Book III

I

THE ARRIVAL

Bacchis had been a courtesan for more than twenty-five years. That is equivalent to saying that she was nearly forty, and that her beauty had changed its character several times.

Her mother, who had long been the directress of the house and her general adviser, had given her principles of conduct and economy which had enabled her gradually to acquire a great fortune, which she was in a position to spend freely, at an age when the magnificence of the bed supplies the place of physical splendour.

Thus it was that instead of buying adult slaves at the market at a high rate, an expense which so many others considered necessary, and which ruined the young courtesans, she had been content for ten years with a single negress, and had provided for the future by making her beget a child every year, in order to create for herself, for nothing, a numerous staff of domestics who should be a source of riches later on.

As she had chosen the father with care, seven very beautiful mulatto girls had been born of her slave, and also three boys whom she had killed, because male slaves give useless suspicions to jealous lovers. She had named the seven daughters after the seven planets, and had chosen them diverse functions, in harmony, as far as possible, with the names they bore. Heliope was the slave for the day-time, Selene for the night, Aretias guarded the door, Aphrodisia tended the bed, Hermione did the buying, and Cronomagira, the cooking. Finally, Diomeda, the housekeeper, kept the books and superintended the staff.

Aphrodisia was the favourite slave, the prettiest and best-loved. She often shared her mistress's bed at the request of lovers who took a fancy to her. Consequently, she was dispensed from all servile work in order that her arms might be kept delicate and her hands soft. By an exceptional favour, her hair was not covered, so that she was often taken for a free woman, and that very night she was to be freed in reality at the enormous price of thirty-five minæ.

Bacchis's seven slaves, all tall and admirably trained, were such a source of pride to her that she never went out without having them in her train, at the risk of leaving her house empty. Thanks to this imprudence, Demetrios had been able to enter her house without difficulty; but when she gave the festival to which Chrysis was invited she was still in ignorance of the calamity.

* * * * *

That evening Chrysis was the first arrival.

She was dressed in a green robe worked with enormous rose-branches which flowered over her breasts.

Aretias opened the door for her without her having to knock, and, according to the Greek custom, took her aside into a little room, untied her red shoes, and gently washed her naked feet. Then, raising the robe, or parting it, according to the place, she perfumed wherever there was necessity for it: for the guests were spared every kind of trouble, even that of making their toilette before going in to dinner. Then she offered a comb and pins to restore the lines of her head-dress, together with cosmetics, both dry and moist, for her lips and cheeks.

At last, when Chrysis was ready:

"Where are the _shades_?" she said to the slave.

This was the term applied to all the diners, except to one alone, the guest par excellence. The guest in honour of whom the dinner was given brought whomsoever he pleased with him, and the "shades" had nothing to do but to bring their bed-cushions and prove themselves people of breeding.

Aretias answered:

"Naukrates has invited Philodemos with his mistress, Faustina, whom he has brought back from Italy. He has also invited Phrasilas and Timon, and your friend Seso of Cuidos."

Seso entered at this precise moment.

"Chrysis!"

"My darling!"

The two women embraced, and enlarged with many an exclamation upon the happy chance which had brought them together.

"I was afraid of being late," said Seso. "That poor Archytas has kept me. . ."

"What, Archytas again?"

"It is always the same thing. Whenever I go out to dine, he imagines that my body is to be at everybody's disposal in turn. Then he insists on having his revenge beforehand, and that takes such a time! Ah! my dear, if he knew me better! I am far from wanting to deceive my lovers. I have quite enough of them as it is."

"And the baby that is coming? It does not show yet, however."

"I hope not indeed. It is the third month. It is growing, the little wretch. But it does not bother me yet. In six weeks I shall begin to dance. I hope that will prove very unpleasant to it, and that it will disappear quickly."

"You are right," said Chrysis. "Don't let your shape get disfigured. I saw Philemation yesterday, our former little friend, who lived three years at Boubaste with a grain merchant. Do you know the first thing she said to me? 'Ah! if you saw my breasts!' and she had tears in her eyes. I told her she was still pretty, but she repeated: 'If you saw my breasts! ah! ah! if you saw my breasts!' weeping like a Byblis. Then I saw that she was almost anxious to show them, and I asked to see them. My dear, two empty bags! And you know what beauties she had. They were so white that the points were invisible. Don't spoil yours, my Seso. Leave them fresh and firm as they are. A courtesan's two breasts are worth more than her necklace."

During this conversation, the two women were making their toilette. Finally they entered the banqueting-room together, where Bacchis was standing waiting, with her waist encircled by breast-bands and her neck loaded with rows of gold necklaces reaching up to the chin.

"Ah, my pretty dears, what a good idea on the part of Naukrates to invite you both together this evening!"

"We congratulate ourselves on its being to your house that we are invited," answered Chrysis without appearing to understand the innuendo. And, in order to say something venomous immediately, she added:

"How is Doryclos?"

Doryclos was a young and extremely rich lover who had just deserted Bacchis to marry a Sicilian woman.

"I . . . I have turned him away," said Bacchis, brazenly.

"Is it possible?"

"Yes; they say he is going to marry out of spite. But I expect him the day after his marriage. He is madly in love with me."

While asking: "How is Doryclos?" Chrysis had thought: "Where is your mirror?" But Bacchis did not look one in the face, and the only expression to be read in her eyes was a vague embarrassment devoid of meaning. Besides, there was time for Chrysis to elucidate this question, and, in spite of her impatience, she knew how to wait with resignation for a more favourable opportunity.

She was about to continue the conversation, when she was prevented by the arrival of Philodemos, Faustina, and Naukrates, which involved Bacchis in fresh interchanges of politeness. They fell into ecstasies over the poet's embroidered garment and the diaphanous robe of his mistress. This young girl, being unfamiliar with Alexandrian usage, had thought to Hellenize herself in this manner, not knowing that a dress of the kind was inadmissible at a festival where hired dancing-women, similarly unclothed, were to appear.

Bacchis affected not to notice this error, and in a few amiable phrases complimented Faustina on her heavy blue hair swimming in brilliant perfumes. She wore her hair raised high above the neck in order to avoid staining her light silken stuffs with myrrh.

They were about to sit down to table when the seventh guest arrived; it was Timon, a young man whose want of principle was a natural gift, but who had discovered in the teaching of the philosophers of his time some superior reasons for self-satisfaction.

"I have brought someone with me," he said laughing.

"Whom?" asked Bacchis.

"A certain Demo, a girl from Mendes."

"Demo! What can you be thinking of, my dear fellow? She is a street girl. She can be had for a fig."

"Good, good. We won't insist on it." said the young man. "I have just made her acquaintance at the corner of the Canopic way. She asked me to give her a dinner, and I brought her to you. If you don't want her. . ."

