And then, that monumental ocean of houses, palaces, temples, porticoes,

colonnades, that swam before her eyes from the Necropolis of the west to

the gardens of the Goddess: Brouchion, the Egyptian town, in front of

which the gleaming Paneion reared itself aloft like a mountain

acropolis; the Great Temple of Serapis, from the facade of which arose,

horn-like, two long pink obelisks; the Great Temple of Aphrodite

engirded by the rustling of three hundred thousand palm-trees and

countless waves; the Temple of Persephone and the Temple of Arsinoe, the

two sanctuaries of Poseidon, the three towers of Isis Lochias, and the

theatre, and the Hippodrome, and the Stadium where Pittacos had run in

competition with Nicosthenes, and the tomb of Stratonice, and the tomb

of the god Alexander--Alexandria! Alexandria! the sea, the men, the

colossal marble Pharos whose mirror saved men from the sea! Alexandria!

the city of the eleven Ptolemies, Physcon, Philometor, Epiphanes,

Philadelphos; Alexandria, the climax of all dreams, the diadem of all

the glories conquered during three thousand years in Memphis, Thebes,

Athens, Corinth, by the chisel, the pen, the compass, and the sword!

Still farther away, the Delta, cloven by the seven tongues of Nile,

Sais, Boubastis, Heliopolis; then, travelling towards the South, that

ribbon of fertile land, the Heptanomos with the long array of its twelve

hundred riverside temples dedicated to all the gods, and further still,

Thebaïs. Diospolis, the Isle of Elephants, the impassable cataracts, the

Isle of Argo . . .Meroë . . . the unknown; and even, if it was permitted to

believe the traditions of the Egyptians, the country of the fabulous

lakes, whence escapes the antique Nile, lakes so vast that one loses

sight of the horizon when crossing their purple flood, and perched so

high upon the mountains that the stars are reflected in them like golden

apples.--all this, all, should be the kingdom, the domain, the possession

of Chrysis, the courtesan.

She almost choked, and threw her arms on high as if she thought to touch

the heavens.

And simultaneously, she watched on her left the slow flight towards the

open sea of a great bird with black wings.

VII

CLEOPATRA

Queen Berenice had a young sister called Cleopatra. Many other Egyptian

princesses had borne the same name, but this girl became in later years

the great Cleopatra who destroyed her kingdom, and killed herself, as

one might say, on the corpse of her dead empire.

About this time, she was twelve years of age, and no one could tell what

her beauty would he. Her body, tall and thin, seemed out of place in a

family where all the females were plump. She was ripening like some

badly-grafted, bastard fruit of foreign, obscure origin. Some of her

lineaments were hard and bold, as seen in Macedonia; other traits

appeared as if inherited from the depths of Nubia, where womankind is

tender and swarthy, for her mother had been a female of inferior race

whose pedigree was doubtful. It was surprising to see Cleopatra's lips,

almost thick, under an aquiline nose of rather delicate shape. Her young

breasts, very round, small, and widely separated, were crowned with a

swelling aureola, thereby showing she was a daughter of the Nile.

The little Princess lived in a spacious room, opening on to the vast sea

and joined to the Queen's apartment by a vestibule under a colonnade.

Cleopatra passed the hours of the night on a bed of bluish silk, where

the skin of her young limbs, already of a dark hue, took on still deeper

tints.

It came to pass that in the night when--far from her and her

thoughts--the events already chronicled in these pages look place,

Cleopatra rose long before dawn. She had slept but little and badly,

being anxious about her troubles of puberty which she had just

experienced, and disturbed by the extreme heat of the atmosphere.

Without waking the woman who watched over her slumbers, she softly put

her feet to the ground, slipped her golden bangles round her ankles,

girded her little brown belly with a row of enormous pearls, and thus

accoutred, left her chamber.

In the monumental corridor, armed guards were also sound asleep, except

one who stood sentinel at the door of the Queen's room.

He fell on his knees and whispered in dire terror, as if he had never

before found himself thus struggling in such a conflict of duty and

danger:

"Princess Cleopatra, I crave thy pardon! I cannot let thee pass!"

The lass drew herself up to her full height, knitted her brows

violently, and dealt a dull blow on the soldier's forehead with her

clenched fist.

"As for thee," she said in smothered accents, but with ferocious

meaning, "I'll raise a cry of rape, and have thee quartered!"

Then, in silence, she entered the Queens chamber.

* * * * *

Berenice was asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, her hand hanging

down.

Over the great crimson couch, a hanging lamp mingled its feeble glare

with that of the moon, reflected by the whiteness of the walls. The

vague, luminous outlines of the slumbering woman's supple nudity were

thus enwrapped in misty shadow, between these two contrasting lights.

Slender Cleopatra sat straight up on the edge of the bed. She took her

sister's face in her two little hands, waking Berenice up by touch and

speech.

"Why is your lover not with you?" asked Cleopatra.

Berenice, startled, opened her lovely eyes.

[Illustration]

"Cleopatra! What are you doing here? What do you want of me?"

"Why is your lover not with you?" repeated the girl, insisting.

"Is he not with me?"

"Certainly not! You know that well enough!"

"True! He's never here. Oh, Cleopatra, how cruel of you to wake me, to

tell me so!"

"But why is he always away?"

"I see him when he chooses," sighed Berenice, in grief. "During the day--

for a minute or two."

"Did you not see him yesterday?"

"Yes. I met him by the roadside. I was in my litter, he got in with me."

"As far as the Palace?"

"No--not quite. He was still in sight nearly as far as the gates."

"What did you tell him?"

"Oh, I was furious! I said most wicked things. Yes, darling, I did!"

"Indeed?" rejoined the young girl, ironically.

"Perhaps too wicked, for he never answered me. Just when I felt myself

scarlet with rage, he recited a long fable for my benefit. As I did not

quite understand it, I did not know how to reply. He slipped out of the

litter, just as I thought of keeping him by my side.

"Why not have called him back?"

"I feared to displease him."

Cleopatra, swelling with indignation, took her sister by the shoulders,

and looking her full in the face, spoke thus to her:

"How now! You are the Queen, the people's goddess! Half the world

belongs to you; all that Rome does not rule is yours; you reign over

the Nile and the entire ocean. You even reign over the heavens, since

you are nearer to the ear of the Gods than anyone, and yet you cannot

reign over the man you love!"

"Reign . . . reign!" said Berenice, hanging her head. "That's easy to say,

but, look you, one does not reign over a lover as if dominating a

slave."

"And why not, pray?"

"Because . . . But you cannot understand! To love, is to prefer the

happiness of another to that which we formerly selfishly desired before

meeting the loved one. Should Demetrios be content, so likewise would I

be, even weeping and far from his side. I wish for no delight that is

not his, and all I bestow on him gives me great joy."

"You know not how to love," said the young lass.

Berenice smiled sadly, then she stretched her two arms stiffly on either

side of her couch, as she jutted out her breasts and arched her loins.

"Ah, little presumptuous virgin!" she sighed. "When for the first time

you'll swoon in loving conjunction, then only will you understand why

one is never the queen of a man who causes you thus to lose your

senses."

"A woman can always be a queen should she so will it."

"But she has no longer any power of will."

"I have! Why should you not be the same? You are my elder!"

Berenice smiled again.

"My little girl, upon whom do you exercise your strength of will? On

which one of your dolls?"

"On my lover!" said Cleopatra.

Without allowing her sister time to find words to express her

stupefaction, the damsel went on talking with growing vivacity.

"I have got a lover! Yes, I've a lover! Why should I not have a

sweetheart like everybody else, the same as you and my mother, and my

aunt, and the lowest woman in Egypt? A lover? Of a surety! And why not,

prithee, seeing that for six months past, I am a woman, and you have not

yet found me a husband? Aye, Berenice, I have a lover. I'm no longer a

little girl. I know now! I know! Be silent--say nothing, for I know

more than you. I, too, have clasped my arms till they were fit to snap,

over the naked back of a man who thought he was my master. I, too, have

crooked my toes in the empty air, feeling as if life was leaving me, and

I've died a hundred limes over in the same way as you have swooned, but

immediately afterwards, Berenice, I was on my feet, upstanding, erect!

Say naught to me, for I am ashamed to claim you as my Sovereign--you,

who are someone's slave!"

Little Cleopatra drew herself up to her full height, endeavouring to

appear as tall as possible. She took her head in her hands, like an

Asiatic queen trying on a tiara.

[Illustration]

Seated on the bed, her feet tucked under her, the elder sister listened,

and then knelt, so she could come near to the young lass and place her

hands on Cleopatra's sloping, slender shoulders.

"So you've a lover?" Berenice now spoke timidly, almost respectfully.

"If you don't believe me, you can look," replied the girl, curtly.

"When do you see him?" sighed Berenice.

"Three times a day."

"Where?"

"Do you want me to tell you?"

"Yes."

"How comes it that you do not know this?" interrogated Cleopatra in her

turn.

"I know nothing, not even what goes on at the Palace. Demetrios is the

only subject of conversation I care about. I have not watched over you

as I should have done, my child. All this is my fault."

"Watch me if you like. When I can no longer have my own way, I'll kill

myself. Therefore, little care I, whatever happens!"

"You are free," replied Berenice, shaking her head. "At any rate, it is

too late to restrain you. But, answer me, darling. You have a lover

--and you manage to keep him to yourself?"

"I have my way of holding him."

"Who taught you?"

"I taught myself all alone. Such knowledge comes instinctively or never.

When I was but six years old, I knew how I meant to hold my sweetheart

later on in life."

"Will you not tell me?"

"Follow me."

Berenice rose slowly, put on a tunic and a mantle, shook out her heavy

tresses, adhering together by the sweat of the bed, and both the sisters

left the room.

[Illustration: Cleopatra crossed a courtyard.]

First went the youngest, straight along the vestibule, back to her bed.

Under the mattress of fresh, dry byssos, she took a newly-cut key.

"Follow me. It's rather far," she said, turning to her sister.

In the middle of the passage was a staircase which she ascended. Then

she glided along a never-ending colonnade, opened several doors, walking

on carpets, white marble slabs and the mosaic floors of a score of

empty, silent apartments.

She descended a stone stairway, and stepped over the dark thresholds of

clanging doors. Now and again, the two women came upon soldiers, resting

on mats in couples, their spears close to their hands. Some long time

afterwards, Cleopatra crossed a courtyard lit up by the rays of the full

moon, and the shadow of a palm-tree caressed her hips. Berenice, wrapped

in her blue mantle, still followed her.

At last, they reached a massive door, clamped with iron like a warrior's

breastplate. In the lock, Cleopatra slipped her key, turning it twice.

Then, pushing open the portal, a man--a very giant in the

darkness--rose to his full height out of the depths of his dungeon.

Berenice stirred with emotion, looked in, and with drooping head, said

very softly:

"Tis you, my child, who know not how to love. At least--not yet. I was

quite right when I told you that."

"Love for love, I prefer mine," said the girl. "He gives me naught but

joy, at any rate."

So saying, erect on the prison threshold, and without making a step

forward, she said to the man who stood in the shadow:

"Come hither, and kiss my foot, son of a cur!"

When he had done so, she pressed her mouth to his lips.

BOOK IV

I

DEMETRIOS DREAMS A DREAM

Now, with the mirror, the necklace, and the collar, Demetrios having

returned home, a dream visited him in his slumber, and this was his

dream:

He is going towards the quay, mingled with the crowd, on a strange

moonless night, cloudless, but shedding a peculiar brilliance of its

own.

