Chapter XVThe travellers had left Sais, after visiting the temple of Athene and the tomb of Psammetichus, son of Necho, founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty, one of the twelve kings of the Dodecarchy, who divided Egypt among themselves after the death of Sethos in B. C. 671. Psammetichus, in obedience to the oracles, defeated and expelled his eleven fellow-kings and reigned alone at Memphis and afterwards at Sais. Here was his tomb; it was sacred; there was an oracle attached to it; and Lucius had consulted that oracle.After that, Lucius had consulted the manteum, or oracle, of Latona at Butos, on an island in the lake. He had next visited Xois, Hermopolis, Lycopolis, Mendes and all the Sebennytic nome, which contained numberless oracles and shrines. At Mendes the god Pan was worshipped; and there was an oracle which spoke by means of the god’s pipes. Here the goat was held sacred and received public worship at the hands of priestesses in Dionysiac frenzy.The travellers next visited Diospolis and Leontopolis, Busiris and Cunopolis and all the Busiritic nome.All these towns, with numbers of villages in between, covered the islands of the flooded Delta, densely peopled and luxuriously cultivated. The great farmsteads and country-mansions stood linked along the canals, which were filled high to their banks with the flowing waters. The ears of corn swelled with ripeness along the shores; and the cattle gleamed and glanced, grazing in the rich meadows. The fat fields were fragrant, in these last days of the summer month of Epiphi, with a strange, moist scent as of nameless flowers ever drenched in dew. The sun was warm, but not burning, as though the moisture of so many waters tempered all the heat; the fierce rays did not burn, as though they were ever drinking the excessive damp. And from the marshes, which the Nile had turned into lakes, rose no mist, but the scent of the water-flowers: lotus, nymphea and nenuphar.The rains seemed to have ended. The maximum gauge in the Nilometers appeared to have been reached; only the morning dew was often heavy, like rain. But the daysglided past in an immaculate glory of sunshine tempered by moisture, while the rich, fragrant country lay stretched under smooth skies, which changed cloudlessly from morning rose to midday blue and evening gold, in a gradual fusing of tints. There was hardly a breeze in the evening; the atmosphere retained an ideal perfection of heavenly, temperate warmth; this summer warmth was fresh and cool.The thalamegus glided up the Nile. The river was as wide as a sea; everywhere, in the noonday sun, the pools of the waters glittered in among the farmsteads, mansions and shrines. On the horizon, the outlines of the towns, with the needles of the obelisks, shimmered in the damp haze. At every moment, dense palm-clusters or sycamores raised their regular canopies along the river, forming an avenue, or else tamarisks luxuriated and their branches threw fine shadows, like blue stripes upon gold.There lay the Athribitic nome and the Prosopitic nome, whose capital is Aphroditopolis. Lucius went on shore with a great retinue. The town, consecrated to Aphrodite, was peopled by none but hierodules, priestsand priestesses of the goddess. Lucius consulted the oracle.Next morning, after the orgy, he was lying under the triple awning of the barge which was gliding still higher up the river. Around him were screens of plaited, transparent reeds, interwoven with flowers. Thrasyllus sat by his side:“Nemu-Pha told me,” said Thrasyllus, “that both Plato and Pythagoras spent years and years on the steps of the temples of Isis before they were deemed worthy of learning one word of the Hermetic wisdom. Well, I never imagined that Nemu-Pha would unlock the Hermetic wisdom to me. But I did hope perhaps to learn a single word with which, continuing to meditate my own thoughts, I could have unlocked the secret, Lucius, of your happiness. But Nemu-Pha did not speak that word to me. And yet, my son, I had to pay him a high price to be admitted to his sanctuary. I am sorry for wasting your money.”Lucius smiled:“Nevertheless, Thrasyllus, the oracles, even though they never satisfy the questioner wholly, say very strange and impressive things. Shall I make you a confession?I certainly hope that I shall one day know who robbed me of Ilia. And, when I know, I shall not rest until I have tortured him and made him die a thousand deaths.”“It was the pirates, Lucius,” said Thrasyllus, evasively, “unless Ilia was drowned.”“It was one pirate, Thrasyllus,” said Lucius. “All the oracles now never speak except of one pirate. And it is for me ... as though I saw him before me! The dog!”The barge was gliding past Latopolis, on the right; on the left, standing farther back from the river, Heliopolis showed faintly. They were nearing Babylon, but the travellers were to go through to Memphis.“Look!” said Thrasyllus, starting up in rapture. “The Pyramids!”Lucius turned, with real interest. There on the horizon, like an enormous, mystic geometry, the triangles of the Pyramids, which announced Memphis, rose against the pink morning sky. They were like eternal lines drawn by the gods from earth to heaven.