Hermon went, with Philippus and Thyone, on board the ship which was to
convey them through the new canal to Pelusium, where the old commandant
had to plan all sorts of measures. In the border fortress the artist
was again obliged to exercise patience, for no ship bound to Pergamus or
Lesbos could be found in the harbour. Philippus had as much work as
he could do, but all his arrangements were made when carrier doves
announced that the surprise intended by the Gauls had been completely
thwarted, and his son Eumedes was empowered to punish them.
The admiral would take his fleet to the Sebennytic mouth of the Nile.
Another dove came from King Ptolemy, and summoned the old general at
once to the capital. Philippus resolved to set off without delay and, as
the way led past that mouth of the Nile, met his son on the voyage.
Hermon must accompany him and his wife to Alexandria, whence, without
entering the city, he could sail for Pergamus; ships bound to all the
ports in the Mediterranean were always in one of the harbours of the
capital. A galley ready to weigh anchor was constantly at the disposal
of the commandant of the fortress, and the next noon the noble pair,
with Hermon and his faithful Bias, went on board the Galatea.
The weather was dull, and gray clouds were sweeping across the sky over
the swift vessel, which hugged the coast, and, unless the wind shifted,
would reach the narrow tongue of land pierced by the Sebennytic mouth of
the Nile before sunrise.
Though the general and his wife went to rest early, Hermon could not
endure the close air of the cabin. Wrapped in his cloak he went on deck.
The moon, almost full, was sailing in the sky, sometimes covered by dark
clouds, sometimes leaving them behind. Like a swan emerging from the
shadow of the thickets along the shore upon the pure bosom of the
lake, it finally floated into the deep azure of the radiant firmament.
Hermon’s heart swelled.
How he rejoiced that he was again permitted to behold the starry sky,
and satiate his soul with the beauty of creation! What delight it gave
him that the eternal wanderers above were no longer soulless forms,
that he again saw in the pure silver disk above friendly Selene, in the
rolling salt waves the kingdom of Poseidon! To-morrow, when the deep
blue water was calm, he would greet the sea-god Glaucus, and when snowy
foam crowned the crests of the waves, white-armed Thetis. The wind was
no longer an empty sound to him; no, it, too, came from a deity. All
Nature had regained a new, divine life. Doubtless he felt much nearer to
his childhood than before, but he was infinitely less distant from the
eternal divinity. And all the forms, so full of meaning, which appeared
to him from Nature, and from every powerful emotion of his own soul,
were waiting to be represented by his art in the noblest of forms, those
of human beings. There were few with whose nature he had not become
familiar in the darkness and solitude that once surrounded him.
When he began to create again, he had only to summon them, and he
awaited, with the suspense of the general who is in command of new
troops on the eve of battle, the success of his own work after the great
transformation which had taken place in him.
What a stress and tumult!
He had controlled it since the first hour when he regained his full
vision. He would fain have transformed the moon into the sun, the ship
into the studio, and begun to model.
He knew, too, what he desired to create.
He would model an Apollo trampling under foot the slain dragon of
darkness.
He would succeed in this work now. And as he looked up and saw Selene
just emerging again from the black cloud island, the thought entered his
mind that it was a moonlight night like this when all the unspeakably
terrible misfortune occurred--which was now past.
Yet neither the calm wanderer above nor a resentful woman had exposed
him to the persecution of Nemesis. In the stillness of the desert he had
perceived what had brought all this terrible suffering upon him; but
he would not repeat it to himself now, for he felt within his soul the
power to remain faithful to his best self in the future.
With clear eyes he gazed keenly and blithely at the new life. Nothing,
least of all, futile self-torturing regret for faults committed, should
cloud the fair morning dawning anew for him, which summoned him to
active work, to gratitude and love.
Uttering a sigh of relief, he paced the deck--now brilliantly
illuminated by silvery light--with long strides.
The moon above his head reminded him of Ledscha. He was no longer angry
with her. The means by which she had intended to destroy him had been
transformed into a benefit, and while in the desert he had perceived
how often man finally blesses, as the highest gain, what he at first
regarded as the most cruel affliction.
