← catalogue

The Sisters — Complete

by Georg Ebers · English · Gutenberg #5466 · 590,602 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sisters — Complete
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Sisters — Complete

Author: Georg Ebers

Translator: Clara Bell


        
Release date: November 15, 2004 [eBook #5466]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5466

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SISTERS — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE SISTERS, Complete

By Georg Ebers

Translated from the German by Clara Bell




DEDICATION TO HERR EDUARD von HALLBERGER

Allow me, my dear friend, to dedicate these pages to you. I present them
to you at the close of a period of twenty years during which a warm and
fast friendship has subsisted between us, unbroken by any disagreement.
Four of my works have first seen the light under your care and have
wandered all over the world under the protection of your name. This, my
fifth book, I desire to make especially your own; it was partly written
in your beautiful home at Tutzing, under your hospitable roof, and I
desire to prove to you by some visible token that I know how to value
your affection and friendship and the many happy hours we have passed
together, refreshing and encouraging each other by a full and perfect
interchange of thought and sentiment.




PREFACE.

By a marvellous combination of circumstances a number of fragments of
the Royal Archives of Memphis have been preserved from destruction with
the rest, containing petitions written on papyrus in the Greek language;
these were composed by a recluse of Macedonian birth, living in the
Serapeum, in behalf of two sisters, twins, who served the god as
“Pourers out of the libations.”

At a first glance these petitions seem scarcely worthy of serious
consideration; but a closer study of their contents shows us that
we possess in them documents of the greatest value in the history
of manners. They prove that the great Monastic Idea--which under the
influence of Christianity grew to be of such vast moral and historical
significance--first struck root in one of the centres of heathen
religious practices; besides affording us a quite unexpected insight
into the internal life of the temple of Serapis, whose ruined walls
have, in our own day, been recovered from the sand of the desert by the
indefatigable industry of the French Egyptologist Monsieur Mariette.

I have been so fortunate as to visit this spot and to search through
every part of it, and the petitions I speak of have been familiar to me
for years. When, however, quite recently, one of my pupils undertook to
study more particularly one of these documents--preserved in the Royal
Library at Dresden--I myself reinvestigated it also, and this study
impressed on my fancy a vivid picture of the Serapeum under Ptolemy
Philometor; the outlines became clear and firm, and acquired color, and
it is this picture which I have endeavored to set before the reader, so
far as words admit, in the following pages.

I did not indeed select for my hero the recluse, nor for my heroines
the twins who are spoken of in the petitions, but others who might have
lived at a somewhat earlier date under similar conditions; for it is
proved by the papyrus that it was not once only and by accident that
twins were engaged in serving in the temple of Serapis, but that, on the
contrary, pair after pair of sisters succeeded each other in the office
of pouring out libations.

I have not invested Klea and Irene with this function, but have
simply placed them as wards of the Serapeum and growing up within its
precincts. I selected this alternative partly because the existing
sources of knowledge give us very insufficient information as to the
duties that might have been required of the twins, partly for other
reasons arising out of the plan of my narrative.

Klea and Irene are purely imaginary personages, but on the other hand
I have endeavored, by working from tolerably ample sources, to give a
faithful picture of the historical physiognomy of the period in which
they live and move, and portraits of the two hostile brothers Ptolemy
Philometor and Euergetes II., the latter of whom bore the nickname of
Physkon: the Stout. The Eunuch Eulaeus and the Roman Publius Cornelius
Scipio Nasica, are also historical personages.

I chose the latter from among the many young patricians living at the
time, partly on account of the strong aristocratic feeling which he
displayed, particularly in his later life, and partly because his
nickname of Serapion struck me. This name I account for in my own way,
although I am aware that he owed it to his resemblance to a person of
inferior rank.

For the further enlightenment of the reader who is not familiar with
this period of Egyptian history I may suggest that Cleopatra, the wife
of Ptolemy Philometor--whom I propose to introduce to the reader--must
not be confounded with her famous namesake, the beloved of Julius Caesar
and Mark Antony. The name Cleopatra was a very favorite one among the
Lagides, and of the queens who bore it she who has become famous through
Shakespeare (and more lately through Makart) was the seventh, the sister
and wife of Ptolemy XIV. Her tragical death from the bite of a viper or
asp did not occur until 134 years later than the date of my narrative,
which I have placed 164 years B.C.

At that time Egypt had already been for 169 years subject to the rule
of a Greek (Macedonian) dynasty, which owed its name as that of the
Ptolemies or Lagides to its founder Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus.
This energetic man, a general under Alexander the Great, when his
sovereign--333 B.C.--had conquered the whole Nile Valley, was appointed
governor of the new Satrapy; after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C.,
Ptolemy mounted the throne of the Pharaohs, and he and his descendants
ruled over Egypt until after the death of the last and most famous of
the Cleopatras, when it was annexed as a province to the Roman Empire.

This is not the place for giving a history of the successive Ptolemies,
but I may remark that the assimilating faculty exercised by the Greeks
over other nations was potent in Egypt; particularly as the result of
the powerful influence of Alexandria, the capital founded by Alexander,
which developed with wonderful rapidity to be one of the most splendid
centres of Hellenic culture and of Hellenic art and science.

Long before the united rule of the hostile brothers Ptolemy Philometor
and Euergetes--whose violent end will be narrated to the reader of this
story--Greek influence was marked in every event and detail of Egyptian
life, which had remained almost unaffected by the characteristics of
former conquerors--the Hyksos, the Assyrians and the Persians; and,
under the Ptolemies, the most inhospitable and exclusive nation of early
antiquity threw open her gates to foreigners of every race.

Alexandria was a metropolis even in the modern sense; not merely an
emporium of commerce, but a focus where the intellectual and religious
treasures of various countries were concentrated and worked up, and
transmitted to all the nations that desired them. I have resisted the
temptation to lay the scene of my story there, because in Alexandria
the Egyptian element was too much overlaid by the Greek, and the
too splendid and important scenery and decorations might easily have
distracted the reader’s attention from the dramatic interest of the
persons acting.

At that period of the Hellenic dominion which I have described, the
kings of Egypt were free to command in all that concerned the internal
affairs of their kingdom, but the rapidly-growing power of the Roman
Empire enabled her to check the extension of their dominion, just as she
chose.

Philometor himself had heartily promoted the immigration of Israelites
from Palestine, and under him the important Jewish community in
Alexandria acquired an influence almost greater than the Greek; and this
not only in the city but in the kingdom and over their royal protector,
who allowed them to build a temple to Jehovah on the shores of the
Nile, and in his own person assisted at the dogmatic discussions of the
Israelites educated in the Greek schools of the city. Euergetes II., a
highly gifted but vicious and violent man, was, on the contrary, just
as inimical to them; he persecuted them cruelly as soon as his brother’s
death left him sole ruler over Egypt. His hand fell heavily even on
the members of the Great Academy--the Museum, as it was called--of
Alexandria, though he himself had been devoted to the grave labors of
science, and he compelled them to seek a new home. The exiled sons of
learning settled in various cities on the shores of the Mediterranean,
and thus contributed not a little to the diffusion of the intellectual
results of the labors in the Museum.

Aristarchus, the greatest of Philometor’s learned contemporaries, has
reported for us a conversation in the king’s palace at Memphis. The
verses about “the puny child of man,” recited by Cleopatra in chapter
X., are not genuinely antique; but Friedrich Ritschl--the Aristarchus of
our own days, now dead--thought very highly of them and gave them to
me, some years ago, with several variations which had been added by an
anonymous hand, then still in the land of the living. I have added to
the first verse two of these, which, as I learned at the eleventh hour,
were composed by Herr H. L. von Held, who is now dead, and of whom
further particulars may be learned from Varnhagen’s ‘Biographisclaen
Denkmalen’. Vol. VII. I think the reader will thank me for directing
his attention to these charming lines and to the genius displayed in the
moral application of the main idea. Verses such as these might very well
have been written by Callimachus or some other poet of the circle of the
early members of the Museum of Alexandria.

I was also obliged in this narrative to concentrate, in one limited
canvas as it were, all the features which were at once the conditions
and the characteristics of a great epoch of civilization, and to give
them form and movement by setting the history of some of the men then
living before the reader, with its complications and its denouement. All
the personages of my story grew up in my imagination from a study of the
times in which they lived, but when once I saw them clearly in outline
they soon stood before my mind in a more distinct form, like people in
a dream; I felt the poet’s pleasure in creation, and as I painted them
their blood grew warm, their pulses began to beat and their spirit to
take wings and stir, each in its appropriate nature. I gave history her
due, but the historic figures retired into the background beside the
human beings as such; the representatives of an epoch became vehicles
for a Human Ideal, holding good for all time; and thus it is that
I venture to offer this transcript of a period as really a dramatic
romance.

Leipzig November 13, 1879. GEORG EBERS.




THE SISTERS.




CHAPTER I.

On the wide, desert plain of the Necropolis of Memphis stands the
extensive and stately pile of masonry which constitutes the Greek temple
of Serapis; by its side are the smaller sanctuaries of Asclepios, of
Anubis and of Astarte, and a row of long, low houses, built of unburnt
bricks, stretches away behind them as a troop of beggar children might
follow in the train of some splendidly attired king.

The more dazzlingly brilliant the smooth, yellow sandstone walls of the
temple appear in the light of the morning sun, the more squalid and mean
do the dingy houses look as they crouch in the outskirts. When the winds
blow round them and the hot sunbeams fall upon them, the dust rises
from them in clouds as from a dry path swept by the gale. Even the rooms
inside are never plastered, and as the bricks are of dried Nile-mud
mixed with chopped straw, of which the sharp little ends stick out from
the wall in every direction, the surface is as disagreeable to touch as
it is unpleasing to look at. When they were first built on the ground
between the temple itself and the wall which encloses the precincts, and
which, on the eastern side, divides the acacia-grove of Serapis in half,
they were concealed from the votaries visiting the temple by the back
wall of a colonnade on the eastern side of the great forecourt; but a
portion of this colonnade has now fallen down, and through the breach,
part of these modest structures are plainly visible with their doors
and windows opening towards the sanctuary--or, to speak more accurately,
certain rudely constructed openings for looking out of or for entering
by. Where there is a door there is no window, and where a gap in
the wall serves for a window, a door is dispensed with; none of the
chambers, however, of this long row of low one-storied buildings
communicate with each other.

A narrow and well-trodden path leads through the breach in the wall; the
pebbles are thickly strewn with brown dust, and the footway leads past
quantities of blocks of stone and portions of columns destined for the
construction of a new building which seems only to have been intermitted
the night before, for mallets and levers lie on and near the various
materials. This path leads directly to the little brick houses, and ends
at a small closed wooden door so roughly joined and so ill-hung that
between it and the threshold, which is only raised a few inches above
the ground, a fine gray cat contrives to squeeze herself through by
putting down her head and rubbing through the dust. As soon as she
finds herself once more erect on her four legs she proceeds to clean and
smooth her ruffled fur, putting up her back, and glancing with gleaming
eyes at the house she has just left, behind which at this moment the sun
is rising; blinded by its bright rays she turns away and goes on with
cautious and silent tread into the court of the temple.

The hovel out of which pussy has crept is small and barely furnished; it
would be perfectly dark too, but that the holes in the roof and the rift
in the door admit light into this most squalid room. There is nothing
standing against its rough gray walls but a wooden chest, near this a
few earthen bowls stand on the ground with a wooden cup and a gracefully
wrought jug of pure and shining gold, which looks strangely out of place
among such humble accessories. Quite in the background lie two mats of
woven bast, each covered with a sheepskin. These are the beds of the two
girls who inhabit the room, one of whom is now sitting on a low stool
made of palm-branches, and she yawns as she begins to arrange her long
and shining brown hair. She is not particularly skilful and even less
patient over this not very easy task, and presently, when a fresh tangle
checks the horn comb with which she is dressing it, she tosses the comb
on to the couch. She has not pulled it through her hair with any haste
nor with much force, but she shuts her eyes so tightly and sets her
white teeth so firmly in her red dewy lip that it might be supposed that
she had hurt herself very much.

A shuffling step is now audible outside the door; she opens wide her
tawny-hazel eyes, that have a look of gazing on the world in surprise,
a smile parts her lips and her whole aspect is as completely changed as
that of a butterfly which escapes from the shade into the sunshine where
the bright beams are reflected in the metallic lustre of its wings.

A hasty hand knocks at the ill-hung door, so roughly that it trembles on
its hinges, and the instant after a wooden trencher is shoved in through
the wide chink by which the cat made her escape; on it are a thin
round cake of bread and a shallow earthen saucer containing a little
olive-oil; there is no more than might perhaps be contained in half an
ordinary egg-shell, but it looks fresh and sweet, and shines in clear,
golden purity. The girl goes to the door, pulls in the platter, and, as
she measures the allowance with a glance, exclaims half in lament and
half in reproach:

“So little! and is that for both of us?”

As she speaks her expressive features have changed again and her
flashing eyes are directed towards the door with a glance of as much
dismay as though the sun and stars had been suddenly extinguished; and
yet her only grief is the smallness of the loaf, which certainly is
hardly large enough to stay the hunger of one young creature--and two
must share it; what is a mere nothing in one man’s life, to another may
be of great consequence and of terrible significance.

The reproachful complaint is heard by the messenger outside the door,
for the old woman who shoved in the trencher over the threshold answers
quickly but not crossly.

“Nothing more to-day, Irene.”

“It is disgraceful,” cries the girl, her eyes filling with tears, “every
day the loaf grows smaller, and if we were sparrows we should not have
enough to satisfy us. You know what is due to us and I will never cease
to complain and petition. Serapion shall draw up a fresh address for us,
and when the king knows how shamefully we are treated--”

“Aye! when he knows,” interrupted the old woman. “But the cry of the
poor is tossed about by many winds before it reaches the king’s ear. I
might find a shorter way than that for you and your sister if fasting
comes so much amiss to you. Girls with faces like hers and yours, my
little Irene, need never come to want.”

“And pray what is my face like?” asked the girl, and her pretty features
once more seemed to catch a gleam of sunshine.

“Why, so handsome that you may always venture to show it beside your
sister’s; and yesterday, in the procession, the great Roman sitting by
the queen looked as often at her as at Cleopatra herself. If you had
been there too he would not have had a glance for the queen, for you are
a pretty thing, as I can tell you. And there are many girls would sooner
hear those words then have a whole loaf--besides you have a mirror I
suppose, look in that next time you are hungry.”

The old woman’s shuffling steps retreated again and the girl snatched up
the golden jar, opened the door a little way to let in the daylight and
looked at herself in the bright surface; but the curve of the costly
vase showed her features all distorted, and she gaily breathed on the
hideous travestie that met her eyes, so that it was all blurred out by
the moisture. Then she smilingly put down the jar, and opening the chest
took from it a small metal mirror into which she looked again and yet
again, arranging her shining hair first in one way and then in another;
and she only laid it down when she remembered a certain bunch of violets
which had attracted her attention when she first woke, and which must
have been placed in their saucer of water by her sister some time the
day before. Without pausing to consider she took up the softly scented
blossoms, dried their green stems on her dress, took up the mirror again
and stuck the flowers in her hair.

How bright her eyes were now, and how contentedly she put out her hand
for the loaf. And how fair were the visions that rose before her young
fancy as she broke off one piece after another and hastily eat them
after slightly moistening them with the fresh oil. Once, at the festival
of the New Year, she had had a glimpse into the king’s tent, and there
she had seen men and women feasting as they reclined on purple cushions.
Now she dreamed of tables covered with costly vessels, was served in
fancy by boys crowned with flowers, heard the music of flutes and harps
and--for she was no more than a child and had such a vigorous young
appetite--pictured herself as selecting the daintiest and sweetest
morsels out of dishes of solid gold and eating till she was satisfied,
aye so perfectly satisfied that the very last mouthful of bread and the
very last drop of oil had disappeared.

But so soon as her hand found nothing more on the empty trencher the
bright illusion vanished, and she looked with dismay into the empty
oil-cup and at the place where just now the bread had been.

“Ah!” she sighed from the bottom of her heart; then she turned the
platter over as though it might be possible to find some more bread
and oil on the other side of it, but finally shaking her head she sat
looking thoughtfully into her lap; only for a few minutes however,
for the door opened and the slim form of her sister Klea appeared, the
sister whose meagre rations she had dreamily eaten up, and Klea had been
sitting up half the night sewing for her, and then had gone out
before sunrise to fetch water from the Well of the Sun for the morning
sacrifice at the altar of Serapis.

Klea greeted her sister with a loving glance but without speaking; she
seemed too exhausted for words and she wiped the drops from her forehead
with the linen veil that covered the back of her head as she seated
herself on the lid of the chest. Irene immediately glanced at the empty
trencher, considering whether she had best confess her guilt to the
wearied girl and beg for forgiveness, or divert the scolding she had
deserved by some jest, as she had often succeeded in doing before. This
seemed the easier course and she adopted it at once; she went up to her
sister quickly, but not quite unconcernedly, and said with mock gravity:

“Look here, Klea, don’t you notice anything in me? I must look like
a crocodile that has eaten a whole hippopotamus, or one of the sacred
snakes after it has swallowed a rabbit. Only think when I had eaten my
own bread I found yours between my teeth--quite unexpectedly--but now--”

Klea, thus addressed, glanced at the empty platter and interrupted her
sister with a low-toned exclamation. “Oh! I was so hungry.”

The words expressed no reproof, only utter exhaustion, and as the young
criminal looked at her sister and saw her sitting there, tired and worn
out but submitting to the injury that had been done her without a word
of complaint, her heart, easily touched, was filled with compunction and
regret. She burst into tears and threw herself on the ground before her,
clasping her knees and crying, in a voice broken with sobs:

“Oh Klea! poor, dear Klea, what have I done! but indeed I did not mean
any harm. I don’t know how it happened. Whatever I feel prompted to do I
do, I can’t help doing it, and it is not till it is done that I begin to
know whether it was right or wrong. You sat up and worried yourself for
me, and this is how I repay you--I am a bad girl! But you shall not go
hungry--no, you shall not.”

“Never mind; never mind,” said the elder, and she stroked her sister’s
brown hair with a loving hand.

But as she did so she came upon the violets fastened among the shining
tresses. Her lips quivered and her weary expression changed as she
touched the flowers and glanced at the empty saucer in which she had
carefully placed them the clay before. Irene at once perceived the
change in her sister’s face, and thinking only that she was surprised at
her pretty adornment, she said gaily: “Do you think the flowers becoming
to me?”

Klea’s hand was already extended to take the violets out of the brown
plaits, for her sister was still kneeling before her, but at this
question her arm dropped, and she said more positively and distinctly
than she had yet spoken and in a voice, whose sonorous but musical tones
were almost masculine and certainly remarkable in a girl:

“The bunch of flowers belongs to me; but keep it till it is faded, by
mid-day, and then return it to me.”

“It belongs to you?” repeated the younger girl, raising her eyes in
surprise to her sister, for to this hour what had been Klea’s had been
hers also. “But I always used to take the flowers you brought home; what
is there special in these?”

“They are only violets like any other violets,” replied Klea coloring
deeply. “But the queen has worn them.”

“The queen!” cried her sister springing to her feet and clasping her
hands in astonishment. “She gave you the flowers? And you never told me
till now? To be sure when you came home from the procession yesterday
you only asked me how my foot was and whether my clothes were whole and
then not another mortal word did you utter. Did Cleopatra herself give
you this bunch?”

“How should she?” retorted Klea. “One of her escort threw them to
me; but drop the subject pray! Give me the water, please, my mouth is
parched and I can hardly speak for thirst.”

The bright color dyed her cheeks again as she spoke, but Irene did not
observe it, for--delighted to make up for her evil doings by performing
some little service--she ran to fetch the water-jar; while Klea filled
and emptied her wooden bowl she said, gracefully lifting a small foot,
to show to her sister:

“Look, the cut is almost healed and I can wear my sandal again. Now
I shall tie it on and go and ask Serapion for some bread for you and
perhaps he will give us a few dates. Please loosen the straps for me
a little, here, round the ankle, my skin is so thin and tender that a
little thing hurts me which you would hardly feel. At mid-day I will go
with you and help fill the jars for the altar, and later in the day I
can accompany you in the procession which was postponed from yesterday.
If only the queen and the great foreigner should come again to look
on at it! That would be splendid! Now, I am going, and before you have
drunk the last bowl of water you shall have some bread, for I will coax
the old man so prettily that he can’t say ‘no.’”

