BOOK IV

I

DEMETRIOS DREAMS A DREAM

Now, with the mirror, the necklace, and the collar, Demetrios having returned home, a dream visited him in his slumber, and this was his dream:

He is going towards the quay, mingled with the crowd, on a strange moonless night, cloudless, but shedding a peculiar brilliance of its own.

Without knowing why, or what it is that draws him, he is in a hurry to arrive, to be _there_ as soon as he can, but he walks with effort, and the air opposes an inexplicable resistance to his legs, as deep water hampers footsteps.

He trembles, he thinks he will never reach the goal, that he will never know towards whom, in this bright obscurity, he is walking thus, panting and troubled.

At times, the crowd disappears entirely, whether it be that it really fades away, or that he ceases to be conscious of its presence. Then it jostles more importunately than ever, and all press, on, on, on, with a quick and sonorous step, more quickly than he . . .

Then the human mass closes in upon him; Demetrios pales; a man pushes him with his shoulder; a woman's buckle tears his tunic; a young girl is wedged against him, so tightly that he feels the pressure of her nipples against his chest, and she pushes his face away with two terrified hands.

Suddenly he is alone, the first, upon the quay. And as he turns to look behind him, he perceives in the distance the white swarm of the crowd which has all at once receded to the Agora.

And he realises that it will advance no further.

The quay lies white and straight like the first stage of an unfinished road which has undertaken to cross the sea.

He wants to go to Pharos, and he walks. His legs have suddenly become light. The wind blowing in the sandy deserts drives him headlong towards the watery solitudes into which the quay plunges venturesomely. But in proportion as he advances, Pharos retreats before him; the quay is immeasurably prolonged. Soon the high marble tower on which blazes a purple wood-pile touches the livid horizon, flickers, dies down, wanes, and sets like another moon!

Demetrios walks ever onwards.

Days and nights seem to have passed since he left the great quay of Alexandria far behind him, and he dare not turn his head, for fear of seeing nothing but the road he has travelled along: a white line stretching to infinity and the sea.

And still he turns round.

An island is behind him, covered with great trees whence droop enormous blossoms.

Has he crossed it like a blind man, or does it spring into sight at the same instant and become mysteriously visible? He does not think of conjecturing: he accepts the impossible as a natural event . . .

A woman is in the isle. She is standing before the door of its one house, with her eyes half closed and her face bending over a monstrous iris-flower that reaches to the level of her lips. She has heavy hair, the colour of dull gold, and of a length one may surmise to be marvellous, judging by the mass of the great coil that lies on her drooping neck. A black tunic envelopes this woman, and a robe blacker still is draped upon the tunic, and the iris whose perfume she breathes with downcast eyelids is of the same hue as night.

In all this mourning garb, Demetrios sees but the hair, like a golden vase on an ebony column. He recognises Chrysis.

The recollection of the mirror and of the necklace and of the comb recurs to him vaguely; but he does not believe in it, and in this singular vision reality alone seems to him a dream . . .

"Come," says Chrysis. "Follow me."

He follows her. She slowly mounts a staircase strewn with white skins. Her arm rests upon the rail. Her naked heels float in and out from under her robe.

The house has but one storey. Chrysis halts at the topmost step.

"There are four chambers," she says.

"When you have seen them, you will never leave them. Will you follow me? Have you confidence?"

But he will follow her everywhere. She opens the first door and closes it behind him.

This room is long and narrow. It is lighted by a single window, through which is seen enframed the great expanse of sea. On the right and left are two small tables and on them a dozen book-rolls.

"Here are the books you love," says Chrysis. "There are no others."

Demetrios opens them: they are _The Oineus of Chæremon_, _The Return of Alexis_, _The Mirror of Lais of Aristippos_, _The Enchantress_, _The Cyclops_, the _Bucolics of Theocritos_, _OEdipus at Colonos_, the _Odes of Sappho_, and several other little works. Upon a pile of cushions, in the midst of this ideal library, there is a naked girl who utters no word.

"Now," murmurs Chrysis, drawing from a long golden coder a manuscript consisting of a single leaf, "here is the page of antique poesy that you never read alone without weeping."

The young man reads at a venture:

[Greek: Hoi men ar' ethrêneon, epi de stenachonto gynaikes. Têsin d'Andromachê leukôlenos êrche gooio, Hektoros androphonoio karê meta chersin echousa; Aner, ap' aiônos neos ôleo, kadde me chêrên Leipeis en megaroisi; pais d'eti nêpios autôs, Hon tekomen sy t'egô te dysammoroi. . .]

He stops, casting upon Chrysis a look of surprise and tenderness.

"You?" he says. "You show me this?"

"Ah! you have not seen everything. Follow me. Follow me quickly."

They open another door.

The second chamber is square. It is lighted by a single window, through which is seen enframed all nature. In the midst, stands a wooden trestle bearing a lump of red clay, and in a corner, a naked girl lies upon a curved chair, and utters no word.

"Here you will model Andromeda and Zagreus and the Horses of the Sun. As you will create them for yourself alone, you will break them in pieces before your death."

"It is the House of Felicity," says Demetrios in a low voice.

And he lets his forehead sink into his hands. But Chrysis opens another door.

The third chamber is vast and round. It is lighted by a single window, through which is seen enframed the great expanse of blue sky. Its walls consist of gratings of bronze bars so disposed as to form lozenge-shaped interstices. Through them glides a music of flutes and pipes played to a doleful measure by invisible musicians. And against the far wall, upon a throne of green marble, sits a naked girl who utters no word.

"Come! Come!" repeats Chrysis.

They open another door.

