck against one
another: they all glided at the trot of their bearers, to the right,
to the left, beside one another; there was only a shouting, a din,
a cursing, a cracking of whips loud enough to rouse the dead. Here
was a quarrel, with violent gestures and shrill voices; there the
noisy gaiety of squabbling vegetable-women and bawling vendors
of water-melons; suddenly, in a rage, the women flung cabbages at
the vendors' heads and the vendors sent melons trundling between
the women's legs; the cabbages and melons rolled across the street
and the crowd yelled with enjoyment, while distinguished but still
trotting processions of notables in litters or on horseback made a way
for themselves. The cabbages and melons rolled in front of the feet
of Lucius' bearers; and Caleb, rising in his stirrups with flapping
burnous and uplifted arms, hardly holding the reins in his fingers
while the mare reared on her hind-legs, poured forth a torrent of
curses over the women and the hucksters ... and then turned to Lucius
with a pleased smile, as though all this tumult were the most ordinary
morning affair in the streets of Alexandria.... Yes, that was the
Egyptian character: bustle, tumult, uproar, yelling and cursing for
the least thing; quarrelling for the least thing; and then everything
just ordinary again, as though nothing had happened. All this in a
motley whirl of colours: Rome was monotonously white and colourless
beside it, Lucius thought. Here the colours glared more fiercely:
the citrons, oranges and melons lay yellow and gold over the markets;
and there were exotic fruits too, scarlet and vermilion....
They came to the painters' quarter. Troughs of used colouring-matter
ran in gutters along the streets: there were rivulets of indigo,
there were little waterfalls of ochre. The bearers splashed through
purple and trotted on with purple-black feet. A golden whirl of dust
in the morning sun powdered over these motley colours as with handfuls
of the finest glittering sand. Tall buildings shot up their pillars
in that glitter, seemed to shimmer, to move in that shimmer of light.
Caleb now pointed to the Acropolis, standing fortress-like, four-square
and heavy, protecting and dominating the city. Next came the Sun
Gate. Outside the city-wall was a canal; along the canal ran an avenue
of tall sycamores, bringing a sudden blissful calm and coolness and
silver-green shadows. And now Caleb pointed to the famous lake, Lake
Mareotis: it lay spread out like a sea, but was divided by isthmuses
into smaller inland lakes; there were islands often bearing some
temple to Aphrodite; and along the margins of the lake rose villa
after villa, in royal pomp of marble-coloured villas, casting their
reflections into the limpid water.
"That is where the rich hetairæ live," said Caleb, with a wink,
"hetairæ for people like your lordship: a prince like you can take
your choice."
Tall papyrus shot up on the lake's edge. There were papyrus-eyots:
the stalks rustled at the least breeze; and on the eyots lived
the basket-makers: there were families of basket-makers; the
children weaving baskets and hampers looked up and cried out for an
obolus. White lotus and pink water-lilies blossomed and small gilt
barges passed across the lake, with coloured awnings to them. Ibises
and cranes fluttered out of the reeds.
"You must come here again in the evening, my lord," Caleb advised,
winking eagerly. "This is the place for one like your lordship to
enjoy himself: at Rhacotis there are only the common women and the
houses where the sailors go. But many princely nobles like to see
everything at Alexandria."
The procession trotted back through the Gate of the Sun, which made a
wide breach in the city-walls, a vaulted arch above Corinthian pillars;
and Caleb said:
"We are now coming to the Avenue of Pillars and to the Museum."
Here again were the bustle, the tumult, the uproar, the shouting
and cheering and cursing, the multitude, litters, horsemen,
pedestrians. The Avenue of Pillars also was swarming, mainly with
students, philosophers and loose women. The sun blazed down in
the middle of the street; there were golden patches of light and
blue-purple islands of shadow. And there was always the golden glitter
of dust, as of the finest sand whirling through the air. Here were the
hair-dressers and barbers; here were the baths, here the tailors'-shops
with their riot of colours and here the glittering jewellers'-shops and
here, behind tables, stood the money-changers. There were stretches
of green garden; and behind the gardens loomed the colonnades of the
Museum. Close by were the Gymnasium and the Athletic School.
"Will your lordship visit the Museum?" asked Caleb, still parading
his horsemanship on the Sabæan mare.
Thrasyllus thought that it would be interesting to visit the Museum;
and the travellers alighted. There was a great rush to see them. Uncle
Catullus threw oboli among the street-boys, who rolled over one
another, fighting. Beggars approached, grey-bearded men like prophets
and old women like sibyls; and Lucius flung a coin here and there.
The runners and guards drew themselves up around the two litters,
the mare and the donkey; but Caleb walked in front of the travellers,
mincing elegantly on the tips of his red riding-boots and holding
the hem of his burnous in his swaying hand. It was as though he were
always dancing, whether on horseback or on foot.
"The Museum," Caleb explained, "is, as your lordships know, the
Academy of Alexandria, founded by the beautiful Cleopatra."
"That is not true," Thrasyllus whispered to his young master. "It
was founded by Ptolemy the First."
"Here philosophers and scholars in every branch of science devote
themselves to study; and they are surrounded by thousands of disciples
from all countries. But both masters and pupils are as poor as rats
and do not, all told, possess ... that!" said Caleb, with a flip of
his finger and thumb.
"The Museum has produced great scholars," Thrasyllus expounded,
more appreciatively, "such as Euclid, Erasistratus and Diophantus;
then there were the poets Theocritus, Aratus, Callimachus; and among
critics Aristarchus; and among philosophers more than I could name."
"And because they are so poor, all these learned gentry," said Caleb,
with a laugh, pointing, as they entered the gardens of the Museum
through a portico, to stately white-cloaked figures walking to and fro,
"because they are so poor, they live on a fund provided by the State:
they're no use for anything, these learned gentry; but they are
certainly clever, my lords, they're all that: you won't find their
equals for cleverness anywhere. And the books they collect! Their
library is quite famous.... Look," continued Caleb, pointing, "it
is just the time when they have their mid-day meal: it seems to be
philosophical to do so earlier than princely nobles are used to do. No
doubt it will interest you, as strangers, to see so many very wise and
poverty-stricken scholars and philosophers eating their black broth."
The colonnades of the Museum loomed aloft; there were statues to
commemorate famous men of learning; and there was an immense rounded
exedra, from which lectures were delivered at frequent intervals. The
travellers entered the cenaculum, the refectory, which was wide,
lofty and very long; the scholars and philosophers sat eating at
long tables; Lucius was struck by the fact that they were sitting,
instead of reclining.
"They don't know any better," Caleb explained. "They just sit down for
a moment and gobble up their broth; they are not epicures, they are
only just clever, you see. They have more in their heads, my lords,
than in their pockets. But they have plenty in their heads beyond
a doubt."
A philosopher moved towards the strangers. He was very old, frail and
grey and looked like a long dry stalk, in his toga. He smiled and
mumbled words which at first were incomprehensible. From the folds
of his garment he stretched forth a clawlike hand. He was begging;
and Lucius gave him some money.
"The highest philosophy is ... to be satisfied with little," he then
said, plainly, in pure Greek.
And he bowed, ironically, and turned away with the movement of a long
dry stalk, in his dirty cloak.
"The shameless rascal!" cried Uncle Catullus, indignantly.
But Lucius laughed and looked down the long table at which the men
of learning ate. Sometimes a beggar would come up to them; and they
gave him their bread and fruit. Sometimes, too, dogs snuffled around;
and the men of learning flung them their offal, over which the dogs
choked greedily. Two ibises also walked in ludicrous high-legged
state through the cenaculum, pecking here and there, and kept the
floor clean, though they themselves were not so cleanly.
The travellers returned to their litters; and, amid much shouting and
cursing and swearing at street-boys and cracking of whips at beggars,
the procession started, while Caleb, for no reason, insisted on making
his mare rear and curvet across the street with elegant movements of
her fore-feet.
But now, smiling with his black eyes and white teeth, he bent to one
side, low enough almost to slip from his mount, and asked Lucius:
"Would your lordship now like to see the Soma?"
And through the public gardens of Bruchium, along the Paneum--an
artificial little rocky mountain built up in the shape of a top or
pineapple--the procession trotted to the Soma, the burying-place
of the Ptolemies, where it lay in the cool shade of sycamores and
tamarisks. A long avenue of recumbent sphinxes, male--bearded--and
female--high-breasted--led to the pyramid tombs. The travellers
alighted and the old priests in charge appeared.
"These distinguished strangers wish to see the burial-places of the
Ptolemies," said Caleb. "They are princely nobles and no doubt will
also be interested in the tomb of Alexander the Great."
"Death is but a slumbering and a twilight transition to the halls of
eternal sunshine," replied the priest in charge. "Earthly greatness
is the perishable step to the imperishable palace of Osiris, where
our dead monarchs now sit enthroned around him, their heads circled
with the pschent and their hands grasping the scarab sceptre. And
great Isis has appeared to them as the splendour of truth, for she
lifted her veil for their delight, so that they saw her. Life is but
a dream, death is a bridge and eternity is life."
Caleb walked mincingly in front, on the tips of his red riding-boots,
and pointed out things, while the old priest went on reciting
the eternal verities, as though to himself, The tombs of granite,
porphyry and marble, inscribed with hieroglyphics, rose like temples,
pyramid-shaped. The priest now went in front of the travellers and
descended a few steps: inside, in the subterranean vault, invisible,
the mummies rested in their painted sarcophagi; standing lamps burned
on their tripods, perfumes rose in a cloud from vases and dishes;
and daintily-coloured glass vessels, filled with oil, honey and
fruit, stood on low bronze tables, while amphoræ of consecrated water
awaited the hour of the resurrection, when the dead should rise and
be baptized into the true new life, which was eternity. There was
an overpowering scent of sickly-sweet aromatics; and in the mist of
the perfumes the big, wide-open eyes of the painted images on the
sarcophagus-lids stared, ghostly and superhuman, straight before them
into the brightening future. They were images of bearded kings and
ibis-crowned queens; sometimes they were images of children.
Through the mist of the aromatics the golden, winged suns gleamed in
the embrace of the snakes coiled tail in mouth. Sacred Horus, son
of Osiris and Isis, the radiant redeemer of mankind, who descended
out of pity on a sinful world, bestrode Typhon, the grinning spirit
of evil. There were images of the god Apis, of the god Râ, of Thoth
and Anubis, with the heads of an ox, an ibis, a dog.
After this, the shade of the sycamores and tamarisks outside the tombs
was silver-green and cool; and the pure air of the sunny morning
seemed strange after the perfumed, sickly-sweet atmosphere of the
sultry underground sepulchres. The priest in charge stopped before a
gleaming marble pyramid. The narrow bronze door hung tapering upwards
between pilasters carved with lotus-capitals.
"The tomb of Alexander of Macedon," said the custodian, solemnly.
They went inside. Again, burning lamps shed their fragrance. There
was a heavy mist of nard. Behind a bronze railing on a basalt pedestal
stood a sarcophagus of transparent crystal, polished and engraved. And
within this thick crystal, in a green watery light, where the flame
of the lamps was mirrored in the glass, a mummy lay visible. It was
like the chrysalis of a gigantic moth. The face was stained brown with
balsam and salve and stared with eyes of beryl. The hair and short
beard were painted gold. Many-coloured bandages wrapped the body in
a close sheath; and the legs also were closely fastened together in
a case of gold filagree.
The mummy lay on a mattress of striped byssus, the head on a byssus
pillow. The scarlet lips seemed to grin in the crisp golden beard
and the beryl eyes were full of amazement at what they saw in eternity.
"These are the sacred remains of the great Alexander," said the priest
in charge. "History teaches us that Ptolemy, son of Lagus, took the
body of the hero and conqueror from Perdiccas, who was bringing it
back from Babylon to Macedon, but was passing through Egypt in the
hope of conquering our sacred country. Ptolemy marched against him;
Perdiccas had hardly set foot in Egypt when he perished at the hands of
his own soldiery on an island which had been surrounded by Ptolemy's
troops. With Perdiccas were the royal family: Alexander's pregnant
widow Roxana and her young children. They were allowed to embark for
Macedon, but the body of Alexander the Great was carried to Alexandria
and buried in state in a massive gold sarcophagus. This sarcophagus
was stolen by Ptolemy Parisactus, a pretender to the Egyptian throne,
who invaded the country from Syria with a host of troops. Alexander's
body, however, was rescued from his hands and laid in this crystal
coffin. Here it lies."
Lucius and his companions stared, greatly moved by the sight of this
corpse nearly three centuries old, embalmed and bandaged, with its
feet in a sheath of gold filagree and its beryl eyes staring with
surprise. Was this chrysalis all that remained of the great Alexander,
whom the oracle of Ammon had declared to be the son of Ammon-Râ son
of the sun-god?
Only Caleb remained indifferent, with his mincing gait and an
incredulous little laugh at the genuineness of Alexander's body, to
which he had already conducted so many "princely nobles," including
Kardusi of Persia and Baabab of Mesopotamia.
"Here lies Alexander the Great," continued the priest in charge. "The
warrior, the conqueror, the king of kings, the son of the sacred
sun-god, Ammon-Râ, descended upon earth. He lived to be thirty-three
in this terrestrial life. But this life is a dream and death is the
bridge to the life that is the eternal reality. The soul has departed
from this house embalmed with precious ointments...."
And he added, in a different voice:
"Even to your excellencies the charge is only one gold stater
a head...."
"I will pay for you, my lord!" smiled Caleb, with an elegant bow
to Lucius.
And he paid the priest, who went on speaking, with the gold coins
shining in his uplifted hand:
"Generosity is a great virtue. He who gives more than he is asked to
give earns the favour of Thoth, who sews the good chances of fortune
upon the earth."
Caleb grinned with flashing teeth to show that he understood and
dropped another half-stater into the priest's palm.
The travellers stepped out of the sepulchre. The sunny morning outside
seemed strange, with silver-green shadows between waving tamarisks
and rustling sycamore-leaves.
Lucius was pale. And he said to Thrasyllus and Uncle Catullus:
"Death!... Death!... She is perhaps dead.... She is drowned, perhaps,
in the sea ... and we shall never recover her exquisite body, to
embalm it...."
"In any case she has disappeared, my dear nephew," said Uncle Catullus,
trying to console him. "Let us think of her no more. By all the gods,
try to forget her: she had thick ankles and large feet.... Lucius,
do be sensible at last! Enjoy yourself during this interesting
tour. We have had a morning more interesting than any that we ever
had at Rome. We have seen an ideal system of scavenging, we have
heard philosophical and religious truths and we have seen the mummy
of Alexander! I've really received too many new impressions. My
brains are soaked like an overfull sponge: they can contain no more
this morning. That sated condition of the head makes my stomach feel
empty, as empty as my pocket when your liberality has forgotten to
line it for your old uncle. My dear Lucius, when travelling one must
be sparing ... of one's powers. I suggest to our indefatigable guide
that we should go home and see if, in our absence, our trusty cook has
remembered that, though life is a dream, even the dead and therefore
all the more the living have to be fed. The dead are sustained with
oil, honey and fruit: I am curious to see what our cook's pious
thoughts have prepared to-day for the living."
The procession trotted home through the gardens of Bruchium, the palace
quarter, and along the Hippodrome to Master Ghizla's great diversorium,
or guest-house. It stood near the Canopian gate in an oval garden,
behind a hedge of tall cactuses; the door opened between two figures
of Hermes. Here sat the janitor, or porter; and the travellers were
struck by the fact that a winged head of Hermes, in marble, crowned the
marble architrave of the door. Caducei, or Hermes'-wands, with winding
snakes, were carved on the pilasters of the door; for the diversorium
was dedicated to Hermes and known in the quarter as the Hermes House.
The janitor rose and bowed, with his hands stretched to the
ground. Master Ghizla also, standing beside a statue of Hermes in
the middle of his garden, bowed in this fashion, bending low, with
his hands stretched groundwards.
The procession trotted in, the travellers alighted, but Caleb sat his
mare, bowed gracefully and, stooping forward, whispered in Lucius' ear:
"After you have rested, my lord, I will take you whither you please,
I will procure you whatsoever you please ... for your lordship's
pleasure and gratification. Whithersoever you please and whatsoever
you please.... I wish you good luck at your repast."
With that he threw the mare on her haunches, stood up in the stirrups,
waved his burnous, uttered a cry and rode away, in a cloud of graceful
gestures.
The diversorium consisted of several low buildings. It harboured
Arabian and Phoenician merchants, who looked out curiously, squatting
on mats or lying at their meal, served by black slaves. But Master
Ghizla led his "princely guests" to their own suites; and Vettius and
Rufus received the travellers on the threshold. They had worked to
good purpose, conveying furniture, boxes and packing-cases on camels
and mules. A Babylonian carpet lay upon the floor; the travellers'
own beds were ready; in the corners of Lucius' bedroom stood bronze
and marble statues, for no important Roman with any pretension to
taste travelled without carrying a few of his treasures with him; and
perfumes burned before the statues. There were curtains hanging from
rings; and garments lay ready, neatly folded and strewn with fragrant
flowers, on long, low, sycamore-wood tables. There were metal mirrors
on bronze pedestals; all the brushes, tweezers and unguent-sticks, in
gold adorned with agates, lay spread on bronze tables; all the jars,
pots and vases essential to the toilet stood filled with cosmetics,
ointments and perfumes. All this furniture and upholstery, all these
useful and artistic possessions had been brought over from the ship.
"My diversorium boasts every possible comfort, my lord, and all
the latest conveniences," bragged Ghizla, "which visitors like your
lordship demand in these days."
He lifted a curtain beside Lucius' couch: there was in fact a marble
basin with taps, under a canopy.
"And here," said Master Ghizla, "is your triclinium."
The dining-room which Master Ghizla described by this high-sounding
name was a pleasant, spacious, airy apartment, with sun-blinds between
pillars; and, as Lucius entered, he was greeted with the music of
harps. For all the wealthy young Roman's "family" were drawn up there
in two rows, awaiting his arrival: Vettius and Rufus and Tarrar, the
little black slave; all his slaves, male and female, all the great
household without which no distinguished Roman thought it possible to
live, even--indeed especially--when travelling. And, amid the female
slaves, stood the Greek slave from Cos, Cora, with two other harpists;
and they drew long, descending cords from their strings, while Cora
sang a short song of welcome to the gracious master. Incense burned on
dishes; two S-shaped couches coiled round a long, low table covered
with a yellow-and-white cloth and already laid with yellow-and-white
crockery and gleaming gold plate. A little fountain of verbena-water
played in the middle of a bowl filled with blue lotus.
Lucius assured Vettius and Rufus that he was really pleased; indeed it
was as though he were at home. Then, because Uncle Catullus said that
he was starving, he invited his uncle and parasite, who had so often
diverted him with a merry jest, to lie down, lay down himself and
motioned Thrasyllus, his friend and tutor, to a stool by his side,
for, though Thrasyllus shared his pupil's meals, as a freedman he
remained the inferior and ate seated. Tarrar and three girl-slaves
waited, while Cora and the two harpists struck a soft melody from
their strings or danced a little ballet.
Uncle Catullus was glad to have neither oysters nor roast peacock
set before him: Lucius' cook had surpassed himself, in this first
exotic repast, with a first course of peppered water-melon in sugared
wine-sauce, with which was served an Egyptian spiced bread, named
caces; next, young tunnies, surrounded by savoury eggs, stuffed
olives and finely chopped coxcombs; next, a sucking-pig served on
bread-fruit and cucumbers; lastly, a honey-tart, covered with a
cream custard containing stoned dates and cinnamon. They had the
celebrated Mareotis wine, thick as ink and purple as molten wax,
poured by Master Ghizla himself out of a jar still warm from the sun;
and there was the topaz-yellow Ethiopian liqueur of Napata, which he
dripped drop by drop into goblets filled with snow and which spread
an aroma as of roses steeped in silphium.
Uncle Catullus ate his fill and Lucius too did honour to the meal,
however much his heart still suffered and craved, while Thrasyllus
was moderate as always. Then a legitimate drowsiness overcame the
three travellers and they withdrew behind their curtains, to rest.
CHAPTER IV
But Lucius did not sleep. Now that he was alone, he felt the agony of
his suffering and affliction. He drew a sandal from a little casket,
a woman's blue-leather sandal adorned with gold relief and small,
for all that Uncle Catullus was pleased to say. It was the only trace
that Ilia had left behind her. And he kissed the sandal and groaned
and stretched himself out impotently and clenched his fists and lay
like that, staring before him without moving.
He lay lost in thought. And suddenly he struck the gong and summoned
Tarrar, who entered nimbly and respectfully:
"Find Caleb and bring him here to me."
The little slave returned in a short time and ushered in Caleb, who
approached with graceful salaams. Tarrar left his master alone with
the Sabæan.
"Caleb," said Lucius, "sit down and listen. I need your advice."
"Your faithful servant is listening, my lord," said Caleb, sitting
down on a chair.
"Caleb," continued Lucius, "I have not come to Egypt merely to see
the things of interest which this country supplies. I have another
object. There are mysterious oracles in Egypt; there are prophets and
sibyls, so I am told, living in the desert. I want to know something. I
want to know where some one is, one who is dear to me and far away. I
want to consult the oracles and the prophets and sibyls. You must
conduct me, without saying a word to my uncle or my tutor, because
they do not approve of the attempts which I wish to make to find this
person whom I love. Be my guide, Caleb, and I will reward you."
"I will be your guide, my lord," replied Caleb, "and this very night
I will conduct you...."
"Where?"
"To the sibyl of Rhacotis, an old sorceress who knows everything."
"We will go by ourselves, in secret."
"Very well, my lord; no one shall accompany us.... What do you think:
would you not like a cool sherbet after your rest? And divert yourself
with looking at the goods which the travelling merchants from distant
foreign lands, who happen to-day to be staying in the diversorium,
have to offer for sale? I will have the sherbet prepared and the
merchants informed, my lord. And to-night I will lead you through
Rhacotis: we will go by ourselves, my lord, and no one shall know
anything of our nocturnal expedition."
Caleb went away; Tarrar drew the curtains aside. Beyond the bedchamber
was a pillared portico; and the green shadow of the palm-garden
outside fell within doors. Uncle Catullus was still asleep, but
Thrasyllus already sat reading his Egyptian guide-books at a table
under a palm-tree. The wonderful, fantastic stories of Herodotus
charmed the old tutor's mind, which was not disinclined to fantasy;
but Thrasyllus also took pleasure in the more succinct descriptions
of the learned Eratosthenes, Ptolemy Evergetes' librarian, who lived
three centuries before and was a noted astronomer, philosopher and
geographer. Thrasyllus loved to consult his splendid maps, which
had never yet been bettered and which lay spread in heavy parchment
on the table before him; and the tutor followed the cinnabar-traced
Nile on these maps down to Ethiopia and the mysterious sources of
the sacred stream.
Yes, Eratosthenes was the most respectable guide. When he went blind,
in his eighty-second year, he starved himself. Thrasyllus honoured
him as a martyr of science. But the tutor also consulted Artemidorus
and Hypsicrates, for he wished to be well-informed about the country
which he was about to visit, that mysterious country of age-old
history and colossal art, while also he did not despise the quite
modern writings of his contemporary, Strabo: what a contemporary
told about a country over the whole of which he had travelled was
perhaps most important of all, because of its practical utility and
also because of the freshness of the new impressions.
So Thrasyllus sat under his palm-tree at a table strewn with unrolled
papyri; more scrolls stood in a case by his side; and his fingers
followed the cinnabar-traced Nile. Lucius in the portico smiled in
kindly approval. But the travelling merchants, led by Caleb, arrived
through the garden. They were Indians, Sabæans, Arabs, Phoenicians;
and their slaves toiled under their heavy bales of merchandise, which
were slung on pliant sticks over their shoulders. The merchants bent
low in salaams before the wealthy Roman, bowed down to the earth,
kissed the ground which his foot had trodden, all eager to sell their
exotic wares at a profit above the ordinary to so distinguished a
traveller. The Phoenicians made their slaves spread out Damascus
tapestry, but Lucius looked at it with scorn and the Phoenicians at
once rolled up their inferior tapestry. Then, however, they displayed
embroidery from Nineveh and Tyre; and Lucius turned a little pale,
because he thought of Ilia. It was all very beautiful in hue and very
curious in pattern.
"Call Uncle Catullus here," he said to Tarrar, who was squatting
beside him like a faithful little monkey.
Tarrar hastened to Catullus, who thereupon arrived, sleepily rubbing
his eyes, in a wide silk indoor simar; his grey hair stood in a tangle
around his bald skull.
"Uncle," said Lucius, aside, "look here, if you please. Those
embroideries from Tyre and Nineveh: I want them. Bargain for them."
For Uncle Catullus knew how to bargain. He began by turning up his
nose at the embroideries; and the merchants uttered loud cries of
protest and lifted their hands and invoked all the gods. But Uncle
Catullus scornfully shook his head and said:
"No, I won't buy that trash. Show me other things."
Then the Phoenicians showed gold vessels from Tartessus, but the Arabs
offered perfumes and aromatics from Jeddah and Zebid. The Sabæans
displayed wonderful amulets, which bring luck and blissful dreams: the
Indians showed tame, trained snakes, as domestic pets: the snakes had a
small sardonyx encrusted in their heads, where it had grown into their
scaly skin, and they danced on the tips of their tails, to the piping
of the Indians' flutes. They were attractive little creatures and did
not cost more than one stater apiece, with the ebony casket in which
they were kept; and Lucius impatiently bought them at once, partly
because Tarrar found them so attractive and grinned where he squatted
and looked on while the snakes danced and twisted one among another.
But at last a Mongolian merchant arrived, with a pale-yellow face
and narrow eyes, which looked as though they were closed, and his
hair, around his shaven head, ended in a pigtail of purple silk,
with a tassel to it. This merchant offered little black balls, to
be smoked in peculiar pipes; he asked Lucius to accept a pipe and a
couple of little black pills in a yellow-silk bag, without payment,
and to smoke them when he had the opportunity. The intoxication which
they produced was something very peculiar, said the merchant.
Meanwhile Uncle Catullus had duly succeeded in acquiring the
embroideries from Tyre and Nineveh at a really laughable price and
presented them to his nephew, who of course paid for them in his
stead. But, when Lucius held them in his hands--they were narrow
strips embroidered with Assyrian lions and strange unicorns--he grew
sad and said:
"What use are they to me, after all? Time was when I should have
given them to Ilia as a border for her stola. Tarrar, put the pretty
embroideries away, with the Mongolian pills and all the other rubbish
which I have bought without wanting to: the little gold vases and
the Sabæan amulets."
"And the dear little snakes, my lord?" asked Tarrar, with glittering
eyes.
"You may keep them ... to play with," said Lucius, carelessly.
Meanwhile Caleb had had the cups of sherbet handed round. Uncle
Catullus thought it particularly good and considered that Lucius' cook
ought really to write down this Egyptian recipe; but Lucius gave his
to Tarrar, who scooped up the sherbet greedily with his black fingers.
CHAPTER V
Night had fallen over the city, a dark, starless night. To escape
attention, Lucius and Caleb mounted a small, inconspicuous litter at
the back of the diversorium. Caleb sat at Lucius' feet with his legs
dangling out of the litter, which was lifted by four powerful Libyans,
in preparation for departing at a trot.