"Timon is really extraordinary," declared Bacchis.

She called a slave:

"Heliope, go and tell your sister that she will find a woman at the door and that she is to drive her away with a stick. Off you go!"

She turned and looked round:

"Has not Phrasilas come yet?"

II.

THE DINNER

At these words, a sickly little man, with a grey forehead, grey eyes, and a small, grey beard, advanced with little steps and said smiling:

"I was there."

Phrasilas was a polygraph of repute of whom it would have been difficult to say exactly whether he was a philosopher, a graminarian, a historian, or a mythologist. He undertook the most weighty studies with timid ardour and ephemeral curiosity. Write a treatise he dare not. Construct a drama he could not. His style had something hypocritical, finniking, and vain. For thinkers he was a poet; for poets he was a sage: for society he was a great man.

"Come! to table!" said Bacchis. And she lay, down with her lover upon the bed which stood at the head of the banqueting board. On her right, reclined Philodemos and Faustina with Phrasilas. On Naukrates's left, Seso, then Chrysis and young Timon. Each one of the guests reclined in a diagonal position, leaning upon silken cushions and wearing wreaths of flowers upon their heads. A slave-girl brought the garlands of red roses and blue lotus-flowers, then the banquet began.

Timon felt that his freak had chilled the women. He therefore did not speak to them at first, but, addressing Philodemos, said gravely:

"They say you are the devoted friend of Cicero. What do you think of him, Philodemos? Is he an enlightened philosopher or a mere compiler, without discernment and without taste? for I have heard both opinions put forward."

"It is precisely because I am his friend that I cannot answer your question," said Philodemos. "I know him too well; consequently I know him ill. Ask Phrasilas, who, having read him but little, will judge him without error."

"Well, what docs Phrasilas think about it?"

"He is an admirable writer," said the little man.

"In what sense?"

"In the sense that all writers, Timon, are admirable in something, like all landscapes and all souls. I cannot prefer the spectacle of the sea itself to the most monotonous plain. And so I am unable to classify in the order of my sympathies a treatise by Cicero, an ode of Pindar, and a letter written by Chrysis, even if I knew the style of our excellent little friend, when I put down a book, I am content if I carry away in my memory a single line which has given me food for thought. Hitherto, all the books I have opened have contained that line: but no book has ever given me a second. Perhaps each of us has only one thing to say in his life, and those who have attempted to speak at greater length have done so because they were inflated by ambition. How much more do I regret the irreparable silence of the millions of souls who have said nothing."

"I am not of your opinion," said Naukrates, without lifting his eyes. "The universe was created for the expression of three verities, and to our misfortune, their certitude was proved five centuries before this evening. Heraclitos has solved the riddle of the world; Parmenides has unmasked the soul; Pythagoras has measured God; we have nothing left us but to hold our tongues. I consider the chickpea very rash."

Seso lightly tapped the table with the handle of her fan.

"Timon, my friend," she said.

"What is it?"

"Why do you propound questions without any interest either for me who am ignorant of Latin, or for yourself who want to forget it? Do you fancy you can dazzle Faustina with your foreign erudition? My poor fellow, I am not the woman to be duped by your words. I undressed your great soul last night under my bed-clothes, and I know the chickpea it concerns itself with."

"Do you think so?" said the young man, simply.

But Phrasilas began a second little couplet, with a suave, ironical intonation.

"Seso, when you think fit to give us the pleasure of judging Timon, whether to applaud him, as he deserves, or to blame him, unjustly in my opinion, remember that he is an invisible being and that the nature of his soul is hidden from us. It has no existence in itself, or at least we cannot know it; but it reflects the souls of those that mirror themselves in it, and changes its aspect when it changes its place. Last night it resembled you exactly; I am not astonished you were pleased with it. Just now it took the image of Philodemos; that is why you have just said it belied itself. Now it certainly does not belie itself, because it does not affirm itself. You see my dear, that we ought to beware of rash judgments."

Timon shot a glance of irritation at Phrasilas, but he reserved his reply.

"However that may be," answered Seso, "there are four of us courtesans here, and we intend to direct the conversation, in order that we may not resemble pink children who only open their mouths to drink milk. Faustina, you arrived the last, please begin."

"Very good," said Naukrates. "Choose for us, Faustina. What shall we talk about?"

The young Italian woman turned her head, raised her eyes, blushed, and with an undulation of her whole body, sighed:

"Love."

"A very pretty subject," said Seso, trying not to laugh.

But no one took it up.

* * * * *

The table was covered with wreaths, flowers, tankards, and jugs. Slaves brought wicker baskets, containing bread as light as snow. On terra-cotta plates were to be seen fat eels sprinkled with seasoning, wax-coloured alphests, and sacred beauty-fish.

There was also a pompilus, a purple fish which was supposed to have sprung from the same foam as Aphrodite, bebradons, a grey mullet served up with calmars, multi-coloured scorpenas Some were brought in their little sauce-pans, in order that they might be eaten foaming hot; fat tunnyfish, hot devil-fish with tender tentacles, slices of lamprey; finally the belly of a white electric eel, round as that of a beautiful woman.

Such was the first course. The guests chose little tit-bits from each fish, and left the rest to the slaves.

"Love," began Phrasilas, "is a word which has no meaning, or rather too much, for it designates in turn two irreconcilable feelings: sensual gratification and passion. I do not know in what sense Faustina takes it."

"For my part," interrupted Chrysis, "I like to have the sensual gratification, and to leave passion to my lovers. We must speak both of one and the other, or my interest will only be partial."

"Love," murmured Philodemos, "is neither passion nor sensual gratification. Love is something quite different."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake," exclaimed Timon, "let us have a banquet for once without philosophies. We are aware, Phrasilas, that you can uphold with graceful eloquence and honeyed persuasiveness the superiority of multiple pleasure over exclusive passion. We are aware also that after having spoken for a full hour on such a thorny question, you would be ready, during the next hour, with the same graceful eloquence and the same honeyed persuasiveness, to defend the arguments of your adversary. I do not . . ."

"Allow me . . ." said Phrasilas.

"I do not deny," continued Timon, "the charm of this little sport, or even the wit you bring to bear on it. I have my doubts as to its difficulty, and consequently as to its interest. The _Banquet_ you published some time ago and incorporated in a story of lighter tone, and also the reflexions you placed recently in the mouth of a mythical personage who resembles your ideal, seemed new and rare in the reign of Ptolemy Auletes. But for three years we have been living under the young Queen Berenice, and I know not by what transformation the method of thought you had adopted, that of an illustrious exegetical critic, harmonious and smiling, has suddenly grown a century older under your pen, like the fashion of tight sleeves and yellow hair. Excellent master, I deplore it, for if your stories lack fire, if your experience of the female heart is not worth serious consideration, on the other hand you are gifted with the comic spirit, and I am grateful to you for having made me smile."