Irene opened the door, and as the broad sunlight fell in it lighted up
tints of gold in her chestnut hair, and her sister looking after her
could almost fancy that the sunbeams had got entangled with the waving
glory round her head. The bunch of violets was the last thing she took
note of as Irene went out into the open air; then she was alone and she
shook her head gently as she said to herself: “I give up everything to
her and what I have left she takes from me. Three times have I met the
Roman, yesterday he gave me the violets, and I did want to keep those
for myself--and now--” As she spoke she clasped the bowl she still held
in her hand closely to her and her lips trembled pitifully, but only for
an instant; she drew herself up and said firmly: “But it is all as it
should be.”

Then she was silent; she set down the water-jar on the chest by her
side, passed the back of her hand across her forehead as if her head
were aching, then, as she sat gazing down dreamily into her lap, her
weary head presently fell on her shoulder and she was asleep.




CHAPTER II.

The low brick building of which the sisters’ room formed a part, was
called the Pastophorium, and it was occupied also by other persons
attached to the service of the temple, and by numbers of pilgrims. These
assembled here from all parts of Egypt, and were glad to pass a night
under the protection of the sanctuary.

Irene, when she quitted her sister, went past many doors--which had
been thrown open after sunrise--hastily returning the greetings of many
strange as well as familiar faces, for all glanced after her kindly as
though to see her thus early were an omen of happy augury, and she soon
reached an outbuilding adjoining the northern end of the Pastophorium;
here there was no door, but at the level of about a man’s height from
the ground there were six unclosed windows opening on the road. From the
first of these the pale and much wrinkled face of an old man looked down
on the girl as she approached. She shouted up to him in cheerful accents
the greeting familiar to the Hellenes “Rejoice!” But he, without moving
his lips, gravely and significantly signed to her with his lean hand
and with a glance from his small, fixed and expressionless eyes that she
should wait, and then handed out to her a wooden trencher on which lay a
few dates and half a cake of bread.

“For the altar of the god?” asked the girl. The old man nodded assent,
and Irene went on with her small load, with the assurance of a person
who knows exactly what is required of her; but after going a few steps
and before she had reached the last of the six windows she paused, for
she plainly heard voices and steps, and presently, at the end of the
Pastophorium towards which she was proceeding and which opened into a
small grove of acacias dedicated to Serapis--which was of much greater
extent outside the enclosing wall--appeared a little group of men whose
appearance attracted her attention; but she was afraid to go on towards
the strangers, so, leaning close up to the wall of the houses, she
awaited their departure, listening the while to what they were saying.

In front of these early visitors to the temple walked a man with a long
staff in his right hand speaking to the two gentlemen who followed, with
the air of a professional guide, who is accustomed to talk as if he were
reading to his audience out of an invisible book, and whom the hearers
are unwilling to interrupt with questions, because they know that his
knowledge scarcely extends beyond exactly what he says. Of his two
remarkable-looking hearers one was wrapped in a long and splendid robe
and wore a rich display of gold chains and rings, while the other wore
nothing over his short chiton but a Roman toga thrown over his left
shoulder.

His richly attired companion was an old man with a full and beardless
face and thin grizzled hair. Irene gazed at him with admiration and
astonishment, but when she had feasted her eyes on the stuffs and
ornaments he wore, she fixed them with much greater interest and
attention on the tall and youthful figure at his side.

“Like Hui, the cook’s fat poodle, beside a young lion,” thought she to
herself, as she noted the bustling step of the one and the independent
and elastic gait of the other. She felt irresistibly tempted to mimic
the older man, but this audacious impulse was soon quelled for scarcely
had the guide explained to the Roman that it was here that those pious
recluses had their cells who served the god in voluntary captivity, as
being consecrated to Serapis, and that they received their food through
those windows--here he pointed upwards with his staff when suddenly a
shutter, which the cicerone of this ill-matched pair had touched with
his stick, flew open with as much force and haste as if a violent gust
of wind had caught it, and flung it back against the wall.--And no less
suddenly a man’s head-of ferocious aspect and surrounded by a shock of
gray hair like a lion’s mane--looked out of the window and shouted to
him who had knocked, in a deep and somewhat overloud voice.

“If my shutter had been your back, you impudent rascal, your stick would
have hit the right thing. Or if I had a cudgel between my teeth instead
of a tongue, I would exercise it on you till it was as tired as that
of a preacher who has threshed his empty straw to his congregation for
three mortal hours. Scarcely is the sun risen when we are plagued by
the parasitical and inquisitive mob. Why! they will rouse us at midnight
next, and throw stones at our rotten old shutters. The effects of my
last greeting lasted you for three weeks--to-day’s I hope may act a
little longer. You, gentlemen there, listen to me. Just as the raven
follows an army to batten on the dead, so that fellow there stalks on
in front of strangers in order to empty their pockets--and you, who call
yourself an interpreter, and in learning Greek have forgotten the little
Egyptian you ever knew, mark this: When you have to guide strangers take
them to see the Sphinx, or to consult the Apis in the temple of Ptah,
or lead them to the king’s beast-garden at Alexandria, or the taverns
at Hanopus, but don’t bring them here, for we are neither pheasants, nor
flute-playing women, nor miraculous beasts, who take a pleasure in being
stared at. You, gentlemen, ought to choose a better guide than this
chatter-mag that keeps up its perpetual rattle when once you set it
going. As to yourselves I will tell you one thing: Inquisitive eyes are
intrusive company, and every prudent house holder guards himself against
them by keeping his door shut.”

Irene shrank back and flattened herself against the pilaster which
concealed her, for the shutter closed again with a slam, the recluse
pulling it to with a rope attached to its outer edge, and he was hidden
from the gaze of the strangers; but only for an instant, for the rusty
hinges on which the shutter was hanging were not strong enough to bear
such violent treatment, and slowly giving way it was about to fall. The
blustering hermit stretched out an arm to support it and save it; but
it was heavy, and his efforts would not have succeeded had not the young
man in Roman dress given his assistance and lifted up the shutter with
his hand and shoulder, without any effort, as if it were made of willow
laths instead of strong planks.

“A little higher still,” shouted the recluse to his assistant. “Let us
set the thing on its edge! so, push away, a little more. There, I have
propped up the wretched thing and there it may lie. If the bats pay me a
visit to-night I will think of you and give them your best wishes.”

“You may save yourself that trouble,” replied the young man with cool
dignity. “I will send you a carpenter who shall refix the shutter, and
we offer you our apologies for having been the occasion of the mischief
that has happened.”

The old man did not interrupt the speaker, but, when he had stared at
him from head to foot, he said: “You are strong and you speak fairly,
and I might like you well enough if you were in other company. I don’t
want your carpenter; only send me down a hammer, a wedge, and a few
strong nails. Now, you can do nothing more for me, so pack off!”

“We are going at once,” said the more handsomely dressed visitor in a
thin and effeminate voice. “What can a man do when the boys pelt him
with dirt from a safe hiding-place, but take himself off.”

“Be off, be off,” said the person thus described, with a laugh. “As
far off as Samothrace if you like, fat Eulaeus; you can scarcely have
forgotten the way there since you advised the king to escape thither
with all his treasure. But if you cannot trust yourself to find it
alone, I recommend you your interpreter and guide there to show you the
road.”

The Eunuch Eulaeus, the favorite councillor of King Ptolemy--called
Philometor (the lover of his mother)--turned pale at these words, cast
a sinister glance at the old man and beckoned to the young Roman; he
however was not inclined to follow, for the scolding old oddity had
taken his fancy--perhaps because he was conscious that the old man,
who generally showed no reserve in his dislikes, had a liking for him.
Besides, he found nothing to object to in his opinion of his companions,
so he turned to Eulaeus and said courteously:

“Accept my best thanks for your company so far, and do not let me detain
you any longer from your more important occupations on my account.”

Eulaeus bowed and replied, “I know what my duty is. The king entrusted
me with your safe conduct; permit me therefore to wait for you under the
acacias yonder.”

When Eulaeus and the guide had reached the green grove, Irene hoped to
find an opportunity to prefer her petition, but the Roman had stopped in
front of the old man’s cell, and had begun a conversation with him which
she could not venture to interrupt. She set down the platter with the
bread and dates that had been entrusted to her on a projecting stone
by her side with a little sigh, crossed her arms and feet as she leaned
against the wall, and pricked up her ears to hear their talk.

“I am not a Greek,” said the youth, “and you are quite mistaken in
thinking that I came to Egypt and to see you out of mere curiosity.”

“But those who come only to pray in the temple,” interrupted the other,
“do not--as it seems to me--choose an Eulaeus for a companion, or any
such couple as those now waiting for you under the acacias, and invoking
anything rather than blessings on your head; at any rate, for my own
part, even if I were a thief I would not go stealing in their company.
What then brought you to Serapis?”

“It is my turn now to accuse you of curiosity!”

“By all means,” cried the old man, “I am an honest dealer and quite
willing to take back the coin I am ready to pay away. Have you come to
have a dream interpreted, or to sleep in the temple yonder and have a
face revealed to you?”

“Do I look so sleepy,” said the Roman, “as to want to go to bed again
now, only an hour after sunrise?”

“It may be,” said the recluse, “that you have not yet fairly come to the
end of yesterday, and that at the fag-end of some revelry it occurred to
you that you might visit us and sleep away your headache at Serapis.”

“A good deal of what goes on outside these walls seems to come to your
ears,” retorted the Roman, “and if I were to meet you in the street
I should take you for a ship’s captain or a master-builder who had to
manage a number of unruly workmen. According to what I heard of you and
those like you in Athens and elsewhere, I expected to find you something
quite different.”

“What did you expect?” said Serapion laughing. “I ask you
notwithstanding the risk of being again considered curious.”

“And I am very willing to answer,” retorted the other, “but if I were to
tell you the whole truth I should run into imminent danger of being sent
off as ignominiously as my unfortunate guide there.”

“Speak on,” said the old man, “I keep different garments for different
men, and the worst are not for those who treat me to that rare dish--a
little truth. But before you serve me up so bitter a meal tell me, what
is your name?”

“Shall I call the guide?” said the Roman with an ironical laugh. “He
can describe me completely, and give you the whole history of my family.
But, joking apart, my name is Publius.”

“The name of at least one out of every three of your countrymen.”

“I am of the Cornelia gens and of the family of the Scipios,” continued
the youth in a low voice, as though he would rather avoid boasting of
his illustrious name.

“Indeed, a noble gentleman, a very grand gentleman!” said the recluse,
bowing deeply out of his window. “But I knew that beforehand, for at
your age and with such slender ankles to his long legs only a nobleman
could walk as you walk. Then Publius Cornelius--”

“Nay, call me Scipio, or rather by my first name only, Publius,” the
youth begged him. “You are called Serapion, and I will tell you what you
wish to know. When I was told that in this temple there were people who
had themselves locked into their little chambers never to quit them,
taking thought about their dreams and leading a meditative life, I
thought they must be simpletons or fools or both at once.”

“Just so, just so,” interrupted Serapion. “But there is a fourth
alternative you did not think of. Suppose now among these men there
should be some shut up against their will, and what if I were one of
those prisoners? I have asked you a great many questions and you have
not hesitated to answer, and you may know how I got into this miserable
cage and why I stay in it. I am the son of a good family, for my father
was overseer of the granaries of this temple and was of Macedonian
origin, but my mother was an Egyptian. I was born in an evil hour, on
the twenty-seventh day of the month of Paophi, a day which it is said in
the sacred books that it is an evil day and that the child that is
born in it must be kept shut up or else it will die of a snake-bite. In
consequence of this luckless prediction many of those born on the same
day as myself were, like me, shut up at an early age in this cage. My
father would very willingly have left me at liberty, but my uncle, a
caster of horoscopes in the temple of Ptah, who was all in all in my
mother’s estimation, and his friends with him, found many other evil
signs about my body, read misfortune for me in the stars, declared that
the Hathors had destined me to nothing but evil, and set upon her so
persistently that at last I was destined to the cloister--we lived here
at Memphis. I owe this misery to my dear mother and it was out of pure
affection that she brought it upon me. You look enquiringly at me--aye,
boy! life will teach you too the lesson that the worst hate that can
be turned against you often entails less harm upon you than blind
tenderness which knows no reason. I learned to read and write, and all
that is usually taught to the priests’ sons, but never to accommodate
myself to my lot, and I never shall.--Well, when my beard grew I
succeeded in escaping and I lived for a time in the world. I have been
even to Rome, to Carthage, and in Syria; but at last I longed to drink
Nile-water once more and I returned to Egypt. Why? Because, fool that I
was, I fancied that bread and water with captivity tasted better in
my own country than cakes and wine with freedom in the land of the
stranger.

“In my father’s house I found only my mother still living, for my father
had died of grief. Before my flight she had been a tall, fine woman,
when I came home I found her faded and dying. Anxiety for me, a
miserable wretch, had consumed her, said the physician--that was the
hardest thing to bear. When at last the poor, good little woman, who
could so fondly persuade me--a wild scamp--implored me on her death-bed
to return to my retreat, I yielded, and swore to her that I would stay
in my prison patiently to the end, for I am as water is in northern
countries, a child may turn me with its little hand or else I am as hard
and as cold as crystal. My old mother died soon after I had taken this
oath. I kept my word as you see--and you have seen too how I endure my
fate.”

“Patiently enough,” replied Publius, “I should writhe in my chains far
more rebelliously than you, and I fancy it must do you good to rage and
storm sometimes as you did just now.”

“As much good as sweet wine from Chios!” exclaimed the anchorite,
smacking his lips as if he tasted the noble juice of the grape, and
stretching his matted head as far as possible out of the window. Thus it
happened that he saw Irene, and called out to her in a cheery voice:

“What are you doing there, child? You are standing as if you were
waiting to say good-morning to good fortune.”

The girl hastily took up the trencher, smoothed down her hair with her
other hand, and as she approached the men, coloring slightly, Publius
feasted his eyes on her in surprise and admiration.

But Serapion’s words had been heard by another person, who now emerged
from the acacia-grove and joined the young Roman, exclaiming before he
came up with them:

“Waiting for good fortune! does the old man say? And you can hear it
said, Publius, and not reply that she herself must bring good fortune
wherever she appears.”

The speaker was a young Greek, dressed with extreme care, and he now
stuck the pomegranate-blossom he carried in his hand behind his ear,
so as to shake hands with his friend Publius; then he turned his fair,
saucy, almost girlish face with its finely-cut features up to the
recluse, wishing to attract his attention to himself by his next speech.

“With Plato’s greeting ‘to deal fairly and honestly’ do I approach you!”
 he cried; and then he went on more quietly: “But indeed you can hardly
need such a warning, for you belong to those who know how to conquer
true--that is the inner--freedom; for who can be freer than he who needs
nothing? And as none can be nobler than the freest of the free, accept
the tribute of my respect, and scorn not the greeting of Lysias of
Corinth, who, like Alexander, would fain exchange lots with you, the
Diogenes of Egypt, if it were vouchsafed to him always to see out the
window of your mansion--otherwise not very desirable--the charming form
of this damsel--”

“That is enough, young man,” said Serapion, interrupting the Greek’s
flow of words. “This young girl belongs to the temple, and any one who
is tempted to speak to her as if she were a flute-player will have to
deal with me, her protector. Yes, with me; and your friend here will
bear me witness that it may not be altogether to your advantage to have
a quarrel with such as I. Now, step back, young gentlemen, and let the
girl tell me what she needs.”

When Irene stood face to face with the anchorite, and had told him
quickly and in a low voice what she had done, and that her sister Klea
was even now waiting for her return, Serapion laughed aloud, and then
said in a low tone, but gaily, as a father teases his daughter:

“She has eaten enough for two, and here she stands, on her tiptoes,
reaching up to my window, as if it were not an over-fed girl that stood
in her garments, but some airy sprite. We may laugh, but Klea, poor
thing, she must be hungry?”

Irene made no reply, but she stood taller on tiptoe than ever, put her
face up to Serapion, nodding her pretty head at him again and again, and
as she looked roguishly and yet imploringly into his eyes Serapion went
on:

“And so I am to give my breakfast to Klea, that is what you want; but
unfortunately that breakfast is a thing of the past and beyond recall;
nothing is left of it but the date-stones. But there, on the trencher in
your hand, is a nice little meal.”

“That is the offering to Serapis sent by old Phibis,” answered the girl.

“Hm, hm--oh! of course!” muttered the old man. “So long as it is for a
god--surely he might do without it better than a poor famishing girl.”

Then he went on, gravely and emphatically, as a teacher who has made an
incautious speech before his pupils endeavors to rectify it by another
of more solemn import.

“Certainly, things given into our charge should never be touched;
besides, the gods first and man afterwards. Now if only I knew what
to do. But, by the soul of my father! Serapis himself sends us what we
need. Step close up to me, noble Scipio--or Publius, if I may so call
you--and look out towards the acacias. Do you see my favorite, your
cicerone, and the bread and roast fowls that your slave has brought him
in that leathern wallet? And now he is setting a wine-jar on the carpet
he has spread at the big feet of Eulaeus--they will be calling you to
share the meal in a minute, but I know of a pretty child who is very
hungry--for a little white cat stole away her breakfast this morning.
Bring me half a loaf and the wing of a fowl, and a few pomegranates if
you like, or one of the peaches Eulaeus is so judiciously fingering.
Nay--you may bring two of them, I have a use for both.”

“Serapion!” exclaimed Irene in mild reproof and looking down at the
ground; but the Greek answered with prompt zeal, “More, much more than
that I can bring you. I hasten--”

“Stay here,” interrupted Publius with decision, holding him back by the
shoulder. “Serapion’s request was addressed to me, and I prefer to do my
friend’s pleasure in my own person.”

“Go then,” cried the Greek after Publius as he hurried away. “You will
not allow me even thanks from the sweetest lips in Memphis. Only look,
Serapion, what a hurry he is in. And now poor Eulaeus has to get up;
a hippopotamus might learn from him how to do so with due awkwardness.
Well! I call that making short work of it--a Roman never asks before he
takes; he has got all he wants and Eulaeus looks after him like a cow
whose calf has been stolen from her; to be sure I myself would rather
eat peaches than see them carried away! Oh if only the people in the
Forum could see him now! Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, own grandson
to the great Africanus, serving like a slave at a feast with a dish in
each hand! Well Publius, what has Rome the all conquering brought home
this time in token of victory?”

“Sweet peaches and a roast pheasant,” said Cornelius laughing, and he
handed two dishes into the anchorite’s window; “there is enough left
still for the old man.”

“Thanks, many thanks!” cried Serapion, beckoning to Irene, and he gave
her a golden-yellow cake of wheaten bread, half of the roast bird,
already divided by Eulaeus, and two peaches, and whispered to her: “Klea
may come for the rest herself when these men are gone. Now thank this
kind gentleman and go.”

For an instant the girl stood transfixed, her face crimson with
confusion and her glistening white teeth set in her nether lip,
speechless, face to face with the young Roman and avoiding the earnest
gaze of his black eyes. Then she collected herself and said:

“You are very kind. I cannot make any pretty speeches, but I thank you
most kindly.”

“And your very kind thanks,” replied Publius, “add to the delights of
this delightful morning. I should very much like to possess one of the
violets out of your hair in remembrance of this day--and of you.”

“Take them all,” exclaimed Irene, hastily taking the bunch from her hair
and holding them out to the Roman; but before he could take them she
drew back her hand and said with an air of importance:

“The queen has had them in her hand. My sister Klea got them yesterday
in the procession.”

Scipio’s face grew grave at these words, and he asked with commanding
brevity and sharpness:

“Has your sister black hair and is she taller than you are, and did she
wear a golden fillet in the procession? Did she give you these flowers?
Yes--do you say? Well then, she had the bunch from me, but although she
accepted them she seems to have taken very little pleasure in them, for
what we value we do not give away--so there they may go, far enough!”

With these words he flung the flowers over the house and then he went
on:

“But you, child, you shall be held guiltless of their loss. Give me your
pomegranate-flower, Lysias!”

“Certainly not,” replied the Greek. “You chose to do pleasure to your
friend Serapion in your own person when you kept me from going to fetch
the peaches, and now I desire to offer this flower to the fair Irene
with my own hand.”

“Take this flower,” said Publius, turning his back abruptly on the girl,
while Lysias laid the blossom on the trencher in the maiden’s hand; she
felt the rough manners of the young Roman as if she had been touched by
a hard hand; she bowed silently and timidly and then quickly ran home.

Publius looked thoughtfully after her till Lysias called out to him:

“What has come over me? Has saucy Eros perchance wandered by mistake
into the temple of gloomy Serapis this morning?”

