Pontius had gone to the steward's room, with a frowning brow, but it was
with a smile on his strongly-marked lips, and a brisk step that he
returned to his work-people. The foreman came to meet him with looks of
enquiry as he said. "The steward was a little offended and with reason;
but now we are capital friends and he will do what he can in the matter
of lighting."
In the hall of the Muses he paused outside the screen, behind which
Pollux was working, and called out:
"Friend sculptor, listen to me, it is high time to have supper."
"It is, indeed," replied Pollux, "else it will be breakfast."
"Then lay aside your tools for a quarter of an hour and help me and the
palace-steward to demolish the food that has been sent me."
"You will need no second assistant if Keraunus is there. Food melts
before him like ice before the sun."
"Then come and save him from an overloaded stomach."
"Impossible, for I am just now dealing most unmercifully with a bowl full
of cabbage and sausages. My mother had cooked that food of the gods and
my father has brought it in to his first-born son."
"Cabbage and sausages!" repeated the architect, and its tone betrayed
that his hungry stomach would fain have made closer acquaintance with the
savory mess.
"Come in here," continued Pollux, "and be my guest. The cabbage has
experienced the process which is impending over this palace--it has been
warmed up."
"Warmed-up cabbage is better than freshly-cooked, but the fire over which
we must try to make this palace enjoyable again, burns too hotly and must
be too vigorously stirred. The best things have been all taken out, and
cannot be replaced."
"Like the sausages, I have fished out of my cabbages," laughed the
sculptor. "After all I cannot invite you to be my guest, for it would be
a compliment to this dish if I were now to call it cabbage with sausages.
I have worked it like a mine, and now that the vein of sausages is nearly
exhausted, little remains but the native soil in which two or three
miserable fragments remain as memorials of past wealth. But my mother
shall cook you a mess of it before long, and she prepares it with
incomparable skill."
"A good idea, but you are my guest."
"I am replete."
"Then come and spice our meal with your good company."
"Excuse me, sir; leave me rather here behind my screen. In the first
place, I am in a happy vein, and on the right track; I feel that
something good will come of this night's work."
"And tomorrow--"
"Hear me out."
"Well."
"You would be doing your other guest an ill-service by inviting me."
"Do you know the steward then?"
"From my earliest youth, I am the son of the gatekeeper of the palace."
"Oh, ho! then you came from that pretty little lodge with the ivy and
the birds, and the jolly old lady."
"She is my mother--and the first time the butcher kills she will concoct
for you and me a dish of sausages and cabbage without an equal."
"A very pleasing prospect."
"Here comes a hippopotamus--on closer inspection Keraunus, the steward."
"Are you his enemy?"
"I, no; but he is mine--yes," replied Pollux. "It is a foolish story.
When we sup together don't ask me about it if you care to have a jolly
companion And do not tell Keraunus that I am here, it will lead to no
good."
"As you wish, and here are our lamps too."
"Enough to light the nether world," exclaimed Pollux, and waving his hand
to the architect in farewell he vanished behind the screens to devote
himself entirely to his model.
It was long past midnight, and the slaves who had set to work with much
zeal had finished their labors in the hall of the Muses. They were now
allowed to rest for some hours on straw that had been spread for them in
another wing of the building. The architect himself wished to take
advantage of this time to refresh himself by a short sleep, for the
exertions of the morrow, but between this intention and its fulfilment an
obstacle was interposed, the preposterous dimensions namely of his
guest. He had invited the steward on purpose to give him his fill of
meat, and Keraunus had shown himself amenable to encouragement in this
respect. But after the last dish bad been removed the steward thought
that good manners demanded that he should honor his entertainer by his
illustrious presence, and at the same time the prefect's good wine
loosened the tongue of the man, who was not usually communicative.
