ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS
And Other Fantastic Romances
by
THEOPHILE GAUTIER
Published by Brentano's
at Union Square. New York
1900
TRANSLATED BY LAFCADIO HEARN
_The love that caught strange light from death's own eyes,_
_And filled death's lips with fiery words and sighs,_
_And, half asleep, let feed from veins of his_
_Her close, red, warm snake's-mouth, Egyptian-wise:_
_And that great night of love more strange than this,_
_When she that made the whole world's bale and bliss_
_Made king of the whole world's desire a slave_
_And killed him in mid-kingdom with a kiss._
SWINBURNE.
"_Memorial verses on the death of Théophile Gautier_."
TO THE READER
The stories composing this volume have been selected for translation
from the two volumes of romances and tales by Théophile Gautier
respectively entitled _Nouvelles_ and _Romans et Contes_. They afford in
the original many excellent examples of that peculiar beauty of fancy
and power of painting with words which made Gautier the most brilliant
literary artist of his time. No doubt their warmth of coloring has been
impoverished and their fantastic enchantment weakened by the process of
transformation into a less voluptuous tongue; yet enough of the original
charm remains, we trust, to convey a just idea of the French author's
rich imaginative power and ornate luxuriance of style.
The verses of Swinburne referring to the witchery of the novelette which
opens the volume, and to the peculiarly sweet and strange romance which
follows, sufficiently indicate the extraordinary art of these tales. At
least three of the stories we have attempted to translate rank among the
most remarkable literary productions of the century.
These little romances are characterized, however, by merits other than
those of mere literary workmanship; they are further remarkable for a
wealth of erudition--picturesque learning, we might say--which often
lends them an actual archæologic value, like the paintings of some
scholarly artist, some Alma Tadema, who with fair magic of
color-blending evokes for us eidolons of ages vanished and civilizations
passed away.
Thus one finds in the delightful fantasy of _Arria Marcella_ not only a
dream of "Pompeiian Days," pictured with an idealistic brilliancy beyond
the art of Coomans, but a rich knowledge, likewise, of all that
fascinating lore gleaned by antiquarian research amid the ashes of the
sepultured city--a knowledge enriched in no small degree by local study,
and presented with a descriptive power finely strengthened by personal
observation. It is something more than the charming imagination of a
poetic dreamer which paints for us the blue sea "unrolling its long
volutes of foam" upon a beach as black and smooth as sifted charcoal;
the fissured summit of Vesuvius, out-pouring white threads of smoke from
its crannies "as from the orifices of a perfuming pan;" and the
far-purple hills "with outlines voluptuously undulating, like the hips
of a woman."
And throughout these romances one finds the same evidences of
archæologic study, of artistic observation, of imagination fostered by
picturesque fact. The glory of the Greek kings of Lydia glows goldenly
again in the pages of _Le Roi Candaule_; the massive gloom and
melancholy weirdness of ancient Egypt is reflected as in a necromancer's
mirror throughout _Une Nuit de Cléopâtre_. It is in the Egyptian
fantasies, perhaps, that the author's peculiar descriptive skill appears
to most advantage; the still fresh hues of the hierophantic paintings,
the pictured sarcophagi, and the mummy-gilding seem to meet the reader's
eye with the gratification of their bright contrasts; a faint perfume
of unknown balm seems to hover over the open pages; and mysterious
sphinxes appear to look on "with that undefinable rose-granite smile
that mocks our modern wisdom."
Excepting _Omphale_ and _La Morte Amoureuse,_ the stories selected for
translation are mostly antique in composition and coloring; the former
being Louis-Quinze, the latter mediæval rather than aught else. But all
alike frame some exquisite delineation of young love-fancies; some
admirable picture of what Gautier in the _Histoire du Romantisme_ has
prettily termed "the graceful _succubi_ that haunt the happy slumbers of
youth."
And what dreamful student of the Beautiful has not been once enamoured
of an Arria Marcella, and worshipped on the altar of his heart those
ancient gods "who loved life and youth and beauty and pleasure"? How
many a lover of mediæval legend has in fancy gladly bartered the blood
of his veins for some phantom Clarimonde? What true artist has not at
some time been haunted by the image of a Nyssia, fairer than all
daughters of men, lovelier than all fantasies realized in stone--a
Pygmalion-wrought marble transmuted by divine alchemy to a being of
opalescent flesh and ichor-throbbing veins?
Gautier was an artist in the common acceptation of the term, as well as
a poet and a writer of romance; and in those pleasant fragments of
autobiography scattered through the _Histoire du Romantisme_ we find his
averment that at the commencement of the Romantic movement of 1830 he
was yet undecided whether to adopt literature or art as a profession;
but, finding it "easier to paint with words than with colors," he
finally decided upon the pen as his weapon in the new warfare against
"the hydra of classicism with its hundred peruked heads." As a writer,
however, he remained the artist still. His pages were pictures, his
sentences touches of color; he learned, indeed, to "paint with words" as
no other writer of the century has done; and created a powerful
impression, not only upon the literature of his day, but even, it may be
said, upon the language of his nation.
