VIITHE TALE OF THE ENCHANTED LYREHe walked very rapidly, hoping to overtake Chrysis in the road which led to the town. He was afraid that if he delayed any further he might once again lose his courage and his power of will.The white, hot road was so luminous that Demetrios closed his eyes as if the midday sun was shining. He was walking in this way without looking in front of him, when he narrowly escaped colliding with four black slaves who were marching at the head of a fresh procession. Suddenly a musical little voice said softly:“Well-beloved, how glad I am!”He raised his head: it was Queen Berenice leaning on her elbow in her litter.She gave the order:“Stop, porters!”And held out her arms to her lover.Demetrios was greatly put out, but he could not refuse, and he got in sulkily.Then Queen Berenice, beside herself with joy, crawled on her hands and knees to the far end, and rolled in the cushions like a playful kitten.For this litter was a chamber carried by four and twenty slaves. It afforded ample room for twelve women to recline in it at random, upon a thick blue carpet strewn with stuffs and cushions; and its height was so great that one could not touch the roof, even with the tip of one’s fan. Its length was greater than its width, and it was closed in front and on the three sides by very fine yellow curtains which scintillated with light. The back was of cedar-wood, draped in a long veil of orange-coloured silk. At the top of this splendid wall, the great golden hawk of Egypt hung grimly with its two wings extended to their full extent. Lower down, carved in ivory and silver, the antique symbol of Astarte gaped above a lighted lamp whose rays strove with the daylight in elusive reflections. Underneath, lay Queen Berenice, fanned on either side by two Persian slave women, waving two tufts of peacock’s feathers.She beckoned the young sculptor to her side with her eyes, and repeated:“Well-beloved, I am happy!” She stroked his cheek.“I was looking for you, Well-beloved. Where were you? I have not seen you since the day before yesterday. If I had not met you I should soon have died of grief. I was so unhappy all alone in this great litter. I have thrown all my jewels over the bridge of Hermes, to make circles in the water. You see I have neither rings nor necklace. I look like a little pauper at your feet.”She turned round to him and kissed him on the mouth.The two fan-bearers sat down upon their haunches a little further off, and when Queen Berenice began to speak in a low tone, they put their fingers close to their ears in order to make a semblance of not hearing. But Demetrios did not answer, barely listened, remained like one bewildered. He saw of the young queen nothing but the red smile of her mouth and the black cushion of her hair which she always wore loosely bound in order to be able to rest her weary head upon it.ill-041But Demetrios did not answer.She said:“Well-beloved, I have wept during the night. My bed was cold. When I awoke, I stretched my naked arms to my two sides and I did not find you, and my hand nowhere met the hand I embrace to-day. I waited for you in the morning, and you had not been since the full moon. I sent slaves into all the quarters of the town and I had them executed when they came back without you. Where were you? were you at the temple? you were not in the garden with those strange women? No, I see by your eyes that you have not loved. Then what were you doing far away from me? You were before the statue? Yes, I am sure you were there. You love it more than me now. It is exactly like me, it has my eyes, my mouth, my breasts, but it is the statue that you treasure. I am a poor deserted woman. I weary you, and I see it well. You think of your marble and your ugly statues as if I were not more beautiful than all of them, and, in addition, alive, amorous, and tender, ready to grant you whatever you are willing to accept, resigned whenever you refuse. But you want nothing. You have refused to be a king, you have refused to be a god and be adored in a temple of your own. You almost refuse to love me now.”She gathered her feet under her and leaned upon her hand.“I would do anything to see you at the palace, Well-beloved. If you do not want me any longer, tell me who it is that attracts you, she shall be my friend. The . . . the women of my court . . . are beautiful. I have a dozen also who have been kept in ignorance of the very existence of men. They shall all be your mistresses if you will come to see me after them. . . And I have others with me who have had more lovers than the sacred courtesans and are expert in love. Choose which you will, I have also a thousand foreign slave-women; you shall have any of them you please. I will dress them like myself, in yellow silk and silver.