From that time the friendship uniting Cinna and the old Greek became
still more intimate. They visited each other frequently and exchanged
thoughts, like bread in time of a banquet. Besides, Cinna, in spite of
experience and the weariness which comes of use, had not reached the age
yet when life has ceased to contain the charm of unknown things; and
just this charm he found in Antea, Timon's only daughter.
Her fame was not less in Alexandria than the fame of her father. Eminent
Romans frequenting Timon's house did her homage, Greeks did her homage,
philosophers from the Serapeum did her homage, and so did the people.
Timon did not restrict her to the gineceum, after the manner of other
women; and he tried to transfer to her everything that he himself knew.
When she had passed the years of childhood, he read Greek books with
her, and even Latin and Hebrew; for, gifted with an uncommon memory, and
reared in many-tongued Alexandria, she learned those languages quickly.
She was a companion to him in thoughts; she took frequent part in the
discussions which were held in Timon's house during Symposiums. Often in
the labyrinth of difficult questions, she was able, like Ariadne, to
avoid going astray herself and to extricate others. Her father honored
and admired her. The charm of mystery and almost of sacredness
surrounded her, besides; for she had prophetic dreams, in which she saw
things invisible to common mortals. The old sage loved her as his own
soul, and the more for this reason, that he was afraid of losing her;
for frequently she said that beings appeared in dreams to her,--ominous
beings,--also a certain divine light, and she knew not whether this
light was the source of life or death.
Meanwhile she was met only by love. The Egyptians, who frequented
Timon's house, called her the Lotus; perhaps because that flower
received divine honor on the banks of the Nile, and perhaps also because
whoever saw it might forget the whole world besides.
Her beauty was equal to her wisdom. The Egyptian sun did not darken her
face, in which the rosy rays of light seemed to be enclosed in
transparent mother-of-pearl. Her eyes had the blueness of the Nile, and
their glances flowed from a remoteness as unknown as the source of that
mysterious river. When Cinna saw and heard her the first time, on
returning home, he conceived the wish to rear an altar to her in the
atrium of his house, and offer a white dove on it. He had met thousands
of women in his life, beginning with virgins from the remote north, with
white eye-lashes and hair the color of ripe wheat, and ending with
Numidians, black as lava; but he had not met hitherto such a figure, or
such a soul. And the oftener he saw her, the better he knew her, the
oftener it happened to him to hear her words, the more did amazement
increase in him. Sometimes he, who did not believe in the gods, thought
that Antea could not be the daughter of Timon, but of a god, hence only
half woman, and therefore half immortal.
And soon he loved her with a love unexpected, immense, irresistible, as
different from the feeling which he had known up to that time as Antea
was different from other women. He desired to love her only to do her
honor. Hence he was willing to give blood to possess her. He felt that
he would prefer to be a beggar with her than to be Cæsar without her.
And as a whirlpool of the sea sweeps away with irresistible might all
that comes within its circle, so Cinna's love swept away his soul, his
heart, his thoughts, his days, his nights, and everything out of which
life is composed.
Till at last it swept away Antea.
"_Tu felix_ (Thou art happy), Cinna!" said his friends.
"_Tu felix_, Cinna," said he to himself; and when at last he married
her, when her divine lips uttered the sacramental words, "Where thou
art, Caius, there am I, Caia," it seemed to him that his felicity was
like the sea,--inexhaustible and boundless.