This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
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ARACHNE
By Georg Ebers
Volume 5.
While the market place in Tennis was filling, Archias's white house had
become a heap of smouldering ruins. Hundreds of men and women were
standing around the scene of the conflagration, but no one saw the statue
of Demeter, which had been removed from Hermon's studio just in time.
The nomarch had had it locked up in the neighbouring temple of the
goddess.
It was rumoured that the divinity had saved her own statue by a miracle;
Pamaut, the police officer, said that he had seen her himself as,
surrounded by a brilliant light, she soared upward on the smoke that
poured from the burning house. The strategist and the nomarch used every
means in their power to capture the robbers, but without the least
success.
As it had become known that Paseth, Gula's husband, had cast off his wife
because she had gone to Hermon's studio, the magistrates believed that
the attack had been made by the Biamites; yet Paseth was absent from the
city during the assault, and the innocence of the others could also be
proved.
Since, for two entire years, piracy had entirely ceased in this
neighbourhood, no one thought of corsairs, and the bodies of the
incendiaries having been consumed by the flames with the white house,
it could not be ascertained to what class the marauders belonged.
The blinded sculptor could only testify that one of the robbers was a
negro, or at any rate had had his face blackened, and that the size of
another had appeared to him almost superhuman. This circumstance gave
rise to the fable that, during the terrible storm of the previous clay,
Hades had opened and spirits of darkness had rushed into the studio of
the Greek betrayer.
The strategist, it is true, did not believe such tales, but the
superstition of the Biamites, who, moreover, aided the Greeks reluctantly
to punish a crime which threatened to involve their own countrymen, put
obstacles in the way of his measures.
Not until he heard of Ledscha's disappearance, and was informed by the
priest of Nemesis of the handsome sum which had been found in the
offering box of the temple shortly after the attack, did he arrive at a
conjecture not very far from the real state of affairs; only it was still
incomprehensible to him what body of men could have placed themselves at
the disposal of a girl's vengeful plan.
On the second day after the fire, the epistrategus of the whole Delta,
who had accidentally come to the border fortress, arrived at Tennis on
the galley of the commandant of Pelusium, and with him Proclus, the
grammateus of the Dionysian artists, the Lady Thyone, Daphne, and her
companion Chrysilla.
The old hero Philippus was detained in the fortress by the preparations
for war.
Althea had returned to Alexandria, and Philotas, who disliked her, had
gone there himself, as Chrysilla intimated to him that he could hope for
no success in his suit to her ward so long as Daphne had to devote
herself to the care of the blinded Hermon.
The epistrategus proceeded with great caution, but his efforts also
remained futile. He ordered a report to be made of all the vessels which
had entered the harbours and bays of the northeastern Delta, but those
commanded by Satabus and his sons gave no cause for investigation; they
had come into the Tanite arm of the Nile as lumber ships from Pontus, and
had discharged beams and planks for the account of a well-known
commercial house in Sinope.
Yet the official ordered the Owl's Nest to be searched. In doing this he
made himself guilty of an act of violence, as the island's right of
asylum still existed, and this incensed the irritable and refractory
Biamites the more violently, the deeper was the reverent awe with which
the nation regarded Tabus, who, according to their belief, was over a
hundred years old. The Biamites honoured her not only as an enchantress
and a leech, but as the ancestress of a race of mighty men. By molesting
this aged woman, and interfering with an ancient privilege, the
epistrategus lost the aid of the hostile fishermen, sailors, and weavers.
Any information from their ranks to him was regarded as treachery; and,
besides, his stay in Tennis could be but brief, as the King, on account
of the impending war, had summoned him back to the capital.
On the third day after his arrival he left Tennis and sailed from Tanis
for Alexandria. He had had little time to attend to Thyone and her
guests.
Proclus, too, could not devote himself to them until after the departure
of the epistrategus, since he had gone immediately to Tanis, where, as
head of the Dionysian artists of all Egypt, he had been occupied in
attending to the affairs of the newly established theatre.
On his return to Tennis he had instantly requested to be conducted to the
Temple of Demeter, to inspect the blinded Hermon's rescued work.
He had entered the cella of the sanctuary with the expectation of finding
a peculiar, probably a powerful work, but one repugnant to his taste, and
left it fairly overpowered by the beauty of this noble work of art.
What he had formerly seen of Hermon's productions had prejudiced him
against the artist, whose talent was great, but who, instead of
dedicating it to the service of the beautiful and the sublime, chose
subjects which, to Proclus, did not seem worthy of artistic treatment,
or, when they were, sedulously deprived them of that by which, in his
eyes, they gained genuine value. In Hermon's Olympian Banquet he--who
also held the office of a high priest of Apollo in Alexandria--had even
seen an insult to the dignity of the deity. In the Street Boy Eating
Figs, the connoisseur's eye had recognised a peculiar masterpiece, but he
had been repelled by this also; for, instead of a handsome boy, it
represented a starving, emaciated vagabond.
True to life as this figure might be, it seemed to him reprehensible, for
it had already induced others to choose similar vulgar subjects.