"Timon!" cried Bacchis in indignation.

Phrasilas motioned to her to be silent.

"Let him alone, my dear. Unlike most men, I retain only the eulogistic portion of the judgments people pass upon me. Timon has given me his; others will praise me on other points. It would be impossible to live in the midst of unanimous approbation, and I regard the very variety of the sentiments I provoke as a charming flower-bed in which I desire to breathe the scent of the roses without tearing up the spurge."

Chrysis moved her lips in a way which showed clearly how slight was the value she set on this man and his cleverness at terminating disputes. She turned towards Timon, who shared her bed with her, and put her hand on his neck. "What is the aim of life?" she asked him.

It was the question she usually asked when she was at a loss what to say to a philosopher; but this time she introduced a tender note into her voice, and Timon fancied he detected a declaration of love.

Nevertheless he answered with a certain calm:

"Each one has his own object in life, my Chrysis. There is no object universal and common to all beings. For my part, I am the son of a banker whose clientele is composed of all the great courtesans of Egypt, and, my father having amassed an enormous fortune by ingenious methods, I restore it honourably to the victims of his favours by sleeping with them as often as the strength the Gods have given me allows me to do so. I have decided that my energy is only susceptible of performing one duty in life. I have chosen this duty because it combines the exigencies of the rarest virtue with contrary satisfactions that another ideal would support less easily."

During this speech he had slipped his right leg behind those of Chrysis, who was lying on her side, and he tried to part the closed knees of the courtesan as if to give a precise object to existence for that evening. But Chrysis did not humour him.

There was a silence for several minutes; then Seso began to speak.

"Timon, it is very annoying of you to interrupt at the very beginning the only serious conversation of which the subject is capable of interesting us. At any rate, let Naukretes speak, since you are so spiteful."

"What shall I say about love?" answered the Guest par excellence. "It is the name given to sorrow to console those who suffer. There are only two ways of being unhappy: either we desire what we have not, or we possess what we desired. Love begins with the first, and comes to an end with the second, in the most lamentable state, that is to say, as soon as it succeeds. May the gods preserve us from love!"

"But to possess unexpectedly," said Philodemos, smiling; "is not that true felicity?"

"What a rarity!"

"Not at all, if one is careful. Listen to me, Naukrates: not to desire, but to act in such a way that the opportunity offers itself; not to love, but to cherish from a distance certain well-chosen women for whom one feels one might have a taste in the long run, if chance and circumstances combined to throw them into one's arms; never to adorn a woman with qualities one wants her to have, or with beauties of which she makes a mystery, but always to take the insipid for granted in order to be astonished by the exquisite. Is not this the best advice a sage can give to lovers? They only have lived happily who, in the course of their dear existences, have been wise enough occasionally to reserve for themselves the priceless purity of unforeseen joys."

* * * * *

The second course was drawing to a close. There had been pheasants, attagas, a magnificent blue and red porphyris, and a swan with all its feathers, the cooking of which had been spread over forty-eight hours so as not to burn its wings. Upon curved plates one saw phlexids, pelicans, a while peacock which seemed to be sitting on a dozen and a half of roast and stuffed spermologues; in a word, enough food to feed a hundred persons on the fragments left behind after the choice pieces had been set aside. But all this was nothing compared with the last dish.

This chef-d'ouvre (such a work of art had not been seen for many a long day at Alexandria) was a young pig, of which one half had been roasted and the other boiled. It was impossible to distinguish the wound which had provoked its death, or by what means its belly had been stuffed with everything it contained. It was stuffed with round quails, chicken breasts, field-larks, succulent sauces, and slices of vulva and mince-meat. The presence of all these things in an animal apparently intact seemed inexplicable.

The guests uttered an unanimous cry of admiration, and Faustina asked for the recipe. Phrasilas smilingly delivered himself of sententious metaphorical maxims; Philodemos improvised a distich in which the word [Greek: choiros] was taken alternately in both senses. This made Seso, already drunk, laugh till the tears flowed, but Bacchis having given the order to pour seven rare wines into seven cups for the use of each guest, the conversation strayed.

Timon turned to Bacchis:

"Why," he asked, "should you have been so hard on the poor girl I wanted to bring with me? She was a colleague, nevertheless. If I were in your place, I should respect a poor courtesan more highly than a rich matron."

"You are mad," said Bacchis, without discussing the question.

"Yes, I have often noticed that those who, once in a way, venture to utter striking truths, are taken for lunatics. Paradoxes find everybody agreed."

"Nonsense, my friend; ask your neighbours, where is the man of birth who would choose a girl without jewels as his mistress."

"I have done it," said Philodemos with simplicity.

And the women despised him.

"Last year," he went on, "at the end of spring, Cicero's exile gave me good reason to fear for my own safety, and I took a little journey. I retired lo the foot of the Alps, to a charming place named Orobia, on the borders of the little lake Clisius. It was a simple village with barely three hundred women, and one of them had become a courtesan in order to protect the virtue of the others. Her house was to be recognised by a bouquet of flowers hanging over the door, but she herself was indistinguishable from her sisters or cousins. She was ignorant of the very existence of paint, perfumes, cosmetics, transparent veils and curling-tongs. She did not know how to preserve her beauty, and depilitated herself with pitchy resin just as one pulls up weeds from a courtyard of white marble. One shudders at the thought that she walked without boots, so that it was impossible to kiss her naked feet as one kisses Faustina's, softer than one's hand. And yet I discovered so many charms in her that beside her brown body I forgot Rome for a whole month and blessed Tyre and Alexandria."

Naukrates nodded approval, took a draught of wine, and said:

"The great event in love is the instant when nudity is revealed. Courtesans should know this and spare us surprises. Now, it would seem on the contrary that they devote all their efforts to disillusioning us. Is there anything more painful than a mass of hair bearing traces of the curling irons? Is there anything more disagreeable than painted cheeks that leave the marks of the cosmetics on the mouth that kisses them! Is there anything more pitiable than a pencilled eye with the charcoal half rubbed off? Strictly speaking, I can understand chaste women using these illusory devices: every woman likes to surround herself with a circle of male adorers, and the chaste ones amongst them do not run the risk of familiarities which would unmask the secrets of their physique. But that courtesans whose end and resource is the bed, should venture to show themselves less beautiful in it than in the street is really inconceivable."