Without knowing why, or what it is that draws him, he is in a hurry to

arrive, to be _there_ as soon as he can, but he walks with effort, and the

air opposes an inexplicable resistance to his legs, as deep water

hampers footsteps.

He trembles, he thinks he will never reach the goal, that he will never

know towards whom, in this bright obscurity, he is walking thus, panting

and troubled.

At times, the crowd disappears entirely, whether it be that it really

fades away, or that he ceases to be conscious of its presence. Then it

jostles more importunately than ever, and all press, on, on, on, with a

quick and sonorous step, more quickly than he . . .

Then the human mass closes in upon him; Demetrios pales; a man pushes

him with his shoulder; a woman's buckle tears his tunic; a young girl is

wedged against him, so tightly that he feels the pressure of her nipples

against his chest, and she pushes his face away with two terrified

hands.

Suddenly he is alone, the first, upon the quay. And as he turns to look

behind him, he perceives in the distance the white swarm of the crowd

which has all at once receded to the Agora.

And he realises that it will advance no further.

The quay lies white and straight like the first stage of an unfinished

road which has undertaken to cross the sea.

He wants to go to Pharos, and he walks. His legs have suddenly become

light. The wind blowing in the sandy deserts drives him headlong towards

the watery solitudes into which the quay plunges venturesomely. But in

proportion as he advances, Pharos retreats before him; the quay is

immeasurably prolonged. Soon the high marble tower on which blazes a

purple wood-pile touches the livid horizon, flickers, dies down, wanes,

and sets like another moon!

Demetrios walks ever onwards.

[Illustration]

Days and nights seem to have passed since he left the great quay of

Alexandria far behind him, and he dare not turn his head, for fear of

seeing nothing but the road he has travelled along: a white line

stretching to infinity and the sea.

And still he turns round.

An island is behind him, covered with great trees whence droop enormous

blossoms.

Has he crossed it like a blind man, or does it spring into sight at the

same instant and become mysteriously visible? He does not think of

conjecturing: he accepts the impossible as a natural event . . .

A woman is in the isle. She is standing before the door of its one

house, with her eyes half closed and her face bending over a monstrous

iris-flower that reaches to the level of her lips. She has heavy hair,

the colour of dull gold, and of a length one may surmise to be

marvellous, judging by the mass of the great coil that lies on her

drooping neck. A black tunic envelopes this woman, and a robe blacker

still is draped upon the tunic, and the iris whose perfume she breathes

with downcast eyelids is of the same hue as night.

In all this mourning garb, Demetrios sees but the hair, like a golden

vase on an ebony column. He recognises Chrysis.

The recollection of the mirror and of the necklace and of the comb

recurs to him vaguely; but he does not believe in it, and in this

singular vision reality alone seems to him a dream . . .

"Come," says Chrysis. "Follow me."

He follows her. She slowly mounts a staircase strewn with white skins.

Her arm rests upon the rail. Her naked heels float in and out from under

her robe.

The house has but one storey. Chrysis halts at the topmost step.

"There are four chambers," she says.

"When you have seen them, you will never leave them. Will you follow me?

Have you confidence?"

[Illustration: A monstrous iris-flower reaches to the level of her

lips.]

But he will follow her everywhere. She opens the first door and closes

it behind him.

This room is long and narrow. It is lighted by a single window, through

which is seen enframed the great expanse of sea. On the right and left

are two small tables and on them a dozen book-rolls.

"Here are the books you love," says Chrysis. "There are no others."

Demetrios opens them: they are _The Oineus of Chæremon_, _The Return

of Alexis_, _The Mirror of Lais of Aristippos_, _The Enchantress_, _The

Cyclops_, the _Bucolics of Theocritos_, _OEdipus at Colonos_, the _Odes

of Sappho_, and several other little works. Upon a pile of cushions, in

the midst of this ideal library, there is a naked girl who utters no

word.

"Now," murmurs Chrysis, drawing from a long golden coder a manuscript

consisting of a single leaf, "here is the page of antique poesy that you

never read alone without weeping."

The young man reads at a venture:

[Greek: Hoi men ar' ethrêneon, epi de stenachonto gynaikes.

Têsin d'Andromachê leukôlenos êrche gooio,

Hektoros androphonoio karê meta chersin echousa;

Aner, ap' aiônos neos ôleo, kadde me chêrên

Leipeis en megaroisi; pais d'eti nêpios autôs,

Hon tekomen sy t'egô te dysammoroi. . .]

He stops, casting upon Chrysis a look of surprise and tenderness.

"You?" he says. "You show me this?"

"Ah! you have not seen everything. Follow me. Follow me quickly."

They open another door.

The second chamber is square. It is lighted by a single window, through

which is seen enframed all nature. In the midst, stands a wooden trestle

bearing a lump of red clay, and in a corner, a naked girl lies upon a

curved chair, and utters no word.

"Here you will model Andromeda and Zagreus and the Horses of the Sun. As

you will create them for yourself alone, you will break them in pieces

before your death."

"It is the House of Felicity," says Demetrios in a low voice.

And he lets his forehead sink into his hands. But Chrysis opens another

door.

The third chamber is vast and round. It is lighted by a single window,

through which is seen enframed the great expanse of blue sky. Its walls

consist of gratings of bronze bars so disposed as to form lozenge-shaped

interstices. Through them glides a music of flutes and pipes played to a

doleful measure by invisible musicians. And against the far wall, upon a

throne of green marble, sits a naked girl who utters no word.

"Come! Come!" repeats Chrysis.

They open another door.

[Illustration]

The fourth chamber is low, sombre, hermetically closed, and triangular.

thick carpets and rugs array it so luxuriously from floor to roof that

nudity is not astonished in it. Lovers can easily imagine that they have

east off their garments upon the walls in all directions. When the door

is closed again, it is impossible to guess where it was. There is no

window. It is a narrow world, outside the world. A few wisps of black

hair hanging to the cushions shed tear-drops of perfumes. And this

chamber is lighted by seven little myrrhine panes which colour diversely

the incomprehensible light of seven subterranean lamps.

"See," explains the woman in an affectionate and tranquil tone, "there

are three different beds in the three corners of _our_ chamber."

Demetrios does not answer. And he asks within himself:

"Is it really a last term? Is it truly a goal of human existence? Have I

then passed through the other three chambers only to stop in this one?

And shall I, shall I ever be able to leave it if I lie in it a whole

night in the attitude of love which is the prostration of the tomb."

But Chrysis speaks.

* * * * *

"Well-Beloved, you asked for me; I am come, look at me well . . ."

She raises her two arms together, lays her hands upon her hair, and,

with her elbows projecting in front of her, smiles.

"Well-Beloved, I am yours . . . Oh! not immediately . . . I promised you to

sing, I will sing first . . ."

And he thinks of her no more, and lays him down at her feet. She has

little black sandals. Four threads of blue pearls pass between the

dainty toes, on the nails of which has been painted a carmine lunar

crescent.

With her head reposing on her shoulder, she taps on the palm of her left

hand with her right, and undulates her hips almost imperceptibly.

"By night, on my bed,

I sought him whom my soul loveth:

I sought him, but I found him not . . .

I charge ye, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,

If ye find my beloved,

Tell him

That I am sick of love."

"Ah! it is the Song of Songs, Demetrios.

It is the nuptial canticle of the women of my

country."

"I sleep, but my heart waketh:

It is the voice of my beloved . . .

That knocketh at my door,

The voice of my beloved!

He cometh,

Leaping upon the mountains

Like a roe

Or a young hart."

"My beloved speaks, and says unto me:

Open unto me, my sister, my fair one:

My head is filled with dew,

And my locks with the drops of the night.

Rise up, my love, my fair one,

And come away.

For lo, the winter is past,

The rain is over and gone,

The flowers appear on the earth.

The time of the singing of birds is come,

The voice of the turtle-dove is heard in the land.

Rise up, my love, my fair one,

And come away."

She casts her veil away, and stands up arrayed

in some tight-fitting stuff wound closely round

the legs and hips.

"I have put off my coat;

How shall I put it on?

I have washed my feet:

How shall I defile them?

My well-beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door,

And my bowels were moved for him.

I rose up to open to my beloved,

And my hands dropped with myrrh,

And my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh,

Upon the handles of the lock.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:

She throws her head back and half closes her eyelids.

"Slay me, comfort me,

For I am sick of love.

Let his left hand be under my head

And his right hand embrace me.

Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, with

one of thine eyes,

With one chain of thy neck.

How fair is thy love!

How fair are thy caresses!

How much better than wine!

The smell of thee pleaseth me more than all spices.

Thy lips drop as the honeycomb:

Honey and milk are under thy tongue.

The smell of thy garments is like the smell of

Lebanon.

"A garden enclosed is my sister,

A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

"Awake, O north wind!

Blow, thou south!

Blow upon my garden,

That the spices thereof may flow out."

She rounds her arms, and holds out her mouth.

"Let my beloved come into his garden

And eat of his pleasant fruits.

Yes, I come into my garden,

O! my sister, my spouse,

I gather my myrrh with my spice,

I eat my honeycomb with my honey.

I drink my wine with my milk.

SET ME A SEAL UPON THINE HEART

AS A SEAL UPON THINE ARM

FOR LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH" [1]

Without moving her feet, without bending her tightly-pressed knees, she

slowly turns her body upon her motionless hips. Her face and her two

breasts, above her tightly-swathed legs, seem three great pink flowers

in a flower-holder made of stuffs.

She dances gravely, with her shoulders and her head and the

intermingling of her beautiful arms. She seems to suffer in her sheath

and to reveal ever and ever more the whiteness of her half imprisoned

body. Her breathing inflates her breast. Her mouth cannot close. Her

eyelids cannot open. A heightening flame flushes her cheeks.

Now her ten interlocked fingers join before her face. Now she raises her

arms. She strains voluptuously. A long fugitive groove separates her

shoulders as they rise and fall. Finally, with a single movement of her

body, enveloping her panting visage in her hair as with a bridal veil,

she tremblingly unfastens the sculptured clasp which retained her

garment about her loins, and allows all the mystery of her grace to slip

down upon the ground.

Demetrios and Chrysis . . .

Their first embracement before love is immediately so perfect, so

harmonious, that they keep it immobile, in order fully to know its

multiple voluptuousness. One of her breasts stands out erect and round,

from under the strong encircling arm of Demetrios. One of her burning

thighs is rivetted between his two legs, and the other lies with all its

heavy weight thrown upon them. They remain thus, motionless, clasped

together but not penetrated, in the rising exaltation of an inflexible

desire which they are loath to satisfy. At first, they catch at one

another with their mouths alone. They intoxicate each other with the

contact of their aching and ungated virginities.

[Illustration: She dances gravely with her shoulders and her head.]

We look at nothing so minutely as the face of the woman we love. Seen at

the excessively close range of the kiss, Chrysis's eyes seem enormous.

When she closes them, two parallel creases remain on each eyelid, and a

loaden-hued patch extends from the brilliant eyebrows to the verge of

the cheeks. When she opens them, a green ring, fine as a silken thread,

illumines with a coloured coronal the fathomless black eyeball

immeasurably distended under the long curved lashes. The little pellet

of red flesh whence the tears flow has sudden palpitations.

Their kiss is endless. Chrysis would seem to have under her tongue, not

milk and honey, as in Holy writ, but living, mobile, enchanted water.