"Have you your dagger, my lord?" asked Caleb.
Yes, Lucius had a dagger in his girdle.
"And are you wearing your Sabæan amulets?"
Yes, Lucius had hung the amulets which he had bought round his neck,
for Caleb was full of confidence in these talismans of his country:
the amulets warded off all ill-luck; Caleb himself wore amulets
everywhere, on his chest and round his waist and even on a narrow
gold bangle round his ankle.
The bearers scurried through Bruchium and past the Gymnasium and the
Museum, as though they had an enemy at their heels. They came to a
square that lay higher than the Great Harbour; and Lucius looked out
across the quays at the different harbours. Red and green and yellow
lights and signals shone over a variegated, patched throng of ships
and boats and swarming people. But the wonder to Lucius' eyes was the
light-house of Pharos. The nine storeys of the tall marble monument,
stacked one on top of the other like so many cubes, each cube smaller
than the one below, ended in a sort of cupola, where a heap of burning
coal gleamed from immense mirrors and reflectors, which turned and
turned continually, sending bright, broad rays from the summit of the
tower upon the harbours, which they lit up each time, before stretching
into the dark night. Sometimes the wide sheaves of light struck the
high marble bridge of the Heptastadium, which led to the light-house
itself and which at this hour was crowded with women and idlers.
"My lord," whispered Caleb, "would you not like to get out ... and
walk ... there? The loveliest women in Alexandria are strolling yonder
... and you can take your choice."
Lucius shook his head:
"I want to go to the sibyl," he said.
"Your lordship is sick," said Caleb. "Your lordship is sick with
longing and useless pining. The lovely women of Alexandria would
cure your lordship. They have often cured me, my lord, when I was
sick with longing and pining."
"Longing and pining for what, Caleb?"
"For my country, for Saba, my lord, for Saba, the fairest and dearest
country in the world, my lord, which I have had to leave ... for the
sake of business, my lord, for the sake of business. For we do no
business in Saba."
The four bearers trotted on. They were now trotting past the
immemorial temple of Serapis, the Serapeum: sombre and grey it lay
with its terraces below the Acropolis; and numbers of other shrines,
also sombre, grey and mysterious, were ranged, with the needles of
their obelisks, around the vast temple.
"These shrines are deserted, my lord," said Caleb, "and no longer
find worshippers. Even the Serapeum is deserted ... for the temple
of Serapis at Canopus. And the modern Alexandrians hold all this
sacred quarter in but slight esteem since the quinquennial games were
instituted at Nicopolis. All those who wish to do honour to Serapis
repair to Nicopolis and Canopus. We will go there too, my lord,
and you shall dream dreams full of import high up, on the roof of
the temple.... Look, my lord, here we are, at Rhacotis...."
The trotting bearers had left the aristocratic quarters. They were
now hurrying through a narrower, sombre street.
"We had better get out here, my lord, and walk," said Caleb. "We
shall find our litter here when we return."
Lucius and Caleb alighted. The sombre street was hardly lit, but
was nevertheless swarming with people, including drunken sailors and
fighting beldames.
"It's very different here, my lord, from the Heptastadium and
Lake Mareotis. Here the people, soldiers and sailors take their
pleasure. Here a dagger is drawn as quick as thought. Here is nothing
but kennels and taverns. But every traveller who wants to know
Alexandria comes here.... Look, my lord, here it is," said Caleb,
"here!"
They had gone through a network of little lanes and alleys and come
to a square. At one corner an old, ragged philosopher stood arguing
and expounding. Around him soldiers, sailors and wenches gathered,
listening attentively to what he said of true wisdom. When he put out
his hand for alms, two soldiers gave him some coppers, but the others
laughed and pelted him with rotten vegetables. He fled and disappeared,
pursued by yelping dogs that bit him in the skirt of his torn toga.
"Will you not see the Syrian boys dance, my lord?" asked Caleb. "They
dance so beautifully."
"No, I want to go to the sibyl," Lucius answered, impatiently.
"We are close to her dwelling, my lord," Caleb declared.
They almost fought their way through the crowd. The men cursed
them because they pushed and the women flung themselves round their
necks. Caleb drew his dagger and raised it threateningly. Other knives
were drawn forthwith. There was a demoniacal yelling and din. But
they succeeded in avoiding bloodshed.
"I want to go to the sibyl," Lucius repeated, panting and with his
clenched fists pushing away two women who were hanging on to his arms.
Lucius and Caleb now hurried through a reek of wine past the open
brothels and reeking taverns. Caleb stopped in front of a small,
narrow door and knocked. It was opened by a little Greek girl, pretty
and delicate as a Tanagra figurine, with very large black eyes.
"Is Herophila within?" asked Caleb. "A distinguished foreigner wishes
to consult her."
"I will tell her," said the girl.
They entered a very narrow little chamber. A woman came from behind
a curtain. She was shrouded in a white veil, like a phantom; she
carried an earthenware lamp; and it was not possible to see if she
was young or old.
"Do you wish to know the future?" she asked, in a hollow voice.
"No," said Lucius, "I want to know the past and the present. I want
to know where a girl named Ilia is and how she vanished from my
house. Here is the sandal which she left behind: the only trace of
her. If she ... is dead, can you make her appear before me, so that
I may ask her?"
"Yes," said the sibyl, "I can. For I am descended from the witch
of En-dor."
"Who was she?" asked Lucius.
"The witch who made Samuel appear before Saul...."
"I never heard of them," said Lucius.
"And another of my forbears was my honoured namesake, Herophila
of Erythræ."
"Who was she?" asked Lucius.
"She was the custodian of the shrine of Apollo Smintheus, the divine
rat-killer. She prophesied to Hecuba the calamity which would cause
the death of her son Paris, whom she was bearing in her womb."
"I never heard of her before," Lucius repeated. "Tell me if Ilia
is dead."
The sibyl pressed the blue-leather sandal to her head; and her other
hand pressed Lucius' forehead.
"She is not dead!" she cried, in a voice of rapture.
"She is not dead?"
"No, Ilia lives!"
"Where? Where is she?"
The sibyl, in a trance, muttered incomprehensible sounds:
"She appears ... she appears," she stammered, at length.
Suddenly, behind her, the curtains parted. There was nothing there
but a smoking tripod. Thick fumes filled the apartment and rolled on
high like a heavy curtain.
"She appears ... she appears," the sibyl went on stammering.
Lucius stared breathlessly.
Suddenly, in the fumes, a figure was vaguely outlined as of a dainty
woman, flimsy and thin, a shade that moved to and fro.
"I see her!" cried Lucius. "Ilia, Ilia! Speak one word to me! Come
back to me! I cannot live without you!"
The vision had vanished. The smoke clouded away. The curtains closed
again.
"It is difficult," said the sibyl, faintly, "to hold the astral bodies
of living persons for more than a single moment. I can summon the
dead for you for a longer time. But Ilia is not dead."
"Then where is she?" cried Lucius.
The sibyl now pressed the sandal to her forehead and her other hand
lay on Lucius' head:
"I see her," said the sibyl. "She is lying in a boat, swooning.... The
sea is raging.... Now rough, bearded men are hurrying her away...."
"She is kidnapped!" cried Lucius. "By pirates?"
"Yes!" cried the sibyl and fell into a faint.
The pretty Greek girl appeared and said:
"The fee is half a ptolemy, in gold...."
Caleb paid.
Lucius looked down in despair upon the swooning sibyl.
"To-morrow night, my lord," said the Greek girl, in a sing-song voice,
"Herophila will be able to tell you more ... where Ilia was taken by
the pirates."
But Lucius clenched his fists; he foamed at the mouth with sudden
anger and roared:
"She has merely read my own thoughts! No more! No more!"
He glared round him like a madman, drew his dagger and made as though
to fling himself upon the sibyl's swooning body.
"My lord! My lord!" shouted Caleb, holding him back and gripping him
in his strong arms.
The Greek girl, standing in front of the fainting woman, spread wide
her arms and cried:
"Do not murder a holy woman, my lord! Do not murder a poor, holy
woman!"
And, as she stood thus, Lucius saw that she was like the shade of
Ilia ... and he burst into sobs.
CHAPTER VI
Those were sad days. Lucius would lie on his bed, sobbing like a child,
then rise suddenly, in transports of rage, tear his clothes or take
up a stool and hurl it at a marble statue, which fell down in dust
and fragments. He showed Thrasyllus the door; and Uncle Catullus kept
out of the way. Lucius had ended by banging Tarrar against a table;
and the little slave had a deep wound in his forehead. Caleb, who
was a good hand at doctoring, had himself bandaged Tarrar's head.
Anxiously, in the palm-garden, the travelling merchants whispered
about the wealthy Roman, who was sick with sorrow, and Uncle Catullus
whispered in their company. Thrasyllus consoled himself by visiting
the libraries of the Museum and the Serapeum. Lucius refused to
hear any music. He did not leave his bed. He did not eat. He did not
sleep. He looked unshaven, lean-cheeked and hollow-eyed, as one who
was desperately sick.
They were sad days. The first charm of Alexandria was past; and Lucius
cursed his journey, his whole life and everybody. In his impotent
pain he groaned, sobbed and raved. Master Ghizla ordained silence
and quiet around his rooms. Not a sandal creaked, not a voice sounded.
Lucius listened to this stillness. It was after luncheon, which Uncle
Catullus had taken alone with Thrasyllus. And in the burning sunny
stillness of that glowing June Lucius suddenly heard a child sobbing.
He rose from his couch. The sobs came from the back-garden; and Lucius
raised the curtain and looked out. There, listening for his master's
gong, sat Tarrar, huddled, like a little monkey, in a gaudy coat. He
wore a napkin round his head as a bandage. And he was weeping, with
little sobs, as if he were in great sorrow.
"Tarrar!" cried Lucius.
The little slave started up:
"My lord!" he answered.
And he rose and approached with comical reverence and sobbed.
"Tarrar," said Lucius, "why are you weeping? Are you in pain?"
"No, my lord," said Tarrar. "I beg pardon, my lord, for weeping. I
must not weep in your august presence. I humbly beg your pardon,
my lord. But I am weeping because ... because ... because I am so
unhappy."
"And why are you unhappy? Because I struck you? Because you are in
pain? Because you fell and made a hole in your head?"
"No, my lord," said Tarrar, trying to control himself, "not because
you struck me. I am your little slave, my lord, and you have the
right to strike me. And also not because I am in pain: there is only
a little burning pain now, for Caleb bandaged my head this morning
with cool ointment. The hole is not so very deep either; and, when
it is healed, the scar will remind me that I belong to you, my lord,
and that I am your little slave."
"But then why are you weeping, Tarrar, and why are you unhappy?"
"I am weeping, my lord," Tarrar began, "because...."
And then he could restrain himself no longer, comical, respectful
little monkey that he was, and sobbed aloud.
Lucius laid his hand on the boy's curly head:
"Why are you weeping, child?"
"Because the snakes wouldn't dance any more!" sobbed Tarrar, in
despair. "Because one of them is dead and the other gone, for it crept
out of its skin and left its skin behind! Because, whatever pains I
took to pipe the magic tune on the flute--in the garden behind the
house, so as not to make a noise or disturb you--the snakes would not
dance any more ... as they did when the merchant piped to them! And
because now ... one of the snakes is dead, my lord, and the other
crept away out of its skin!"
And Tarrar, overcome with misery, sobbed aloud and showed his master
the snake and the ebony casket, from which a skin hung, with a square
piece of glass gummed to the head.
Lucius gave a melancholy smile. Was he not himself miserable, like
Tarrar, because he too had been robbed of his plaything? And he said:
"Come with me, Tarrar."
And he took the little slave by the hand and led him to his room.
He sat down, with Tarrar standing in front of him. Then he said:
"Tarrar, I am sorry for hurting you so badly. Forgive me, Tarrar."
But Tarrar shook his head:
"It is not for me to forgive you, my lord," he said, earnestly,
with great, dim eyes. "You are the master."
"Tarrar," Lucius continued, "when we are back in Rome, you shall
be free. I will set you free. And you shall no longer be a little
slave. But you shall go to school, to the freedmen's college. And learn
all sorts of things. And become very clever, like Thrasyllus. And I
will give you money. And you will be able to do whatever you please."
Tarrar was a little taken aback:
"You are very kind, my lord," he said. "But, if I go to school, who
will fold your clothes? And listen for your gong? You are not driving
me away, my lord, because I was so unhappy? I would rather stay with
you, my lord, I would rather remain your little slave ... and I will
never again be so disrespectful as to weep.... I would rather remain
your stupid little slave."
"You shall be free, Tarrar. But you will be allowed to serve me all
the same."
"I don't want to be free, my lord. What use is freedom to me? I am your
little slave. I should always be your little slave just as before."
"Then ask me something else, Tarrar, something that you would like
very much."
Tarrar grinned with his white teeth through his tears:
"May I tell you, my lord?"
"Yes."
Tarrar hesitated. Then he said, shyly:
"Two other little dancing snakes, my lord."
Lucius laughed softly:
"Child!" he said. "I will give you two other little snakes! But I fear
that those also will refuse to dance as only the Indian merchant can
make them dance."
"I fear so too," said Tarrar, reflecting. "The snake that is still
alive has crept back to the merchant, I expect, out of the skin which
it left behind it. I also fear that the new snakes would refuse to
dance.... Then I would rather have nothing, my lord. I don't want
anything. If only I may serve you."
"Then get everything ready to shave me ... and tell the slaves to
prepare the bath."
"Yes, my lord," said Tarrar, with alacrity.
CHAPTER VII
"Mother of Eros, hear thy slave!
"Child of the foam, great goddess of love,
Aphrodite, look down from above!
Thou, who dost madden the gods with desire,
Thou, who fulfillest men's hearts with thy fire,
All but the heart of my lord that I crave,
Hark to thy slave!
"Spill this hot blood that courses in vain for him,
Darken these eyes that are heavy with pain for him,
Smite the parched lips that he sees but to spurn them,
The hands stretched in love ... take them, break them and burn them!
"Then, in the place where lately he strode,
Mingle mine ash with the dust of the road;
Thus, though I win not a glance from his eye,
Thus, though as ever he pass me by
Careless, unseeing, at least my lord's heel
Cannot but touch me, at least I shall feel
The embrace of his foot; and his sandall'd sole
Shall kiss my dust and make me whole.
"Then let the heart that he has press'd,
The ashen lips by him caressed
Sink low in the lowly dust of the road
Lest another tread where late he trod.
"Mother of Eros, hear thy slave!
"Child of the foam, great goddess of love,
Aphrodite, look down from above!
Thou, who dost madden the gods with desire,
Thou, who fulfillest men's hearts with thy fire,
All but the heart of my lord that I crave,
Hark to thy slave!"
Cora's song rang through the falling night. Her clear voice, tinkling
as though with little golden bells, at first soft and hushed, rose
throbbing in passion and then broke like a crystal ray and melted in
mournfulness and plaintive prayer.
The shadows lay heaped under the palm-trees. Outside the doors of their
apartments, in the galleries of the diversorium, sat the travelling
merchants, squatting or lying on mat or rug, listening. Uncle Catullus
lay in a hammock and Thrasyllus sat beside him and looked up at the
stars, which were beginning to show like silver daisies in wide,
blue meadows.
"You have sung beautifully, Cora," said Uncle Catullus to the slave,
who was sitting on the ground with the four-stringed harp before her.
"Thank you, my lord," said the slave.
"Why not call me uncle?" said Catullus, good-naturedly.
"I should not dare," said Cora, smiling.
"Ilia used to call me uncle."
"I am not Ilia, my lord."
Tarrar appeared in the pillared portico.
But his appearance was a surprise. For Tarrar, no longer bandaged,
looked like a little savage: he wore his Libyan festive garment;
a girdle of feathers hung round his waist; he was crowned with a
head-dress of feathers. And he stood grinning.
"Great gods, Tarrar!" cried Uncle Catullus, with a start. "What have
you done to yourself? You look like a little cannibal! You frighten
me! What's happening?"
"We are going to Canopus, my lord, to-night!" cried Tarrar,
jubilantly. "My Lord Lucius lets you know that we are all going to
Canopus this very night! Here is his lordship himself!"
And Tarrar pointed triumphantly to Lucius, who appeared upon the
threshold. Cora had risen and now curtseyed low to the ground, with
outstretched arms.
Lucius looked like a young Egyptian god. He wore an Egyptian robe
of striped byssus, with a border of hieroglyphics worked in heavy
embroidery and precious stones; his legs were encased in hose of gold
tissue; about his head was an Egyptian coif, like that of a sphinx,
with broad, projecting, striped bands, which fell to his shoulders;
he glittered with strange jewels and was wrapped from head to foot in
fine gold net like a transparent cloak, like an immaterial shroud. And
he approached with a smile, brilliantly, superhumanly beautiful.
"Great sacred gods! Great sacred gods!" exclaimed Uncle Catullus.
He rose; Thrasyllus rose too; and the merchants gathered round and, in
salaam upon salaam, showed their admiration for the dazzling stranger.
"Lucius, what possesses you? What is happening? Have you turned into
Serapis himself?"
"No, uncle," smiled Lucius, "I am merely clad in ceremonial raiment
because I want to go to Canopus and dream on the roof of the temple
of Serapis. It is the great feast; and Caleb"--he pointed to Caleb
stepping forward--"has persuaded me to go this night in state to
Canopus. You are coming too, uncle; you also, Thrasyllus; we shall
all go, all my freedmen and slaves. Caleb will see about a boat."
A violent and feverish excitement followed. Slaves, male and female,
streamed from every side of the diversorium, rejoicing and clasping
their hands in amazement.
"When any princely noble, such as his lordship," Caleb explained,
"goes to Canopus, to the feast of Serapis thrice holy, he goes in
the greatest state, with all his household to accompany him."
"So I am going too, as I belong to the household?" exclaimed Uncle
Catullus. "Only ... am I to rig myself out like that? And where shall
I find such a sumptuous raiment?"
"My lord," said Caleb, "you will find everything ready in your
chamber. You too, Master Thrasyllus."
Uncle Catullus hurried away, clasping his fat stomach in his two
hands. You never knew where you were with that Lucius! For days and
days he had been mourning and sobbing and lamenting; he had remained
invisible and had eaten nothing ... and there, there he appeared,
decked out like a young god, and wanted to go to Canopus, to dream
on the roof of the temple!
"And I had just been reckoning on a quiet evening, because I feel
that I've overloaded my stomach!" moaned Uncle Catullus. "Egypt will
be the death of me!"
Lights everywhere, links and torches; fever and gaiety everywhere,
because one and all were going to Canopus that night. What a
surprise! Their lord was no longer sick! It was the great feast! It
was the feast of Serapis! The feast of dreams! The water-festival
and the boat-festival! It was the summer festival of Canopus!
Vettius and Rufus, the two stewards, gave orders here, there and
everywhere. One and all, they said, were to deck themselves in festive
garb. Ione, the old female slave, who had charge of the harpists and
dancers, was given leave to buy from the merchants whatever she needed,
veils and ornaments.
"We are going to Canopus, we are going to Canopus!" cried the women,
in joyful chorus. "Quick, Ione, hand me the poppy-rouge! Here, a stick
of antimony! I want a blue veil, Ione, and blue lotus-flowers for my
hair! Quick, quick, Ione! The master is ready!"
"We are going to Canopus, we are going to Canopus!" Cora cried,
joyfully, with the rest. "My lord was like a young god, he looked
like Serapis himself! Ione, I must have a net of gold thread and a
dreaming-veil of gold thread and pink water-lilies for my hair! I
want a wreath of pink water-lilies!"
Lucius from afar beheld this stir, in the reflection of the lamps and
torches in the night. Slaves were running to and fro; litters were
prepared. He thought only of Ilia. He wanted to wrap himself in the
dreaming-veil and to lie on the temple-roof and dream where Ilia was,
where she had been carried ... by the pirates. And he stood like a
priest, gazing solemnly before him.
CHAPTER VIII
During those evenings of the summer festival, Alexandria was lighted
more brilliantly than Rome itself. The town glittered with hundreds
of lights, lamps, lanterns, torches and links; it glittered in
its harbours, where the blinding sheaves of light floated from the
dome of the light-house; it glittered in its two main streets, which
intersected each other; it glittered in the colonnades of the Museum
and the Gymnasium, colonnades and stadia themselves restlessly teeming,
up to where the multitude were making merry for the festival.
But above all it glittered over Lake Mareotis and the Canopus
Canal. The splendid villas on the lake were bright with many-coloured
lanterns and balls of fire; the temple of Aphrodite, on the eyot,
was silhouetted in flaring lines; and over the golden waters of the
lake itself the illuminated boats pressed and crowded, filled with
song, filled with dance, full of colour, gladness and joy; streamers
flapped and rugs trailed over the sides of the boats down to the water.
Through the lighted streets the bearers hurried and thronged with the
litters towards Lake Mareotis. They hurried from the diversorium, with
the harpists and the dancing-girls and a great procession of slaves
in festive raiment. An army of freedmen followed on horses and mules;
and the passers-by pointed to the imposing procession, evidently the
household of a very wealthy Roman who was going to Canopus to dream.
The procession reached a landing-stage on the lake. Here a great barge
lay moored, a thalamegus which Caleb had succeeded in hiring at the
last moment for a vast sum of money. The thalamegus was painted blue
and gilded, with blue-and-gilt oars, which stuck out like so many
swan's-legs. Caleb had had her covered with tapestry and adorned
with wreaths of flowers and festoons of leaves. The silver statue of
Aphrodite stood on the prow, with incense burning before it. The troop
of slaves, male and female, and freedmen, with Vettius and Rufus,
hastened on board to await the master's coming.
A dense multitude pressed round to look on greedily. Now a Roman
litter approached, recognizable by its square shape; yet another and
the master alighted, with the aid of his slaves, male and female. He
was accompanied by an old, corpulent kinsman and a grave tutor.
"He's going dreaming! He's going dreaming!" cried the populace. "See,
he has his dreaming-veil on! He looks like Serapis himself!"
Beggars crowded round the travellers:
"Divine lord and exalted prince! Image of Horus, the son of Osiris! May
Serapis send you good dreams! May Serapis load you with blessings! May
he keep bad dreams locked far from you, in the shadowy underworld!"
The stewards distributed money among the beggars. Lucius had gone on
board. The slave-girls scattered flowers before his feet as he walked.
The song of the rowers was heard from the body of the boat. The
creaking ropes were cast off; the barge glided towards the middle of
the lake. She gleamed with blue, green and yellow lights and left a
trail of brightness in her wake; the water was bright around her. On
the banks the villas and palaces of light stood in gardens of light.
Hundreds of other barges were gliding slowly in the same
direction. Above the monotonous drone of the rowers' song rang ballads
and hymns. The music of citharas was heard in descending chords;
the harps rang out; the notes of double flutes quavered through the
evening air with a magic intoxication of melody.
The waters of the lake stood high. It was the month when the kindly
Nile stepped outside its banks with a moist foot and overflowed the
Delta. The golden waters of the lake lapped higher than the marble
steps of the villas down which the brilliant hetairæ descended, holding
the lappets of their veils, to take their seats on the cushions of
their barges.
Flowers fell on the water, in unison with the notes of hymn and
song. All the craft, hundreds and hundreds, large and small, barges
and coracles, square rafts and canoes, pressed gently forward towards
the entrance of the Canopian Canal. On the banks were thousands of
idlers and spectators, all the people of Alexandria.
The vessels glided to the harmony of the twanged strings into the
broad canal. It was very full of water; the banks were flooded. Reeds
tall as a man, biblos and cyamos, rose like pillars, blossoming during
this month with thousands of waving plumes: the leaves of the biblos
were long and bending over, as though each were languidly broken;
those of the cyamos were round as scales and goblet-deep, stacked
one above the other along the stems, like cups. [1] In the light on
the barges, golden patches glowed among the stalks; and the reeds
and rushes blossomed up as though out of molten gold.
Here lay the Canopian harbour, here the suburb of Eleusis; and the
canal split into two branches. The narrower channel led to Schedia,
on the Nile; the broader led past Nicopolis to Canopus.
Beyond stretched the sea, wide and blue. Only a narrow strip of land
separated it from the canal; and it lay boundless under a thousand
twinkling stars.
"Lucius," said Thrasyllus, sitting spell-bound at the feet of the
young Roman, who sat on a raised throne and gazed in front of him like
a priest, full of longing for his dream of that night, "Lucius, my
Lord Catullus, look! We have passed Nicopolis, with its amphitheatre
and stadium; and yonder lies Taposiris, with Cape Zephyrium; and on
a height I can see the temple of Aphrodite Arsinoe."
"I see," said Lucius, turning his eyes towards the temple, which
was lit with lines of fire and rose above the water like a mansion
in Olympus.
"I see," echoed Uncle Catullus, seated by Lucius' side.
"I was reading," Thrasyllus explained, "that at the same place where
that temple now stands there once stood the city of Thonis, named
after the king who hospitably entreated Menelaus and Helen. Homer
mentions it and speaks of the secret herbs and precious balsams which
Helen received from Queen Polydamna, Thonis' spouse."
"You know everything, Thrasyllus," said Uncle Catullus, warmly,
"and it is a joy to travel with you."
"Tell the slave from Cos to sing the Hymn to Aphrodite as we row past
the goddess' temple," said Lucius.
Thrasyllus went to Cora and communicated the master's order. Forthwith
a group of singers and dancers rose to their feet. Cora herself struck
the resounding chords. And she sang:
"Mother of Eros, hear thy slave!
"Child of the foam, great goddess of love,
Aphrodite, look down from above!
Thou, who dost madden the gods with desire,
Thou, who fulfillest men's hearts with thy fire,
All but the heart of my lord that I crave,
Hark to thy slave!"
She stood as one inspired while she sang, with her fingers on the
chords, facing the temple. Around her the girls danced to the song. The
movements of their lithe bodies, light as the ripple of a silken
scarf in the breeze, met and dissolved in picture after picture with
each word of the song. The singer's voice swelled crystal-clear. From
the bank of the canal, from the open houses, on the temple-steps the
people listened to her song. In the tall reeds lay smaller boats,
wherein a man and woman embraced in love. Their hands thrust aside
the yielding stems; and their smiles glanced at Cora.
"All but the heart of my lord that I crave,
Hark to thy slave!"
the other singers now sang after her.
"She sings well," said Lucius.
Cora heard him. She blushed crimson between the great rose-coloured
flowers at her temples. But she behaved as though she had heard
nothing. And she sat down quietly among her companions, at the foot
of the silver statue of Aphrodite.
The barge glided on slowly with the others. From all of them, in turns,
came music. The water of the flooding canal was like a broad golden
mirror. On the bank, between the stalks of the tall reeds, the open
taverns and brothels rose, wreathed in flowers, as from an enchanted
lake. The women in them beckoned and waved with long lotus-stems.
But the barges glided on, towards Canopus. They were all going to the
temple of Serapis. Not until after the dreams would the brothels and
taverns be visited. The orgy was to come after the dream.