When recently at Althea's performance he had met Hermon and saw how
quickly his beautiful travelling companion allowed herself to be induced
to bestow the wreath on the handsome, black-bearded fellow, it vexed him,
and he had therefore treated him with distant coldness, and allowed him
to perceive the disapproval which the direction taken by his art had
awakened in his mind.
In the presence of Hermon's Demeter, the opinion of the experienced man
and intelligent connoisseur had suddenly changed.
The creator of this work was not only one of the foremost artists of his
day, nay, he had also been permitted to fathom the nature of the deity
and to bestow upon it a perfect form.
This Demeter was the most successful personification of the divine
goodness which rewards the sowing of seed with the harvest. When Hermon
created it, Daphne's image had hovered before his mind, even if he had
not been permitted to use her as a model, and of all the maidens whom he
knew there was scarcely one better suited to serve as the type for the
Demeter.
So what he had seen in Pelusium, and learned from women, was true. The
heart and mind of the artist who had created this work were not filled
with the image of Althea--who during the journey had bestowed many a mark
of favour upon the aging man, and with whom he was obliged to work hand
in hand for Queen Arsinoe's plans--but the daughter of Archias, and this
circumstance also aided in producing his change of view.
Hermon's blindness, it was to be hoped, would be cured.
Duty, and perhaps also interest, commanded him to show him frankly how
highly he estimated his art and his last work.
After the arrival of Thyone and Daphne, Hermon had consented to accompany
them on board the Proserpina, their spacious galley. True, he had
yielded reluctantly to this arrangement of his parents' old friend, and
neither she nor Daphne had hitherto succeeded in soothing the fierce
resentment against fate which filled his soul after the loss of his sight
and his dearest friend. As yet every attempt to induce him to bear his
terrible misfortune with even a certain degree of composure had failed.
The Tennis leech, trained by the Egyptian priests at Sais in the art of
healing, who was attached as a pastophorus to the Temple of Isis, in the
city of weavers, had covered the artist's scorched face with bandages,
and earnestly adjured him never in his absence to raise them, and to keep
every ray of light from his blinded eyes. But the agitation which had
mastered Hermon's whole being was so great that, in spite of the woman's
protestations, he lifted the covering again and again to see whether he
could not perceive once more at least a glimmer of the sunlight whose
warming power he felt. The thought of living in darkness until the end
of his life seemed unendurable, especially as now all the horrors which,
hitherto, had only visited him in times of trial during the night
assailed him with never-ceasing cruelty.
The image of the spider often forced itself upon him, and he fancied that
the busy insect was spreading its quickly made web over his blinded eyes,
which he was not to touch, yet over which he passed his hand to free them
from the repulsive veil.
The myth related that because Athene's blow had struck the ambitious
weaver Arachne, she had resolved, before the goddess transformed her into
a spider, to put an end to her disgrace.
How infinitely harder was the one dealt to him! How much better reason
he had to use the privilege in which man possesses an advantage over the
immortals, of putting himself to death with his own hand when he deems
the fitting time has come! What should he, the artist, to whom his eyes
brought whatever made life valuable, do longer in this hideous black
night, brightened by no sunbeam?
He was often overwhelmed, too, by the remembrance of the terrible end
of the friend in whom he saw the only person who might have given him
consolation in this distress, and the painful thought of his poverty.
He was supported solely by what his art brought and his wealthy uncle
allowed him. The Demeter which Archias had ordered had been partially
paid for in advance, and he had intended to use the gold--a considerable
sum--to pay debts in Alexandria. But it was consumed with the rest of
his property--tools, clothing, mementoes of his dead parents, and a few
books which contained his favourite poems and the writings of his master,
Straton.
These precious rolls had aided him to maintain the proud conviction of
owing everything which he attained or possessed solely to himself. It
had again become perfectly clear to him that the destiny of earth-born
mortals was not directed by the gods whom men had invented after their
own likeness, in order to find causes for the effects which they
perceived, but by deaf and blind chance. Else how could even worse
misfortune, according to the opinion of most people, have befallen the
pure, guiltless Myrtilus, who so deeply revered the Olympians and
understood how to honour them so magnificently by his art, than himself,
the despiser of the gods?
But was the death for which he longed a misfortune?
Was the Nemesis who had so swiftly and fully granted the fervent prayer
of an ill-used girl also only an image conjured up by the power of human
imagination?
It was scarcely possible!
Yet if there was one goddess, did not that admit the probability of the
existence of all the others?
He shuddered at the idea; for if the immortals thought, felt, acted, how
terribly his already cruel fate would still develop! He had denied and
insulted almost all the Olympians, and not even stirred a finger to the
praise and honour of a single one.
What marvel if they should choose him for the target of their resentment
and revenge?
He had just believed that the heaviest misfortune which can befall a man
and an artist had already stricken him. Now he felt that this, too, had
been an error; for, like a physical pain, he realized the collapse of the
proud delusion of being independent of every power except himself, freely
and arbitrarily controlling his own destiny, owing no gratitude except to
his own might, and being compelled to yield to nothing save the
enigmatical, pitiless power of eternal laws or their co-operation, so
incomprehensible to the human intellect, called "chance," which took no
heed of merit or unworthiness.