And this multiform tongue itself, now incurved like an arch, now rolled

up like a spiral, now shrinking into its hiding-place, now darting forth

like a flame, more caressing than the hand, more expressive than the

eyes, circling, flower-like, into a pistil, or thinning away into a

petal, this ribbon of flesh that hardens when it quivers and softens

when it licks, Chrysis animates it with all the resources of her

endearing and passionate fantasy . . . Then she showers on him a series of

prolonged caresses that twist and turn. Her nervous finger-tips suffice

to grasp him tightly, and to produce convulsive tremblings along his

sides. She is happy only when palpitating with desire or enervated by

exhaustion: the transition terrifies her like a torture. As soon as her

lover summons her, she thrusts him away with rigid arms: she presses her

knees close together, she supplicates him dumbly with her lips.

Demetrios constrains her by force.

No spectacle of nature, neither the blazing glory of the setting sun,

nor the tempest in the palm-trees, nor the mirage, nor the mighty

upheavals of the waters, seem worthy of astonishment to those who have

witnessed the transfiguration of a woman in their arms. Chrysis becomes

extraordinary. Arching her body upwards, and sinking back again in

turns, with her bent elbow resting on the cushions, she seizes the

corner of a pillow, clutches at it like a dying woman, and gasps for

breath, with her head thrown back. Her eyes, brilliant with gratitude,

fix the madness of their glance at the corner of the eyelids. Her checks

are resplendent. The curve of her swaying hair is disconcerting. Two

admirable, muscular lines, descending from the ear and the shoulder,

meet under the right breast and bear it like a fruit.

Demetrios contemplates this divine madness in the feminine body with a

sort of religious awe--this transport of a whole being, this superhuman

convulsion of which he is the direct cause, which he exalts or represses

at will, and which confounds him for the thousandth time.

Under his very eyes all the mighty forces of life strain in the effort

to create. The breasts have already assumed, up to their very tips,

maternal majesty. And these wails, these lamentable wails that

prematurely weep over the labour of childbirth! . . .

[1] Song of Songs.

II

THE PANIC

Far above the sea and the Gardens of the Goddess, the moon poured down

torrents of light.

Melitta--that little damsel, so delicate and slender, possessed by

Demetrios for a fleeting moment, and who had offered to take him to

Chimairis, learned in chiromancy--had remained behind alone with the

fortune-teller, crouching, and still fierce.

"Do not fellow that man," Chimairis had said.

"Oh yes, I will! I've not even asked him if I am ever to see him again.

Let me run after him to kiss him, and I'll come back--"

"No, you'll not see him ever more. And so much the better, my girl.

Women who meet him once, learn to knew pain. Women who meet him twice,

trifle with death."

[Illustration: "Oh, prophetess of evil! Take back what you've said!]

"Why say it? I've just met him, and I've only trifled with pleasure in

his arms."

"You owe your pleasure to him because you do not know what

voluptuousness means, my tiniest of tiny girls. Forget him as you would

a playmate and congratulate yourself on being only twelve years old."

"So one is very unhappy when grown up?" asked the child. "All the women

here chatter unceasingly of their troubles, and I, who never hardly cry,

see so many weeping!"

Chimairis dug her two hands into her hair and uttered a groan. Her goat

shook its gold collar and turned its head in her direction, but she did

not bestow a glance on the animal.

"Nevertheless, I know one happy woman," continued Melitla,

significantly. "She's my great friend, Chrysis. I'm certain she never

sheds a tear."

"She will," said Chimairis.

"Oh, prophetess of evil! Take back what you've said, distraught old

woman, or I shall hate you!"

Seeing the young girl's threatening gestures, the black goat reared up

erect, its front legs bent under; its horns thrust forward.

Melitta fled without looking where she went.

Twenty paces farther on, she burst out laughing, as she caught sight of

a ridiculous couple hidden between two bushes. That sufficed to change

the current of her young thoughts.

She took the longest road before returning to her hut, and then decided

not to go home at all. It was a magnificent, warm, moonlight night. The

gardens were full of many voices and songs. Satisfied with what she had

earned through the visit of Demetrios, she was seized with a sudden

fancy to play the part of a vagrant girl of roads and ditches, in the

depths of the wood, with pauper passers-by. In this way, she was enjoyed

twice or three against a tree, a stone pillar, or on a bench, and found

amusement as if the game was new, because the scene kept changing. A

soldier, standing in the middle of a pathway, lifted her bodily up in

his robust arms and identified himself with the God of the Gardens who

joins himself to the wenches who tend the rose-trees without needing to

let the hussies feet touch the ground. At this, Melitta uttered a cry of

triumph.

Escaping again, she continued her flight through an avenue of palms,

where she met a lad, named Mikyllos, seemingly lost in the forest. She

offered to be his guide, but led him astray designedly, so as to keep

him with her for her own purposes. Mikyllos was not long in fathoming

Melitta's intentions, as well as her tiny talents and capabilities. Soon

becoming companions, rather than lovers, they ran along side by side in

solitude that grew more and more silent. Suddenly, they came in front of

the sea.

The spot where they found themselves was far distant from the

parts where the courtesans generally celebrated the rites of their

religious profession. Why they chose other trysting-places in preference

to this--the most admirable of all--they could not have told you. The

part of the wood where the crowd gathered soon became a notorious

central alley, surrounded by a network of bypaths and starry glades. On

the outskirts, despite the charm or the beauty of the sites, there

reigned eternal solitude where luxuriant vegetation flourished

peacefully.

Thus strolling, hand in hand, Mikyllos and Melitta reached the limit of

the public park, a low hedge of aloes, forming a useless dividing line

between the gardens of Aphrodite and those of her High Priest.

Encouraged by the hushed solitude of this flowery wilderness, the young

couple easily climbed over the irregular wall formed by the quaint

twisted plants. The Mediterranean, at their feet, slowly swept the

shore, with wavelets like the fringes of a river. The two children waded

in breast-high and chased each other, laughing meanwhile, as they tried

to effect difficult conjunctions in the water. They soon put an end to

these sports, which failed like games insufficiently rehearsed. Alter

that, luminous and dripping wet, wriggling their frog-like legs in the

moonlight, they sprang upon the dark edge of the sea.

Traces of footprints on the sand urged the boy and girl onwards. They

walked, ran, and struggled, pulling each other by the hand; their black,

well-defined shadows sketching bold outlines of their two figures. How

far were they to go in this wise? They saw no other living things on the

immense azure horizon.

"Ah! Look!" exclaimed Melitta, all of a sudden.

"What's the matter?"

"There's a woman!"

"A courtesan! Oh, the shameless thing! She has fallen asleep in the

open."

"No, no!" rejoined Melitta, shaking her head. "I dare not go near her,

Mikyllos. She's no courtesan."

"I should have thought she was.

"No, I say, Mikyllos, she's not one of us. It's Touni, wife of the High

Priest. Look well at her. She is not asleep. Oh, I'm afraid to approach

her. Her eves are wide open! Let us go away! I'm afraid--oh, so

afraid!"

Mikyllos made three steps forward on tip-toe.

"You're right, Melitta. She is not sleeping, poor woman! She is dead."

"Dead?"

"There is a pin in her heart."

He stretched out his hand to draw it from her breast, but Melitta was

terrified.

[Illustration]

"No, no! Touch her not! She is sacred! Remain by her side, watch over

her, protect her. I'll call for help. I'll tell the others."

She fled with all the strength of her legs into the deep shadow of the

black trees.

Alone and trembling, Mikyllos wandered round the corpse of the young

woman. He touched the pierced breast with his finger. Then, either

scared by death, or more likely fearing to be taken for an accomplice of

the murder, he suddenly took to his heels, resolved to apprise no one.

The icy nakedness of Touni remained as before, abandoned in the bright

light of the moon.

* * * * *

A long time afterwards, the woods near where she lay became filled with

murmurs which were frightful because almost imperceptible.

On all sides, between tree-trunks and bushes, a thousand courtesans,

huddled together like frightened sheep, advanced slowly, their masses

quivering with a unanimous shudder.

By a movement as regular as that of the sea striking the sandy

foreshore, the front rank of this army made way for those following

behind. It seemed as if nobody wanted to be the first to find the dead

woman.

A great cry, taken up by a thousand mouths and dying away at a distance,

arose to salute the poor corpse when it was perceived stretched out at

the foot of a tree.

A thousand naked arms were first uplifted and then as many others.

"Goddess! Not on us!" now sobbed many voices. "Goddess, not on us! If

thou wreakest vengeance, Goddess, spare our lives!"

"To the Temple!" was the rallying-cry arising from one despairing

throat.

[Illustration: "Open the gates for us!"]

"To the Temple! To the Temple!" repeated all the other women.

At this juncture, a new eddy convulsed the surging multitude. Without

daring to cast another look at the dead woman, stretched out on her back

on the ground, her eyes upturned and her arms thrown back, all the

courtesans in one great mob, black women and white, those of the East

and the West, some in sumptuous robes and others in vague nudity,

scampered through the trees, rushing across glades, paths, and roads;

swarming into the vast open spaces in front of the houses, until they

mounted the gigantic pink marble staircase that gleamed deeply red in

the light of coming day. With their weak clenched fists, they battered

the lofty bronze doors, squalling childishly:

"Open the gates for us! Open! Let us in!"

III

THE CROWD

The morning the orgie at Bacchis's came to an end an event took place at

Alexandria: rain fell.

Immediately, contrarily to what usually happens in countries less

African, everybody went out to welcome the shower.

The phenomenon was neither torrent-like nor stormy. Large warm drops

fell from a violet cloud and traversed the air. The men looked at the

sky with interest. The little children roared with laughter, and went

about splashing their tiny naked feet in the surface-mud.

Then the cloud faded away in the light, the sky remained implacably

pure, and a short time after midday the mud had once more turned into

dust under the sun.

But this momentary shower had sufficed. It filled the town with gaiety.

The men congregated on the pavement of the Agora, and the women thronged

together in groups, intermingling their shrill voices.

Only the courtesans were there, for the third day of the Aphrodisæ

being reserved for the exclusive devotions of the married women, the

latter had just started for the Astarteion in a great procession, and

there was nothing in the square but flowered robes and eyes blackened

with paint.

As Myrtocleia passed by, a young girl called Philotis, who was talking

with many others, pulled her by the sleeve knot.

"Ho, my little lass! you played at Bacchis's yesterday? What happened?

What took place there? Did Bacchis put on a new necklace to hide the

cavities in her neck? Has she got wooden breasts or copper ones? Did she

forget to dye the little white hairs on her temples before putting on

her wig? Come, speak, fried fish!"

"Do you suppose I looked at her? I arrived after the banquet, I played

my piece, I received my payment, and I ran off."

"Oh, I know you don't dissipate!"

"To stain my robe and receive blows? No, Philotis. Only rich women can

afford to indulge in orgies. Little flute-girls get nothing but tears."

"When one doesn't want to stain one's robe, one leaves it in the

ante-chamber. When one receives blows, one insists on being paid double.

It is quite elementary. So you have nothing to tell us? not an

adventure, not a joke, not a scandal? We are yawning like storks. Invent

something if you know nothing."

"My friend Theano stayed after me. When I awoke a few minutes ago, she

had not yet come. The fète is perhaps still going on."

"It is finished," said another woman. "Theano is down there, by the

ceramic wall."