The fourth chamber is low, sombre, hermetically closed, and triangular. thick carpets and rugs array it so luxuriously from floor to roof that nudity is not astonished in it. Lovers can easily imagine that they have east off their garments upon the walls in all directions. When the door is closed again, it is impossible to guess where it was. There is no window. It is a narrow world, outside the world. A few wisps of black hair hanging to the cushions shed tear-drops of perfumes. And this chamber is lighted by seven little myrrhine panes which colour diversely the incomprehensible light of seven subterranean lamps.

"See," explains the woman in an affectionate and tranquil tone, "there are three different beds in the three corners of _our_ chamber."

Demetrios does not answer. And he asks within himself:

"Is it really a last term? Is it truly a goal of human existence? Have I then passed through the other three chambers only to stop in this one? And shall I, shall I ever be able to leave it if I lie in it a whole night in the attitude of love which is the prostration of the tomb."

But Chrysis speaks.

* * * * *

"Well-Beloved, you asked for me; I am come, look at me well . . ."

She raises her two arms together, lays her hands upon her hair, and, with her elbows projecting in front of her, smiles.

"Well-Beloved, I am yours . . . Oh! not immediately . . . I promised you to sing, I will sing first . . ."

And he thinks of her no more, and lays him down at her feet. She has little black sandals. Four threads of blue pearls pass between the dainty toes, on the nails of which has been painted a carmine lunar crescent.

With her head reposing on her shoulder, she taps on the palm of her left hand with her right, and undulates her hips almost imperceptibly.

"By night, on my bed, I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not . . . I charge ye, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, If ye find my beloved, Tell him That I am sick of love."

"Ah! it is the Song of Songs, Demetrios. It is the nuptial canticle of the women of my country."

"I sleep, but my heart waketh: It is the voice of my beloved . . . That knocketh at my door, The voice of my beloved! He cometh, Leaping upon the mountains Like a roe Or a young hart."

"My beloved speaks, and says unto me: Open unto me, my sister, my fair one: My head is filled with dew, And my locks with the drops of the night. Rise up, my love, my fair one, And come away. For lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing of birds is come, The voice of the turtle-dove is heard in the land. Rise up, my love, my fair one, And come away."

She casts her veil away, and stands up arrayed in some tight-fitting stuff wound closely round the legs and hips.

"I have put off my coat; How shall I put it on? I have washed my feet: How shall I defile them? My well-beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, And my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved, And my hands dropped with myrrh, And my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh, Upon the handles of the lock. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:

She throws her head back and half closes her eyelids.

"Slay me, comfort me, For I am sick of love. Let his left hand be under my head And his right hand embrace me. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, with one of thine eyes, With one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love! How fair are thy caresses! How much better than wine! The smell of thee pleaseth me more than all spices. Thy lips drop as the honeycomb: Honey and milk are under thy tongue. The smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.

"A garden enclosed is my sister, A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

"Awake, O north wind! Blow, thou south! Blow upon my garden, That the spices thereof may flow out."

She rounds her arms, and holds out her mouth.

"Let my beloved come into his garden And eat of his pleasant fruits. Yes, I come into my garden, O! my sister, my spouse, I gather my myrrh with my spice, I eat my honeycomb with my honey. I drink my wine with my milk. SET ME A SEAL UPON THINE HEART AS A SEAL UPON THINE ARM FOR LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH" [1]

Without moving her feet, without bending her tightly-pressed knees, she slowly turns her body upon her motionless hips. Her face and her two breasts, above her tightly-swathed legs, seem three great pink flowers in a flower-holder made of stuffs.

She dances gravely, with her shoulders and her head and the intermingling of her beautiful arms. She seems to suffer in her sheath and to reveal ever and ever more the whiteness of her half imprisoned body. Her breathing inflates her breast. Her mouth cannot close. Her eyelids cannot open. A heightening flame flushes her cheeks.

Now her ten interlocked fingers join before her face. Now she raises her arms. She strains voluptuously. A long fugitive groove separates her shoulders as they rise and fall. Finally, with a single movement of her body, enveloping her panting visage in her hair as with a bridal veil, she tremblingly unfastens the sculptured clasp which retained her garment about her loins, and allows all the mystery of her grace to slip down upon the ground.

Demetrios and Chrysis . . .

Their first embracement before love is immediately so perfect, so harmonious, that they keep it immobile, in order fully to know its multiple voluptuousness. One of her breasts stands out erect and round, from under the strong encircling arm of Demetrios. One of her burning thighs is rivetted between his two legs, and the other lies with all its heavy weight thrown upon them. They remain thus, motionless, clasped together but not penetrated, in the rising exaltation of an inflexible desire which they are loath to satisfy. At first, they catch at one another with their mouths alone. They intoxicate each other with the contact of their aching and ungated virginities.

We look at nothing so minutely as the face of the woman we love. Seen at the excessively close range of the kiss, Chrysis's eyes seem enormous. When she closes them, two parallel creases remain on each eyelid, and a loaden-hued patch extends from the brilliant eyebrows to the verge of the cheeks. When she opens them, a green ring, fine as a silken thread, illumines with a coloured coronal the fathomless black eyeball immeasurably distended under the long curved lashes. The little pellet of red flesh whence the tears flow has sudden palpitations.