“The Pyramids!” echoed Lucius, as though overcome by a mystic impression.On the other side, Heliopolis was now more clearly outlined, standing high on a hill, with the temple of the bull Mnevis.Babylon, a suburb of Memphis, swarmed on the river-bank and, with the battlements of its forts; was visible through a sycamore avenue. And suddenly, after a grove of palms, Memphis loomed into view.“Memphis!” cried Thrasyllus.And Uncle Catullus, appearing from his cabin, pointed and repeated:“Memphis!”The old Egyptian capital lay Cyclopean, like some extinct monster, with heavy lines of squat, bleaching sanctuaries and, on the river, a portico of giant pylons. Behind these age-old, massive buildings the Pyramids showed spectrally.Thrasyllus pointed his long, crystal spy-glass towards the horizon:“There!” he said, with a shiver. “The most sacred monument in Egypt! The great Sphinx, the immense Neith, the ever-silent wisdom! Next to the second pyramid: that looming figure of a gigantic, motionless animal!”The barge hove to and was moored. Caleb proposed that they should go on shore.Here, even on the quays, the riotous bustle of agriculture and commerce had ceased to reign. Under the palms there was not themetropolitan press and throng of Alexandria, the world’s market-place and emporium. Only a few fruit-sellers squatted beside their wares and uttered their cries, now that they saw strangers, offering sliced melons and coco-nut milk. Here and there an Egyptian cowered, dreaming, with long, split eyes. The quays were old, grey, wide and deserted. Even the foreigners’ barge roused but little curiosity. A few children at play assembled when the two litters were carried on shore.Caleb found it difficult to hire two camels, for himself and Thrasyllus, but he succeeded. The cavalcade started; Caleb’s armed guards—for an escort was needed here, because of the robbers in the desert—surrounded the litters. And the strangers proceeded along the quays, under the palms, to the city. Caleb rode ahead, for he knew the city and the way.The city was gloomy, huge and empty, but Lucius, ever sensitive to impressions, underwent the enchantment of that past. For Memphis was the eternal past. The town had once numbered six hundred thousand inhabitants. It now haply numbered a few thousands; the rare figures in the wide streets were dwarfed and lost. Sometimesa woman’s face peeped out from the half-opened, vermilion shutters of some great grey, dilapidated house.Ye gods, what dimensions! What lines, what spaciousness of deserted squares, what heaven-high rows of pylons! The Serapeum yonder, at the endless end of an avenue of six hundred sphinxes, six rows of a hundred sphinxes, the ever-silent incarnations of wisdom, the lion-women who were the wisdom of Neith! What colossal statues, hewn out of one block of stone and towering to the sky, with the pschent crowns of their diadems! And everywhere the deathly silence and under the feet of the Libyan bearers the dust of ages, which flew up on high in one dense cloud after another!Caleb rode ahead, by the sphinxes in the avenue. They stood in rows, the wise lionesses with fixed women’s faces, eternal guardians of the secret. Some of them were already sinking in the sandy ground, disappearing with their stretched fore-paws. Others shelved to one side, borne down by the pressure of the centuries. Here the Pharaohs themselves had passed in sacred processions! Here Moses had walked and Hermes Trismegistus; here Joseph had wandered,the interpreter of dreams; here, lastly, Cambyses, with his Persian hordes, had ridden sacrilegiously! This was Memphis, thrice-sacred Memphis, profaned long centuries ago and now dead and sinking in the devouring sands of the desert, which approached from the west, out yonder! The city would be swallowed up by the sands! That past would sink back into the lap of the earth!Suddenly Lucius shuddered with the mystic awe of what has been. And his own life and grief seemed small to him.They approached the sanctuary. It rose as a huge shadow. And from every door swarmed serving-priests of Serapis, minor priests and door-keepers ... because they saw the strangers. They ranged themselves in front of the entrance and stood waiting.Caleb said:“These are distinguished Latin lords, cousins of the divine Cæsar Tiberius, blessed be his name. They wish to see the sacred bull....”“Apis ...” said the oldest priest.“Who is Osiris, in the sacred shape of the bull ...” added other priests.And others again, oracularly:“And who drew the plough through thefields of sacred Egypt when he disguised himself with the other gods, under the forms of animals....”“From the eyes of Jupiter Ammon, who wished to reign alone.”“The same,” said Caleb, flinging himself from his camel.The priests arranged themselves in processional order while the travellers alighted and Thrasyllus also slid from his camel. And they sang the Hymn of Apis, as they were wont to do when visitors came. For in the huge dead city of Memphis, inhabited by hardly a few thousands, who were dwarfed and lost in the spaces of the ancient, mystic capital of ancient, mystic Egypt, in truth the worship of Apis was still maintained only because all the travellers came to see the sacred bull. The fees which the travellers paid to the priests formed the principal revenue of their brotherhood. The temple was falling in ruins; the enormous pylons seemed to totter, the gigantic architraves leaned forward; the giant statues were bruised by the rains and eaten away, as though the centuries themselves had mutilated them; the sphinxes were sinking into the sand. But still the worship of the bull Apis was maintained,because of the strangers and their fees.A young priest who spoke a little Latin was allotted to the travellers and took his place by Lucius’ side, respectfully:“It is a pity,” he said, smiling cheerfully, “that Serapis did not bring you to Memphis a month earlier. For then, my noble lord, you would have beheld the death of Apis and his return to life.”