The courtesans started off at a run, but presently stopped with a smile

of pity.

Theano, in a naive fit of drunkenness, was obstinately pulling at a rose

stripped of its leaves, the thorns of which were caught in her hair. Her

yellow tunic was soiled with red and white stains as if she had borne

the brunt of the whole orgie. The bronze clasp, which kept up up the

converging folds of the stuff upon her left shoulder, dangled below the

waist, and revealed the mobile globe of a young breast already too

mature, and which was stained with two spots of purple.

As soon as she saw Myrtocleia, she brusquely went off into a peal of

singular laughter. Everybody knew it at Alexandria, and it had procured

her the nickname of the "Fowl." It was an interminable cluck-cluck, a

torrent of gaiety which commenced in a very low key and took her breath

away, then shot up again into a shrill cry, and so forth, rhythmically,

like the joy of a triumphant hen.

"An egg! an egg!" said Philotis.

[Illustration]

But Myrtocleia made a gesture:

"Come, Theano, come to bed. You are not well, come with me."

"Ah! . . . ha! . . . Ah! . . . ha!" laughed the child. And she took her breast in

her little hand, crying in a hoarse voice:

"Ah! . . . Ha! . . . the mirror . . ."

"Come along!" repeated Myrto, losing patience.

"The mirror . . . it is stolen, stolen! Ah! haaa! I shall never laugh so

much again if I live to be as old as Chronos. Stolen, stolen, the silver

mirror!"

The singing-girl tried to drag her away, but Philotis had understood.

"Hi!" she cried to the others, waving her two arms. "Come here quickly!

There is news! Bacchis's mirror has been stolen!"

And all exclaimed:

"Papaië! Bacchis's mirror!"

In an instant, thirty women crowded round the flute-girl:

"What is happening?"

"What?"

"Bacchis has had her mirror stolen: Theano has just said so."

"But when?"

"Who has taken it?"

The child shrugged her shoulders:

"How do I know?"

"You passed the night there. You must know. It is not possible. Who

entered her house? You have certainly been told. Try to collect

yourself, Theano."

[Illustration: Thirty women crowded round the flute-girl.]

"What do I know about it? There were more than twenty of them in the

banqueting room.

"They had hired me to play the flute, but they prevented me from playing

because they do not like music. They asked me to mimic the figure of

Danaë and they threw gold coins at me, and Bacchis took them all away

from me . . . It was a band of madmen. They made me drink head downwards

out of a bowl overflowing with wine. They had poured seven tankards in

it because there were seven wines upon the table. My face was all

dripping. Even my hair was soaked, and my roses."

"Yes," interrupted Myrto, "you are an awful fright. But the mirror? Who

took it?"

"Exactly! when they put me on my feet again, my head was suffused with

blood, and I was covered with wine up to the ears. Ha! Ha! they all

began to laugh . . . Bacchis sent for the mirror . . . Ha! ha! it had

disappeared. Somebody had taken it."

"Who? That is what we want to know."

"It was not I, that is all I know, It was no use searching me: I was

quite naked. I cannot hide a mirror under my eyelid, like a drachma. It

was not I, that is all I know. She crucified a slave, perhaps on account

of that. When I saw that they were not looking at me, I picked up the

Danaë coins. See, Myrto, I have five: you shall buy robes for the three

of us."

The news of the theft spread gradually over the whole square. The

courtesans did not hide their envious satisfaction. A noisy curiosity

animated the moving groups.

"It is a woman," said Philotis; "it is a woman who is responsible for

this piece of work."

"Yes, the mirror was well hidden. A thief could have carried off

everything in the room and upset everything without finding the stone."

"Bacchis had enemies, especially her former friends. The knew all her

secrets. One of them has probably enticed her away somewhere, and then

entered her house at the hour when the sun is hot and the streets are

almost deserted."

"Oh! she has perhaps sold the mirror to pay her debts."

"Supposing it were one of her lovers? They say she takes porters now!"

"No, it is a woman, I am sure of it."

"By the two goddesses! it serves her right." Suddenly, a still more

excited mob rushed towards a point of the Agora, followed by a rising

rumour which drew all the passers-by after it.

"What is the matter? what is the matter?"

And a shrill voice dominating the tumult shouted over all their heads:

"The High-Priest's wife has been killed!"

Violent consternation took possession of the crowd. It was incredible.

People refuse to believe that so atrocious a murder could have been

committed at the very height of the Aphrodisisæ, bringing down the

wrath of the gods upon the town. But the same sentence passed from mouth

to mouth in all directions:

"The wife of the High-Priest has been killed! The festival at the Temple

is put off."

News arrived rapidly. The body had been found, lying on a pink marble

seat, in a lonely place, at the summit of the gardens.

A long golden pin penetrated her left breast; the wound had not bled;

but the assassin had cut off all the young woman's hair, and had carried

away the antique comb of Queen Nitaoucrit.

After the first exclamations of anguish, a profound stupor gained the

uppermost. The whole multitude grew every minute. The whole town was

there: it was a sea of bare heads and women's hats, an immense herd

pouring simultaneously from the streets bathed in blue shade into the

dazzling brilliance of the Alexandrian Agora. Such a throng had never

been seen since the day when Ptolemy Auleter had been driven from the

throne by the partisans of Berenice. And even political revolutions

seemed less terrible than this piece of sacrilege, on which the safety

of the whole city might depend.

The men pushed their way close to the witnesses. They clamoured for

further details. They put forth conjectures. Women informed the new

arrivals of the theft of the celebrated mirror. The wiseacres swore that

these two simultaneous crimes had been committed by the same hand.

But who could it be? Courtesans, who had made their offerings the night

before for the ensuing year, were fearful lest the goddess should pay no

attention to them, and sat sobbing, with their heads buried in their

robes.

An ancient superstition had it that two such events would be followed by

a third and still graver one. The crowd awaited the third. After the

mirror and the comb, what had the mysterious robber taken? A stifling

atmosphere, inflamed by the south wind and filled with sand dust,

weighed upon the motionless crowd.

Gradually, as if this human mass were a single being, it was seized with

a shivering which grew little by little until it became a panic, and all

eyes were turned towards the same point on the horizon.

It was at the distant extremity of the long straight avenue which

traversed Alexandria from the Canopic gate and led from the Temple to

the Agora. There, on the top of the gentle incline, where the road

opened upon the sky, a second terror-stricken multitude had just made

its appearance and was running down the hill to join the first one.

"The courtesans, the sacred courtesans!"

Nobody stirred. Nobody dared to go and meet them, for fear of hearing of

a new disaster. They arrived like a living flood, preceded by the dull

noise of their footsteps on the ground. They waved their arms, they

jostled one another, they seemed to be in flight before an army. They

were to be recognised now. One could distinguish their robes, their

girdles, their hair. Rays of light gleamed on their golden jewels. They

were quite near. They opened their mouths. There was a silence.

"The necklace of the Goddess has been stolen, the True Pearls of

Anadyomene are gone!"

[Illustration]

A clamour of despair arose at the fatal utterance. The crowd retreated

at first like a wave, then poured headlong forward, beating the walls,

filling the road, thrusting back the frightened women, in the long

avenue of the Dromos, towards the desecrated immortal saint.

IV

THE RESPONSE

And the Agora was left empty, like a beach after the tide.

Empty, but not completely: a man and a woman stayed behind, the only two

mortals who knew the secret of the great public emotion, the two beings

who were the cause of it: Chrysis and Demetrios.

The young man was seated on a block of marble near the port. The young

woman stood at the opposite end of the square. They could not recognise

one another; but they divined one another mutually: Chrysis, drunk with

pride and finally with desire, ran in the full glare of the sun.

"You have done it!" she cried; "you have done it, then!"

"Yes," said the young man simply. "You are obeyed."

She quickly sat herself on his knees and embraced him deliriously:

"I love you! I love you! I have never before felt what I feel now! Gods!

At last I know what it is to be in love! You see, my beloved, I give you

more than I promised you the day before yesterday. I, who have never

denied anyone, I could not dream that should change so quickly. I had

only sold you my body upon the bed, now I give you all my excellence,

all my purity, my sincerity, my passion, my virgin soul, Demetrios. Come

with me; let us leave this town for a time; let us go into a hidden

place, where there are, only you and I. We will spend days such as the

world has never seen. Never did a lover do what you have done for me.

Never did a woman love as I love: it is not possible! it is not possible!

I can hardly speak. I am choking. You see, I weep. I know now what it is

to weep: it is through excess of happiness. But you do not answer! You

say nothing? Kiss me!"

Demetrios stretched out his right leg to ease his knee, which was a

little cramped. Then he raised the young woman, stood up, shook the

creases out of his garments, and said softly with an enigmatic smile:

"No . . . Adieu . . ."

[Illustration: "You say nothing! Kiss me!"]

And he tranquilly turned away.

Chrysis stood rooted to the ground with stupefaction, her mouth open and

her head dangling.

"What? What . . . what . . . what do you say?"

"I say adieu," he said, without raising his voice.

"But . . . but it cannot be you who . . ."

"Yes. I had promised."

"Then . . . I fail to understand . . ."

"My dear, whether you understand or not is a matter of indifference to

me. I leave this little mystery to your meditations. If what you have

told me is true, they are likely to be prolonged. This affair occurs

most conveniently to give them occupation. Adieu."

"Demetrios! what do I hear? . . . what is the meaning of this tone? Is it

really you who speak? Explain! I conjure you! What has happened between

us? It is enough to make one dash one's head against the wall."

"Am I to repeat the same thing a hundred times? Yes, I have taken the

mirror; yes, I have killed the priestess Touni in order to get the

peerless comb; yes, I have stolen the great seven-stringed necklace of

the goddess. I was to hand you over the presents in exchange for a

single sacrifice on your part. It was putting it at a high value, was it

not? Now, I have ceased to estimate it at this extraordinary value, and

I have nothing more to ask of you. Act in the same way, and let us part.

I wonder you do not understand a situation the simplicity of which is so

evident."

"Keep your presents! Do you suppose I care about them? It is yourself

that I want, you, you alone."

"Yes, I know. But once again, I am not willing, and, as the consent of

both the parties is necessary for a rendez-vous, I am very much afraid

it will not take place, if I persist in my present views. This is what I

am trying to impress upon you with all the clearness of diction of which

I am capable. I see it is inadequate; but as I cannot improve it, I beg

you to kindly accept the accomplished fact with a good grace, without

prying into what you consider obscure about it, since you do not admit

that it is within the limits of probability. I am most anxious to bring

this discussion to an end. It can lead to no result, and might perhaps

force me to be impolite."

"People have been tittle-tattling about me?"

"No!"

"Oh yes, I guess as much! People have been talking about me, don't deny

it. They have said things about me behind my back! I have terrible

enemies, Demetrios! You must not listen to them: I swear to you by the

gods, they lie!"

"I do not know them."

"Believe me! Believe me, Well-beloved! What interest could I have in

deceiving you, since I desire nothing from you except yourself?"

[Illustration]

"You are the first person I have ever spoken to like this . . ."

Demetrios looked her in the eyes.

"It is too late," he said. "I have possessed you."

"You are raving . . . When? Where? How?"

"I speak the truth. I have possessed you in spite of yourself. What I

hoped from your complaisance you have given me without your knowledge.