“But no, you are the most beautiful and the coldest of men. You love no one, you suffer yourself to be loved, you lend yourself, out of charity, to those who are captured by your eyes. You permit me to have my pleasure of you, but as an animal allows itself to be milked, looking somewhere else all the time. Ah! Gods! Ah! Gods! I shall end by being able to do without you, young coxcomb that the whole town adores, and from whom no woman can draw tears. I have other than women at the palace; I have sturdy Ethiopians with chests of bronze and arms bulging out with muscles. In their embrace, I shall soon forget your womanish legs and your pretty beard. The spectacle of their passion will doubtless be a new one for me, and I shall give my amorousness a rest. But the day I am certain that your eyes have ceased to trouble me by their absence, and that I can replace your mouth, then I shall despatch you from the top of the bridge of Hermes to join my necklace and my rings like a jewel I have worn too long. Ah! what it is to be a queen!”She sat up and seemed as if waiting. But Demetrios remained impassive, and did not move a muscle, as if he had not heard her. She resumed angrily:“You have not understood?”He leaned carelessly upon his elbow and said quietly and unmovedly:“I have thought of a tale.“Long ago, long before the conquest of Thrace by your father’s ancestors, it was inhabited by wild beasts and a few timorous men.“The animals were very beautiful: there were lions tawny as the sun, tigers striped like the evening, and bears black as night.“The men were little and flat-nosed, covered with old, worn skins, armed with rude lances and bows without beauty. They shut themselves up in mountain holes, behind huge stones which they moved with difficulty. They passed their lives at the chase. There was blood in the forests.“The country was so forlorn that the gods had deserted it. When Artemis left Olympus in the whiteness of the morning, she never took the path which would have led her to the North. The wars which were waged there did not disturb Ares. The absence of pipes and flutes repelled Apollo. The triple Hecate alone shone in solitude, like the face of a Medusa upon a petrified land.“Now, there came to live in that country a man of more favoured race, one who did not dress in skin like the mountain savages.“He wore a long white robe which trailed behind him a little. He loved to wander at night in the calm forest-glades by the light of the moon, holding in his hand a little tortoise-shell in which were fixed two auroch-horns. Between these horns were stretched three silver strings.“When his fingers touched the strings, delicious music passed over them, much sweeter than the sound of fountains, or the murmur of the wind in the trees, or the swaying of the barley. The first time he played, three sleepy tigers awoke, so prodigiously charmed that they did him no harm, but approached as near as they could and retired when he ceased. On the morrow there were many more, and wolves also, and hyenas, and snakes poised upright on their tails.“After a very short time the animals came of their own accord, and begged him to play to them. A bear would often come quite alone to him and go away enchanted on hearing three marvellous chords. In return for his favours, the wild beasts provided him with food and protected him against the men.ill-042“But he tired of this tedious life. He became so certain of his genius, and of the pleasure he afforded to the beasts, that he ceased to care to play well. The animals were always satisfied, so long as it was he who played. Soon he refused even to give them this satisfaction, and stopped playing altogether, from indifference. The whole forest mourned, but for all that the musician’s threshold did not lack savoury meats and fruits. They continued to nourish him, and loved him all the more. The hearts of beasts are so constructed.“Now one day, he was leaning against his open door, looking at the sunset behind the motionless trees, when a lioness happened to pass by. He took a step inside as if he feared tiresome solicitations. The lioness did not trouble about him, and simply passed by.“Then he asked her in astonishment; ‘Why do you not beg me to play?’ She answered that she cared nothing about it. He said to her: ‘Do you not know me?’ She answered: ‘You are Orpheus.’ He answered: ‘And you don’t want to hear Me?’ She repeated, ‘No.’ ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘oh! how I am to be pitied! It is just for you that I should have liked to play. You are much more beautiful than the others, and you must understand so much better. If you will listen to me one little hour, I will give you everything you can dream of.’ She answered: ‘Steal the fresh meats that belong to the men of the plain. Assassinate the first person you meet. Take the victims they have offered to your gods, and lay all at my feet.’ He thanked her for the moderation of her demands, and did what she required.“For one hour he played before her: but afterwards he broke his lyre and lived as if he were dead.”The queen sighed:“I never understand allegories. Explain it to me, Well-beloved. What does it mean?”He rose.“I do not tell you this in order that you may understand. I have told you a tale to calm you a little. It is late. Good-bye, Berenice.”She began to weep.“I was sure of it! I was sure of it!”He laid her like a child upon her soft bed of luxurious stuffs, imprinted a smiling kiss upon her unhappy eyes, and tranquilly descended from the great litter without stopping it.