Must he, who had learned to silence and to starve every covetous desire,
in order to require no gifts from his own uncle and his wealthy kinsman
and friend, and be able to continue to hold his head high, as the most
independent of the independent, now, in addition to all his other woe, be
forced to believe in powers that exercised an influence over his every
act? Must he recognise praying to them and thanking them as the demand
of justice, of duty, and wisdom? Was this possible either?
And, believing himself alone, since he could not see Thyone and Daphne,
who were close by him, he struck his scorched brow with his clinched
fist, because he felt like a free man who suddenly realizes that a rope
which he can not break is bound around his hands and feet, and a giant
pulls and loosens it at his pleasure.
Yet no! Better die than become for gods and men a puppet that obeys
every jerk of visible and invisible hands.
Starting up in violent excitement, he tore the bandage from his face and
eyes, declaring, as Thyone seriously reprimanded him, that he would go
away, no matter where, and earn his daily bread at the handmill, like the
blind Ethiopian slave whom he had seen in the cabinetmaker's house at
Tennis.
Then Daphne spoke to him tenderly, but her soothing voice caused him
keener pain than his old friend's stern one.
To sit still longer seemed unendurable, and, with the intention of
regaining his lost composure by pacing to and fro, he began to walk;
but at the first free step he struck against the little table in front of
Thyone's couch, and as it upset and the vessels containing water fell
with it, clinking and breaking, he stopped and, as if utterly crushed,
groped his way back, with both arms outstretched, to the armchair he had
quitted.
If he could only have seen Daphne press her handkerchief first to her
eyes, from which tears were streaming, and then to her lips, that he
might not hear her sobs, if he could have perceived how Thyone's wrinkled
old face contracted as if she were swallowing a colocynth apple, while at
the same time she patted his strong shoulder briskly, exclaiming with
forced cheerfulness: "Go on, my boy! The steed rears when the hornet
stings! Try again, if it only soothes you! We will take everything out
of your way. You need not mind the water-jars. The potter will make new
ones!"
Then Hermon threw back his burning head, rested it against the back of
the chair, and did not stir until the bandage was renewed.
How comfortable it felt!
He knew, too, that he owed it to Daphne; the matron's fingers could not
be so slender and delicate, and he would have been more than glad to
raise them to his lips and thank her; but he denied himself the pleasure.
If she really did love him, the bond between them must now be severed;
for, even if her goodness of heart extended far enough to induce her to
unite her blooming young existence to his crippled one, how could he have
accepted the sacrifice without humiliating himself? Whether such a
marriage would have made her happy or miserable he did not ask, but he
was all the more keenly aware that if, in this condition, he became her
husband, he would be the recipient of alms, and he would far rather, he
mentally repeated, share the fate of the negro at the handmill.
The expression of his features revealed the current of his thoughts to
Daphne, and, much as she wished to speak to him, she forced herself to
remain silent, that the tones of her voice might not betray how deeply
she was suffering with him; but he himself now longed for a kind word
from her lips, and he had just asked if she was still there when Thyone
announced a visit from the grammateus Proclus.
He had recently felt that this man was unfriendly to him, and again his
anger burst forth. To be exposed in the midst of his misery to the scorn
of a despiser of his art was too much for his exhausted patience.
But here he was interrupted by Proclus himself, who had entered the
darkened cabin where the blind man remained very soon after Thyone.
Hermon's last words had betrayed to the experienced courtier how well
he remembered his unkind remarks, so he deferred the expression of his
approval, and began by delivering the farewell message of the
epistrategus, who had been summoned away so quickly.
He stated that his investigations had discovered nothing of importance,
except, perhaps, the confirmation of the sorrowful apprehension that the
admirable Myrtilus had been killed by the marauders. A carved stone had
been found under the ashes, and Chello, the Tennis goldsmith, said he had
had in his own workshop the gem set in the hapless artist's shoulder
clasp, and supplied it with a new pin.
While speaking, he took Hermon's hand and gave him the stone, but the
artist instantly used his finger tips to feel it.
Perhaps it really did belong to the clasp Myrtilus wore, for, although
still unpractised in groping, he recognised that a human head was carved
in relief upon the stone, and Mrytilus's had been adorned with the
likeness of the Epicurean.
The damaged little work of art, in the opinion of Proclus and Daphne,
appeared to represent this philosopher, and at the thought that his
friend had fallen a victim to the flames Hermon bowed his head and
exerted all his strength of will in order not to betray by violent sobs
how deeply this idea pierced his heart.
Thyone, shrugging her shoulders mournfully, pointed to the suffering
artist. Proclus nodded significantly, and, moving nearer to Hermon,
informed him that he had sought out his Demeter and found the statue
uninjured. He was well aware that it would be presumptuous to offer
consolation in so heavy an affliction, and after the loss of his dearest
friend, yet perhaps Hermon would be glad to hear his assurance that he,
whose judgment was certainly not unpractised, numbered his work among the
most perfect which the sculptor's art had created in recent years.