Possessed of an almost matchless imaginative power, and a sense of
beauty as refined as that of an antique sculptor, Gautier so perfects
his work as to leave nothing for the imagination of his readers to
desire. He insists that they should behold the author's fancy precisely
as the author himself fancied it with all its details; the position of
objects, the effects of light, the disposition of shadow, the material
of garments, the texture of stuffs, the interstices of stonework, the
gleam of a lamp upon sharp angles of furniture, the whispering sound of
trailing silk, the tone of a voice, the expression of a face--all is
visible, audible, tangible. You can find nothing in one of his
picturesque scenes which has not been treated with a studied accuracy of
minute detail that leaves no vacancy for the eye to light upon, no
hiatus for the imagination to supply. This is the art of painting
carried to the highest perfection in literature. It is not wonderful
that such a man should at times sacrifice style to description; and he
has himself acknowledged an occasional abuse of violent coloring.
Naturally, a writer of this kind pays small regard to the demands of
prudery. His work being that of the artist, he claims the privilege of
the sculptor and the painter in delineations of the beautiful. A perfect
human body is to him the most beautiful of objects. He does not seek to
veil its loveliness with cumbrous drapery; he delights to behold it and
depict it in its "divine nudity;" he views it with the eyes of the
Corinthian statuary or the Pompeiian fresco-painter; he idealizes even
the ideal of beauty: under his treatment flesh becomes diaphanous, eyes
are transformed to orbs of prismatic light, features take tints of
celestial loveliness. Like the Hellenic sculptor, he is not satisfied
with beauty of form alone, but must add a vital glow of delicate
coloring to the white limbs and snowy bosom of marble.
It is the artist, therefore, who must judge of Gautier's creations. To
the lovers of the loveliness of the antique world, the lovers of
physical beauty and artistic truth, of the charm of youthful dreams and
young passion in its blossoming, of poetic ambitions and the sweet
pantheism that finds all Nature vitalized by the Spirit of the
Beautiful--to such the first English version of these graceful fantasies
is offered in the hope that it may not be found wholly unworthy of the
original.
L.H.
NEW ORLEANS, 1882.
ONE OF CLEOPATRA'S NIGHTS
CHAPTER I
Nineteen hundred years ago from the date of this writing, a
magnificently gilded and painted cangia was descending the Nile as
rapidly as fifty long, flat oars, which seemed to crawl over the
furrowed water like the legs of a gigantic scarabæus, could impel it.
This cangia was narrow, long, elevated at both ends in the form of a new
moon, elegantly proportioned, and admirably built for speed; the figure
of a ram's head, surmounted by a golden globe, armed the point of the
prow, showing that the vessel belonged to some personage of royal
blood.
In the centre of the vessel arose a flat-roofed cabin--a sort of _naos_,
or tent of honor--colored and gilded, ornamented with palm-leaf
mouldings, and lighted by four little square windows.
Two chambers, both decorated with hieroglyphic paintings, occupied the
horns of the crescent. One of them, the larger, had a second story of
lesser height built upon it, like the _châteaux gaillards_ of those
fantastic galleys of the sixteenth century drawn by Della-Bella; the
other and smaller chamber, which also served as a pilot-house, was
surmounted with a triangular pediment.
In lieu of a rudder, two immense oars, adjusted upon stakes decorated
with stripes of paint, which served in place of our modern row-locks,
extended into the water in rear of the vessel like the webbed feet of a
swan; heads crowned with _pshents_, and bearing the allegorical horn
upon their chins, were sculptured upon the handles of these huge oars,
which were manœuvred by the pilot as he stood upon the deck of the
cabin above.
He was a swarthy man, tawny as new bronze, with bluish surface gleams
playing over his dark skin; long oblique eyes, hair deeply black and
all plaited into little cords, full lips, high cheek-bones, ears
standing out from the skull--the Egyptian type in all its purity. A
narrow strip of cotton about his loins, together with five or six
strings of glass beads and a few amulets, comprised his whole costume.
He appeared to be the only one on board the cangia; for the rowers
bending over their oars, and concealed from view by the gunwales, made
their presence known only through the symmetrical movements of the oars
themselves, which spread open alternately on either side of the vessel,
like the ribs of a fan, and fell regularly back into the water after a
short pause.
Not a breath of air was stirring; and the great triangular sail of the
cangia, tied up and bound to the lowered mast with a silken cord,
testified that all hope of the wind rising had been abandoned.