He walked very rapidly, hoping to overtake Chrysis in the road which led to the town. He was afraid that if he delayed any further he might once again lose his courage and his power of will.
The white, hot road was so luminous that Demetrios closed his eyes as if the midday sun was shining. He was walking in this way without looking in front of him, when he narrowly escaped colliding with four black slaves who were marching at the head of a fresh procession. Suddenly a musical little voice said softly:
“Well-beloved, how glad I am!”
He raised his head: it was Queen Berenice leaning on her elbow in her litter.
She gave the order:
“Stop, porters!”
And held out her arms to her lover.
Demetrios was greatly put out, but he could not refuse, and he got in sulkily.
Then Queen Berenice, beside herself with joy, crawled on her hands and knees to the far end, and rolled in the cushions like a playful kitten.
For this litter was a chamber carried by four and twenty slaves. It afforded ample room for twelve women to recline in it at random, upon a thick blue carpet strewn with stuffs and cushions; and its height was so great that one could not touch the roof, even with the tip of one’s fan. Its length was greater than its width, and it was closed in front and on the three sides by very fine yellow curtains which scintillated with light. The back was of cedar-wood, draped in a long veil of orange-coloured silk. At the top of this splendid wall, the great golden hawk of Egypt hung grimly with its two wings extended to their full extent. Lower down, carved in ivory and silver, the antique symbol of Astarte gaped above a lighted lamp whose rays strove with the daylight in elusive reflections. Underneath, lay Queen Berenice, fanned on either side by two Persian slave women, waving two tufts of peacock’s feathers.
She beckoned the young sculptor to her side with her eyes, and repeated:
“Well-beloved, I am happy!” She stroked his cheek.
“I was looking for you, Well-beloved. Where were you? I have not seen you since the day before yesterday. If I had not met you I should soon have died of grief. I was so unhappy all alone in this great litter. I have thrown all my jewels over the bridge of Hermes, to make circles in the water. You see I have neither rings nor necklace. I look like a little pauper at your feet.”
She turned round to him and kissed him on the mouth.
The two fan-bearers sat down upon their haunches a little further off, and when Queen Berenice began to speak in a low tone, they put their fingers close to their ears in order to make a semblance of not hearing. But Demetrios did not answer, barely listened, remained like one bewildered. He saw of the young queen nothing but the red smile of her mouth and the black cushion of her hair which she always wore loosely bound in order to be able to rest her weary head upon it.
ill-041
But Demetrios did not answer.
She said:
“Well-beloved, I have wept during the night. My bed was cold. When I awoke, I stretched my naked arms to my two sides and I did not find you, and my hand nowhere met the hand I embrace to-day. I waited for you in the morning, and you had not been since the full moon. I sent slaves into all the quarters of the town and I had them executed when they came back without you. Where were you? were you at the temple? you were not in the garden with those strange women? No, I see by your eyes that you have not loved. Then what were you doing far away from me? You were before the statue? Yes, I am sure you were there. You love it more than me now. It is exactly like me, it has my eyes, my mouth, my breasts, but it is the statue that you treasure. I am a poor deserted woman. I weary you, and I see it well. You think of your marble and your ugly statues as if I were not more beautiful than all of them, and, in addition, alive, amorous, and tender, ready to grant you whatever you are willing to accept, resigned whenever you refuse. But you want nothing. You have refused to be a king, you have refused to be a god and be adored in a temple of your own. You almost refuse to love me now.”
She gathered her feet under her and leaned upon her hand.
“I would do anything to see you at the palace, Well-beloved. If you do not want me any longer, tell me who it is that attracts you, she shall be my friend. The . . . the women of my court . . . are beautiful. I have a dozen also who have been kept in ignorance of the very existence of men. They shall all be your mistresses if you will come to see me after them. . . And I have others with me who have had more lovers than the sacred courtesans and are expert in love. Choose which you will, I have also a thousand foreign slave-women; you shall have any of them you please. I will dress them like myself, in yellow silk and silver.