First he spoke of the manifold infirmities which tormented him and
endangered his life, and when Pontius, to divert his talk into other
channels, was so imprudent as to allude to the Council of Citizens,
Keraunus gave full play to his eloquence, and, while he emptied cup after
cup of wine, tried to lay down the reasons which had made him and his
friends decide on staking everything in order to deprive the members of
the extensive community of Jews in the city of their rights as citizens,
and to expel them, if possible, from Alexandria. So warm was his zeal
that he totally forgot the presence of the architect, and his humble
origin, and declared to be indispensable, that even the descendants of
freed-slaves should be disenfranchised.
Pontius saw in the steward's inflamed eyes and cheeks that it was the
wine which spoke within him, and he made no answer; and determined that
the rest he needed should not be thus abridged, he rose from table and
briefly excusing himself he retired to the room in which the couch had
been prepared for him. After he had undressed he desired his slave to
see what Keraunus was about, and soon received the reassuring information
that the steward was fast asleep and snoring.
"Only listen," said the slave, to confirm his report. "You can hear him
grunting and snuffing as far as this. I pushed a cushion under his head,
for otherwise, so full as he is, the stout gentleman might come to some
harm."
Love is a plant which springs up for many who have never sown it, and
grows into a spreading tree for many who have neither fostered nor tended
it. How little had Keraunus ever done to win the heart of his daughter,
how much on the contrary which could not fail to overshadow and trouble
her young life. And yet Selene, whose youth--for she was but nineteen--
needed repose and to whom the evening with the reprieve of sleep brought
more pleasure than the morning with its load of cares and labor, sat by
the three-branched lamp and watched, and tormented herself more and more
as it grew later and later, at her father's long absence. About a week
before the strong man had suddenly lost consciousness; only, it is true,
for a few minutes, and the physician had told her that though he appeared
to be in superabundant health, the attack indicated that he must follow
his prescriptions strictly and avoid all kinds of excess. A single
indiscretion, he had declared, might swiftly and suddenly cut the thread
of his existence. After her father had gone out in obedience to the
architect's invitation, Selene had brought out her youngest brothers' and
sisters' garments, in order to mend them. Her sister Arsinoe, who was
her junior by two years, and whose fingers were as nimble as her own,
might indeed have helped her, but she had gone to bed early and was
sleeping by the children who could not be left untended at night. Her
female slave, who had been in her grandmother's service, ought to have
assisted her; but the old half-blind negress saw even worse by lamp-light
than by daylight, and after a few stitches could do no more. Selene sent
her to bed and sat down alone to her work.
For the first hour she sewed away without looking up, considering,
meanwhile, how she could best contrive to support the family till the end
of the month on the few drachmae she could dispose of. As it got later
she grew wearier and wearier, but still she sat at the work, though her
pretty head often sank upon her breast. She must await her father's
return, for a potion prepared by the physician stood waiting for him, and
she feared he would forget it if she did not remind him.
By the end of the second hour sleep overcame her, and she felt as if the
chair she was sitting on was giving way under her, and as if it was
sinking at first slowly and then quicker and quicker, into a deep abyss
that opened beneath her. Looking up for help in her dream, she could see
nothing but her father's face, which looked aside with indifference. As
her dream went on she called him and called him again, but for a long
time he did not seem to hear her. At last he looked down at her and when
he perceived her he smiled, but instead of helping her he picked up
stones and clods from the edge of the gulf and threw them on her hands
with which she had clutched the brambles and roots that grew out of the
rift of the rocks. She entreated him to cease, implored him, shrieked to
him to spare her, but not a muscle moved in the face above her; it seemed
set in a vacant smile, and even his heart was dead too, for he ruthlessly
flung down now a pebble, now a clod, one after the other, till her hands
were losing their last feeble hold and she was on the point of falling
into the fatal gulf below. Her own cry of terror aroused her, but during
the brief process of returning from her dream to actuality, she saw
through swiftly parting mists--only for an instant, and yet quite plainly
--the tall grass of a meadow, spangled with ox-eye daisies, white and
gold, with violet-hued blue bells and scarlet poppies, among which she
was lying--as in a soft green bed, while near the sward lay a sparkling
blue lake and behind it rose beautiful swelling hills, with red cliffs,
and green groves, and meadows bright in the clear sunshine. A clear sky,
across which a soft breeze gently blew light silvery flakes of cloud,
bent over the lovely but fleeting picture, which she could not compare
with anything she had ever seen near her own home.