The noonday sun shot his arrows perpendicularly from above; the
ashen-hued slime of the river banks reflected the fiery glow; a raw
light, glaring and blinding in its intensity, poured down in torrents
of flame; the azure of the sky whitened in the heat as a metal whitens
in the furnace; an ardent and lurid fog smoked in the horizon. Not a
cloud appeared in the sky--a sky mournful and changeless as Eternity.
The water of the Nile, sluggish and wan, seemed to slumber in its
course, and slowly extend itself in sheets of molten tin. No breath of
air wrinkled its surface, or bowed down upon their stalks the cups of
the lotus-flowers, as rigidly motionless as though sculptured; at long
intervals the leap of a bechir or fabaka expanding its belly scarcely
caused a silvery gleam upon the current; and the oars of the cangia
seemed with difficulty to tear their way through the fuliginous film of
that curdled water. The banks were desolate, a solemn and mighty sadness
weighed upon this land, which was never aught else than a vast tomb, and
in which the living appeared to be solely occupied in the work of
burying the dead. It was an arid sadness, dry as pumice stone, without
melancholy, without reverie, without one pearly gray cloud to follow
toward the horizon, one secret spring wherein to lave one's dusty feet;
the sadness of a sphinx weary of eternally gazing upon the desert, and
unable to detach herself from the granite socle upon which she has
sharpened her claws for twenty centuries.
So profound was the silence that it seemed as though the world had
become dumb, or that the air had lost all power of conveying sound. The
only noises which could be heard at intervals were the whisperings and
stifled "chuckling" of the crocodiles, which, enfeebled by the heat,
were wallowing among the bullrushes by the river banks; or the sound
made by some ibis, which, tired of standing with one leg doubled up
against its stomach, and its head sunk between its shoulders, suddenly
abandoned its motionless attitude, and, brusquely whipping the blue air
with its white wings, flew off to perch upon an obelisk or a palm-tree.
The cangia flew like, an arrow over the smooth river-water, leaving
behind it a silvery wake which soon disappeared; and only a few
foam-bubbles rising to break at the surface of the stream bore testimony
to the passage of the vessel, then already out of sight.
The ochre-hued or salmon-colored banks unrolled themselves rapidly, like
scrolls of papyrus, between the double azure of water and sky so similar
in tint that the slender tongue of earth which separated them seemed
like a causeway stretching over an immense lake, and that it would have
been difficult to determine whether the Nile reflected the sky, or
whether the sky reflected the Nile.
The scene continually changed. At one moment were visible gigantic
propylæa, whose sloping walls, painted with large panels of fantastic
figures, were mirrored in the river; pylons with broad-bulging capitals;
stairways guarded by huge crouching sphinxes, wearing caps with lappets
of many folds, and crossing their paws of black basalt below their
sharply projecting breasts; palaces, immeasurably vast, projecting
against the horizon the severe horizontal lines of their entablatures,
where the emblematic globe unfolded its mysterious wings like an eagle's
vast-extending pinions; temples with enormous columns thick as towers,
on which were limned processions of hieroglyphic figures against a
background of brilliant white--all the monstrosities of that Titanic
architecture. Again the eye beheld only land-scapes of desolate
aridity--hills formed of stony fragments from excavations and building
works, crumbs of that gigantic debauch of granite which lasted for more
than thirty centuries; mountains exfoliated by heat, and mangled and
striped with black lines which seemed like the cauterizations of a
conflagration; hillocks humped and deformed, squatting like the
criocephalus of the tombs, and projecting the outlines of their
misshapen attitude against the sky-line; expanses of greenish clay,
reddle, flour-white tufa; and from time to time some steep cliff of dry,
rose-colored granite, where yawned the black mouths of the stone
quarries.
This aridity was wholly unrelieved; no oasis of foliage refreshed the
eye; green seemed to be a color unknown to that nature; only some meagre
palm-tree, like a vegetable crab, appeared from time to time in the
horizon; or a thorny fig-tree brandished its tempered leaves like sword
blades of bronze; or a carthamus-plant, which had found a little
moisture to live upon in the shadow of some fragment of a broken column,
relieved the general uniformity with a speck of crimson.
After this rapid glance at the aspect of the landscape, let us return to
the cangia with its fifty rowers, and, without announcing ourselves,
enter boldly into the _naos_ of honor.
The interior was painted white with green arabesques, bands of
vermilion, and gilt flowers fantastically shaped; an exceedingly fine
rush matting covered the floor; at the further end stood a little bed,
supported upon griffin's feet, having a back resembling that of a modern
lounge or sofa; a stool with four steps to enable one to climb into bed;
and (rather an odd luxury according to our ideas of comfort) a sort of
hemicycle of cedar wood, supported upon a single leg, and designed to
fit the nape of the neck so as to support the head of the person
reclining.