CHAPTER IX
In the strange bright summer night of light, lit by the sheen of
the stars and the glow of the lamps, Canopus rose amid its slender
obelisks and its spreading palm-trees. The barges lay moored to the
long quay, one beside the other. One solemn train of pilgrims after
another flowed down the street to the temple of Serapis. The town
was alive with the whisper of music and aglow with illumination.
It was mid-night. From the temple of Serapis heavy gong-strokes
sounded, like a divine, golden thunder rolling at regular intervals
under the stars. The singing processions, bathed in torchlight,
streamed towards the temple.
There was a wide avenue paved with large, square stones. This avenue,
or dromos, led to the sanctuary, the temenos, along a double row of
immense basalt sphinxes, half woman, half lioness; half man, half
bull. They were drawn up like superhuman sentinels that had turned to
stone; and their great human faces stared raptly into the night. In
between the sphinxes, the coloured lamps and lanterns blossomed like
lotus-flowers, glowing blue, red and yellow.
The processions streamed into the dromos at pilgrims' pace. Through
the dromos they reached the first propylæum, then the second,
the third, the fourth. These consisted of a gigantic series of
heavy pylons, painted with hieroglyphics: a veritable forest of
pylon-trunks rising in serried ranks of frowning columns and crowned
with heavy architraves which seemed to support the starry realm of
the summer night itself. Through these endless rows of pillars the
dense multitude of pilgrims in search of their dreams marched to the
music of hymns. It marched with its steady, slow, regular, religious
tread. And monotonous as the rhythm of its march was the melody of
its hymn, borne upon ever the same harp-chords.
Lucius' procession marched with the others. He walked gravely,
with Catullus by his side; Thrasyllus followed; the slaves, male
and female, followed. In front of him strode his musicians, singers
and dancers. And Cora's voice rose only a little higher in the
ever-repeated hymn to the god Serapis.
The temple itself produced a sense of infinity. An immense fore-court,
or pronaos, soared on high with its pillars, a forest of pylons
crowned by the roof, with its painted hieroglyphics. The pronaos gave
admittance to the sanctuary, the holy of holies, an immeasurable empty
space, without image, without altar, without anything. Nevertheless
as it were a mysterious sanctity descended here, because of the
height, the impressive, colossal dimensions. The "wings," or pteres,
the two side-walls, sculptured with symbolic bas-reliefs, painted
gold, azure and scarlet, approached each other with slanting lines
in a mystic perspective, where a cloud of fragrance hovered like a
conflagration. Behind this the holy of holies lost itself, the abode
of the god, of Serapis; invisible the statue. A swarm of acolytes,
zacori and neocori, were officiating on ascending stairs, in worship
before close-drawn hyacinth curtains.
The processions divided themselves along the wings, the side-walls,
as directed by the temple-keepers' wands. It was as though a broad
stream were dividing into two rivers. At the end of the wings, behind
the holy of holies, flights of stairs widened in the open night,
leading to terraces, the one ever higher than the other, so that they
could not be overlooked. The golden gong-strokes solemnly rolled and
thundered, echoing heavily and loudly.
Over the terraces, in a constant round, up and down, marched the
chief priests, the hieropsalts, the hieroscopes, the hierogrammats,
the pastophors, the sphagists and the stolists. The hieropsalts sang
the hymns to the sacred harps; the hieroscopes prophesied from the
entrails of victims; the hierogrammats guarded the secrets of the
Hermetic wisdom; the pastophors carried the images of Anubis, with
the dog's head, in silver boats; the sphagists were the sacrificial
priests; the stolists served the sacred images, adorned them, tended
them with ever clean and perfumed hands. But among the hierogrammats
strode the prophets. They had beheld the godhead face to face;
they knew the past and the future, they knew the meaning of the
sacred dreams. They were very holy; and the oldest of them were most
holy. Whenever they approached, the people sank to the ground and
kissed the pavement, with hands uplifted.
The sacred hour approached, the hour when Serapis would send the
sacred dreams from heaven, out of the sun itself, when all the
procession would have streamed in, when the gates of the dromos would
have slammed with their ponderous monolithic doors, when the last
gong-stroke would clatter away in the sacred night.
From the terraces the town, the canal, and the lake lay visible as in
one golden shimmer of lights. But on the terraces themselves suddenly
an incredible stillness reigned. Not a voice, not a rustle sounded
from out of that multitude of thousands. And on the granite pavement
the pilgrims were stretched one beside the other.
In between the rows the temple-keepers moved, the neocori. And
they bent incessantly over the pilgrims and covered them with the
dreaming-nets and -veils, while zacori slung the censers. A heavy,
intoxicating perfume of almost stifling aromatic vapour was wafted
through the air.
Suddenly, through the silence, the harps of the hieropsalts struck
the sacred chord.
There was a short hymn, one single phrase, which melted away.
On the vast terraces the multitude of the thousands of pilgrims lay
motionless under nets and veils, their eyes closed. Not a sound came
from the illuminated city. The sacred silence reigned wide and mystic,
fraught with terror, over the sea, along the starry sky, over the city
and the temple. For Serapis, invisible, was rising from the underworld,
to bring the dreams.
He rose in a cloud of dreams, out of the sacred, subterranean
Hell, where he reigns even as Osiris reigns in high Heaven. He is
Osiris himself; between him and Osiris there is no difference. He
is two. While Osiris is the benevolent Almighty above, he is the
benevolent Almighty below. He opposes Typhon, even as Osiris combated
Typhon. Victory falls to him in the end, even as it did to Osiris.
Now he rises, in the cloud of dreams. For it is his feast, the feast
of his kindly waters, which he pours in summer rains from the sacred
vessels wherewith the dog's-head of Anubis, his watchman, servant and
comrade, is crowned, the waters which he pours into the sacred stream,
so that it may flood sacred Egypt. Now he rises in the cloud of dreams.
The earth splits and Serapis rises from the subterranean Hell. He is
everything, even as Osiris is. He is feminine, Neith, the beginning,
and masculine, Ammon, eternity. He is what the last will be. And he
cannot be other than the benefactor. He makes the dreams hover like
butterflies around the foreheads of those who believe in him. His
healing power makes whole the sick. He pours the secret of that healing
into the minds of the servants of sufferers who shall dream in their
masters' stead. His dreams advise what must be done or left undone
to achieve prosperity, fortune, consideration, happiness and love.
And he will make Lusius dream where to find a beloved woman who has
disappeared....
In the silence the young Roman lies, covered with a gold network,
like a precious mummy, straight out, his arms beside his body, his
eyes shut. Near him lie all his followers.
The cloud of the perfumes is wafted over their eyes reverently closed
under the veils.
The sacred silence continues, hour after hour, unbroken....
CHAPTER X
Had Lucius slept? Had he dreamed? Had the fragrant cloud drugged
his senses? Had a strange mystic power spread over him? Had Serapis
descended upon him? Had the dreams surrounded him?
It seemed to him that a golden thunder roused him from his heavy,
motionless lethargy. The gong-strokes rolled through the temple
and far away into the starry night. Harp-chords sounded, a hymn was
intoned. He felt his veil wet with thick-rising dew....
Round and round the terraces, singing, moved the long procession
of the priests. It was still night. Everywhere around Lucius the
dreamers arose, drunk with sleep and dreaming. In the reflections
of the lamps and torches their faces were ghostly, spiritualized as
after a long prayer, after protracted adoration and ecstasy, wherein
their thoughts, desires and souls had been refined.
On the topmost terrace, round which the whole city shimmered
visibly with light--on the one side the nocturnal blue of the sea,
on the other the silvery forking of the Nile's mouths through the
Delta--the learned hierogrammats, the keepers of the sacred writings,
sat each on his throne. In their hands they held unrolled the sacred
scrolls, whose hieroglyphics gave answer to all things. Temple-slaves
behind them lifted high the coloured lanterns. In front of them the
multitudinous dreamers thronged.
Great was the thronging. The dreamers wanted to know the interpretation
of their dreams. But those who had dreamed were so many that the
priests did not answer save with a few words full of dark meaning.
Many, disappointed, went down the terraces. Orgy awaited them in the
taverns and brothels along the canal....
Lucius had risen, in the midst of all his followers. He stood stiff,
motionless, veiled in the gold net, like a god entranced.
"Lucius," Thrasyllus asked, "my dear child and master, tell me:
have you dreamed?"
"Yes," replied Lucius, in a trance.
"I too," said Uncle Catullus. "It was a nightmare, most unpleasant! I
had dined too heavily. My stomach was overloaded. And I am now
shivering with this chilly dew. Egypt is most interesting, but Egypt
will positively be the death of me!"
Caleb had approached:
"My gracious lord," said Caleb, "your Sabæan amulets have no doubt
inspired you with a favourable dream. You must have your dream
expounded. But not by the hierogrammats.... Look, the dreamers are
crowding in front of them. There is no reaching them. You must
have your dream expounded by a most holy prophet, by Amphris,
the centenarian.... Come with me, let me lead you to him...." He
took Lucius by the hand. "It costs half a talent, no less," said
Caleb. "Thirty minæ, my lord. But then Amphris will expound your
dreams for you, Amphris, the holy Amphris. The hierogrammats charge
ten or twenty drachmæ. But they can never tell it as the holy Amphris,
the prophet does. This is where he sits enthroned, my lord."
They were standing in front of a small pyramid, on one of the upper
terraces. Two sphinxes beside the narrow door lay like mysterious
stone sentinels. Temple-keepers guarded the gate.
"The most holy Amphris?" Caleb asked.
"Forty minæ," said one of the priests.
"Why not a talent right away?" grumbled Caleb.
"Forty minæ," repeated the priest.
Caleb took the gold coins from the long purse at his girdle and
slipped them into the priest's hand:
"Enter, my lord," he said, pointing to the open door.
Lucius entered. Seated on a throne was an old man who looked like a god
of age and wisdom. Lucius himself was as beautiful as a young god. A
strange light, as of soft moons, shone from blue globes. Lucius bowed
to the ground, fell upon his knees and kissed the floor. He remained
in this position.
"Did Serapis pass over you, my son?"
"Yes, holy father."
"What did he make you see, in your dreams?"
"The woman whom I love...."
The prophet had laid his long, thin, transparent hand on the dreamer's
head:
"But who did not love you," he said, gently and quietly.
"How do you know, holy father?... I saw the pirates who kidnapped
her...."
"But by whom she was not kidnapped...."
"How do you know, holy father?"
"And by whom she was not sold as a slave."
"Where is she then, O father?"
"What did Serapis make you see in the dream?"
Lucius sobbed:
"I do not know, father.... I saw her and ... those who kidnapped her."
"How many were they?"
"Many."
"Old and young?"
"No, they resembled one another like brothers, like doubles."
"Because they were not many."
"Not many?"
"No."
"How many were they, father?"
"They were ... one."
"Not more?"
"They were one," repeated the prophet. "My son, your soul is
sick. It is sick with sorrow and love. Love is strong, but wisdom
is stronger. Gather wisdom, my son. My child, I can see into your
soul. I see it lying tortured and trembling."
"There is no comfort if I do not find her!"
"There is comfort. Isis seeking for Osiris recovered all the pieces
of his body except that piece which fructified her. And yet she found
comfort, in the end."
"Give me comfort, holy father."
"I am wisdom, child, and you are young. Serve wisdom, but honour love."
"Father, why did the pirates resemble one another?"
"Because they were one."
"One pirate?"
"One pirate."
"Where is Ilia, father?"
"My son, even my wisdom does not tell me that whereof you have not
dreamed. You dreamed of many pirates, who resembled one another like
doubles. There was one pirate, my child."
"Who was he?"
"Did Serapis conjure up his image before you?"
"I no longer see it."
"Then go in peace. And let love and wisdom comfort you."
Lucius went. On the threshold of the pyramid he met an hetaira. She
glittered like an idol in her ceremonial garb, sewn with jewels,
and looked at him with painted eyes.
"It's Tamyris, my lord," said Caleb. "She is going to consult
Amphris. She has paid a talent! Has Amphris interpreted your dream? The
door-keeper, who also is wise, has interpreted mine for me! And for
only five drachmæ."
"One pirate! One pirate!" murmured Lucius.
And he clenched his fists, impotently....
The multitude streamed away along the terraces. The barges glided
back on the canal, in the night.
And constantly, near the pleasure-houses and taverns, the vessels
stopped and the dreamers alighted.
Here mead flowed and foaming golden beer and heavy Mareotis wines
and the intoxicating liqueurs of Napata. Here the naked women, who
beckoned with lotus-stalks, twisted in the dance.
"Back!" cried Lucius. "Back to Alexandria!"
The barge stopped at no pleasure-houses, at no taverns. The master
sobbed, his head wrapped in his golden dreaming-veil. There was
no music. Only the plaintive song of the rowers made itself heard
from below.
Behind, in the east, the dawn paled in one long, rosy line, above
the sea ... while the festal lamps flickered out and died....
CHAPTER XI
Serapis had opened the floodgates of the sky.
The first spring rains had already descended in heavy torrents;
the water-gods had already poured the kindly streams from their urns
into the swelling Nile; the river-surveyors, who had consulted the
Nilometers [2] at every place, declared that the sacred stream was
steadily rising and that the maximum gauge would be reached that
summer.
The rains clattered down in white curtains of pouring waters.
The palm-garden of the diversorium was inundated. Master Ghizla made
his slaves dig little canals to carry the water to cisterns.
There was much joy and gladness at all this water. The air was fresh;
though mid-summer was approaching, an equable coolness tempered the
atmosphere around Alexandria; no river-mist spread seeds of disease;
and the great dampness brought relief even to this ground, which had
dried up during the winter, and to the parched air.
The travellers remained indoors. After the night of dreams at Canopus,
Lucius had come home in one of his impotent fits of fury, locking
himself in his room in despair and refusing to see anybody whatever.
Uncle Catullus abandoned himself to long siestas; Thrasyllus studied
books, maps and globes.
In the porch of the slaves' quarters sat Cora. As she was forbidden
to sing or play, she sat crouched with her arms around her knees,
gazing mournfully at the rains. Their lord's sickness spread melancholy
among all his household.
Caleb squatted beside Cora. Like her he sat with his arms around his
knees and he smiled with his flashing eyes and teeth and said:
"Cora, I love you very much."
Cora did not move; she merely answered, very gently:
"I am not free; I belong to the master."
"I should like to buy you, Cora; and then you would be free."
Cora did not answer; the rain poured down in an endless grey sheet;
and in the palm-garden, under an umbrella, Master Ghizla drilled his
dripping slaves.
"You would be free," Caleb repeated. "You would not be my slave,
but my wife. I am rich: we are rich, Ghizla and I. We do a very
good business. Our diversorium is the finest in Alexandria. We
make a great deal of money, because all princely nobles alight at
our establishment. Cora, you would be its mistress. You would have
slaves, male and female. I would pay your master whatever he asked;
it would be deducted from his bill. For business is business, you
know. But I could pay for you, if necessary, in ready money. And then,
Cora, when we have grown very rich ... then we would go back to Saba,
to my native land. It is the sweetest and most beautiful country in
the world ... to live in, you know. But there's no business to be
done there. You have to be rich there; then it's delightful. When we
are rich, we will go back there. Cora, shall I tell you about Saba,
about my country, even if it were only, Cora, to divert you, now that
it's raining and you mustn't sing?"
"I am listening, Caleb."
"Saba, dear Cora, is the mightiest kingdom of Arabia; Saba is
Arabia Felix, Cora. Saba is the sweet land where the balsam-trees
grow and the precious spices are gathered: myrrh and frankincense
and cinnamon. All the herbs and flowers, Cora, are scented in Saba;
there is no herb and no flower that is not scented. Under the sky,
which is transparent as empty blue space, the clouds of perfume waft
up and rise to the feet of the gods, who always glance down smilingly
upon my country, upon my happy country. The palm-tree is scented there
and the calamus-reed is scented there; the scented papyrus blossoms
there. Nowhere are the flowers so big and of so many kinds, or the
trees so densely-leaved or so green. Nowhere are the nights so mild
and the days so blissful. The nights are for feasting and the days
for resting. We climb up long ladders into the tall trees and sleep
in leafy nests, like birds. Mariaba is my town, the golden capital
of my sweet land. Have you ever seen a fairy-city in your dreams,
Cora? That is Mariaba. There are temples of chrysolite with domes
of blue crystal, which imitate the firmament. The streets are strewn
with golden sand. Mariaba is situated on a hill, like the palace of
a god. The king, Cora, is a descendant of Balkis, our great queen,
who brought Solomon the treasures of Ophir; the king lives at Mariaba
in a palace walled with gold. The walls of his apartments are like
blue mirrors and he treads on carpets that are woven of flowers and
hourly renewed. He does not eat, but lives on perfumes. He is sacred,
but he may not leave his palace; for an oracle has commanded his
people to stone him the moment that he comes out. Everything in his
palace and in the town is luxury and delight. There is no commerce,
there is no business. The Sabæans surrender the trade in the precious
products of their country to the men of Syria and Mesopotamia. They
themselves, Cora, are rich and as gods.... When we are rich and
you are my wife ... we shall be as gods in Mariaba and you shall
see the king, behind a transparent hanging of gold glass, while
he feeds on those perfumes. We shall live in a house of alabaster,
which is transparent, but only to those inside. We shall have a barge
of blue leather with red-silk tassels and little golden, tinkling
bells.... When the evening wind is fresh, we shall warm our hands
at glowing cinnamon. I shall anoint your body with fluid larimnum,
which is the most costly of aromatics and is not exported, not even
to Cæsar. We shall have no plate except of gold and an ivory couch
inlaid with jasper, or perhaps with sard. And you will go about on an
elephant with silvered hoofs, many gold bands round his trunk and,
at night, two little lanterns on his tusks, Cora. And we shall be
happier than you can imagine or than I can tell." [3]
"What you are describing, Caleb, is indeed like fairyland. But I
have heard say that, because of all that fragrance in their country,
the Sabæans one and all suffer from headache."
"When we suffer from headache, Cora, we burn asphalt and the hairs of a
goat's beard. There is no remedy to compare with that for headache. Or
else we wear the sacred amulets. Wear one, Cora: wear this amulet,
which I have always worn."
"No, Caleb."
"Are you afraid that I shall bewitch you?"
"Yes. I fear the Sabæan amulets. It is perhaps because of one of them
that the master dreamed the bad dream which has made him ill and sad."
"Cora, I love you so much.... Will you permit me to buy you from
your master?"
"If you bought me, O Caleb, I should be a faithful slave and sing
and play the harp to you. But I should be unhappy, even if I were
your wife and free ... because I should be so far from my master...."
"Whom you love."
Cora hesitated. Then she said:
"Whom I love, Caleb ... but as the flower loves the sun, as the moth
loves the star ... from afar and from the depths ... without hope."
The rain poured down in an endless grey sheet. In the garden, Master
Ghizla was swearing at the slaves and wading, with tucked-up tunic
and lean, hairy legs, through the puddles.
Caleb rose. He said nothing and went away, his head sunk in
melancholy. Then he came back and resumed:
"You would go hunting with me, Cora, and you would sit in front of
me on a Sabæan stallion, which would be swift as the wind, and we
should catch lion-whelps in nets and tame them with palm-wine and
they would follow you about like big cats."
Cora only smiled and said nothing.
"I know, Cora, why you will not be my wife. It is not because you
love your master. For, even if your master loved you, you would
be a slave. My wife would be a free woman and reign as queen in
my house. But you will not be my wife because perhaps you know the
Sabæan law which prescribes that a married woman is also the wife of
all her husband's brothers. But Ghizla, dear Cora, would not dare to
touch even the hem of your garment."
"I did not know that law," said Cora.
"There was a king's daughter in our country, Cora. She was dazzlingly
beautiful and was the wife of fifteen brothers, who were princes. All
the fifteen of them glowed with love for her. When one of the brothers
wished to tarry in her chamber, he set his stick outside the door,
as a sign. Then the others passed their way.... When she wearied of
their eagerness to love her, she devised a stratagem. She had sticks
made for her, like the brothers'. When one of the princes left her,
she placed one of these sticks outside her door. In this way she
enjoyed peace.... But one day all the brothers happened to be in
the square of the town at the same time. One of them went to visit
her ... and found outside the door the stick of a brother ... whom
he had just left in the town-square! Then he thought that his wife,
the wife of the fifteen brothers, was unfaithful to them ... with a
sixteenth, a stranger. And he sought his father and told him of his
suspicions. But it appeared that the wife was innocent. And not only
the father but the fifteen brothers and their spouse laughed at the
stratagem and were happy.... But you, Cora, would never need to put a
stick like mine outside your door. For I have only one brother, Ghizla,
and he would not dare to touch so much as the hem of your garment."
Cora laughed and Caleb laughed and his eyes and teeth flashed and
glittered.
"In that case, I'll think it over, Caleb!" laughed Cora. "In that case,
I'll think it over!"
"Do think it over, Cora," laughed Caleb. "If you are willing, I'll buy
you from your master. And we shall have a pleasure-boat of cedar-wood,
but with sails like a bird's wings, so that we can either sail about
on the sea or soar high into the clouds. And then on some nights we
could visit the moon, where all the people are transparent, like
shades.... This is not a fairy-tale, Cora; it's as I tell you. We
have those magic ships in our seas, in our skies.... Think it over,
Cora! Do think it over!"
And, while Cora was still laughing incredulously, Caleb girdled his
tunic high and waded barefoot through the puddles of the palm-garden,
looking round and laughing as he went. For Ghizla had called to him
to see the canals which the slaves were digging to carry off the
rain-water to the cisterns.
CHAPTER XII
But Libyan bearers carried a litter into the garden.
The litter was close-curtained with blue canvas, against the rain.
And a veiled woman peeped through a slit in the curtains and beckoned
to Caleb:
"Is he at home?" she asked.
Caleb recognized her, but he answered with an air of innocence
and asked:
"Who, gracious lady?"
"He," repeated the woman. "The young Roman, Publius Lucius Sabinus."
"He is at home, gracious lady," said Caleb. "But he is unwell. He
will not see any one."
"If he is at home, I want to see him," said the woman.
And she alighted on the stone steps of the portico. She was closely
wrapped in her veils, but Caleb had recognized her. And she offered
Caleb a gold coin, which Caleb did not refuse, because business was
business and a well-invested stater brought him still a little nearer
to his native land, for which he was longing.
"I do not know whether I can let you in," said Caleb, hesitatingly.
The woman produced a second piece of gold. It disappeared in Caleb's
girdle as though by witchcraft.
"Where is he staying?" she asked.
"In the princes' building, of course," said Caleb, proudly. "Where
his little black slave is squatting."
The veiled woman went up to Tarrar, squatting on a mat outside a door:
"I want to see him," said the woman. "I want to speak to him. Take
me to him."
"The master is asleep," said Tarrar.
"Wake him."
"The master is sick," said Tarrar.
"Tell him that I can cure him."
"I dare not," said Tarrar. "He would be angry. It would be against
his orders. He is accustomed to have us obey him."
"Announce me."
"No," said Tarrar.
"You're a little monkey," said the woman.
And she opened the door and lifted a curtain.
Tarrar and Caleb, dismayed, tried to stop her:
"She's inside!" said Caleb.
"The master will beat me!" said Tarrar, shivering. "That impudent
wench!"
But Caleb, with his finger to his mouth, told him to be silent ... and
listened at the door.
The veiled woman stood in Lucius' room. Lucius lay on a couch in
mournful meditation. He opened his eyes wide with amazement.
"I am Tamyris," said the woman. "Lucius, I am Tamyris. I am famed
for my beauty; and I have kept kings waiting on the threshold of my
villa on Lake Mareotis merely out of caprice. I once kissed a negro
slave while the King of Pontus was waiting; and, when my black lover
held me in his arms, I called the king in ... and then showed him
the door and drove him away."
"That's not true," said Lucius.
Tamyris opened her veils and laughed:
"No, it's not true," she said. "But what is true is this, that I
have been burning with love for you since the day when I saw you,
beautiful as a god, on the threshold of Amphris' pyramid. Lucius, I
want to be your slave. I want to serve and love you. I will cure you
and make you laugh. I shall make you forget all your sorrow. Lucius,
I have served the sacred goddess Aphrodite since I was a child of
six. She has taught me, through oracles and dreams, the utter secret
of her science, the secret of her highest voluptuousness, which she
herself did not know until she loved Adonis. Lucius, if you will love
me, I shall be your slave and reveal the secret of Adonis to you."
"Go away," said Lucius.
"Lucius," said Tamyris, "I have never asked a man to love me. But
my days, since I looked into the mournful depths of your eyes,
have been like withered gardens and my nights like scorched sands. I
suffer and I am ill. I have an everlasting thirst here, in my throat,
despite draughts cooled with snow and fruit steeped in silphium. See,
my hands shake as though I were in a fever. See, Lucius, how my hands
shake. They want to fondle you, to fondle your limbs and...."
"Go away," said Lucius.
"Lucius, I long to be your slave. I, Tamyris, the famous hetaira,
who possess treasures, as you do, and the largest beryl discovered in
Ethiopia, I long to be your slave and I long to shake your pillows
high and soft and to lave your feet in nard and to dry them with my
kisses, kiss after kiss until they are dry."
Lucius struck a hard blow on the gong. Caleb and Tarrar appeared.
"Call the guards," Lucius commanded. "And drag this woman away if
she does not go."
"I am going," said Tamyris. "But, when I am dead, O Lucius, burnt
out with love, I shall haunt you and my ghost will twine around you,
without your being able to prevent it, and I shall suck your soul
from your lips ... until I have you inside me ... inside me."
"Gracious lady," said Caleb, obsequiously, "the rain has ceased and
your litter waits."
"I am going," said Tamyris. "The Prince of Numidia expects me. He
has come with twenty swimming elephants, over the sea and straight
across the lake, to love me. I am giving an orgy to-night, just to
amuse him. Lucius, if you call on me to-night, we will tie up the
Prince of Numidia and tickle the soles of his feet till he dies of
laughing. Will you come?"
"You lie," said Lucius. "There is no prince come to see you and there
are no swimming elephants. You weary me. Go away, or I shall have
you scourged from my presence with long whips."
"I am going," said Tamyris. "But, at a moment when you are not thinking
of it, I shall bewitch you. Then you, without knowing it, will drink
a philtre which I have prepared for you; and you will come to me and
I shall embrace you. And in my embrace you shall know what otherwise
would have always remained a secret to you. I am going."
That night Lucius went to Tamyris.
But he returned, the next morning, disillusionized and disappointed.
CHAPTER XIII
"My son," said old Thrasyllus, sitting beside his couch, "do you intend
always to cherish your illness and longing, like a serpent that devours
you, bone and flesh? The sibyl of Rhacotis merely guessed your own
thoughts. The holy Amphris could explain nothing more than that many,
who resemble one another, mean only one in the dream. After that,
what could your credulity imagine that a crafty hetaira would make
you guess in her embrace? The name of that one man? The name of the
pirate? The place where he is hiding Ilia?... One pirate?... Who
could have stolen her?"
"I don't know," said Lucius, wearily.