Their kiss is endless. Chrysis would seem to have under her tongue, not milk and honey, as in Holy writ, but living, mobile, enchanted water. And this multiform tongue itself, now incurved like an arch, now rolled up like a spiral, now shrinking into its hiding-place, now darting forth like a flame, more caressing than the hand, more expressive than the eyes, circling, flower-like, into a pistil, or thinning away into a petal, this ribbon of flesh that hardens when it quivers and softens when it licks, Chrysis animates it with all the resources of her endearing and passionate fantasy . . . Then she showers on him a series of prolonged caresses that twist and turn. Her nervous finger-tips suffice to grasp him tightly, and to produce convulsive tremblings along his sides. She is happy only when palpitating with desire or enervated by exhaustion: the transition terrifies her like a torture. As soon as her lover summons her, she thrusts him away with rigid arms: she presses her knees close together, she supplicates him dumbly with her lips. Demetrios constrains her by force.

No spectacle of nature, neither the blazing glory of the setting sun, nor the tempest in the palm-trees, nor the mirage, nor the mighty upheavals of the waters, seem worthy of astonishment to those who have witnessed the transfiguration of a woman in their arms. Chrysis becomes extraordinary. Arching her body upwards, and sinking back again in turns, with her bent elbow resting on the cushions, she seizes the corner of a pillow, clutches at it like a dying woman, and gasps for breath, with her head thrown back. Her eyes, brilliant with gratitude, fix the madness of their glance at the corner of the eyelids. Her checks are resplendent. The curve of her swaying hair is disconcerting. Two admirable, muscular lines, descending from the ear and the shoulder, meet under the right breast and bear it like a fruit.

Demetrios contemplates this divine madness in the feminine body with a sort of religious awe--this transport of a whole being, this superhuman convulsion of which he is the direct cause, which he exalts or represses at will, and which confounds him for the thousandth time.

Under his very eyes all the mighty forces of life strain in the effort to create. The breasts have already assumed, up to their very tips, maternal majesty. And these wails, these lamentable wails that prematurely weep over the labour of childbirth! . . .

[1] Song of Songs.

II

THE PANIC

Far above the sea and the Gardens of the Goddess, the moon poured down torrents of light.

Melitta--that little damsel, so delicate and slender, possessed by Demetrios for a fleeting moment, and who had offered to take him to Chimairis, learned in chiromancy--had remained behind alone with the fortune-teller, crouching, and still fierce.

"Do not fellow that man," Chimairis had said.

"Oh yes, I will! I've not even asked him if I am ever to see him again. Let me run after him to kiss him, and I'll come back--"

"No, you'll not see him ever more. And so much the better, my girl. Women who meet him once, learn to knew pain. Women who meet him twice, trifle with death."

"Why say it? I've just met him, and I've only trifled with pleasure in his arms."

"You owe your pleasure to him because you do not know what voluptuousness means, my tiniest of tiny girls. Forget him as you would a playmate and congratulate yourself on being only twelve years old."

"So one is very unhappy when grown up?" asked the child. "All the women here chatter unceasingly of their troubles, and I, who never hardly cry, see so many weeping!"

Chimairis dug her two hands into her hair and uttered a groan. Her goat shook its gold collar and turned its head in her direction, but she did not bestow a glance on the animal.

"Nevertheless, I know one happy woman," continued Melitla, significantly. "She's my great friend, Chrysis. I'm certain she never sheds a tear."

"She will," said Chimairis.

"Oh, prophetess of evil! Take back what you've said, distraught old woman, or I shall hate you!"

Seeing the young girl's threatening gestures, the black goat reared up erect, its front legs bent under; its horns thrust forward.

Melitta fled without looking where she went.

Twenty paces farther on, she burst out laughing, as she caught sight of a ridiculous couple hidden between two bushes. That sufficed to change the current of her young thoughts.

She took the longest road before returning to her hut, and then decided not to go home at all. It was a magnificent, warm, moonlight night. The gardens were full of many voices and songs. Satisfied with what she had earned through the visit of Demetrios, she was seized with a sudden fancy to play the part of a vagrant girl of roads and ditches, in the depths of the wood, with pauper passers-by. In this way, she was enjoyed twice or three against a tree, a stone pillar, or on a bench, and found amusement as if the game was new, because the scene kept changing. A soldier, standing in the middle of a pathway, lifted her bodily up in his robust arms and identified himself with the God of the Gardens who joins himself to the wenches who tend the rose-trees without needing to let the hussies feet touch the ground. At this, Melitta uttered a cry of triumph.

Escaping again, she continued her flight through an avenue of palms, where she met a lad, named Mikyllos, seemingly lost in the forest. She offered to be his guide, but led him astray designedly, so as to keep him with her for her own purposes. Mikyllos was not long in fathoming Melitta's intentions, as well as her tiny talents and capabilities. Soon becoming companions, rather than lovers, they ran along side by side in solitude that grew more and more silent. Suddenly, they came in front of the sea.

The spot where they found themselves was far distant from the parts where the courtesans generally celebrated the rites of their religious profession. Why they chose other trysting-places in preference to this--the most admirable of all--they could not have told you. The part of the wood where the crowd gathered soon became a notorious central alley, surrounded by a network of bypaths and starry glades. On the outskirts, despite the charm or the beauty of the sites, there reigned eternal solitude where luxuriant vegetation flourished peacefully.

Thus strolling, hand in hand, Mikyllos and Melitta reached the limit of the public park, a low hedge of aloes, forming a useless dividing line between the gardens of Aphrodite and those of her High Priest.

Encouraged by the hushed solitude of this flowery wilderness, the young couple easily climbed over the irregular wall formed by the quaint twisted plants. The Mediterranean, at their feet, slowly swept the shore, with wavelets like the fringes of a river. The two children waded in breast-high and chased each other, laughing meanwhile, as they tried to effect difficult conjunctions in the water. They soon put an end to these sports, which failed like games insufficiently rehearsed. Alter that, luminous and dripping wet, wriggling their frog-like legs in the moonlight, they sprang upon the dark edge of the sea.