“That would not be wise,” interrupted the recluse, “for Cerberus, who
lies at the foot of our God, would soon pluck the fluttering wings of
the airy youngster,” and as he spoke he looked significantly at the
Greek.

“Aye! if he let himself be caught by the three-headed monster,” laughed
Lysias. “But come away now, Publius; Eulaeus has waited long enough.”

“You go to him then,” answered the Roman, “I will follow soon; but first
I have a word to say to Serapion.”

Since Irene’s disappearance, the old man had turned his attention to the
acacia-grove where Eulaeus was still feasting. When the Roman addressed
him he said, shaking his great head with dissatisfaction:

“Your eyes of course are no worse than mine. Only look at that man
munching and moving his jaws and smacking his lips. By Serapis! you can
tell the nature of a man by watching him eat. You know I sit in my cage
unwillingly enough, but I am thankful for one thing about it, and that
is that it keeps me far from all that such a creature as Eulaeus calls
enjoyment--for such enjoyment, I tell you, degrades a man.”

“Then you are more of a philosopher than you wish to seem,” replied
Publius.

“I wish to seem nothing,” answered the anchorite.

“For it is all the same to me what others think of me. But if a man who
has nothing to do and whose quiet is rarely disturbed, and who thinks
his own thoughts about many things is a philosopher, you may call me
one if you like. If at any time you should need advice you may come
here again, for I like you, and you might be able to do me an important
service.”

“Only speak,” interrupted the Roman, “I should be glad from my heart to
be of any use to you.”

“Not now,” said Serapion softly. “But come again when you have
time--without your companions there, of course--at any rate without
Eulaeus, who of all the scoundrels I ever came across is the very worst.
It may be as well to tell you at once that what I might require of you
would concern not myself but the weal or woe of the water-bearers, the
two maidens you have seen and who much need protection.”

“I came here for my parents’ sake and for Klea’s, and not on your
account,” said Publius frankly. “There is something in her mien and in
her eyes which perhaps may repel others but which attracts me. How came
so admirable a creature in your temple?”

“When you come again,” replied the recluse, “I will tell you the history
of the sisters and what they owe to Eulaeus. Now go, and understand
me when I say the girls are well guarded. This observation is for the
benefit of the Greek who is but a heedless fellow; but you, when you
know who the girls are, will help me to protect them.”

“That I would do as it is, with real pleasure,” replied Publius; he took
leave of the recluse and called out to Eulaeus.

“What a delightful morning it has been!”

“It would have been pleasanter for me,” replied Eulaeus, “if you had not
deprived me of your company for such a long time.”

“That is to say,” answered the Roman, “that I have stayed away longer
than I ought.”

“You behave after the fashion of your race,” said the other bowing low.
“They have kept even kings waiting in their ante-chambers.”

“But you do not wear a crown,” said Publius evasively. “And if any one
should know how to wait it is an old courtier, who--”

“When it is at the command of his sovereign,” interrupted Eulaeus, “the
old courtier may submit, even when youngsters choose to treat him with
contempt.”

“That hits us both,” said Publius, turning to Lysias. “Now you may
answer him, I have heard and said enough.”




CHAPTER III.

Irene’s foot was not more susceptible to the chafing of a strap than her
spirit to a rough or an unkind word; the Roman’s words and manner had
hurt her feelings.

She went towards home with a drooping head and almost crying, but before
she had reached it her eyes fell on the peaches and the roast bird she
was carrying. Her thoughts flew to her sister and how much the famishing
girl would relish so savory a meal; she smiled again, her eyes shone
with pleasure, and she went on her way with a quickened step. It never
once occurred to her that Klea would ask for the violets, or that
the young Roman could be anything more to her sister than any other
stranger.

She had never had any other companion than Klea, and after work, when
other girls commonly discussed their longings and their agitations and
the pleasures and the torments of love, these two used to get home so
utterly wearied that they wanted nothing but peace and sleep. If they
had sometimes an hour for idle chat Klea ever and again would tell some
story of their old home, and Irene, who even within the solemn walls of
the temple of Serapis sought and found many innocent pleasures, would
listen to her willingly, and interrupt her with questions and with
anecdotes of small events or details which she fancied she remembered
of her early childhood, but which in fact she had first learnt from her
sister, though the force of a lively imagination had made them seem a
part and parcel of her own experience.

Klea had not observed Irene’s long absence since, as we know, shortly
after her sister had set out, overpowered by hunger and fatigue she had
fallen asleep. Before her nodding head had finally sunk and her drooping
eyelids had closed, her lips now and then puckered and twitched as if
with grief; then her features grew tranquil, her lips parted softly and
a smile gently lighted up her blushing cheeks, as the breath of spring
softly thaws a frozen blossom. This sleeper was certainly not born for
loneliness and privation, but to enjoy and to keep love and happiness.

It was warm and still, very still in the sisters’ little room. The buzz
of a fly was audible now and again, as it flew round the little oil-cup
Irene had left empty, and now and again the breathing of the sleeper,
coming more and more rapidly. Every trace of fatigue had vanished from
Klea’s countenance, her lips parted and pouted as if for a kiss, her
cheeks glowed, and at last she raised both hands as if to defend herself
and stammered out in her dream, “No, no, certainly not--pray, do not! my
love--” Then her arm fell again by her side, and dropping on the chest
on which she was sitting, the blow woke her. She slowly opened her eyes
with a happy smile; then she raised her long silken lashes till her eyes
were open, and she gazed fixedly on vacancy as though something strange
had met her gaze. Thus she sat for some time without moving; then she
started up, pressed her hand on her brow and eyes, and shuddering as
if she had seen something horrible or were shivering with ague, she
murmured in gasps, while she clenched her teeth:

“What does this mean? How come I by such thoughts? What demons are these
that make us do and feel things in our dreams which when we are waking
we should drive far, far from our thoughts? I could hate myself, despise
and hate myself for the sake of those dreams since, wretch that I am!
I let him put his arm round me--and no bitter rage--ah! no--something
quite different, something exquisitely sweet, thrilled through my soul.”

As she spoke, she clenched her fists and pressed them against her
temples; then again her arms dropped languidly into her lap, and shaking
her head she went on in an altered and softened voice:

“Still-it was only in a dream and--Oh! ye eternal gods--when we are
asleep--well! and what then? Has it come to this; to impure thoughts I
am adding self-deception! No, this dream was sent by no demon, it was
only a distorted reflection of what I felt yesterday and the day before,
and before that even, when the tall stranger looked straight into my
eyes--four times he has done so now--and then--how many hours ago, gave
me the violets. Did I even turn away my face or punish his boldness with
an angry look? Is it not sometimes possible to drive away an enemy with
a glance? I have often succeeded when a man has looked after us; but
yesterday I could not, and I was as wide awake then as I am at this
moment. What does the stranger want with me? What is it he asks with his
penetrating glance, which for days has followed me wherever I turn, and
robs me of peace even in my sleep? Why should I open my eyes--the gates
of the heart--to him? And now the poison poured in through them is
seething there; but I will tear it out, and when Irene comes home I will
tread the violets into the dust, or leave them with her; she will soon
pull them to pieces or leave them to wither miserably--for I will remain
pure-minded, even in my dreams--what have I besides in the world?”

At these words she broke off her soliloquy, for she heard Irene’s voice,
a sound that must have had a favorable effect on her spirit, for she
paused, and the bitter expression her beautiful features had but just
now worn disappeared as she murmured, drawing a deep breath:

“I am not utterly bereft and wretched so long as I have her, and can
hear her voice.”

Irene, on her road home, had given the modest offerings of the anchorite
Phibis into the charge of one of the temple-servants to lay before the
altar of Serapis, and now as she came into the room she hid the platter
with the Roman’s donation behind her, and while still in the doorway,
called out to her sister:

“Guess now, what have I here?”

“Bread and dates from Serapion,” replied Klea.

“Oh, dear no!” cried the other, holding out the plate to her sister,
“the very nicest dainties, fit for gods and kings. Only feel this peach,
does not it feel as soft as one of little Philo’s cheeks? If I could
always provide such a substitute you would wish I might eat up your
breakfast every day. And now do you know who gave you all this? No, that
you will never guess! The tall Roman gave them me, the same you had the
violets from yesterday.”

Klea’s face turned crimson, and she said shortly and decidedly:

“How do you know that?”

“Because he told me so himself,” replied Irene in a very altered tone,
for her sister’s eyes were fixed upon her with an expression of stern
gravity, such as Irene had never seen in her before.

“And where are the violets?” asked Klea.

“He took them, and his friend gave me this pomegranate-flower,”
 stammered Irene. “He himself wanted to give it me, but the Greek--a
handsome, merry man--would not permit it, and laid the flower there on
the platter. Take it--but do not look at me like that any longer, for I
cannot bear it!”

“I do not want it,” said her sister, but not sharply; then, looking
down, she asked in a low voice: “Did the Roman keep the violets?”

“He kept--no, Klea--I will not tell you a lie! He flung them over the
house, and said such rough things as he did it, that I was frightened
and turned my back upon him quickly, for I felt the tears coming into
my eyes. What have you to do with the Roman? I feel so anxious, so
frightened--as I do sometimes when a storm is gathering and I am afraid
of it. And how pale your lips are! that comes of long fasting, no
doubt--eat now, as much as you can. But Klea! why do you look at me
so--and look so gloomy and terrible? I cannot bear that look, I cannot
bear it!”

Irene sobbed aloud, and her sister went up to her, stroked her soft hair
from her brow, kissed her kindly, and said:

“I am not angry with you, child, and did not mean to hurt you. If only I
could cry as you do when clouds overshadow my heart, the blue sky would
shine again with me as soon as it does with you. Now dry your eyes,
go up to the temple, and enquire at what hour we are to go to the
singing-practice, and when the procession is to set out.”

Irene obeyed; she went out with downcast eyes, but once out she looked
up again brightly, for she remembered the procession, and it occurred
to her that she would then see again the Roman’s gay acquaintance,
and turning back into the room she laid her pomegranate-blossom in the
little bowl out of which she had formerly taken the violets, kissed her
sister as gaily as ever, and then reflected as to whether she would wear
the flower in her hair or in her bosom. Wear it, at any rate, she must,
for she must show plainly that she knew how to value such a gift.

As soon as Klea was alone she seized the trencher with a vehement
gesture, gave the roast bird to the gray cat, who had stolen back into
the room, turning away her head, for the mere smell of the pheasant was
like an insult. Then, while the cat bore off her welcome spoils into
a corner, she clutched a peach and raised her hand to fling it away
through a gap in the roof of the room; but she did not carry out her
purpose, for it occurred to her that Irene and little Philo, the son of
the gate-keeper, might enjoy the luscious fruit; so she laid it back on
the dish and took up the bread, for she was painfully hungry.

She was on the point of breaking the golden-brown cake, but acting on a
rapid impulse she tossed it back on the trencher saying to herself: “At
any rate I will owe him nothing; but I will not throw away the gifts of
the gods as he threw away my violets, for that would be a sin. All is
over between him and me, and if he appears to-day in the procession, and
if he chooses to look at me again I will compel my eyes to avoid meeting
his--aye, that I will, and will carry it through. But, Oh eternal gods!
and thou above all, great Serapis, whom I heartily serve, there is
another thing I cannot do without your aid. Help me, oh! help me to
forget him, that my very thoughts may remain pure.”

With these words she flung herself on her knees before the chest,
pressed her brow against the hard wood, and strove to pray.

Only for one thing did she entreat the gods; for strength to forget the
man who had betrayed her into losing her peace of mind.

But just as swift clouds float across the sky, distracting the labors
of the star-gazer, who is striving to observe some remote planet--as the
clatter of the street interrupts again and again some sweet song we fain
would hear, marring it with its harsh discords--so again and again the
image of the young Roman came across Klea’s prayers for release from
that very thought, and at last it seemed to her that she was like a
man who strives to raise a block of stone by the exertion of his utmost
strength, and who weary at last of lifting the stone is crushed to the
earth by its weight; still she felt that, in spite of all her prayers
and efforts, the enemy she strove to keep off only came nearer, and
instead of flying from her, overmastered her soul with a grasp from
which she could not escape.

Finally she gave up the unavailing struggle, cooled her burning face
with cold water, and tightened the straps of her sandals to go to the
temple; near the god himself she hoped she might in some degree recover
the peace she could not find here.

Just at the door she met Irene, who told her that the singing-practice
was put off, on account of the procession which was fixed for four hours
after noon. And as Klea went towards the temple her sister called after
her.

“Do not stay too long though, water will be wanted again directly for
the libations.”

“Then will you go alone to the work?” asked Klea; “there cannot be
very much wanted, for the temple will soon be empty on account of the
procession. A few jars-full will be enough. There is a cake of bread and
a peach in there for you; I must keep the other for little Philo.”




CHAPTER IV.

Klea went quickly on towards the temple, without listening to Irene’s
excuses. She paid no heed to the worshippers who filled the forecourt,
praying either with heads bent low or with uplifted arms or, if they
were of Egyptian extraction, kneeling on the smooth stone pavement, for,
even as she entered, she had already begun to turn in supplication to
the divinity.

She crossed the great hall of the sanctuary, which was open only to
the initiated and to the temple-servants, of whom she was one. Here all
around her stood a crowd of slender columns, their shafts crowned with
gracefully curved flower calyxes, like stems supporting lilies, over
her head she saw in the ceiling an image of the midnight sky with the
bright, unresting and ever-restful stars; the planets and fixed stars
in their golden barks looked down on her silently. Yes! here were the
twilight and stillness befitting a personal communion with the divinity.

The pillars appeared to her fancy like a forest of giant growth, and it
seemed to her that the perfume of the incense emanated from the gorgeous
floral capitals that crowned them; it penetrated her senses, which
were rendered more acute by fasting and agitation, with a sort of
intoxication. Her eyes were raised to heaven, her arms crossed over
her bosom as she traversed this vast hall, and with trembling steps
approached a smaller and lower chamber, where in the furthest and
darkest background a curtain of heavy and costly material veiled the
brazen door of the holy of holies.

Even she was forbidden to approach this sacred place; but to-day she was
so filled with longing for the inspiring assistance of the god, that she
went on to the holy of holies in spite of the injunction she had never
yet broken, not to approach it. Filled with reverent awe she sank down
close to the door of the sacred chamber, shrinking close into the angle
formed between a projecting door-post and the wall of the great hall.

The craving desire to seek and find a power outside us as guiding the
path of our destiny is common to every nation, to every man; it is as
surely innate in every being gifted with reason--many and various as
these are--as the impulse to seek a cause when we perceive an effect, to
see when light visits the earth, or to hear when swelling waves of
sound fall on our ear. Like every other gift, no doubt that of religious
sensibility is bestowed in different degrees on different natures.
In Klea it had always been strongly developed, and a pious mother had
cultivated it by precept and example, while her father always had taught
her one thing only: namely to be true, inexorably true, to others as to
herself.

Afterwards she had been daily employed in the service of the god whom
she was accustomed to regard as the greatest and most powerful of all
the immortals, for often from a distance she had seen the curtain of the
sanctuary pushed aside, and the statue of Serapis with the Kalathos
on his head, and a figure of Cerberus at his feet, visible in the
half-light of the holy of holies; and a ray of light, flashing through
the darkness as by a miracle, would fall upon his brow and kiss his lips
when his goodness was sung by the priests in hymns of praise. At other
times the tapers by the side of the god would be lighted or extinguished
spontaneously.

Then, with the other believers, she would glorify the great lord of the
other world, who caused a new sun to succeed each that was extinguished,
and made life grow up out of death; who resuscitated the dead, lifting
them up to be equal with him, if on earth they had reverenced truth and
were found faithful by the judges of the nether world.

Truth--which her father had taught her to regard as the best possession
of life--was rewarded by Serapis above all other virtues; hearts were
weighed before him in a scale against truth, and whenever Klea tried to
picture the god in human form he wore the grave and mild features of her
father, and she fancied him speaking in the words and tones of the man
to whom she owed her being, who had been too early snatched from her,
who had endured so much for righteousness’ sake, and from whose lips
she had never heard a single word that might not have beseemed the god
himself. And, as she crouched closely in the dark angle by the holy of
holies, she felt herself nearer to her father as well as to the god, and
accused herself pitilessly, in that unmaidenly longings had stirred her
heart, that she had been insincere to herself and Irene, nay in that if
she could not succeed in tearing the image of the Roman from her heart
she would be compelled either to deceive her sister or to sadden the
innocent and careless nature of the impressionable child, whom she
was accustomed to succor and cherish as a mother might. On her, even
apparently light matters weighed oppressively, while Irene could throw
off even grave and serious things, blowing them off as it were into the
air, like a feather. She was like wet clay on which even the light touch
of a butterfly leaves a mark, her sister like a mirror from which the
breath that has dimmed it instantly and entirely vanishes.

“Great God!” she murmured in her prayer, “I feel as if the Roman had
branded my very soul. Help thou me to efface the mark; help me to
become as I was before, so that I may look again in Irene’s eyes without
concealment, pure and true, and that I may be able to say to myself,
as I was wont, that I had thought and acted in such a way as my father
would approve if he could know it.”

She was still praying thus when the footsteps and voices of two men
approaching the holy of holies startled her from her devotions; she
suddenly became fully conscious of the fact that she was in a forbidden
spot, and would be severely punished if she were discovered.

“Lock that door,” cried one of the new-comers to his companion, pointing
to the door which led from the prosekos into the pillared hall, “none,
even of the initiated, need see what you are preparing here for us--”

Klea recognized the voice of the high-priest, and thought for a moment
of stepping forward and confessing her guilt; but, though she did not
usually lack courage, she did not do this, but shrank still more closely
into her hiding-place, which was perfectly dark when the brazen door of
the room; which had no windows, was closed. She now perceived that the
curtain and door were opened which closed the inmost sanctuary, she
heard one of the men twirling the stick which was to produce fire, saw
the first gleam of light from it streaming out of the holy of holies,
and then heard the blows of a hammer and the grating sound of a file.

The quiet sanctum was turned into a forge, but noisy as were the
proceedings within, it seemed to Klea that the beating of her own heart
was even louder than the brazen clatter of the tools wielded by Krates;
he was one of the oldest of the priests of Serapis, who was chief in
charge of the sacred vessels, who was wont never to speak to any one
but the high-priest, and who was famous even among his Greek
fellow-countrymen for the skill with which he could repair broken
metal-work, make the securest locks, and work in silver and gold.

When the sisters first came into the temple five years since, Irene had
been very much afraid of this man, who was so small as almost to be a
dwarf, broad shouldered and powerfully knit, while his wrinkled face
looked like a piece of rough cork-bark, and he was subject to a painful
complaint in his feet which often prevented his walking; her fears had
not vexed but only amused the priestly smith, who whenever he met the
child, then eleven years old, would turn his lips up to his big red
nose, roll his eyes, and grunt hideously to increase the terror that
came over her.

He was not ill-natured, but he had neither wife nor child, nor brother,
nor sister, nor friend, and every human being so keenly desires that
others should have some feeling about him, that many a one would rather
be feared than remain unheeded.

After Irene had got over her dread she would often entreat the old
man--who was regarded as stern and inaccessible by all the other
dwellers in the temple--in her own engaging and coaxing way to make a
face for her, and he would do it and laugh when the little one, to his
delight and her own, was terrified at it and ran away; and just lately
when Irene, having hurt her foot, was obliged to keep her room for a
few days, an unheard of thing had occurred: he had asked Klea with the
greatest sympathy how her sister was getting on, and had given her a
cake for her.

While Krates was at his work not a word passed between him and the
high-priest. At length he laid down the hammer, and said:

“I do not much like work of this kind, but this, I think, is successful
at any rate. Any temple-servant, hidden here behind the altar, can now
light or extinguish the lamps without the illusion being detected by the
sharpest. Go now and stand at the door of the great hall and speak the
word.”

Klea heard the high-priest accede to this request and cry in a
chanting voice: “Thus he commands the night and it becomes day, and the
extinguished taper and lo! it flames with brightness. If indeed thou art
nigh, Oh Serapis! manifest thyself to us.”

At these words a bright stream of light flashed from the holy of holies,
and again was suddenly extinguished when the high-priest sang: “Thus
showest thou thyself as light to the children of truth, but dost punish
with darkness the children of lies.”

“Again?” asked Krates in a voice which conveyed a desire that the answer
might be ‘No.’