"You know nothing about it, Naukrates," said Chrysis with a smile. "I know that one does not keep one lover out of twenty; but one does not seduce one man out of five hundred, and before pleasing in the bed one must please in the street. No one would notice us if we did not rouge our faces and darken our eyes. The little peasant-girl Philodemos speaks of, attracted him without difficulty because she was alone in her village. There are fifteen thousand courtesans here. The competition is quite another thing."

"Don't you know that pure beauty has no need of adornment, and suffices for itself?"

"Yes. Well, institute a competition between a pure beauty, as you say, and Gnathene, who is old and plain. Dress the former in a tunic covered with holes and set her in the last row at the theatre, and put the latter in her star-embroidered robe in the places reserved by her slaves, and note their prices at the end of the performance: the pure beauty will get eight obols and Gnathene two minæ."

"Men are stupid," Seso concluded.

"No, simply lazy. They do not take the trouble to choose their mistresses. The best-loved women are the most mendacious."

"But if," suggested Phrasilas, "but if, on the one hand, I should willingly applaud . . ."

And he delivered himself, with great charm, of two set discourses entirely devoid of interest.

One by one, twelve dancing girls appeared, the two first playing the flute and the last the timbrel, the others manipulating castanets. They arranged their bandelets, rubbed their little sandals with white resin, and waited with extended arms for the music to begin . . . A note . . . two notes . . . a Lydian scale, and the twelve young girls shot forward to the accompaniment of a light rhythm.

Their dance was voluptuous, languorous, and without apparent order, although all the figures had been settled beforehand. They confined their evolutions to a small space: they intermingled like waves. Soon they formed in couples, and without interrupting the step, unfastened their girdles and let their pink tunics glide to the ground. An odour of naked women spread about the men, dominating the perfume of the flowers and the steam of the gaping viands. They threw themselves backwards with brusque movements, with their bellies tightly drawn, and their arms over their eyes. Then they straightened themselves up again and hollowed their loins, and touched one another, as they passed, with the points of their dancing breasts. Timon's hand received the fugitive caress of a hot thigh.

"What does our friend think about it?" said Phrasilas with his piping voice.

"I feel perfectly happy," answered Timon.

"I have never before so clearly understood the supreme mission of women."

"And what is it?"

"Prostitution, either with or without art."

"That is only an opinion."

"Phrasilas, once again, we know that nothing can be proved: worse still, we know that nothing exists, and that even that is not certain. This being conceded and in order to satisfy your celebrated mania, permit me to hold a theory at once contestable and antiquated, as all of them are, but interesting to me, who affirm it, and to the majority of men, who deny it. In the ease of thought, originality is an ideal still more chimerical than certitude. You are aware of that."

"Give me some Lesbian wine," said Seso to the slave. "It is stronger than the other."

"I maintain," Timon went on, "that the married woman, by devoting herself to a man who deceives her, by refusing herself to all others (or by committing adultery very rarely, which comes to the same thing), by giving birth to children who deform her before they see the light and monopolise her when they are born,--I maintain that by living thus a woman destroys her life without merit, and that on her wedding-day a young girl concludes a dupe's bargain."

"She acts in fancied obedience to a duty," said Naukrates without conviction.

"A duty? and to whom? Is she not free to settle a question which concerns nobody but herself? She is a woman, and in virtue of her sex is generally insensible to the pleasures of the intellect; and not content with remaining a stranger to one half of human joys, she excludes herself, by her marriage, from the other aspect of pleasure. Thus a young girl can say to herself, at the age when she is all passion: 'I shall know my husband, and in addition, ten lovers, perhaps twelve', and believe that she will die without having regretted anything? Three thousand women will not be enough for me on the day I take my leave of life."

"You are ambitious," said Chrysis.

"But with what incense, with what golden poesy," exclaimed the gentle Philodemos, "should we not praise to eternity the beneficent courtesans! Thanks to them, we escape all the complicated precautions, the jealousies, the stratagems, the throbbings of the heart that accompany adultery. It is they who spare us hours of waiting in the rain, rickety ladders, secret doors, interrupted meetings, and intercepted letters and misunderstood signals. O! dear creatures, how I love you! With you there are no sieges to be undertaken: for a few little coins you give us what another would hardly be capable of granting us as a condescension, after three weeks of coldness. For your enlightened souls, love is not a sacrifice, it is an equal favour exchanged by two lovers, and so the sums we confide to you do not serve to compensate you for your priceless caresses, but to pay at its proper price for the multiple and charming luxury with which, by a supreme complaisance, you pacify nightly our ravenous passions. As you are innumerable, we always find amongst you both the dream of our lives and our fancy for the evening, all women at a day's notice, hair of every shade, eyes of every colour, lips of every savour. There is no love under heaven so pure that you cannot feign it, nor so revolting that you dare not propose it. You are tender to the disreputable, consolatory to the afflicted, hospitable to all, and beautiful! That is why I tell you, Chrysis, Bacchis, Seso, Faustina, that it is a just law of the gods which decrees that courtesans shall be the eternal desire of lovers and the eternal envy of virtuous spouses."

The dancing-girls had ceased dancing.

A young girl-acrobat had just entered, who juggled with daggers and walked on her hands between the upright blades.

As the attention of the guest was entirely absorbed by the lassie's dangerous sport, Timon looked at Chrysis, and gradually, without being seen, manoevered so that he lay behind her at full length and touched her with his feet and mouth.

"No," said Chrysis in a low voice, "no, my friend."

But he had slipped his arm around her through the large slit in her robe and was carefully caressing the reclining courtesan's delicate, burning skin.

"Wait," she implored. "We shall be seen. Bacchis will be angry."

A glance convinced the young man that he was not being watched. He ventured upon a caress after which women rarely resist when once they have allowed things to go so far. Then, in order to quench by a decisive argument the last scruples of expiring modesty, he put his purse in her hand, which happened by chance to be open.

Chrysis resisted no longer.

Meanwhile the young acrobat continued her subtle and dangerous tricks. She walked upon her hands, with her skirt reversed, with her feet dangling in front of her head, between sharp swords and long keen blades. The effort occasioned by this critical posture, and perhaps also the fear of wounds, flooded her cheeks with dark warm blood, which heightened still further the glitter of her wide-open eyes. Her waist bent and straightened itself again. Her legs parted like the arms of a dancing girl.

A violent respiration agitated her naked breast.

"Enough," said Chrysis briefly: "you have only excited me a little. Let us have no more of it. Leave me. Leave me."

And at the moment when the two Ephesians rose, according to the tradition, to play _The Fable of Hermaphroditus_, she let herself slip down from the bed and went out feverishly.

III

RHACOTIS

Hardly had the door closed upon her than Chrysis pressed the inflamed centre of her desire with her hand as one presses a sore spot to relieve shooting pains. Then she leaned up against a column and twisted her fingers, groaning with anguish.