How distinctly the image of the Biamite again stood before his agitated
soul!
Had he not loved her once?
Or how had it happened that, though his heart was Daphne’s, and hers
alone, he had felt wounded and insulted when his Bias, who was leaning
over the railing of the deck yonder, gazing at the glittering waves, had
informed him that Ledscha had been accompanied in her flight from her
unloved husband by the Gaul whose life he, Hermon, had saved? Was this
due to jealousy or merely wounded vanity at being supplanted in a heart
which he firmly believed belonged, though only in bitter hate, solely to
him?
She certainly had not forgotten him, and while the remembrance of her
blended with the yearning for Daphne which never left him, he sat down
and gazed out into the darkness till his head drooped on his breast.
Then a dream showed the Biamite to the slumbering man, yet no longer in
the guise of a woman, but as the spider Arachne. She increased before
his eyes to an enormous size and alighted upon the pharos erected by
Sostratus. Uninjured by the flames of the lighthouse, above which she
hovered, she wove a net of endlessly long gray threads over the whole
city of Alexandria, with its temples, palaces, and halls, harbours and
ships, until Daphne suddenly appeared with a light step and quietly cut
one after the other.
Suddenly a shrill whistle aroused him. It was the signal of the
flute-player to relieve the rowers.
A faint yellow line was now tingeing the eastern horizon of the gray,
cloudy sky. At his left extended the flat, dull-brown coast line, which
seemed to be lower than the turbid waves of the restless sea. The cold
morning wind was blowing light mists over the absolutely barren shore.
Not a tree, not a bush, not a human dwelling was to be seen in this
dreary wilderness. Wherever the eye turned, there was nothing but sand
and water, which united at the edge of the land. Long lines of surf
poured over the arid desert, and, as if repelled by the desolation of
this strand, returned to the wide sea whence they came.
The shrill screams of the sea-gulls behind the ship, and the hoarse,
hungry croaking of the ravens on the shore blended with the roaring of
the waves. Hermon shuddered at this scene. Shivering, he wrapped his
cloak closer around him, yet he did not go to the protecting cabin, but
followed the nauarch, who pointed out to him the numerous vessels which,
in a wide curve, surrounded the place where the Sebennytic arm of the
Nile pierced the tongue of land to empty into the sea.
The experienced seaman did not know what ships were doing there, but it
was hardly anything good; for ravens in a countless multitude were to be
seen on the shore and all moved toward the left.
Philippus’s appearance on deck interrupted the nauarch. He anxiously
showed the birds to the old hero also, and the latter’s only reply was,
“Watch the helm and sails!”
Yonder squadron, Philippus said to the artist, was a part of his son’s
fleet; what brought it there was a mystery to him too.
After the early meal, the galley of Eumedes approached his father’s
trireme. Two other galleys, not much inferior in size, were behind, and
probably fifty smaller vessels were moving about the mouth of the Nile
and the whole dreary tongue of land.
All belonged to the royal war fleet, and the deck of every one was
crowded with armed soldiers.
On one a forest of lances bristled in the murky air, and upon its
southward side a row of archers, each man holding his bow in his hand,
stood shoulder to shoulder.
At what mark were their arrows to be aimed? The men on board the Galatea
saw it distinctly, for the shore was swarming with human figures, here
standing crowded closely together, like horses attacked by a pack of
wolves; yonder running, singly or in groups, toward the sea or into the
land. Dark spots on the light sand marked the places where others had
thrown themselves on the ground, or, kneeling, stretched out their arms
as if in defence.
Who were the people who populated this usually uninhabited, inhospitable
place so densely and in so strange a manner?
This could not be distinguished from the Galatea with the naked eye,
but Philippus thought that they were the Gauls whose punishment had been
intrusted to his son, and it soon proved that the old general was right;
for just as the Galatea was approaching the shore, a band of twenty or
thirty men plunged into the sea. They were Gauls. The light complexions
and fair and red bristling hair showed this--Philippus knew them, and
Hermon remembered the hordes of men who had rushed past him on the ride
to Tennis.