She had only slept for a short time, but when, once more thoroughly
awake, she rubbed her eyes, she thought her dream must have lasted for
hours.
One flame of the three-branched lamp had flickered into extinction and
the wick of another was beginning to waste. She hastily put it out with
a pair of tongs that hung by a chain, and then after pouring fresh oil
into the lamp that was still burning she carried the light into her
father's sleeping room.
He had not yet returned. She was seized with a mortal terror. Had the
architect's wine bereft him of his senses? Had he on his way back to his
rooms been seized with a fresh attack of giddiness? In spirit she saw
the heavy man incapable of raising himself, dying perhaps where he had
fallen.
No choice remained to her; she must go at once to the hall of the Muses
and see what had happened to her father, pick him up, give him help or--
if he still were feasting--endeavor to tempt him back by any excuse she
could find. Everything was at stake; her father's life and with it
maintenance and shelter for eight helpless creatures.
The December night was stormy, a keen and bitter wind blew through the
ill-closed opening in the roof of the room as Selene, before she began
her expedition, tied a handkerchief over her head and threw over her
shoulders a white mantle which had been worn by her dead mother. In the
long corridor which lay between her father's rooms and the front portion
of the palace, she had to screen the flickering light of the little lamp
with her left hand, carrying it in her right; the flame blown about by
the draught and her own figure were mirrored here and there in the
polished surface of the dark marble. The thick sandals she had tied on
to her feet roused loud echoes in the empty rooms as they fell on the
stone pavements, and terror possessed Selene's anxious soul. Her fingers
trembled as they held the lamp and her heart beat audibly as, with bated
breath, she went through the cupolaed hall in which Ptolemy Euergetes
'the fat' was said, some years ago, to have murdered his own son, and in
which even a deep breath roused an echo.
But even in this room she did not forget to look to the right and left
for her father. She breathed a sigh of relief when she perceived a
streak of light which shone through the gaping rift of a cracked side-
door of the hall of the Muses and fell in a broken reflection on the
floor and the wall of the last room through which she had to pass. She
now entered the large hall which was dimly lighted by the lamps behind
the sculptor's screen, and by several tapers, now burnt down low. These
were standing on a table knocked together out of blocks of wood and
planks at the extreme end of the hall, and behind this her father was
sound asleep.
The deep notes brought out of the sleeper's broad chest, were echoed in a
very uncanny way from the bare walls of the vast empty room, and she was
frightened by them and still more by the long black shadows of the
pillars, that lay, like barriers, across her path. She stood listening
in the middle of the hall and soon recognized in the alarming tones a
sound that was only too familiar. Without a moment's hesitation she
started to run, and hastened to the sleeper, shook him, pushed him,
called him, sprinkled his forehead with water, and appealed to him by the
tenderest names with which her sister Arsinoe was wont to coax him.
When, in spite of all this, he neither spoke nor stirred, she flung the
full light of the lamp on his face. Then she thought she perceived that
a bluish tinge had overspread his bloated features, and she broke into
the deep, agonized, weeping which, a few hours previously had touched the
architect's heart.
There was a sudden stir behind the screens which enclosed the sculptor
and the work in progress. Pollux had been working for a long time with
zeal and pleasure, but at last the steward's snoring had begun to disturb
him. The body of the Muse had already taken a definite form and he could
begin to work out the head with the earliest dawn of day. He now dropped
his arms wearily, for as soon as he ceased to create with his whole heart
and mind he felt tired, and saw plainly that without a model he could do
nothing satisfactory with the drapery of his Urania. So he pulled his
stool up to a great chest full of gypsum to get a little repose by
leaning against it.