“I must trouble you,” replied the high-priest. “Good! the performance
went much better this time. I was always well assured of your skill; but
consider the particular importance of this affair. The two kings and the
queen will probably be present at the solemnity, certainly Philometor
and Cleopatra will, and their eyes are wide open; then the Roman who has
already assisted four times at the procession will accompany them, and
if I judge him rightly he, like many of the nobles of his nation, is
one of those who can trust themselves when it is necessary to be content
with the old gods of their fathers; and as regards the marvels we are
able to display to them, they do not take them to heart like the poor
in spirit, but measure and weigh them with a cool and unbiassed mind.
People of that stamp, who are not ashamed to worship, who do not
philosophize but only think just so much as is necessary for acting
rightly, those are the worst contemners of every supersensual
manifestation.”

“And the students of nature in the Museum?” asked Krates. “They believe
nothing to be real that they cannot see and observe.”

“And for that very reason,” replied the high-priest, “they are often
singularly easy to deceive by your skill, since, seeing an effect
without a cause, they are inclined to regard the invisible cause as
something supersensual. Now, open the door again and let us get out by
the side door; do you, this time, undertake the task of cooperating with
Serapis yourself. Consider that Philometor will not confirm the
donation of the land unless he quits the temple deeply penetrated by the
greatness of our god. Would it be possible, do you think, to have the
new censer ready in time for the birthday of King Euergetes, which is to
be solemnly kept at Memphis?”

“We will see,” replied Krates, “I must first put together the lock
of the great door of the tomb of Apis, for so long as I have it in my
workshop any one can open it who sticks a nail into the hole above the
bar, and any one can shut it inside who pushes the iron bolt. Send to
call me before the performance with the lights begins; I will come in
spite of my wretched feet. As I have undertaken the thing I will carry
it out, but for no other reason, for it is my opinion that even without
such means of deception--”

“We use no deception,” interrupted the high-priest, sternly rebuking his
colleague. “We only present to short-sighted mortals the creative power
of the divinity in a form perceptible and intelligible to their senses.”

With these words the tall priest turned his back on the smith and
quitted the hall by a side door; Krates opened the brazen door, and as
he gathered together his tools he said to himself, but loud enough for
Klea to hear him distinctly in her hiding-place:

“It may be right for me, but deceit is deceit, whether a god deceives a
king or a child deceives a beggar.”

“Deceit is deceit,” repeated Klea after the smith when he had left the
hall and she had emerged from her corner.

She stood still for a moment and looked round her. For the first time
she observed the shabby colors on the walls, the damage the pillars had
sustained in the course of years, and the loose slabs in the pavement.

The sweetness of the incense sickened her, and as she passed by an old
man who threw up his arms in fervent supplication, she looked at him
with a glance of compassion.

When she had passed out beyond the pylons enclosing the temple she
turned round, shaking her head in a puzzled way as she gazed at it; for
she knew that not a stone had been changed within the last hour, and yet
it looked as strange in her eyes as some landscape with which we have
become familiar in all the beauty of spring, and see once more in winter
with its trees bare of leaves; or like the face of a woman which we
thought beautiful under the veil which hid it, and which, when the veil
is raised, we see to be wrinkled and devoid of charm.

When she had heard the smith’s words, “Deceit is deceit,” she felt her
heart shrink as from a stab, and could not check the tears which started
to her eyes, unused as they were to weeping; but as soon as she had
repeated the stern verdict with her own lips her tears had ceased, and
now she stood looking at the temple like a traveller who takes leave of
a dear friend; she was excited, she breathed more freely, drew herself
up taller, and then turned her back on the sanctuary of Serapis, proudly
though with a sore heart.

Close to the gate-keeper’s lodge a child came tottering towards her with
his arms stretched up to her. She lifted him up, kissed him, and then
asked the mother, who also greeted her, for a piece of bread, for her
hunger was becoming intolerable. While she ate the dry morsel the child
sat on her lap, following with his large eyes the motion of her hand and
lips. The boy was about five years old, with legs so feeble that they
could scarcely support the weight of his body, but he had a particularly
sweet little face; certainly it was quite without expression, and it was
only when he saw Klea coming that tiny Philo’s eyes had lighted up with
pleasure.

“Drink this milk,” said the child’s mother, offering the young girl an
earthen bowl. “There is not much and I could not spare it if Philo would
eat like other children, but it seems as if it hurt him to swallow. He
drinks two or three drops and eats a mouthful, and then will take no
more even if he is beaten.”

“You have not been beating him again?” said Klea reproachfully, and
drawing the child closer to her. “My husband--” said the woman, pulling
at her dress in some confusion. “The child was born on a good day and
in a lucky hour, and yet he is so puny and weak and will not learn to
speak, and that provokes Pianchi.”

“He will spoil everything again!” exclaimed Klea annoyed. “Where is he?”

“He was wanted in the temple.”

“And is he not pleased that Philo calls him ‘father,’ and you ‘mother,’
and me by my name, and that he learns to distinguish many things?” asked
the girl.

“Oh, yes of course,” said the woman. “He says you are teaching him to
speak just as if he were a starling, and we are very much obliged to
you.”

“That is not what I want,” interrupted Klea. “What I wish is that you
should not punish and scold the boy, and that you should be as glad as
I am when you see his poor little dormant soul slowly waking up. If
he goes on like this, the poor little fellow will be quite sharp and
intelligent. What is my name, my little one?”

“Ke-ea,” stammered the child, smiling at his friend. “And now taste
this that I have in my hand; what is it?--I see you know. It is
called--whisper in my ear. That’s right, mil--mil-milk! to be sure, my
tiny, it is milk. Now open your little mouth and say it prettily after
me--once more--and again--say it twelve times quite right and I will
give you a kiss--Now you have earned a pretty kiss--will you have it
here or here? Well, and what is this? your ea-? Yes, your ear. And
this?--your nose, that is right.”

The child’s eyes brightened more and more under this gentle teaching,
and neither Klea nor her pupil were weary till, about an hour later, the
re-echoing sound of a brass gong called her away. As she turned to
go the little one ran after her crying; she took him in her arms and
carried him back to his mother, and then went on to her own room to
dress herself and her sister for the procession. On the way to the
Pastophorium she recalled once more her expedition to the temple and her
prayer there.

“Even before the sanctuary,” said she to herself, “I could not succeed
in releasing my soul from its burden--it was not till I set to work to
loosen the tongue of the poor little child. Every pure spot, it seems to
me, may be the chosen sanctuary of some divinity, and is not an infant’s
soul purer than the altar where truth is mocked at?”

In their room she found Irene; she had dressed her hair carefully and
stuck the pomegranate-flower in it, and she asked Klea if she thought
she looked well.

“You look like Aphrodite herself,” replied Klea kissing her forehead.
Then she arranged the folds of her sister’s dress, fastened on the
ornaments, and proceeded to dress herself. While she was fastening
her sandals Irene asked her, “Why do you sigh so bitterly?” and Klea
replied, “I feel as if I had lost my parents a second time.”




CHAPTER V.

The procession was over.

At the great service which had been performed before him in the Greek
Serapeum, Ptolemy Philometor had endowed the priests not with the whole
but with a considerable portion of the land concerning which they
had approached him with many petitions. After the court had once more
quitted Memphis and the procession was broken up, the sisters returned
to their room, Irene with crimson cheeks and a smile on her lips, Klea
with a gloomy and almost threatening light in her eyes.

As the two were going to their room in silence a temple-servant called
to Klea, desiring her to go with him to the high-priest, who wished to
speak to her. Klea, without speaking, gave her water-jar to Irene and
was conducted into a chamber of the temple, which was used for keeping
the sacred vessels in. There she sat down on a bench to wait. The two
men who in the morning had visited the Pastophorium had also followed
in the procession with the royal family. At the close of the solemnities
Publius had parted from his companion without taking leave, and without
looking to the right or to the left, he had hastened back to the
Pastophorium and to the cell of Serapion, the recluse.

The old man heard from afar the younger man’s footstep, which fell
on the earth with a firmer and more decided tread than that of the
softly-stepping priests of Serapis, and he greeted him warmly with signs
and words.

Publius thanked him coolly and gravely, and said, dryly enough and with
incisive brevity:

“My time is limited. I propose shortly to quit Memphis, but I promised
you to hear your request, and in order to keep my word I have come to
see you; still--as I have said--only to keep my word. The water-bearers
of whom you desired to speak to me do not interest me--I care no more
about them than about the swallows flying over the house yonder.”

“And yet this morning you took a long walk for Klea’s sake,” returned
Serapion.

“I have often taken a much longer one to shoot a hare,” answered the
Roman. “We men do not pursue our game because the possession of it is
any temptation, but because we love the sport, and there are sporting
natures even among women. Instead of spears or arrows they shoot with
flashing glances, and when they think they have hit their game they
turn their back upon it. Your Klea is one of this sort, while the pretty
little one I saw this morning looks as if she were very ready to be
hunted, I however, no more wish to be the hunter of a young girl than
to be her game. I have still three days to spend in Memphis, and then I
shall turn my back forever on this stupid country.”

“This morning,” said Serapion, who began to suspect what the grievance
might be which had excited the discontent implied in the Roman’s speech,
“This morning you appeared to be in less hurry to set out than now, so
to me you seem to be in the plight of game trying to escape; however, I
know Klea better than you do. Shooting is no sport of hers, nor will she
let herself be hunted, for she has a characteristic which you, my friend
Publius Scipio, ought to recognize and value above all others--she is
proud, very proud; aye, and so she may be, scornful as you look--as if
you would like to say ‘how came a water-carrier of Serapis by her pride,
a poor creature who is ill-fed and always engaged in service, pride
which is the prescriptive right only of those, whom privilege raises
above the common herd around them?--But this girl, you may take my word
for it, has ample reason to hold her head high, not only because she
is the daughter of free and noble parents and is distinguished by rare
beauty, not because while she was still a child she undertook, with
the devotion and constancy of the best of mothers, the care of another
child--her own sister, but for a reason which, if I judge you rightly,
you will understand better than many another young man; because she
must uphold her pride in order that among the lower servants with whom
unfortunately she is forced to work, she may never forget that she is
a free and noble lady. You can set your pride aside and yet remain what
you are, but if she were to do so and to learn to feel as a servant,
she would presently become in fact what by nature she is not and by
circumstances is compelled to be. A fine horse made to carry burdens
becomes a mere cart-horse as soon as it ceases to hold up its head and
lift its feet freely. Klea is proud because she must be proud; and
if you are just you will not contemn the girl, who perhaps has cast a
kindly glance at you--since the gods have so made you that you cannot
fail to please any woman--and yet who must repel your approaches because
she feels herself above being trifled with, even by one of the Cornelia
gens, and yet too lowly to dare to hope that a man like you should ever
stoop from your height to desire her for a wife. She has vexed you, of
that there can be no doubt; how, I can only guess. If, however, it has
been through her repellent pride, that ought not to hurt you, for
a woman is like a soldier, who only puts on his armor when he is
threatened by an opponent whose weapons he fears.”

The recluse had rather whispered than spoken these words, remembering
that he had neighbors; and as he ceased the drops stood on his brow, for
whenever any thing disturbed him he was accustomed to allow his powerful
voice to be heard pretty loudly, and it cost him no small effort to
moderate it for so long.

Publius had at first looked him in the face, and then had gazed at the
ground, and he had heard Serapion to the end without interrupting him;
but the color had flamed in his cheeks as in those of a schoolboy, and
yet he was an independent and resolute youth who knew how to conduct
himself in difficult straits as well as a man in the prime of life.
In all his proceedings he was wont to know very well, exactly what he
wanted, and to do without any fuss or comment whatever he thought right
and fitting.

During the anchorite’s speech the question had occurred to him, what
did he in fact expect or wish of the water-bearer; but the answer was
wanting, he felt somewhat uncertain of himself, and his uncertainty and
dissatisfaction with himself increased as all that he heard struck him
more and more. He became less and less inclined to let himself be thrown
over by the young girl who for some days had, much against his will,
been constantly in his thoughts, whose image he would gladly have
dismissed from his mind, but who, after the recluse’s speech, seemed
more desirable than ever. “Perhaps you are right,” he replied after
a short silence, and he too lowered his voice, for a subdued tone
generally provokes an equally subdued answer. “You know the maiden
better than I, and if you describe her correctly it would be as well
that I should abide by my decision and fly from Egypt, or, at any rate,
from your protegees, since nothing lies before me but a defeat or a
victory, which could bring me nothing but repentance. Klea avoided my
eye to-day as if it shed poison like a viper’s tooth, and I can have
nothing more to do with her: still, might I be informed how she came
into this temple? and if I can be of any service to her, I will-for your
sake. Tell me now what you know of her and what you wish me to do.”

The recluse nodded assent and beckoned Publius to come closer to him,
and bowing down to speak into the Roman’s ear, he said softly: “Are you
in favor with the queen?” Publius, having said that he was, Serapion,
with an exclamation of satisfaction, began his story.

“You learned this morning how I myself came into this cage, and that
my father was overseer of the temple granaries. While I was wandering
abroad he was deposed from his office, and would probably have died in
prison, if a worthy man had not assisted him to save his honor and his
liberty. All this does not concern you, and I may therefore keep it to
myself; but this man was the father of Klea and Irene, and the enemy
by whose instrumentality my father suffered innocently was the villain
Eulaeus. You know--or perhaps indeed you may not know--that the priests
have to pay a certain tribute for the king’s maintenance; you know? To
be sure, you Romans trouble yourselves more about matters of law
and administration than the culture of the arts or the subtleties of
thought. Well, it was my father’s duty to pay these customs over to
Eulaeus, who received them; but the beardless effeminate vermin,
the glutton--may every peach he ever ate or ever is to eat turn to
poison!--kept back half of what was delivered to him, and when the
accountants found nothing but empty air in the king’s stores where
they hoped to find corn and woven goods, they raised an alarm, which of
course came to the ears of the powerful thief at court before it reached
those of my poor father. You called Egypt a marvellous country, or
something like it; and so in truth it is, not merely on account of the
great piles there that you call Pyramids and such like, but because
things happen here which in Rome would be as impossible as moonshine
at mid-day, or a horse with his tail at the end of his nose! Before a
complaint could be laid against Eulaeus he had accused my father of the
peculation, and before the Epistates and the assessor of the district
had even looked at the indictment, their judgment on the falsely accused
man was already recorded, for Eulaeus had simply bought their verdict
just as a man buys a fish or a cabbage in the market. In olden times the
goddess of justice was represented in this country with her eyes shut,
but now she looks round on the world like a squinting woman who winks
at the king with one eye, and glances with the other at the money in
the hand of the accuser or the accused. My poor father was of course
condemned and thrown into prison, where he was beginning to doubt the
justice of the gods, when for his sake the greatest wonder happened,
ever seen in this land of wonders since first the Greeks ruled in
Alexandria. An honorable man undertook without fear of persons the
lost cause of the poor condemned wretch, and never rested till he
had restored him to honor and liberty. But imprisonment, disgrace and
indignation had consumed the strength of the ill-used man as a worm eats
into cedar wood, and he fell into a decline and died. His preserver,
Klea’s father, as the reward of his courageous action fared even worse;
for here by the Nile virtues are punished in this world, as crimes are
with you. Where injustice holds sway frightful things occur, for the
gods seem to take the side of the wicked. Those who do not hope for
a reward in the next world, if they are neither fools nor
philosophers--which often comes to the same thing--try to guard
themselves against any change in this.

“Philotas, the father of the two girls, whose parents were natives of
Syracuse, was an adherent of the doctrines of Zeno--which have many
supporters among you at Rome too--and he was highly placed as an
official, for he was president of the Chrematistoi, a college of judges
which probably has no parallel out of Egypt, and which has been kept
up better than any other. It travels about from province to province
stopping in the chief towns to administer justice. When an appeal is
brought against the judgment of the court of justice belonging to any
place--over which the Epistates of the district presides--the case is
brought before the Chrematistoi, who are generally strangers alike to
the accuser and accused; by them it is tried over again, and thus
the inhabitants of the provinces are spared the journey to Alexandria
or--since the country has been divided--to Memphis, where, besides, the
supreme court is overburdened with cases.

“No former president of the Chrematistoi had ever enjoyed a higher
reputation than Philotas. Corruption no more dared approach him than a
sparrow dare go near a falcon, and he was as wise as he was just, for
he was no less deeply versed in the ancient Egyptian law than in that of
the Greeks, and many a corrupt judge reconsidered matters as soon as it
became known that he was travelling with the Chrematistoi, and passed a
just instead of an unjust sentence.

“Cleopatra, the widow of Epiphanes, while she was living and acting as
guardian of her sons Philometor and Euergetes--who now reign in Memphis
and Alexandria--held Philotas in the highest esteem and conferred on
him the rank of ‘relation to the king’; but she was just dead when this
worthy man took my father’s cause in hand, and procured his release from
prison.

“The scoundrel Eulaeus and his accomplice Lenaeus then stood at the
height of power, for the young king, who was not yet of age, let himself
be led by them like a child by his nurse.

“Now as my father was an honest man, no one but Eulaeus could be the
rascal, and as the Chrematistoi threatened to call him before their
tribunal the miserable creature stirred up the war in Caelo-Syria
against Antiochus Epiphanes, the king’s uncle.

“You know how disgraceful for us was the course of that enterprise,
how Philometor was defeated near Pelusium, and by the advice of Eulaeus
escaped with his treasure to Samothrace, how Philometor’s brother
Euergetes was set up as king in Alexandria, how Antiochus took Memphis,
and then allowed his elder nephew to continue to reign here as though he
were his vassal and ward.

“It was during this period of humiliation, that Eulaeus was able to
evade Philotas, whom he may very well have feared, as though his own
conscience walked the earth on two legs in the person of the judge, with
the sword of justice in his hand, and telling all men what a scoundrel
he was.

“Memphis had opened her gates to Antiochus without offering much
resistance, and the Syrian king, who was a strange man and was fond of
mixing among the people as if he himself were a common man, applied to
Philotas, who was as familiar with Egyptian manners and customs as with
those of Greece, in order that he might conduct him into the halls of
justice and into the market-places; and he made him presents as was his
way, sometimes of mere rubbish and sometimes of princely gifts.

“Then when Philometor was freed by the Romans from the protection of the
Syrian king, and could govern in Memphis as an independent sovereign,
Eulaeus accused the father of these two girls of having betrayed Memphis
into the hands of Antiochus, and never rested till the innocent man was
deprived of his wealth, which was considerable, and sent with his wife
to forced labor in the gold mines of Ethiopia.

“When all this occurred I had already returned to my cage here; but
I heard from my brother Glaucus--who was captain of the watch in the
palace, and who learned a good many things before other people did--what
was going on out there, and I succeeded in having the daughters of
Philotas secretly brought to this temple, and preserved from sharing
their parents’ fate. That is now five years ago, and now you know how it
happens, that the daughters of a man of rank carry water for the altar
of Serapis, and that I would rather an injury should be done to me than
to them, and that I would rather see Eulaeus eating some poisonous root
than fragrant peaches.”

“And is Philotas still working in the mines?” asked the Roman, clenching
his teeth with rage.

“Yes, Publius,” replied the anchorite. “A ‘yes’ that it is easy to say,
and it is just as easy too to clench one’s fists in indignation--but
it is hard to imagine the torments that must be endured by a man like
Philotas; and a noble and innocent woman--as beautiful as Hera and
Aphrodite in one--when they are driven to hard and unaccustomed labor
under a burning sun by the lash of the overseer. Perhaps by this time
they have been happy enough to die under their sufferings and their
daughters are already orphans, poor children! No one here but the
high-priest knows precisely who they are, for if Eulaeus were to learn
the truth he would send them after their parents as surely as my name is
Serapion.”

“Let him try it!” cried Publius, raising his right fist threateningly.

“Softly, softly, my friend,” said the recluse, “and not now only, but
about everything which you under take in behalf of the sisters, for
a man like Eulaeus hears not only with his own ears but with those of
thousand others, and almost everything that occurs at court has to go
through his hands as epistolographer. You say the queen is well-disposed
towards you. That is worth a great deal, for her husband is said to be
guided by her will, and such a thing as Eulaeus cannot seem particularly
estimable in Cleopatra’s eyes if princesses are like other women--and I
know them well.”

“And even if he were,” interrupted Publius with glowing cheeks, “I would
bring him to ruin all the same, for a man like Philotas must not perish,
and his cause henceforth is my own. Here is my hand upon it; and if I am
happy in having descended from a noble race it is above all because the
word of a son of the Cornelii is as good as the accomplished deed of any
other man.”