"My poor, sick boy," said the tutor, "no one knows and no one will
ever know. She has disappeared. If she has not been kidnapped by
pirates, she is drowned. Did you not visit the slave-markets in
Rome on purpose to find her? Have you not done the same thing here,
in Alexandria? She is not to be found. Forget her, my son. Try to get
better. If no other woman can cure you, let some other power than love
cure you. Amphris mentioned wisdom. There is wisdom. Seek it here,
in the land of wisdom. This city, my son, is a sinful city, though it
is fair to look upon. This city is as Tamyris herself: it is a wanton
among cities. There is no more wisdom in this city, notwithstanding the
Museum, notwithstanding the Serapeum, notwithstanding the dreams of
Canopus, which die away in orgies. In this city I have met none save
merchants, usurers and venal women. This magnificent city is a venal
city. Even the philosophers here are avaricious and venal. Even the
prophets demand a talent for their divinations. The power of money
holds sway here and no longer wisdom. Let us go farther. There is
wisdom left in Egypt. And in the wisdom which we shall find you will
be cured. Listen, my son: there is the sacred word of the Kabbala,
which Moses himself received from the godhead on Mount Sinai. That
word has never been graven on tables of stone, but Moses whispered it
to his sons and those sons to theirs. It is the key to happiness. He
who utters it has the power to avoid suffering and to know all that
can be known on earth. I have sought for it, in the Museum, in the
Serapeum, here and at Canopus. While you lay sorrowing on your couch,
my son, I have held converse with priests and with philosophers, with
prophets. I am persuaded that I shall not find the word in Alexandria."
"But where will you find it, Thrasyllus?"
The tutor stared before him:
"Perhaps farther on," he said. "Perhaps at Memphis. Let us go to
Memphis. If I do not find the word at Memphis, I shall look for it
farther still. Let us sail up the Nile, to Thebes, to Ethiopia. Let
us go to the pillars of Sesostris. Something tells me that we shall
find it ... and that you will be cured, my son. But let us go."
Lucius approved and the departure was decided. Thereupon Master
Ghizla and Caleb had a long talk on "business," after which Caleb
asked for an interview with Lucius, which was granted and at which
Uncle Catullus and Thrasyllus were present.
"Noble lords," Caleb began, "I should like to speak to you in your
own interest. The question, noble lords, is this: I understand from
the most learned Master Thrasyllus that there is a plan on foot to
leave Alexandria and to travel over Memphis to Ethiopia, as far as
the pillars of Sesostris. That will certainly be a fine journey;
and all great lords take that road. But permit me, your servant, to
give you a piece of advice, in your own interest, noble lords, in your
own interest. My advice is this: hire from me and my brother Ghizla a
comfortable and spacious Nile barge, a thalamegus, not only to ascend
the Nile in, but also to live in, so far as possible, because--spoken
without slander, noble lords, spoken without slander!--the diversoria
which you will find at Hermopolis, at Leontopolis, ay, even at
Memphis and Thebes are ... bad, are all bad, not to be compared with
our far-famed Hermes House, O my honoured benefactors! No, they are
unclean hovels, standing on the edges of marshes, without any modern
conveniences; and, though you have your own cook, you would not even
find any unpolluted wells there, not to speak of wine, and would never
have a good meal again, O my Lord Catullus! Therefore, O my patrons,
hire our Nile thalamegus, in which you can live with a small following,
with a few slaves; leave the other slaves here, with the greater part
of your splendid equipment; and allow me--if you have been satisfied,
O my Lord Lucius, with my conduct at Alexandria and Canopus--to be your
guide, at the head of your own escort, and to remove all difficulties
from your path. I know the whole of Egypt! I have already conducted
numbers of noble lords, ay, to the sources of the Nile, to those
most mysterious sources! We will take tents with us and hire camels,
when necessary, but take my advice ... and never alight at any other
Egyptian diversoria, except our Hermes House, for they are all bad,
bad, bad ... indescribably bad, O my noble lords!"
"Caleb," said Lucius, "I was just about to propose to you what you
are proposing to me, that you should be our guide to the pillars of
Sesostris and hire me a barge to sail up the Nile."
"O my lords!" cried Caleb, overjoyed and obviously relieved. "How glad
I am of that! For now I am convinced that you will be comfortable and
travel pleasantly and that you, O my Lord Catullus, will dine as you
have been wont to do here ... especially as we shall not forget to
take our own wines on board, the purple Mareotis wine, thick as ink,
and the topaz-yellow liqueur of Napata."
"But is the last really necessary, Caleb?" asked Uncle Catullus,
mischievously. "After all, we are going to Ethiopia!"
"And on the way, my lord? Before we reach Ethiopia? And above all let
me also explain that the Ethiopian liqueurs ... must first descend
the Nile, to acquire the perfume and the rich flavour which they do
not possess in Ethiopia itself."
"If only they don't lose that perfume, Caleb, when they ascend the
Nile again!" said Uncle Catullus, jestingly.
"I shall see to that, my lord," said Caleb, who saw through Uncle
Catullus quite as plainly as Uncle Catullus saw through Caleb. "I'll
see to that. You just leave it to me."
"We are leaving everything to you, Caleb. Get the barge ready for
to-morrow," said Lucius.
"Then we shall go up the Nile next day, my lord," said Caleb, happy
and delighted.
And he retired with salaam upon salaam.
And Master Ghizla, in the palm-garden, pretending to be busy with the
little canal, but in reality full of eagerness to know the result of
Caleb's advice, whispered:
"I say!... Brother!..."
"Yes?"
"Well, Caleb, well?" asked Ghizla, anxiously and looking a little pale.
"They're hiring the thalamegus ... they're alighting at no other
diversorium ... they're sleeping in our tents, they'll travel with
our camels and...."
"Well, Caleb, and what else?" asked Ghizla, rubbing his hands.
"They're drinking our wines ... all the way to Napata!"
"Where you'll pretend to lay in a fresh stock of liqueurs?"
"You leave that to me, Brother Ghizla, you just leave it to me!"
"May the gods bless you, Brother Caleb; may Thoth, Hermes and Serapis
bless you! Quick, let us look in the cellars if we have enough
in store!"
There came a sudden shower, as though poured from an urn in the sky
by an invisible water-god; and the two brothers, with their garments
girdled up, rushed bare-legged through the puddles of their palm-garden
to their wine-cellars, which lay warm as stone cupolas in the sun,
or else were kept cool with double walls filled with snow.
CHAPTER XIV
In the still and silent night, the Delta lay flooded by the kindly
waters of the sacred river. From the Canopic to the Sebennytic mouth,
from the Phatmetic along the Mendesian to the Pelusiac mouth, the
Delta lay flooded: one still and silent sea in the night, a wide,
silver sheet of water without a ripple, stretching farther than the
eye could reach in the soft-falling sheen of the full moon. Between the
river-mouths the canals lay in streaks of silver light, full of water
to their edges. Past the blossoming reeds, past the blossoming lotuses
and water-lilies, the great barge glided up the stream as in a vision.
There was not a sound amid the silence but the dripping from the oars.
The night was muffled, wide and immense. It was as though the moon,
up above, had inundated the sky, even as the flood the sacred land
below. It was as though the flood of moonshine were drenching the
sacred sky also with a calm, unrippled sea, but a sea of light. The
night was like a noiseless, silvery day; the night was like a shadow
of the day. In that inundation of the light of heaven the stars paled,
innumerous, like a silvery powder sprinkled by the moonshine. There lay
the lake of Butos, wide and mystic and gleaming. Island emerged after
island. Palms stood in clusters, stately, motionless and delicate. A
shrine appeared and vanished as the dream-barge glided down a bend of
the canal. Country-mansions stood peacefully linked together. There
were taller dykes and patches of golden, shadowy wheat. Sheaves of
corn looked like the images of gods, reverence-compelling, ranged
in order beside one another, against the wall of a barn. A peculiar
scent was wafted by, a fresh aroma as of always moist flowers.
The outline of a village came into view. And hamlet joined itself to
hamlet, with shrines and mansions in between. Suddenly, farther up,
in the sea of glory, in the sea of light, huge needles rose on high
from the ground, with quivering lines, and became lost in the midst
of light.
Thrasyllus standing by Cora on the fore-castle pointed:
"The obelisks of Sais."
She turned, with a start, and was silent. The barge that afternoon
had left Naucratis along the canals which seam the Saitic nome, or
province. They were now nearing the capital, Sais, the capital of
all Lower Egypt. They already saw the Anubis Avenue. And suddenly,
at a bend, between very tall reeds blossoming with tassels and bowing
before the barge, Thrasyllus pointed:
"The temple of Isis-Neith."
There were sphinxes: they seemed to lift their basalt heads in prayer
to the moon and the sky. Lamps and lights twinkled like stars. The
thalamegus hove to; orders rang out; the sailors moored the vessel.
"The temple of Isis-Neith," Thrasyllus repeated to Lucius, who
approached with Catullus and Caleb.
They were all arrayed in long, white-linen robes. Cora also was
similarly clad, in a long, white, close fitting linen robe. She wore
a wreath of wheat-ears and lotus-flowers at her temples. For it was
the Night of the Glowing Lights, the Feast of the Burning Lamps.
"Nemu-Pha is waiting for me in the temple," said Thrasyllus. "I wrote
to him and he has consented to receive me. He is the high-priest
of Isis; and to-night he receives those who come to consult him. I
thought, Lucius, of going alone. Nemu-Pha is one of the holiest
prophets in Egypt. One word from him can perhaps enable me to guess
much. But, if you accompany me, with only a single thought in your
sick brain, you would break the mystic thread which might be woven
between the high-priest's spirit and mine. Let me go alone. I have
no other care than your happiness ... even though we are not agreed
on the form which it should take.
"Go, Thrasyllus," said Lucius.
"I don't think that I shall go on shore," said Uncle Catullus. "The
Night of the Glowing Lights and the Feast of the Burning Lamps leave
me cold. It is colourless and cheerless; it will be a spectral orgy. I
am too old and fat, Lucius, for spectral orgies. Go on shore alone
and amuse yourself as you may."
Lucius assembled his slaves, male and female. They were all in long,
white robes, the women wreathed with ears of wheat and lotus-flowers.
"You are all free to-night," said Lucius. "You have a night of
liberty. Until sunrise you belong to yourselves. Go your ways and do
whatever you please."
Rufus handed each a small sum of money. The slaves bowed low and
disappeared, between the palms, in the direction of the moonlit,
twinkling city.
Only a guard of sailors kept watch on the barge. Uncle Catullus retired
to his cabin. Tarrar also did not wish to go on shore and remained to
sleep at his master's threshold. The Feast of Isis made many shudder
who were not accustomed from their youth to its shivery mysticism.
Thrasyllus had gone. Lucius also went on shore. He saw Cora hesitating
under the palm-trees while the other women slaves had already gone
gaily to enjoy their night of liberty:
"Why don't you join your companions, Cora?" asked Lucius.
"My lord," Cora replied, "if you permit me, I would rather stay here."
"You are free to-night."
"What should I do with liberty, my lord?"
"You can do what you please, go to the temple and see the veiled Isis
... and enjoy yourself as and with whom you choose."
She cast down her eyes and blushed.
"There is a general holiday to-night," continued Lucius, "for slaves
male and female."
She folded her hands as though in prayer:
"My lord," she begged, "suffer me to remain here, near the barge. I
am afraid of liberty and of the big city."
"Do as you please," said Lucius.
He went on alone. Loneliness sent a shiver through him because of
this strange night which was like day. A white melancholy emanated
from his soul. He felt aimless. He would have preferred to accompany
Thrasyllus. He would not have minded going to bed. He had almost
invited Cora to accompany him to Sais, but did not think it suited
to his dignity.
He went alone, in his white raiment, in the bountiful moonlight. How
strange the night was, all white and trembling. He approached the
town. There was nothing but the monotonous rattling of the sistra
carried by the long-robed pilgrims who walked in procession to the
temple. All the houses along the road were lit with the lamps burning
at the doors and windows, vessels full of oil with burning wicks. It
was a strange pale-yellow twinkling in the moonshine. It was like a
funeral ceremony. For it commemorated the night on which Isis had
collected the scattered limbs of her brother and husband Osiris,
murdered and quartered by Typhon and scattered all over Egypt.
The procession streamed to the temple. Along the road, the hierodules,
the priestesses, danced to a monotonous chant, hand in hand, in a
long row. They threw a laugh to the numberless strangers who had come
to Sais, for that night. The strangers laughed back and picked out
the priestesses; and they withdrew together, first to the temple,
then farther away.
Three hierodules laughed to Lucius. They danced round him. He did not
wish to seem uncivil; also he felt very forlorn. He just laughed back,
wearily and kindly.
"Shall we come with you?" asked one of the hierodules.
"As you please," said Lucius. "Are you going to the temple?"
"If you wish."
They walked in front of him and beside him. They wore white,
close-fitting robes, with lotus-flowers and ears of wheat in their
hair. They were gentle and civil and obliging and young, like three
young children.
The white multitude streamed along the streets. The obelisks of
the dromos came into view. The temple rose gigantic and mysterious,
with numbers of square buildings and terraces stacked one above the
other. There were rows of gigantic pylons, which lost themselves in
the moonlit night. The monotonous melody of the sistra rattled on
every side; on every side the lamps twinkled. Lucius felt within him
an immeasurable melancholy, because of life and because of death,
because of people and because of himself.
The hierodules led the way. They were kind and courteous, glad at
meeting this amiable stranger, to whom they would be obliging, as
their duty prescribed that night.
They entered the pronaos and secos. In the immensity of the pillared
spaces the countless sistra rattled eerily, producing a vibration
which was no longer music: it was as though the pylons and pillars
themselves were rattling, as though the very earth were rattling.
Suddenly Lucius felt a cold shiver pass through him. In the holy of
holies rose the veiled Isis. It was an immense statue, five fathoms
high and surrounded entirely with a silvery film, seamed with
hieroglyphics. Above the image, on the architrave, was written:
I AM WHO HAVE BEEN,
WHO AM
AND WHO SHALL BE;
AND NO ONE HAS LIFTED MY VEIL.
Around the image shone thousands of burning vessels, of glowing
lamps. There was a mist of light and a smoke of incense. And round
about the image there was the incessant dance of the hierodules and the
worship of the sacrificing priests, all the night through. And ever,
like an obsession, there was the rattle of the sistra, as though the
whole immense temple were rattling.
Lucius, led by the three women, offered his sacrifice at one of the
numberless altars. The priest pronounced the sacred words and Lucius
poured forth the libation and paid his gold coin.
He felt desperately unhappy.
"Sir," asked one of the women, "do you wish us all three to accompany
you to one of the temple-chambers? Or would you have two of us
go away?"
He laughed softly at their polite manners, like those of young and
well-brought-up children. He gave a melancholy glance:
"I am unwell, I am very unwell," he said. "I think I will go home
alone."
"Your eyes are full of pain, sir," said one of the hierodules.
And one of the others said:
"Cannot we comfort you and cure you?"
Lucius shook his head.
"Then let us lead you home," said the third.
They left the temple.
"I live on the river," said Lucius. "I came in a thalamegus."
They walked beside him, like shades. When they reached the barge,
Lucius said:
"I am at home here. Let me thank you and pay you. May holy Isis
protect you!"
"May holy Isis cure you, sir!" said the hierodules.
He gave them a gold coin apiece. They disappeared in the night,
like shades. But under the palm-trees was another shade. It was Cora.
"I am not well," said Lucius. "I came back."
"Do you wish to go to bed, my lord?" asked Cora.
"No, I should not be able to sleep," replied Lucius. "This night is
strange and unreal. I will lie here under the trees."
"I will leave you, my lord."
"No, stay," he said. "I am ill and I feel lonely. Stay."
"Suffer me to fetch you a cloak and a pillow, my lord."
"I thank you."
She disappeared into the barge and returned with the pillow and
cloak. She covered him up and pushed the pillow under his head.
"The night is strange," he repeated, "and unreal. It is like a white
day. There is no dew falling. I shall remain here till Thrasyllus
comes. But do you stay. I feel ill and lonely."
"What can I do, my lord? I may not sing: only the sistrum may sound
to-night."
"Dance to me; move in the moonlight. Can you dance without
accompaniment?"
"Yes, my lord," said Cora.
He lay under the palms. Cora danced in the open moonlight, near the
tall river-reeds. She twisted and turned like a white water-nymph
that had risen from the stream. She stood still, in attitudes of
rapture. She adored Isis, her hands uplifted to the moon. She was
very lithe and slender, very white, with white flowers and ears of
wheat around her temples.
He lay without moving, watching her. And he thought his only thought:
where could Ilia be? For there had not been more than one pirate....
When, late in the night, Thrasyllus returned, he found Lucius asleep
under the palms with Cora keeping vigil beside him.
"My lord is asleep," said Cora. And she asked, "Tell me, Thrasyllus:
what did Nemu-Pha say?"
The old tutor looked gloomy. And he said:
"The wise ages have been drowned in the night of time. Egypt is Egypt
no longer. Sais is Sais no longer. If wisdom still tarries here and
is still to be found, I shall find it not by the sea, not in the
Delta. This is the granary and the emporium of the world ... but
nothing more. Great Isis hides behind her veil the worthlessness and
venality of her priests, whose last remaining pride is to sell in
great secrecy the word, 'Be a god unto yourself.'... That word does
not satisfy me. But there is Memphis, there is Thebes. I still have
hope, Cora ... that I shall find the divine word which will cure him."
The old man stepped on board the barge. The night waned; yonder,
in Sais, the twinkling of the Burning Lamps died away.
In the east, the light broke through, as through a bursting
sluice. Long, rosy islands seemed to drift in an ocean of molten
gold. A long flight of cranes, black against the golden sky, swept
down to meet the dawn. Cocks crowed; and on the waters of Lake Butos
the first lotus-blooms opened their white chalices. As it were crimson
flowed and lay, here and there, over the silent, silver streaks of
the canals, in pools of purple red.
CHAPTER XV
The travellers had left Sais, after visiting the temple of
Athene and the tomb of Psammetichus, son of Necho, founder of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, one of the twelve kings of the Dodecarchy,
who divided Egypt among themselves after the death of Sethos in
B. C. 671. Psammetichus, in obedience to the oracles, defeated and
expelled his eleven fellow-kings and reigned alone at Memphis and
afterwards at Sais. Here was his tomb; it was sacred; there was an
oracle attached to it; and Lucius had consulted that oracle.
After that, Lucius had consulted the manteum, or oracle, of Latona at
Butos, on an island in the lake. He had next visited Xois, Hermopolis,
Lycopolis, Mendes and all the Sebennytic nome, which contained
numberless oracles and shrines. At Mendes the god Pan was worshipped;
and there was an oracle which spoke by means of the god's pipes. Here
the goat was held sacred and received public worship at the hands of
priestesses in Dionysiac frenzy. The travellers next visited Diospolis
and Leontopolis, Busiris and Cunopolis and all the Busiritic nome.
All these towns, with numbers of villages in between, covered
the islands of the flooded Delta, densely peopled and luxuriously
cultivated. The great farmsteads and country-mansions stood linked
along the canals, which were filled high to their banks with the
flowing waters. The ears of corn swelled with ripeness along the
shores; and the cattle gleamed and glanced, grazing in the rich
meadows. The fat fields were fragrant, in these last days of the summer
month of Epiphi, with a strange, moist scent as of nameless flowers
ever drenched in dew. The sun was warm, but not burning, as though the
moisture of so many waters tempered all the heat; the fierce rays did
not burn, as though they were ever drinking the excessive damp. And
from the marshes, which the Nile had turned into lakes, rose no mist,
but the scent of the water-flowers: lotus, nymphea and nenuphar.
The rains seemed to have ended. The maximum gauge in the Nilometers
appeared to have been reached; only the morning dew was often heavy,
like rain. But the days glided past in an immaculate glory of sunshine
tempered by moisture, while the rich, fragrant country lay stretched
under smooth skies, which changed cloudlessly from morning rose to
midday blue and evening gold, in a gradual fusing of tints. There
was hardly a breeze in the evening; the atmosphere retained an ideal
perfection of heavenly, temperate warmth; this summer warmth was
fresh and cool.
The thalamegus glided up the Nile. The river was as wide as a sea;
everywhere, in the noonday sun, the pools of the waters glittered
in among the farmsteads, mansions and shrines. On the horizon, the
outlines of the towns, with the needles of the obelisks, shimmered
in the damp haze. At every moment, dense palm-clusters or sycamores
raised their regular canopies along the river, forming an avenue,
or else tamarisks luxuriated and their branches threw fine shadows,
like blue stripes upon gold.
There lay the Athribitic nome and the Prosopitic nome, whose capital
is Aphroditopolis. Lucius went on shore with a great retinue. The
town, consecrated to Aphrodite, was peopled by none but hierodules,
priests and priestesses of the goddess. Lucius consulted the oracle.
Next morning, after the orgy, he was lying under the triple awning
of the barge which was gliding still higher up the river. Around
him were screens of plaited, transparent reeds, interwoven with
flowers. Thrasyllus sat by his side:
"Nemu-Pha told me," said Thrasyllus, "that both Plato and Pythagoras
spent years and years on the steps of the temples of Isis before they
were deemed worthy of learning one word of the Hermetic wisdom. Well,
I never imagined that Nemu-Pha would unlock the Hermetic wisdom
to me. But I did hope perhaps to learn a single word with which,
continuing to meditate my own thoughts, I could have unlocked the
secret, Lucius, of your happiness. But Nemu-Pha did not speak that
word to me. And yet, my son, I had to pay him a high price to be
admitted to his sanctuary. I am sorry for wasting your money."
Lucius smiled:
"Nevertheless, Thrasyllus, the oracles, even though they never satisfy
the questioner wholly, say very strange and impressive things. Shall
I make you a confession? I certainly hope that I shall one day know
who robbed me of Ilia. And, when I know, I shall not rest until I
have tortured him and made him die a thousand deaths."
"It was the pirates, Lucius," said Thrasyllus, evasively, "unless
Ilia was drowned."
"It was one pirate, Thrasyllus," said Lucius. "All the oracles now
never speak except of one pirate. And it is for me ... as though I
saw him before me! The dog!"
The barge was gliding past Latopolis, on the right; on the left,
standing farther back from the river, Heliopolis showed faintly. They
were nearing Babylon, but the travellers were to go through to Memphis.
"Look!" said Thrasyllus, starting up in rapture. "The Pyramids!"
Lucius turned, with real interest. There on the horizon, like an
enormous, mystic geometry, the triangles of the Pyramids, which
announced Memphis, rose against the pink morning sky. They were like
eternal lines drawn by the gods from earth to heaven.
"The Pyramids!" echoed Lucius, as though overcome by a mystic
impression.
On the other side, Heliopolis was now more clearly outlined, standing
high on a hill, with the temple of the bull Mnevis. Babylon, a suburb
of Memphis, swarmed on the river-bank and, with the battlements
of its forts; was visible through a sycamore avenue. And suddenly,
after a grove of palms, Memphis loomed into view.
"Memphis!" cried Thrasyllus.
And Uncle Catullus, appearing from his cabin, pointed and repeated:
"Memphis!"
The old Egyptian capital lay Cyclopean, like some extinct monster,
with heavy lines of squat, bleaching sanctuaries and, on the river,
a portico of giant pylons. Behind these age-old, massive buildings
the Pyramids showed spectrally.
Thrasyllus pointed his long, crystal spy-glass towards the horizon:
"There!" he said, with a shiver. "The most sacred monument
in Egypt! The great Sphinx, the immense Neith, the ever-silent
wisdom! Next to the second pyramid: that looming figure of a gigantic,
motionless animal!"
The barge hove to and was moored. Caleb proposed that they should go
on shore.
Here, even on the quays, the riotous bustle of agriculture and
commerce had ceased to reign. Under the palms there was not the
metropolitan press and throng of Alexandria, the world's market-place
and emporium. Only a few fruit-sellers squatted beside their wares
and uttered their cries, now that they saw strangers, offering
sliced melons and coco-nut milk. Here and there an Egyptian cowered,
dreaming, with long, split eyes. The quays were old, grey, wide and
deserted. Even the foreigners' barge roused but little curiosity. A few
children at play assembled when the two litters were carried on shore.
Caleb found it difficult to hire two camels, for himself and
Thrasyllus, but he succeeded. The cavalcade started; Caleb's armed
guards--for an escort was needed here, because of the robbers in the
desert--surrounded the litters. And the strangers proceeded along
the quays, under the palms, to the city. Caleb rode ahead, for he
knew the city and the way.
The city was gloomy, huge and empty, but Lucius, ever sensitive to
impressions, underwent the enchantment of that past. For Memphis was
the eternal past. The town had once numbered six hundred thousand
inhabitants. It now haply numbered a few thousands; the rare figures
in the wide streets were dwarfed and lost. Sometimes a woman's face
peeped out from the half-opened, vermilion shutters of some great grey,
dilapidated house.
Ye gods, what dimensions! What lines, what spaciousness of deserted
squares, what heaven-high rows of pylons! The Serapeum yonder,
at the endless end of an avenue of six hundred sphinxes, six rows
of a hundred sphinxes, the ever-silent incarnations of wisdom, the
lion-women who were the wisdom of Neith! What colossal statues, hewn
out of one block of stone and towering to the sky, with the pschent
crowns of their diadems! And everywhere the deathly silence and under
the feet of the Libyan bearers the dust of ages, which flew up on
high in one dense cloud after another!
Caleb rode ahead, by the sphinxes in the avenue. They stood in rows,
the wise lionesses with fixed women's faces, eternal guardians of
the secret. Some of them were already sinking in the sandy ground,
disappearing with their stretched fore-paws. Others shelved to one
side, borne down by the pressure of the centuries. Here the Pharaohs
themselves had passed in sacred processions! Here Moses had walked
and Hermes Trismegistus; here Joseph had wandered, the interpreter of
dreams; here, lastly, Cambyses, with his Persian hordes, had ridden
sacrilegiously! This was Memphis, thrice-sacred Memphis, profaned
long centuries ago and now dead and sinking in the devouring sands
of the desert, which approached from the west, out yonder! The city
would be swallowed up by the sands! That past would sink back into
the lap of the earth!
Suddenly Lucius shuddered with the mystic awe of what has been. And
his own life and grief seemed small to him.
They approached the sanctuary. It rose as a huge shadow. And from every
door swarmed serving-priests of Serapis, minor priests and door-keepers
... because they saw the strangers. They ranged themselves in front
of the entrance and stood waiting.
Caleb said:
"These are distinguished Latin lords, cousins of the divine Cæsar
Tiberius, blessed be his name. They wish to see the sacred bull...."
"Apis ..." said the oldest priest.
"Who is Osiris, in the sacred shape of the bull ..." added other
priests.
And others again, oracularly:
"And who drew the plough through the fields of sacred Egypt when he
disguised himself with the other gods, under the forms of animals...."
"From the eyes of Jupiter Ammon, who wished to reign alone."
"The same," said Caleb, flinging himself from his camel.
The priests arranged themselves in processional order while the
travellers alighted and Thrasyllus also slid from his camel. And
they sang the Hymn of Apis, as they were wont to do when visitors
came. For in the huge dead city of Memphis, inhabited by hardly a few
thousands, who were dwarfed and lost in the spaces of the ancient,
mystic capital of ancient, mystic Egypt, in truth the worship of Apis
was still maintained only because all the travellers came to see the
sacred bull. The fees which the travellers paid to the priests formed
the principal revenue of their brotherhood. The temple was falling in
ruins; the enormous pylons seemed to totter, the gigantic architraves
leaned forward; the giant statues were bruised by the rains and
eaten away, as though the centuries themselves had mutilated them;
the sphinxes were sinking into the sand. But still the worship of
the bull Apis was maintained, because of the strangers and their fees.