But sleep avoided the artist who was too much excited by his rapid
night's work, and as soon as Selene opened the door he sat upright and
peeped through an opening between the frames of his place of retirement.
When he saw the tall draped figure in whose hand a lamp was trembling,
when he watched her cross the spacious hall, and then suddenly stand
still, he was not a little startled, but this did not hinder him from
noting every step of the nocturnal spectre with far more curiosity than
alarm. Then, when Selene looked round her, and the lamp illuminated her
face, be recognized the steward's daughter, and immediately knew what she
must be seeking.
Her vain attempts to rouse the sleeper, though somewhat pathetic, had in
them at the same time something irresistibly ludicrous, and Pollux felt
sorely tempted to laugh. But as soon as Selene began to weep so bitterly
he hastily pushed apart two of the laths of the screen, went up and
called her name, at first softly not to frighten her, and then more
loudly. When she turned her head he begged her warmly not to be alarmed
far he was no ghost, only a very humble and ordinary mortal, in fact-as
she might see--nothing more, alas! than the son of Euphorian, the gate-
keeper, good for nothing as yet, but treading the path to something
better.
"You, Pollux?" asked the girl with surprise.
"The very man. But you--can I help you?"
"My poor father," sobbed Selene. "He does not stir, he is immovable--
and his face--oh! merciful gods."
"A man who snores is not dead," said the sculptor. "But the doctor told
him--"
"He is not even ill! Pontius only gave him stronger wine to drink than
he is used to. Let him be; he is sleeping with the pillow under his
neck, as comfortably as a child. When he began just now to trumpet a
little too loud I whistled as loud as a plover, for that often silences a
snorer; but I could more easily have made those stone Muses dance than
have roused him."
"If only we could get him to bed."
"Well, if you have four horses at hand."
"You are as bad as you ever were!"
"A little less so, Selene, only you must become accustomed again to my
way of speaking. This time I only mean that we two together are not
strong enough to carry him away."
"But what can I do, then? The doctor said--"
"Never mind the doctor. The complaint your father is suffering from is
one I know well. It will be gone to-morrow, perhaps by sundown, and the
only pain it will leave behind, he will feel under his wig. Only leave
him to sleep."
"But it is so cold here."
"Take my cloak and cover him with that."
"Then you will be frozen."
"I am used to it. How long has Keraunus had dealings with the doctor?"
Selene related the accident that had befallen her father and how
justified were her fears. The sculptor listened to her in silence and
then said in a quite altered tone:
"I am truly sorry to hear it. Let us put some cold water on his
forehead, and until the slaves come back again I will change the wet
cloth every quarter of an hour. Here is a jar and a handkerchief--good,
they might have been left on purpose. Perhaps, too, it will wake him,
and if not the people shall carry him to his own rooms."
"Disgraceful, disgraceful!" sighed the girl.
"Not at all; the high-priest of Serapis even is sometimes unwell. Only
let me see to it."
"It will excite him afresh if he sees you. He is so angry with you--so
very angry."
"Omnipotent Zeus, what harm have I done you, fat father! The gods
forgive the sins of the wise, and a man will not forgive the fault
committed by a stupid lad in a moment of imprudence."
"You mocked at him."
"I set a clay head that was like him on the shoulders of the fat Silenus
near the gate, that had lost its own head. It was my first piece of
independent work."
"But you did it to vex my father."
"Certainly not, Selene; I was delighted with the joke and nothing more."
"But you knew how touchy he is."
"And does a wild boy of fifteen ever reflect on the consequences of his
audacity? If he had but given me a thrashing his annoyance would have
discharged itself like thunder and lightning, and the air would have been
clear again. But, as it was, he cut the face off the work with a knife,
and deliberately trod the pieces under foot as they lay on the ground.
He gave me one single blow--with his thumb--which I still feel, it is
true, and then he treated me and my parents with such scorn, so coldly
and hardly, with such bitter contempt--"
"He never is really violent, but wrath seems to eat him inwardly, and I
have rarely seen him so angry as he was that time."