But the watchers were allowed only a short time for observation; brief
shouts of command rang from the ships near them, long bows were raised
in the air, and one after another of the light-hued forms in the water
threw up its arms, sprang up, or sank motionless into the waves around
them, which were dyed with a crimson stain.
The artist shuddered; the gray-haired general covered his head with his
cloak, and the Lady Thyone followed his example, uttering her son’s name
in a tone of loud lamentation.
The nauarch pointed to the black birds in the air and close above the
shore and the water; but the shout, “A boat from the admiral’s galley!”
soon attracted the attention of the voyagers on the Galatea in a new
direction.
Thirty powerful rowers were urging the long, narrow boat toward them.
Sometimes raised high on the crest of a mountain wave, sometimes sinking
into the hollow, it completed its trip, and Eumedes mounted a swinging
rope ladder to the Galatea’s deck as nimbly as a boy.
Here the young commander of the fleet hastened toward his parents. His
mother sobbed aloud at his anything but cheerful greeting; Philippus
said mournfully, “I have heard nothing yet, but I know all.”
“Father,” replied the admiral, and raising the helmet from his head,
covered with brown curls, he added mournfully: “First as to these men
here. It will teach you to understand the other terrible things. Your
Uncle Archias’s house was destroyed; yonder men were the criminals.”
“In the capital!” Philippus exclaimed furiously, and Hermon cried in no
less vehement excitement: “How did my uncle get the ill will of these
monsters? But as the vengeance is in your hands, they will atone for
this breach of the peace!”
“Severely, perhaps too severely,” replied Eumedes gloomily, and
Philippus asked his son how this evil deed could have happened, and the
purport of the King’s command.
The admiral related what had occurred in the capital since his departure
from Pithom.
The four thousand Gauls who had been sent by King Antiochus to the
Egyptian army as auxiliary troops against Cyrene refused, before
reaching Paraetonium, on the western frontier of the Egyptian kingdom,
to obey their Greek commanders. As they tried to force them to continue
their march, the barbarians left them bound in the road. They
spared their lives, but rushed with loud shouts of exultation toward
Alexandria, which was close at hand.
They had learned that the city was almost stripped of troops, and the
most savage instinct urged them toward the wealthy capital.
Without encountering any resistance, they broke through the necropolis
into Alexandria, crossed the Draco canal, and marched past the
unfinished Temple of Serapis through the Rhakotis. At the Canopic Way
they turned eastward and rushed through this main artery of traffic
till, in the Brucheium, they hastened in a northerly direction toward
the sea.
South of the Theatre of Dionysus they halted. One division turned toward
the market-place, another toward the royal palaces.
Until they reached the Brucheium the hordes, so eager for booty, had
refrained from plunder and pillage.
Their whole strength was to be reserved, as the examination proved, for
the attack upon the royal palaces. Several people who were thoroughly
familiar with Alexandria had acted as guides.
The instigator of the mutiny was said to be a Gallic captain who had
taken part in the surprise of Delphi, but, having ventured to punish
disobedient soldiers, he was killed. A bridge-builder from the ranks,
and his wife, who was not of Gallic blood, had taken his place.
This woman, a resolute and obstinate but rarely beautiful creature, when
the division that was to attack the royal palaces was marching past the
house which Hermon had occupied as the heir of Myrtilus, pressed forward
herself across the threshold, to order the mutineers who followed her to
destroy and steal whatever came in their way. The bridge-builder went to
the market-place, and in pillaging the wealthy merchants’ houses
began with Archias’s. Meanwhile it was set on fire and, with the large
warehouses adjoining it, was burned to the foundation walls.
But the robbers were to obtain no permanent success, either in the
market-place or in Myrtilus’s house, which was diagonally opposite
to the palaestra; for General Satyrus, at the first tidings of their
approach, had collected all the troops at his disposal and the crews of
several war galleys, and imprisoned the division in the market-place
as though in a mouse-trap. The bands to which the woman belonged were
forced by the cavalry into the palaestra and the neighbouring Maander,
and kept there until Eumedes brought re-enforcements and compelled the
Gauls to surrender.