"I myself best know the value of this Demeter," the sculptor broke in
harshly. "Your praise is the bit of honey which is put into the mouth of
the hurt child."
"No, my friend," Proclus protested with grave decision. "I should
express no less warmly the ardent admiration with which this noble figure
of the goddess fills me if you were well and still possessed your sight.
You were right just now when you alluded to my aversion, or, let us say,
lack of appreciation of the individuality of your art; but this noble
work changes everything, and nothing affords me more pleasure than that I
am to be the first to assure you how magnificently you have succeeded in
this statue."
"The first!" Hermon again interrupted harshly. "But the second and
third will be lacking in Alexandria. What a pleasure it is to pour the
gifts of sympathy upon one to whom we wish ill! But, however successful
my Demeter may be, you would have awarded the prize twice over to the one
by Myrtilus."
"Wrong, my young friend!" the statesman protested with honest zeal.
"All honour to the great dead, whose end was so lamentable; but in this
contest--let me swear it by the goddess herself!--you would have remained
victor; for, at the utmost, nothing can rank with the incomparable save
a work of equal merit, and--I know life and art--two artists rarely or
never succeed in producing anything so perfect as this masterpiece at the
same time and in the same place."
"Enough!" gasped Hermon, hoarse with excitement; but Proclus, with
increasing animation, continued: "Brief as is our acquaintance, you have
probably perceived that I do not belong to the class of flatterers, and
in Alexandria it has hardly remained unknown to you that the younger
artists number me, to whom the office of judge so often falls, among the
sterner critics. Only because I desire their best good do I frankly
point out their errors. The multitude provides the praise. It will soon
flow upon you also in torrents, I can see its approach, and as this
blindness, if the august Aesculapius and healing Isis aid, will pass away
like a dreary winter night, it would seem to me criminal to deceive you
about your own ability and success. I already behold you creating other
works to the delight of gods and men; but this Demeter extorts boundless,
enthusiastic appreciation; both as a whole, and in detail, it is
faultless and worthy of the most ardent praise. Oh, how long it is,
my dear, unfortunate friend, since I could congratulate any other
Alexandrian with such joyful confidence upon the most magnificent
success! Every word--you may believe it!--which comes to you in
commendation of this last work from lips unused to eulogy is sincerely
meant, and as I utter it to you I shall repeat it in the presence of the
King, Archias, and the other judges."
Daphne, with hurried breath, deeply flushed cheeks, and sparkling eyes,
had fairly hung upon the lips of the clever connoisseur. She knew
Proclus, and his dreaded, absolutely inconsiderate acuteness, and was
aware that this praise expressed his deepest conviction. Had he been
dissatisfied with the statue of Demeter, or even merely superficially
touched by its beauty, he might have shrunk from wounding the unfortunate
artist by censure, and remained silent; but only something grand,
consummate, could lead him to such warmth of recognition.
She now felt it a misfortune that she and Thyone had hitherto been
prevented, by anxiety for their patient, from admiring his work. Had it
still been light, she would have gone to the temple of Demeter at once;
but the sun had just set, and Proclus was obliged to beg her to have
patience.
As the cases were standing finished at the cabinetmaker's, the statue had
been packed immediately, under his own direction, and carried on board
his ship, which would convey it with him to the capital the next day.
While this arrangement called forth loud expressions of regret from
Daphne and the vivacious matron, Hermon assented to it, for it would at
least secure the ladies, until their arrival in Alexandria, from a
painful disappointment.
"Rather," Proclus protested with firm dissent, "it will rob you for some
time of a great pleasure, and you, noble daughter of Archias, probably of
the deepest emotion of gratitude with which the favour of the immortals
has hitherto rendered you happy; yet the master who created this genuine
goddess owes the best part of it to your own face."
"He told me himself that he thought of me while at work," Daphne
admitted, and a flood of the warmest love reached Hermon's ears in her
agitated tones, while, greatly perplexed, he wondered with increasing
anxiety whether the stern critic Proclus had really been serious in the
extravagant eulogium, so alien to his reputation in the city.
Myrtilus, too, had admired the head of his Demeter, and--this he himself
might admit--he had succeeded in it, and yet ought not the figure, with
its too pronounced inclination forward, which, it is true, corresponded
with Daphne's usual bearing, and the somewhat angular bend of the arms,
have induced this keen-sighted connoisseur to moderate the exalted strain
of his praise? Or was the whole really so admirable that it would have
seemed petty to find fault with the less successful details? At any
rate, Proclus's eulogy ought to give him twofold pleasure, because his
art had formerly repelled him, and Hermon tried to let it produce this
effect upon him. But it would not do; he was continually overpowered by
the feeling that under the enthusiastic homage of the intriguing Queen
Arsinoe's favourite lurked a sting which he should some day feel. Or
could Proclus have been persuaded by Thyone and Daphne to help them
reconcile the hapless blind man to his hard fate?
Hermon's every movement betrayed the great anxiety which filled his mind,
and it by no means escaped Proclus's attention, but he attributed it to
the blinded sculptor's anguish in being prevented, after so great a
success, from pursuing his art further.