She would never know anything, then!

As the hours passed, the improbability of her success increased, became flagrant. Brusquely to ask for the mirror was a very risky method of discovering the truth. In case it should have been taken, she would attract the suspicions of all to herself, and would be lost. On the other hand, she had left the banqueting hall out of sheer impatience.

Timon's clumsinesses had merely served to exasperate her dumb rage. A trembling fit due to over-excitement compelled her to apply her whole body to the freshness of the smooth, monstrous column. She felt an attack coming on and was afraid.

She called the slave Arelias:

"Keep my jewels for me: I am going out."

And she descended the seven stone steps.

The night was hot. Not a breath of wind to fan the heavy beads of sweat upon her forehead. The disappointment increased her discomfort and made her reel.

She walked along down the street.

Bacchis's house was situated at the extremity of Brouchion, on the limits of the native town, an enormous slum inhabited by sailors and Egyptian women. The fishermen, who slept upon their vessels anchored during the crippling heat of the day, came to pass their nights there till the break of dawn, and in return for a double intoxication left the harlots and the wine-sellers the price of the evening's catch.

Chrysis entered the narrow streets of this Alexandrian Suburra, full of sound, movement and barbarous music. She cast furtive glances through open doors into rooms reeking with lamp smoke, where naked couples lay enlaced together. At the cross-roads, on low trestles erected in front of the houses, multi-coloured mattresses creaked and tumbled in the shadow, under a double human load. Chrysis walked along with embarrassment. A woman without a lover solicited her. An old man caressed her breasts. A mother offered her her daughter. A gaping peasant kissed the back of her neck. She fled, in a sort of hot terror.

This foreign town within the Greek town was, for Chrysis, full of night and dangers. She was ill acquainted with the strange labyrinth, the intricacy of the streets, the secrets of certain houses. When, at rare intervals, she ventured to set foot in it, she always followed the same direct road towards a little red door; and there she forgot her usual lovers in the indefatigable arms of a young ass-driver with strong muscles, whom she had the joy of paying in her turn.

But this evening, she felt even without turning her head that she was being followed by a double footstep.

She increased her pace. The double footstep did likewise. She began to run; the footsteps behind her ran also; then beside herself with terror, she took another alley, and then another in the opposite direction, and then a long street which stretched away in an unknown direction.

With dry throat and swollen temples, but sustained by Bacchis's wine, she pursued her flight, turned from right to left, pale, panic-stricken.

Finally, a wall blocked farther progress: she was in a blind alley. She tried hastily to double, but two sailors with brown hands barred the narrow passage.

"Where are you going to, my little wisp of gold?" said one of them laughing.

"Let me pass."

"Eh? you are lost, young lady, you don't know Rhacotis well, eh? We are going to show you the town."

And they both took her by the waist. She shouted, and struggled, struck out with her fist, but the second sailor seized both her hands in his left hand and simply said:

"A little calm, please. You know that the Greeks are not loved here: nobody will come to your assistance."

"I am not Greek!"

"You lie, you have a white skin and a straight nose. Unless you want the stick, submit quietly."

Chrysis looked at the speaker, and suddenly fell on his neck.

"I love you, I will follow you," she said.

"You will follow both of us. My friend shall have his share. Walk with us: it will not be dull."

Where were they taking her to? She had not the least idea, but this second sailor's very rudeness, his brutish head pleased her. She considered him with the imperturbable glance that young bitches have in the presence of meat. She bent her body towards him, to touch him as she walked.

With rapid steps they traversed strange quarters, without life, without lights. Chrysis could not understand how they threaded their way through this nocturnal maze out of which she never could have got alone on account of the curious intricacy of the streets. The closed doors, the deserted windows, the motionless shadows terrified her. Above her head, between the houses, that almost met, ran a pale ribbon of sky, flooded with moonlight.

Finally, they entered life once more. At a turning of the street, suddenly, eight, ten, eleven lights appeared, illuminated doorways occupied by Nabatæan women squatting between two red lamps which cast a gleam from below upon their heads hooded with gold.

In the distance, they heard first a swelling murmur, and then a confused roar of chariots, tumbling bales, asses' footsteps, and human voices. It was the square of Rhacotis where, during the Alexandrian summer, all the provisions for nine hundred thousand mouths a day were collected and stacked up.

They passed the houses of the square, between green piles, vegetables, lotus roots, smooth beans, baskets of olives. Chrysis took a handful of mulberries out of a violet heap, and ate them without stopping. Finally, they arrived before a low door and the sailors entered with her for whom had been stolen the True Pearls of Anadyomene.

There was an immense hall there. Five hundred men of the people sat waiting for the day, drinking cups of yellow beer, eating figs, lentils, sesame cakes, olyra bread. In their midst, swarmed a herd of yelping women, a whole field of black hair and multicoloured flowers in an atmosphere of fire. They were poor homeless girls who were the property of all. They came there to beg for scraps, bare-footed, bare-breasted, with a scanty red or blue rag tied round their bellies, carrying, for the most part, a tattered infant on their left arm. There were also dancing-girls, six Egyptians on a dais, with an orchestra of three musicians, the first two of whom smote ox-hide timbrels with drum-sticks, whilst the third wielded a great sistrum of sonorous brass.

"Oh! myxaira sweets!" said Chrysis gleefully.

And she bought two sous' worth of the little girl who hawked them.

But suddenly she swooned, overcome by the insupportable stink of this den, and the sailors carried her out in their arms.

The fresh air brought her round a little.

"Where are we going to?" she implored. "Let us be quick: I can walk no more. You see that I don't resist, I am nice to you. But let us find a bed as soon as possible, otherwise I shall drop down in the street."

IV

THE ORGIE AT BACCHIS'S

When she once more found herself at Bacchis's door, she was penetrated by the delicious sensation produced by the respite from desire and the silence of the flesh. Her forehead no longer ached. Her mouth no longer twitched. She felt nothing but an intermittent pain which seized her from time to time in the small of the back. She mounted the steps and crossed the threshold.

As soon as Chrysis had left the room the orgie had developed like a flame.

Other friends entered, to whom the twelve dancing girls fell an easy prey. Forty tattered wreaths strewed the ground with flowers. A leathern bottle of Syracusan wine had burst in a corner, and its golden flood flowed under and around the table.

Philodemos was by the side of Faustina.

He had torn her robe and was singing her the verses he had made in her honour.

