IIITHE CROWDThe 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 Astarteïon 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 fête 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.ill-070But 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.”ill-071Thirty women crowded round the flute-girl.“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. They 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!”ill-072A 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.
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 Astarteïon 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 fête 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.
ill-070
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.”
ill-071
Thirty women crowded round the flute-girl.
“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. They 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.”
“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!”
ill-072
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.