Traces of footprints on the sand urged the boy and girl onwards. They walked, ran, and struggled, pulling each other by the hand; their black, well-defined shadows sketching bold outlines of their two figures. How far were they to go in this wise? They saw no other living things on the immense azure horizon.

"Ah! Look!" exclaimed Melitta, all of a sudden.

"What's the matter?"

"There's a woman!"

"A courtesan! Oh, the shameless thing! She has fallen asleep in the open."

"No, no!" rejoined Melitta, shaking her head. "I dare not go near her, Mikyllos. She's no courtesan."

"I should have thought she was.

"No, I say, Mikyllos, she's not one of us. It's Touni, wife of the High Priest. Look well at her. She is not asleep. Oh, I'm afraid to approach her. Her eves are wide open! Let us go away! I'm afraid--oh, so afraid!"

Mikyllos made three steps forward on tip-toe.

"You're right, Melitta. She is not sleeping, poor woman! She is dead."

"Dead?"

"There is a pin in her heart."

He stretched out his hand to draw it from her breast, but Melitta was terrified.

"No, no! Touch her not! She is sacred! Remain by her side, watch over her, protect her. I'll call for help. I'll tell the others."

She fled with all the strength of her legs into the deep shadow of the black trees.

Alone and trembling, Mikyllos wandered round the corpse of the young woman. He touched the pierced breast with his finger. Then, either scared by death, or more likely fearing to be taken for an accomplice of the murder, he suddenly took to his heels, resolved to apprise no one.

The icy nakedness of Touni remained as before, abandoned in the bright light of the moon.

* * * * *

A long time afterwards, the woods near where she lay became filled with murmurs which were frightful because almost imperceptible.

On all sides, between tree-trunks and bushes, a thousand courtesans, huddled together like frightened sheep, advanced slowly, their masses quivering with a unanimous shudder.

By a movement as regular as that of the sea striking the sandy foreshore, the front rank of this army made way for those following behind. It seemed as if nobody wanted to be the first to find the dead woman.

A great cry, taken up by a thousand mouths and dying away at a distance, arose to salute the poor corpse when it was perceived stretched out at the foot of a tree.

A thousand naked arms were first uplifted and then as many others.

"Goddess! Not on us!" now sobbed many voices. "Goddess, not on us! If thou wreakest vengeance, Goddess, spare our lives!"

"To the Temple!" was the rallying-cry arising from one despairing throat.

"To the Temple! To the Temple!" repeated all the other women.

At this juncture, a new eddy convulsed the surging multitude. Without daring to cast another look at the dead woman, stretched out on her back on the ground, her eyes upturned and her arms thrown back, all the courtesans in one great mob, black women and white, those of the East and the West, some in sumptuous robes and others in vague nudity, scampered through the trees, rushing across glades, paths, and roads; swarming into the vast open spaces in front of the houses, until they mounted the gigantic pink marble staircase that gleamed deeply red in the light of coming day. With their weak clenched fists, they battered the lofty bronze doors, squalling childishly:

"Open the gates for us! Open! Let us in!"

III

THE CROWD

The morning the orgie at Bacchis's came to an end an event took place at Alexandria: rain fell.

Immediately, contrarily to what usually happens in countries less African, everybody went out to welcome the shower.

The phenomenon was neither torrent-like nor stormy. Large warm drops fell from a violet cloud and traversed the air. The men looked at the sky with interest. The little children roared with laughter, and went about splashing their tiny naked feet in the surface-mud.

Then the cloud faded away in the light, the sky remained implacably pure, and a short time after midday the mud had once more turned into dust under the sun.

But this momentary shower had sufficed. It filled the town with gaiety. The men congregated on the pavement of the Agora, and the women thronged together in groups, intermingling their shrill voices.

Only the courtesans were there, for the third day of the Aphrodisæ being reserved for the exclusive devotions of the married women, the latter had just started for the Astarteion in a great procession, and there was nothing in the square but flowered robes and eyes blackened with paint.

As Myrtocleia passed by, a young girl called Philotis, who was talking with many others, pulled her by the sleeve knot.

"Ho, my little lass! you played at Bacchis's yesterday? What happened? What took place there? Did Bacchis put on a new necklace to hide the cavities in her neck? Has she got wooden breasts or copper ones? Did she forget to dye the little white hairs on her temples before putting on her wig? Come, speak, fried fish!"

"Do you suppose I looked at her? I arrived after the banquet, I played my piece, I received my payment, and I ran off."

"Oh, I know you don't dissipate!"

"To stain my robe and receive blows? No, Philotis. Only rich women can afford to indulge in orgies. Little flute-girls get nothing but tears."

"When one doesn't want to stain one's robe, one leaves it in the ante-chamber. When one receives blows, one insists on being paid double. It is quite elementary. So you have nothing to tell us? not an adventure, not a joke, not a scandal? We are yawning like storks. Invent something if you know nothing."

"My friend Theano stayed after me. When I awoke a few minutes ago, she had not yet come. The fète is perhaps still going on."

"It is finished," said another woman. "Theano is down there, by the ceramic wall."

The courtesans started off at a run, but presently stopped with a smile of pity.

Theano, in a naive fit of drunkenness, was obstinately pulling at a rose stripped of its leaves, the thorns of which were caught in her hair. Her yellow tunic was soiled with red and white stains as if she had borne the brunt of the whole orgie. The bronze clasp, which kept up up the converging folds of the stuff upon her left shoulder, dangled below the waist, and revealed the mobile globe of a young breast already too mature, and which was stained with two spots of purple.

