Hermon entered his house with drooping head.
Here he was informed that the grammateus of the Dionysian artists had
already called twice to speak to him concerning an important matter.
When he came from the bath, Proclus visited him again. His errand was
to invite him to a banquet which was to take place that evening at his
residence in a wing of the royal palace.
But Hermon was not in the mood to share a joyous revel, and he frankly
said so, although immediately after his return he had accepted the
invitation to the festival which the whole fellowship of artists would
give the following day in honour of the seventieth birthday of the old
sculptor Euphranor. The grammateus alluded to this, and most positively
insisted that he could not release him; for he came not only by his own
wish, but in obedience to the command of Queen Arsinoe, who desired to
tell the creator of the Demeter how highly she esteemed his work and his
art. She would appear herself at dessert, and the banquet must therefore
begin at an unusually early hour. He, Proclus, was to have the high
honour of including the royal lady among his guests solely on Hermon’s
account, and his refusal would be an insult to the Queen.
So the artist found himself obliged to relinquish his opposition. He did
this reluctantly; but the Queen’s attention to him and his art flattered
his vanity and, if he was to abandon the intoxicating and barren life
of pleasure, it could scarcely be done more worthily than at a festival
where the King’s consort intended to distinguish him in person.
The banquet was to begin in a few hours, yet he could not let the day
pass without seeing Daphne and telling her the words of the oracle. He
longed, with ardent yearning, for the sound of her voice, and still more
to unburden his sorely troubled soul to her.
Oh, if only his Myrtilus still walked among the living! How totally
different, in spite of his lost vision, would his life have been!
Daphne was now the only one whom he could put in his place.
Since his return from the oracle, the fear that the rescued Demeter
might yet be the work of Myrtilus had again mastered him. However loudly
outward circumstances might oppose this, he now felt, with a certainty
which surprised him, that this work was not his own. The approval, as
well as the doubts, which it aroused in others strengthened his opinion,
although even now he could not succeed in bringing it into harmony with
the facts. How deep had been the intoxication in which he had so long
reeled from one day to the next, since it had succeeded in keeping every
doubt of the authorship of this work far from him!
Now he must obtain certainty, and Daphne could help him to it; for, as
a priestess of Demeter, she possessed the right to procure him access
to the cella and get permission for him to climb the lofty pedestal and
feel the statue with his fingers, whose sense of touch had become much
keener.
He would frankly inform her of his fear, and her truthful nature would
find the doubt that gnawed his heart as unendurable as he himself.
It would have been a grave crime to woo her before he was relieved of
this uncertainty, and he would utter the decisive words that very day,
and ask her whether her love was great enough to share the joys and
sorrows of life with him, the blind man, who perhaps must also divest
himself of a false fame.
Time pressed.
He called at Archias’s house with a wreath on his head and in festal
robes; but Daphne was in the temple, whither old Philippus and Thyone
had gone, and his uncle was attending a late session of the Council.
He would have liked to follow Daphne to the sanctuary, but the late
hour forbade it, and he therefore only charged Gras to tell his young
mistress that he was going to Proclus’s banquet, and would return early
the next morning to discuss a most important subject with her.
Then he went directly to the neighbouring palace. The Queen might have
appeared already, and it would not do to keep her waiting.
He was aware that she lived at variance with her husband, but how
could he have suspected that she cherished the more than bold design
of hurling the sovereign from his throne and seizing the Egyptian crown
herself.
Proclus and Althea were among the conspirators who supported Arsinoe,
and the Queen thought it would be an easy matter to win over to her
cause and herself the handsome sculptor, whom she remembered at the last
Dionysia.
The wealthy blind artist, so highly esteemed among the members of his
profession, might become valuable to the conspiracy, for she knew what
enthusiastic devotion the Alexandrian artists felt for the King, and
everything depended upon forming a party in her own favour among them.
This task was to fall to Hermon, and also another, still more important
one; for he, his nephew and future son-in-law, if any one, could
persuade the wealthy Archias to lend the plot his valuable aid. Hitherto
the merchant had been induced, it is true, to advance large sums of
money to the Queen, but the loyal devotion which he showed to her
royal husband had rendered it impossible to give him even a hint of the
conspiracy. Althea, however, declared that the blind man’s marriage to
Daphne was only a question of time, and Proclus added that the easily
excited nephew would show himself more pliant than the uncle if Arsinoe
exerted upon him the irresistible charm of her personality.