"But if he had only settled the account with me on the spot! but my
father was by, and hot words fell like rain, and my mother added her
share, and from that time there has been utter hostility between our
little house and you up here. What hurt me most was that you and your
sister were forbidden to come to see us and to play with me."
"That has spoilt many pleasant hours for me, too."
"It was nice when we used to dress up in my father's theatrical finery
and cloaks."
"And when you made us dolls out of clay.".
"Or when we performed the Olympian games."
"I was always the teacher when we played at school with our little
brothers and sisters."
"Arsinoe gave you most trouble."
"Oh! and what fun when we went fishing!"
"And when we brought home the fishes and mother gave us meal and raisins
to cook them."
"Do you remember the festival of Adonis, and how I stopped the runaway
horse of that Numidian officer?"
"The horse had knocked over Arsinoe, and when we got home mother gave you
an almond-cake."
"And your ungrateful sister bit a great piece out of it and left me only
a tiny morsel. Is Arsinoe as pretty as she promised to become? It is
two years since I last saw her; at our place we never have time to leave
work till it is dark. For eight months I had to work for the master at
Ptolemais, and often saw the old folks but once in the month."
"We go out very little, too, and we are not allowed to go into your
parents' house. My sister--"
"Is she pretty?"
"Yes, I think she is. Whenever she can get hold of a piece of ribbon she
plaits it in her hair, and the men in the street turn round to look at
her. She is sixteen now."
"Sixteen! What, little Arsinoe! Why, how long then is it since your
mother died?"
"Four years and eight months."
"You remember the date very exactly; such a mother is not easily
forgotten, indeed. She was a good woman and a kinder I never met.
I know, too, that she tried to mollify your father's feeling, but
she could not succeed, and then she need must die!"
"Yes," said Selene gloomily. "How could the gods decree it! They are
often more cruel than the hardest hearted man."
"Your poor little brothers and sisters!"
The girl bowed her head sadly and Pollux stood for some time with his
eyes fixed on the ground. Then he raised his head and exclaimed:
"I have something for you that will please you."
"Nothing ever pleases me now she is dead."
"Yes, yes indeed," replied the young sculptor eagerly. "I could not
forget the good soul, and once in my idle moments I modelled her bust
from memory. To-morrow I will bring it to you."
"Oh!" cried Selene, and her large heavy eyes brightened with a sunny
gleam.
"Now, is not it true, you are pleased?"
"Yes indeed, very much. But when my father learns that it is you who
have given me the portrait--"
"Is he capable of destroying it?"
"If he does not destroy it, he will not suffer it in the house as soon
as he knows that you made it." Pollux took the handkerchief from the
steward's head, moistened it afresh, and exclaimed as he rearranged it
on the forehead of the sleeping man:
"I have an idea. All that matters is that my bust should serve to remind
you often of your mother; the bust need not stand in your rooms. The
busts of the women of the house of Ptolemy stand on the rotunda, which
you can see from your balcony, and which you can pass whenever you
please; some of them are badly mutilated and must be got rid of. I will
undertake to restore the Berenice and put your mother's head on her
shoulders. Then you have only to go out and look at her. Will that do?"
"Yes, Pollux; you are a good man."
"So I told you just now. I am beginning to improve. But time--time!
if I am to undertake to repair Berenice I must begin by saving the
minutes."
"Go back to your work now; I know how to apply a wet compress only too
well."
With these words Selene threw back her mantle over her shoulders so as to
leave her hands free for use, and stood with her slender figure, her pale
face, and the fine broadly-flowing folds of rich stuff, like a statue in
the eyes of the young sculptor.
"Stop--stay so--just so," cried Pollux to the astonished girl, so loudly
and eagerly that she was startled.