"O feet," he said, "O sweet thighs, deep reins, round croup, cloven fig, hips, shoulders, breasts, mobile neck; O all ye things that charm me, warm hands, expert movements, active tongue! You are a Roman, you are a Roman, you are too dark and you do not sing the poems of Sappho; but Perseus was the lover of the Indian Andromeda." [1]

Meanwhile, Seso lay flat upon her belly on the table in a pile of crushed fruit. She was completely overpowered by the fumes of Egyptian wine, and as she lay dipping the nipple of her right breast in a pond of snow-cooled wine, she kept repeating with a comical pathos:

"Drink, my little darling. You are thirsty. Drink, my little darling. Drink. Drink. Drink."

Aphrodisia, still a slave, triumphed in the midst of a circle of men, and was celebrating her last night of servitude by an extravagant debauch. In obedience to the tradition of all Alexandrian orgies, she had begun by giving herself to three lovers at once; but her task did not end there, and according to the law of slaves who became courtesans, she was expected to prove by an incessant zeal, lasting all night, that she had not usurped her new dignity.

Standing alone behind a curtain, Naukrates and Phrasilas discussed courteously the respective value of Arcesilas and Carneades.

At the end of the hall, Myrtocleia protected Rhodis against the over-zealous enterprises of one of the guests.

As soon as the two Ephesians saw Chrysis enter, they rose to meet her.

"Come away, my Chryse. Theano stays: but we are going.

"I stay too," said tho courtesan. And she lay down on her back upon a great bed covered with roses.

A din of voices and the clattering of money falling on the floor attracted her attention. It was Theano who, in order to parody her sister, had bethought her to caricature the "Fable of Danaë," simulating a mad ecstasy of voluptuous delight every time a golden coin penetrated her. The child's daring impiety amused all the guests, for they were no longer in the days when the thunderbolt would have exterminated those who scoffed at the Immortal One. But the sport degenerated, as might have been foreseen. A clumsy fellow hurt the poor little thing, and she fell to weeping noisily.

It was necessary to invent a new amusement to console her. Two dancing-girls pushed into the centre of the room an immense silver-gilt bowl filled to the top with wine. Then somebody seized Theano by the feet, and made her drink with her head downwards. This convulsed her with a fit of laughter which she was unable to master.

This idea was such a success that everybody crowded around, and when the flute-girl was set on her feet again, the sight of her little face purple with congestion and dripping with wine, produced such a general hilarity that Bacchis said to Selene:

"A mirror! a mirror! let her see herself!"

The slave brought a bronze mirror. "No, not that one. The mirror of Rhodopis. She merits it."

Chrysis sprang up with a bound. The blood spurted to her cheeks, then retired again, and she remained perfectly pale, with the beatings of her heart battering her breast, and her eyes fixed on the door through which the slave had disappeared.

That instant was to decide her whole life. Her last hope was either to vanish or be realised. The fète continued all around her. An iris wreath, thrown from somewhere or other, fell upon her lips. A man broke a little phial of perfume over her hair. It ran down too quickly and wetted her shoulders. The splashes of wine from a full tankard into which somebody had thrown a pomegranate spotted her silk tunic and penetrated to the skin. She bore all the traces of the orgie magnificently.

The slave who had gone out did not return.

Chrysis remained stone-pale, motionless as a sculptured goddess. The rhythmic and monotonous wail of a woman in travail of love not far away marked the passage of time for her. It seemed to her that this woman had been moaning thus since the night before. She could have twisted something, broken her fingers, shouted.

At last Selene came back, empty-handed.

"The mirror?" asked Bacchis.

"It . . . It has gone . . . it . . . has been . . . stolen," stammered the servant.

Bacchis uttered a cry so piercing that all ceased speaking, and a frightful silence brusquely interrupted the tumult.

Men and women crowded round her from all parts of the vast chamber, leaving a little space in the centre which was occupied by the distracted Bacchis and the kneeling slave.

"What! What!" she shrieked.

And as Selene did not answer, she seized her violently by the neck:

"You have stolen it yourself! You have stolen it yourself! Answer, answer! I will loosen your tongue with the whip, miserable little bitch!"

Then a terrible thing happened. Beside herself with fear, the fear of suffering, the fear of death, the most instant terror she had ever known, the child exclaimed hurriedly:

"It is Aphrodisia! It is not I! it is not I!"

"Your sister!"

"Yes, yes," said the mulatto woman; "it is Aphrodisia who has taken it."

And they dragged their sister, who had just fallen into a fainting fit, before Bacchis.

[1] Philodème AP. V. 132.

V

THE CRUCIFIED ONE

They all repeated together:

"It is Aphrodisia who has taken it! Bitch! Bitch! Filthy thief!"

Their hatred of the favourite sister was reinforced by their fear for themselves.

Aretias grave her a kick in the breast.

"Where is it?" asked Bacchis. "Where have you put it?"

"She has given it to her lover."

"Who is he?"

"An Opian sailor."

"Where is his ship?"

"It sailed this evening for Rome. You will never see your mirror again. Let us crucify the bitch, the bloody animal!"

"Ah! Gods! Gods!" sobbed Bacchis.

Then suddenly her sorrow changed into a frenzy of rage.

Aphrodisia had come to herself again; but, paralysed by terror, and unable to understand what was happening, she remained speechless and tearless.

Bacchis seized her by the hair, dragged her over the soiled floor, through the flowers and pools of wine, and cried:

"The cross! the cross! bring the nails! bring the hammer!"

"Oh!" said Seso to her neighbour; "I have never seen that. Let us follow them."

All pressed forward to follow. And Chrysis, who alone knew the guilty one, and was alone the cause of everything, Chrysis followed too.

Bacchis went straight into the slaves' chamber, a square apartment furnished with three mattresses on which they slept in couples when the nights were over. At the lower end, like an ever-present menace, stood a T-shaped cross which had never yet been used.

In the midst of the confused murmur of the young men and women, four slaves hoisted the martyr to the level of the branches of the cross.

Not a sound had yet left her lips; but when she felt the touch of the cold rough beam on her naked back, her long eyes dilated, and she was seized with a convulsive fit of groaning which lasted till the end.

They put her astride on a wooden peg driven into the centre of the upright. This served to support the body and obviate the tearing of the hands.

Then they opened out her arms.

Chrysis looked on and held her peace. What could she say? She could only have exonerated the slave by incriminating Demetrios, who was beyond reach of all attack, and who would have taken a cruel revenge. Besides, a slave was a source of riches, and it was a satisfaction to the long-standing grudge that Chrysis bore her enemy to think that she was destroying in this way with her own hands the value of three thousand drachmæ as completely as if she had thrown the money into the Eunostis. And then, was the life of a minion worth troubling about?

Heliope handed Bacchis the first nail and the hammer, and the torture began. Intoxication, rancour, anger, all the passions together, even the instinct of cruelty which lurks in a woman's heart, animated the soul of Bacchis at the moment she struck, and she uttered a shriek almost as piercing as that of Aphrodisia when the nail bent in the open palm.