The recluse grasped the right hand the young man gave him and nodded
to him affectionately, his eyes radiant, though moistened with joyful
emotion. Then he hastily turned his back on the young man, and soon
reappeared with a large papyrus-roll in his hand. “Take this,” he said,
handing it to the Roman, “I have here set forth all that I have told
you, fully and truly with my own hand in the form of a petition. Such
matters, as I very well know, are never regularly conducted to an
issue at court unless they are set forth in writing. If the queen seems
disposed to grant you a wish give her this roll, and entreat her for a
letter of pardon. If you can effect this, all is won.”

Publius took the roll, and once more gave his hand to the anchorite,
who, forgetting himself for a moment, shouted out in his loud voice:

“May the gods bless thee, and by thy means work the release of the
noblest of men from his sufferings! I had quite ceased to hope, but if
you come to our aid all is not yet wholly lost.”




CHAPTER VI.

“Pardon me if I disturb you.”

With these words the anchorite’s final speech was interrupted by
Eulaeus, who had come in to the Pastophorium softly and unobserved, and
who now bowed respectfully to Publius.

“May I be permitted to enquire on what compact one of the noblest of the
sons of Rome is joining hands with this singular personage?”

“You are free to ask,” replied Publius shortly and drily, “but every one
is not disposed to answer, and on the present occasion I am not. I will
bid you farewell, Serapion, but not for long I believe.”

“Am I permitted to accompany you?” asked Eulaeus.

“You have followed me without any permission on my part.”

“I did so by order of the king, and am only fulfilling his commands in
offering you my escort now.”

“I shall go on, and I cannot prevent your following me.”

“But I beg of you,” said Eulaeus, “to consider that it would ill-become
me to walk behind you like a servant.”

“I respect the wishes of my host, the king, who commanded you to follow
me,” answered the Roman. “At the door of the temple however you can get
into your chariot, and I into mine; an old courtier must be ready to
carry out the orders of his superior.”

“And does carry them out,” answered Eulaeus with deference, but his eyes
twinkled--as the forked tongue of a serpent is rapidly put out and still
more rapidly withdrawn--with a flash first of threatening hatred, and
then another of deep suspicion cast at the roll the Roman held in his
hand.

Publius heeded not this glance, but walked quickly towards the
acacia-grove; the recluse looked after the ill-matched pair, and as he
watched the burly Eulaeus following the young man, he put both his hands
on his hips, puffed out his fat cheeks, and burst into loud laughter as
soon as the couple had vanished behind the acacias.

When once Serapion’s midriff was fairly tickled it was hard to reduce it
to calm again, and he was still laughing when Klea appeared in front of
his cell some few minutes after the departure of the Roman. He was about
to receive his young friend with a cheerful greeting, but, glancing at
her face, he cried anxiously;

“You look as if you had met with a ghost; your lips are pale instead
of red, and there are dark shades round your eyes. What has happened to
you, child? Irene went with you to the procession, that I know. Have you
had bad news of your parents? You shake your head. Come, child, perhaps
you are thinking of some one more than you ought; how the color rises
in your cheeks! Certainly handsome Publius, the Roman, must have looked
into your eyes--a splendid youth is he--a fine young man--a capital good
fellow--”

“Say no more on that subject,” Klea exclaimed, interrupting her friend
and protector, and waving her hand in the air as if to cut off the other
half of Serapion’s speech. “I can hear nothing more about him.”

“Has he addressed you unbecomingly?” asked the recluse.

“Yes!” said Klea, turning crimson, and with a vehemence quite foreign
to her usual gentle demeanor, “yes, he persecutes me incessantly with
challenging looks.”

“Only with looks?” said the anchorite. “But we may look even at the
glorious sun and at the lovely flowers as much as we please, and they
are not offended.”

“The sun is too high and the soulless flowers too humble for a man to
hurt them,” replied Klea. “But the Roman is neither higher nor lower
than I, the eye speaks as plain a language as the tongue, and what his
eyes demand of me brings the blood to my cheeks and stirs my indignation
even now when I only think of it.”

“And that is why you avoid his gaze so carefully?”

“Who told you that?”

“Publius himself; and because he is wounded by your hard-heartedness he
meant to quit Egypt; but I have persuaded him to remain, for if there is
a mortal living from whom I expect any good for you and yours--”

“It is certainly not he,” said Klea positively. “You are a man, and
perhaps you now think that so long as you were young and free to wander
about the world you would not have acted differently from him--it is
a man’s privilege; but if you could look into my soul or feel with the
heart of a woman, you would think differently. Like the sand of the
desert which is blown over the meadows and turns all the fresh verdure
to a hideous brown-like a storm that transforms the blue mirror of the
sea into a crisped chaos of black whirl pools and foaming ferment, this
man’s imperious audacity has cruelly troubled my peace of heart. Four
times his eyes pursued me in the processions; yesterday I still did not
recognize my danger, but to-day--I must tell you, for you are like a
father to me, and who else in the world can I confide in?--to-day I was
able to avoid his gaze, and yet all through long endless hours of the
festival I felt his eyes constantly seeking mine. I should have been
certain I was under no delusion, even if Publius Scipio--but what
business has his name on my lips?--even if the Roman had not boasted to
you of his attacks on a defenceless girl. And to think that you, you of
all others, should have become his ally! But you would not, no indeed
you would not, if you knew how I felt at the procession while I was
looking down at the ground, and knew that his very look desecrated me
like the rain that washed all the blossoms off the young vine-shoots
last year. It was just as if he were drawing a net round my heart--but,
oh! what a net! It was as if the flax on a distaff had been set on fire,
and the flames spun out into thin threads, and the meshes knotted of the
fiery yarn. I felt every thread and knot burning into my soul, and could
not cast it off nor even defend myself. Aye! you may look grieved and
shake your head, but so it was, and the scars hurt me still with a pain
I cannot utter.”

“But Klea,” interrupted Serapion, “you are quite beside yourself--like
one possessed. Go to the temple and pray, or, if that is of no avail, go
to Asclepios or Anubis and have the demon cast out.”

“I need none of your gods!” answered the girl in great agitation. “Oh!
I wish you had left me to my fate, and that we had shared the lot of
our parents, for what threatens us here is more frightful than having
to sift gold-dust in the scorching sun, or to crush quartz in mortars.
I did not come to you to speak about the Roman, but to tell you what the
high-priest had just disclosed to me since the procession ended.”

“Well?” asked Serapion eager and almost frightened, stretching out his
neck to put his head near to the girl’s, and opening his eyes so wide
that the loose skin below them almost disappeared.

“First he told me,” replied Klea, “how meagrely the revenues of the
temple are supplied--”

“That is quite true,” interrupted the anchorite, “for Antiochus carried
off the best part of its treasure; and the crown, which always used to
have money to spare for the sanctuaries of Egypt, now loads our estates
with heavy tribute; but you, as it seems to me, were kept scantily
enough, worse than meanly, for, as I know--since it passed through my
hands--a sum was paid to the temple for your maintenance which would
have sufficed to keep ten hungry sailors, not speak of two little
pecking birds like you, and besides that you do hard service without
any pay. Indeed it would be a more profitable speculation to steal a
beggar’s rags than to rob you! Well, what did the high-priest want?”

“He says that we have been fed and protected by the priesthood for five
years, that now some danger threatens the temple on our account, and
that we must either quit the sanctuary or else make up our minds to take
the place of the twin-sisters Arsinoe and Doris who have hitherto been
employed in singing the hymns of lamentation, as Isis and Nephthys, by
the bier of the deceased god on the occasion of the festivals of the
dead, and in pouring out the libations with wailing and outcries when
the bodies were brought into the temple to be blessed. These maidens,
Asclepiodorus says, are now too old and ugly for these duties, but
the temple is bound to maintain them all their lives. The funds of the
temple are insufficient to support two more serving maidens besides them
and us, and so Arsinoe and Doris are only to pour out the libations for
the future, and we are to sing the laments, and do the wailing.”

“But you are not twins!” cried Serapion. “And none but twins--so say the
ordinances--may mourn for Osiris as Isis and Neplithys.”

“They will make twins of us!” said Klea with a scornful turn of her
lip. “Irene’s hair is to be dyed black like mine, and the soles of her
sandals are to be made thicker to make her as tall as I am.”

“They would hardly succeed in making you smaller than you are, and it is
easier to make light hair dark than dark hair light,” said Serapion
with hardly suppressed rage. “And what answer did you give to these
exceedingly original proposals?”

“The only one I could very well give. I said no--but I declared myself
ready, not from fear, but because we owe much to the temple, to perform
any other service with Irene, only not this one.”

“And Asclepiodorus?”

“He said nothing unkind to me, and preserved his calm and polite
demeanor when I contradicted him, though he fixed his eyes on me several
times in astonishment as if he had discovered in me something quite new
and strange. At last he went on to remind me how much trouble the
temple singing-master had taken with us, how well my low voice went with
Irene’s high one, how much applause we might gain by a fine performance
of the hymns of lamentation, and how he would be willing, if we
undertook the duties of the twin-sisters, to give us a better dwelling
and more abundant food. I believe he has been trying to make us amenable
by supplying us badly with food, just as falcons are trained by hunger.
Perhaps I am doing him an injustice, but I feel only too much disposed
to-day to think the worst of him and of the other fathers. Be that as
it may; at any rate he made me no further answer when I persisted in my
refusal, but dismissed me with an injunction to present myself before
him again in three days’ time, and then to inform him definitively
whether I would conform to his wishes, or if I proposed to leave the
temple. I bowed and went towards the door, and was already on the
threshold when he called me back once more, and said: ‘Remember your
parents and their fate!’ He spoke solemnly, almost threateningly, but
he said no more and hastily turned his back on me. What could he mean
to convey by this warning? Every day and every hour I think of my father
and mother, and keep Irene in mind of them.”

The recluse at these words sat muttering thoughtfully to himself for a
few minutes with a discontented air; then he said gravely:

“Asclepiodorus meant more by his speech than you think. Every sentence
with which he dismisses a refractory subordinate is a nut of which the
shell must be cracked in order to get at the kernel. When he tells you
to remember your parents and their sad fate, such words from his lips,
and under the present circumstances, can hardly mean anything else than
this: that you should not forget how easily your father’s fate might
overtake you also, if once you withdrew yourselves from the protection
of the temple. It was not for nothing that Asclepiodorus--as
you yourself told me quite lately, not more than a week ago I am
sure--reminded you how often those condemned to forced labor in the
mines had their relations sent after them. Ah! child, the words of
Asclepiodorus have a sinister meaning. The calmness and pride, with
which you look at me make me fear for you, and yet, as you know, I am
not one of the timid and tremulous. Certainly what they propose to you
is repulsive enough, but submit to it; it is to be hoped it will not be
for long. Do it for my sake and for that of poor Irene, for though you
might know how to assert your dignity and take care of yourself outside
these walls in the rough and greedy world, little Irene never could. And
besides, Klea, my sweetheart, we have now found some one, who makes
your concerns his, and who is great and powerful--but oh! what are
three clays? To think of seeing you turned out--and then that you may be
driven with a dissolute herd in a filthy boat down to the burning south,
and dragged to work which kills first the soul and then the body! No, it
is not possible! You will never let this happen to me--and to yourself
and Irene; no, my darling, no, my pet, my sweetheart, you cannot, you
will not do so. Are you not my children, my daughters, my only joy? and
you, would you go away, and leave me alone in my cage, all because you
are so proud!”

The strong man’s voice failed him, and heavy drops fell from his eyes
one after another down his beard, and on to Klea’s arm, which he had
grasped with both hands.

The girl’s eyes too were dim with a mist of warm tears when she saw her
rough friend weeping, but she remained firm and said, as she tried to
free her hand from his:

“You know very well, father Serapion, that there is much to tie me to
this temple; my sister, and you, and the door-keeper’s child, little
Philo. It would be cruel, dreadful to have to leave you; but I would
rather endure that and every other grief than allow Irene to take the
place of Arsinoe or the black Doris as wailing woman. Think of that
bright child, painted and kneeling at the foot of a bier and groaning
and wailing in mock sorrow! She would become a living lie in human form,
an object of loathing to herself, and to me--who stand in the place of a
mother to her--from morning till night a martyrizing reproach! But what
do I care about myself--I would disguise myself as the goddess without
even making a wry face, and be led to the bier, and wail and groan so
that every hearer would be cut to the heart, for my soul is already
possessed by sorrow; it is like the eyes of a man, who has gone blind
from the constant flow of salt tears. Perhaps singing the hymns of
lamentation might relieve my soul, which is as full of sorrow as an
overbrimming cup; but I would rather that a cloud should for ever darken
the sun, that mists should hide every star from my eyes, and the air
I breathe be poisoned by black smoke than disguise her identity,
and darken her soul, or let her clear laugh be turned to shrieks of
lamentation, and her fresh and childlike spirit be buried in gloomy
mourning. Sooner will I go way with her and leave even you, to perish
with my parents in misery and anguish than see that happen, or suffer it
for a moment.”

As she spoke Serapion covered his face with his hands, and Klea, hastily
turning away from him, with a deep sigh returned to her room.

Irene was accustomed when she heard her step to hasten to meet her,
but to-day no one came to welcome her, and in their room, which was
beginning to be dark as twilight fell, she did not immediately catch
sight of her sister, for she was sitting all in a heap in a corner of
the room, her face hidden, in her hands and weeping quietly.

“What is the matter?” asked Klea, going tenderly up to the weeping
child, over whom she bent, endeavoring to raise her.

“Leave me,” said Irene sobbing; she turned away from her sister with an
impatient gesture, repelling her caress like a perverse child; and then,
when Klea tried to soothe her by affectionately stroking her hair, she
sprang up passionately exclaiming through her tears:

“I could not help crying--and, from this hour, I must always have to
cry. The Corinthian Lysias spoke to me so kindly after the procession,
and you--you don’t care about me at all and leave me alone all this time
in this nasty dusty hole! I declare I will not endure it any longer,
and if you try to keep me shut up, I will run away from this temple, for
outside it is all bright and pleasant, and here it is dingy and horrid!”




CHAPTER VII.

In the very midst of the white wall with its bastions and ramparts,
which formed the fortifications of Memphis, stood the old palace of the
kings, a stately structure built of bricks, recently plastered, and with
courts, corridors, chambers and halls without number, and veranda-like
out-buildings of gayly-painted wood, and a magnificent pillared
banqueting-hall in the Greek style. It was surrounded by verdurous
gardens, and a whole host of laborers tended the flower-beds and shady
alleys, the shrubs and the trees; kept the tanks clean and fed the fish
in them; guarded the beast-garden, in which quadrupeds of every kind,
from the heavy-treading elephant to the light-footed antelope, were to
be seen, associated with birds innumerable of every country and climate.

A light white vapor rose from the splendidly fitted bath-house, loud
barkings resounded from the dog-kennels, and from the long array of open
stables came the neighing of horses with the clatter and stamp of hoofs,
and the rattle of harness and chains. A semicircular building of new
construction adjoining the old palace was the theatre, and many large
tents for the bodyguard, for ambassadors and scribes, as well as others,
serving as banqueting-halls for the various court-officials, stood both
within the garden and outside its enclosing walls. A large space leading
from the city itself to the royal citadel was given up to the soldiers,
and there, by the side of the shady court-yards, were the houses of the
police-guard and the prisons. Other soldiers were quartered in tents
close to the walls of the palace itself. The clatter of their arms and
the words of command, given in Greek, by their captain, sounded out at
this particular instant, and up into the part of the buildings occupied
by the queen; and her apartments were high up, for in summer time
Cleopatra preferred to live in airy tents, which stood among the
broad-leaved trees of the south and whole groves of flowering shrubs,
on the level roof of the palace, which was also lavishly decorated with
marble statues. There was only one way of access to this retreat,
which was fitted up with regal splendor; day and night it was fanned by
currents of soft air, and no one could penetrate uninvited to disturb
the queen’s retirement, for veteran guards watched at the foot of the
broad stair that led to the roof, chosen from the Macedonian “Garde
noble,” and owing as implicit obedience to Cleopatra as to the king
himself. This select corps was now, at sunset, relieving guard, and the
queen could hear the words spoken by the officers in command and
the clatter of the shields against the swords as they rattled on the
pavement, for she had come out of her tent into the open air, and stood
gazing towards the west, where the glorious hues of the sinking sun
flooded the bare, yellow limestone range of the Libyan hills, with
their innumerable tombs and the separate groups of pyramids; while the
wonderful coloring gradually tinged with rose-color the light silvery
clouds that hovered in the clear sky over the valley of Memphis, and
edged them as with a rile of living gold.

The queen stepped out of her tent, accompanied by a young Greek
girl--the fair Zoe, daughter of her master of the hunt Zenodotus, and
Cleopatra’s favorite lady-in-waiting--but though she looked towards the
west, she stood unmoved by the magic of the glorious scene before her;
she screened her eyes with her hand to shade them from the blinding
rays, and said:

“Where can Cornelius be staying! When we mounted our chariots before the
temple he had vanished, and as far as I can see the road in the quarters
of Sokari and Serapis I cannot discover his vehicle, nor that of Eulaeus
who was to accompany him. It is not very polite of him to go off in this
way without taking leave; nay, I could call it ungrateful, since I had
proposed to tell him on our way home all about my brother Euergetes, who
has arrived to-day with his friends. They are not yet acquainted, for
Euergetes was living in Cyrene when Publius Cornelius Scipio landed in
Alexandria. Stay! do you see a black shadow out there by the vineyard
at Kakem; That is very likely he; but no--you are right, it is only some
birds, flying in a close mass above the road. Can you see nothing more?
No!--and yet we both have sharp young eyes. I am very curious to know
whether Publius Scipio will like Euergetes. There can hardly be two
beings more unlike, and yet they have some very essential points in
common.”

“They are both men,” interrupted Zoe, looking at the queen as if she
expected cordial assent to this proposition.

“So they are,” said Cleopatra proudly. “My brother is still so young
that, if he were not a king’s son, he would hardly have outgrown the
stage of boyhood, and would be a lad among other Epheboi,--[Youths above
18 were so called]--and yet among the oldest there is hardly a man who
is his superior in strength of will and determined energy. Already,
before I married Philometor, he had clutched Alexandria and Cyrene,
which by right should belong to my husband, who is the eldest of us
three, and that was not very brotherly conduct--and indeed we had other
grounds for being angry with him; but when I saw him again for the first
time after nine months of separation I was obliged to forget them all,
and welcome him as though he had done nothing but good to me and his
brother--who is my husband, as is the custom of the families of Pharaohs
and the usage of our race. He is a young Titan, and no one would be
astonished if he one day succeeded in piling Pelion upon Ossa. I know
well enough how wild he can often be, how unbridled and recalcitrant
beyond all bounds; but I can easily pardon him, for the same bold blood
flows in my own veins, and at the root of all his excesses lies power,
genuine and vigorous power. And this innate pith and power are just the
very thing we most admire in men, for it is the one gift which the gods
have dealt out to us with a less liberal hand than to men. Life indeed
generally dams its overflowing current, but I doubt whether this will be
the case with the stormy torrent of his energy; at any rate men such as
he is rush swiftly onwards, and are strong to the end, which sooner
or later is sure to overtake them; and I infinitely prefer such a wild
torrent to a shallow brook flowing over a plain, which hurts no one, and
which in order to prolong its life loses itself in a misty bog. He, if
any one, may be forgiven for his tumultuous career; for when he pleases
my brother’s great qualities charm old and young alike, and are as
conspicuous and as remarkable as his faults--nay, I will frankly say his
crimes. And who in Greece or Egypt surpasses him in grasp and elevation
of mind?”

“You may well be proud of him,” replied Zoe. “Not even Publius Scipio
himself can soar to the height reached by Euergetes.”

“But, on the other hand, Euergetes is not gifted with the steady, calm
self-reliance of Cornelius. The man who should unite in one person the
good qualities of those two, need yield the palm, as it seems to me, not
even to a god!”

“Among us imperfect mortals he would indeed be the only perfect one,”
 replied Zoe. “But the gods could not endure the existence of a perfect
man, for then they would have to undertake the undignified task of
competing with one of their own creatures.”