"Your cloak hangs with a wonderfully-free flow from your shoulders--in
the name of all the gods do not touch it. If only I might model from it
I should in a few minutes gain a whole day for our Berenice. I will wet
the handkerchief at intervals in the pauses." Without waiting for
Selene's answer the sculptor hastened into his nook and returned first
with one of the lamps he worked by in each hand, and some small tools in
his mouth, and then fetched his wax model which he placed on the outer
side of the table, behind which the steward was sleeping. The tapers
were put out, the lamps pushed aside, and raised or lowered, and when at
last a tolerably suitable light was procured Pollux threw himself on a
stool, straddled his legs, craned his head forward as far as his neck
would allow, looking, with his hooked nose, like a vulture that strives
to descry his distant prey-cast his eyes down, raised them again to take
in something fresh, and after a long gaze looked down again while his
fingers and nails moved over the surface of the wax-figure, sinking into
the plastic material, applying new pieces to apparently complete
portions, removing others with a decided nip and rounding them off with
bewildering rapidity to use them for a fresh purpose.
He seemed to be seized with cramp in his hands, but still under his
knotted brow his eye shone earnest, resolute and calm, and yet full of
profound and speechless inspiration. Selene had said not a word that
permitted his using her as a model; but, as if his enthusiasm was
infectious, she remained motionless, and when, as he worked, his gaze
met hers she could detect the stern earnestness which at this moment
possessed her eager companion.
Neither of them opened their lips for some time. At last he stood back
from his work, stooping low to look first at Selene and then at his
statuette with keen examination from head to foot; and then, drawing a
deep breath, and rubbing the wax over with his finger, he said:
"There, that is how it must go! Now I will wet your father's
handkerchief and then we can go on again. If you are tired you can
rest."
She availed herself but little of this permission and presently he began
work again. As he proceeded carefully to replace some folds of her
drapery which had fallen out of place, she moved her foot as if to draw
back, but he begged her earnestly to stand still and she obeyed his
request.
Pollux now used his fingers and modelling tools more calmly; his gaze was
less wistful and he began to talk again.
"You are very pale," he said. "To be sure the lamp-light and a sleepless
night have something to do with it."
"I look just the same by daylight, but I am not ill."
"I thought Arsinoe would have been like your mother, but now I see many
features of her face in yours again. The oval of their form is the same
and, in both, the line of the nose runs almost straight to the forehead;
you have her eyes and the same bend of the brow, but your mouth is
smaller and more sharply cut, and she could hardly have made such a heavy
knot of her hair. I fancy, too, that yours is lighter than hers."
"As a girl she must have had still more hair, and perhaps she may have
been as fair as I was--I am brown now."
"Another thing you inherit from her is that your hair, without being
curly, lies upon your head in such soft waves."
"It is easy to keep in order."
"Are not you taller than she was?"
"I fancy so, but as she was stouter she looked shorter. Will you soon
have done?"
"You are getting tired of standing?"
"Not very."
"Then have a little more patience. Your face reminds me more and more of
our early years; I should be glad to see Arsinoe once more. I feel at
this moment as if time had moved backwards a good piece. Have you the
same feeling?"
Selene shook her head.
"You are not happy?"
"No."
"I know full well that you have very heavy duties to perform for your
age."
"Things go as they may."
"Nay, nay. I know you do not let things go haphazard. You take care of
your brothers and sisters like a mother."
"Like a mother!" repeated Selene, and she smiled a bitter negative.
"Of course a mother's love is a thing by itself, but your father and the
little ones have every reason to be satisfied with yours."
"The little ones are perhaps, and Helios who is blind, but Arsinoe does
what she can."
"You certainly are not content, I can hear it in your voice, and you used
formerly to be as merry and happy as your sister, though perhaps not so
saucy."
"Formerly--"
"How sadly that sounds! And yet you are handsome, you are young, and
life lies before you."
"But what a life!"
"Well, what?" asked the sculptor, and taking his hands from his work he
looked ardently at the fair pale girl before him and cried out fervently:
"A life which might be full of happiness and satisfied affection."