A young priest who spoke a little Latin was allotted to the travellers
and took his place by Lucius' side, respectfully:
"It is a pity," he said, smiling cheerfully, "that Serapis did not
bring you to Memphis a month earlier. For then, my noble lord, you
would have beheld the death of Apis and his return to life."
"What is this, then?" asked Lucius.
"The incarnation of the god in the sacred bull lasts a quarter of
a century," the young, pleasant, smiling priest explained. "After
being incarnated in the bull for five-and-twenty years, the god
disappears out of the bull and the bull is marked down for death. The
priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and
celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord,
that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young
Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him
immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a
new-born bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great
that the country is plunged into mourning and the disaster foretells
universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom
delays the new incarnation. This time, after Apis' obsequies, we were
able at once to celebrate his blessed advent."
"And where was Apis found?" asked Lucius.
"On the farm belonging to my father, who is a land-owner," replied the
pleasant young priest, smiling mischievously. "I am a land-owner's
son; and, when Apis was born in our stables, my father dedicated me
to Osiris, that I might take care of the god. I came here with him;
I have been here hardly a month; I came with him."
And he smiled, glad, young and happy; his fresh, young cheeks were
still bronzed with the sun and his arms and hands were sturdy as
those of a young peasant and shepherd.
The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot
of grass surrounded by columns.
"My lords," said the pleasant-looking priest, "this is the secos of
the mother of Apis and we are going to show her to you."
"So she also comes from your father's farm?" asked Uncle Catullus.
"Most certainly, my lord," replied the priest, roguishly.
"That of course goes without saying," commented Uncle Catullus.
The young priest opened the gate of the secos. At the far end was
the sacred stall, like the wide interior of a temple. The priest,
vanished in the shadow.
And, when he reappeared, he was leading, merely by pressing his hand
against her snow-white flank, a handsome, sleek cow.
He led her to the strangers. She shone, well-tended and well-fed. She
had placid eyes of bluish gold, beautiful, large, soft and womanly,
the eyes of Hera herself. Her horns were gilded and her hoofs were
painted red.
The pleasant-looking priest led her to the strangers and was glad
and happy because Apis' mother was so comely:
"Is she not handsome?" he asked proudly.
The strangers smiled and agreed that she was very handsome; and the
priest, with respectful familiarity, stroked her snow-white flank
and pointed out that she had one black foot. Then he kissed her,
fondly and reverently, on her moist muzzle and led her back, with
the pressure of his hand, to the temple that was her stall. She went,
solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed
only because of the strangers and their fee.
The priest, still smiling, returned; and the other priests sang
their hymn.
And, by the priest's pleasant manner, Lucius seemed to observe that he
ought to pay. He beckoned to Caleb; and there were mutual, smiling,
roguish negotiations between Caleb and the priest. For Caleb always
tried to pay the fees which he distributed on Lucius' behalf a little
less liberally than he set them down on the long papyrus scroll of
his bill; and he generally succeeded.
But the priest was not only roguish, but very crafty and polite; and
the transaction, conducted in mysterious and jocular whispers, lasted
a long time ... until Lucius said, impatiently, but still smiling:
"And may we now see Apis himself?"
So Caleb paid, grudgingly. But the priest remained pleasant and the
other priests sang while conducting the strangers to Apis' own secos.
This sanctuary was even bigger and more impressive than that of the
white bull-mother. There was a square in front of it, with obelisks;
and the pleasant-looking priest entered between two sphinxes. But
the pillars, the obelisks, the sphinxes seemed to totter, to slant,
to burst with old age.
The priests sang the hymn; and suddenly, like a whirlwind, a young
bull came trotting out of the stable over the grass-plot. It was Apis;
and the priests lifted their hands in adoration as they sang.
But, if his mother was stately and aware of her dignity, Apis himself
carried his divinity with the recklessness of his hot youth. He ran
across the lawn, glad to have escaped from his stable; and the pleasant
priest, laughing, ran after him. But he could not catch him by his
gold collar; and, panting for breath, the little priest said, proudly:
"Isn't he beautiful and playful? Isn't he most delightful, our Apis?"
He was beautiful and playful and most delightful, the visitors
granted. He was a splendid bull-calf. His coat gleamed black as jet;
and he was painted in accordance with the sacred prescript without
which there is no incarnation: a white moon, like a snowy little crown,
shone like a sickle between his gilded horns; and two other little
white crowns adorned him on either side above the forelegs. His eyes
blazed as might carbuncles with a light kindled behind them; and he
stared from under his curly forehead with an almost human glance. His
neck already fell into powerful, heavy folds; his chest was broad;
and he lashed his tail like a whip. His hoofs were vermilion. And he
trotted round his grass-plot and pushed out the sods with his horns
and scratched with his red hoofs. The pleasant-looking priest now
went up to him, laughing, and took him, respectfully and yet firmly,
by the gold collar and talked to him and laughed; and Apis shook
himself; and the priest laughed; and now all the priests began to
laugh and the strangers laughed and Caleb roared and Uncle Catullus
held his sides. Even Lucius had to laugh and Thrasyllus too; they all
laughed at Apis, because he was such a delightful, pretty, playful
bull-calf, just like a merry boy, with his human eyes which looked
at you naughtily and watchfully and archly ... until all of a sudden
he tore himself loose from his little priest and ran, ran like a
whirlwind, till the clods of earth flew all around.
"He is so pretty and playful!" said the little priest, glad and
happy as a boy, when he came back panting, after locking up the
little bull again in the sanctuary. "But he is wild, he is very wild:
as a rule, we only show him through the windows of his secos; but,
when such very distinguished strangers come to look at him, we let
him out for a trot, now and again. Yes, then he may come for a trot,
once in a way!... And he himself thinks it great fun, to come for a
trot, now and then, in the presence of strangers."
Then the pleasant-looking little priest went up to Caleb, who was
still laughing aloud because Apis was such a very delightful little
bull. And there was a long and protracted discussion, mysterious,
jocular and yet weighty. For Caleb was taken aback; but then the
little priest knew what it cost to make Apis trot about so prettily
for such very distinguished strangers.
CHAPTER XVI
They took the repast provided by Caleb outside the town, in a farmstead
beside a canal, under a cluster of palm-trees. There were no dainty
dishes, there were no purple-coloured wines thick as ink; but there
were omelettes and there was cestreus, the sea-fish that swims up the
Nile in certain months: fried in cici-oil, this is a popular, homely
dish, it is true, but nevertheless toothsome for hungry travellers
picnicking in the grass. There was foaming beer and hydromel, or
honey-water; and Uncle Catullus, spoilt though he was, thought the
simple meal anything but unpalatable and considered that an idyll of
this sort was good for the stomach, once in a way.
Lucius told Caleb to have his luncheon with them; and Caleb, after
much deprecation and many salaams at the honour shown him, squatted
down and crossed his legs and ate with relish and kept on laughing
at the thought of dear little Apis trotting round his secos for the
strangers who paid so generously. The travellers were to rest under
the palm-trees and allow the midday heat to pass before going on
to the pyramids. For Caleb had sent the litters back to the barge
and had now hired four good camels at the farm, including two with
comfortable saddles of bright tapestry, for his two noble clients.
The farmer and his wife, glad at the visit that brought them in
money, spread awnings under which the travellers could enjoy their
siesta and laid mats on the ground; and Uncle Catullus called for
a fly-net, which he wound round his head. And, while he slept and
Caleb also closed his eyes, Lucius, with Thrasyllus by his side,
gazed at the wonderful, divinely geometrical lines in the distance,
the lightly-traced triangles against the golden noonday sky.
"The base is square," said Thrasyllus, "and the summit is square,
but looks pointed."
"To me they seem strange, mysterious embodiments of vastness," said
Lucius. "What are they actually?"
"We don't altogether know," replied Thrasyllus. "Some of the pyramids
were sepulchres of kings and sacred animals. Those are the pyramids
of Cheops, or Khufu, of Chephren and of Mencheres; and we shall see
the kings' chambers inside them. They were built twenty, perhaps
thirty centuries ago. Herodotus says that the pyramid of Cheops,
which is the biggest, took thirty years to build with a hundred
thousand slaves, who were changed every three months. The name is
derived from pyr fire, because, like a flame, the pyramid ends in
a point. Many were used as store-houses in the long years of famine;
others were dykes against the sands of the desert, which blew towards
Memphis and threatened to bury the city, in a succession of ages. Many
pyramids have already been swallowed up in the sands."
"What are those ruined palaces over there?" asked Lucius, pointing to
crumbled rows of pylons and pillars, surmounted by cracked architraves,
impressive ruins which stood on a hill at the outskirts of the town
and seemed to be tumbling into the Nile.
"The old palaces of the Pharaohs," said Thrasyllus. "They were ten
in number. Joseph, the Jewish interpreter of dreams, was a powerful
governor under one of them; Moses, who knew Hermes Trismegistus and
learned the occult wisdom from him, all the wisdom that can be known,
was saved, as a babe, by the daughter of a Pharaoh, where his sister
had exposed him in a basket made of bulrushes at the place where the
princess was wont to bathe: she was the daughter of Amenophis III.,
who saw his people smitten with ten plagues sent over Egypt by Jahve,
the God of the Jews, because the Pharaoh would not suffer them to
leave the country. This Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea and was
the father of Sesostris.... I have written on these scrolls everything
that is more or less interesting."
And Thrasyllus, glad to see that Lucius' attention was attracted,
handed him the scrolls. Lucius began reading:
"This all happened here!" he said, startled and arrested. "This is
all ... the past! The age-old past, which is gone, which was swallowed
up by the sands ... thousands of years ago!... How small we are when
we look into the past ... and when we gaze into the centuries, the
centuries that have buried themselves so deeply!"
"My son," said the old tutor, "I am so thankful that your mind is
once more capable of receiving these impressions. For the beauty of
the past is a comfort for the future; and the sick soul is healed in
that beauty when it understands that its own grief is but a grain of
sand in a desert which blows in the wind and conceals all things."
Lucius made no further reply, absorbed in what he was reading about
Joseph and Moses, about Jahve and Pharaoh Amenophis, who was the
father of Sesostris....
CHAPTER XVII
The golden noonday sky paled; the blinding topaz of the heavens melted
away into amber honey; and the sands of the desert stretched out
wide, far and endless to the last glittering streak of the horizon, on
which the sun had set. Behind the group formed by the travellers--four
camels surrounded by drivers and guards, Arabs and Libyans--between
the darkening palm-trees the gigantic city of Memphis sank into shadow
like some vast extinct monster; and the crumbling palaces of the
kings sloped down the hill, as it were tumbling into the Nile, and
mirrored their ruins in the clear sapphire of the stream, where the
pools lay pink and gold among the tall reeds and the lotuses closing
on the face of the water. The last fallen pillars lay, round and
immense, in the luxuriant grass, amid a riot of scarlet and crimson
poppies. Mysteriously carved with hieroglyphics, they were as felled
Titans of rose-red granite; and they pressed heavily on the ground
wherein they were sinking. They were of a melancholy majesty, those
huge overthrown pillars which had supported the golden roofs above
the might of the Pharaohs.
Caleb rode his camel with a swagger, as though he were bestriding his
Sabæan mare. He dug his heel into the camel's side; and the startled
brute took great strides, snorting and grunting; Caleb roared with
delight. The Libyans, big-limbed and powerful, went silently; the
Arab drivers yelled and shouted.
Forty stadia from Memphis rose a broad, hilly dyke, on which the
pyramids stood. And Caleb, who, as the guide, also knew a thing or
two, cried:
"My lord, two of the pyramids yonder, the largest, belong to the
seven wonders of the world! They are a stadium high; and the length
of their sides is equal to their height. They are the two tombs of
the Pharaohs; but the smaller pyramid, higher up on the hill and,
as you see, built entirely of black stone, was the costliest of all."
He trotted on his startled camel around the others and cried:
"Master Thrasyllus won't deny it, learned though he is!"
Thrasyllus smiled; and Caleb, glad at being allowed to speak,
continued:
"That black stone comes from Southern Ethiopia and is heavier than
any other stone and incredibly hard! That is why the pyramid cost so
much. But then it was erected by all the lovers of Queen Cleopatra;
and it is she who is buried there!"
"Caleb," cried Master Thrasyllus, "what you have been telling about
the black stone I accept; but Cleopatra, who died in Alexandria,
was not buried at Memphis."
"Cleopatra, Cleopatra!" Caleb insisted, vigorously; but he now
rushed away on his bewildered camel, because he wanted to warn
the priest-custodian of the pyramids that there were great lords
approaching.
"Caleb is wrong," said Thrasyllus, as the three camels stepped
along sedately, among the gigantic Libyans and shouting Arabs, while
Caleb tore fantastically over the sands. "The black pyramid yonder
is really not the tomb of Cleopatra. The historians speak of Doricha,
an hetaira mentioned by Sappho, the famous poetess, as the mistress of
her brother Charaxus, who was a wine-merchant at Lésbos and travelled
constantly to Naucratis. This costly black tomb is said to have been
dedicated to Doricha, who died young, by her lovers...."
The cavalcade had drawn near; the camels, in obedience to the drivers'
orders, knelt down; the travellers slipped to the ground. And Caleb at
once came to meet them, smiling, at the head of six priest-custodians,
whose business it was to keep up the interior of the pyramids and
show the shrines to foreigners.
"Do many foreigners come here?" Uncle Catullus asked of the oldest
priest.
"Not a week passes in this present month," said the old priest, "but
foreigners come to admire the sacred pyramids. You are Latins, but we
receive visits also from Greek lords and Persians and Indians. When
the Nile has subsided to its lowest gauge, however, when the autumnal
winds blow and the sand-storms begin, then no more foreigners come. For
then death and destruction blow out of the desert, as the hurricanes
of fate which one day will cover Memphis with a sandy shroud. See
these few sphinxes, whose heads alone still project above these
downs. Once they numbered hundreds; and an avenue stretched between
their silence to the Pyramids. But the desert swallowed them up,
the hurricanes spread them with dust, the sandy shroud covered up
the wisdom of Neith. One day the shroud will cover up all Egypt and
veil all her wisdom. What was known will be known no longer. That
will be the punishment of the gods, inflicted upon unworthy man,
who will be plunged into a night of ignorance and the bestiality of
primitive desire. The centuries will turn about!"
The priests in attendance, with a simple pressure of the hand, had
caused a heavy monolithic door to turn on its hinges in the largest
of the pyramids. They lighted torches and went through the syrinx,
a winding tunnel painted with gigantic figures of gods and with
hieroglyphics. It was strange, but there was a humming and murmur of
voices, though the pyramid was uninhabited. It was as though a swarm
of ghosts were whirling around like a gale of wind. The impression
was given immediately; and, when the travellers exchanged glances,
they saw in one another's eyes that they were all four thinking the
same thing; and Caleb muttered saving incantations and repeatedly
kissed his amulets.
The priests led the way, while the flames of the torches blew
and blew in the mysterious draught, as though ghosts were hovering
around. The travellers entered an enormous square room; huge statues
were sculptured in the stone walls; and, though the room was empty,
there was a smell of spices, as if the smells of old had lingered
eternally. Two bats fluttered to the ceiling and whirled round in
a circle.
"This is the king's chamber of Cheops," said the old priest. "Once
upon a time it contained a sarcophagus of azure granite, with
the embalmed body of the great King Cheops, or Khufu; and it was
surrounded by the sarcophagi of his brothers. He wore out his people
with taxes and heavy labour, in order to found this mausoleum for
himself. Where is he now? Where is his embalmed body? Where is his
azure sarcophagus? Where are the sarcophagi of his brothers Chefren
and Schafra? Where are they? Where are they? They are scattered
and vanished as grains of sand, the mummies of the proud rulers,
covered with scented wax and tightly swathed in narrow bandages;
and scattered and vanished are their sarcophagi; and one day these
pyramids themselves will be scattered and vanished, swallowed up in
the lap of the earth! Everything vanishes, all is vanity: thy wisdom
alone, O Neith, is needful to man!"
"Thy wisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!" echoed the priests.
"And we no longer possess it!"
"Alas, alas, we no longer possess it!" echoed the priests,
mechanically, indifferently, while they led the way back through the
tunnel; and their words blew away in the strange, mysterious draught,
because of the invisible ghosts that hovered.
But, when they were outside, the priests kept their torches alight;
and they led the travellers to the small, black pyramid. They pushed
open the stone door; and the old priest went in first. There was a
long tunnel, followed by a room with smooth, black, polished walls,
in which the torches and the shadows of the travellers and priests
themselves were reflected curiously.
"The pyramid of Cleopatra," whispered Caleb to Thrasyllus.
"The pyramid of Doricha," Thrasyllus corrected him, with a smile.
But the old priest shook his head gently and, in a low and fond
voice, said:
"The pyramid of Rhodopis. She lived at Naucratis and was incomparably
beautiful and chaste. One day, when she was bathing, an eagle flew
through the open ceiling of the bathroom and plucked from her maid's
hands the sandal which she was just about to lace on her mistress'
foot."
Lucius suddenly turned very pale. But the priest continued:
"The eagle flew to Memphis, where the king was administering justice
in one of the courts of the palace; and, flying above the king, the
eagle dropped the sandal, so that it fell into the folds of the king's
garment. The king was much surprised; and he examined the sandal,
which was as small as a child's and yet was the sandal of a woman. And
he bade his servants search all Egypt to find the woman whom so small
a sandal would fit. His servants then found Rhodopis at Naucratis and
carried her to the king and he married her; and, when she died, after a
few months' happiness, the disconsolate king dedicated to her the black
pyramid ... which is the costliest of all the pyramids.... Rhodopis'
scented mummy vanished; her sarcophagus vanished. But the sandal,
which the king ever worshipped, was preserved by a miracle. Behold it."
And the priests, with their torches, lighted in the middle of
the jet-black room a crystal shrine, standing on a black-porphyry
table. And in the crystal shrine lay a little sandal, like a child's
and yet a woman's, a little red-leather sandal with gold ornaments,
arabesques that glittered incredibly fresh.
"The sandal kept for tourists," murmured Uncle Catullus, with a
sceptical smile. "We shall pay for it presently, Caleb, just as we
did for the little Apis."
"But still it is very pretty, my lord," whispered Caleb, with a smile.
But Lucius was trembling in every limb. And he said to Thrasyllus:
"This is an omen. I had never heard of this legend. This sandal,
in this shrine!... I would be alone with the priest!"
The request of so distinguished a noble could not be gainsaid. The
others withdrew, after fixing two torches in sconces. Lucius remained
alone with the old priest, by the shrine of Rhodopis' sandal. And
then he produced Ilia's little sandal from his breast and said:
"Wise priest and holy father, you possess wisdom, you assuredly still
know the past. I have confidence in you: you shall tell me where the
girl Ilia is, whom I have lost; you shall tell me who stole her from
me. See, this sandal is the only trace that she left behind her. Tell
me the past and I will reward you richly."
The priest took the sandal and pressed it to his head, while his
other hand trembled above the crystal shrine:
"May the spirit of Rhodopis enlighten me," said the old priest. "I
see Ilia...."
"Dead?"
"No, alive."
"Alone?"
"No, with her kidnapper."
"Do you see her kidnapper?"
"Yes."
"Describe him to me!"
"Give me your hand, here, above Rhodopis' sandal."
Lucius stretched out his hand to the priest, above the sandal:
"Describe him to me!" he repeated.
And in his tortured mind he saw before him the image of one of his
own sailors, of whom he had been thinking lately, who at that time
used to prowl about the villa at Baiæ: a Cypriote whom he had once
caught talking to Ilia in the oleanders; she had never been able to
explain what he was doing.
There was a pause. The priest's lean hand trembled violently in Lucius'
firm grasp. And at last the priest said, with his eyes closed and
his other hand still pressing Ilia's sandal to his forehead:
"I see him, plainly, plainly! Rhodopis' spirit is enlightening me! I
see the kidnapper! I see Ilia's kidnapper!"
"Is he tall?"
"He is tall."
"Broad?"
"He has broad shoulders ... and a coarse face; he is of a coarse
beauty which women sometimes like, which unworthy women prefer to
noble beauty, because they prefer rude passion to love.... Rhodopis'
chaste spirit is over me! I see the kidnapper."
"How is he clad? As a slave?"
"No."
"As a freedman?"
"No."
"As a freeman?"
"Yes."
"As a patrician? A knight?"
"No."
"As a soldier?"
"No."
"As a sailor?"
"No. Yes, he is clad as a sailor, I think, my lord. But I no longer
see him," said the priest, opening his eyes. "And I shall never be
able to tell you anything more."
He gave Lucius back the sandal. The other priests returned, took up
the torches. Quivering with suppressed rage, Lucius walked out of
the black pyramid. Uncle Catullus was already sitting on his camel.
Lucius also mounted his. The Cypriote's image now stood clearly
before his eyes. But he said nothing; his lips were tightly shut,
his forehead frowned; his grief seemed to be restrained and subdued
in his heart by his outraged pride.
And, while Caleb paid the lordly fee, as he always did, Lucius slipped
into the old priest's hand a purse heavy with gold.
CHAPTER XVIII
The short twilight had deepened to purple over the desert; night came
gliding along the firmament; the stars began to peep. And Caleb,
who suspected Lucius' emotion at each fresh divination, considered
that new impressions would be the best medicine for him. After a
short deliberation with Uncle Catullus and Thrasyllus, he said:
"My noble lord, before the night has quite fallen, I should like to
take you to the great Neith ... for the sake both of the statue itself
and of the Jewish prophet, a hermit, who dwells in a cave hard by."
Lucius nodded his approval. And in the falling night he sat erect on
the saddle-pad of his camel and raised his head towards the stars. Had
he guessed the truth? Had the truth gradually been revealed within
him? Or had the sibyl, Amphris, the oracle and the priests whom he had
consulted really shown him the way to that truth? He did not know, he
had so many vague memories that it all grew confused in his seeking,
solving brain.... But he certainly was the Cypriote, the sailor, Carus
... who, shortly before Ilia's disappearance, had himself disappeared
from the crew of the quadrireme ... and whom he had once found with
Ilia among the oleanders! A thing which she had never been able to
explain! Carus! A sailor! Not a slave, it was true, but one of his
meanest servants! A Cyprian sailor, to have robbed him of the woman
who reigned as queen over his house, whom he dressed like a goddess,
whom he covered with everything that was precious! And she must have
been kidnapped--it could not be otherwise--with her own consent,
her own, infatuated consent.
Had he guessed the truth? Had his groping brain at last divined the
truth? Or had the priests and the oracles and Amphris and the sibyl
indeed revealed the truth to him? He decided that they must have done
so. His soul was inclined to accept the supernatural. And he knew,
he knew, thanks to the wise knowledge of the priests and the oracles.
So she had been able to leave him, him, for his hired sailor! He
raised his head towards the stars. His lips were tightly clenched,
his forehead frowned. But never, he resolved, would his lips utter to
any one, not even to Thrasyllus, the secret truth which the oracles
had revealed to him. He would be silent and his pride would suppress
his grief.
"Look, my lord," said Caleb, while Lucius still stared straight before
him, up, towards the stars.
Lucius lowered his eyes. And suddenly he gave a start. The Sphinx
loomed before him in the night. In the immense starry night, with the
sands glittering all around like a silver sea, loomed the immense
Neith, the omniscient wisdom. It was more gigantic than any sphinx
that he had ever seen.
It had been shaped by Nature herself out of an immense monolith. Human
hands had only reshapen it more plainly for human eyes ... into the
Sphinx. It was not the veiled Isis of Sais; it was the unveiled,
silent knowledge, which had known everything from the beginning of
time. It raised its head towards the stars ... as he had done. It was
resting: its lioness-body rested and sank into the sand; its fore-paws
projected like walls. Its superhuman breasts seemed to heave in the
night. Its fixed eyes stared upwards and its granite veil stood out
upon its lioness-body. It was awesomely beautiful in the starry night.
The travellers had alighted. And Caleb had fetched the Jewish hermit
from the cave in which he lived, opposite the Sphinx.
"I believe he's mad," said Caleb, timidly, a little alarmed by Lucius'
frown. "But it doesn't matter if he is mad. He is the Jewish hermit;
and all distinguished foreigners, such as your lordship, listen to
him ... because he says strange things."
"He too!" muttered Lucius.
The Jewish hermit came up to them in the fallen night. He was of
giant stature and incredibly old; his beard fell in waves down to
his waist. His grey robe trailed over the sand. And he exclaimed,
in a loud voice:
"I am Tsafnath-Paeneach, 'he who reveals mysteries!' I am of the tribe
of Joseph himself, who took to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah
priest of On! In me was the wisdom of Joseph, who interpreted dreams,
and the wisdom of the priests of On! But all wisdom is dead in me,
Jahve be praised, since I beheld Him!"
"Whom?" asked Lucius, dismayed by the prophet's booming voice.
"It was a night of twinkling stars!" cried the prophet. "It was thirty
years ago! I lived in my cave, as I do now! And I knew everything
and I looked Neith in the face and in the eyes.... Along the road,
yonder, through the sands ... they came! They came, they came, they
drew near.... On an ass that stumbled with fatigue sat a woman. A
greybeard, staff in hand, led the stumbling beast. Then I saw that
the woman held, pressed to her breast, in the folds of her mantle,
a Child! And the woman was like Heva and like Isis; and the Child was
like Habel and like Horus. When they came before the mighty Neith,
the ass could stumble no farther through the sands of the desert. And
the woman alighted and smiled upon the Child through her tears. But
the greybeard led the woman to the mighty Neith and helped her to climb
into its deep granite lap. There the woman rested against Neith's bosom
and the Child rested against the woman's bosom. And then ... then
I saw, I, Tsafnath-Paeneach, I who reveal mysteries, that the Child
that was like Habel and Horus was radiant in the night, in the folds of
the woman's mantle! The Child was radiant; a wreath of rays, a halo of
light shone about the Child! The mother slept, the radiant Child slept,
the greybeard slept ... and the mighty Neith watched over their sleep
in the starry night! Then, O Jahve, I knew that I had beheld Thy Son;
and this happiness was my last wisdom. Since then I know nothing more,
O Jahve, be praised! Since then I have discovered no mysteries! Since
then the knowledge of Joseph has died away within me and that of the
priests of On! For I have seen Jahve's Son, there, there, in the lap
of Neith ... and since then I have seen nothing but that vision! And
I shall die with the vision of the radiant Child before my eyes!"
The prophet's loud, booming voice had risen to a cry of joy; and
Caleb repeated to Lucius, in a whisper:
"You see, my lord, he's mad."
But Thrasyllus, on the other side, whispered:
"He's not mad, Lucius.... He is a seer.... He has seen.... He has
perhaps seen the new God of Whom all the sibyls speak...."
"Which new God?" asked Lucius.
"I don't know His name," said Thrasyllus.