You took me to the country you want to go to, in a dream, last night,

and you were beautiful . . . ah! you were beautiful, Chrysis! I have

returned from that country. No human will shall force me to see it

again. The same event never brings happiness twice. I am not so mad as

to ruin a happy souvenir. I am indebted for this to you, you will say;

but as I have only loved your shadow, you will dispense me, dear

creature, from thanking your reality."

Chrysis pressed her hands to her temples.

"It is abominable, abominable! And he dares to say this! And he makes a

boast of it!"

"You jump to definite conclusions very quickly. I have told you that I

have had a dream: are you sure that I was asleep? I have told you that I

was happy: does happiness, according to you, consist in the gross

physical thrill which you say you are so expert in producing, but which

you cannot diversify, since it is much the same with all women who give

themselves! No, it is yourself that you belittle by taking this most

unbecoming point of view. I think you do not quite realise all the

felicities which spring from under your footsteps. What differentiates

mistresses from one another is that they have each a fashion, personal

to themselves, of preparing and terminating an incident which, as a

matter of fact, is as monstrous as it is necessary, and the quest of

which, supposing we had only it in view, would not be worth all the

trouble we take to find a perfect mistress. In this preparation and in

this termination you excel beyond all women. At least, it has been a

pleasure to me to think so, and perhaps you will grant me that after

having produced the Aphrodite of the Temple my imagination has had no

great difficulty in divining the manner of woman you are. Once again, I

will not tell you whether it is a question of a night dream or a waking

error. It is enough for you to know that, whether dreamed or conceived,

your image has appeared to me in an extraordinary frame. Illusion; but,

in all things I shall prevent you, Chrysis, from disillusioning me."

"And me, what do you mean to do with me, who love you still in spite of

all the horrors that proceed from your mouth? Have I had the

consciousness of your odious dream? Have I had my share in this

happiness of which you speak, and which you have stolen, stolen from me!

Has one ever heard of a lover so amazingly selfish as to take his

pleasure of the woman who loves him without allowing her to share it!

. . . This confounds all thought. It will drive me mad."

At this point, Demetrios dropped his tone of mockery, and said, in a

voice that trembled slightly:

"Did you trouble yourself about me when you took advantage of my sudden

passion to extort from me, in a moment of folly, three actions which

might have destroyed my existence, and which will always leave behind

them the remembrance of a triple shame?"

"If I asked this, it was to attach you to me. I should not have got you

if I had given myself."

"Good. You have been satisfied. You have held me, not for long, but you

have held me, nevertheless, in the serfdom you desired. Today, you must

allow me to free myself!"

"I am the only slave, Demetrios."

[Illustration: He freed himself from both her arms.]

"Yes, you or I, but one of us two if he loves the other. Slavery!

Slavery! that is the real name of passion. You have all of you only one

dream, one idea in your heads; to break men's strength with your

feebleness and govern his intelligence with your futility. As soon as

your breasts take form, you desire neither to love nor to be loved, but

to bind a man to your ankles, to lower him, to bow his head and put your

sandals upon it. Then, in conformity with your ambition, you can dash

the sword, the chisel, or the compass out of our hands, break everything

which transcends you, emasculate everything which frightens you, tweak

Hercules by the nose and set him a-spinning wool. But when you have been

able neither to bow his head nor weaken his character, you adore the

fist that beats you, the knee that strikes you to the ground, the very

mouth that insults you. The man who has refused to kiss your naked feet

satisfies your dearest wish if he violates you. The man who has not wept

when you left his house, can drag you there by the hair: your love will

spring up again from your tears, for there is but one thing that

consoles you when you are unable to impose slavery, amorous women! and

that is to submit to it."

"Ah, beat me, if you like! but love me afterwards!"

And she hugged him so brusquely that he had not time to turn away his

lips. He freed himself from both her arms.

"I detest you! Adieu," he said.

But Chrysis clung to his mantle.

"Do not lie. You adore me. Your soul is full of me: but you are ashamed

at having yielded. Listen, listen, Well-beloved! If that is all that is

needed to console your pride, I am ready to give you, in order to have

you, still more than I asked of you. Whatever sacrifice I make you, I

will not complain of life after our union."

Demetrios looked at her curiously, and, like her, the night before upon

the quay, he said to her:

"What oath do you swear me?"

"By Aphrodite also."

"You do not believe in Aphrodite. Swear by Jehovah Sabaoth."

The Galilæan woman paled.

"We do not swear by Jehovah."

"You refuse?"

"It is a terrible oath."

"I must have it."

She hesitated, then said in a low voice: "I swear by Jehovah. What do

you want of me, Demetrios?"

The young man kept silence.

"Speak quickly, I am afraid."

"Oh! very little."

"But what is it?"

"I will not ask you to give me three presents, were they as simple as

the first three were rare. It would be contrary to the usages. But I can

ask you to accept some, can I not?"

"Assuredly," said Chrysis joyously.

"This mirror, this necklace, this comb, which you made me steal for you,

you did not expect to use them, I suppose? A stolen mirror, the comb of

a victim, and the goddess's necklace are not jewels one can make a

display of."

"What an idea!"

"No, I thought so. It is therefore out of pure cruelty that you incited

me to ravish them at the price of the three crimes with which the whole

town resounds to-day. Well, you are going to wear them."

"What?"

"You must go into the little enclosed garden where the statue of the

Stygian Hermes is. This place is always deserted, and you will run no

risk of being disturbed. You will take off the god's left heel. The

stone is broken, you will see. Then, in the interior of the pedestal, you

will find Bacchis's mirror, and you will place it in your hand; you will

find the great comb of Nitaoucrit, and will place it in your hair; you

will find the seven pearl necklaces of the goddess Aphrodite, and you

will put them on your neck. Thus adorned, beautiful Chrysis, you will go

about the town. The crowd will deliver you to the Queen's soldiers, but

you will have what you desired, and I will go and see you in your prison

before sunrise."

V

THE GARDEN OF HERMANUBIS

Chrysis's first impulse was to shrug her shoulders. She would not be so

ingenuous as to keep her word.

The second was to go and see.

A rising curiosity impelled her toward the mysterious place where

Demetrios had hidden the three criminal trophies. She wanted to take

them, to touch them with her hands, to make them gleam in the sunlight,

to possess them for an instant. It seemed to her that her victory would

not be quite complete so long as she should not have seized the booty of

her ambitions.

[Illustration]

As for Demetrios: she would find the means of recapturing him

ultimately. How was it possible to believe that he had emancipated

himself from her for ever? The passion she attributed to him was not one

of those that die out in a man's heart irrevocably. The women one has

once greatly loved form a family of election in a man's hearts and the

meeting with a former mistress, even though hated or forgotten, excites

an unexpected disorder of the soul whence the new love may burst forth.

Chrysis was not ignorant of this. However ardent she might be herself,

however anxious to conquer the first man she had ever loved, she was not

mad enough to buy him at the cost of her life when she saw so many other

methods of seducing him more simply.

And yet . . . what a blessed end he had proposed to her!

Under the eyes of an innumerable crowd, bear the antique mirror into

which Sappho had gazed, the comb which had held in place the royal hair

of Nitaoucrit, the necklace of marine pearls that had rolled in the

shell of the goddess Anadyomene . . . Then, from the evening till the

morning drink madly of all the sensations with which the wildest love

can inspire a woman . . . and towards the middle of the day, die without

effort . . . what an incomparable destiny!

She closed her eyes . . .

But no: she would not allow herself to be tempted.

She crossed Rhacotis and mounted the street which led in a straight line

to the Great Serapeion. This road, constructed by the Greeks, seemed

incongruous in this quarter of angular alleys. The two populations

mingled oddly, in a promiscuity from which hatred was not absent.

Amongst the blue-shirted Egyptians, the unbleached tunics of the

Hellenes made splashes of white. Chrysis mounted rapidly, without

listening to the conversations in which the people discoursed of the

crimes committed for her sake.

Before the steps of the monument, she turned to the right, took an

obscure street, then another, the houses of which almost touched,

crossed a little star-shaped square where two swarthy little girls were

playing in a sunny fountain, and finally she stopped.

* * * * *

The garden of Hermes Anubis was a little necropolis long ago abandoned,

a sort of no man's land to which parents no longer brought the libations

to the dead, and that the passers-by avoided. In the midst of the

crumbling tombs, Chrysis advanced in the greatest silence, quaking with

fear at every stone that clattered under her feet. The wind, always

charged with fine sand, blew her hair over her temples and sent her veil

of scarlet silk floating towards the white leaves of the sycamores.

She discovered the statue between three monuments that hid it on all

sides and enclosed it in a triangle. The spot was well chosen for the

concealment of a mortal secret.

Chrysis forced her way as best she could through the narrow, stony

passage; on seeing the statue she paled slightly.

The jackal-headed god was in a standing attitude, with his right leg

advanced, and with his hair falling on his shoulders. This hair was

pierced by two holes for the arms.

The head on the top of the rigid body was bent downwards and

contemplated the movement of the hands as they performed the

characteristic gesture of the embalmer. The left foot was loose.

Looking round slowly and fearfully, Chrysis made sure that she was quite

alone. A little noise behind her made her start; but it was only a green

lizard slipping away into a marble fissure.

Then she ventured at last to lay hold of the broken foot of the statue.

She lifted it obliquely, and not without difficulty, for it was attached

to a loose fragment of the hollow pedestal. And under the stone she

suddenly saw the gleam of the enormous pearls.

She withdrew the necklace altogether. How heavy it was! She would never

have imagined that unmounted pearls could weigh with such a weight upon

the hand. The pearl globes were all marvellously round and of an almost

lunar water. The seven strings succeeded one another in ever-widening

circles, like circular clouds on a star-studded lake.

She put it round her neck.

[Illustration: On seeing the statue she paled slightly.]

She arranged it in tiers with one hand, closing her eyes in order the

better to feel the coldness of the pearls on her skin. She disposed the

seven tiers regularly along her naked breast, and thrust the last one

into the warm channel between her breasts.

Then she took the ivory comb, considered it for a time, caressed the

white figurine carved in the dainty coronal, and plunged the jewel into

her hair several times before fixing it exactly as she wished.

Then she drew the silver mirror from the pedestal, looked at herself in

it, saw her triumph in it, her eyes gleaming with pride, her shoulders

adorned with the spoils of the gods . . .

And enveloping herself to the hair in her great purple cyclas, she left

the necropolis, taking with her the terrible jewels.

VI

THE WALLS OF PURPLE

Then, out of the mouth of the hierodules, the people had learnt the

certainty of the sacrilege for the second time, they gradually melted

away through the gardens.

The courtesans of the temple crowded by hundreds along the paths of

black olive trees. Some scattered ashes on their heads. Others beat

their foreheads on the ground, or pulled out their hair, or tore their

breasts, as a sign of calamity. Many sobbed, with their heads in their

hands.

The crowd descended into the town in silence, along the Dromos and along

the quay. Universal mourning spread consternation throughout the

streets. The shopkeepers had hastily taken in their multicoloured

stands, from fear, and wooden shutters kept in place by iron bars

succeeded one another like a monotonous palisade on the ground-floor of

windowless houses.

The life of the harbour had come to a stand-still. The sailors sat

motionless on the street-posts, with their cheeks in their hands. The

ships ready to leave had taken in their long oars and clewed up their

pointed sails along the masts rocking in the wind. Those who wished to

enter the harbour waited for the signals out in the open, and some of

their passengers, who had relatives at the queen's palace, believing a

bloody revolution was in progress, sacrificed to the infernal gods.