When Hermon entered the residence of the grammateus in the palace, the
guests had already assembled. The Queen was not to appear until after
the feast, when the mixing jars were filled. The place by Hermon’s side,
which Althea had chosen for herself, would then be given up to Arsinoe.
The sovereign was as unaccustomed to the society of a blind artist
as Hermon was to that of a queen, and both eagerly anticipated the
approaching meeting.
Yet it was difficult for Hermon to turn a bright face toward his
companion. The sources of anxiety and grief which had previously
burdened his mind would not vanish, even under the roof of the royal
palace.
Althea’s presence reminded him of Tennis, Ledscha, and Nemesis, who for
so long a time seemed to have suspended her persecution, but since he
had returned from the abode of the oracle was again asserting the old
right to him. During many a sleepless hour of the night he had once more
heard the rolling of her terrible wheel.
Even before the journey to the oasis of Amon, everything life could
offer him, the idle rake, in his perpetual darkness, had seemed shallow
and scarcely worth stretching out his hand for it.
True, an interesting conversation still had power to charm him, but
often during its continuance the full consciousness of his misfortune
forced itself upon his mind; for the majority of the subjects discussed
by the artists came to them through the medium of sight, and referred
to new creations of architecture, sculpture, and painting, from whose
enjoyment his blindness debarred him.
When returning home from a banquet, if his way lay through the city,
he was reminded of the superb buildings, marble terraces and fountains,
statues and porticoes, which had formerly satiated his eyes with
delight, and must now be illumined with a brilliant radiance by the
morning sunbeams, though a hostile fate shut them out from his eyes,
starving and thirsting for beautiful forms.
But it had seemed to him still harder to bear that his blinded eyes
refused to show him the most beautiful of all beautiful things, the
human form, when he lingered among the Ephebi or the spectators of
a festal procession, or visited the gymnasium, the theatre, the
Aphrodisium, or the Paneum gardens, where the beautiful women met at
sunset.
The Queen was to appear immediately, and when she took her place near
him his blindness would again deprive him of the sight of her delicately
cut features, prevent his returning the glances from her sparkling eyes,
and admiring the noble outlines of her thinly veiled figure.
Would his troubled spirit at least permit him to enjoy and enter without
restraint into the play of her quick wit?
Perhaps her arrival would relieve him from the discomfort which
oppressed him here.
A stranger, out of his own sphere, he felt chilled among these closely
united men and women, to whom no tie bound him save the presence of the
same host.
He was not acquainted with a single individual except the mythograph
Crates, who for several months had been one of the members of the
Museum, and who had attached himself to Hermon at Straton’s lectures.
The artist was surprised to find this man in such a circle, but he
learned from Althea that the young member of the Museum was a relative
of Proclus, and a suitor of the beautiful Nico, one of the Queen’s
ladies in waiting, who was among the guests.
Crates had really been invited in order to win him over to the Queen’s
cause; but charming fair-haired Nico had been commissioned by the
conspirators to persuade him to sing Arsinoe’s praises among his
professional associates.
The rest of the men present stood in close connection with Arsinoe,
and were fellow-conspirators against her husband’s throne and life.
The ladies whom Proclus had invited were all confidants of Arsinoe, the
wives and daughters of his other guests. All were members of the highest
class of society, and their manners showed the entire freedom from
restraint that existed in the Queen’s immediate circle. Althea profited
by the advantage of being Hermon’s only acquaintance here. So, when he
took his place on the cushion at her side, she greeted him familiarly
and cordially, as she had treated him for a long time, wherever they
met, and in a low voice told him, sometimes in a kindly tone, sometimes
with biting sarcasm, the names and characters of the other guests.
The most aristocratic was Amyntas, who stood highest of all in the
Queen’s favour because he had good reason to hate the other Arsinoe, the
sister of the King. His son had been this royal dame’s first husband,
and she had deserted him to marry Lysimachus, the aged King of Thrace.
The Rhodian Chrysippus, her leech and trusted counsellor, also possessed
great influence over the Queen.