But Uncle Catullus spoke:
"My dear nephew, that great monstrous fellow frightens me, here
in the dark, in the desert, in front of this awful statue. Egypt
gives me too many impressions. I feel like a sponge full of water,
so soaked am I with impressions. Egypt will be the death of me,
Lucius, you'll see it will! Meanwhile I propose to mount my camel."
And Uncle Catullus called his guards and drivers and bade them make
his camel kneel down for him.
But Lucius went to the prophet and drew him aside:
"Do you know the past?" he asked, anxiously.
"The past?" echoed the Jewish seer, in an uncertain voice; and his
eyes were as though blind.
"Do you see and can you tell me if that which I think has happened
... is undoubtedly true?"
"I no longer see either the past or the future," said the seer. "I
see nothing but the present. And the present for me is nothing but
... the radiant Child yonder!"
"Who is He?" asked Lucius.
"I do not know, unless He be Jahve's Son!" cried the seer. "He was like
Habel, he was like Horus. But I do not know, unless He be Jahve's Son!"
Thrasyllus approached:
"Lucius," he said, "let us go. The night is falling and the guards
have warned us against wild animals and robbers."
"Let Caleb give the prophet a gold piece," said Lucius.
Caleb produced a stater; but the prophet's laugh of thunder sent him
staggering back:
"Gold!" cried the prophet, laughing like thunder. "What do I want
with dead gold! I have seen living gold; I have seen the Child That
was radiant gold as the sun itself, radiant as the burning bush! What
do I want with dead gold!"
"He's mad! He's mad!" cried Caleb. "He doesn't want gold!"
And, terrified, Caleb slipped back the stater--but into another
purse, in which he collected his savings--and rushed to his camel,
which was already kneeling in the sand.
In the light of the stars that twinkled over the sea of sand the
travellers rode back to Memphis.
CHAPTER XIX
It was very early one morning and Lucius was walking alone on the
opposite bank of the river. In the tender dawn the vast grey lines
of Memphis became visible in rose-red silhouette.
Lucius was wandering alone. Solitude had become dear to him, like rest
after a severe illness, especially because he doubted his cure. He
doubted; he doubted the certainty.
Did he know the truth? He was doubting now, after a sleepless night,
and asking himself, did he know the truth? And, if he knew the truth,
was he really cured, cured in his sick soul, cured of his suffering?
He did not know; he no longer knew anything. He wandered beside
the Nile, alone, without knowing, without knowing. A dulness filled
his brain, like a mist. Life was awaking on the farms with cheerful
rural activity. The grain burst under the mill-stones; and the women
on their knees rubbed with powerful palms the dough which the men
beside them had already kneaded with the vigorous dance of their
feet. Lucius stopped to look on; and they laughed; and he laughed
back. The men danced and the women rubbed; and they laughed and were
happy. A jealousy of their happiness rose hotly in the young Roman.
"Will you give me some milk?" he asked a girl who was milking a
splendid, snow-white cow.
The girl handed the stranger the milk in the hollow leaf of a
cyamus-plant. Lucius did not know whether to give her any money. He
drank and handed back the reed goblet:
"Thank you," he said; and she laughed and went on milking.
He gave her no money and went on. How beautiful the world was and
the morning! How rosy this first light over the silvering stream! How
grey and colossal the past, yonder, of that dying, sinking city! How
beautiful and impressive were every form and tint! How lovely
was the world! Even the people down there, those labourers, those
shepherdesses, those men and women baking, had a calm rustic, idyllic
beauty in their simplicity and naturalness. How good the world was
and how happy people could be, if the gods did not pour grief into
their hearts!
Grief! Did he feel grief? Or had the mere thought that Ilia had proved
unworthy of his great love already cured him of the disease that was
grief? But was he cured and did he know?
He was approaching the hamlet of Troia. And he remembered reading in
Thrasyllus' notes that Menelaus had come past here with his band of
Trojan captives and generously permitted them to settle here. They
had founded their colony. Behind Troia stood a rocky mountain-range;
and behold, there was the ancient quarry from which, years ago, the
blocks of stone were hewn to build the pyramids, block upon block,
without cement! And Lucius' feet rattled through the curious fossils
which strewed the ground like pebbles with the shapes of long lentils
and pea-pods and which were thought to be the petrified remnants
of the meals served to the many thousand slaves who had worked at
the pyramids.
Suddenly he saw a woman. She was resting, sitting against the rocks
and gazing at the rosy sky. He recognized his slave, the one with
the beautiful voice, the singer, Cora.
She started when she saw him and rose and bowed low, with outstretched
hands:
"Forgive me, my lord," she stammered, "for straying so far from
the barge."
He reassured her: he was a master who did not grudge his slaves a
liberty. And he asked her, in a kind voice:
"Why did you stray so far?"
"I strayed without intending it, my lord. My thoughts carried me
along!"
"What were you thinking of?"
"I was thinking of Cos, my dear birthplace, and whether I should ever
see it again."
"It is the birthplace of Apelles the painter and of Epicharmus the
poet-philosopher and inventor of comedy. It is a place of beauty and
art, is it not, Cora?"
"It is like a most charming garden, my lord. It contains the temples
of Æsculapius and Aphrodite. I was born there in the slave-school. I
had a delightful childhood. There was a big garden in which I used
to play.... Forgive me, my lord...."
"Go on."
"I was trained there and tended. I was bathed and carefully anointed
and rubbed. This was done by the negresses. I learned to dance when
I was very young. That is why I am lithe, my lord; and I hope that
I dance well. But I also loved music; I sang. We had masters, who
taught us to sing and play the harp, and mistresses, who taught us
to dance. Dryope, who was in charge of the slave-school, was stern,
but she was not unkind. My parents also were her slaves. My father
was a runner and my mother was a dancer too. There were wagers when
my father ran in a race; and he but seldom failed to win the prize
for our mistress. She would have him flogged when he did not win
the prize, but not hard, for she did not want to injure his precious
body. Dryope was a good mistress to us, for my mother stopped dancing
after she had once sprained her foot and Dryope nevertheless remained
kind and gentle to her slave. But, when I was able to sing and dance,
my lord, Dryope sold me for a big sum to a slave-dealer who was going
to Rome with a number of slaves, male and female. I embraced Dryope
and my parents and went with the dealer. He also was not harsh to
me, because I was a valuable slave, my lord; he was not harsh to his
slaves; he was careful of them as of precious merchandise. Thrasyllus
bought me for you, my lord, on the slave-market in Rome; and I was
proud when he paid a big sum for me after hearing my trial song and
seeing my trial dance. And now ... now I am happy, my lord, to belong
to a master like yourself. But still my thoughts often wander to Cos,
to the slaves' quarters, to my parents, to my fellow-slaves there
and to Dryope. Forgive me, my lord."
"And would you like to go back to Cos, Cora?"
"My lord, our native land remains dear to us. But I belong to you;
and where you are there I will be."
"And shall you be happy there too, Cora, so far from Cos?"
"I shall be happy where you are happy, my lord, and unhappy where
you are unhappy."
Lucius looked at her. He did not take her words to be more than the
politeness of a courteous slave, who came from a famous slave-school
and for whom he had paid a high price, because of her delicate beauty
and her accomplishments. But still the sound of Cora's voice was
pleasant to his ear; and he said, graciously and with a gentle smile:
"You know how to speak the word that sounds well, even as you sing
true and play true."
She made no further answer and bowed her head, feeling that he did
not count her words as more than a well-sounding speech:
"Have I your permission, my lord, to go back to the barge?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, "go."
She made a gesture of graceful reverence and moved away. He followed
her at a distance. She walked along by the tall reeds of the river. She
was very pretty and dainty, like the soft-tinted statuettes that came
from Tanagra. Her flowered muslin peplos hung limply pleated around
her shapely body in a succession of thin folds, which blew open and
shut. Her bare arms were very slender. Her blue-black hair was fine
and caught golden gleams. Now, while she stopped to pluck a flowering
reed, she stood among the stems like a nymph.
And Lucius smiled because she was so very pretty, so tenderly winsome,
because she sang and played the harp so very beautifully and because
she said such civil words and had spoken so charmingly of her native
island, Cos, where she was born in Dryope's slave-school.
CHAPTER XX
Uncle Catullus lay under the awning of the thalamegus and asked Cora
to come and sit by him:
"Sing and play me some cheerful songs, Cora," he said. "Be kind to
me even though I be not your master. For I feel bored here, on this
Nile boat, at Memphis. I have been bored ever since Lucius went to
the oracle of Ammon, through the barren desert. What an idea, what
a mad idea! They have been gone five days now; they will probably
arrive to-morrow.... I am bored, Cora, I am horribly bored. Egypt
will be the death of me! First I am saturated with new impressions,
like a sponge with water, and then Lucius abandons me to unlimited
boredom. He's an egoist; he never thinks of his old uncle.... Cora,
be amiable to me and sing and play me some cheerful songs, won't you?"
This was the burden of Uncle Catullus' complaint. As he said,
Lucius had gone through the desert to the oracle of Ammon, with
Caleb, Thrasyllus and Tarrar, with guards and drivers, and Uncle
Catullus had remained behind on the barge, under the care of Rufus
the under-steward, with all the other slaves, male and female.
A track led from Memphis through the desert to the oasis where
the oracle of Ammon resided. It ran through the sands marked with
granite posts, like small obelisks, nothing more. It was a chain of
sign-posts rather than a road. The summer sun beat down implacably
upon the scorching sands, which lay blown against the rocky range of
mountains along the south of which the road was traced.
The caravan had now been travelling five days through the
sands. Lucius, on an elephant, lay in a spacious, square litter, with
blue and yellow curtains to keep out the light, and had expressed a
wish that Thrasyllus should sit by his side. Caleb, swathed in white
muslin, which left only his gleaming eyes and flashing teeth visible,
sat upon a powerful dromedary, on leather cushions, under a great
parasol fixed to his saddle-gear, and occasionally swaying gently to
and fro. Elephant and dromedary were surrounded with long fly-nets,
from which dangled many-coloured fringes. Tarrar, also swathed in
linens of many colours, squatted like a little monkey on a camel
and defied the sun of his native land, the glare of his Libyan
desert. The guards and drivers rode mules; and ponies carried the
travellers' luggage, their tents, their provisions and their still
swollen water-bags.
For five days now they had been marching on their monotonous journey
through the desert. At break of day the caravan started; at noon a
halt was made under the tents; in the evening the procession moved on
again, until darkness and fatigue urged the travellers to rest. It
was an endless journey. It seemed as if the goal would never be
reached. It was an unrelieved alternation of gold-glittering sands,
under implacable, blazing skies, and fading sands, under endless skies
of nocturnal blue. It was an unrelieved alternation of rosy sunrises
and orange sunsets. It was an unrelieved alternation of the peeping,
the radiant awakening and the duller waning of the stars. Sometimes
the south wind rose and blew for hours. Silently the caravan plodded
through the rising whirls of sand. Sometimes the faint track of posts
seemed to have disappeared; the obelisks stood aslant, sunk into the
sands. A melancholy descended over man and beast.
The midday meal, taken under a tent, Lucius shared with Thrasyllus,
Caleb, and Tarrar. It consisted always of broiled mutton, dates and an
unvarying ration of water, with a dash of palm-wine in it. Strange to
say, Lucius was almost cheerful and declared that Uncle Catullus had
done well not to accompany them to the oasis of Ammon, as such meals
would certainly have been a sore trial for him. And, strange again,
Caleb, usually so merry and cheerful, became despondent and sad. At
least, he exclaimed, now that Lucius began to jest:
"I wonder, my lord, that you can be gay in these god-forsaken Libyan
sands! They weigh upon my chest, O my lord, as though I were already
sinking under them, like the obelisks and sphinxes! O my noble lord,
O my princely lord, what a desperate idea of your lordship's to wish
to undertake this awful journey, to wish to go to the oracle of Ammon,
which is quite ruined and deserted, whither perhaps for two centuries
past no noble lord like your lordship has ever travelled! O my lord,
O my lord, if only this horrible journey ends well! The drivers and
guards are not yet complaining; there is still water in the bags
for men and beasts; we have not yet experienced any other adventure
beyond the appearance of one lion, who stood proudly on the point
of a rock but fled when he saw my burnous flapping in the distance,
while our hunters tried to shoot him with poisoned arrows. But my
lord, if more lions appear, or if robbers suddenly come in sight,
or if those terrible ghosts loom up: the sphinxes with the human
heads and the giants with faces of animals, which, people say,
fill the desert; or if we meet the giant snake, who has a forest
growing on his back and who makes his nest underground and who,
when hungry, bores his terrible body right through the earth's flat
disk and swallows towns and villages, O my lord, then I doubt, alas,
whether my flapping burnous and the bows and arrows of our hunters
and guards will save us! O my lord, O my gracious, noble lord, shall
I ever see Saba again, my dear country blessed by the gods!"
Thus ran Caleb's complaint; but Lucius said:
"Tarrar is seeing his country again, aren't you, Tarrar?"
"Yes, my lord," said the little slave, "but I come from the sea-coast,
not from the desert, and I was not happy in my country and my parents
gave me no food to eat and the country is not beautiful either, as
Saba is, and I would much rather be with you, in Rome, for that is
the loveliest country in the world, and in your house, which is the
loveliest house in the world."
After the midday rest the journey was resumed and the sun sank slowly:
the sky was like a glowing copper dome, which dulled and cooled;
and the stars came out; and over the rocky crests that rose on ridges
along the road appeared the flying figures of wild animals. Startling
roars sounded in the night, to the great alarm of Caleb, who said that
he did not mind lions or hyenas but that he was afraid of the giants
and the colossal snake and the ghosts of the desert, which lured
travellers to the magic cities which are nothing but hallucination,
enchantment and destruction. And all the drivers and guards, sturdy
Libyans and Arabs, were like him and said that they did not fear the
tangible lions and would hunt them if need be, but that they did fear
the intangible lions of the desert, all the haunting, shadowy visions
of wrath with which Typhon lures the caravans into Hell.
Then great fires were kindled, to ward off the lions and the ghosts;
and they glowed in the still glowing night; and the guards and drivers
danced fantastic dances round the fires; and Caleb, to forget his
alarm, joined in the dance.
But Thrasyllus told his master about Alexander the Great. When
Alexander founded Alexandria, the oracle of Ammon was the most
celebrated in Egypt; and Callisthenes and Plutarch relate how the
great Macedonian started from Parætonium, on the coast, to make his
way through the desert by way of the oasis. Violent south-winds
attacked his retinue; but he did not give in, though sand-storms
nearly swallowed him up, with his elephants and camels. Suddenly,
however, kindly showers fell, at the bidding of the gods, and the
winds abated and the sand-storms dropped. Two crows flew beside the
great Alexander and guided him to the oasis.
At the first ray of dawn, after a refreshing sleep, the journey was
resumed, the monotonous journey, the endless journey. It was the
last day but one; and, when the halt was called, it appeared that
the drivers and guards had cut open the water-bags and drunk their
fill of the water. Caleb grew furious and instantly drew his dagger
and wanted to fling himself on the Libyans and Arabs; but they also
drew their daggers and everybody shouted and screamed and yelled. Then
Lucius intervened and quieted them all and gave them money; and they
fell on their knees and sobbed and begged his pardon for drinking
up the water, but they had been so thirsty and they accused Caleb
of being too sparing with the ration. And Caleb defended himself and
said that in the desert one had to be sparing and not gulp down all
the water at once, without thinking of the morrow, of the animals
and of the noble lord, who now had not a drop of water left. But
the noble lord caused a heavy basket full of lemons to be let down
from his elephant and gave each of the guards and drivers one lemon
and told them that they must now hold out, by sucking this lemon,
until they reached the oasis. And they kissed his hands and abased
themselves before him and caressed his legs and called him Osiris
and Serapis and Ammon-Râ and their life's benefactor.
Men and animals were exhausted, but they allowed themselves hardly
any rest that night and no one slept and all wanted to go on, ever on,
in the last spurring of their energies.
Was it, after the sleepless night, because of that exhaustion and
that last spurring, an atmospheric phenomenon, an hallucination,
an illusion, a fata morgana? In the first rosy glimmers of the dawn,
reflected from the east to the west, there rose in the west as it were
a dream, a nebulous dream-vision of unsubstantial forms, the vague
paradisial vision of barely-outlined, rose-tinted trees, slender,
shadowy trunks and palm-crowns suffused in rosy light; and then the
straight lines, no more than an azure shadow, of walls, of roofs,
terraces, domes.
Was it a vision, was it a dream? No, it was real; and Caleb jubilantly
pointed and shouted:
"Ammon-Râ! Ammon-Râ!"
"Ammon-Râ! Ammon-Râ!" repeated the guards and drivers, yelling wildly
and cheering like madmen, for the oasis took colour, the trees became
more clearly marked and the temple, large as a town, now stretched
its walls impressively.
The horses sniffed the air and neighed, the elephants waved their
trunks, the camels swung out their legs, the men thrust forward
their throats and inhaled the fragrance of verdure and the coolness
of running wells; and the inhabitants of the oasis, poor natives in
the service of the priests of the temple, poured out of their huts
to meet the caravan and knelt in the road, offering split coconuts,
juicy oranges and scarlet fruits, of strange shapes and juicy pulp,
and earthenware dishes full of water limpid as flowing crystal.
CHAPTER XXI
There was a dense wood of palm-trees through which the travellers
made their way to the temple of Ammon-Râ, whose walls lay spread like
a town.
"See, my lord," said Caleb, walking ahead and pointing, "these are
male palm-trees; and those more slender ones are female; and they
marry one another, my lord, and feel love for one another; they grow
towards one another, see, my lord, like these two; and they wave to
one another and the male fructifies the female; and it is only when
they love each other that the fruits are luxuriant and their honey
and wine pleasant to the taste."
"It is as Caleb says," Tarrar assented. "The palm-trees in my country
marry one another and they are the most excellent in the whole world."
"They also marry in Saba," said Caleb, in pique. "We have sweeter
honey and date-wine in Saba than you have here in Libya."
A heated discussion arose between Caleb and Tarrar upon the respective
merits of the Sabæan and Libyan palm-trees. But the travellers were
now entering the first gate of the temple.
There was a triple row of walls round the old sanctuary, but
they were falling into ruins, the obelisks were sinking away,
the sphinxes were covered with luxuriant, flowering creepers, tall
grasses shot up between the flag-stones of the dromos and all the
doors were open. There was a deep shade from the leafy tops of the
turpentine-trees, which were fragrant with heavy perfumes in the
sunshine. The fleshy aloes drove their sword-like leaves over the
walls; and their long stalks blossomed with huge scarlet flowers which
smoked as though with incense. But it was above all the daturas whose
pendant alabaster goblets poured forth a giddiness, an intoxication of
heavy scents, around which the great Atlas moths flew slowly hovering.
There were no door-keepers; and the travellers walked on, through
the endless dromos. The monolithic colossi rose on either hand; but
they also were shelving to one side, or sinking away. Lastly, from
out of the vista of the pylons, which stood in endless row after row,
a group of priests approached the travellers. It was the high-priest
of Ammon-Râ, accompanied by eleven other priests; and they were all
very old and grey. They all had grey locks and they all wore long,
grey beards. They all wore long, fiery red robes; and, when they drew
near in procession, they were like gods in their placid dignity.
They did not wish to betray their surprise to the travellers. The
oracle of Ammon was no longer visited as it had been visited
two centuries ago. It was no longer held in honour; the temple
was fallen into decay; summers would pass without the advent of a
single pilgrim. But Lucius had wanted to consult the oracle of Ammon
just because its historic past gave it a poetic charm for him. And,
when he saw the high-priest approach, he stretched out his hands in
reverence to the ground and knelt and bowed his head; and Thrasyllus,
Caleb and Tarrar knelt and bowed behind him.
"What do you seek, my son?" asked the centenarian high-priest.
"The truth," replied Lucius.
"Then enter into the House of the Sun," the high-priest ordained.
And the travellers rose; and the priests gladly led the way. They led
their visitors through the pronaos and naos to the secos, to the holy
of holies. And, pointing in the golden shade of midday dusk, between
pillars like tree-trunks, to the enormous statue of Ammon-Râ, old as
time, the sun-god with the bull's head, the high-priest continued:
"The Sun reveals the truth to him who is worthy to hear it, even
as ages ago he revealed the truth to Alexander of Macedon. Before
his coming, the deity uttered himself only by moving his brows and
wrinkling his bull forehead between his divine horns. But the deity
addressed Alexander of Macedon with the sound of his lowing voice and
told him, in words plainly audible to the king and all his following,
that he was the son of the Sun, the son of Jupiter Ammon-Râ."
Lucius looked up at the statue. In the golden twilight of the temple,
where the noontide daylight filtered in and broke between the pillars
in a shimmer of dust, he saw the supreme god, who was no longer held
in honour, wrapped in shadow, paintless wood and colourless basalt,
blind and pock-pitted where his bull head and his human neck had
been robbed of the jewelled eyes and the precious stones with which
he had once been inlaid. And Lucius felt so deep a compassion within
himself for the fading god, once all-honoured and now forgotten in
his distant, sinking temple in the Libyan desert, that he bent his
knees in pity and reverence.
The Jewish seer, who lived in the cave of Neith, had haply seen the
new god, the Son of Jahve, crowned with light for days and days. Here,
in the immensity of his ruined sanctuary, Lucius beheld the fading
of the god who was forgotten, but whom, centuries ago, Alexander of
Macedon had travelled through whirlwinds and sand-storms to seek.
When Lucius looked up, he was alone with the old high-priest:
"Father," he said, kneeling, "I would know the truth. I would know if
what I believe to be the truth, revealed to me by oracle after oracle,
is the truth to Jupiter Ammon-Râ."
"My son," said the priest, "the truth does not shine forth until after
meditation, after contemplation and pious prayers, after days and
nights of communing with the deity. I will be your intermediary. And
you shall know what you would know, if you have faith."
"Father," said Lucius, "I lay my forehead, heavy with care and
suffering and doubt, in your holy hands."
And he bowed his head towards the priest's open palms.
He remained five days and nights together with the priest. In the
temple, the golden shadows of the day changed into the blue shadows
of the night and the glittering of the sun into the flickering of
the lamps. There was prayer and fasting and the touch of soul to soul.
CHAPTER XXII
After five days and nights, Lucius knew. Pale, tired and enlightened,
he sought out his followers, Thrasyllus, Caleb and Tarrar, who were
staying in the great, cavernous rooms of the temple. And he was calm,
peaceful and dignified. He bathed and ate and slept. And at night, in
the silence of the temple-grounds, which wove itself into one mystic
atmosphere with the golden gleam of the stars, he woke Tarrar and said:
"Take this sycamore box."
It was a small casket of delicate workmanship, which had always
accompanied him wherever he went.
Tarrar, heavy with sleep, took up the little box.
"Follow me," said Lucius.
The little slave, in astonishment, followed his master. Lucius
passed through the shadow-haunted temple-precincts, which stretched
endlessly in every direction. He went through the parks, which were
haunted with sphinxes and obelisks and thick with the sultry heat
of datura-scent. He went through the whole oasis, under the grove of
palm-trees and past the huts of the natives.
Tarrar followed him. The little slave felt, inquisitively, that the
sycamore casket was not locked. He opened it for an instant; and by
the flickering starlight Tarrar saw a small woman's sandal, which
he knew. The little slave wondered and wondered. But he continued to
follow his master, faithfully; he would have followed him to the death.
They came to the desert. The master entered the desert; and Tarrar
continued to wonder. The starry night now spread its dome over their
heads; the silvery sands lay outstretched before him.
"Dig," Lucius commanded, suddenly turning round.
Tarrar gave a start. He put down the casket in the sand and dug a
hole with his hands.
"Deeper," Lucius commanded. "Dig deeper."
The little slave dug; quickly, like a little monkey, he dug the hole
deep with his two hands.
"Put the casket in the hole," Lucius commanded.
Tarrar did so and looked at his master.
"Cover the casket up with sand."
Tarrar did as his master commanded. Then Lucius said:
"Now come back."
And he went back to the oasis; but Tarrar, before following him,
stamped down the sand under which the casket lay buried and overwhelmed
it, amid violent gestures of delight, with native curses, curses not
to be averted, in the Libyan tongue.
CHAPTER XXIII
The travellers had returned to Memphis and Caleb displayed the skin
of a lion which had been shot in the desert and told the people in
the thalamegus terrible tales of desert ghosts and dread visions. The
barge was now gliding up the Nile in the night; the sky was softly
blue, like dark byssus; the water was a pale blue, like rippling silk;
and the waning moon hung above the palm-clusters and country-mansions
on the river-bank like a great, overripe fruit which threatened to
burst in the sky and whose juice was already trickling in thick orange
drops that flowed far over the Nile.
And, while the rowers' monotonous chant resounded with the regular
beat of the oars, Thrasyllus, sitting beside Lucius, gave way to
melancholy and said:
"Egypt is Egypt no longer. Alexandria is a commercial town; Memphis is
a decaying greatness; and the priests are venal and no longer know the
Hermetic wisdom. I have sought for five days among the dusty papyri
of the neglected library in the temple of Ammon; it is as though all
that is worth knowing were hiding itself."
"The priests must be hiding the Hermetic wisdom on purpose," said
Lucius.
"They used to do so in other days for Plato and Pythagoras, when their
souls were lofty and incorruptible. Nowadays they show what they have
and tell what they know for money. But what they have is not more
than we in Rome possess in the temple of Isis; and what they know is
not the key to happiness. And yet ... and yet I believe in a sacred
word, handed down in the wisdom of the Kabbala by word of mouth,
from father to son. But I have not yet received it from any priest,
neither at Memphis nor in the oasis. And yet I have hopes. There is
Thebes; and there are the secrets of Ethiopia ... down to the pillars
of Sesostris."
Lucius smiled gently:
"The word," he said, "the secret of happiness ... Thrasyllus, is
happiness not an illusion of the brain? Does happiness not lie in
resigning one's self piously to one's fate and is the secret word
not the proud 'Be a god unto yourself'?"
The old man started. And he whispered:
"You also? Have you also heard that word, as I heard it at Sais? I
took no account of it, it did not satisfy me."
"It satisfied me in the oasis, because it is a proud, strong word and
I have needed pride and strength ... since I have known, Thrasyllus."
"Known what, Lucius?"
"That Carus stole Ilia from me."
The old man started violently:
"You know?" he exclaimed. "You know? Who told you? Who betrayed
the secret?"
"The voice itself within my own soul, which the oracles caused to
speak to me. My own thoughts, tossing this way and that, which the
oracles guided. From the sibyl of Rhacotis, who merely guessed my own
thoughts, down to the old high-priest of Ammon-Râ, who spoke to me like
a father ... and who said to me the word, 'Be a god unto yourself!'"
"As Nemu-Pha said to me, at Sais. I paid for it in gold."
"I paid for it in gold in the oasis. But what does that matter,
Thrasyllus? The word gave me strength and pride."
"O my son, if you could be cured of your sorrow, of your grief!"
"They are no longer in me. I no longer have any grief, no longer any
sorrow. I am a god unto myself."
"The gods suffer. Isis suffered because of Osiris. All the gods
suffer."
