IITHE DINNERAt 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 grammarian, 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 does Phrasilas think about it?”“He is an admirable writer,” said the little man.“In what sense?”ill-046“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.”ill-047“I like to have the sensual gratification.”“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. TheBanquetyou 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.ill-048Nevertheless 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 clientèle 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 white 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’œuvre (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 χοῖρος 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 Gnathène, 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 Gnathène 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.ill-049Soon they formed in couples.“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.ill-050“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.”ill-051She let herself slip down from the bed.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 playThe Fable of Hermaphroditus, she let herself slip down from the bed and went out feverishly.
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 grammarian, 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 does Phrasilas think about it?”
“He is an admirable writer,” said the little man.
“In what sense?”
ill-046
“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.”
ill-047
“I like to have the sensual gratification.”
“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. TheBanquetyou 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.
ill-048
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 clientèle 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 white 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’œuvre (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 χοῖρος 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 Gnathène, 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 Gnathène 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.
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Soon they formed in couples.
“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.
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“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.”
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She let herself slip down from the bed.
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 playThe Fable of Hermaphroditus, she let herself slip down from the bed and went out feverishly.