“The noble lady,” whispered Althea, “needs the faithful devotion of
every well-disposed subject, for perhaps you have already learned how
cruelly the King embitters the life of the mother of his three children.
Many a caprice can be forgiven the suffering Ptolemy, who recently
expressed a wish that he could change places with the common workmen
whom he saw eating their meal with a good appetite, and who is now
tortured by the gout; yet he watches the hapless woman with the jealousy
of a tiger, though he himself is openly faithless to her. What is the
Queen to him, since the widow of Lysimachus returned from Thrace--no,
from Cassandrea, Ephesus, and sacred Samothrace, or whatever other
places there are which would no longer tolerate the murderess?”
“The King’s sister--the object of his love?” cried Hermon incredulously.
“She must be forty years old now.”
“Very true,” Althea assented. “But we are in Egypt, where marriages
between brothers and sisters are pleasing to gods and men; and besides,
we make our own moral laws here. Her age! We women are only as old as we
look, and the leeches and tiring women of this beauty of forty practise
arts which give her the appearance of twenty-five, yet perhaps the King
values her intellect more than her person, and the wisdom of a hundred
serpents is certainly united in this woman’s head. She will make our
poor Queen suffer unless real friends guard her from the worst. The
three most trustworthy ones are here: Amyntas, the leech Chrysippus, and
the admirable Proclus. Let us hope that you will make this three-leaved
clover the luck-promising four-leaved one. Your uncle, too, has often
with praiseworthy generosity helped Arsinoe in many an embarrassment.
Only make the acquaintance of this beautiful royal lady, and the
last drop of your blood will not seem too precious to shed for her!
Besides--Proclus told me so in confidence--you have little favour to
expect from the King. How long he kept you waiting for the first word
concerning a work which justly transported the whole city with delight!
When he did finally summon you, he said things which must have wounded
you.”
“That is going too far,” replied Hermon.
“Then he kept back his real opinion,” Althea protested. “Had I not made
it a rule to maintain absolute silence concerning everything I hear in
conversation from those with whom I am closely associated--”
Here she was interrupted by Chrysippus, who asked if Althea had told her
neighbour about his Rhodian eye-salve.
He winked at her and made a significant gesture as he spoke, and then
informed the blind artist how graciously Arsinoe had remembered him when
she heard of the remedy by whose aid many a wonderful cure of blind eyes
had been made in Rhodes. The royal lady had inquired about him and his
sufferings with almost sisterly interest, and Althea eagerly confirmed
the statement.
Hermon listened to the pair in silence.
He had not been able to see them, it is true, yet he had perceived
their design as if the loss of sight had sharpened his mental vision.
He imagined that he could see the favourite and Althea nudge each other
with sneering gestures, and believed that their sole purpose was to
render him--he knew not for what object--the obedient tool of the Queen,
who had probably also succeeded in persuading his usually cautious uncle
to render her great services.
The remembrance of Arsinoe’s undignified conduct at the Dionysia, and
the shameful stories of her which he had heard returned to his mind. At
the same time he saw Daphne rise before him in her aristocratic dignity
and kindly goodness, and a smile of satisfaction hovered around his lips
as he said to himself: “The spider Althea again! But, in spite of my
blindness, I will be caught neither in her net nor in the Queen’s. They
are the last to bar the way which leads to Daphne and real happiness.”
The Rhodian was just beginning to praise Arsinoe also as a special
friend and connoisseur of the sculptor’s art when Crates, Hermon’s
fellow-student, asked the blind artist, in behalf of his beautiful
companion, why his Demeter was placed upon a pedestal which, to others
as well as himself, seemed too high for the size of the statue.
Hermon replied that he had heard several make this criticism, but the
priests of the goddess refused to take it into account.
Here he hesitated, for, like a blow from an invisible hand, the thought
darted through his mind that perhaps, on the morrow, he would see
himself compelled before the whole world to cast aside the crown of fame
which he owed to the statue on the lofty pedestal. He did not have even
the remotest idea of continuing to deck himself with false renown if
his dread was realized; yet he doubtless imagined how this whole
aristocratic circle, with the Queen, Althea, and Proclus at its head,
would turn with reckless haste from the hapless man who had led them
into such a shameful error.