Sincerely touched, he laid his slender hand on the sufferer's muscular
arm, saying: "A more severe trial than yours, my young friend, can
scarcely be imposed upon the artist who has just attained the highest
goal, but three things warrant you to hope for recovery--your vigorous
youth, the skill of our Alexandrian leeches, and the favour of the
immortal gods. You shrug your shoulders? Yet I insist that you have won
this favour by your Demeter. True, you owe it less to yourself than to
yonder maiden. What pleasure it affords one whom, like myself, taste and
office bind to the arts, to perceive such a revolution in an artist's
course of creation, and trace it to its source! I indulged myself in it
and, if you will listen, I should like to show you the result."
"Speak," replied Hermon dully, bowing his head as if submitting to the
inevitable, while Proclus began:
"Hitherto your art imitated, not without success, what your eyes showed
you, and if this was filled with the warm breath of life, your work
succeeded. All respect to your Boy Eating Figs, in whose presence you
would feel the pleasure he himself enjoyed while consuming the sweet
fruit. Here, among the works of Egyptian antiquity, there is imminent
danger of falling under the tyranny of the canon of proportions which can
be expressed in figures, or merely even the demands of the style hallowed
by thousands of years, but in a subject like the 'Fig-eater' such a
reproach is not to be feared. He speaks his own intelligible language,
and whoever reproduces it without turning to the right or left has won,
for he has created a work whose value every true friend of art, no matter
to what school he belongs, prizes highly.
"To me personally such works of living reality are cordially welcome.
Yet art neither can nor will be satisfied with snatches of what is
close at hand; but you are late-born, sons of a time when the two great
tendencies of art have nearly reached the limits of what is attainable
to them. You were everywhere confronted with completed work, and you
are right when you refuse to sink to mere imitators of earlier works,
and therefore return to Nature, with which we Hellenes, and perhaps the
Egyptians also, began. The latter forgot her; the former--we Greeks--
continued to cling to her closely."
"Some few," Hermon eagerly interrupted the other, "still think it worth
the trouble to take from her what she alone can bestow. They save
themselves the toilsome search for the model which others so successfully
used before them, and bronze and marble still keep wonderfully well.
Bring out the old masterpieces. Take the head from this one, the arm
from that, etc. The pupil impresses the proportions on his mind. Only
so far as the longing for the beautiful permits do even the better ones
remain faithful to Nature, not a finger's breadth more."
"Quite right," the other went on calmly. "But your objection only
brings one nearer the goal. How many who care only for applause content
themselves to-day, unfortunately, with Nature at second hand! Without
returning to her eternally fresh, inexhaustible spring, they draw from
the conveniently accessible wells which the great ancients dug for them."
"I know these many," Hermon wrathfully exclaimed. "They are the brothers
of the Homeric poets, who take verses from the Iliad and Odyssey to piece
out from them their own pitiful poems."
"Excellent, my son!" exclaimed Thyone, laughing, and Daphne remarked that
the poet Cleon had surprised her father with such a poem a few weeks
before. It was a marvellous bit of botchwork, and yet there was a
certain meaning in the production, compiled solely from Homeric verses.
"Diomed's Hecuba," observed Proclus, "and the Aphrodite by Hippias, which
were executed in marble, originated in the same way, and deserve no
better fate, although they please the great multitude. But, praised be
my lord, Apollo, our age can also boast of other artists. Filled with
the spirit of the god, they are able to model truthfully and faithfully
even the forms of the immortals invisible to the physical eye. They
stand before the spectator as if borrowed from Nature, for their creators
have filled them with their own healthy vigour. Our poor Myrtilus
belonged to this class and, after your Demeter, the world will include
you in it also."
"And yet," answered Hermon in a tone of dissent, "I remained faithful to
myself, and put nothing, nothing at all of my own personality, into the
forms borrowed from Nature."
"What need of that was there?" asked Proclus with a subtle smile. "Your
model spared you the task. And this at last brings me to the goal I
desired to reach. As the great Athenians created types for eternity, so
also does Nature at times in a happy hour, for her own pleasure, and such
a model you found in our Daphne.-No contradiction, my dear young lady!
The outlines of the figure--By the dog! Hermon might possibly have
found forms no less beautiful in the Aphrosion, but how charming and
lifelike is the somewhat unusual yet graceful pose of yours! And then
the heart, the soul! In your companionship our artist had nothing to do
except lovingly to share your feelings in order to have at his disposal
everything which renders so dear to us all the giver of bread, the
preserver of peace, the protector of marriage, the creator and supporter
of the law of moderation in Nature, as well as in human existence. Where
would all these traits be found more perfectly united in a single human
being than in your person, Daphne, your quiet, kindly rule?"