As soon as she saw Myrtocleia, she brusquely went off into a peal of singular laughter. Everybody knew it at Alexandria, and it had procured her the nickname of the "Fowl." It was an interminable cluck-cluck, a torrent of gaiety which commenced in a very low key and took her breath away, then shot up again into a shrill cry, and so forth, rhythmically, like the joy of a triumphant hen.

"An egg! an egg!" said Philotis.

But Myrtocleia made a gesture:

"Come, Theano, come to bed. You are not well, come with me."

"Ah! . . . ha! . . . Ah! . . . ha!" laughed the child. And she took her breast in her little hand, crying in a hoarse voice:

"Ah! . . . Ha! . . . the mirror . . ."

"Come along!" repeated Myrto, losing patience.

"The mirror . . . it is stolen, stolen! Ah! haaa! I shall never laugh so much again if I live to be as old as Chronos. Stolen, stolen, the silver mirror!"

The singing-girl tried to drag her away, but Philotis had understood.

"Hi!" she cried to the others, waving her two arms. "Come here quickly! There is news! Bacchis's mirror has been stolen!"

And all exclaimed:

"Papaië! Bacchis's mirror!"

In an instant, thirty women crowded round the flute-girl:

"What is happening?"

"What?"

"Bacchis has had her mirror stolen: Theano has just said so."

"But when?"

"Who has taken it?"

The child shrugged her shoulders:

"How do I know?"

"You passed the night there. You must know. It is not possible. Who entered her house? You have certainly been told. Try to collect yourself, Theano."

"What do I know about it? There were more than twenty of them in the banqueting room.

"They had hired me to play the flute, but they prevented me from playing because they do not like music. They asked me to mimic the figure of Danaë and they threw gold coins at me, and Bacchis took them all away from me . . . It was a band of madmen. They made me drink head downwards out of a bowl overflowing with wine. They had poured seven tankards in it because there were seven wines upon the table. My face was all dripping. Even my hair was soaked, and my roses."

"Yes," interrupted Myrto, "you are an awful fright. But the mirror? Who took it?"

"Exactly! when they put me on my feet again, my head was suffused with blood, and I was covered with wine up to the ears. Ha! Ha! they all began to laugh . . . Bacchis sent for the mirror . . . Ha! ha! it had disappeared. Somebody had taken it."

"Who? That is what we want to know."

"It was not I, that is all I know, It was no use searching me: I was quite naked. I cannot hide a mirror under my eyelid, like a drachma. It was not I, that is all I know. She crucified a slave, perhaps on account of that. When I saw that they were not looking at me, I picked up the Danaë coins. See, Myrto, I have five: you shall buy robes for the three of us."

The news of the theft spread gradually over the whole square. The courtesans did not hide their envious satisfaction. A noisy curiosity animated the moving groups.

"It is a woman," said Philotis; "it is a woman who is responsible for this piece of work."

"Yes, the mirror was well hidden. A thief could have carried off everything in the room and upset everything without finding the stone."

"Bacchis had enemies, especially her former friends. The knew all her secrets. One of them has probably enticed her away somewhere, and then entered her house at the hour when the sun is hot and the streets are almost deserted."

"Oh! she has perhaps sold the mirror to pay her debts."

"Supposing it were one of her lovers? They say she takes porters now!"

"No, it is a woman, I am sure of it."

"By the two goddesses! it serves her right." Suddenly, a still more excited mob rushed towards a point of the Agora, followed by a rising rumour which drew all the passers-by after it.

"What is the matter? what is the matter?"

And a shrill voice dominating the tumult shouted over all their heads:

"The High-Priest's wife has been killed!"

Violent consternation took possession of the crowd. It was incredible. People refuse to believe that so atrocious a murder could have been committed at the very height of the Aphrodisisæ, bringing down the wrath of the gods upon the town. But the same sentence passed from mouth to mouth in all directions:

"The wife of the High-Priest has been killed! The festival at the Temple is put off."

News arrived rapidly. The body had been found, lying on a pink marble seat, in a lonely place, at the summit of the gardens.

A long golden pin penetrated her left breast; the wound had not bled; but the assassin had cut off all the young woman's hair, and had carried away the antique comb of Queen Nitaoucrit.

After the first exclamations of anguish, a profound stupor gained the uppermost. The whole multitude grew every minute. The whole town was there: it was a sea of bare heads and women's hats, an immense herd pouring simultaneously from the streets bathed in blue shade into the dazzling brilliance of the Alexandrian Agora. Such a throng had never been seen since the day when Ptolemy Auleter had been driven from the throne by the partisans of Berenice. And even political revolutions seemed less terrible than this piece of sacrilege, on which the safety of the whole city might depend.

The men pushed their way close to the witnesses. They clamoured for further details. They put forth conjectures. Women informed the new arrivals of the theft of the celebrated mirror. The wiseacres swore that these two simultaneous crimes had been committed by the same hand.

But who could it be? Courtesans, who had made their offerings the night before for the ensuing year, were fearful lest the goddess should pay no attention to them, and sat sobbing, with their heads buried in their robes.

An ancient superstition had it that two such events would be followed by a third and still graver one. The crowd awaited the third. After the mirror and the comb, what had the mysterious robber taken? A stifling atmosphere, inflamed by the south wind and filled with sand dust, weighed upon the motionless crowd.

Gradually, as if this human mass were a single being, it was seized with a shivering which grew little by little until it became a panic, and all eyes were turned towards the same point on the horizon.

It was at the distant extremity of the long straight avenue which traversed Alexandria from the Canopic gate and led from the Temple to the Agora. There, on the top of the gentle incline, where the road opened upon the sky, a second terror-stricken multitude had just made its appearance and was running down the hill to join the first one.