Yet what mattered it, even if these miserable people considered
themselves deceived and pointed the finger of scorn at him? Better
people would thereby be robbed of the right to accuse him of
faithlessness to himself. This thought darted through his heated brain
like a flash of lightning, and when, in spite of his silence, the
conversation was continued and Althea told the others that only Hermon’s
blindness had prevented the creation of a work which could have been
confidently expected far to surpass the Demeter, since it seemed to have
been exactly suited to his special talent, he answered his beautiful
companion’s remark curtly and absently.
She perceived this with annoyance and perplexity.
A woman who yearns for the regard of all men, and makes love a toy,
easily lessens the demands she imposes upon individuals. Only, even
though love has wholly disappeared, she still claims consideration, and
Althea did not wish to lose Hermon’s regard.
When Amyntas, the head of the conspirators, attracted the attention of
the company by malicious remarks about the King’s sister, the Thracian
laid her hand on the blind artist’s arm, whispering: “Has the image of
the Arachne which, at Tennis, charmed you even in the presence of the
angry Zeus, completely vanished from your memory? How indifferent you
look! But I tell you”--her deep blue eyes flashed as she spoke--“that so
long as you were still a genuine creating artist the case was different.
Even while putting the last touches of the file to the Demeter, for
which Archias’s devout daughter posed as your model, another whom you
could not banish from your mind filled your imagination. Though so loud
a denial is written on your face, I persist in my conviction, and that
no idle delusion ensnares me I can prove!”
Hermon raised his sightless eyes to her inquiringly, but she went on
with eager positiveness: “Or, if you did not think of the weaver while
carving the goddess, how did you happen to engrave a spider on the
ribbon twined around the ears of grain in Demeter’s hand? Not the
smallest detail of a work produced by the hand of a valued friend
escapes my notice, and I perceived it before the Demeter came to the
temple and the lofty pedestal. Now I would scarcely be able to discover
it in the dusky cella, yet at that time I took pleasure in the sight of
the ugly insect, not only because it is cleverly done, but because it
reminded me of something”--here she lowered her voice still more--“that
pleased me, though probably it would seem less flattering to the
daughter of Archias, who perhaps is better suited to act as guide to the
blind. How bewildered you look! Eternal gods! Many things are forgotten
after long months have passed, but it will be easy for me to sharpen
your memory. ‘At the time Hermon had just finished the Demeter,’ the
spider called to me, ‘he scratched me on the gold.’ But at that very
time--yes, my handsome friend, I can reckon accurately--you had met me,
Althea, in Tennis, I had brought the spider-woman before your eyes. Was
it really nothing but foolish vanity that led me to the conviction
that you were thinking of me also when you engraved on the ribbon the
despised spider-for which, however, I always felt a certain regard--with
the delicate web beneath its slender legs?”
Hitherto Hermon had listened to every word in silence, labouring for
breath. He was transported as if by magic to the hour of his return from
Pelusium; he saw himself enter Myrtilus’s studio and watch his friend
scratch something, he did not know what, upon the ribbon which fastened
the bunch of golden grain. It was--nay, it could have been nothing
else--that very spider. The honoured work was not his, but his dead
friend’s. How the exchange had occurred he could not now understand,
but to disbelieve that it had taken place would have been madness or
self-deception.
Now he also understood the doubts of Soteles and the King. Not
he--Myrtilus, and he alone, was the creator of the much-lauded Demeter!
This conviction raised a hundred-pound weight from his soul.
What was applause! What was recognition! What were fame and laurel
wreaths! He desired clearness and truth for himself and all the world
and, as if frantic, he suddenly sprang from his cushions, shouting to
the startled guests: “I myself and this whole great city were deceived!
The Demeter is not mine, not the work of Hermon! The dead Myrtilus
created it!”
Then pressing his hand to his brow, he called his student friend to
his side, and, as the scholar anxiously laid his arm on his shoulder,
whispered: “Away, away from here! Only let me get out of doors into the
open air!”
Crates, bewildered and prepared for the worst, obeyed his wish; but
Althea and the other guests left behind felt more and more impressed by
the suddenly awakened conviction that the hapless blind man had now also
become the victim of madness.