She nailed up the second hand. She nailed the feet one upon the other. Then, excited by the sight of the blood spurting from the three wounds, she cried:

"It is not enough! Thief! Sow! Sailors' strumpet!"

She took the long pins out of her hair, and dug them violently into the flesh of her breasts, the belly, and the thighs. When she had no more weapons left in her hands, she smacked the poor wretch and spat upon her.

She contemplated this work of vengeance for some time; then she returned into the banqueting-hall with all the guests.

Phrasilas and Timon alone did not follow her.

* * * * *

After a moment's silent meditation, Phrasilas coughed slightly, put his right hand into his left, raised his head, lifted his eyebrows, and drew near the crucified one, whose body shook with a continuous, horrible trembling.

"Although I am," he said to her, "in divers circumstances, opposed to absolute theories so-called, yet I cannot blind myself to the fact that, in the conjuncture which has overtaken you, you would gain by being familiarised in more solid fashion with the maxims of the Stoics. Zeno, who does not seem to have had a spirit completely exempt from error, has left us several sophistries of no great general import, but, at the same time, you might derive profit from them to the particular end of calming your last moments. Pain", he said, "is a word void of meaning, since our will transcends the imperfections of our perishable body. It is true that Zeno died at the age of ninety-eight, without ever having had, according to his biographers, any illness, however slight; but this circumstance cannot be used as an argument against him, for from the mere fact that he succeeded in maintaining an unimpaired good health, we cannot logically conclude that he would have been lacking in force of character had he fallen ill. Besides, it would be an abuse to compel the philosophers to practise in their persons the rules of conduct they profess, and to cultivate without respite the virtues they deem superior. In a word, not to prolong inordinately a discourse which might last; longer than yourself, endeavour to lift up your soul, my dear, as far as possible, above your physical sufferings. However melancholy, however cruel they may appear to you, I beg you to believe that I have a real part in them. They are drawing to a close: be patient, forget. Between the various doctrines which attribute immortality to us, this is the moment for choosing the one most fitted to alleviate your regrets at having to disappear. If these doctrines are true, you will have lightened the bitter agony of the passage. If they lie, what does it matter? You will never know that you were mistaken."

Having spoken thus, Phrasilas re-adjusted the folds of his garment over his shoulder and vanished with an unsteady gait.

Timon remained alone in the room with the woman hanging in the throes of death upon the cross.

The memory of a night passed on the poor wretch's breast haunted his brain, and confounded itself with the atrocious vision of the imminent rottenness into which this splendid body that had burned in his arms was about to fall.

He pressed his hand over his eyes in order not to see her torture, but he _heard_ the unceasing trembling of the body upon the cross.

Finally, he looked. Great threads of blood formed a network on the skin from the pins in the breast down to the curled-up heels. The head turned perpetually. All the hair, matted with blood, sweat, and perfume, hung over the left side.

"Aphrodisia! do you hear me! do you recognise me? It is I, Timon; Timon."

Her glance, almost blind, rested on him for a second. But the head turned incessantly. The body trembled continually.

Softly, as if he feared the sound of his foot-steps would hurt her, the young man advanced to the foot of the cross. He stretched out his arms, he carefully took her strengthless and ever-turning head between his two fraternal hands, piously smoothed away her tear-drenched hair from her cheeks, and imprinted on the hot lips a kiss of infinite tenderness.

Aphrodisia closed her eyes. Did she recognise him who had charmed her horrible end by this impulse of affectionate pity? An inexpressible smile distended her blue eyelids, and with a sigh she gave up the ghost.

VI

ENTHUSIASM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She mounted.

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

A great gnarled palm-tree stood with its thicket of green leaves hanging over the balustrade. Chrysis ensconced her tingling nudity in its shade, and shivered, with her breasts in her hands.

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

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

And then?

* * * * *

And then, that monumental ocean of houses, palaces, temples, porticoes, colonnades, that swam before her eyes from the Necropolis of the west to the gardens of the Goddess: Brouchion, the Egyptian town, in front of which the gleaming Paneion reared itself aloft like a mountain acropolis; the Great Temple of Serapis, from the facade of which arose, horn-like, two long pink obelisks; the Great Temple of Aphrodite engirded by the rustling of three hundred thousand palm-trees and countless waves; the Temple of Persephone and the Temple of Arsinoe, the two sanctuaries of Poseidon, the three towers of Isis Lochias, and the theatre, and the Hippodrome, and the Stadium where Pittacos had run in competition with Nicosthenes, and the tomb of Stratonice, and the tomb of the god Alexander--Alexandria! Alexandria! the sea, the men, the colossal marble Pharos whose mirror saved men from the sea! Alexandria! the city of the eleven Ptolemies, Physcon, Philometor, Epiphanes, Philadelphos; Alexandria, the climax of all dreams, the diadem of all the glories conquered during three thousand years in Memphis, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, by the chisel, the pen, the compass, and the sword! Still farther away, the Delta, cloven by the seven tongues of Nile, Sais, Boubastis, Heliopolis; then, travelling towards the South, that ribbon of fertile land, the Heptanomos with the long array of its twelve hundred riverside temples dedicated to all the gods, and further still, Thebaïs. Diospolis, the Isle of Elephants, the impassable cataracts, the Isle of Argo . . .Meroë . . . the unknown; and even, if it was permitted to believe the traditions of the Egyptians, the country of the fabulous lakes, whence escapes the antique Nile, lakes so vast that one loses sight of the horizon when crossing their purple flood, and perched so high upon the mountains that the stars are reflected in them like golden apples.--all this, all, should be the kingdom, the domain, the possession of Chrysis, the courtesan.

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

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

VII

CLEOPATRA

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

About this time, she was twelve years of age, and no one could tell what her beauty would he. Her body, tall and thin, seemed out of place in a family where all the females were plump. She was ripening like some badly-grafted, bastard fruit of foreign, obscure origin. Some of her lineaments were hard and bold, as seen in Macedonia; other traits appeared as if inherited from the depths of Nubia, where womankind is tender and swarthy, for her mother had been a female of inferior race whose pedigree was doubtful. It was surprising to see Cleopatra's lips, almost thick, under an aquiline nose of rather delicate shape. Her young breasts, very round, small, and widely separated, were crowned with a swelling aureola, thereby showing she was a daughter of the Nile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Princess Cleopatra, I crave thy pardon! I cannot let thee pass!"

The lass drew herself up to her full height, knitted her brows violently, and dealt a dull blow on the soldier's forehead with her clenched fist.

"As for thee," she said in smothered accents, but with ferocious meaning, "I'll raise a cry of rape, and have thee quartered!"

Then, in silence, she entered the Queens chamber.