“But no, you are the most beautiful and the coldest of men. You love no one, you suffer yourself to be loved, you lend yourself, out of charity, to those who are captured by your eyes. You permit me to have my pleasure of you, but as an animal allows itself to be milked, looking somewhere else all the time. Ah! Gods! Ah! Gods! I shall end by being able to do without you, young coxcomb that the whole town adores, and from whom no woman can draw tears. I have other than women at the palace; I have sturdy Ethiopians with chests of bronze and arms bulging out with muscles. In their embrace, I shall soon forget your womanish legs and your pretty beard. The spectacle of their passion will doubtless be a new one for me, and I shall give my amorousness a rest. But the day I am certain that your eyes have ceased to trouble me by their absence, and that I can replace your mouth, then I shall despatch you from the top of the bridge of Hermes to join my necklace and my rings like a jewel I have worn too long. Ah! what it is to be a queen!”
She sat up and seemed as if waiting. But Demetrios remained impassive, and did not move a muscle, as if he had not heard her. She resumed angrily:
“You have not understood?”
He leaned carelessly upon his elbow and said quietly and unmovedly:
“I have thought of a tale.
“Long ago, long before the conquest of Thrace by your father’s ancestors, it was inhabited by wild beasts and a few timorous men.
“The animals were very beautiful: there were lions tawny as the sun, tigers striped like the evening, and bears black as night.
“The men were little and flat-nosed, covered with old, worn skins, armed with rude lances and bows without beauty. They shut themselves up in mountain holes, behind huge stones which they moved with difficulty. They passed their lives at the chase. There was blood in the forests.
“The country was so forlorn that the gods had deserted it. When Artemis left Olympus in the whiteness of the morning, she never took the path which would have led her to the North. The wars which were waged there did not disturb Ares. The absence of pipes and flutes repelled Apollo. The triple Hecate alone shone in solitude, like the face of a Medusa upon a petrified land.
“Now, there came to live in that country a man of more favoured race, one who did not dress in skin like the mountain savages.
“He wore a long white robe which trailed behind him a little. He loved to wander at night in the calm forest-glades by the light of the moon, holding in his hand a little tortoise-shell in which were fixed two auroch-horns. Between these horns were stretched three silver strings.
“When his fingers touched the strings, delicious music passed over them, much sweeter than the sound of fountains, or the murmur of the wind in the trees, or the swaying of the barley. The first time he played, three sleepy tigers awoke, so prodigiously charmed that they did him no harm, but approached as near as they could and retired when he ceased. On the morrow there were many more, and wolves also, and hyenas, and snakes poised upright on their tails.
“After a very short time the animals came of their own accord, and begged him to play to them. A bear would often come quite alone to him and go away enchanted on hearing three marvellous chords. In return for his favours, the wild beasts provided him with food and protected him against the men.
ill-042
“But he tired of this tedious life. He became so certain of his genius, and of the pleasure he afforded to the beasts, that he ceased to care to play well. The animals were always satisfied, so long as it was he who played. Soon he refused even to give them this satisfaction, and stopped playing altogether, from indifference. The whole forest mourned, but for all that the musician’s threshold did not lack savoury meats and fruits. They continued to nourish him, and loved him all the more. The hearts of beasts are so constructed.
“Now one day, he was leaning against his open door, looking at the sunset behind the motionless trees, when a lioness happened to pass by. He took a step inside as if he feared tiresome solicitations. The lioness did not trouble about him, and simply passed by.
“Then he asked her in astonishment; ‘Why do you not beg me to play?’ She answered that she cared nothing about it. He said to her: ‘Do you not know me?’ She answered: ‘You are Orpheus.’ He answered: ‘And you don’t want to hear Me?’ She repeated, ‘No.’ ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘oh! how I am to be pitied! It is just for you that I should have liked to play. You are much more beautiful than the others, and you must understand so much better. If you will listen to me one little hour, I will give you everything you can dream of.’ She answered: ‘Steal the fresh meats that belong to the men of the plain. Assassinate the first person you meet. Take the victims they have offered to your gods, and lay all at my feet.’ He thanked her for the moderation of her demands, and did what she required.
“For one hour he played before her: but afterwards he broke his lyre and lived as if he were dead.”
The queen sighed:
“I never understand allegories. Explain it to me, Well-beloved. What does it mean?”
He rose.
“I do not tell you this in order that you may understand. I have told you a tale to calm you a little. It is late. Good-bye, Berenice.”
She began to weep.
“I was sure of it! I was sure of it!”
He laid her like a child upon her soft bed of luxurious stuffs, imprinted a smiling kiss upon her unhappy eyes, and tranquilly descended from the great litter without stopping it.