"I suffer no longer. My grief has departed from me. The world and life
are beautiful. See, the colours and the light are beautiful. The sky
is softly blue, like dark byssus; the water ripples like blue silk;
and the moon is like a great, overripe fruit which bursts in the sky
and whose juice trickles over the Nile. To-morrow the day will bring
another beauty. In these successive beauties, Thrasyllus, I will be
a god unto myself."
"O my son, though I did not tell you the word myself, I am so happy
that you yourself found the word!"
In the night there sounded the high, rising tones of a harp, followed
by Cora's crystal-clear voice, which was accompanied by other harps
and other voices.
"The word of pride, the word of strength, Thrasyllus," said Lucius,
calmly; and the old tutor saw a tranquil smile on his young master's
face as he added, "The word that almost makes me happy."
CHAPTER XXIV
After the abundant dews of the night came the delight of the cool-warm
summer day. The clustering trees now pressed their way forward more
richly and luxuriously along the banks of the Nile. Here, on the
Libyan side, lay the town of Acanthus, with its temple of Osiris in
a spreading wood of Theban acanthus-trees, of which the natives tap
the fragrant gums. Next, on the Arabian bank, came Aphroditopolis,
the second town of the name, with the temple of the White Cow;
and then the travellers reached the Heracleotic nome, a big island
in the Nile, from which a canal cuts through the Arsinoic nome,
the most fertile in the whole country. Here and here alone the
olive-tree flourished in dense, silvery woods; but here also there
twisted and twined, in close festoons, the vine-branches, on which
the grapes were beginning to swell; here the fruit-trees bent under
their heavy load and the orchards stretched; here the sickles of the
husbandmen waved through the abundant ears of corn. Here the fat soil
yielded wealth and prosperity; here the innumerable sheep spread in a
wave of wool over the hills, like a shadowy white sea. Here, between
margins of sands, Lake Moeris stretched exquisite and crystal blue to
the horizon, as it were a fresh-water inland sea. In earlier ages,
the ocean must have extended to those margins and stolen the whole
northern land of Lower Egypt, that gift of the Nile, as Herodotus
had called it long ago. Here the double lotus-flowers were trained
to blossom in the waters; and here the sacred scarabs were bred and
worshipped upon the white flowers.
Lucius would wander alone of a morning, strolling along the banks of
the lake. It was so strangely calm here and so divinely beautiful; and
a heaven-sent consolation filled the air. These were the regions blest
by the gods; and it pleased Lucius to linger here. The thalamegus lay
moored under acanthus-trees; the flowering reeds shot up to a man's
height around her. And every afternoon, at sunset, Lucius, sometimes
accompanied by Thrasyllus, sometimes alone, walked to the labyrinth.
The road lay along the waterworks of the canal, where daily, under
the supervision of the engineers, the quantity of water that flowed in
and out of the lake through the canal was closely gauged. The tilled
and inhabited lands around Lake Moeris, large as a sea, were never
flooded. If the Nile increased, all that happened was that the blue
crystal mirror of the lake rose. If the waters of the river fell,
then those of the lake filled them up, by careful management of the
sluices. The water was never other than a benevolent deity.
Along the waterworks ran the road to the labyrinth. In the sinking
glory of the sun, in blood-red and orange splendours, Lucius saw
it daily, the strange Titanic town of monoliths, the linked rows of
palaces and courts, projecting their columns endlessly, endlessly,
towards the sunlit horizon. Orange and blood-red gleams glowed over
the flat stone tables of the roofs, which were not higher than a
single pillared storey and which spread out their immense terrace
like a paved desert. There were twenty palaces, each surrounded by
twenty-seven monolithic columns; and all this wondrous architecture
of past centuries was without a beam of wood, was without cement or
masonry, was simply stone laid upon stone with faultless precision
and column hewn beside column, absolutely circular, each column a
single stone. At the end of the palaces, which were a stadium long,
rose the square pyramid, the tomb of the builder, King Amenemha.
The holy place was guarded by priests, who led Lucius through the
halls and crypts. The twenty palaces represented the former twenty
Egyptian nomes, or provinces; and the emissaries of each province
used to gather with their priests and priestesses in their palace or
court and offer up sacrifices and discuss great questions of policy
or local welfare. But nowadays the palaces were deserted, the crypts
were deserted, and the priests led Lucius along endless, deserted,
winding corridors which meandered from palace to palace. The torches
smeared the walls with blood-red light, smeared the smooth stone
walls of the corridors and halls and floors and ceilings, stone after
stone upon stone of wonderful dimensions all resting one upon another
without cement. And to Lucius it was one of the marvels of the world,
even more marvellous, because of its sublime human architecture,
than the pyramids had been.
Travelling on camels with Uncle Catullus and a great retinue, Lucius
went a hundred stadia farther, to Arsinoe-Crocodilopolis. The trees
flourished more richly, more luxuriantly, like a richly-wooded park
around the travellers, till they came to the sacred lake where the
sacred crocodile, named Such, was held in veneration.
"Well," said Uncle Catullus, "here's another of these little pets
which are kept for the edification of foreigners!"
And in fact the priests who came to meet the travellers in front of
the dromos of the sacred lake, surrounded on every side with pillars,
first amiably demanded a stater a head as entrance-fee, while Caleb,
of course, had seen to a supply of rich provisions, as an offering
to the deity. The slaves carried baskets with cakes, roast meats and
jars of hydromel.
In the lake lay Such, the huge monster; but the priests had tamed the
terrible deity: they were luring him from the middle of the lake,
where his temple was, to the bank, because some Persian visitors
happened to have arrived before Lucius and wished to present their
offerings. On the edge of the lake the priests took Such fearlessly
by his terrible jaws and made him swallow the cakes and meat and wine
of the Persian grandees, who were greatly diverted and laughed aloud.
"They must be great noblemen," said Caleb, "and are going from the
pillars of Sesostris to Alexandria, even as you, my noble lords,
are going from Alexandria to the pillars of Sesostris. My lord, if
you permit me, I should much like to exchange a few words with the
guide of the Persian lords."
Lucius gave his permission; and the crocodile, who had swallowed his
Persian presents, swam back to the middle of the lake. But the priests
now quickly lured him to the other side, where Lucius was waiting;
and the ever greedy crocodile approached; and the priests again took
him fearlessly by his terrible jaws and the monster now swallowed
Lucius' gifts, the cakes, the roast meat, as though insatiable;
and the priests, laughing, emptied a jar of hydromel into his maw.
Meanwhile, Caleb, after a few words with the guide, had sunk in
salaams before the Persian lords.
"He's offering the Persians his diversorium," said Uncle Catullus,
jestingly.
And in fact Caleb, in a few minutes, came back happy and swaggering
to his own travellers and said, in a mysterious whisper:
"I have recommended their Persian lordships to be sure to stop at
the Hermes House at Alexandria; and I slipped a gold ptolemy into
their guide's hand. Yes, my lords, business is business; and, if we
did no business at Alexandria, I could never hope to see my beloved
Saba again. For there you must have done business, if you want to
live in the country; there's no business to be done there, my lords."
By way of Heracleopolis, where divine honours were paid to the
ichneumon, the spotted rat that devours the eggs of the adders and
attacks the adders themselves, after first rolling itself in the mud,
which dries round its body and forms an armour, the travellers reached
Cynopolis, where the dog is worshipped as Anubis, and Oxyrynchus,
where the fish of the name is venerated. And it now appeared that,
in this region of Heptanomis, where, on the Arabian side of the Nile,
the strange battlements of the blinding white Alabastrites Mountains
blaze against the sky, all animals received divine honours, as though
the priests had instituted these popular forms of worship in great
numbers everywhere, so that they might the more carefully keep to
themselves the secret Hermetic wisdom. Cats and falcons, sheep and
wolves, baboons and zebus, eagles and lions, goats and spiders: all
the animals were worshipped in one or other town or village; all the
animals had their temples and priests; and Uncle Catullus said that
he grew weary of having to admire so many sacred animals, especially
as Apis, the little bull, and Such, the crocodile, were after all the
only ones that were really interesting to see. But all these cattle,
all these birds and fishes, all these creatures, from carnivora down
to insects, were worshipped, tended, fed and shown in the temples to
strangers, each time at a piece of gold a head. No, it was really too
silly, especially when, after the first Crocodilopolis, on the left,
the second Crocodilopolis appeared on the right, on the bank of the
Nile, with another Such!
"Lucius," said Uncle Catullus, "honestly, I'm not going to feed
any more sacred crocodiles, nor any sacred goats or cats or beetles
either. I've seen enough of all those pests, do you hear, nephew?"
And Lucius and Thrasyllus were inclined to agree with Uncle Catullus;
and the barge sped past the wondrous purple of the Porphyrites
Mountains, gold-ruddy crests in the orange evening sky, up to
Ptolemais, the greatest town in the Thebais.
Ptolemais was a prosperous city, ruled like Alexandria by a municipal
government founded on the Greek model; but after Ptolemais the
travellers were especially charmed with Abydos. Here they saw the
Memnonium, which was not so gigantic as the labyrinth, but which
still was built of great single blocks of stone, according to that
same marvellous system of lost ancient architecture. They also saw
the underground well, which is reached by vaults and galleries,
a subterranean miracle of monoliths, always fitted to one another
and upon one another, without masonry. The temple of Apollo rose
in a flowering acacia-wood, as in a sudden dream of swarming white,
fragrant blossoms.
Lesser Diospolis and Tentyra followed. The Tentyrians worship
Aphrodite and hunt the crocodile, which they destroy wherever they
can; and Uncle Catullus said that they showed good taste in this
civilized choice. After the half-Arabian Coptos and Apollonopolis,
Thebes loomed into view, with its hundred gates, the gates which
Homer sang, the gates through which two hundred warriors, with all
their horses and chariots, could pass. And, as the travellers drew
near, in the rosy dawn behind Thebes, the Smaragdis Hills appeared
in green outline, transparent and far-away as a dream, through the
misty light of the horizon.
Thebes was already called Greater Diospolis and worshipped
Zeus-Jupiter.
"Heaven be praised!" said Uncle Catullus. "The Upper Egyptians are
become sensible. Venus and Jupiter are once more held in honour! Every
conceivable sort of crocodile, goat, dog, rat, falcon and beetle is
done with. It was high time!"
Like Memphis, Thebes spread itself as an immense, ancient, but dying
city. For eighty stadia along the Nile its ancient palaces and temples
stood in an endless row, forsaken, ruined, cracking, slanting and
sinking, with their pillars and walls, their mutilated colossi and
sphinxes, their obelisks already fallen to the ground. Even in the
sun, a grey melancholy spread over the great city, whose streets,
indeed, were crowded with numbers of pedestrians, camels and litters,
but without the feverish, metropolitan bustle which had reigned at
Alexandria. The gloom of a fatally waning glory lay like a haze over
all this architectural immensity, which Cambyses, with his Persian
hordes, had in past ages destroyed beyond repair, as with gigantic
hammer-strokes.
In the moonlit night the city, with its vast outlines, with its endless
row of Titanic palaces, rose beside the Nile like a Titanic citadel,
mysteriously chilling to the heart. In these abandoned temples the
lost wisdom especially had been cultivated by the omniscient priests,
the heirs of Moses and of Hermes Trismegistus. Here the utmost wisdom
of philosophy and astronomy and astrology was known. Here the year
and the day were calculated by the sun and no longer, as of yore,
by the moon; here the year was divided into twelve months of thirty
days, with five intercalary days; and here was calculated the time
that must be added to the three hundred and sixty-five days in order
to arrive at the exact length of the year. The kings who reigned here
reigned, according to the hieroglyphs on the obelisks, over Scythia,
Bactria, Ionia and India! They had ruled the world, in the deep-sunk
centuries! In the measureless spaces of their immense palaces and
temples, from which the Nile, flowing silver in the moonlight, could be
seen through the rows of pylons gleaming as it had gleamed centuries
ago, not an atom remained of the material or immaterial life of this
long, long array of monarchs. Their names alone were still extant,
written on cracking or mutilated obelisks, but their history lingered
only in a few disputed legends. The unplumbed depth of the past made
Lucius' sensitive mind turn giddy. Yet, as he wandered by Thrasyllus'
side through the endless forsaken halls and rooms and courts, here
dark with shadow, there lighted by the spectral moon, he was charmed
by the sombre beauty and grandeur of that giddy depth.
Here, too, stood a monolithic memnonium. Next came, linked together,
the forty royal tombs hewn in the rock. And, in front of this Titanic
ruin, in which not a mummy remained, the travellers saw, in the moonlit
night, the two seated colossi, themselves carved out of monoliths;
but one, with the trunk broken off--by what power?--had fallen in
the high grass, while the other still stared towards the east, in
the hieratic attitude, the long hands upon the knees, the pschent
crowning the vast, ecstatic head, with its huge, staring, sightless
eyes, from which the enamel had disappeared and the jewelled pupils.
The travellers stood in silence before the statue in the moonlight;
and even Uncle Catullus refrained from jesting. The atmosphere at
this spot was woven of shimmering divinity. The moon was waning, the
dawn was rising rose-red. And, as though with a human voice, a single
note sounded from the statue. The note was intoned clearly and almost
plaintively; it developed into the powerful sound of a man's high
voice, swelled into something terribly human and almost divine and
broke off short and hard. They all heard it in the uncertain light:
Lucius, Thrasyllus, Catullus, Caleb, Cora, all the slaves, male and
female, who had accompanied the travellers. Caleb turned very pale
and time after time pressed his lips to his amulets.
And, motionless and now silent, the blind colossus stared towards the
sun, which was rising out of a sea of rosy beams and gold-dust cloud.
That evening, in the temple of Zeus-Jupiter-Râ, the travellers saw the
strange ceremony of the wedding of the Pallade, or Pallachide. She
was the daughter of one of the greatest families of Diospolis and
was chosen a month ago, for her birth and beauty, as the priestess
of the god. She had served the god that month by giving her beauty
to whomsoever she would. Now that the period of her service was
past, she was marrying her bridegroom, a young man, like herself a
member of one of the greatest and oldest Theban families. There was
a ceremony of mourning and dirge because the service of so fair and
famed a maiden was at an end; there was the presentation of gifts
by all whom she had embraced that month; there was glad gaiety now
because of her wedding. She was attired and anointed as a goddess and
received great honour from the close-packed multitude; and after her
wedding she kissed the priestess who succeeded her, likewise a virgin
from one of the leading families of the town, and who was shown naked
before the altar and was exquisitely beautiful as a child.
"Every country has its customs," said Uncle Catullus, with a shrug. "I
don't envy the bridegroom; but no one seems to consider it odd;
and the polite thing for us foreigners to do will be just to act as
though we thought it all quite natural."
And with Lucius, Thrasyllus and Caleb he approached the bride,
who was now sparkling with jewels beside her bridegroom; and their
slaves threw roses and lilies and lotus-flowers before her feet;
and she thanked him with a silent, winning dignity, standing amid
the circle of her kinsmen in a queenly attitude.
But, after Thebes, to Uncle Catullus' despair, there reappeared on the
banks of the Nile the towns at which crocodiles, fishes and falcons
were worshipped.
"Lucius," said Uncle Catullus to his nephew, seriously, one morning,
while the barge was approaching Apollonopolis Magna, "Lucius, my dear
boy, I have a confession to make to you. I think I've had enough
of it. I'm sick of falcons, fishes and crocodiles which are gods,
not to mention dogs, wolves, beetles, bulls and other cattle. And,
in addition to being sick of all these sacred animals, I'm sick of all
those strange Egyptian foodstuffs, while, moreover, I suspect Caleb of
fortifying with barley-spirit the wines with which he supplies us out
of his store; and this applies not only to the thick-as-ink Mareotis
wine, but also to the topaz-yellow liqueurs of Napata.... Lucius, my
dear boy, I am old and I feel ill. My head is like a sponge saturated
not with water but with impressions of strange ceremonies and immoral
customs. Also my stomach is overloaded and my palate over-excited. I
have a craving for a few succulent oysters and a young roast peacock. I
understand that one can't get those here, on the Nile; but still
I should like to learn what your plans really are ... I've heard
something about hunting-expeditions and the pillars of Sesostris...."
"Yes, uncle," said Lucius, with a smile, "Caleb did suggest that we
should leave the barge at Philæ, where we shall soon be arriving, and
go through Ethiopia with carts, camels, elephants and tents, go hunting
on elephants and ostriches and travel over Napata and Meroe, through
forest and wilderness, to Cape Dire and the pillars of Sesostris,
where we shall find the quadrireme waiting for the homeward journey."
"Well, my dear boy, I think that this programme, together with my
spongy brain and overloaded stomach, would be too much for me. If I
were to accomplish it by your side, then Egypt would certainly be the
death of me, a contingency which I am dreading as it is. I think,
don't you, that I had better go down the Nile again in the barge,
past all the sacred wolves and falcons and cats and beetles?"
But Caleb had approached:
"In that case, my noble Lord Catullus," he said, "I have a much better
plan. In fact, I, your humble, obedient servant, agree with you that
the journey through Ethiopia would perhaps be very tiring for you. That
is why I would propose that the thalamegus take you from Apollonopolis
Magna, by the canal, to Berenice, on the Bay of Acathantus, in the
Arabian Gulf. [4] At Berenice you will meet the quadrireme, which
has gone by Pelusium and the Nechao Canal [5] and is ascending the
Arabian Gulf to fetch us at the pillars of Sesostris. In this way
you will do the journey without inconvenience and yet with enjoyment,
for the Berenice Canal passes along the Smaragdis Mountains and they
are a dream, my lord; my lord, they're a dream!..."
Thus did Caleb advise him, reflecting that, if Uncle Catullus adopted
this programme, instead of going back to Alexandria, the princely
apartments at the Hermes House would remain unoccupied and could
be let to the Persian grandees who had fed the sacred Such on Lake
Moeris and who were travelling in the opposite direction to his own
noble clients....
CHAPTER XXV
And so it happened. Uncle Catullus thought that Caleb's suggestion was
really not bad; and so he remained on board the thalamegus with Rufus
the under-steward and a number of male and female slaves and was to go
from Apollonopolis Magna to Berenice, there to meet the quadrireme,
while Lucius, Thrasyllus and Caleb took ship in a simple barge which
brought them to Syene. Tarrar was with them; and Cora was with them.
"Cora," Lucius had asked, "do you dare undertake the journey through
the forest and the wilderness?"
"My lord, I am your slave," Cora had answered, gladly; and she had
gone with them.
"When we come back at night from hunting, Cora, you shall sing to us
under the twinkling stars of Ethiopia...."
At Syene the travellers saw the last Roman soldiers: there were always
three cohorts stationed at this spot, on the Egyptian frontier. At
Elephantina was the Little Cataract, in the middle of the river,
falling over rocky steps, across whose smooth surface the water first
shot forward quickly, to come shooting next over a rocky rampart,
roaring and clattering in a deep dive. And the travellers saw the
watermen come up from Philæ in light boats and then shoot, with the
powerful, brawling stream, over the steps and raise themselves over
the rocky wall and slip, boat and all, with joyful cries, down the
waterfall into the depths; and it looked such a safe sport that first
Caleb, next Lucius, next even Cora, strapped into a little skiff,
shot the rapids, raising themselves over the wall and slipping down
the waterfall.
From Syene to Philæ the journey was done in carts. There was an
end to any luxurious comfort; the road led for hundreds of stadia
through a level plain with strange big rocks, like statues of Hermes
in a Greek city, along the road. They were round and cylindrical,
like polished black stones, three on top of one another, from large
to small. The travellers were conveyed to the island in a raft of
laths and wickerwork, on which the water lapped over their feet.
"Herodotus tells us," said Thrasyllus, "that the mysterious sources
of the Nile ought to be here, near Syene and Elephantina, and that
the canal which leads to them is an abyss and a bottomless sea! But
Herodotus often tells us fairy-tales! For observe, the abyss,
the bottomless sea, is covered all over with islands; and they are
inhabited; and the sources of the Nile are certainly not here!"
At Tachampso the travellers again took a boat. But the Ethiopian
forests were now to be traversed. Lucius mounted his elephant; the
others mounted camels; more camels carried tents and luggage, of which
there was now only a little; and Caleb had hired a strongly-armed
escort of powerful Libyans and swift-footed Arabs. For, though the
Ethiopians themselves were not warlike and offered no danger to the
travellers, there were the savage races, the Troglodytæ, the Blemmyes,
the Nubians, the Megabari, and, above all, the Ochthyophagi and
Macrobii, who, if they were not overawed by the sight of a strong
and numerous force, might surprise and plunder the travellers. The
civilized world ended here. This was the very end of the world. True,
on the Nile there was still Napata and the Ethiopian capital, Meroe;
but beyond that was buried the secret of the world's end, the secret
of the sources of the Nile, the secret of the horizons of the earth,
the secret of the endless sea surrounding the world. Here, in these
forests, began the temptation merely to go on and on, to go on in order
to learn what the end would be, with what temptations and with what
dread perils. Caleb told of travellers who had gone on and on and who
had seen Typhon's awful giant head appear above the edge of the world,
with gaping mouth; and he had swallowed them up. One guide had escaped
and had told it to Caleb, who said that he was worthy of belief. There
also, in the immeasurable ocean that washed the world's edge, lay
the great serpent, which coiled itself in spirals and then covered
the whole surface of the water, as far as the eye could reach, when
it came up to bask in the scorching heat of the southern sun. Once,
said Caleb, some daring travellers, who thought that the snake was
a sort of dark desert, had walked over its scales, for miles on end,
until the snake moved and they realized the terror and slipped into
the sea in which you sink and sink and sink, for three centuries,
before reaching the bottom of Typhon's Hell.
These were the terrible tales which Caleb knew how to tell, one after
the other, while the sun set over the forest and the stars twinkled
and the fires blazed high and the tents were pitched and a sheep
roasted on the spit. And Caleb made himself so much afraid and the
guards and drivers so very much afraid that, shivering with fear, they
asked Cora to sing. Then Cora would play on her harp and sing to them;
and at the sound of her voice the dread visions, the uncanny phantoms,
the giants and pygmies vanished and sleep came over them all, except
Thrasyllus, who remained awake, smiling and thoughtful, and looked
up at the stars and reflected that, thanks to his studies, he knew
the occult secret, that the world was not a disk, washed by the sea,
but a sphere, which glowed with internal fire and moved round the sun,
the centre of the universe....
It was as though a new health were making Lucius strong and
cheerful. Yes, it seemed to Thrasyllus that Lucius was no longer
thinking of Ilia and that he was cured of his carking grief. In
the Ethiopian forests, which now almost surrounded them with an
impenetrable wall of huge trees and dense foliage and tangled creepers,
he abandoned himself enthusiastically to the delights of the great
hunts which Caleb organized, with the aid of the mighty hunters
whom he had hired for his noble client. These hunters included five
Elephantophagi, with whom Lucius hunted the elephants which sometimes
pass through the forests in herds. The elephants were often shot by
archers, three of whom served one heavy bow: two men, leg forward,
held the bow; the third drew back the string; and the arrow, dipped
in snake poison, struck the elephant, who fell stunned. If the
elephant was not killed, he was surrounded with a network of ropes;
and, when he recovered consciousness, he was tamed and made to lure
other elephants. If the elephant, however, was not to be tamed and if,
after recovering his senses, he relapsed into a dangerous rage, then
he was driven, amid much shouting and yelling, against a tree, which
had purposely been sawn through at the foot. Elephants are accustomed
to rest against trees; but, as soon as the untamable elephant leant
against this tree, it fell over him and prevented him from rising, so
that he broke the bone of his leg and was killed. This often implied
cruelty, but it also implied danger; and Lucius' newly aroused manhood
found satisfaction in this robust, virile sport.
But there was also the hunting of the swift-footed ostriches,
with hunters selected from the tribe of the Struthophagi; and this
hunt provided the maddest enjoyment and excited Caleb and Tarrar in
particular; and Thrasyllus and Cora also came to look on, for it was
a most diverting spectacle, in which the hunters disguised themselves
as ostriches, with little skirts of feathers and with one hand stuck
into a stuffed ostrich-neck, with the stuffed head sticking out on
top. There were first wild bird-dances; then the hunters darted forward
and scattered corn and lured the real birds, which rushed after them
and pecked at the grains, until they were caught in ravines from
which they could find no issue and were shot with arrows. And with
their precious feathers, bleached and curled, the Struthophagi made
costly coverings, soft and white and downy, which Caleb bought for a
song to send to Alexandria and Rome, where they were a great luxury,
so that Caleb made a pretty penny by the transaction.
Sometimes there was danger in the forest. There was danger when
the Struthophagi met the Sionians, a tribe of nomads with whom they
were always at war; it was dangerous when the Acridophagi appeared,
the verminous locust-eaters; but the travellers' strong escort, the
huge Libyans and nimble Arabs, inspired respect and the wild nomads
fled at the first bow-shot. And Caleb was afraid of nobody; he feared
only the wood-nymphs, who, when they have caught you in their arms,
which are pythons, laugh and laugh into your ears, until you go mad,
and then dance round with you, until you drop dead. And, when he
lay down at night to sleep under a black ostrich-feather covering,
he also feared the scorpions, which have no fewer than four jaws and
whose bite is not fatal but produces a slow, incurable canker.
They also caught lions, in nets, and hippopotami, in pits, and wild
buffaloes, which they pursued with the huge hounds of the Cynamolgian
hunters. They hunted from tall trees and they hunted from the reeds
in the water. It was a rude and stimulating life; and Caleb once said
to Lucius, seriously, that he felt the courage to go on and to go
on again ... to fight the great snake in the ocean that encompassed
the earth....
It did not come to that, however. But the caravan was approaching
Napata and the Ethiopian emerald-mines and topaz-rocks. The
emerald-mines were like marvellous green, magic caves, in which
thousands of slaves were working; the topaz-rocks were visited at night
time: the stones, because of their yellow sheen, are almost invisible
by day, but glitter in the dark night; then little metal tubes are
planted over each stone that is found, so as to make it easier to
recognize the stones in the daytime and to grub them out. In former
ages, the Egyptian and Ethiopian kings maintained separate guards
around these mines and rocks.
At Napata, where the travellers now arrived, they saw their first
entirely native, barbarian town. There was not a word of Latin
spoken here; Lucius and Thrasyllus could not have made themselves
understood without Tarrar and Caleb; and even then the little Libyan
slave and the Sabæan guide found it difficult to grapple with the
language. The Ethiopians, who wore no clothing save the skin of some
animal round their waist, surprised the travellers by the smallness of
their stature. Everything about them was small: their houses built of
palm-leaves and bamboo, their oxen and goats and sheep; and Thrasyllus
was of opinion that the legend of the Pygmæi, or nations of dwarfs,
had originated because of Ethiopia.
The natives ate hardly any meat, but mainly vegetables and fruits,
or young shoots of trees, or they would suck reed-stalks and
lotus-flowers. But they also took blood and milk and cheese; and there
was no other food. No, Uncle Catullus would never have stood it here,
thought Lucius, when the travellers went still farther south, to
the capital of Ethiopia, Meroe, on the island of the same name. And
here Lucius discovered that the famous date-wines and topaz-yellow
liqueurs of Napata and Meroe were a sheer hoax, that there was no
wine or liqueur whatever distilled in Ethiopia and that the delicious
drinks with which Master Ghizla and Caleb had provided him and Uncle
Catullus came from no farther than Lake Mareotis at Alexandria!