The girl shook her head in negation and answered coldly:
"'Love is joy,' says the Christian woman who superintends us at work in
the papyrus factory, and since my mother died I have had no love. I
enjoyed all my share of happiness once for all in my childhood, now I am
content if only we are spared the worst misfortunes. Otherwise I take
what each day brings, because I can not do otherwise. My heart is empty,
and if I ever feel anything keenly, it is dread. I have long since
ceased to expect any thing good of the future."
"Girl!" exclaimed Pollux. "Why, what has been happening to you? I do
not understand half of what you are saying. How came you in the papyrus
factory?"
"Do not betray me," begged Selene. "If my father were to hear of it."
"He is asleep, and what you confide to me no one will ever hear of
again."
"Why should I conceal it? I go every day with Arsinoe for two hours to
the manufactory, and we work there to earn a little money."
"Behind your father's back?"
"Yes, he would rather that we should starve than allow it. Every day I
feel the same loathing for the deceit; but we could not get on without
it, for Arsinoe thinks of nothing but herself, plays draughts with my
father, curls his hair, plays with the children as if they were dolls,
but it is my part to take care of them."
"And you, you say, have no share of love. Happily no one believes you,
and I least of all. Only lately my mother was telling me about you, and
I thought you were a girl who might turn out just such a wife as a woman
ought to be."
"And now?"
"Now, I know it for certain."
"You may be mistaken."
"No, no! your name is Selene, and you are as gentle as the kindly
moonlight; names, even, have their significance."
"And my blind brother who has never even seen the light is called
Helios!" answered the girl.
Pollux had spoken with much warmth, but Selene's last words startled him
and checked the effervescence of his feelings. Finding he did not answer
her bitter exclamation, she said, at first coolly, but with increasing
warmth:
"You are beginning to believe me, and you are right, for what I do for
the children is not done out of love, or out of kindness, or because I
set their welfare above my own. I have inherited my father's pride, and
it would be odious to me if my brothers and sisters went about in rags,
and people thought we were as poor and helpless as we really are. What
is most horrible to me is sickness in the house, for that increases the
anxiety I always feel and swallows up my last coin; the children must not
perish for want of it. I do not want to make myself out worse than I am;
it grieves me too to see them drooping. But nothing that I do brings me
happiness--at most it moderates my fears. You ask what I am afraid of?
--of everything, everything that can happen to me, for I have no reason
to look forward to anything good. When there is a knock, it may be a
creditor; when people look at Arsinoe in the street, I seem to see
dishonor lurking round her; when my father acts against the advice of the
physician I feel as if we were standing already roofless in the open
street. What is there that I can do with a happy mind? I certainly am
not idle, still I envy the woman who can sit with her hands in her lap
and be waited on by slaves, and if a golden treasure fell into my
possession, I would never stir a finger again, and would sleep every
day till the sun was high and make slaves look after my father and the
children. My life is sheer misery. If ever we see better days I shall
be astonished, and before I have got over my astonishment it will all be
over."
The sculptor felt a cold chill, and his heart which had opened wide to
his old playfellow shrank again within him. Before he could find the
right words of encouragement which he sought, they heard in the hall,
where the workmen and slaves were sleeping, the blast of a trumpet
intended to awake them. Selene started, drew her mantle more closely
round her, begged Pollux to take care of her father, and to hide the
wine-jar which was standing near him from the work-people and then,
forgetting her lamp, she went hastily toward the door by which she had
entered. Pollux hurried after her to light the way and while he
accompanied her as far as the door of her rooms, by his warm and urgent
words which appealed wonderfully to her heart, he extracted from her a
promise to stand once more in her mantle as his model.
A quarter of an hour later the steward was safe in bed and still sleeping
soundly, while Pollux, who had stretched himself on a mattress behind his
screen, could not for a long time cease to think of the pale girl with
her benumbed soul. At last sleep overcame him too, and a sweet dream
showed him pretty little Arsinoe, who but for him must infallibly have
been killed by the Numidian's restive horse, taking away her sister
Selene's almond-cake and giving it to him. The pale girl submitted
quietly to the robbery and only smiled coldly and silently to herself.