At the corner of the island of Pharos and the quay, Rhodis recognised

Chrysis standing near her in the crowd.

"Ah! Chrysis! take me under your care! I am afraid! Myrto is here! but

the crowd is so great . . . I am afraid that we shall be separated. Take

us by the hand."

"You know," said Myrtocleia, "you know what is happening? Do they know

the culprit? Is he being tortured? Nothing like it has ever been seen

since Hierostratos. The Olympians are deserting us. What is going to

become of us?"

Chrysis did not answer.

"We had given doves," said the little flute-player; "will the goddess

remember? The goddess must be very angry. And you, my poor Chryse! you

who were to be very happy to-day or very powerful . . ."

"All is accomplished," said the courtesan.

"What do you mean?"

Chrysis took two steps backwards and lifted her right hand to her mouth.

"Look well, Rhodis; look, Myrtocleia. Human eyes have never beheld what

you are to behold to-day, since the day, when the goddess descended upon

Ida. And such a sight will never be seen again upon the earth."

The two friends, believing her to be mad, recoiled in stupefaction. But

Chrysis, lost in her dream, walked to the monstrous Pharos, a mountain

of gleaming marble in eight hexagonal tiers. Taking advantage of the

public inattention, she pushed open the bronze door and closed it on the

inside by letting drop the sonorous bars.

A few minutes elapsed.

The crowd surged perpetually. The living tide added its clamour to the

regular upheavals of the waters.

Suddenly a cry arose upon the air, repeated by a hundred thousand

voices.

"Aphrodite!"

"Aphrodite!!"

A thunder of cries burst forth. The joy, the enthusiasm of a whole

people sang in an indescribable tumult of ecstasy at the walls of

Pharos.

[Illustration]

The rout that covered the quay surged violently forward into the island,

took possession of the rocks, mounted on the houses, on the signal

masts, on the fortified towers. The isle was full, more than full, and

the crowd arrived ever more compact, like the onrush of a swollen river

hurling long rows of human beings into the sea from the top of the

precipitous cliff.

This flood of men was interminable. From the palace of the Ptolemies to

the wall of the Canal, the banks of the Royal Port, of the Great Port,

and of Euroste were alive with a dense mass of human beings that

received continual reinforcements from the side streets. Above this

ocean, agitated by immense eddies, a foaming mass of arms and faces,

floated like a barque in peril the yellow sails of Queen Berenice's

litter. The tumult gathered force every moment and became formidable.

Neither Helen on the Scain Gates, nor Phryne in the waves of Eleusis,

nor Thaïs setting fire to Persepolis have known what triumph means.

* * * * *

Chrysis had appeared by the western Gate, on the first terrace of the

red monument.

She was naked like the goddess, she held in her two hands the ends of

her scarlet veil which floated with the wind upon the evening sky, and

in her right hand the mirror, in which was reflected the setting sun.

[Illustration: She went in her way towards the sky.]

Slowly, with bended head, moving with infinite grace and majesty, she

mounted the outer staircase which wound around the high vermilion tower

like a spiral. Her veil flickered like a flame. The rosy sunset reddened

the pearl necklace like a river of rubies.

She mounted, and in this glory, her gleaming skin took on all the

magnificence of flesh, blood, fire, blue carmine, velvety red, bright

pink, and revolving upwards with the great purple walls, she went on her

way towards the sky.

BOOK V

I

THE SUPREME NIGHT

"You are loved of the gods," said the old gaoler. "If I, a poor slave,

had committed the hundredth part of your crimes, I should have been

bound upon the rack, hung up by the feet, lashed with thongs, burnt with

pincers. They would have poured vinegar into my nostrils, overwhelmed

and crushed me with bricks, and if I had died under the agony, my body

would already he food for the jackals of the burning plains. But you who

have stolen, assassinated, profaned, you may expect nothing more than

the gentle hemlock, and in the meanwhile you enjoy a good room. May Zeus

blast me with his thunderbolt if I can tell why! You probably know

somebody at the palace."

"Give me figs," said Chrysis; "my mouth is dry."

The old slave brought her a dozen ripe figs in a green basket.

Chrysis was left alone.

She sat down and got up again, she walked round the room, she struck the

walls with the palms of her hands without thinking of anything whatever.

She let down her hair to cool it, and then put it up again almost

immediately.

They had dressed her in a long garment of white wool. The stuff was hot.

Chrysis was bathed in perspiration. She stretched her arms, yawned, and

leaned herself against the lofty window.

Outside, the silvery moon shone in a sky of liquid purity, a sky so pale

and clear that not a star was visible.

It was on just such a night that, seven years before, Chrysis had left

the land of Gennesaret.

She remembered . . . They were five. They were sellers of ivory. Their

long-tailed horses were adorned with parti-coloured tufts. They had met

the child at the edge of a round cistern . . .

And before that, the blue lake, the transparent sky, the light air of

the land of Galilee . . .

The house was environed with pink flax-plants and tamarisks. Thorny

caper-bushes pricked one's fingers when one went a-catching

butterflies . . . One could almost see the wind in the undulations of the

pine grasses . . .

[Illustration]

The little girls bathed in a limpid brook where one found red shells

under the flowering laurels: and there were flowers upon the water, and

flowers all over the mead, and great lilacs upon the mountains, and the

line of the mountain was that of a young breast . . .

Chrysis closed her eyes with a faint smile which suddenly died away. The

idea of death had just occurred to her. And she felt that, until the

last, she would be incapable of ceasing to think.

"Ah!" she said to herself, "what have I done? Why did I meet that man:

Why did he listen to me? Why did I let myself be caught in the trap? How

is it that, even now, I regret nothing?

"Not to love or to die: that is the choice God has given me. What have I

done to deserve punishment?"

And fragments of sacred verses occurred to her that she had heard quoted

in her childhood. She had not thought of them for seven years. But they

returned, one after the other, with an implacable precision, to apply to

her life and predict her penalty.

She murmured:

"It is written:

I remember thy love when thou wast young.

For of old thou hast broken thy yoke.

And burst thy bonds;

And thou hast said: I will no longer serve.

But upon every high hill,

And under every green tree,

Thou hast wandered, playing the harlot. [1]

"It is written:

I will follow after my lovers,

Who give me my bread and my wine,

And my wool and my flax,

And my oil and my wine. [2]

"It is written:

How canst thou say: I am not polluted?

See thy way in the valley,

Know what thou hast done,

O thou dromedary traversing her ways,

O thou wild ass,

Painting and ever lustful,

Who could prevent thee from satisfying thy desire? [3]

"It is written:

_She has played the harlot in the land of Egypt._

She has doted upon paramours

Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses,

And whose issue is like the issue of horses.

Thus thou callest to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth,

In bruising thy teats by the Egyptians

For the paps of thy youth." [4]

"Oh!" she cried. "It is I! It is I!"

"And it is written again:

Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers,

And thou wouldst return again to me! saith the Lord. [5]

"But my chastisement also is written:

Behold: I raise up thy lovers against thee:

They shall judge thee according to their judgments.

They shall take away thy nose and thine ears,

And thy remnant shall fall by the sword. [6]

"And again:

She is undone; she is stripped naked, she is led away

Her servants wail like doves captive

And tabor upon their breasts. [7]

"But does one know what the Scripture says?"

she added to console herself. "Is it not written elsewhere:

I will not punish your daughters when they commit

whoredom. [8]

"And elsewhere does not Scripture give this advice:

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a

merry heart: for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments

be always white, and let thy head lack no ointment. Live

joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life

of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun; for there

is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave,

whither thou goest. [9]

She shivered, and repeated in a low voice:

For there is no work, nor device nor knowledge, nor wisdom in

the grave, _whither thou goest!_

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to see the

sun. [10]

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee

in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart and

in the sight of thine eyes, or ever thou goest to thy long home

and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord

be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken

at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, or the dust

return to the earth as it was. [11]

Shivering once more, she repeated slowly:

Or the dust return to the earth as it was.

And as she took her head in her hands in order to stifle her thoughts,

she suddenly felt, without having foreseen it, the mortuary form of her

cranium through the living skin: the empty temples, the enormous orbits,

the flat nose under the cartilage, and the protruding jaws.

Horror! this it was, then, that she was about to become! With frightful

lucidity, she had the vision of her corpse, and she passed her hands

over her whole body in order to probe to the bottom an idea which,

though simple, had never yet occurred to her--that she bore _her

skeleton within her_, that it was not a result of death, a

metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing one carries about, a spectre

inseparable from the human form, and that the framework of life is

already the symbol of the tomb.

A furious desire to live, to see everything again, to begin everything

again, to do everything again, suddenly came over her. It was a revolt

in the presence of death: the impossibility of admitting that she would

never see the evening of the dawning day: the impossibility of

understanding how this beauty, this body, this active thought, this

opulent life of the flesh could cease to be, in its zenith, and go to

rottenness.

The door opened quietly.

Demetrios entered.

[1] _Jeremiah_ II, 2, 20.

[2] _Hosea_ II, 7.

[3] _Jeremiah_ II, 23, 24.

[4] _Ezekiel_ XXIII, 20, 21.

[5] _Jeremiah_ III, 1.

[6] _Ezekiel_ XXIII, 22, 25.

[7] _Nabum_ III, 8.

[8] _Hosea_ IV, 14.

[9] _Ecclesiastes_ IX, 7, 10.

[10] _Ecclesiastes_ XI, 7.

[11] _Ecclestiastes_ XII, 1, 8, 9.

II

DUST RETURNS TO EARTH

"Demetrios!" she cried.

And she rushed forward.

But after carefully dropping the wooden bolt, the young man remained

motionless, and his glance betrayed such profound tranquility that

Chrysis was suddenly stricken with a cold chill.

She had hoped for an impulse of generosity, a movement of the arms, the

lips, anything, an outstretched hand . . .

Demetrios did not move.

He waited in silence for an instant, in an extremely correct attitude,

as if he wished clearly to disavow all responsibility in the case.

Then, seeing that nothing was asked of him, he strode towards the window

and planted himself in the embrasure to contemplate the dawn of day.

Chrysis sat upon the low bed, with a fixed look in her dulled eyes.

Then Demetrios began to commune with himself.

"It is better thus," He said to himself. "Such trivial amusements on the

very eve of death would, as a matter of fact, be most lugubrious. I

wonder, however, that she should not have had a presentiment of it from

the very beginning, and I marvel that she should have received me so

enthusiastically. As for me, it is an adventure terminated. I regret

somewhat this denouement, for all things considered, the only crime of

which Chrysis is guilty is to have expressed very frankly an ambition

which might have been shared by most women, without doubt, and if it

were not necessary to cast a victim to the public indignation, I should

be satisfied with the banishment of this too-ardent young woman, in

order to get rid of her and at the same time leave her the joys of life.

But there has been a scandal, and none can stop the course of events.

Such are the effects of passion. Thoughtless sensuality, or its

contrary, the idea without the reality, do not involve these fatal

consequences. We ought to have many mistresses, but to beware, with the

help of the gods, of forgetting that all mouths resemble one another."

[Illustration: Chrysis sat upon the low bed.]

Having thus, in an audacious aphorism, summed up one of his moral

theories, he lightly resumed the normal course of his ideas.

He remembered vaguely an invitation to dine that he had accepted for the

night before and then forgotten in the whirl of events, and he resolved

to send an apology.

