"Ah! ah! ah! we're all poor creatures! The gods of Olympus play at
ball with us! Men weep and the gods laugh!"
The companion of Agamemnon meanwhile had succeeded in joining the
conversation, and with nonchalant adroitness acertained the names of
the talkers. He had intercepted the news, conveyed by the cobbler to
the leather-dresser, about a plot hatched against Cæsar's life by the
soldiers of the Pretorian guard. Then, strolling on a few paces, he
had written down the names of the talkers with a jewelled stilus on
tablets of soft wax, where many other names were inscribed already. At
this moment hoarse sounds like the roarings of some subterranean
monster came from the market square. They were the notes, now
plaintive, now lively, of a hydraulic organ.
At the entrance to a showman's travelling booth, a blind slave, for
four obols a day, was pumping up the water which produced this
extraordinary harmony.
Agamemnon dragged his companion towards the booth, a great tent with
blue awnings sprinkled with silver tinsel. A lantern lighted the
black-board on which the order of the programme was chalked up, in
Syriac and Greek. An oppressive atmosphere of garlic and lamp-oil
prevailed inside, where, beside the organ, there struck up the wailing
of two harsh flutes, while a negro, rolling the whites of his eyes,
thrummed on an Arab drum. A dancer was skipping to and fro on a
tight-rope, keeping time to the music with his hands, and singing the
latest street song:
Huc, huc, convenite nunc...
Spatolocinædi!
Pedem tendite
Cursum addite...
This starveling mountebank was old, impudent, and repulsively cheery.
Drops of sweat, mixed with paint, were trickling from his shaven face.
His wrinkles, plastered with white lead, looked like the cracks in a
wall when rain has washed off the lime. When he withdrew, the flutes
and the organ ceased, and on the platform a fifteen-year-old girl
appeared. She was to perform the _Cordax_, a celebrated licentious
dance adored by the mob. Fathers of the Church might anathematise, and
Roman laws interdict this dance, but both did so in vain. Everywhere
the Cordax was danced as before by rich and poor, by street-dancers as
well as by wives of senators.
Agamemnon murmured with enthusiasm:
"What a divinely pretty girl!"
Thanks to jostling by his companions he had reached a place in the
front rank of spectators. The slender bronze body of the Nubian was
only veiled round the hips by a light and transparent rose-coloured
scarf. Her hair was wound on the top of her head in close fine curls,
like those of Ethiopian women. Her face was of the severest Egyptian
type, recalling that of the Sphinx.
She began to dance in careless fashion, as if already out-wearied.
Above her head she swung heavy steel bells, castanets or
"crotals,"--swung them lazily and loosely. But the movements became
more emphatic, and suddenly under long lashes yellow eyes shone out,
clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She straightened her
body. The steel crotals shook with such a challenge in their piercing
sound that the crowd shivered and became still. The damsel whirled
rapidly, vivid, slender, supple as a serpent; her nostrils dilated, a
strange cry came crooning from her throat, and at each sharp movement
her brown bosom shook and trembled within its almost invisible meshes
of fine green silk.
The crowd howled with enthusiasm. Agamemnon struggled with rage
because his companions held him back. Suddenly the girl stopped. A
slight shudder ran through her body. Deep silence prevailed. The head
of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon, but above it the
crotals still shivered with an extraordinary languor, a dying
vibration, quick and tender as the wing-flutterings of a captive
butterfly. The flashing of the yellow eyes died away, although the
eyeball kept its sparkling lights, and the face remained severe; but
upon the dark and sensuous lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile
trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.
The public shouted and applauded so loudly that the blue tent with its
stars and spangles swayed like a sail in a hurricane. The showman
became apprehensive lest his booth should collapse. The companions of
Agamemnon at last failed to hold him back; raising the curtain, he
rushed through the scenes into the part reserved for the dancers and
actors. In vain his friends counselled--
"Wait; to-morrow you shall have everything as you wish! now something
might...."