"Oh, stop!" the girl entreated. "I am only too well aware--"
"That you also are not free from human frailties," Proclus continued,
undismayed. "We will take them, great or small as they may be, into the
bargain. The secret ones do not concern the sculptor, who does not or
will not see them. What he perceives in you, what you enable him to
recognise through every feature of your sweet, tranquillizing face, is
enough for the genuine artist to imagine the goddess; for the distinction
between the mortal and the immortal is only the degree of perfection, and
the human intellect and artist soul can find nothing more perfect in the
whole domain of Demeter's jurisdiction than is presented to them in your
nature. Our friend yonder seized it, and his magnificent work of art
proves how nearly it approaches the purest and loftiest conception we
form of the goddess whom he had to represent. It is not that he deified
you, Daphne; he merely bestowed on the divinity forms which he recognised
in you."
Just at that moment, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, Hermon pulled the
bandage from his eyes to see once more the woman to whom this warm homage
was paid.
Was the experienced connoisseur of art and the artist soul in the right?
He had told himself the same thing when he selected Daphne for a model,
and her head reproduced what Proclus praised as the common possession of
Daphne and Demeter. Truthful Myrtilus had also seen it. Perhaps his
work had really been so marvellously successful because, while he was
engaged upon it, his friend had constantly stood before his mind in all
the charm of her inexhaustible goodness.
Animated by the ardent desire to gaze once more at the beloved face, to
which he now owed also this unexpectedly great success, he turned toward
the spot whence her voice had reached him; but a wall of violet mist,
dotted with black specks, was all that his blinded eyes showed him, and
with a low groan he drew the linen cloth over the burns.
This time Proclus also perceived what was passing in the poor artist's
mind, and when he took leave of him it was with the resolve to do his
utmost to brighten with the stars of recognition and renown the dark
night of suffering which enshrouded this highly gifted sculptor, whose
unexpectedly great modesty had prepossessed him still more in his favour.
CHAPTER II.
After the grammateus had retired, Daphne insisted upon leaving Tennis the
next day.
The desire to see Hermon's masterpiece drew her back to Alexandria even
more strongly than the knowledge of being missed by her father.
Only the separation from Thyone rendered the departure difficult, for the
motherless girl had found in her something for which she had long
yearned, and most sorely missed in her companion Chrysilla, who from
expediency approved of everything she did or said.
The matron, too, had become warmly attached to Daphne, and would gladly
have done all that lay in her power to lighten Hermon's sad fate, yet she
persisted in her determination to return speedily to her old husband in
Pelusium.
But she did not fully realize how difficult this departure would be for
her until the blind man, after a long silence, asked whether it was
night, if the stars were in the sky, and if she really intended to leave
him.
Then burning sympathy filled her compassionate soul, and she could no
longer restrain her tears. Daphne, too, covered her face, and imposed
the strongest restraint upon herself that she might not sob aloud.
So it seemed a boon to both when Hermon expressed the desire to spend
part of the night on deck.
This desire contained a summons to action, and to be able to bestir
themselves in useful service appeared like a favour to Thyone and Daphne.
Without calling upon a slave, a female servant, or even Chrysilla for the
smallest office, the two prepared a couch on deck for the blind man, and,
leaning on the girl's stronger arm, he went up into the open air.
There he stretched both arms heavenward, inhaled deep breaths of the cool
night breeze, and thirstily emptied the goblet of wine which Daphne mixed
and gave him with her own hand.
Then, with a sigh of relief, he said: "Everything has not grown black
yet. A delightful feeling of pleasure takes possession even of the blind
man when the open air refreshes him and the wine warms his blood in the
sunshine of your kindness."
"And much better things are still in prospect," Daphne assured him.
"Just think what rapture it will be when you are permitted to see the
light again after so long a period of darkness!"
"When--" repeated Hermon, his head drooping as he spoke.
"It must, it must be so!" rang with confident assurance from Thyone's
lips.
"And then," added Daphne, gazing sometimes upward to the firmament strewn
with shining stars, sometimes across the broad, rippling expanse of the
water, in which the reflection of the heavenly bodies shimmered in
glittering, silvery radiance, "yes, Hermon, who would not be glad to
exchange with you then? You may shake your head, but I would take your
place quickly and with joyous courage. There is a proof of the existence
of the gods, which so exactly suits the hour when you will again see,
enjoy, admire what this dreary darkness now hides from you. It was a
philosopher who used it; I no longer know which one. How often I have
thought of it since this cruel misfortune befell you! And now--"
"Go on," Hermon interrupted with a smile of superiority. "You are
thinking of Aristotle's man who grew up in a dark cave. The conditions
which must precede the devout astonishment of the liberated youth when he
first emerged into the light and the verdant world would certainly exist
in me."
"Oh, not in that way," pleaded the wounded girl; and Thyone exclaimed:
"What is the story of the man you mention? We don't talk about Aristotle
and such subjects in Pelusium."
"Perhaps they are only too much discussed in Alexandria," said the blind
artist. "The Stagirite, as you have just heard, seeks to prove the
existence of the gods by the man of whom I spoke."
"No, he does prove it," protested Daphne. "Just listen, Mother Thyone.