A fabulous vegetation, however, grew luxuriantly over the island. If
the people and animals were small, the trees shot up with amazing
vigour: the huge palm-trees, the ebony-trees, the ceratia and persea,
under whose gigantic domes of thick foliage the green villages of
little plaited wicker huts disappeared from view. In the marshes round
Lake Psebo the travellers hunted, if not the great snake, at any rate
the terrible boa, which even ventures to attack the elephant. And the
natives showed them a fight between one of these boas and an elephant
and a hippopotamus.
They visited the gold-mines, the copper-mines, the jewel-mines, the
temples of Hercules and Pan and of a strange barbaric deity. The dead
were buried in the Nile, or else they were kept in the houses under a
mica slab of human form. In the middle of the town stood the Golden
Temple, where the king dwelt in sacred mystery. There were slabs of
gold between bamboo columns. In former ages the priests elected the
kings and deposed them at will; but a certain king had caused all the
priests to be strangled and since then a law had been passed that,
if the king were maimed or lost a limb, all the people of his court
had to inflict the same injury on themselves, for which reason the
king's person was guarded with great care and was divine and sacred;
and the travellers did not see him.
CHAPTER XXVI
After the fierce hunting by day, the nights were twinkling mysteries
of great shining, diamond stars; and Sirius shone like a white sun. The
rustling silence, the audible stillness of the vast forests lapped the
encampment of the caravan, where the fires died out but still glowed
sufficiently to keep the wild animals at a distance and where the
guards and drivers lay immersed in sound sleep. Lucius was happy in
that mystery; and in the silvery sheen of the night the last memories
of his grief seemed to lift like wisps of disappearing mist.
The travellers had approached the Land of Ophir; and the pillars of
Sesostris would be reached next day. In this last twinkling night of
forest-life, with the stars shining through the foliage like a diamond
cupola above an emerald dome, Lucius had left his tent while all the
others slept. Next to his tent were those of Thrasyllus, Caleb and
Cora. And he saw Cora sitting outside her tent, which was the biggest,
because she was a woman, and made of spotted lynx-hides, whose warmth
resisted the plentiful dew. And she rose and stretched her hands to
the ground, in salutation, and preserved that attitude, shyly.
"Are you not sleeping, Cora?" asked Lucius.
"No, my lord. I cannot sleep when the nights twinkle like this, when
the stars send forth such rays that it is really as though they were
moving to and fro. I feel that I must go on gazing at them until they
fade away."
"Life here in the forest is too wild for you, too lonely...."
"Life in the forest is paradise, my lord. By day Thrasyllus tells me
wonderful things about the mountains and the plants and the animals
and the savage tribes; and so the hours pass till you return from
hunting...."
"And you sing to us and dance in the light of the fire and charm the
rude hunters and Caleb in particular...."
She smiled and made no reply.
Then she continued:
"And the nights are such strange mysteries of sounds and silence and
of radiant stars; and it is as though Sirius grew bigger nightly."
"And you are never frightened?"
"I am not frightened, my lord."
"Not even at night?"
"Least of all at night, because ..."
"Because what?"
"Because then you have returned; and I feel safest where you are."
"From that height yonder, Cora, one can see the sea. I love the sea
and I often miss the sea in the forest. I am glad that we are near
the sea again. As I returned from hunting, I could just catch sight
of a streak of sea from there. I should like to see the sea now,
at night, with all those twinkling stars above it."
"Yes, my lord."
"Come with me ... that is, if you are not frightened."
"I am not frightened, my lord, where you are."
And her heart throbbed in her throat, but not with fear.
They went past the sleeping guards and left the circle of the
watch-fires. She nearly stumbled over the creepers and stones; and
he said:
"Give me your hand."
It was the first time that his hand had met hers. He had never touched
her before. When she felt the warm strength of his hand around her
own small hand, hers lay passive like a captive dove.
"Why are you trembling so?" he asked.
"I don't know, my lord," she stammered.
He smiled and did not speak again.
They climbed the rocky height and he helped her, with his fingers
still grasping hers. He even put his arm round her slim waist, to
support her, and he felt that she was still trembling, as in a fever.
"Look," he said, pointing, "there is the sea."
They both looked out. Around them stretched the forests, all shadow
and denseness and gloom and loneliness and mystery. On one horizon,
gleaming darkly in the night, lay the line of the sea, the Arabian
Gulf, the Erythræan or Red Sea.
"The sea," she stammered. "Yes, the sea, I love it too. I always had it
around me, at Cos. I also miss it in the forest, as you do, my lord."
"To-morrow we shall reach the sea again, Cora.... Cora, I want
you, to-night, this last night ... to dance to me ... here, in the
starlight."
"Yes, my lord," said the slave.
She danced. She softly hummed a tune between scarce-parted lips. The
thin folds of her garment flew to either side; and with her veils she
mimicked the movements of birds' wings. She hovered round and round
on the upland, circling like a swallow.
He stepped towards her; and she ceased dancing.
"Cora," he said, "to-morrow we shall be at Dire, by the pillars of
Sesostris. On the opposite side are Ebal and Usal and Saba, Caleb's
country, to which he wants to return when he is rich."
"Yes, my lord."
"Cora, if you are really fond of Caleb, I will resign you to him."
She trembled and clasped her hands. She fell on her knees and gave
one loud sob.
"What's the matter, Cora?"
"My lord, let me stay with you! Let me dance and sing for you, let me
serve you, let me wash your feet; kick me, beat me, torture me! But do
not send me away! Do not send me away! Keep me! Keep me with you!... I
come from Dryope's slave-school, I have cost you a fortune, my lord! I
am not beautiful, but my voice is good and, my lord, I am a clever
dancer. But, if your lordship is tired of my voice and my dancing,
I will wash your feet; and, when you are angry and want to beat a
slave, you shall beat me and ill-treat me! But keep me, keep me,
wherever you may be!"
She had thrown herself before him and was sobbing and kissing his feet.
And he said:
"Then, Cora, don't you love Caleb?"
"My lord," she said, "I love you--if I must say it!--and I have loved
you from the first moment when Thrasyllus brought me to you. And,
if it please you, my lord, I will die for you. But keep me and do
not give me to Caleb!"
"And if it pleased me, Cora ... that you should not die for me but
live for me? Not only to sing to me and dance to me, but also to throw
your arms around my neck, to lay your breast upon my breast and your
lips upon my lips?..."
She gave a cry as of incredible happiness. Smiling, he raised her
very tenderly and folded her in his arms, close against him.
"Oh!" she cried, in ecstasy, when his lips sought
hers. "Aphrodite! Aphrodite! She has heard my prayer!"
Her little hands ventured to reach out for his head and take it by the
temples. Around them was the solitude of the Ethiopian night; from out
of the forests the flowers filled the air with incense; a spice-laden
aroma was wafted from the sea; and the radiant stars hung above them,
like white suns, with the dazzling glory that was Sirius....
CHAPTER XXVII
Cape Dire! The sea was reached; and there rose the obelisks, the
shafts, the pillars of Sesostris, whose sacred writings immortalized
the remembrance of the passage of the Egyptian world-ruler who for
nine years had linked conquest to conquest, even to Arabia, even to
Bactriana, even to India. And Caleb approached Lucius with a smile
and said:
"Most noble lord, I wished to keep it for you as a surprise and
would not tell you before, but this little diversorium at Cape Dire,
overlooking my beloved native land, belongs to us, to Ghizla and me,
and is a small branch of our great Hermes House at Alexandria; and
to-night you need no longer sleep in a tent, but will have a worthy
apartment and sleep on a soft couch of skins. For, though you are
still without your own furniture and your sumptuous utensils and
treasures of art and though this little guest-house is not to be
compared with our big diversorium, it is nevertheless comfortable and
clean and it has bathrooms and kitchens and we built it here for the
accommodation of any noble lords who travel from Alexandria to the
pillars of Sesostris or from the pillars of Sesostris to Alexandria."
And Caleb, swaggering gaily and elegantly on the tips of his red boots,
led the travellers into his guest-house; and Lucius, for the first
time for weeks, bathed not in a rustling stream but in a bathroom,
where his slaves rubbed and kneaded his body.
Caleb stood on the cape, with his hand above his eyes, and looked
out in astonishment. He was surprised that the quadrireme, with Uncle
Catullus on board, had not arrived from the Gulf of Acathantus, nay,
was not even in sight. Could there have been an accident? He told
his fears to no one but Thrasyllus; and the two stood looking long
on the point of Cape Dire, gazing into the distance, each with his
hand above his eyes.
But at last, when night began to fall, the great, graceful sea-monster
appeared on the horizon, with her prow erect like a swan's neck and her
hundreds of slender legs moving in unison; and the rose-yellow sails
bellied in the breeze; and the silver statue of Aphrodite shot forth
its silver spark of light; and the rowers' long, melancholy chant,
the soft, monotonous accompaniment of tiring work, was borne long
and wistfully over the sea, together with the cheerful song of the
sailors. And the travellers, who now all stood on the cape waiting
for the ship, saw the figures of Uncle Catullus, of the stewards
Vettius and Rufus, of the master and the steersman.
And they waved again and again; and Cora, with her harp pressed to
her bosom, sang the song of welcome to the ship; and her voice sounded
jubilant and clear, full of happiness and full of gladness. The ropes
were flung ashore, the ship lay moored....
But what was the anxiety that covered the faces of all on board, who
were now preparing to walk across the gangway to the jetty? Why did
Uncle Catullus lift his hands on high and shake his head, pinned round
so comically in his travelling-veil? And what was it that Vettius
and Rufus were saying to each other with much gesticulation and why
did they now all land with such embarrassed faces?
"Well, Lucius," said Uncle Catullus, embracing him, "you're looking
splendid, my dear fellow, splendid, brown and bronzed as a Nimrod;
and your arms feel hard and your eyes are bright and your mouth is
laughing happily and you look very different from what you were when
we left Baiæ.... Ah, my dear, dear Lucius! Fortune is blind and fate
is a riddle and we poor mortals are the playthings of the cruel gods;
and we never know, in the midst of our delight and gladness, what
is hanging over our heads ... especially when travelling, dear boy:
my dear boy, especially when travelling!"
"But why especially when travelling, my dear uncle?" asked Lucius,
laughing.
And he led his uncle into the diversorium; and his uncle was now
weeping; and his slaves unpinned his travelling-veil for him and
relieved him of his travelling-cloak; and Vettius and Rufus also
looked so strange and so gloomy and solemn; and it was as though the
air were filled with dread.
"But, Uncle Catullus," said Lucius, "what has happened?"
"My dear, dear boy," Uncle Catullus kept on tediously repeating,
"I ... I really can not tell you."
And he wrung his hands and wept; and Thrasyllus turned pale and Cora
turned pale and Rufus looked gloomy.
"No," repeated Uncle Catullus, "I really can not tell Lucius. You
tell him, Vettius, you tell him."
"My Lord Catullus," said Vettius, at last, in despair, "how can I tell
my Lord Lucius? If I do, he will fly into a passion and kill me; but,
perhaps, if Rufus will tell him ..."
"I will not, I will not," said Rufus, warding off the suggestion with
both hands. "By all the gods, Vettius, I will not tell him."
"Nor will I," said Uncle Catullus, moaning and weeping.
Lucius now knitted his brows and said:
"But I must know, Vettius. I order you to tell me what has
happened--for something has happened--I order you to tell me and I
swear not to kill you.... Has it to do with the quadrireme, a mutiny
among the rowers?"
"Worse than that, my lord!" wailed Vettius.
"Has there been a theft of our baggage or jewels or plate?"
"Worse, my lord, much worse!"
"Has there been a fire at our insula in Rome? Is the villa burned
down?"
"Worse, worse, my lord!" Vettius and Rufus now cried in chorus.
And they flung themselves at Lucius' feet and embraced his knees;
and Uncle Catullus fell sobbing on Thrasyllus' breast.
"But what is it? By all the gods, speak up!" cried Lucius, in a
fury. "What is it? Speak up, or I will have you whipped till you do!"
"We will tell you, my lord!" Vettius and Rufus now cried.
And Uncle Catullus cried:
"Yes, tell him, tell him; after all, he must be told."
"Are we alone, my lord?" whined Vettius. "Are there no slaves listening
at the doors and is Caleb out of hearing?"
Cora opened the doors and peeped out:
"There is no one there," she said. "I will withdraw, my lord."
"No, stay," commanded Lucius.
She stayed.
"Speak up," Lucius commanded Vettius, lifting him up.
"My lord," said Vettius, again falling at Lucius' feet, "if I must
tell you, let me do so on my knees. For I have not the strength left
to tell you, my lord, if I stand face to face with your anger."
"Speak!" roared Lucius, in a voice of thunder.
"My lord," said Vettius, at last, clasping Lucius' knees in his hands
and kissing them continually, "my lord, our gracious emperor, Augustus
Tiberius, is wroth with you, we know not for what reason, and...."
"Well?" shouted Lucius.
"And he has confiscated all your possessions, O my lord, everything
that you possess: all your insula in Rome, your villa, your estates and
domains, your horses and chariots and cattle, your slaves and treasures
of art, your library and your jewels ... and has attached all the sums
which you had lodged with your bankers and money-changers in various
towns! You are penniless, my lord, for you own nothing except what
your ship contains; and, if I had not succeeded in keeping Tiberius'
displeasure secret by means of a precipitate flight and by continuing
to drift about in the Great Sea and the Arabian Gulf, your quadrireme
also would have been seized at Alexandria and you would now have been
without your ship, without your rowers, without your slaves, without
a single penny. By bribing the authorities at Pelusium with the money
that remained in my hands, I managed secretly to pass through the
Nechao Canal to Arsinoe; and at Berenice we met your Uncle Catullus
and informed him of the terrible news. My lord, do not slay me and
do not be wroth with me, for I have saved for you what I could!"
And Vettius writhed at Lucius' feet and sobbed; and they all sobbed:
Uncle Catullus, Thrasyllus, Rufus and Cora....
And Caleb, who had been listening at the door, turned very pale.
For there was still a long, long, long papyrus scroll of a bill
awaiting payment, for the big hunts in the Ethiopian forests!
CHAPTER XXVIII
Caleb was pale when he appeared before Lucius, who had sent for him.
"Caleb," said Lucius, "perhaps you already know ..."
"I know nothing, my lord," said Caleb.
"I am penniless, Caleb. The Emperor Tiberius has confiscated all my
possessions; and even my title to the quadrireme is questionable."
"O my lord, O my lord!" Caleb began to lament. "O my poor, poor,
noble lord! What a terrible fate to befall you! If only you had
consented faithfully to wear the Sabæan amulets! O my poor, poor,
noble lord! What will you do now? You, who always lived in the lap of
luxury! And now! How now? Alas, my poor, poor, noble lord and alas,
poor, poor Caleb! For who, my lord, my poor, poor noble lord, will
now pay my bill?"
And, wailing and lamenting and shaking his head and weeping, Caleb
unfurled the long, long, long papyrus scroll of his bill, which
uncoiled itself from his quivering fingers right down to the floor,
like a rustling snake.
"We'll look into your bill at once, Caleb," said Lucius,
encouragingly. "Call the stewards and Thrasyllus to me."
They came and examined the bill and shook their heads and thought the
expenses of the great Ethiopian hunt terribly high; but Caleb swore
that, because of his growing affection for Lucius, he had charged
less than he did to other noble lords:
"But there is a solution, my lord," said Caleb, drawing Lucius
aside. And he continued, "My lord, if you will make over Cora to me
... I will write off all the expenses of the Ethiopian hunt."
"Caleb," said Lucius, earnestly, "I know that you are fond of
Cora. But I also am very fond of her, Caleb, and I mean to keep her
as my only treasure."
A loud sob came from a corner of the room. And Lucius, turning round,
saw Tarrar sitting on the floor, looking profoundly dejected.
"And me, my lord?" sobbed Tarrar. "Won't you keep me as your little
slave, my lord?"
Lucius smiled and laid his hand on Tarrar's woolly head:
"I am not forgetting you either, Tarrar," he said, "and I shall keep
you too. But, for the rest, Caleb, I shall have to sell the ship and
all my slaves and anything that remains to me. I have some money as
well, however, and I will try to pay you in full. But Cora shall not
appear on the bill."
"Alas, my lord, this is an evil day and the end of the world is
certainly near at hand, notwithstanding that I can see the blue coast
of my dear Saba! I, like yourself, am losing everything: the hope
of getting Cora, who loves you even as you love her, and the hope of
getting my poor money!"
"Come, Caleb, we must not repine. Let us just count the money that
remains to us."
The stewards laid rows of gold coins on the table. And Caleb's bill,
despite the length which his papyrus scroll covered on the floor,
was paid and receipted, after some quibbling between the stewards,
who took exception to certain items, and Caleb, who was quite amenable
to reason. And, when the money had been transferred to the purse which
wound like a fat snake round Caleb's waist, he became cheerful again
and said:
"My lord, my noble lord, for you are still a noble lord, listen to
me. I am profoundly miserable that I can't have Cora. Yes, my lord,
really, I am profoundly miserable. But I am an honest fellow and
at the same time I am a man of business. Listen, my lord, and let
your stewards listen and your trusty Thrasyllus too. Listen, my
lord. You wish to sell the quadrireme with all her contents. But
where, my lord? It can't be done at Alexandria, for any property
of yours would be seized at once. Here, at Cape Dire, oh, there are
only uncivilized Macrobii and no noble lords who could afford to buy
the quadrireme! Listen, my lord, listen. Do you with all these your
servants, free men and witnesses, sign a certificate, oh, my ever
noble lord, a certificate ... dare I say it?"
"Speak out, Caleb!"
"A certificate that the quadrireme, with her rowers and all her
contents, belongs to me; and I swear by the gods of Sabæa and of Egypt,
by the eyes of Cora, whom I love, by the friendship which I, my lord,
your guide and companion in the chase, venture to cherish for you,
I swear, my lord, that I will myself endeavour to dispose of the
quadrireme to a noble lord and pay you honestly, to the last penny,
after deducting my expenses!"
Thus spoke Caleb; and he stood up in the exalted attitude in which
he had taken his oath, with his eyes and hands raised to heaven,
and waited.
Vettius and Rufus thought it rather risky, but Lucius said:
"Caleb's advice is excellent. It is the only thing to do. If I delay,
Tiberius' minions will discover where I am and take the last remnant
of my belongings from me. Caleb, I will do as you say. I will sign
the document certifying that the ship is your property, together
with the slaves, the rowers, the furniture, the jewels, the very
valuable plate...."
But Caleb did not move. He continued to stand in the solemn, rapt
attitude of his oath, with his eyes and hands raised to heaven. And
he now said, slowly:
"I thank you, my lord, for your confidence. It will certainly not be
abused. If I do not render you an equitable account in whatever place
of exile you may be, may the awful jaws of Typhon, whose tongue is a
serpent and whose teeth are blazing flames, swallow me and devour me!"
And Caleb himself trembled at his terrific oath and then fell on his
knees before Lucius--a thing which he, a free Sabæan, had never yet
done--and kissed the foot of the suddenly impoverished noble lord!
CHAPTER XXIX
Near the pillars of Sesostris, near the little diversorium, there lay
moored, beside the quadrireme, a merchant trireme, which was sailing
past Ophir to the Persian Gulf and which was to go up the Euphrates
to Babylon. And Lucius asked to speak to the master and said:
"Master, can I have room in your ship for myself, my father, my young
wife and my little black slave? I am a sculptor; and I am on my way
to Babylon."
And he pointed to Thrasyllus, Cora and Tarrar, who approached, each
carrying a small bundle of luggage.
"Certainly," said the master. "My one cabin is still unoccupied. It is
small and perhaps inconvenient; but people like you, who are sculptors,
are not accustomed to luxury, I dare say, and will be prepared to
make shift."
Lucius answered that, if the cabin was suitable for his wife and his
father, he and the little slave would do the best they could on the
half-deck or in the hold; and he beckoned to his family to come on
board and paid the passage-money.
For Caleb had advanced him a goodly sum on the value of the quadrireme,
for the immediate needs of the voyage; and Caleb himself had set out,
with a great following, for his dear Saba, first because he wanted
to forget his love-sickness in the pleasures of Arabia Felix and
then to make a start by selling many of Lucius' slaves and jewels,
his ornaments and furniture at Mariaba, the capital, because it was
safer to get this done as quickly as possible. The sale of the great
ship herself would be difficult enough.
Uncle Catullus remained on board of her. He did not wish to be a
burden on his poor nephew Lucius; he had contrived to hoard a modest
capital with one gold piece after another that had accidentally slipped
through Lucius' fingers; and he was to sail to Alexandria in the ship,
after she had been sold, and there, in the city of the finest cooking,
to spend his old age in a small apartment in the Hermes House. And
so he had taken a tearful leave of Lucius, Thrasyllus and Cora and
had said to her:
"Dear Cora, just as you were going to call me uncle, we part and
perhaps for ever. Ah, Egypt is the death of me! Egypt will irrevocably
be the death of me! For I can never go back to Rome, poor old exile
that I am, because Tiberius--may he die a thousand deaths!--would rob
me of my few pence even as he has robbed Lucius of his treasures...."
The merchant trireme glided away over a smooth sea; and the travellers
on the deck waved farewell to Uncle Catullus, who stood on the prow
and waved back. It was a leave-taking for good. And the master asked,
inquisitively:
"Is that lord, who stands waving his hand to you, the owner of that
splendid vessel?"
"Yes, master," Lucius lied, "and he's my uncle. And one day I shall
be his heir."
"Then you will do well to hold him in honour, sir," said the master,
growing very respectful. "Whew! That's a prospect not to be sneezed
at! What a noble ship! What a magnificent quadrireme! But tell me,
master," he continued, more and more inquisitively, "in that case
why don't you stay with your uncle?"
"Because it's not a good thing, master, for poor relations to be
always hanging round the rich. For then you only annoy them and they
end by cutting you off with a shilling. And that is why, master,"
said Lucius, pressing Cora, by his side, to him "after seeing and
admiring Egypt at my rich uncle's expense, I am now paying a visit
to Babylon with my father, my wife and my little slave. From there
we shall go through Assyria and Asia Minor to the island of Cos,
where my wife was born and where I want to settle down as a sculptor."
The master thought this very natural; and, as the wind was now blowing
a stiff breeze, with the first cold, autumnal gusts, Lucius, happy,
gay and healthy, led Cora into her cabin, while Tarrar squatted
outside, like a faithful, clever little monkey, and Thrasyllus,
within, carefully rolled up the maps, books and itineraries which he
had consulted during their tour.
POSTSCRIPT.
Caleb of Mariaba (Saba), joint proprietor of the Great Diversorium,
the Hermes House, at Alexandria, near the Canopian Gate, to the ever
noble Lord Publius Lucius Sabinus, sculptor, at Cos.
"Written at Alexandria, at the second hour of the fourteenth day of
the month of Pacothi, in the ninth year of the benevolent reign of
our gracious Emperor Tiberius Augustus.
"My ever noble Lord, greeting!
"It is a pleasure to me, Caleb of Mariaba, to inform you by
this letter, entrusted to Alexandros of Alexandria, master of
the merchant trireme Berenice, that by chance and great good
fortune I have succeeded in disposing of the valuable quadrireme,
the pleasure-ship Aphrodite, once your property, noble lord, and
in the presence of witnesses, free men, transferred to me at Cape
Dire, by the Pillars of Sesostris [6] ... selling her at Arsinoe,
previous to the passage through the Nechao Canal (which would probably
have been liable to legal objections), at the very profitable price
(as, considering all the circumstances, it appears to me, your most
obedient, humble servant, friend, guide and companion in the chase)
of (after deducting my commission and all my expenses) 900,000 (say,
nine hundred thousand) sesterces, a sum reckoned according to the Roman
value, item that noble quadrireme Aphrodite and three hundred rowers
(slaves), item all the necessary and most complete equipment, item
costly furniture, carpets, plate and treasures of art, which would
probably have produced large sums had it been possible to sell them
separately, without danger of seizure in the name of our gracious
Emperor Tiberius Augustus, but the separate sale of which would,
in the circumstances aforesaid, have entailed innumerable drawbacks;
"Whereas I, Caleb of Mariaba, acting and appearing on my own behalf,
as actual owner of the noble quadrireme Aphrodite, have been able
to sell this magnificent pleasure-ship to the noble Lord Baabab,
a Persian satrap, residing at Susa;
"Wishing, my noble Lord Lucius, companion of the chase and friend,
to act to your ever noble advantage, I propose, in order to reduce to
a minimum all risks of shipwreck and piracy and other fatal accidents
(such as a jealous fate keeps ever hanging over the heads of us poor
mortals), to remit to you at frequent intervals, by the intermediary
of a master of merchant-vessels, one trusted by all and personally
known to myself and sailing to and fro between Alexandria and the
Archipelago, a small sum in gold coin or bar, with account and
settlement, so that you, my noble lord, may at the earliest moment
possess your whole capital in your own hands.
"And I also send you, in memory of your most beautiful ship, a few
pieces of furniture and valuables (withheld and smuggled away),
including two bronze bedsteads, a citron-wood table, a Babylonian
carpet, some Ethiopian ostrich-feather coverings, the silver statue
of Aphrodite, patroness of your ship, and a few minor trifles of
taste and convenience.
"I take advantage of the opportunity, my noble lord, dear friend and
stout companion of the chase, to tell you that at Mariaba, during a
temporary stay in my beloved country, Sabæa, I bought myself a most
beautiful slave, a Greek like Cora and excelling in many gifts, which
slave, in order to bind her with greater certainty to my affection,
I set free at Mariaba, leaving her, however, as my wife in my house
in that city, where I hope one day, after achieving my fortune, to
enjoy a life of bliss, fearing lest my brother Ghizla might allow his
rights on her to prevail (according to the manners of our country)
and hoping to visit her each time that my conduct of noble lords
shall bring me to the pillars of Sesostris, from which my beloved
country is easily reached.
"Wishing you, my noble lord and friend and companion of the chase,
the blessing of the gods upon your house, upon your new work and your
household, upon your wife and your servants, the wise Thrasyllus
and the faithful Tarrar, together with an always possible change
of fortune, I bow low before you, in all humility and friendship,
with one hand on my heart and one hand on my lips.
"Your ever most obedient, humble servant and guide and friend and
companion of the chase,
"Caleb of Mariaba (Saba), joint proprietor of the Great Diversorium,
the Hermes House, at Alexandria, near the Canopian Gate."
THE END
NOTES
[1] These cyamos-leaves were actually used for kitchen-utensils by
the people of Alexandria; and their sale provided a regular livelihood.
[2] Stone wells on the banks of the Nile, in which the water rose and
fell as in the river itself; marked columns indicated the maximum,
minimum and middle gauge. Inspectors informed the people beforehand
how high the Nile would rise and when the stream would be likely to
overflow its banks.
[3] Caleb's description of Saba owes very little to the author's
invention. Nearly all these details upon Arabia Felix will be found
set forth in Strabo's Geography.
[4] The Red Sea.
[5] The old canal through the Isthmus of Suez.
[6] Here follow the hour, day and month.
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