Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 28

VI

ENTHUSIASM

So, the deed was accomplished. Chrysis had the proof.

If Demetrios had brought himself to commit the first crime, the two others had probably followed without delay. A man of his rank would consider murder, and even sacrilege, as less dishonourable than theft.

He had obeyed, consequently he was a captive. This man, free, impa.s.sive, and cold as he was, had submitted to the yoke of slavery like the others, and his mistress, his tamer, it was she, Chrysis, Sarah of Gennesaret.

Ah! to think of it, to repeat it, to say it out aloud, alone!

Chrysis rushed out of the noisy house and ran quickly, straight before her, with the fresh breeze of morning bathing her face.

She went as far as the Agora along the road which led to the sea, at the end of which the masts of eight hundred s.h.i.+ps stood huddled together like gigantic stalks of corn. Then she turned to the right, before the immense avenue of the Dromos where the house of Demetrios was. A thrill of pride came over her when she pa.s.sed in front of the windows of her future lover; but she did not commit the indiscretion of attempting to see him the first. She followed the long road as far as the Canopic Gate, and cast herself upon the ground between two aloes.

He had done it. He had done everything for her, certainly more than any lover had ever done for any woman. She repeated it unceasingly and reiterated her triumph again and again. Demetrios, the Well-Beloved, the impossible and hopeless dream of so many feminine hearts, had run every sort of peril for her, every kind of shame, of willing remorse. He had even abjured the ideal of his thought, he had despoiled his handiwork of the miraculous necklace, and that day which was just dawning would see the lover of the G.o.ddess at the feet of his new idol.

"Take me! take me!" she cried. She adored him now. She called out for him. She longed for him. The three crimes became metamorphosed in her mind into three heroic actions, in return for which she would never be able to give enough affection, enough pa.s.sion. With what an incomparable flame would their love burn--this unique love of two beings equally young, equally beautiful, equally loved by one another and united for ever after the conquest of so many obstacles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She extended her arms]

They would go away together, they would set sail for mysterious countries, for Amaronthis, for Epidauros, or even for that unknown Rome which was the second town in the world after immense Alexandria, and which had undertaken the subjugation of the earth. What would they not do, wherever they might be? What joy would be a stranger to them, what human felicity would not envy them theirs, and pale before their enchanted pa.s.sage?

Chrysis rose from the ground, dazzled, She extended her arms, set back her shoulders, threw out her bust. A sensation of languor and mounting joy stiffened her firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She set out for home . . .

On opening the door of her chamber, she started with surprise to see that nothing had changed under her roof since the night before. The little objects on her toilet-table, on the stands, on the shelves, appeared to her an inadequate setting for her new life.

She broke some that reminded her too directly of bygone useless lovers, for whom she now conceived a sudden hatred. If she spared others, it was not that she valued them more, but she was afraid of dismantling her chamber in case Demetrios had formed the design of pa.s.sing the night there.

She undressed slowly. Vestiges of the orgie fell from her tunic, crumbs of cake, hairs, rose-leaves.

When her waist was relieved of the pressure of her girdle, she smoothed the skin and plunged her fingers into her hair to lighten its weight.

But before going to bed a longing came over her to rest an instant on the rugs of the terrace, where the coolness of the air was so delicious.

She mounted.

The sun had barely risen. It lay on the horizon line like a vast swollen orange.

A great gnarled palm-tree stood with its thicket of green leaves hanging over the bal.u.s.trade. Chrysis ensconced her tingling nudity in its shade, and s.h.i.+vered, with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in her hands.

Her eyes wandered over the gradually whitening town. The violet vapours of the dawn rose from the silent streets and disappeared in the pellucid air.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Suddenly, an idea burst upon her mind, grew upon her, took possession of her. Demetrios, who had already done so much, why should he not kill the Queen, Demetrios who might be the king?

And then?