“Here, however, comes one whom no one can accuse!” cried the young
queen, as she hastened to meet a richly dressed woman, older than
herself, who came towards her leading her son, a pale child of two
years old. She bent down to the little one, tenderly but with impetuous
eagerness, and was about to clasp him in her arms, but the fragile
child, which at first had smiled at her, was startled; he turned away
from her and tried to hide his little face in the dress of his nurse--a
lady of rank-to whom he clung with both hands. The queen threw herself
on her knees before him, took hold of his shoulder, and partly by
coaxing and partly by insistence strove to induce him to quit the
sheltering gown and to turn to her; but although the lady, his
wet-nurse, seconded her with kind words of encouragement, the terrified
child began to cry, and resisted his mother’s caresses with more and
more vehemence the more passionately she tried to attract and conciliate
him. At last the nurse lifted him up, and was about to hand him to his
mother, but the wilful little boy cried more than before, and throwing
his arms convulsively round his nurse’s neck he broke into loud cries.

In the midst of this rather unbecoming struggle of the mother against
the child’s obstinacy, the clatter of wheels and of horses’ hoofs rang
through the court-yard of the palace, and hardly had the sound reached
the queen’s ears than she turned away from the screaming child, hurried
to the parapet of the roof, and called out to Zoe:

“Publius Scipio is here; it is high time that I should dress for the
banquet. Will that naughty child not listen to me at all? Take him away,
Praxinoa, and understand distinctly that I am much dissatisfied with
you. You estrange my own child from me to curry favor with the future
king. That is base, or else it proves that you have no tact, and are
incompetent for the office entrusted to you. The office of wet-nurse you
duly fulfilled, but I shall now look out for another attendant for the
boy. Do not answer me! no tears! I have had enough of that with the
child’s screaming.” With these words, spoken loudly and passionately,
she turned her back on Praxinoa--the wife of a distinguished Macedonian
noble, who stood as if petrified--and retired into her tent, where
branched lamps had just been placed on little tables of elegant
workmanship. Like all the other furniture in the queen’s dressing-tent
these were made of gleaming ivory, standing out in fine relief from the
tent-cloth which was sky-blue woven with silver lilies and ears of corn,
and from the tiger-skins which covered all the cushions, while white
woollen carpets, bordered with a waving scroll in blue, were spread on
the ground.

The queen threw herself on a seat in front of her dressing-table, and
sat staring at herself in a mirror, as if she now saw her face and her
abundant, reddish-fair hair for the first time; then she said, half
turning to Zoe and half to her favorite Athenian waiting-maid, who stood
behind her with her other women:

“It was folly to dye my dark hair light; but now it may remain so, for
Publius Scipio, who has no suspicion of our arts, thought this color
pretty and uncommon, and never will know its origin. That Egyptian
headdress with the vulture’s head which the king likes best to see me
in, the young Greek Lysias and the Roman too, call barbaric, and so
every one must call it who is not interested in the Egyptians. But
to-night we are only ourselves, so I will wear the chaplet of golden
corn with sapphire grapes. Do you think, Zoe, that with that I could
wear the dress of transparent bombyx silk that came yesterday from Cos?
But no, I will not wear that, for it is too slight a tissue, it hides
nothing and I am now too thin for it to become me. All the lines in
my throat show, and my elbows are quite sharp--altogether I am much
thinner. That comes of incessant worry, annoyance, and anxiety. How
angry I was yesterday at the council, because my husband will always
give way and agree and try to be pleasant; whenever a refusal is
necessary I have to interfere, unwilling as I am to do it, and odious
as it is to me always to have to stir up discontent, disappointment, and
disaffection, to take things on myself and to be regarded as hard
and heartless in order that my husband may preserve undiminished the
doubtful glory of being the gentlest and kindest of men and princes. My
son’s having a will of his own leads to agitating scenes, but even that
is better than that Philopator should rush into everybody’s arms. The
first thing in bringing up a boy should be to teach him to say ‘no.’ I
often say ‘yes’ myself when I should not, but I am a woman, and yielding
becomes us better than refusal--and what is there of greater importance
to a woman than to do what becomes her best, and to seem beautiful?

“I will decide on this pale dress, and put over it the net-work of gold
thread with sapphire knots; that will go well with the head-dress. Take
care with your comb, Thais, you are hurting me! Now--I must not chatter
any more. Zoe, give me the roll yonder; I must collect my thoughts a
little before I go down to talk among men at the banquet. When we have
just come from visiting the realm of death and of Serapis, and have
been reminded of the immortality of the soul and of our lot in the next
world, we are glad to read through what the most estimable of human
thinkers has said concerning such things. Begin here, Zoe.”

Cleopatra’s companion, thus addressed, signed to the unoccupied
waiting-women to withdraw, seated herself on a low cushion opposite the
queen, and began to read with an intelligent and practised intonation;
the reading went on for some time uninterrupted by any sound but the
clink of metal ornaments, the rustle of rich stuffs, the trickle of oils
or perfumes as they were dropped into the crystal bowls, the short
and whispered questions of the women who were attiring the queen, or
Cleopatra’s no less low and rapid answers.

All the waiting-women not immediately occupied about the queen’s
person--perhaps twenty in all, young and old-ranged themselves along the
sides of the great tent, either standing or sitting on the ground or
on cushions, and awaiting the moment when it should be their turn to
perform some service, as motionless as though spellbound by the mystical
words of a magician. They only made signs to each other with their eyes
and fingers, for they knew that the queen did not choose to be disturbed
when she was being read to, and that she never hesitated to cast aside
anything or anybody that crossed her wishes or inclinations, like a
tight shoe or a broken lutestring.

Her features were irregular and sharp, her cheekbones too strongly
developed, and the lips, behind which her teeth gleamed pearly
white-though too widely set--were too full; still, so long as she
exerted her great powers of concentration, and listened with flashing
eyes, like those of a prophetess, and parted lips to the words of Plato,
her face had worn an indescribable glow of feeling, which seemed to have
come upon her from a higher and better world, and she had looked far
more beautiful than now when she was fully dressed, and when her women
crowded round leer--Zoe having laid aside the Plato--with loud and
unmeasured flattery.

Cleopatra delighted in being thus feted, and, in order to enjoy the
adulation of a throng, she would always when dressing have a great
number of women to attend her toilet; mirrors were held up to her on
every side, a fold set right, and the jewelled straps of her sandals
adjusted.

One praised the abundance of her hair, another the slenderness of her
form, the slimness of her ankles, and the smallness of her tiny
hands and feet. One maiden remarked to another--but loud enough to
be heard--on the brightness of her eyes which were clearer than the
sapphires on her brow, while the Athenian waiting-woman, Thais, declared
that Cleopatra had grown fatter, for her golden belt was less easy to
clasp than it had been ten days previously.

The queen presently signed to Zoe, who threw a little silver ball into a
bowl of the same metal, elaborately wrought and decorated, and in a few
minutes the tramp of the body-guard was audible outside the door of the
tent.

Cleopatra went out, casting a rapid glance over the roof--now brightly
illuminated with cressets and torches--and the white marble statues
that gleamed out in relief against the dark clumps of shrubs; and then,
without even looking at the tent where her children were asleep, she
approached the litter, which had been brought up to the roof for her by
the young Macedonian nobles. Zoe and Thais assisted her to mount into
it, and her ladies, waiting-women, and others who had hurried out of
the other tents, formed a row on each side of the way, and hailed their
mistress with loud cries of admiration and delight as she passed by,
lifted high above them all on the shoulders of her bearers. The diamonds
in the handle of her feather-fan sparkled brightly as Cleopatra waved a
gracious adieu to her women, an adieu which did not fail to remind them
how infinitely beneath her were those she greeted. Every movement of
her hand was full of regal pride, and her eyes, unveiled and untempered,
were radiant with a young woman’s pleasure in a perfect toilet, with
satisfaction in her own person, and with the anticipation of the festive
hours before her.

The litter disappeared behind the door of the broad steps that led up to
the roof, and Thais, sighing softly, said to herself, “If only for once
I could ride through the air in just such a pretty shell of colored and
shining mother-of-pearl, like a goddess! carried aloft by young men, and
hailed and admired by all around me! High up there the growing Selene
floats calmly and silently by the tiny stars, and just so did she
ride past in her purple robe with her torch-bearers and flames
and lights-past us humble creatures, and between the tents to the
banquet--and to what a banquet, and what guests! Everything up here
greets her with rejoicing, and I could almost fancy that among those
still marble statues even the stern face of Zeno had parted its lips,
and spoken flattering words to her. And yet poor little Zoe, and the
fair-haired Lysippa, and the black-haired daughter of Demetrius, and
even I, poor wretch, should be handsomer, far handsomer than she, if we
could dress ourselves with fine clothes and jewels for which kings would
sell their kingdoms; if we could play Aphrodite as she does, and ride
off in a shell borne aloft on emerald-green glass to look as if it were
floating on the waves; if dolphins set with pearls and turquoises served
us for a footstool, and white ostrich-plumes floated over our heads,
like the silvery clouds that float over Athens in the sky of a fine
spring day. The transparent tissue that she dared not put on would well
become me! If only that were true which Zoe was reading yesterday, that
the souls of men were destined to visit the earth again and again in new
forms! Then perhaps mine might some day come into the world in that of
a king’s child. I should not care to be a prince, so much is expected of
him, but a princess indeed! That would be lovely!”

These and such like were Thais’ dreams, while Zoe stood outside the tent
of the royal children with her cousin, the chief-attendant of prince
Philopator, carrying on an eager conversation in a low tone. The child’s
nurse from time to time dried her eyes and sobbed bitterly as she said:
“My own baby, my other children, my husband and our beautiful house
in Alexandria--I left them all to suckle and rear a prince. I have
sacrificed happiness, freedom, and my nights’-sleep for the sake of the
queen and of this child, and how am I repaid for all this? As if I were
a lowborn wench instead of the daughter and wife of noble men; this
woman, half a child still, scarcely yet nineteen, dismisses me from her
service before you and all her ladies every ten days! And why? Because
the ungoverned blood of her race flows in her son’s veins, and because
he does not rush into the arms of a mother who for days does not ask for
him at all, and never troubles herself about him but in some idle moment
when she has gratified every other whim. Princes distribute favor or
disgrace with justice only so long as they are children. The little one
understands very well what I am to him, and sees what Cleopatra is. If I
could find it in my heart to ill-use him in secret, this mother--who is
not fit to be a mother--would soon have her way. Hard as it would be to
me so soon to leave the poor feeble little child, who has grown as
dear to my soul as my own--aye and closer, even closer, as I may well
say--this time I will do it, even at the risk of Cleopatra’s plunging us
into ruin, my husband and me, as she has done to so many who have dared
to contravene her will.”

The wet-nurse wept aloud, but Zoe laid her hand on the distressed
woman’s shoulder, and said soothingly: “I know you have more to submit
to from Cleopatra’s humors than any of us all, but do not be overhasty.
Tomorrow she will send you a handsome present, as she so often has done
after being unkind; and though she vexes and hurts you again and again,
she will try to make up for it again and again till, when this year is
over, your attendance on the prince will be at an end, and you can go
home again to your own family. We all have to practise patience; we
live like people dwelling in a ruinous house with to-day a stone and
to-morrow a beam threatening to fall upon our heads. If we each take
calmly whatever befalls us our masters try to heal our wounds, but if
we resist may the gods have mercy on us! for Cleopatra is like a strung
bow, which sets the arrow flying as soon as a child, a mouse, a breath
of air even touches it--like an over-full cup which brims over if a
leaf, another drop, a single tear falls into it. We should, any one of
us, soon be worn out by such a life, but she needs excitement, turmoil
and amusement at every hour. She comes home late from a feast, spends
barely six hours in disturbed slumber, and has hardly rested so long as
it takes a pebble to fall to the ground from a crane’s claw before we
have to dress her again for another meal. From the council-board she
goes to hear some learned discourse, from her books in the temple to
sacrifice and prayer, from the sanctuary to the workshops of artists,
from pictures and statues to the audience-chamber, from a reception
of her subjects and of foreigners to her writing-room, from answering
letters to a procession and worship once more, from the sacred services
back again to her dressing-tent, and there, while she is being attired
she listens to me while I read the most profound works--and how she
listens! not a word escapes her, and her memory retains whole sentences.
Amid all this hurry and scurry her spirit must need be like a limb that
is sore from violent exertion, and that is painfully tender to every
rough touch. We are to her neither more nor less than the wretched flies
which we hit at when they trouble us, and may the gods be merciful to
those on whom this queen’s hand may fall! Euergetes cleaves with the
sword all that comes in his way. Cleopatra stabs with the dagger, and
her hand wields the united power of her own might and of her yielding
husband’s. Do not provoke her. Submit to what you cannot avert; just as
I never complain when, if I make a mistake in reading, she snatches the
book from my hand, or flings it at my feet. But I, of course, have only
myself to fear for, and you have your husband and children as well.”

Praxinoa bowed her head at these words in sad assent, and said:

“Thank you for those words! I always think only from my heart, and you
mostly from your head. You are right, this time again there is nothing
for me to do but to be patient; but when I have fulfilled the duties
here, which I undertook, and am at home again, I will offer a great
sacrifice to Asclepias and Hygiea, like a person recovered from a severe
illness; and one thing I know: that I would rather be a poor girl,
grinding at a mill, than change with this rich and adored queen who, in
order to enjoy her life to the utmost, carelessly and restlessly hurries
past all that our mortal lot has best to offer. Terrible, hideous to me
seems such an existence with no rest in it! and the heart of a mother
which is so much occupied with other things that she cannot win the love
of her child, which blossoms for every hired nurse, must be as waste as
the desert! Rather would I endure anything--everything--with patience
than be such a queen!”




CHAPTER VIII.

“What! No one to come to meet me?” asked the queen, as she reached the
foot of the last flight of porphyry steps that led into the ante-chamber
to the banqueting-hall, and, looking round, with an ominous glance, at
the chamberlains who had accompanied her, she clinched her small fist.
“I arrive and find no one here!”

The “No one” certainly was a figure of speech, since more than a hundred
body-guards-Macedonians in rich array of arms-and an equal number of
distinguished court-officials were standing on the marble flags of the
vast hall, which was surrounded by colonnades, while the star-spangled
night-sky was all its roof; and the court-attendants were all men of
rank, dignified by the titles of fathers, brothers, relatives, friends
and chief-friends of the king.

These all received the queen with a many-voiced “Hail!” but not one of
them seemed worthy of Cleopatra’s notice. This crowd was less to her
than the air we breathe in order to live--a mere obnoxious vapor, a
whirl of dust which the traveller would gladly avoid, but which he must
nevertheless encounter in order to proceed on his way.

The queen had expected that the few guests, invited by her selection
and that of her brother Euergetes to the evening’s feast, would have
welcomed her here at the steps; she thought they would have seen her--as
she felt herself--like a goddess borne aloft in her shell, and that
she might have exulted in the admiring astonishment of the Roman and of
Lysias, the Corinthian: and now the most critical instant in the part
she meant to play that evening had proved a failure, and it suggested
itself to her mind that she might be borne back to her roof-tent, and be
floated down once more when she was sure of the presence of the company.
But there was one thing she dreaded more even than pain and remorse,
and that was any appearance of the ridiculous; so she only commanded the
bearers to stand still, and while the master of the ceremonies, waiving
his dignity, hurried off to announce to her husband that she was
approaching, she signed to the nobles highest in rank to approach, that
she might address a few gracious words to them, with distant amiability.
Only a few however, for the doors of thyia wood leading into the
banqueting hall itself, presently opened, and the king with his friends
came forward to meet Cleopatra.

“How were we to expect you so early?” cried Philometor to his wife.

“Is it really still early?” asked the queen, “or have I only taken you
by surprise, because you had forgotten to expect me?”

“How unjust you are!” replied the king. “Must you now be told that, come
as early as you will, you always come too late for my desires.”

“But for ours,” cried Lysias, “neither too early nor too late, but
at the very right time--like returning health and happiness, or the
victor’s crown.”

“Health as taking the place of sickness?” asked Cleopatra, and her
eyes sparkled keenly and merrily. “I perfectly understand Lysias,” said
Publius, intercepting the Greek. “Once, on the field of Mars, I was
flung from my horse, and had to lie for weeks on my couch, and I know
that there is no more delightful sensation than that of feeling our
departed strength returning as we recover. He means to say that in your
presence we must feel exceptionally well.”

“Nay rather,” interrupted Lysias, “our queen seems to come to us like
returning health, since so long as she was not in our midst we felt
suffering and sick for longing. Thy presence, Cleopatra, is the most
effectual remedy, and restores us to our lost health.”

Cleopatra politely lowered her fan, as if in thanks, thus rapidly
turning the stick of it in her hand, so as to make the diamonds that
were set in it sparkle and flash. Then she turned to the friends, and
said:

“Your words are most amiable, and your different ways of expressing
your meaning remind me of two gems set in a jewel, one of which
sparkles because it is skilfully cut, and reflects every light from its
mirrorlike facets, while the other shines by its genuine and intrinsic
fire. The genuine and the true are one, and the Egyptians have but one
word for both, and your kind speech, my Scipio--but I may surely venture
to call you Publius--your kind speech, my Publius seems to me to be
truer than that of your accomplished friend, which is better adapted to
vainer ears than mine. Pray, give me your hand.”

The shell in which she was sitting was gently lowered, and, supported
by Publius and her husband, the queen alighted and entered the
banqueting-hall, accompanied by her guests.

As soon as the curtains were closed, and when Cleopatra had exchanged a
few whispered words with her husband, she turned again to the Roman, who
had just been joined by Eulaeus, and said:

“You have come from Athens, Publius, but you do not seem to have
followed very closely the courses of logic there, else how could it be
that you, who regard health as the highest good--that you, who declared
that you never felt so well as in my presence--should have quitted me so
promptly after the procession, and in spite of our appointment? May I be
allowed to ask what business--”

“Our noble friend,” answered Eulaeus, bowing low, but not allowing the
queen to finish her speech, “would seem to have found some particular
charm in the bearded recluses of Serapis, and to be seeking among them
the key-stone of his studies at Athens.”

“In that he is very right,” said the queen. “For from them he can
learn to direct his attention to that third division of our existence,
concerning which least is taught in Athens--I mean the future--”

“That is in the hands of the gods,” replied the Roman. “It will come
soon enough, and I did not discuss it with the anchorite. Eulaeus may be
informed that, on the contrary, everything I learned from that singular
man in the Serapeum bore reference to the things of the past.”

“But how can it be possible,” said Eulaeus, “that any one to whom
Cleopatra had offered her society should think so long of anything else
than the beautiful present?”

“You indeed have good reason,” retorted Publius quickly, “to enter the
lists in behalf of the present, and never willingly to recall the past.”

“It was full of anxiety and care,” replied Eulaeus with perfect
self-possession. “That my sovereign lady must know from her illustrious
mother, and from her own experience; and she will also protect me from
the undeserved hatred with which certain powerful enemies seem minded
to pursue me. Permit me, your majesty, not to make my appearance at the
banquet until later. This noble gentleman kept me waiting for hours
in the Serapeum, and the proposals concerning the new building in the
temple of Isis at Philae must be drawn up and engrossed to-day, in order
that they may be brought to-morrow before your royal husband in council
and your illustrious brother Euergetes--”

“You have leave, interrupted Cleopatra.”

As soon as Eulaeus had disappeared, the queen went closer up to Publius,
and said:

“You are annoyed with this man--well, he is not pleasant, but at any
rate he is useful and worthy. May I ask whether you only feel his
personality repugnant to you, or whether actual circumstances have given
rise to your aversion--nay, if I have judged rightly, to a very bitterly
hostile feeling against him?”

“Both,” replied Publius. “In this unmanly man, from the very first, I
expected to find nothing good, and I now know that, if I erred at all,
it was in his favor. To-morrow I will ask you to spare me an hour when
I can communicate to your majesty something concerning him, but which is
too repulsive and sad to be suitable for telling in an evening devoted
to enjoyment. You need not be inquisitive, for they are matters that
belong to the past, and which concern neither you nor me.”

The high-steward and the cup-bearer here interrupted this conversation
by calling them to table, and the royal pair were soon reclining with
their guests at the festal board.