"The courtesans, the sacred courtesans!"

Nobody stirred. Nobody dared to go and meet them, for fear of hearing of a new disaster. They arrived like a living flood, preceded by the dull noise of their footsteps on the ground. They waved their arms, they jostled one another, they seemed to be in flight before an army. They were to be recognised now. One could distinguish their robes, their girdles, their hair. Rays of light gleamed on their golden jewels. They were quite near. They opened their mouths. There was a silence.

"The necklace of the Goddess has been stolen, the True Pearls of Anadyomene are gone!"

A clamour of despair arose at the fatal utterance. The crowd retreated at first like a wave, then poured headlong forward, beating the walls, filling the road, thrusting back the frightened women, in the long avenue of the Dromos, towards the desecrated immortal saint.

IV

THE RESPONSE

And the Agora was left empty, like a beach after the tide.

Empty, but not completely: a man and a woman stayed behind, the only two mortals who knew the secret of the great public emotion, the two beings who were the cause of it: Chrysis and Demetrios.

The young man was seated on a block of marble near the port. The young woman stood at the opposite end of the square. They could not recognise one another; but they divined one another mutually: Chrysis, drunk with pride and finally with desire, ran in the full glare of the sun.

"You have done it!" she cried; "you have done it, then!"

"Yes," said the young man simply. "You are obeyed."

She quickly sat herself on his knees and embraced him deliriously:

"I love you! I love you! I have never before felt what I feel now! Gods! At last I know what it is to be in love! You see, my beloved, I give you more than I promised you the day before yesterday. I, who have never denied anyone, I could not dream that should change so quickly. I had only sold you my body upon the bed, now I give you all my excellence, all my purity, my sincerity, my passion, my virgin soul, Demetrios. Come with me; let us leave this town for a time; let us go into a hidden place, where there are, only you and I. We will spend days such as the world has never seen. Never did a lover do what you have done for me. Never did a woman love as I love: it is not possible! it is not possible! I can hardly speak. I am choking. You see, I weep. I know now what it is to weep: it is through excess of happiness. But you do not answer! You say nothing? Kiss me!"

Demetrios stretched out his right leg to ease his knee, which was a little cramped. Then he raised the young woman, stood up, shook the creases out of his garments, and said softly with an enigmatic smile:

"No . . . Adieu . . ."

And he tranquilly turned away.

Chrysis stood rooted to the ground with stupefaction, her mouth open and her head dangling.

"What? What . . . what . . . what do you say?"

"I say adieu," he said, without raising his voice.

"But . . . but it cannot be you who . . ."

"Yes. I had promised."

"Then . . . I fail to understand . . ."

"My dear, whether you understand or not is a matter of indifference to me. I leave this little mystery to your meditations. If what you have told me is true, they are likely to be prolonged. This affair occurs most conveniently to give them occupation. Adieu."

"Demetrios! what do I hear? . . . what is the meaning of this tone? Is it really you who speak? Explain! I conjure you! What has happened between us? It is enough to make one dash one's head against the wall."

"Am I to repeat the same thing a hundred times? Yes, I have taken the mirror; yes, I have killed the priestess Touni in order to get the peerless comb; yes, I have stolen the great seven-stringed necklace of the goddess. I was to hand you over the presents in exchange for a single sacrifice on your part. It was putting it at a high value, was it not? Now, I have ceased to estimate it at this extraordinary value, and I have nothing more to ask of you. Act in the same way, and let us part. I wonder you do not understand a situation the simplicity of which is so evident."

"Keep your presents! Do you suppose I care about them? It is yourself that I want, you, you alone."

"Yes, I know. But once again, I am not willing, and, as the consent of both the parties is necessary for a rendez-vous, I am very much afraid it will not take place, if I persist in my present views. This is what I am trying to impress upon you with all the clearness of diction of which I am capable. I see it is inadequate; but as I cannot improve it, I beg you to kindly accept the accomplished fact with a good grace, without prying into what you consider obscure about it, since you do not admit that it is within the limits of probability. I am most anxious to bring this discussion to an end. It can lead to no result, and might perhaps force me to be impolite."

"People have been tittle-tattling about me?"

"No!"

"Oh yes, I guess as much! People have been talking about me, don't deny it. They have said things about me behind my back! I have terrible enemies, Demetrios! You must not listen to them: I swear to you by the gods, they lie!"

"I do not know them."

"Believe me! Believe me, Well-beloved! What interest could I have in deceiving you, since I desire nothing from you except yourself?"

"You are the first person I have ever spoken to like this . . ."

Demetrios looked her in the eyes.

"It is too late," he said. "I have possessed you."

"You are raving . . . When? Where? How?"

"I speak the truth. I have possessed you in spite of yourself. What I hoped from your complaisance you have given me without your knowledge. You took me to the country you want to go to, in a dream, last night, and you were beautiful . . . ah! you were beautiful, Chrysis! I have returned from that country. No human will shall force me to see it again. The same event never brings happiness twice. I am not so mad as to ruin a happy souvenir. I am indebted for this to you, you will say; but as I have only loved your shadow, you will dispense me, dear creature, from thanking your reality."

Chrysis pressed her hands to her temples.

"It is abominable, abominable! And he dares to say this! And he makes a boast of it!"