Upon this strange pillow reposed a most charming head, one look of
which once caused the loss of half a world; an adorable, a divine head;
the head of the most perfect woman that ever lived; the most womanly and
most queenly of all women; an admirable type of beauty which the
imagination of poets could never invest with any new grace, and which
dreamers will find forever in the depths of their dreams--it is not
necessary to name Cleopatra.
Beside her stood her favorite slave Charmion, waving a large fan of ibis
feathers; and a young girl was moistening with scented water the little
reed blinds attached to the windows of the _naos_, so that the air might
only enter impregnated with fresh odors.
Near the bed of repose, in a striped vase of alabaster with a slender
neck and a peculiarly elegant, tapering shape, vaguely recalling the
form of a heron, was placed a bouquet of lotus-flowers, some of a
celestial blue, others of a tender rose-color, like the finger-tips of
Isis the great goddess.
Either from caprice or policy, Cleopatra did not wear the Greek dress
that day. She had just attended a panegyris,[1] and was returning to
her summer palace still clad in the Egyptian costume she had worn at the
festival.
Perhaps our fair readers will feel curious to know how Queen Cleopatra
was attired on her return from the Mammisi of Hermonthis whereat were
worshipped the holy triad of the god Mandou, the goddess Ritho, and
their son, Harphra; luckily we are able to satisfy them in this regard.
For headdress Queen Cleopatra wore a kind of very light helmet of beaten
gold, fashioned in the form of the body and wings of the sacred
partridge. The wings, opening downward like fans, covered the temples,
and extending below, almost to the neck, left exposed on either side,
through a small aperture, an ear rosier and more delicately curled than
the shell whence arose that Venus whom the Egyptians named Athor; the
tail of the bird occupied that place where our women wear their
chignons; its body, covered with imbricated feathers, and painted in
variegated enamel, concealed the upper part of the head; and its neck,
gracefully curving forward over the forehead of the wearer, formed
together with its little head a kind of horn-shaped ornament, all
sparkling with precious stones; a symbolic crest, designed like a tower,
completed this odd but elegant headdress. Hair dark as a starless night
flowed from beneath this helmet, and streamed in long tresses over the
fair shoulders whereof the commencement only, alas! was left exposed by
a collarette, or gorget, adorned with many rows of serpentine stones,
azodrachs, and chrysoberyls; a linen robe diagonally cut--a mist of
material, of woven air, _ventus textilis_ as Petronius says, undulated
in vapory whiteness about a lovely body whose outlines it scarcely
shaded with the softest shading. This robe had half-sleeves, tight at
the shoulder, but widening toward the elbows like our _manches-à-sabot_,
and permitting a glimpse of an adorable arm and a perfect hand, the arm
being clasped by six golden bracelets, and the hand adorned with a ring
representing the sacred scarabæus. A girdle, whose knotted ends hung
down in front, confined this free-floating tunic at the waist; a short
cloak adorned with fringing completed the costume; and, if a few
barbarous words will not frighten Parisian ears, we might add that the
robe was called _schenti,_ and the short cloak, _calisiris_.
Finally, we may observe that Queen Cleopatra wore very thin, light
sandals, turned up at the toes, and fastened over the instep, like the
_Souliers-à-la-poulaine_ of the mediæval _chatelaines_.
But Queen Cleopatra did not wear that air of satisfaction which becomes
a woman conscious of being perfectly beautiful and perfectly well
dressed. She tossed and turned in her little bed, and her sudden
movements momentarily disarranged the folds of her gauzy _conopeum_,
which Charmion as often rearranged with inexhaustible patience, and
without ceasing to wave her fan.
"This room is stifling," said Cleopatra; "even if Pthah the God of Fire
established his forges in here, he could not make it hotter; the air is
like the breath of a furnace!" And she moistened her lips with the tip
of her little tongue, and stretched out her hand like a feverish patient
seeking an absent cup.
Charmion, ever attentive, at once clapped her hands. A black slave
clothed in a short tunic hanging in folds like an Albanian petticoat,
and a panther-skin thrown over his shoulders, entered with the
suddenness of an apparition; with his left hand balancing a tray laden
with cups, and slices of watermelon, and carrying in his right a long
vase with a spout like a modern teapot.
The slave filled one of these cups, pouring the liquor into it from a
considerable height with marvellous dexterity, and placed it before the
queen. Cleopatra merely touched the beverage with her lips, laid the cup
down beside her, and turning upon Charmion her beautiful liquid black
eyes, lustrous with living light, exclaimed:
"O Charmion, I am weary unto death!"
[1] _Panegyris_; pl., _panegyreis_,--from the Greek [], --signifies the
meeting of a whole people to worship at a common sanctuary or
participate in a national religious festival. The assemblies at the
Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, or Isthmian games were in this sense
_panegyreis_. See Smith's Dict. Antiq.--(Trans.)