A little boy grows up from earliest childhood into a youth in a dark
cave. Then suddenly its doors are opened to him. For the first time he
sees the sun, moon, and stars, flowers and trees, perhaps even a
beautiful human face. But at the moment when all these things rush upon
him like so many incomprehensible marvels, must he not ask himself who
created all this magnificence? And the answer which comes to him--"
"There is only one," cried the matron; "the omnipotent gods. Do you
shrug your shoulders at that, son of the pious Erigone? Why, of course!
The child who still feels the blows probably rebels against his earthly
father. But if I see aright, the resentment will not last when you, like
the man, go out of the cave and your darkness also passes away. Then the
power from which you turned defiantly will force itself upon you, and you
will raise your hands in grateful prayer to the rescuing divinity. As to
us women, we need not be drawn out of a cave to recognise it. A mother
who reared three stalwart sons--I will say nothing of the daughters--can
not live without them. Why are they so necessary to her? Because we
love our children twice as much as ourselves, and the danger which
threatens them alarms the poor mother's heart thrice as much as her own.
Then it needs the helping powers. Even though they often refuse their
aid, we may still be grateful for the expectation of relief. I have
poured forth many prayers for the three, I assure you, and after doing so
with my whole soul, then, my son, no matter how wildly the storm had
raged within my breast, calmness returned, and Hope again took her place
at the helm. In the school of the denier of the gods, you forgot the
immortals above and depended on yourself alone. Now you need a guide,
or even two or three of them, in order to find the way. If your mother
were still alive, you would run back to her to hide your face in her lap.
But she is dead, and if I were as proud as you, before clasping the
sustaining hand of another mortal I would first try whether one would not
be voluntarily extended from among the Olympians. If I were you, I would
begin with Demeter, whom you honoured by so marvellous a work."
Hermon waved his hand as if brushing away a troublesome fly, exclaiming
impatiently: "The gods, always the gods! I know by my own mother,
Thyone, what you women are, though I was only seven years old when I
was bereft of her by the same powers that you call good and wise, and who
have also robbed me of my eyesight, my friend, and all else that was
dear. I thank you for your kind intention, and you, too, Daphne, for
recalling the beautiful allegory. How often we have argued over its
meaning! If we continued the discussion, perhaps it might pleasantly
shorten the next few hours, which I dread as I do my whole future
existence, but I should be obliged in the outset to yield the victory to
you. The great Herophilus is right when he transfers the seat of thought
from the heart to the head. What a wild tumult is raging here behind my
brow, and how one voice drowns another! The medley baffles description.
I could more easily count with my blind eyes the cells in a honeycomb
than refute with my bewildered brain even one shrewd objection. It seems
to me that we need our eyes to understand things. We certainly do to
taste. Whatever I eat and drink--langustae and melons, light Mareotic
wine and the dark liquor of Byblus my tongue can scarcely distinguish it.
The leech assures me that this will pass away, but until the chaos within
merges into endurable order there is nothing better for me than solitude
and rest, rest, rest."
"We will not deny them to you," replied Thyone, glancing significantly at
Daphne. "Proclus's enthusiastic judgment was sincerely meant. Begin by
rejoicing over it in the inmost depths of your heart, and vividly
imagining what a wealth of exquisite joys will be yours through your last
masterpiece."
"Willingly, if I can," replied the blind man, gratefully extending his
hand. "If I could only escape the doubt whether the most cruel tyrant
could devise anything baser than to rob the artist, the very person to
whom it is everything, of his sight."
"Yes, it is terrible," Daphne assented. "Yet it seems to me that a
richer compensation for the lost gift is at the disposal of you artists
than of us other mortals, for you understand how to look with the eyes of
the soul. With them you retain what you have seen, and illumine it with
a special radiance. Homer was blind, and for that very reason, I think,
the world and life became clear and transfigured for him though a veil
concealed both from his physical vision."
"The poet!" Hermon exclaimed. "He draws from his own soul what sight,
and sight alone, brings to us sculptors. And, besides, his spirit
remained free from the horrible darkness that assailed mine. Joy itself,
Daphne, has lost its illuminating power within. What, girl, what is to
become of the heart in which even hope was destroyed?"
"Defend it manfully and keep up your courage," she answered softly; but
he pressed her hand firmly, and, in order not to betray how self-
compassion was melting his own soul, burst forth impetuously: "Say
rather: Crush the wish whose fulfilment is self-humiliation! I will go
back to Alexandria. Even the blind and crippled can find ways to earn
their bread there. Now grant me rest, and leave me alone!"
Thyone drew the girl away with her into the ship's cabin.
A short time after, the steward Gras went to Hermon to entreat him to
yield to Thyone's entreaties and leave the deck.
The leech had directed the sufferer to protect himself from draughts and
dampness, and the cool night mists were rising more and more densely from
the water.
Hermon doubtless felt them, but the thought of returning to the close
cabin was unendurable. He fancied that his torturing thoughts would
stifle him in the gloom where even fresh air was denied him.
He allowed the careful Bithynian to throw a coverlet over him and draw
the hood of his cloak over his head, but his entreaties and warnings were
futile.
The steward's watchful nursing reminded Hermon of his own solicitude for
his friend and of his faithful slave Bias, both of whom he had lost.