The King sent from Memphis the order to take the vanquished men to
the tongue of land where they now were, and could easily be imprisoned
between the sea and the Sebennytic inland lake. They were guilty of
death to the last man, and starvation was to perform the executioner’s
office upon them.
He, Eumedes, the admiral concluded, was in the King’s service, and must
do what his commander in chief ordered.
“Duty,” sighed Philippus; “yet what a punishment!”
He held out his hand to his son as he spoke, but the Lady Thyone shook
her head mournfully, saying: “There are four thousand over yonder; and
the philosopher and historian on the throne, the admirable art critic
who bestows upon his capital and Egypt all the gifts of peace, who
understands how to guard and develop it better than any one else--yet
what influence the gloomy powers exert upon him!”
Here she hesitated, and went on in a low whisper: “The blood of two
brothers stains his hand and his conscience. The oldest, to whom
the throne would have belonged, he exiled. And our friend, Demetrius
Phalereus, his father’s noble councillor! Because you, Philippus,
interceded for him--though you were in a position of command, because
Ptolemy knows your ability--you were sent to distant Pelusium, and there
we should be still--”
“Guard your tongue, wife!” interrupted the old general in a tone
of grave rebuke. “The vipers on the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt
symbolize the King’s swift power over life and death. To the Egyptians
the Philadelphi, Ptolemy and Arsinoe, are gods, and what cause have we
to reproach them except that they use their omnipotence?”
“And, mother,” Eumedes eagerly added, “do not the royal pair on the
throne merely follow the example of far greater ones among the immortal
gods? When the very Gauls who are devoted to death yonder, greedy for
booty, attacked Delphi, four years ago, it was the august brother and
sister, Apollo and Artemis, who sent them to Hades with their arrows,
while Zeus hurled his thunderbolts at them and ordered heavy boulders
to fall upon them from the shaken mountains. Many of the men over there
fled from destruction at Delphi. Unconverted, they added new crimes
to the old ones, but now retribution will overtake them. The worse the
crime, the more bloody the vengeance.
“Even the last must die, as my sovereign commands; only I shall
determine the mode of death according to my own judgment, and at the
same time, mother, feel sure of your approval. Instead of lingering
starvation, I shall use swift arrows. Now you know what you were obliged
to learn. It would be wise, mother, for you to leave this abode of
misery. Duty summons me to my ship.” He held out his hand to his parents
and Hermon as he spoke, but the latter clasped it firmly, exclaiming in
a tone of passionate emotion, “What is the name of the woman to whom,
though she is not of their race, the lawless barbarians yielded?”
“Ledscha,” replied the admiral.
Hermon started as if stung by a scorpion, and asked, “Where is she?”
“On my ship,” was the reply, “if she has not yet been taken ashore with
the others.”
“To be killed with the pitiable band there?” cried Thyone angrily,
looking her son reproachfully in the face.
“No, mother,” replied Eumedes. “She will be taken to the others under
the escort of trustworthy men in order, perhaps, to induce her to speak.
It must be ascertained whether there were accomplices in the attack on
the royal palaces, and lastly whence the woman comes.”
“I can tell you that myself,” replied Hermon. “Allow me to accompany
you. I must see and speak to her.”
“The Arachne of Tennis?” asked Thyone. Hermon’s mute nod of assent
answered the question, but she exclaimed: “The unhappy woman, who called
down the wrath of Nemesis upon you, and who has now herself fallen a
prey to the avenging goddess. What do you want from her?”
Hermon bent down to his old friend and whispered, “To lighten her
terrible fate, if it is in my power.”
“Go, then,” replied the matron, and turned to her son, saying, “Let
Hermon tell you how deeply this woman has influenced his life, and, when
her turn comes, think of your mother.”
“She is a woman,” replied Eumedes, “and the King’s mandate only commands
me to punish men. Besides, I promised her indulgence if she would make a
confession.”
“And she?” asked Hermon.
“Neither by threats nor promises,” answered the admiral, “can this
sinister, beautiful creature be induced to speak.”
“Certainly not,” said the artist, and a smile of satisfaction flitted
over his face.