He considered whether he should put his slave-tailor up for sale, an old

man who had remained attached to the fashionable cut of the former

regime, and who succeeded very imperfectly with the new puckered

tunics.

His mind was even so free from all preoccupation that he stumped out

upon the wall a rough study of his group of _Zagreus and the Titans_, a

variant which modified the position of the principal character's right

arm.

Hardly had he finished, when a gentle knock was heard at the door.

Demetrios opened without haste. The old executioner entered, followed by

two helmeted hoplites.

"I bring the little cup," he said, smiling obsequiously at the royal

lover.

Demetrios kept silence.

Chrysis, half beside herself, raised her head. "Come, my girl,"

continued the gaoler, "the hour has come. The hemlock is crushed. There

is really nothing left but to take it. Do not be afraid. There is no

pain."

Chrysis looked at Demetrios, who did not turn away his eyes.

Still continuing to regard him with her great black eyes that were

rimmed with green light, Chrysis stretched out her hand, took the cup,

and slowly raised it to her mouth.

She dipped her lips in it. The bitterness of the poison and also the

pangs of the poisoning had been tempered with honey and narcotics.

She drank half the contents of the cup, then, whether it was that she

had seen this gesture at the Theatre, in the _Thyestes_ of Agathon, or

whether it was really the outcome of a spontaneous sentiment, she handed

the poison to Demetrios. But the young man waved away this indiscreet

suggestion.

Then the Galilæan drank the rest of the beverage even to the green

slime at the bottom. An agonising smile overspread her cheeks, a smile

in which there was certainly a little contempt.

[Illustration]

"What must I do?" she said to the gaoler.

"Walk about the room, my girl, until you feel a heaviness in the legs.

Then lie down on your back, and the poison will do the rest."

Chrysis walked to the window, leaned her head against the wall, with her

temples in her hand, and cast a last look of vanished youth upon the

violet dawn.

The orient was bathed in a sea of colour. A long band, livid as a water

leaf, enveloped the horizon with an olive-coloured girdle. Higher up,

several tints sprang out of one another, liquid sheets of blue-green

sky, irisated, or lilac-coloured, melting insensibly into the leaden

azure of the upper heavens. Then, these tiers of colour rose slowly, a

line of gold appeared, mounted, expanded: a thin thread of purple

illumined this melancholic dawn, and, in a flood of blood, the sun was

born.

It is written:

"The light is sweet . . ."

She remained thus, standing, so long as her legs could sustain her. When

she showed signs of reeling, the hoplites carried her to the bed.

There, the old man disposed the white folds of the robe along the rigid

limbs. Then he touched her feet and asked her:

"Do you feel anything?"

[Illustration: The hoplites carried her to the bed.]

She answered:

"No."

He touched her knees and asked her:

"Do you feel anything?"

She made a sign to him that she felt nothing, and suddenly, with a

movement of her mouth and shoulders (for her very hands were dead),

seized with a supreme frenzy of passion, and perhaps with regret, at

this sterile hour, she raised herself towards Demetrios, but before he

could answer she fell back lifeless, with the light for ever gone from

out of her eyes.

Then the executioner covered her face with the upper folds of her

garment: and one of the assistant soldiers, supposing that a more tender

past had once united this young man and woman, severed with his sword

the uttermost lock of her hair, and it fell down upon the paving-stones.

Demetrios took it in his hand, and in truth it was Chrysis in her

entirety, the gold that survived her beauty, the very pretext of her

name . . .

He took the warm lock between his thumb and his fingers, severed the

strands slowly, dropped them to the-earth, and ground them into the dust

under the sole of his shoe.

III

CHRYSIS IMMORTAL

When Demetrios found himself alone in his red studio, littered with

marble statuary, rough models, trestles, and scaffoldings, he

endeavoured to apply himself once more to his work.

With his chisel in his left hand and his mallet in his right, he

resumed, but without ardour, an interrupted rough study. It was the

breast and shoulders of a gigantic horse intended for the temple of

Poseidon. Under the close-cropped mane, the skin of the neck, puckered

by a movement of the head, curved in geometrically like an undulating

marine basin.

Three days before, the details of this regular muscular arrangement had

entirely absorbed all Demetrios's interest; but on the morning of the

death of Chrysis, the aspect of things seemed changed. Less calm than he

could have wished, Demetrios could not succeed in fixing his preoccupied

thoughts. A sort of veil which he could not lift interposed itself

between him and the marble. He throw down his mallet and began to pace

about amongst the dusty pedestals.

Suddenly he crossed the court, called a slave, and said to her:

"Prepare the piscina and the aromatics. Bathe me and perfume me, give me

my white garments, and light the round perfume-pans."

When he had finished his toilette, he summoned two other slaves.

"Go," said he, "to the Queen's prison; hand the gaoler this lump of

potter's earth, and tell him to place it in the death-chamber of Chrysis

the courtesan. If the body has not already been thrown into the dungeon,

charge him to take no action until he receives my orders. Go quickly."

He put a roughing-chisel into the fold of his girdle and opened the

principal door which gave upon the deserted avenue of the Dromos.

Suddenly he halted on the threshold, stupefied by the immense midday

light of Africa.

[Illustration]

The street was certainly white and the houses white too, but the flame

of the perpendicular sunbeams bathed the gleaming surfaces with such a

fury of reflections that the limestone walls and the pavements danced

with prodigious incandescence in dark blue, red, green, raw ochre, and

hyacinth. Great palpitating pillars of colour seemed to hang in the air

and to be superimposed in transparent masses over the shimmering,

flaming facades. The very lines of the houses lost their shape behind

this dazzling magnificence; the right wall of the street rounded off

dimly into space, floated like a piece of drapery, and in certain places

became invisible. A dog lying near a street-post was literally bathed in

crimson.

Lost in admiration, Demetrios saw a symbol of his new existence in this

spectacle. He had lived long enough in solitary night, in silence, and

in peace. Long enough had he taken moon-beams for light, and, for his

ideal, the languid line of a too delicate pose, His work was not virile.

There was an icy shiver on the skin of his statues.

During the tragic adventure which had just convulsed his intelligence,

he had, for the first time, felt the great living breath of life inflate

his breast. If he feared a second ordeal; if, victorious in the

struggle, he swore above all things not to run the risk of flinching

from the beautiful attitude he had adopted in the face of the world, at

any rate he had just realised that that only is worthy of being imagined

which penetrates by means of marble, colour or speech to one of the

profundities of human emotion--and that formal beauty is merely so much

uncertain matter, ever capable of being transfigured by the expression

of sorrow or joy.

Just as he was finishing this line of thought, he arrived before the

door of the criminal prison.

His two slaves were waiting for him.

"We have brought the lump of red clay," they said. "The body is on the

bed. It has not been touched. The gaoler salutes you and hopes you will

not forget him."

The young man entered in silence, Followed the long corridor, mounted

some steps, and penetrated into the death-chamber. He carefully closed

the door after him.

The body lay upon the bed, with the head covered with a veil, the

fingers extended, and the feet close together. The fingers were laden

with rings: two silver bangles encircled the pale ankles, and the nails

of each toe were still red with powder.

Demetrios laid his hand on the veil in order to raise it; but he had no

sooner touched it than a dozen flies rapidly escaped from the opening.

He shivered from head to foot. Nevertheless he removed the tissue of

white wool and wound it round the hair.

Chrysis' face had little by little become illumined with the expression

of eternity that death dispenses to the eyelids and hair of corpses. In

the bluish whiteness of the cheeks, the azure veinlets gave the immobile

head the appearance of cold marble. The diaphanous nostrils were

distended above the fine lips. The fragile ears had something immaterial

about them. Never, in any light, even in his dreams, had Demetrios seen

such superhuman beauty and such a brilliancy of fading skin.

* * * * *

And then he remembered the words uttered by Chrysis during their first

interview: "You only know my face. You do not know how beautiful I am!"

An intense emotion suddenly stifles him. He wishes to know. He has the

power.

Of his three days of passion he wishes to keep a souvenir which shall

last longer than himself.--to lay bare the admirable body, to pose it

as a model in the violent attitude in which he saw it in his dreams, and

to create, from the corpse, the statue of Immortal Life.

He unclasps the buckle and unties the knot. He throws back the

draperies. The body is heavy. He raises it. The head falls backwards.

The breasts tremble. The arms drop pendent. He withdraws the robe

entirely and casts it into the middle of the chamber. Heavily, the body

falls back again.

Placing his two hands under the icy armpits, Demetrios pulls the dead

woman to the upper end of the bed. He turns the head over on to the left

cheek, collects and arranges the hair splendidly under the back. Then he

raises the right arm, bends the forearm over the forehead, closes the

still soft fingers over the stuff of a cushion: two admirable muscular

lines, descending from the ear and elbow, meet under the right breast

and bear it like a fruit.

[Illustration: The rough figure takes life and precision.]

Afterwards, he arranges the legs, one stretched out stiffly on one side,

the other with the knee raised and the heel almost touching the croup.

He rectifies a few details, turns over the waist a little to the left,

straightens out the right foot and takes off the bracelets, the

necklaces and the rings, in order not to mar by a single dissonance the

pure and complete harmony of feminine nudity.

The Model has taken the pose.

Demetrios casts the dark lump of clay upon the table. He presses it,

kneads it, lengthens it out into human form: a sort of barbarous monster

takes shape under his burning fingers: he looks.

The motionless corpse preserves its attitude of passion. But a thin

thread of blood trickles from the right nostril, flows upon the lip, and

falls, drop by drop, under the half-opened mouth.

Demetrios continues. The rough figure takes life and precision. A

prodigious left arm circles over the body as if it were clasping someone

in a tight embrace. The muscles of the thigh stand out violently. The

heels are bent upwards.

* * * * *

When night mounted from the earth and darkened the low chamber,

Demetrios had finished the statue.

He had it carried to his studio by four slaves. That very evening, by

lamplight, he had a block of Parian marble rough-hewed, and a year after

that day he was still working at the marble.

IV

PITY

"Gaoler, open! Gaoler, open!"

Rhodis and Myrtocleia knocked at the closed door.

The door opened half way.

"What do you want?"

"To see our friend," said Myrto. "To see Chrysis, poor Chrysis, who died

this morning."

"It is not allowed; go away!"

"Oh, let us enter. No one will know. We will tell no one. She was our

friend, let us see her once more. We will go out again. We will go out

again quickly. We will make no noise."

"And supposing I am caught, my little girls? Supposing I am punished on

your account? You will not pay the fine?"

"You will not be caught. You are alone here. There are no other inmates

of the prison. You have sent away the soldiers. We know this. Let us

enter."

"Well, well! Do not stay too long. Here is the key. It is the third

door. Tell me when you go away. It is late and I want to go to bed."

The kindly old man handed them a key of beaten iron which hung from his

girdle, and the two little virgins ran immediately, on their noiseless

sandals, along the obscure corridors.

Then the gaoler re-entered his lodge, and did not insist any further

upon a useless surveillance. The penalty of imprisonment was not applied

in Greek Egypt, and the little white house that was placed under the

care of the gentle old man served merely for the reception of culprits

condemned to death. In the interval between executions it remained

almost deserted.

The moment the great key entered the lock, Rhodis arrested her friend's

hand:

"I do not know whether I dare see her," she said. "I loved her well,

Myrto . . . I am afraid . . . Go in first, will you?"