Oriental splendor and Greek elegance were combined in the decorations
of the saloon of moderate size, in which Ptolemy Philometor was wont to
prefer to hold high-festival with a few chosen friends. Like the great
reception-hall and the men’s hall-with its twenty doors and lofty
porphyry columns--in which the king’s guests assembled, it was lighted
from above, since it was only at the sides that the walls--which had
no windows--and a row of graceful alabaster columns with Corinthian
acanthus-capitals supported a narrow roof; the centre of the hall was
quite uncovered. At this hour, when it was blazing with hundreds of
lights, the large opening, which by day admitted the bright sunshine,
was closed over by a gold net-work, decorated with stars and a crescent
moon of rock-crystal, and the meshes were close enough to exclude
the bats and moths which at night always fly to the light. But the
illumination of the king’s banqueting-hall made it almost as light as
day, consisting of numerous lamps with many branches held up by lovely
little figures of children in bronze and marble. Every joint was plainly
visible in the mosaic of the pavement, which represented the reception
of Heracles into Olympus, the feast of the gods, and the astonishment of
the amazed hero at the splendor of the celestial banquet; and hundreds
of torches were reflected in the walls of polished yellow marble,
brought from Hippo Regius; these were inlaid by skilled artists
with costly stones, such as lapis lazuli and malachite, crystals,
blood-stone, jasper, agates and chalcedony, to represent fruit-pieces
and magnificent groups of game or of musical instruments; while the
pilasters were decorated with masks of the tragic and comic Muses,
torches, thyrsi wreathed with ivy and vine, and pan-pipes. These were
wrought in silver and gold, and set with costly marbles, and they stood
out from the marble background like metal work on a leather shield, or
the rich ornamentation on a sword-sheath. The figures of a Dionysiac
procession, forming the frieze, looked down upon the feasters--a fine
relievo that had been designed and modelled for Ptolemy Soter by the
sculptor Bryaxis, and then executed in ivory and gold.

Everything that met the eye in this hall was splendid, costly, and above
all of a genial aspect, even before Cleopatra had come to the throne;
and she--here as in her own apartments--had added the busts of the
greatest Greek philosophers and poets, from Thales of Miletus down to
Strato, who raised chance to fill the throne of God, and from Hesiod to
Callimachus; she too had placed the tragic mask side by side with the
comic, for at her table--she was wont to say--she desired to see no one
who could not enjoy grave and wise discourse more than eating, drinking,
and laughter.

Instead of assisting at the banquet, as other ladies used, seated on a
chair or at the foot of her husband’s couch, she reclined on a couch of
her own, behind which stood busts of Sappho the poetess, and Aspasia the
friend of Pericles.

Though she made no pretensions to be regarded as a philosopher nor
even as a poetess, she asserted her right to be considered a finished
connoisseur in the arts of poetry and music; and if she preferred
reclining to sitting how should she have done otherwise, since she was
fully aware how well it became her to extend herself in a picturesque
attitude on her cushions, and to support her head on her arm as it
rested on the back of her couch; for that arm, though not strictly
speaking beautiful, always displayed the finest specimens of Alexandrian
workmanship in gem-cutting and goldsmiths’ work.

But, in fact, she selected a reclining posture particularly for the sake
of showing her feet; not a woman in Egypt or Greece had a smaller or
more finely formed foot than she. For this reason her sandals were so
made that when she stood or walked they protected only the soles of
her feet, and her slender white toes with the roseate nails and their
polished white half-moons were left uncovered.

At the banquet she put off her shoes altogether, as the men did; hiding
her feet at first however, and not displaying them till she thought
the marks left on her tender skin by the straps of the sandals had
completely disappeared.

Eulaeus was the greatest admirer of these feet; not, as he averred, on
account of their beauty, but because the play of the queen’s toes showed
him exactly what was passing in her mind, when he was quite unable to
detect what was agitating her soul in the expression of her mouth and
eyes, well practised in the arts of dissimulation.

Nine couches, arranged three and three in a horseshoe, invited the
guests to repose, with their arms of ebony and cushions of dull
olive-green brocade, on which a delicate pattern of gold and silver
seemed just to have been breathed.

The queen, shrugging her shoulders, and, as it would seem, by no means
agreeably surprised at something, whispered to the chamberlain, who then
indicated to each guest the place he was to occupy. To the right of the
central group reclined the queen, and her husband took his place to
the left; the couch between the royal pair, destined for their brother
Euergetes, remained unoccupied.

On one of the three couches which formed the right-hand angle with those
of the royal family, Publius found a place next to Cleopatra; opposite
to him, and next the king, was Lysias the Corinthian. Two places next to
him remained vacant, while on the side by the Roman reclined the
brave and prudent Hierax, the friend of Ptolemy Euergetes and his most
faithful follower.

While the servants strewed the couches with rose leaves, sprinkled
perfumed waters, and placed by the couch of each guest a small
table-made of silver and of a slab of fine, reddish-brown porphyry,
veined with white-the king addressed a pleasant greeting to each guest,
apologizing for the smallness of the number.

“Eulaeus,” he said, “has been forced to leave us on business, and our
royal brother is still sitting over his books with Aristarchus, who came
with him from Alexandria; but he promised certainly to come.”

“The fewer we are,” replied Lysias, bowing low, “the more honorable is
the distinction of belonging to so limited a number of your majesty’s
most select associates.”

“I certainly think we have chosen the best from among the good,” said
the queen. “But even the small number of friends I had invited must have
seemed too large to my brother Euergetes, for he--who is accustomed
to command in other folks’ houses as he does in his own--forbid the
chamberlain to invite our learned friends--among whom Agatharchides, my
brothers’ and my own most worthy tutor, is known to you--as well as our
Jewish friends who were present yesterday at our table, and whom I had
set down on my list. I am very well satisfied however, for I like
the number of the Muses; and perhaps he desired to do you, Publius,
particular honor, since we are assembled here in the Roman fashion. It
is in your honor, and not in his, that we have no music this evening;
you said that you did not particularly like it at a banquet. Euergetes
himself plays the harp admirably. However, it is well that he is late in
coming as usual, for the day after tomorrow is his birthday, and he is
to spend it here with us and not in Alexandria; the priestly delegates
assembled in the Bruchion are to come from thence to Memphis to wish him
joy, and we must endeavor to get up some brilliant festival. You have no
love for Eulaeus, Publius, but he is extremely skilled in such matters,
and I hope he will presently return to give us his advice.”

“For the morning we will have a grand procession,” cried the king.
“Euergetes delights in a splendid spectacle, and I should be glad to
show him how much pleasure his visit has given us.”

The king’s fine features wore a most winning expression as he spoke
these words with heart-felt warmth, but his consort said thoughtfully:
“Aye! if only we were in Alexandria--but here, among all the Egyptian
people--”




CHAPTER IX.

A loud laugh re-echoing from the marble walls of the state-room
interrupted the queen’s speech; at first she started, but then smiled
with pleasure as she recognized her brother Euergetes, who, pushing
aside the chamberlains, approached the company with an elderly Greek,
who walked by his side.

“By all the dwellers on Olympus! By the whole rabble of gods and beasts
that live in the temples by the Nile!” cried the new-comer, again
laughing so heartily that not only his fat cheeks but his whole
immensely stout young frame swayed and shook. “By your pretty little
feet, Cleopatra, which could so easily be hidden, and yet are always
to be seen--by all your gentle virtues, Philometor, I believe you are
trying to outdo the great Philadelphus or our Syrian uncle Antiochus,
and to get up a most unique procession; and in my honor! Just so! I
myself will take a part in the wonderful affair, and my sturdy person
shall represent Eros with his quiver and bow. Some Ethiopian dame
must play the part of my mother Aphrodite; she will look the part to
perfection, rising from the white sea-foam with her black skin. And what
do you think of a Pallas with short woolly hair; of the Charities
with broad, flat Ethiopian feet; and an Egyptian, with his shaven head
mirroring the sun, as Phoebus Apollo?”

With these words the young giant of twenty years threw himself on the
vacant couch between his brother and sister, and, after bowing, not
without dignity, to the Roman, whom his brother named to him, he called
one of the young Macedonians of noble birth who served at the feast as
cup-bearers, had his cup filled once and again and yet a third time,
drinking it off quickly and without setting it down; then he said in
a loud tone, while he pushed his hands through his tossed, light brown
hair, till it stood straight up in the air from his broad temples and
high brow:

“I must make up for what you have had before I came.--Another cup-full
Diocleides.”

“Wild boy!” said Cleopatra, holding up her finger at him half in jest
and half in grave warning. “How strange you look!”

“Like Silenus without the goat’s hoofs,” answered Euergetes. “Hand me a
mirror here, Diocleides; follow the eyes of her majesty the queen,
and you will be sure to find one. There is the thing! And in fact the
picture it shows me does not displease me. I see there a head on which
besides the two crowns of Egypt a third might well find room, and in
which there is so much brains that they might suffice to fill the skulls
of four kings to the brim. I see two vulture’s eyes which are always
keen of sight even when their owner is drunk, and that are in danger
of no peril save from the flesh of these jolly cheeks, which, if they
continue to increase so fast, must presently exclude the light, as the
growth of the wood encloses a piece of money stuck into a rift in a
tree-or as a shutter, when it is pushed to, closes up a window. With
these hands and arms the fellow I see in the mirror there could, at
need, choke a hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be
twice as long as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest. In this mirror
I see a man, who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more
unctuous and solid stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature
there on the bright surface wears a transparent robe, what have you to
say against it, Cleopatra? The Ptolemaic princes must protect the import
trade of Alexandria, that fact was patent even to the great son of
Lagus; and what would become of our commerce with Cos if I did not
purchase the finest bombyx stuffs, since those who sell it make no
profits out of you, the queen--and you cover yourself, like a vestal
virgin, in garments of tapestry. Give me a wreath for my head--aye and
another to that, and new wine in the cup! To the glory of Rome and
to your health, Publius Cornelius Scipio, and to our last critical
conjecture, my Aristarchus--to subtle thinking and deep drinking!”

“To deep thinking and subtle drinking!” retorted the person thus
addressed, while he raised the cup, looked into the wine with his
twinkling eyes and lifted it slowly to his nose--a long, well-formed and
slightly aquiline nose--and to his thin lips.

“Oh! Aristarchus,” exclaimed Euergetes, and he frowned. “You please me
better when you clear up the meaning of your poets and historians than
when you criticise the drinking-maxims of a king. Subtle drinking is
mere sipping, and sipping I leave to the bitterns and other birds that
live content among the reeds. Do you understand me? Among reeds, I
say--whether cut for writing, or no.”

“By subtle drinking,” replied the great critic with perfect
indifference, as he pushed the thin, gray hair from his high brow with
his slender hand. “By subtle drinking I mean the drinking of choice
wine, and did you ever taste anything more delicate than this juice of
the vines of Anthylla that your illustrious brother has set before us?
Your paradoxical axiom commends you at once as a powerful thinker and as
the benevolent giver of the best of drinks.”

“Happily turned,” exclaimed Cleopatra, clapping her hands, “you here
see, Publius, a proof of the promptness of an Alexandrian tongue.”

“Yes!” said Euergetes, “if men could go forth to battle with words
instead of spears the masters of the Museum in Alexander’s city, with
Aristarchus at their head, they might rout the united armies of Rome and
Carthage in a couple of hours.”

“But we are not now in the battle-field but at a peaceful meal,” said
the king, with suave amiability. “You did in fact overhear our secret
Euergetes, and mocked at my faithful Egyptians, in whose place I would
gladly set fair Greeks if only Alexandria still belonged to me instead
of to you.--However, a splendid procession shall not be wanting at your
birthday festival.”

“And do you really still take pleasure in these eternal goose-step
performances?” asked Euergetes, stretching himself out on his couch,
and folding his hands to support the back of his head. “Sooner could
I accustom myself to the delicate drinking of Aristarchus than sit
for hours watching these empty pageants. On two conditions only can
I declare myself ready and willing to remain quiet, and patiently to
dawdle through almost half a day, like an ape in a cage: First, if it
will give our Roman friend Publius Cornelius Scipio any pleasure to
witness such a performance--though, since our uncle Antiochus pillaged
our wealth, and since we brothers shared Egypt between us, our
processions are not to be even remotely compared to the triumphs of
Roman victors--or, secondly, if I am allowed to take an active part in
the affair.”

“On my account, Sire,” replied Publius, “no procession need be arranged,
particularly not such a one as I should here be obliged to look on at.”

“Well! I still enjoy such things,” said Cleopatra’s husband.
“Well-arranged groups, and the populace pleased and excited are a sight
I am never tired of.”

“As for me,” cried Cleopatra, “I often turn hot and cold, and the tears
even spring to my eyes, when the shouting is loudest. A great mass of
men all uniting in a common emotion always has a great effect. A drop, a
grain of sand, a block of stone are insignificant objects, but
millions of them together, forming the sea, the desert or the pyramids,
constitute a sublime whole. One man alone, shouting for joy, is like
a madman escaped from an asylum, but when thousands of men rejoice
together it must have a powerful effect on the coldest heart. How is
it that you, Publius Scipio, in whom a strong will seems to me to have
found a peculiarly happy development, can remain unmoved by a scene in
which the great collective will of a people finds its utterance?”

“Is there then any expression of will, think you,” said the Roman, “in
this popular rejoicing? It is just in such circumstances that each man
becomes the involuntary mimic and duplicate of his neighbor; while I
love to make my own way, and to be independent of everything but the
laws and duties laid upon me by the state to which I belong.”

“And I,” said Euergetes, “from my childhood have always looked on
at processions from the very best places, and so it is that fortune
punishes me now with indifference to them and to everything of the kind;
while the poor miserable devil who can never catch sight of anything
more than the nose or the tip of a hair or the broad back of those who
take part in them, always longs for fresh pageants. As you hear, I need
have no consideration for Publius Scipio in this, willing as I should be
to do so. Now what would you say, Cleopatra, if I myself took a part in
my procession--I say mine, since it is to be in my honor; that really
would be for once something new and amusing.”

“More new and amusing than creditable, I think,” replied Cleopatra
dryly.

“And yet even that ought to please you,” laughed Euergetes. “Since,
besides being your brother, I am your rival, and we would sooner see our
rivals lower themselves than rise.”

“Do not try to justify yourself by such words,” interrupted the king
evasively, and with a tone of regret in his soft voice. “We love you
truly; we are ready to yield you your dominion side by side with ours,
and I beg you to avoid such speeches even in jest, so that bygones may
be bygones.”

“And,” added Cleopatra, “not to detract from your dignity as a king and
your fame as a sage by any such fool’s pranks.”

“Madam teacher, do you know then what I had in my mind? I would
appear as Alcibiades, followed by a train of flute-playing women, with
Aristarchus to play the part of Socrates. I have often been told that
he and I resemble each other--in many points, say the more sincere; in
every point, say the more polite of my friends.”

At these words Publius measured with his eye the frame of the royal
young libertine, enveloped in transparent robes; and recalling to
himself, as he gazed, a glorious statue of that favorite of the
Athenians, which he had seen in the Ilissus, an ironical smile passed
over his lips. It was not unobserved by Euergetes and it offended him,
for there was nothing he liked better than to be compared to the nephew
of Pericles; but he suppressed his annoyance, for Publius Cornelius
Scipio was the nearest relative of the most influential men of Rome,
and, though he himself wielded royal power, Rome exercised over him the
sovereign will of a divinity.

Cleopatra noticed what was passing in her brother’s mind, and in
order to interrupt his further speech and to divert his mind to fresh
thoughts, she said cheerfully:

“Let us then give up the procession, and think of some other mode of
celebrating your birthday. You, Lysias, must be experienced in such
matters, for Publius tells me that you were the leader in all the games
of Corinth. What can we devise to entertain Euergetes and ourselves?”

The Corinthian looked for a moment into his cup, moving it slowly about
on the marble slab of the little table at his side, between an oyster
pasty and a dish of fresh asparagus; and then he said, glancing round to
win the suffrages of the company:

“At the great procession which took place under Ptolemy
Philadelphus--Agatharchides gave me the description of it, written by
the eye-witness Kallixenus, to read only yesterday--all kinds of scenes
from the lives of the gods were represented before the people. Suppose
we were to remain in this magnificent palace, and to represent ourselves
the beautiful groups which the great artists of the past have produced
in painting or sculpture; but let us choose those only that are least
known.”

“Splendid,” cried Cleopatra in great excitement, “who can be more like
Heracles than my mighty brother there--the very son of Alcmene, as
Lysippus has conceived and represented him? Let us then represent
the life of Heracles from grand models, and in every case assign to
Euergetes the part of the hero.”

“Oh! I will undertake it,” said the young king, feeling the mighty
muscles of his breast and arms, “and you may give me great credit for
assuming the part, for the demi-god who strangled the snakes was lacking
in the most important point, and it was not without due consideration
that Lysippus represented him with a small head on his mighty body; but
I shall not have to say anything.”

“If I play Omphale will you sit at my feet?” asked Cleopatra.

“Who would not be willing to sit at those feet?” answered Euergetes.
“Let us at once make further choice among the abundance of subjects
offered to us, but, like Lysias, I would warn you against those that are
too well-known.”

“There are no doubt things commonplace to the eye as well as to the
ear,” said Cleopatra. “But what is recognized as good is commonly
regarded as most beautiful.”

“Permit me,” said Lysias, “to direct your attention to a piece of
sculpture in marble of the noblest workmanship, which is both old and
beautiful, and yet which may be known to few among you. It exists on the
cistern of my father’s house at Corinth, and was executed many centuries
since by a great artist of the Peloponnesus. Publius was delighted
with the work, and it is in fact beautiful beyond description. It is an
exquisite representation of the marriage of Heracles and Hebe--of the
hero, raised to divinity, with sempiternal youth. Will Your Majesty
allow yourself to be led by Pallas Athene and your mother Alcmene to
your nuptials with Hebe?”

“Why not?” said Euergetes. “Only the Hebe must be beautiful. But one
thing must be considered; how are we to get the cistern from your
father’s house at Corinth to this place by to-morrow or next day? Such a
group cannot be posed from memory without the original to guide us; and
though the story runs that the statue of Serapis flew from Sinope to
Alexandria, and though there are magicians still at Memphis--”

“We shall not need them,” interrupted Publius, “while I was staying as
a guest in the house of my friend’s parents--which is altogether more
magnificent than the old castle of King Gyges at Sardis--I had some gems
engraved after this lovely group, as a wedding-present for my sister.
They are extremely successful, and I have them with me in my tent.”

“Have you a sister?” asked the queen, leaning over towards the Roman.
“You must tell me all about her.”

“She is a girl like all other girls,” replied Publius, looking down at
the ground, for it was most repugnant to his feelings to speak of his
sister in the presence of Euergetes.

“And you are unjust like all other brothers,” said Cleopatra smiling,
“and I must hear more about her, for”--and she whispered the words and
looked meaningly at Publius--“all that concerns you must interest me.”

During this dialogue the royal brothers had addressed themselves to
Lysias with questions as to the marriage of Heracles and Hebe, and all
the company were attentive to the Greek as he went on: “This fine work
does not represent the marriage properly speaking, but the moment when
the bridegroom is led to the bride. The hero, with his club on his
shoulder, and wearing the lion’s skin, is led by Pallas Athene, who, in
performing this office of peace, has dropped her spear and carries her
helmet in her hand; they are accompanied by his mother Alcmene, and
are advancing towards the bride’s train. This is headed by no less a
personage than Apollo himself, singing the praises of Hymenaeus to a
lute. With him walks his sister Artemis and behind them the mother of
Hebe, accompanied by Hermes, the messenger of the gods, as the envoy of
Zeus. Then follows the principal group, which is one of the most lovely
works of Greek art that I am acquainted with. Hebe comes forward to meet
her bridegroom, gently led on by Aphrodite, the queen of love.
Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, lays her hand on the bride’s arm,
imperceptibly urging her forward and turning away her face; for what she
had to say has been said, and she smiles to herself, for Hebe has not
turned a deaf ear to her voice, and he who has once listened to Peitho
must do what she desires.”

“And Hebe?” asked Cleopatra.

“She casts down her eyes, but lifts up the arm on which the hand of
Peitho rests with a warning movement of her fingers, in which she holds
an unopened rose, as though she would say; ‘Ah! let me be--I tremble at
the man’--or ask: ‘Would it not be better that I should remain as I am
and not yield to your temptations and to Aphrodite’s power?’ Oh! Hebe is
exquisite, and you, O Queen! must represent her!”

“I!” exclaimed Cleopatra. “But you said her eyes were cast down.”

“That is from modesty and timidity, and her gait must also be bashful
and maidenly. Her long robe falls to her feet in simple folds, while
Peitho holds hers up saucily, between her forefinger and thumb, as if
stealthily dancing with triumph over her recent victory. Indeed the
figure of Peitho would become you admirably.”