Then he remembered the eulogy of the grammateus, and it brought up the
question whether Myrtilus would have agreed with him. Like Proclus, his
keen-sighted and honest friend had called Daphne the best model for the
kindly goddess. He, too, had given to his statue the features of the
daughter of Archias, and admitted that he had been less successful. But
the figure! Perhaps he, Hermon, in his perpetual dissatisfaction with
himself had condemned his own work too severely, but that it lacked the
proper harmony had escaped neither Myrtilus nor himself. Now he recalled
the whole creation to his remembrance, and its weaknesses forced
themselves upon him so strongly and objectionably that the extravagant
praise of the stern critic awakened fresh doubts in his mind.
Yet a man like the grammateus, who on the morrow or the day following it
would be obliged to repeat his opinion before the King and the judges,
certainly would not have allowed himself to be carried away by mere
compassion to so great a falsification of his judgment.
Or was he himself sharing the experience of many a fellow-artist? How
often the creator deceived himself concerning the value of his own work!
He had expected the greatest success from his Polyphemus hurling the rock
at Odysseus escaping in the boat, and a gigantic smith had posed for a
model. Yet the judges had condemned it in the severest manner as a work
far exceeding the bounds of moderation, and arousing positive dislike.
The clay figure had not been executed in stone or metal, and crumbled
away. The opposite would probably now happen with the Demeter. Her
bending attitude had seemed to him daring, nay, hazardous; but the acute
critic Proclus had perceived that it was in accord with one of Daphne's
habits, and therefore numbered it among the excellences of the statue.
If the judges who awarded the prize agreed with the verdict of the
grammateus, he must accustom himself to value his own work higher,
perhaps even above that of Myrtilus.
But was this possible?
He saw his friend's Demeter as though it was standing before him, and
again he recognised in it the noblest masterpiece its maker had ever
created. What praise this marvellous work would have deserved if his own
really merited such high encomiums!
Suddenly an idea came to him, which at first he rejected as
inconceivable; but it would not allow itself to be thrust aside, and its
consideration made his breath fail.
What if his own Demeter had been destroyed and Myrtilus's statue saved?
If the latter was falsely believed to be his work, then Proclus's
judgment was explained--then--then---
Seized by a torturing anguish, he groaned aloud, and the steward Gras
inquired what he wanted.
Hermon hastily grasped the Bithynian's arm, and asked what he knew about
the rescue of his statue.
The answer was by no means satisfying. Gras had only heard that, after
being found uninjured in his studio, it had been dragged with great
exertion into the open air. The goldsmith Chello had directed the work.
Hermon remembered all this himself, yet, with an imperious curtness in
marked contrast to his usual pleasant manner to this worthy servant, he
hoarsely commanded him to bring Chello to him early the next morning, and
then again relapsed into his solitary meditations.
If the terrible conjecture which had just entered his mind should be
confirmed, no course remained save to extinguish the only new light which
now illumined the darkness of his night, or to become a cheat.
Yet his resolution was instantly formed. If the goldsmith corroborated
his fear, he would publicly attribute the rescued work to the man who
created it. And he persisted in this intention, indignantly silencing
the secret voice which strove to shake it. It temptingly urged that
Myrtilus, so rich in successes, needed no new garland. His lost sight
would permit him, Hermon, from reaping fresh laurels, and his friend
would so gladly bestow this one upon him. But he angrily closed his ears
to these enticements, and felt it a humiliation that they dared to
approach him.
With proud self-reliance he threw back his head, saying to himself that,
though Myrtilus should permit him ten times over to deck him self with
his feathers, he would reject them. He would remain himself, and was
conscious of possessing powers which perhaps surpassed his friend's.
He was as well qualified to create a genuine work of art as the best
sculptor, only hitherto the Muse had denied him success in awakening
pleasure, and blindness would put an end to creating anything of his own.
The more vividly he recalled to memory his own work and his friend's,
the more probable appeared his disquieting supposition.
He also saw Myrtilus's figure before him, and in imagination heard his
friend again promise that, with the Arachne, he would wrest the prize
even from him.
During the terrible events of the last hours he had thought but seldom
and briefly of the weaver, whom it had seemed a rare piece of good
fortune to be permitted to represent. Now the remembrance of her took
possession of his soul with fresh power.
The image of Arachne illumined by the lamplight, which Althea had showed
him, appeared like worthless jugglery, and he soon drove it back into the
darkness which surrounded him. Ledscha's figure, however, rose before
him all the more radiantly. The desire to possess her had flown to the
four winds; but he thought he had never before beheld anything more
peculiar, more powerful, or better worth modelling than the Biamite
girl as he saw her in the Temple of Nemesis, with uplifted hand, invoking
the vengeance of the goddess upon him, and there--he discovered it now--
Daphne was not at all mistaken. Images never presented themselves as
distinctly to those who could see as to the blind man in his darkness.
If he was ever permitted to receive his sight, what a statue of the
avenging goddess he could create from this greatest event in the history
of his vision!
After this work--of that he was sure--he would no longer need the
borrowed fame which, moreover, he rejected with honest indignation.