Ancient Manners; Also Known As Aphrodite Part 38

Chrysis did not answer.

"We had given doves," said the little flute-player; "will the G.o.ddess remember? The G.o.ddess must be very angry. And you, my poor Chryse! you who were to be very happy to-day or very powerful . . ."

"All is accomplished," said the courtesan.

"What do you mean?"

Chrysis took two steps backwards and lifted her right hand to her mouth.

"Look well, Rhodis; look, Myrtocleia. Human eyes have never beheld what you are to behold to-day, since the day, when the G.o.ddess descended upon Ida. And such a sight will never be seen again upon the earth."

The two friends, believing her to be mad, recoiled in stupefaction. But Chrysis, lost in her dream, walked to the monstrous Pharos, a mountain of gleaming marble in eight hexagonal tiers. Taking advantage of the public inattention, she pushed open the bronze door and closed it on the inside by letting drop the sonorous bars.

A few minutes elapsed.

The crowd surged perpetually. The living tide added its clamour to the regular upheavals of the waters.

Suddenly a cry arose upon the air, repeated by a hundred thousand voices.

"Aphrodite!"

"Aphrodite!!"

A thunder of cries burst forth. The joy, the enthusiasm of a whole people sang in an indescribable tumult of ecstasy at the walls of Pharos.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The rout that covered the quay surged violently forward into the island, took possession of the rocks, mounted on the houses, on the signal masts, on the fortified towers. The isle was full, more than full, and the crowd arrived ever more compact, like the onrush of a swollen river hurling long rows of human beings into the sea from the top of the precipitous cliff.

This flood of men was interminable. From the palace of the Ptolemies to the wall of the Ca.n.a.l, the banks of the Royal Port, of the Great Port, and of Euroste were alive with a dense ma.s.s of human beings that received continual reinforcements from the side streets. Above this ocean, agitated by immense eddies, a foaming ma.s.s of arms and faces, floated like a barque in peril the yellow sails of Queen Berenice's litter. The tumult gathered force every moment and became formidable.

Neither Helen on the Scain Gates, nor Phryne in the waves of Eleusis, nor Thas setting fire to Persepolis have known what triumph means.

Chrysis had appeared by the western Gate, on the first terrace of the red monument.

She was naked like the G.o.ddess, she held in her two hands the ends of her scarlet veil which floated with the wind upon the evening sky, and in her right hand the mirror, in which was reflected the setting sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She went in her way towards the sky.]

Slowly, with bended head, moving with infinite grace and majesty, she mounted the outer staircase which wound around the high vermilion tower like a spiral. Her veil flickered like a flame. The rosy sunset reddened the pearl necklace like a river of rubies.

She mounted, and in this glory, her gleaming skin took on all the magnificence of flesh, blood, fire, blue carmine, velvety red, bright pink, and revolving upwards with the great purple walls, she went on her way towards the sky.

BOOK V

I

THE SUPREME NIGHT

"You are loved of the G.o.ds," said the old gaoler. "If I, a poor slave, had committed the hundredth part of your crimes, I should have been bound upon the rack, hung up by the feet, lashed with thongs, burnt with pincers. They would have poured vinegar into my nostrils, overwhelmed and crushed me with bricks, and if I had died under the agony, my body would already he food for the jackals of the burning plains. But you who have stolen, a.s.sa.s.sinated, profaned, you may expect nothing more than the gentle hemlock, and in the meanwhile you enjoy a good room. May Zeus blast me with his thunderbolt if I can tell why! You probably know somebody at the palace."

"Give me figs," said Chrysis; "my mouth is dry."

The old slave brought her a dozen ripe figs in a green basket.

Chrysis was left alone.

She sat down and got up again, she walked round the room, she struck the walls with the palms of her hands without thinking of anything whatever.

She let down her hair to cool it, and then put it up again almost immediately.

They had dressed her in a long garment of white wool. The stuff was hot.

Chrysis was bathed in perspiration. She stretched her arms, yawned, and leaned herself against the lofty window.

Outside, the silvery moon shone in a sky of liquid purity, a sky so pale and clear that not a star was visible.

It was on just such a night that, seven years before, Chrysis had left the land of Gennesaret.

She remembered . . . They were five. They were sellers of ivory. Their long-tailed horses were adorned with parti-coloured tufts. They had met the child at the edge of a round cistern . . .

And before that, the blue lake, the transparent sky, the light air of the land of Galilee . . .

The house was environed with pink flax-plants and tamarisks. Th.o.r.n.y caper-bushes p.r.i.c.ked one's fingers when one went a-catching b.u.t.terflies . . . One could almost see the wind in the undulations of the pine gra.s.ses . . .

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The little girls bathed in a limpid brook where one found red sh.e.l.ls under the flowering laurels: and there were flowers upon the water, and flowers all over the mead, and great lilacs upon the mountains, and the line of the mountain was that of a young breast . . .

Chrysis closed her eyes with a faint smile which suddenly died away. The idea of death had just occurred to her. And she felt that, until the last, she would be incapable of ceasing to think.

"Ah!" she said to herself, "what have I done? Why did I meet that man: Why did he listen to me? Why did I let myself be caught in the trap? How is it that, even now, I regret nothing?

"Not to love or to die: that is the choice G.o.d has given me. What have I done to deserve punishment?"

And fragments of sacred verses occurred to her that she had heard quoted in her childhood. She had not thought of them for seven years. But they returned, one after the other, with an implacable precision, to apply to her life and predict her penalty.

She murmured: