The Temptation of St. Antony Part 15

_Apollonius_--"I will first describe to you the long road I travelled to gain doctrine; and, if you find in all my life one bad action, you will stop me--for he must scandalise by his words who has offended by his actions."

_Damis_ to Antony:

"What a just man! eh?"

_Antony_--"Decidedly, I believe he is sincere."

_Apollonius_--"The night of my birth, my mother thought she saw herself gathering flowers on the border of a lake. A flash of lightning appeared; and she brought me into the world amid the cries of swans who were singing in her dream. Up to my fifteenth year, they plunged me three times a day into the fountain Asbadeus, whose waters render perjurers dropsical; and they rubbed my body with leaves of cnyza, to make me chaste. A princess from Palmyra sought me out, one evening, and offered me treasures, which she knew were hidden in tombs. A priest of the temple of Diana cut his throat in despair with the sacrificial knife; and the Governor of Cilicia, after repeated promises, declared before my family that he would put me to death; but it was he who died three days after, a.s.sa.s.sinated by the Romans."

_Damis_, to Antony, striking him on the elbow--"Eh? Just as I told you!

What a man!"

_Apollonius_--"I have for four years in succession observed the complete silence of the Pythagoreans. The most unforeseen calamity did not draw one sigh from me; and, at the theatre, when I entered, they turned aside from me as from a phantom."

_Damis_--"Would you have done that--you?"

_Apollonius_--"The time of my ordeal ended, I undertook to instruct the priests who had lost the tradition."

_Antony_--"What tradition?"

_Damis_--"Let him continue. Be silent!"

_Apollonius_--"I have conversed with the Samaneans of the Ganges, with the astrologers of Chaldea, with the magi of Babylon, with the Gaulish druids, with the priests of the negroes. I have climbed the fourteen Olympi; I have sounded the Lakes of Sythia; I have measured the vastness of the desert!"

_Damis_--"All this is undoubtedly true. I was there myself!"

_Apollonius_--"At first, I went as far as the Hyrcanian Sea. I have gone all round it, and through the country of the Baraomatae, where Bucephalus is buried. I have gone down to Nineveh. At the gates of the city a man came up to me."

_Damis_--"I! I! my good Master! I loved you from the very beginning. You were sweeter than a girl, and more beautiful than a G.o.d!"

_Appollonius_, without listening to him--"He wished to accompany me, in order to act as an interpreter for me."

_Damis_--"But you replied that you understood every language, and that you divined all thoughts. Then I kissed the end of your mantle, and I walked behind you."

_Apollonius_--"After Ctesiphon, we entered into the land of Babylon."

_Damis_--"And the satrap uttered an exclamation on seeing a man so pale."

_Antony_, to himself--"Which signifies----?"

_Apollonius_--"The King received me standing near a throne of silver, in a circular hall studded with stars, and from a cupola hung, from unseen threads, four great golden birds, with both wings extended."

_Antony_, musing--"Are there such things on the earth?"

_Damis_--"That is, indeed, a city--Babylon! Everyone is rich there! The houses, painted blue, have gates of bronze, with staircases that lead down to the river."

Making a sketch with his stick on the ground:

"Like that, do you see? And then there are temples, squares, baths, aqueducts! The palaces are covered with copper! and then the interior, if you only saw it!"

_Apollonius_--"On the northern wall rises a tower, which supports a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth; and there are three others besides!

The eighth is a chapel with a bed in it. n.o.body enters there but the woman chosen by the priests for the G.o.d Belus. The King of Babylon made me take up my quarters in it."

_Damis_--"They scarcely paid any heed to me. I was left, too, to walk about the streets by myself. I enquired into the customs of the people; I visited the workshops; I examined the huge machines which bring water into the gardens. But it annoyed me to be separated from the Master."

_Apollonius_--"At last, we left Babylon; and, by the light of the moon, we suddenly saw a wild mare."

_Damis_--"Yes, indeed! she sprang forth on her iron hoofs; she neighed like an a.s.s; she galloped amongst the rocks. He burst into angry abuse of her; and she disappeared."

_Antony_, aside--"Where can they have come from?"

_Apollonius_--"At Taxilla, capital of five thousand fortresses, Phraortes, King of the Ganges, showed us his guard of tall black men, five cubits high, and in the gardens of his palace, under a pavilion of green brocade, an enormous elephant, whom the queens used to amuse themselves in perfuming. This was the elephant of Porus, who fled after the death of Alexander."

_Damis_--"And which was found again in a forest."

_Antony_--"They talk a great deal, like drunken people."

_Apollonius_--"Phraortes made us sit down at his table."

_Damis_--"What an odd country! The n.o.blemen, while drinking, amuse themselves by flinging arrows under the feet of a child who is dancing.

But I do not approve ..."

_Apollonius_--"When I was ready to depart, the King gave me a parasol, and said to me: 'I have, on the Indus, a stud of white camels. When you do not want them any longer, blow into their ears, and they will return.' We proceeded along the river, walking in the night by the gleaming of the glow-worms, who emitted their radiance through the bamboos. The slave whistled an air to keep off the serpents; and our camels bent the reins while pa.s.sing under the trees, as if under doors that were too low. One day, a black child, who held in his hand a caduceus of gold, conducted us to the College of Sages. Iarchas, their chief, spoke to me of my ancestors, of all my thoughts, of all my actions, and all my existences. He had been the river Indus, and he recalled to my mind that I had conducted the boats on the Nile in the time of King Sesostris."

_Damis_--"As for me, they told me nothing, so that I do not know what I was."

_Antony_--"They have the unsubstantial air of shadows."

_Apollonius_--"We met on the seash.o.r.e the cynocephali, glutted with milk, who were returning from their expedition in the Island of Taprobane. The tepid waves pushed white pearls before us. The amber cracked under our footsteps. Whales' skeletons were bleaching in the crevices of the cliffs. In short, the earth grew more contracted than a sandal;--and, after casting towards the sun drops from the ocean, we turned to the right to go back. We returned through the region of the Aromatae, through the country of the Gangaridae, the promontory of Comaria, the land of the Sachalitae, of the Aramitae, and the Homeritae; then across the Ca.s.sanian mountains, the Red Sea, and the Island of Topazes, we penetrated into Ethiopia, through the kingdom of the Pygmaei."

_Antony_, aside--"How large the earth is!"

_Damis_--"And when we got home again, all those whom we had known in former days were dead."

Antony hangs his head. Silence.

_Apollonius_ goes on:

"Then they began talking about me in the world. The plague ravaged Ephesus; I made them stone an old mendicant."

_Damis_--"And the plague was gone!"

_Antony_--"What! He banishes diseases?"

_Apollonius_--"At Cnidus, I cured the lover of Venus."

_Damis_--"Yes, a madman, who had even promised to marry her. To love a woman is bad enough; but a statue--what idiocy! The Master placed his hand on this man's heart, and immediately the love was extinguished."

_Antony_--"What! He drives out demons?"