"You jump to definite conclusions very quickly. I have told you that I have had a dream: are you sure that I was asleep? I have told you that I was happy: does happiness, according to you, consist in the gross physical thrill which you say you are so expert in producing, but which you cannot diversify, since it is much the same with all women who give themselves! No, it is yourself that you belittle by taking this most unbecoming point of view. I think you do not quite realise all the felicities which spring from under your footsteps. What differentiates mistresses from one another is that they have each a fashion, personal to themselves, of preparing and terminating an incident which, as a matter of fact, is as monstrous as it is necessary, and the quest of which, supposing we had only it in view, would not be worth all the trouble we take to find a perfect mistress. In this preparation and in this termination you excel beyond all women. At least, it has been a pleasure to me to think so, and perhaps you will grant me that after having produced the Aphrodite of the Temple my imagination has had no great difficulty in divining the manner of woman you are. Once again, I will not tell you whether it is a question of a night dream or a waking error. It is enough for you to know that, whether dreamed or conceived, your image has appeared to me in an extraordinary frame. Illusion; but, in all things I shall prevent you, Chrysis, from disillusioning me."

"And me, what do you mean to do with me, who love you still in spite of all the horrors that proceed from your mouth? Have I had the consciousness of your odious dream? Have I had my share in this happiness of which you speak, and which you have stolen, stolen from me! Has one ever heard of a lover so amazingly selfish as to take his pleasure of the woman who loves him without allowing her to share it! . . . This confounds all thought. It will drive me mad."

At this point, Demetrios dropped his tone of mockery, and said, in a voice that trembled slightly:

"Did you trouble yourself about me when you took advantage of my sudden passion to extort from me, in a moment of folly, three actions which might have destroyed my existence, and which will always leave behind them the remembrance of a triple shame?"

"If I asked this, it was to attach you to me. I should not have got you if I had given myself."

"Good. You have been satisfied. You have held me, not for long, but you have held me, nevertheless, in the serfdom you desired. Today, you must allow me to free myself!"

"I am the only slave, Demetrios."

"Yes, you or I, but one of us two if he loves the other. Slavery! Slavery! that is the real name of passion. You have all of you only one dream, one idea in your heads; to break men's strength with your feebleness and govern his intelligence with your futility. As soon as your breasts take form, you desire neither to love nor to be loved, but to bind a man to your ankles, to lower him, to bow his head and put your sandals upon it. Then, in conformity with your ambition, you can dash the sword, the chisel, or the compass out of our hands, break everything which transcends you, emasculate everything which frightens you, tweak Hercules by the nose and set him a-spinning wool. But when you have been able neither to bow his head nor weaken his character, you adore the fist that beats you, the knee that strikes you to the ground, the very mouth that insults you. The man who has refused to kiss your naked feet satisfies your dearest wish if he violates you. The man who has not wept when you left his house, can drag you there by the hair: your love will spring up again from your tears, for there is but one thing that consoles you when you are unable to impose slavery, amorous women! and that is to submit to it."

"Ah, beat me, if you like! but love me afterwards!"

And she hugged him so brusquely that he had not time to turn away his lips. He freed himself from both her arms.

"I detest you! Adieu," he said.

But Chrysis clung to his mantle.

"Do not lie. You adore me. Your soul is full of me: but you are ashamed at having yielded. Listen, listen, Well-beloved! If that is all that is needed to console your pride, I am ready to give you, in order to have you, still more than I asked of you. Whatever sacrifice I make you, I will not complain of life after our union."

Demetrios looked at her curiously, and, like her, the night before upon the quay, he said to her:

"What oath do you swear me?"

"By Aphrodite also."

"You do not believe in Aphrodite. Swear by Jehovah Sabaoth."

The Galilæan woman paled.

"We do not swear by Jehovah."

"You refuse?"

"It is a terrible oath."

"I must have it."

She hesitated, then said in a low voice: "I swear by Jehovah. What do you want of me, Demetrios?"

The young man kept silence.

"Speak quickly, I am afraid."

"Oh! very little."

"But what is it?"

"I will not ask you to give me three presents, were they as simple as the first three were rare. It would be contrary to the usages. But I can ask you to accept some, can I not?"

"Assuredly," said Chrysis joyously.

"This mirror, this necklace, this comb, which you made me steal for you, you did not expect to use them, I suppose? A stolen mirror, the comb of a victim, and the goddess's necklace are not jewels one can make a display of."

"What an idea!"

"No, I thought so. It is therefore out of pure cruelty that you incited me to ravish them at the price of the three crimes with which the whole town resounds to-day. Well, you are going to wear them."

"What?"

"You must go into the little enclosed garden where the statue of the Stygian Hermes is. This place is always deserted, and you will run no risk of being disturbed. You will take off the god's left heel. The stone is broken, you will see. Then, in the interior of the pedestal, you will find Bacchis's mirror, and you will place it in your hand; you will find the great comb of Nitaoucrit, and will place it in your hair; you will find the seven pearl necklaces of the goddess Aphrodite, and you will put them on your neck. Thus adorned, beautiful Chrysis, you will go about the town. The crowd will deliver you to the Queen's soldiers, but you will have what you desired, and I will go and see you in your prison before sunrise."

V

THE GARDEN OF HERMANUBIS

Chrysis's first impulse was to shrug her shoulders. She would not be so ingenuous as to keep her word.

The second was to go and see.

A rising curiosity impelled her toward the mysterious place where Demetrios had hidden the three criminal trophies. She wanted to take them, to touch them with her hands, to make them gleam in the sunlight, to possess them for an instant. It seemed to her that her victory would not be quite complete so long as she should not have seized the booty of her ambitions.

As for Demetrios: she would find the means of recapturing him ultimately. How was it possible to believe that he had emancipated himself from her for ever? The passion she attributed to him was not one of those that die out in a man's heart irrevocably. The women one has once greatly loved form a family of election in a man's hearts and the meeting with a former mistress, even though hated or forgotten, excites an unexpected disorder of the soul whence the new love may burst forth. Chrysis was not ignorant of this. However ardent she might be herself, however anxious to conquer the first man she had ever loved, she was not mad enough to buy him at the cost of her life when she saw so many other methods of seducing him more simply.