“I think I will represent Peitho,” said the queen interrupting the
Corinthian. “Hebe is but a bud, an unopened blossom, while I am a
mother, and I flatter myself I am something of a philosopher--”

“And can with justice assure yourself,” interrupted Aristarchus, “that
with every charm of youth you also possess the characters attributed to
Peitho, the goddess, who can work her spells not only on the heart but
on the intellect also. The maiden bud is as sweet to look upon as
the rose, but he who loves not merely color but perfume too--I mean
refreshment, emotion and edification of spirit--must turn to the
full-blown flower; as the rose--growers of lake Moeris twine only the
buds of their favorite flower into wreaths and bunches, but cannot use
them for extracting the oil of imperishable fragrance; for that they
need the expanded blossom. Represent Peitho, my Queen! the goddess
herself might be proud of such a representative.”

“And if she were so indeed,” cried Cleopatra, “how happy am I to hear
such words from the lips of Aristarchus. It is settled--I play Peitho.
My companion Zoe may take the part of Artemis, and her grave sister
that of Pallas Athene. For the mother’s part we have several matrons to
choose from; the eldest daughter of Epitropes appears to me fitted for
the part of Aphrodite; she is wonderfully lovely.”

“Is she stupid too?” asked Euergetes. “That is also an attribute of the
ever-smiling Cypria.”

“Enough so, I think, for our purpose,” laughed Cleopatra. “But where are
we to find such a Hebe as you have described, Lysias? The daughter of
Alimes the Arabarch is a charming child.”

“But she is brown, as brown as this excellent wine, and too thoroughly
Egyptian,” said the high-steward, who superintended the young Macedonian
cup-bearers; he bowed deeply as he spoke, and modestly drew the queen’s
attention to his own daughter, a maiden of sixteen. But Cleopatra
objected, that she was much taller than herself, and that she would have
to stand by the Hebe, and lay her hand on her arm.

Other maidens were rejected on various grounds, and Euergetes had
already proposed to send off a carrier-pigeon to Alexandria to command
that some fair Greek girl should be sent by an express quadriga to
Memphis--where the dark Egyptian gods and men flourish, and are more
numerous than the fair race of Greeks--when Lysias exclaimed:

“I saw to-day the very girl we want, a Hebe that might have stepped out
from the marble group at my father’s, and have been endued with life and
warmth and color by some god. Young, modest, rose and white, and just
about as tall as Your Majesty. If you will allow me, I will not tell you
who she is, till after I have been to our tent to fetch the gems with
the copies of the marble.”

“You will find them in an ivory casket at the bottom of my
clothes-chest,” said Publius; “here is the key.”

“Make haste,” cried the queen, “for we are all curious to hear where in
Memphis you discovered your modest, rose and white Hebe.”




CHAPTER X.

An hour had slipped by with the royal party, since Lysias had quitted
the company; the wine-cups had been filled and emptied many times;
Eulaeus had rejoined the feasters, and the conversation had taken
quite another turn, since the whole of the company were not now equally
interested in the same subject; on the contrary, the two kings were
discussing with Aristarchus the manuscripts of former poets and of the
works of the sages, scattered throughout Greece, and the ways and means
of obtaining them or of acquiring exact transcripts of them for the
library of the Museum. Hierax was telling Eulaeus of the last Dionysiac
festival, and of the representation of the newest comedy in Alexandria,
and Eulaeus assumed the appearance--not unsuccessfully--of listening
with both ears, interrupting him several times with intelligent
questions, bearing directly on what he had said, while in fact his
attention was exclusively directed to the queen, who had taken entire
possession of the Roman Publius, telling him in a low tone of her
life--which was consuming her strength--of her unsatisfied affections,
and her enthusiasm for Rome and for manly vigor. As she spoke her cheeks
glowed and her eyes sparkled, for the more exclusively she kept the
conversation in her own hands the better she thought she was being
entertained; and Publius, who was nothing less than talkative, seldom
interrupted her, only insinuating a flattering word now and then when
it seemed appropriate; for he remembered the advice given him by the
anchorite, and was desirous of winning the good graces of Cleopatra.

In spite of his sharp ears Eulaeus could understand but little of their
whispered discourse, for King Euergetes’ powerful voice sounded loud
above the rest of the conversation; but Eulaeus was able swiftly to
supply the links between the disjointed sentences, and to grasp the
general sense, at any rate, of what she was saying. The queen avoided
wine, but she had the power of intoxicating herself, so to speak, with
her own words, and now just as her brothers and Aristarchus were at the
height of their excited and eager question and answer--she raised her
cup, touched it with her lips and handed it to Publius, while at the
same time she took hold of his.

The young Roman knew well enough all the significance of this hasty
action; it was thus that in his own country a woman when in love was
wont to exchange her cup with her lover, or an apple already bitten by
her white teeth.

Publius was seized with a cold shudder--like a wanderer who carelessly
pursues his way gazing up at the moon and stars, and suddenly perceives
an abyss yawning; at his feet. Recollections of his mother and of
her warnings against the seductive wiles of the Egyptian women,
and particularly of this very woman, flashed through his mind like
lightning; she was looking at him--not royally by any means, but with
anxious and languishing gaze, and he would gladly have kept his eyes
fixed on the ground, and have left the cup untouched; but her eye held
his fast as though fettering it with ties and bonds; and to put aside
the cup seemed to the most fearless son of an unconquered nation a deed
too bold to be attempted. Besides, how could he possibly repay this
highest favor with an affront that no woman could ever forgive--least of
all a Cleopatra?

Aye, many a life’s happiness is tossed away and many a sin committed,
because the favor of women is a grace that does honor to every man, and
that flatters him even when it is bestowed by the unloved and unworthy.
For flattery is a key to the heart, and when the heart stands half open
the voice of the tempter is never wanting to whisper: “You will hurt her
feelings if you refuse.”

These were the deliberations which passed rapidly and confusedly through
the young Roman’s agitated brain, as he took the queen’s cup and set his
lips to the same spot that hers had touched. Then, while he emptied the
cup in long draughts, he felt suddenly seized by a deep aversion to the
over-talkative, overdressed and capricious woman before him, who thus
forced upon him favors for which he had not sued; and suddenly there
rose before his soul the image, almost tangibly distinct, of the humble
water-bearer; he saw Klea standing before him and looking far more
queenly as, proud and repellent, she avoided his gaze, than the
sovereign by his side could ever have done, though crowned with a
diadem.

Cleopatra rejoiced to mark his long slow draught, for she thought the
Roman meant to imply by it that he could not cease to esteem himself
happy in the favor she had shown him. She did not take her eyes off him,
and observed with pleasure that his color changed to red and white; nor
did she notice that Eulaeus was watching, with a twinkle in his eyes,
all that was going on between her and Publius. At last the Roman set
down the cup, and tried with some confusion to reply to her question as
to how he had liked the flavor of the wine.

“Very fine--excellent--” at last he stammered out, but he was no longer
looking at Cleopatra but at Euergetes, who just then cried out loudly:

“I have thought over that passage for hours, I have given you all my
reasons and have let you speak, Aristarchus, but I maintain my opinion,
and whoever denies it does Homer an injustice; in this place ‘siu’ must
be read instead of ‘iu’.”

Euergetes spoke so vehemently that his voice outshouted all the other
guests; Publius however snatched at his words, to escape the necessity
for feigning sentiments he could not feel; so he said, addressing
himself half to the speaker and half to Cleopatra:

“Of what use can it be to decide whether it is one or the other--‘iu’ or
‘siu’. I find many things justifiable in other men that are foreign
to my own nature, but I never could understand how an energetic and
vigorous man, a prudent sovereign and stalwart drinker--like you,
Euergetes--can sit for hours over flimsy papyrus-rolls, and rack his
brains to decide whether this or that in Homer should be read in one way
or another.”

“You exercise yourself in other things,” replied Euergetes. “I consider
that part of me which lies within this golden fillet as the best that I
have, and I exercise my wits on the minutest and subtlest questions just
as I would try the strength of my arms against the sturdiest athletes. I
flung five into the sand the last time I did so, and they quake now when
they see me enter the gymnasium of Timagetes. There would be no strength
in the world if there were no obstacles, and no man would know that he
was strong if he could meet with no resistance to overcome. I for my
part seek such exercises as suit my idiosyncrasy, and if they are not
to your taste I cannot help it. If you were to set these excellently
dressed crayfish before a fine horse he would disdain them, and could
not understand how foolish men could find anything palatable that tasted
so salt. Salt, in fact, is not suited to all creatures! Men born far
from the sea do not relish oysters, while I, being a gourmand, even
prefer to open them myself so that they may be perfectly fresh, and mix
their liquor with my wine.”

“I do not like any very salt dish, and am glad to leave the opening of
all marine produce to my servants,” answered Publius. “Thereby I save
both time and unnecessary trouble.”

“Oh! I know!” cried Euergetes. “You keep Greek slaves, who must even
read and write for you. Pray is there a market where I may purchase men,
who, after a night of carousing, will bear our headache for us? By the
shores of the Tiber you love many things better than learning.”

“And thereby,” added Aristarchus, “deprive yourselves of the noblest and
subtlest of pleasures, for the purest enjoyment is ever that which we
earn at the cost of some pains and effort.”

“But all that you earn by this kind of labor,” returned Publius, “is
petty and unimportant. It puts me in mind of a man who removes a block
of stone in the sweat of his brow only to lay it on a sparrow’s feather
in order that it may not be carried away by the wind.”

“And what is great--and what is small?” asked Aristarchus. “Very
opposite opinions on that subject may be equally true, since it depends
solely on us and our feelings how things appear to us--whether cold or
warm; lovely or repulsive--and when Protagoras says that ‘man is the
measure of all things,’ that is the most acceptable of all the maxims
of the Sophists; moreover the smallest matter--as you will fully
appreciate--acquires an importance all the greater in proportion as the
thing is perfect, of which it forms a part. If you slit the ear of a
cart-horse, what does it signify? but suppose the same thing were to
happen to a thoroughbred horse, a charger that you ride on to battle!

“A wrinkle or a tooth more or less in the face of a peasant woman
matters little, or not at all, but it is quite different in a celebrated
beauty. If you scrawl all over the face with which the coarse finger of
the potter has decorated a water-jar, the injury to the wretched pot is
but small, but if you scratch, only with a needle’s point, that gem
with the portraits of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, which clasps Cleopatra’s robe
round her fair throat, the richest queen will grieve as though she had
suffered some serious loss.

“Now, what is there more perfect or more worthy to be treasured than the
noblest works of great thinkers and great poets.

“To preserve them from injury, to purge them from the errors which, in
the course of time, may have spotted their immaculate purity, this is
our task; and if we do indeed raise blocks of stone it is not to weight
a sparrow’s feather that it may not be blown away, but to seal the door
which guards a precious possession, and to preserve a gem from injury.

“The chatter of girls at a fountain is worth nothing but to be wafted
away on the winds, and to be remembered by none; but can a son ever
deem that one single word is unimportant which his dying father has
bequeathed to him as a clue to his path in life? If you yourself were
such a son, and your ear had not perfectly caught the parting counsels
of the dying-how many talents of silver would you not pay to be able to
supply the missing words? And what are immortal works of the great poets
and thinkers but such sacred words of warning addressed, not to a single
individual, but to all that are not barbarians, however many they maybe.
They will elevate, instruct, and delight our descendants a thousand
years hence as they do us at this day, and they, if they are not
degenerate and ungrateful will be thankful to those who have devoted
the best powers of their life to completing and restoring all that our
mighty forefathers have said, as it must have originally stood before it
was mutilated, and spoiled by carelessness and folly.

“He who, like King Euergetes, puts one syllable in Homer right, in
place of a wrong one, in my opinion has done a service to succeeding
generations--aye and a great service.”

“What you say,” replied Publius, “sounds convincing, but it is still
not perfectly clear to me; no doubt because I learned at an early age to
prefer deeds to words. I find it more easy to reconcile my mind to your
painful and minute labors when I reflect that to you is entrusted the
restoration of the literal tenor of laws, whose full meaning might be
lost by a verbal error; or that wrong information might be laid
before me as to one single transaction in the life of a friend or of a
blood-relation, and it might lie with me to clear him of mistakes and
misinterpretation.”

“And what are the works of the great singers of the deeds of the
heroes-of the writers of past history, but the lives of our fathers
related either with veracious exactness or with poetic adornments?”
 cried Aristarchus. “It is to these that my king and companion in study
devotes himself with particular zeal.”

“When he is neither drinking, nor raving, nor governing, nor wasting his
time in sacrificing and processions,” interpolated Euergetes. “If I had
not been a king perhaps I might have been an Aristarchus; as it is I
am but half a king--since half of my kingdom belongs to you,
Philometor--and but half a student; for when am I to find perfect quiet
for thinking and writing? Everything, everything in me is by halves, for
I, if the scale were to turn in my favor”--and here he struck his chest
and his forehead, “I should be twice the man I am. I am my whole real
self nowhere but at high festivals, when the wine sparkles in the cup,
and bright eyes flash from beneath the brows of the flute-players of
Alexandria or Cyrene--sometimes too perhaps in council when the risk is
great, or when there is something vast and portentous to be done from
which my brother and you others, all of you, would shrink--nay perhaps
even the Roman. Aye! so it is--and you will learn to know it.”

Euergetes had roared rather than spoken the last words; his cheeks were
flushed, his eyes rolled, while he took from his head both the garland
of flowers and the golden fillet, and once more pushed his fingers
through his hair.

His sister covered her ears with her hands, and said: “You positively
hurt me! As no one is contradicting you, and you, as a man of culture,
are not accustomed to add force to your assertions, like the Scythians,
by speaking in a loud tone, you would do well to save your metallic
voice for the further speech with which it is to be hoped you will
presently favor us. We have had to bow more than once already to the
strength of which you boast--but now, at a merry feast, we will not
think of that, but rather continue the conversation which entertained
us, and which had begun so well. This eager defence of the interests
which most delight the best of the Hellenes in Alexandria may perhaps
result in infusing into the mind of our friend Publius Scipio--and
through him into that of many young Romans--a proper esteem for a line
of intellectual effort which he could not have condemned had he not
failed to understand it perfectly.

“Very often some striking poetical turn given to a subject makes it,
all at once, clear to our comprehension, even when long and learned
disquisitions have failed; and I am acquainted with such an one,
written by an anonymous author, and which may please you--and you too,
Aristarchus. It epitomizes very happily the subject of our discussion.
The lines run as follows:

          “Behold, the puny Child of Man
          Sits by Time’s boundless sea,
          And gathers in his feeble hand
          Drops of Eternity.

          “He overhears some broken words
          Of whispered mystery
          He writes them in a tiny book
          And calls it ‘History!’

“We owe these verses to an accomplished friend; another has amplified
the idea by adding the two that follow:

          “If indeed the puny Child of Man
          Had not gathered drops from that wide sea,
          Those small deeds that fill his little span
          Had been lost in dumb Eternity.

          “Feeble is his hand, and yet it dare
          Seize some drops of that perennial stream;
          As they fall they catch a transient gleam--
          Lo! Eternity is mirrored there!

“What are we all but puny children? And those of us who gather up the
drops surely deserve our esteem no less than those who spend their lives
on the shore of that great ocean in mere play and strife--”

“And love,” threw in Eulaeus in a low voice, as he glanced towards
Publius.

“Your poet’s verses are pretty and appropriate,” Aristarchus now said,
“and I am very happy to find myself compared to the children who catch
the falling drops. There was a time--which came to an end, alas! with
the great Aristotle--when there were men among the Greeks, who fed the
ocean of which you speak with new tributaries; for the gods had bestowed
on them the power of opening new sources, like the magician Moses, of
whom Onias, the Jew, was lately telling us, and whose history I have
read in the sacred books of the Hebrews. He, it is true--Moses I
mean--only struck water from the rock for the use of the body, while to
our philosophers and poets we owe inexhaustible springs to refresh the
mind and soul. The time is now past which gave birth to such divine and
creative spirits; as your majesties’ forefathers recognized full well
when they founded the Museum of Alexandria and the Library, of which I
am one of the guardians, and which I may boast of having completed with
your gracious assistance. When Ptolemy Soter first created the Museum in
Alexandria the works of the greatest period could receive no additions
in the form of modern writings of the highest class; but he set
us--children of man, gathering the drops--the task of collecting and of
sifting them, of eliminating errors in them--and I think we have proved
ourselves equal to this task.

“It has been said that it is no less difficult to keep a fortune than to
deserve it; and so perhaps we, who are merely ‘keepers’ may nevertheless
make some credit--all the more because we have been able to arrange the
wealth we found under hand, to work it profitably, to apply it well, to
elucidate it, and to make it available. When anything new is created
by one of our circle we always link it on to the old; and in many
departments we have indeed even succeeded in soaring above the
ancients, particularly in that of the experimental sciences. The sublime
intelligence of our forefathers commanded a broad horizon--our narrower
vision sees more clearly the objects that lie close to us. We have
discovered the sure path for all intellectual labor, the true scientific
method; and an observant study of things as they are, succeeds better
with us than it did with our predecessors. Hence it follows that in the
provinces of the natural sciences, in mathematics, astronomy,
mechanics and geography the sages of our college have produced works of
unsurpassed merit. Indeed the industry of my associates--”

“Is very great,” cried Euergetes. “But they stir up such a dust that all
free-thought is choked, and because they value quantity above all things
in the results they obtain, they neglect to sift what is great from what
is small; and so Publius Scipio and others like him, who shrug their
shoulders over the labors of the learned, find cause enough to laugh in
their faces. Out of every four of you I should dearly like to set three
to some handicraft, and I shall do it too, one of these days--I shall
do it, and turn them and all their miserable paraphernalia out of
the Museum, and out of my capital. They may take refuge with you,
Philometor, you who marvel at everything you cannot do yourself, who
are always delighted to possess what I reject, and to make much of those
whom I condemn--and Cleopatra I dare say will play the harp, in honor of
their entering Memphis.”

“I dare say!” answered the queen, laughing bitterly. “Still, it is to be
expected that your wrath may fall even on worthy men. Until then I will
practise my music, and study the treatise on harmony that you have begun
writing. You are giving us proof to-day of how far you have succeeded in
attaining unison in your own soul.”

“I like you in this mood!” cried Euergetes. “I love you, sister, when
you are like this! It ill becomes the eagle’s brood to coo like the
dove, and you have sharp talons though you hide them never so well under
your soft feathers. It is true that I am writing a treatise on harmony,
and I am doing it with delight; still it is one of those phenomena
which, though accessible to our perception, are imperishable, for no
god even could discover it entire and unmixed in the world of realities.
Where is harmony to be found in the struggles and rapacious strife of
the life of the Cosmos? And our human existence is but the diminished
reflection of that process of birth and decease, of evolution and
annihilation, which is going on in all that is perceptible to our
senses; now gradually and invisibly, now violently and convulsively, but
never harmonyously.

“Harmony is at home only in the ideal world--harmony which is unknown
even among the gods harmony, whom I may know, and yet may never
comprehend--whom I love, and may never possess--whom I long for, and who
flies from me.

“I am as one that thirsteth, and harmony as the remote, unattainable
well--I am as one swimming in a wide sea, and she is the land which
recedes as I deem myself near to it.

“Who will tell me the name of the country where she rules as queen,
undisturbed and untroubled? And which is most in earnest in his pursuit
of the fair one: He who lies sleeping in her arms, or he who is consumed
by his passion for her?

“I am seeking what you deem that you possess.--Possess--!

“Look round you on the world and on life--look round, as I do, on this
hall of which you are so proud! It was built by a Greek; but, because
the simple melody of beautiful forms in perfect concord no longer
satisfies you, and your taste requires the eastern magnificence in which
you were born, because this flatters your vanity and reminds you, each
time you gaze upon it, that you are wealthy and powerful--you commanded
your architect to set aside simple grandeur, and to build this gaudy
monstrosity, which is no more like the banqueting-hall of a Pericles
than I or you, Cleopatra, in all our finery, are like the simply clad
gods and goddesses of Phidias. I mean not to offend you, Cleopatra, but
I must say this; I am writing now on the subject of harmony, and perhaps
I shall afterwards treat of justice, truth, virtue; although I know full
well that they are pure abstractions which occur neither in nature nor
in human life, and which in my dealings I wholly set aside; nevertheless
they seem to me worthy of investigation, like any other delusion, if by
resolving it we may arrive at conditional truth. It is because one man
is afraid of another that these restraints--justice, truth, and what
else you will--have received these high-sounding names, have been
stamped as characteristics of the gods, and placed under the protection
of the immortals; nay, our anxious care has gone so far that it has been
taught as a doctrine that it is beautiful and good to cloud our free
enjoyment of existence for the sake of these illusions. Think of
Antisthenes and his disciples, the dog-like Cynics--think of the fools
shut up in the temple of Serapis! Nothing is beautiful but wha

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/5466