* * * * *

Berenice was asleep, her head pillowed on her arm, her hand hanging down.

Over the great crimson couch, a hanging lamp mingled its feeble glare with that of the moon, reflected by the whiteness of the walls. The vague, luminous outlines of the slumbering woman's supple nudity were thus enwrapped in misty shadow, between these two contrasting lights.

Slender Cleopatra sat straight up on the edge of the bed. She took her sister's face in her two little hands, waking Berenice up by touch and speech.

"Why is your lover not with you?" asked Cleopatra.

Berenice, startled, opened her lovely eyes.

"Cleopatra! What are you doing here? What do you want of me?"

"Why is your lover not with you?" repeated the girl, insisting.

"Is he not with me?"

"Certainly not! You know that well enough!"

"True! He's never here. Oh, Cleopatra, how cruel of you to wake me, to tell me so!"

"But why is he always away?"

"I see him when he chooses," sighed Berenice, in grief. "During the day-- for a minute or two."

"Did you not see him yesterday?"

"Yes. I met him by the roadside. I was in my litter, he got in with me."

"As far as the Palace?"

"No--not quite. He was still in sight nearly as far as the gates."

"What did you tell him?"

"Oh, I was furious! I said most wicked things. Yes, darling, I did!"

"Indeed?" rejoined the young girl, ironically.

"Perhaps too wicked, for he never answered me. Just when I felt myself scarlet with rage, he recited a long fable for my benefit. As I did not quite understand it, I did not know how to reply. He slipped out of the litter, just as I thought of keeping him by my side.

"Why not have called him back?"

"I feared to displease him."

Cleopatra, swelling with indignation, took her sister by the shoulders, and looking her full in the face, spoke thus to her:

"How now! You are the Queen, the people's goddess! Half the world belongs to you; all that Rome does not rule is yours; you reign over the Nile and the entire ocean. You even reign over the heavens, since you are nearer to the ear of the Gods than anyone, and yet you cannot reign over the man you love!"

"Reign . . . reign!" said Berenice, hanging her head. "That's easy to say, but, look you, one does not reign over a lover as if dominating a slave."

"And why not, pray?"

"Because . . . But you cannot understand! To love, is to prefer the happiness of another to that which we formerly selfishly desired before meeting the loved one. Should Demetrios be content, so likewise would I be, even weeping and far from his side. I wish for no delight that is not his, and all I bestow on him gives me great joy."

"You know not how to love," said the young lass.

Berenice smiled sadly, then she stretched her two arms stiffly on either side of her couch, as she jutted out her breasts and arched her loins.

"Ah, little presumptuous virgin!" she sighed. "When for the first time you'll swoon in loving conjunction, then only will you understand why one is never the queen of a man who causes you thus to lose your senses."

"A woman can always be a queen should she so will it."

"But she has no longer any power of will."

"I have! Why should you not be the same? You are my elder!"

Berenice smiled again.

"My little girl, upon whom do you exercise your strength of will? On which one of your dolls?"

"On my lover!" said Cleopatra.

Without allowing her sister time to find words to express her stupefaction, the damsel went on talking with growing vivacity.

"I have got a lover! Yes, I've a lover! Why should I not have a sweetheart like everybody else, the same as you and my mother, and my aunt, and the lowest woman in Egypt? A lover? Of a surety! And why not, prithee, seeing that for six months past, I am a woman, and you have not yet found me a husband? Aye, Berenice, I have a lover. I'm no longer a little girl. I know now! I know! Be silent--say nothing, for I know more than you. I, too, have clasped my arms till they were fit to snap, over the naked back of a man who thought he was my master. I, too, have crooked my toes in the empty air, feeling as if life was leaving me, and I've died a hundred limes over in the same way as you have swooned, but immediately afterwards, Berenice, I was on my feet, upstanding, erect! Say naught to me, for I am ashamed to claim you as my Sovereign--you, who are someone's slave!"

Little Cleopatra drew herself up to her full height, endeavouring to appear as tall as possible. She took her head in her hands, like an Asiatic queen trying on a tiara.

Seated on the bed, her feet tucked under her, the elder sister listened, and then knelt, so she could come near to the young lass and place her hands on Cleopatra's sloping, slender shoulders.

"So you've a lover?" Berenice now spoke timidly, almost respectfully.

"If you don't believe me, you can look," replied the girl, curtly.

"When do you see him?" sighed Berenice.

"Three times a day."

"Where?"

"Do you want me to tell you?"

"Yes."

"How comes it that you do not know this?" interrogated Cleopatra in her turn.

"I know nothing, not even what goes on at the Palace. Demetrios is the only subject of conversation I care about. I have not watched over you as I should have done, my child. All this is my fault."

"Watch me if you like. When I can no longer have my own way, I'll kill myself. Therefore, little care I, whatever happens!"

"You are free," replied Berenice, shaking her head. "At any rate, it is too late to restrain you. But, answer me, darling. You have a lover --and you manage to keep him to yourself?"

"I have my way of holding him."

"Who taught you?"

"I taught myself all alone. Such knowledge comes instinctively or never. When I was but six years old, I knew how I meant to hold my sweetheart later on in life."

"Will you not tell me?"

"Follow me."

Berenice rose slowly, put on a tunic and a mantle, shook out her heavy tresses, adhering together by the sweat of the bed, and both the sisters left the room.

First went the youngest, straight along the vestibule, back to her bed. Under the mattress of fresh, dry byssos, she took a newly-cut key.

"Follow me. It's rather far," she said, turning to her sister.

In the middle of the passage was a staircase which she ascended. Then she glided along a never-ending colonnade, opened several doors, walking on carpets, white marble slabs and the mosaic floors of a score of empty, silent apartments.

She descended a stone stairway, and stepped over the dark thresholds of clanging doors. Now and again, the two women came upon soldiers, resting on mats in couples, their spears close to their hands. Some long time afterwards, Cleopatra crossed a courtyard lit up by the rays of the full moon, and the shadow of a palm-tree caressed her hips. Berenice, wrapped in her blue mantle, still followed her.

At last, they reached a massive door, clamped with iron like a warrior's breastplate. In the lock, Cleopatra slipped her key, turning it twice. Then, pushing open the portal, a man--a very giant in the darkness--rose to his full height out of the depths of his dungeon.

Berenice stirred with emotion, looked in, and with drooping head, said very softly:

"Tis you, my child, who know not how to love. At least--not yet. I was quite right when I told you that."

"Love for love, I prefer mine," said the girl. "He gives me naught but joy, at any rate."

So saying, erect on the prison threshold, and without making a step forward, she said to the man who stood in the shadow:

"Come hither, and kiss my foot, son of a cur!"

When he had done so, she pressed her mouth to his lips.