Myrtocleia pushed open the door; but as soon as she had cast a glance

into the chamber she cried:

"Do not enter, Rhodis! Wait for me here."

"Oh! What is there? You are afraid too . . . What is there on the bed? Is

she not dead?"

"Yes, wait for me . . . I will tell you . . . Stay in the corridor and do

not look."

The body was still in the ecstatic attitude in which Demetrius had

arranged it for his Statue of Immortal Life. But the transports of

extreme joy confine upon the convulsions of extreme pain, and Myrtocleia

asked herself what atrocious sufferings, what agonies had produced such

an upheaval in the corpse.

[Illustration]

She approached the bed on tiptoe.

The thread of blood continued to flow from the diaphanous nostril. The

skin of the body was perfectly white; the pale tips of the breasts

receded like delicate navels; not a single rose-coloured reflection gave

life to the ephemeral recumbent statue; but some emerald-coloured spots

that tinted the smooth belly signified that millions of new lives were

germinating in the scarcely--cold flesh, and were demanding "the right

of succession!"

Myrtocleia took the dead arm and laid it flat along the hip. She tried

also to pull out the left leg; but the knee was almost rigid, and she

did not succeed in pulling it out completely.

"Rhodis," she said, in a troubled voice, "come; you can enter now."

The trembling child penetrated into the chamber. Her features

contracted, her eyes opened wide.

As soon as they felt that there were two of them, they fell into one

another's arms and burst into long-drawn sobs.

"Poor Chrysis! Poor Chrysis!" repeated the child.

They kissed one another on the cheek with a desperate affection from

which all sensuality had disappeared and the taste of the tears upon

their lips filled their forlorn little souls with bitterness.

They wept, and wailed, they looked at one another other with anguish,

and sometimes they spoke both together in a hoarse voice of agony, and

their words ended in sobs.

"How we loved her! She was not a friend for us. She was a little mother

for both of us . . ."

Rhodis repeated:

"Like a little mother . . ."

And Myrto, dragging her to the side of the dead woman, said in a low

voice:

"Kiss her."

They both bent down, and placed their hands upon the bed, as, with fresh

sobs, they touched the icy forehead with their lips.

And Myrto took the head between her two hands, buried them in the hair,

and spoke to her thus:

* * * * *

"Chrysis, my Chrysis, you who were the most beautiful and the most

adored of women, who were so like the goddess that the people took you

for her, where are you now, what have they done with you? You lived to

impart beneficent joy. No fruit was ever sweeter than your mouth, no

light brighter than your eyes; your skin was a glorious robe that you

would not veil; voluptuousness floated upon it like a perpetual odour;

and when you unclasped your hair, all desires flowed from it; and when

you clasped your naked arms, one implored the gods for permission

to die."

* * * * *

Rhodis sat huddled up on the ground, sobbing.

* * * * *

"Chrysis, my Chrysis." pursued Myrtocleia, "but yesterday you were

living, and young, and hoping for length of days, and now you are dead,

and no power on earth can induce you to speak a word to us. You have

closed your eyes, and we were not there. You have suffered and you did

not know that we wept for you behind the walls. Your dying eyes looked

for someone and did not meet our eyes stricken with sorrow and pity."

The flute-girl wept continually. The singing girl took her by the hand.

* * * * *

Chrysis, my Chrysis, you once told us that one day, thanks to you, we

should marry. Our union is one of tears, and sad is the betrothal of

Rhodis and Myrtocleia. But sorrow, rather than love, welds together two

enclasped hands. Those who have once wept together will never desert one

another. We are going to lay your dear body under the ground,

Chrysidion, and we will both of us cut off our hair upon your tomb.

* * * * *

She enveloped the beautiful body and then she said to Rhodis:

"Help me."

[Illustration]

They lifted her up gently; but the burden was a heavy one for the little

musicians, and they laid it down upon the ground.

"Let us take off our sandals," said Myrto. "Let us walk bare-footed in

the corridors. The gaoler is surely asleep. If we do not wake him we

shall pass, but if he sees us he will prevent us . . . To-morrow matters

not: when he sees the empty bed, he will say to the Queen's soldiers

that he has thrown the body into a ditch, according to the law. Let us

fear nothing, Rhodis! . . . Put your sandals in your girdle, like me. And

come! Take the body under the knees. Let the feet hang behind. Walk

without noise, slowly, slowly . . ."

V

PIETY

After the turning of the second street, they laid the body down a second

time in order in put on their sandals. Rhodis's feet, too delicate to

walk naked, were torn and bleeding.

The night was full of brilliancy. The town was full of silence. The

iron-coloured shadows lay in square blocks in the middle of the streets,

according to the profile of the houses.

The little virgins resumed their load.

"Where are we going to?" asked the child. "Where are we going to bury

it?"

"In the cemetery of Hermanubis. It is always deserted, it will be in

peace there."

"Poor Chrysis! Could I ever have thought that on her last day, I should

bear her body without torches and without funeral car, secretly, like a

thing stolen."

Then both began to talk volubly as if they were afraid of the silence,

cheek by jowl with the corpse. The last day of Chrysis's life filled

them with astonishment. Where had she got the mirror, the necklace and

the comb? She could not have taken the pearls of the goddess herself.

The temple was too well guarded for a courtesan to be able to enter it.

Then somebody must have acted for her? But who? She was not known to

possess any lover amongst the Stolists to whom the guard of the divine

statue was entrusted. And then, if someone had acted for her, why had

she not denounced him? And, in any case, why these three crimes? Of what

had they availed her, except to deliver her over to punishment? A woman

does not commit such follies without an object, unless she be in love?

Was Chrysis in love? and who could it be?

"We shall never know", concluded the flute-player. "She has taken her

secret with her, and even if she had an accomplice he would be the last

to enlighten us."

At this point, Rhodis, who had been resting for several instants, sighed:

[Illustration: The little virgins resumed their load]

"I cannot carry her any longer, Myrto. I shall fall down on my knees, I

am broken with fatigue and grief."

Myrtocleia took her by the neck:

"Try again, my darling. We _must_ carry her. Her nether life is at

stake. If she has no sepulture and no obol in her hand, she will roam

eternally on the banks of the river of hell, and when we in our turn,

Rhodis, go down to the dead, she will reproach us with our impiety, and

we shall not know what to answer her."

But the child, overcome with weakness, burst into tears.

"Quickly, quickly!" exclaimed Myrtocleia.

"Somebody is coming along the end of the street. Place yourself in front

of the body with me. Let us hide it behind our tunics . . . If it is seen,

all is lost . . ."

She stooped short.

"It is Timon. I recognise him. Timon with four women. Ah, gods! what is

going to happen? He laughs at everything and will mock us . . . But no,

stay here, Rhodis; I will speak to him."

And, inspired by a sudden thought, she ran down the street to meet the

little group.

"Timon," she said, and her voice was full of supplication; "Timon, stop.

I have grave words to utter to you alone."

"My poor little thing," said the young man, "how excited you are! Have

you lost your shoulder-knot or have you dropped your doll and broken its

nose? This would be an irreparable disaster."

The girl threw him a look of anguish; but the four women, Philotis, Seso

of Cnidos, Callistion, and Tryphera, were already clamouring round her

with impatience.

"Get away, little idiot!" said Tryphera, "if you have dried up your

nurse's teats, we cannot help it, we have no milk. It is almost

daylight, you ought to be in bed; what business have children to roam

about in the moonlight?"

"Her nurse?" said Philotis. "She wants to steal away Timon."

"The whip! She deserves the whip!" said Callistion, who put one arm

round Myrto's waist, lifting her off the ground and raising her little

blue tunic, But Seso interposed:

"You are mad," she cried. "Myrto has never known a man. If she calls

Timon, it is not to sleep with him. Let her alone, and let us have done

with it!"

"Come," said Timon, "what do you want with me? Come here. Whisper in my

ear. Is it really serious?"

"The body of Chrysis is there, in the street," said the young girl

tremblingly. "We are carrying into the cemetary, my little friend and I.

but it is heavy, and we ask you if you will help us. It will not lake

long. Immediately afterwards you can rejoin your women . . ."

Timon's look reassured her.

"Poor girls! To think that I laughed! You are better than we are . . .

Certainly I will help you. Go and join your friend and wait for me, I am

coming."

Turning to the four women . . .

"Go to my house," he said, "by the street of the Potters. I shall be

there in a short time. Do not follow me."

Rhodis was still sitting in front of the corpse. When she saw Timon

coming, she implored him:

"Do not tell! We have stolen it to save her shade. Keep our secret, we

will love you, Timon."

"Have no fears," said the young man.

He took the body under the shoulders and Myrto took it under the knees,

and they walked on in silence, with Rhodis tottering along behind.

Timon said not a word. For the second time in two days, human passion

had carried off one of the transitory guests of his bed, and he

marvelled at the unreason that drove people out of the enchanted road

that leads to perfect happiness.

"Impassivity," he thought, "indifference, quietude, voluptuous serenity!

who amongst men will appreciate you? We fight, we struggle, we hope,

when one thing only is worth having: namely, to extract from the

fleeting moment all the joys it is capable of affording, and to leave

one's bed as little as possible."

They reached the gate of the ruined necropolis.

"Where shall we put it?" said Myrto.

"Near the god."

"Where is the Statue? I have never been in here before. I was afraid of

the tombs and the inscriptions. I do not know the Hermanubis. It is

probably in the centre of the little garden. Let us look for it. I once

came here before when I was a child, in quest of a lost gazelle. Let us

follow the alley of white sycamores. We cannot fail to discern it."

Nor did they fail to find it.

Dawn mingled its delicate violets with the moonbeams on the monuments. A

vague and distant harmony floated in the cypress branches. The regular

rustling of the palms, so similar to tiny drops of falling rain, cast an

illusion of freshness.

Timon opened with difficulty a pink stone imbedded in the earth. The

sepulture was excavated beneath the hands of the funerary god, whose

attitude was that of the embalmer. It must have contained a body,

formerly; but at present nothing was to be found but a handful of

brownish dust.

[Illustration: They passed the limp body to Timon.]

The young man jumped into the grave, as far as his waist, and held out

his arms:

"Give it to me," he said to Myrto. "I am going to lay it at the far end,

and we will close up the tomb again."

But Rhodis threw herself on the body.

"No, do not bury her so quickly! I want to see her again! One last time!

One last time! Chrysis! My poor Chrysis! Ah! the horror of it . . . How she

has changed! . . ."

Myrtocleia had just disarranged the blanket which covered the dead

woman, and the sight of the sudden change the face had undergone made

the two girls recoil. The checks had become square, the eyelids and lips

were puffed out like half-a-dozen white pads. Nothing was left of all

that superhuman beauty. They drew the thick winding-sheet over her

again: but Myrto slipped her hand under the stuff and placed an obol for

Charon in her fingers.

Then, shaken by interminable sobs, they passed the limp inert body to

Timon.

And when Chrysis was laid in the bottom of the sandy tomb, Timon opened

the winding-sheet again. He fixed the silver obol tightly in the

nerveless hand; he propped up the head with a flat stone; he spread the

long deep-gold hair over her body from the forehead to the knees.

Then he left the tomb, and the musicians, kneeling before the yawning

opening, cut off their young hair, bound it together in one sheaf, and

buried it with the dead.

[Greek: TOIONDE PERAS ESCHE TO SYNTAGMA

TÔN PERI CHRYSIDA KAI DÊMÊTRION]

[Illustration]