And yet . . . what a blessed end he had proposed to her!

Under the eyes of an innumerable crowd, bear the antique mirror into which Sappho had gazed, the comb which had held in place the royal hair of Nitaoucrit, the necklace of marine pearls that had rolled in the shell of the goddess Anadyomene . . . Then, from the evening till the morning drink madly of all the sensations with which the wildest love can inspire a woman . . . and towards the middle of the day, die without effort . . . what an incomparable destiny!

She closed her eyes . . .

But no: she would not allow herself to be tempted.

She crossed Rhacotis and mounted the street which led in a straight line to the Great Serapeion. This road, constructed by the Greeks, seemed incongruous in this quarter of angular alleys. The two populations mingled oddly, in a promiscuity from which hatred was not absent. Amongst the blue-shirted Egyptians, the unbleached tunics of the Hellenes made splashes of white. Chrysis mounted rapidly, without listening to the conversations in which the people discoursed of the crimes committed for her sake.

Before the steps of the monument, she turned to the right, took an obscure street, then another, the houses of which almost touched, crossed a little star-shaped square where two swarthy little girls were playing in a sunny fountain, and finally she stopped.

* * * * *

The garden of Hermes Anubis was a little necropolis long ago abandoned, a sort of no man's land to which parents no longer brought the libations to the dead, and that the passers-by avoided. In the midst of the crumbling tombs, Chrysis advanced in the greatest silence, quaking with fear at every stone that clattered under her feet. The wind, always charged with fine sand, blew her hair over her temples and sent her veil of scarlet silk floating towards the white leaves of the sycamores.

She discovered the statue between three monuments that hid it on all sides and enclosed it in a triangle. The spot was well chosen for the concealment of a mortal secret.

Chrysis forced her way as best she could through the narrow, stony passage; on seeing the statue she paled slightly.

The jackal-headed god was in a standing attitude, with his right leg advanced, and with his hair falling on his shoulders. This hair was pierced by two holes for the arms.

The head on the top of the rigid body was bent downwards and contemplated the movement of the hands as they performed the characteristic gesture of the embalmer. The left foot was loose.

Looking round slowly and fearfully, Chrysis made sure that she was quite alone. A little noise behind her made her start; but it was only a green lizard slipping away into a marble fissure.

Then she ventured at last to lay hold of the broken foot of the statue. She lifted it obliquely, and not without difficulty, for it was attached to a loose fragment of the hollow pedestal. And under the stone she suddenly saw the gleam of the enormous pearls.

She withdrew the necklace altogether. How heavy it was! She would never have imagined that unmounted pearls could weigh with such a weight upon the hand. The pearl globes were all marvellously round and of an almost lunar water. The seven strings succeeded one another in ever-widening circles, like circular clouds on a star-studded lake.

She put it round her neck.

She arranged it in tiers with one hand, closing her eyes in order the better to feel the coldness of the pearls on her skin. She disposed the seven tiers regularly along her naked breast, and thrust the last one into the warm channel between her breasts.

Then she took the ivory comb, considered it for a time, caressed the white figurine carved in the dainty coronal, and plunged the jewel into her hair several times before fixing it exactly as she wished.

Then she drew the silver mirror from the pedestal, looked at herself in it, saw her triumph in it, her eyes gleaming with pride, her shoulders adorned with the spoils of the gods . . .

And enveloping herself to the hair in her great purple cyclas, she left the necropolis, taking with her the terrible jewels.

VI

THE WALLS OF PURPLE

Then, out of the mouth of the hierodules, the people had learnt the certainty of the sacrilege for the second time, they gradually melted away through the gardens.

The courtesans of the temple crowded by hundreds along the paths of black olive trees. Some scattered ashes on their heads. Others beat their foreheads on the ground, or pulled out their hair, or tore their breasts, as a sign of calamity. Many sobbed, with their heads in their hands.

The crowd descended into the town in silence, along the Dromos and along the quay. Universal mourning spread consternation throughout the streets. The shopkeepers had hastily taken in their multicoloured stands, from fear, and wooden shutters kept in place by iron bars succeeded one another like a monotonous palisade on the ground-floor of windowless houses.

The life of the harbour had come to a stand-still. The sailors sat motionless on the street-posts, with their cheeks in their hands. The ships ready to leave had taken in their long oars and clewed up their pointed sails along the masts rocking in the wind. Those who wished to enter the harbour waited for the signals out in the open, and some of their passengers, who had relatives at the queen's palace, believing a bloody revolution was in progress, sacrificed to the infernal gods.

At the corner of the island of Pharos and the quay, Rhodis recognised Chrysis standing near her in the crowd.

"Ah! Chrysis! take me under your care! I am afraid! Myrto is here! but the crowd is so great . . . I am afraid that we shall be separated. Take us by the hand."

"You know," said Myrtocleia, "you know what is happening? Do they know the culprit? Is he being tortured? Nothing like it has ever been seen since Hierostratos. The Olympians are deserting us. What is going to become of us?"

Chrysis did not answer.

"We had given doves," said the little flute-player; "will the goddess remember? The goddess 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 goddess 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.

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 Canal, the banks of the Royal Port, of the Great Port, and of Euroste were alive with a dense mass of human beings that received continual reinforcements from the side streets. Above this ocean, agitated by immense eddies, a foaming mass 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 Thaïs 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 goddess, 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.

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.