And then, that monumental ocean of houses, palaces, temples, porticoes, colonnades, that swam before her eyes from the Necropolis of the west to the gardens of the G.o.ddess: Brouchion, the Egyptian town, in front of which the gleaming Paneion reared itself aloft like a mountain acropolis; the Great Temple of Serapis, from the facade of which arose, horn-like, two long pink obelisks; the Great Temple of Aphrodite engirded by the rustling of three hundred thousand palm-trees and countless waves; the Temple of Persephone and the Temple of Arsinoe, the two sanctuaries of Poseidon, the three towers of Isis Lochias, and the theatre, and the Hippodrome, and the Stadium where Pittacos had run in compet.i.tion with Nicosthenes, and the tomb of Stratonice, and the tomb of the G.o.d Alexander--Alexandria! Alexandria! the sea, the men, the colossal marble Pharos whose mirror saved men from the sea! Alexandria!

the city of the eleven Ptolemies, Physcon, Philometor, Epiphanes, Philadelphos; Alexandria, the climax of all dreams, the diadem of all the glories conquered during three thousand years in Memphis, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, by the chisel, the pen, the compa.s.s, and the sword!

Still farther away, the Delta, cloven by the seven tongues of Nile, Sais, Boubastis, Heliopolis; then, travelling towards the South, that ribbon of fertile land, the Heptanomos with the long array of its twelve hundred riverside temples dedicated to all the G.o.ds, and further still, Thebas. Diospolis, the Isle of Elephants, the impa.s.sable cataracts, the Isle of Argo . . .Meroe . . . the unknown; and even, if it was permitted to believe the traditions of the Egyptians, the country of the fabulous lakes, whence escapes the antique Nile, lakes so vast that one loses sight of the horizon when crossing their purple flood, and perched so high upon the mountains that the stars are reflected in them like golden apples.--all this, all, should be the kingdom, the domain, the possession of Chrysis, the courtesan.

She almost choked, and threw her arms on high as if she thought to touch the heavens.

And simultaneously, she watched on her left the slow flight towards the open sea of a great bird with black wings.

VII

CLEOPATRA

Queen Berenice had a young sister called Cleopatra. Many other Egyptian princesses had borne the same name, but this girl became in later years the great Cleopatra who destroyed her kingdom, and killed herself, as one might say, on the corpse of her dead empire.

About this time, she was twelve years of age, and no one could tell what her beauty would he. Her body, tall and thin, seemed out of place in a family where all the females were plump. She was ripening like some badly-grafted, b.a.s.t.a.r.d fruit of foreign, obscure origin. Some of her lineaments were hard and bold, as seen in Macedonia; other traits appeared as if inherited from the depths of Nubia, where womankind is tender and swarthy, for her mother had been a female of inferior race whose pedigree was doubtful. It was surprising to see Cleopatra's lips, almost thick, under an aquiline nose of rather delicate shape. Her young b.r.e.a.s.t.s, very round, small, and widely separated, were crowned with a swelling aureola, thereby showing she was a daughter of the Nile.

The little Princess lived in a s.p.a.cious room, opening on to the vast sea and joined to the Queen's apartment by a vestibule under a colonnade.

Cleopatra pa.s.sed the hours of the night on a bed of bluish silk, where the skin of her young limbs, already of a dark hue, took on still deeper tints.

It came to pa.s.s that in the night when--far from her and her thoughts--the events already chronicled in these pages look place, Cleopatra rose long before dawn. She had slept but little and badly, being anxious about her troubles of p.u.b.erty which she had just experienced, and disturbed by the extreme heat of the atmosphere.

Without waking the woman who watched over her slumbers, she softly put her feet to the ground, slipped her golden bangles round her ankles, girded her little brown belly with a row of enormous pearls, and thus accoutred, left her chamber.

In the monumental corridor, armed guards were also sound asleep, except one who stood sentinel at the door of the Queen's room.

He fell on his knees and whispered in dire terror, as if he had never before found himself thus struggling in such a conflict of duty and danger:

"Princess Cleopatra, I crave thy pardon! I cannot let thee pa.s.s!"