“What is this, then?” asked Lucius.“The incarnation of the god in the sacred bull lasts a quarter of a century,” the young, pleasant, smiling priest explained. “After being incarnated in the bull for five-and-twenty years, the god disappears out of the bull and the bull is marked down for death. The priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord, that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a new-born bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great that the country is plunged into mourning andthe disaster foretells universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom delays the new incarnation. This time, after Apis’ obsequies, we were able at once to celebrate his blessed advent.”“And where was Apis found?” asked Lucius.“On the farm belonging to my father, who is a land-owner,” replied the pleasant young priest, smiling mischievously. “I am a land-owner’s son; and, when Apis was born in our stables, my father dedicated me to Osiris, that I might take care of the god. I came here with him; I have been here hardly a month; I came with him.”And he smiled, glad, young and happy; his fresh, young cheeks were still bronzed with the sun and his arms and hands were sturdy as those of a young peasant and shepherd.The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot of grass surrounded by columns.“My lords,” said the pleasant-looking priest, “this is the secos of the mother of Apis and we are going to show her to you.”“So she also comes from your father’s farm?” asked Uncle Catullus.“Most certainly, my lord,” replied the priest, roguishly.“That of course goes without saying,” commented Uncle Catullus.The young priest opened the gate of the secos. At the far end was the sacred stall, like the wide interior of a temple. The priest, vanished in the shadow.And, when he reappeared, he was leading, merely by pressing his hand against her snow-white flank, a handsome, sleek cow.He led her to the strangers. She shone, well-tended and well-fed. She had placid eyes of bluish gold, beautiful, large, soft and womanly, the eyes of Hera herself. Her horns were gilded and her hoofs were painted red.The pleasant-looking priest led her to the strangers and was glad and happy because Apis’ mother was so comely:“Is she not handsome?” he asked proudly.The strangers smiled and agreed that she was very handsome; and the priest, with respectful familiarity, stroked her snow-white flank and pointed out that she had one black foot. Then he kissed her, fondly and reverently, on her moist muzzle and led her back, with the pressure of his hand, to the templethat was her stall. She went, solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed only because of the strangers and their fee.The priest, still smiling, returned; and the other priests sang their hymn.And, by the priest’s pleasant manner, Lucius seemed to observe that he ought to pay. He beckoned to Caleb; and there were mutual, smiling, roguish negotiations between Caleb and the priest. For Caleb always tried to pay the fees which he distributed on Lucius’ behalf a little less liberally than he set them down on the long papyrus scroll of his bill; and he generally succeeded.But the priest was not only roguish, but very crafty and polite; and the transaction, conducted in mysterious and jocular whispers, lasted a long time ... until Lucius said, impatiently, but still smiling:“And may we now see Apis himself?”So Caleb paid, grudgingly. But the priest remained pleasant and the other priests sang while conducting the strangers to Apis’ own secos.This sanctuary was even bigger and more impressive than that of the white bull-mother. There was a square in front of it,with obelisks; and the pleasant-looking priest entered between two sphinxes. But the pillars, the obelisks, the sphinxes seemed to totter, to slant, to burst with old age.The priests sang the hymn; and suddenly, like a whirlwind, a young bull came trotting out of the stable over the grass-plot. It was Apis; and the priests lifted their hands in adoration as they sang.But, if his mother was stately and aware of her dignity, Apis himself carried his divinity with the recklessness of his hot youth. He ran across the lawn, glad to have escaped from his stable; and the pleasant priest, laughing, ran after him. But he could not catch him by his gold collar; and, panting for breath, the little priest said, proudly:“Isn’t he beautiful and playful? Isn’t he most delightful, our Apis?”He was beautiful and playful and most delightful, the visitors granted. He was a splendid bull-calf. His coat gleamed black as jet; and he was painted in accordance with the sacred prescript without which there is no incarnation: a white moon, like a snowy little crown, shone like a sickle between his gilded horns; and two other little white crowns adorned him on either side above the forelegs.His eyes blazed as might carbuncles with a light kindled behind them; and he stared from under his curly forehead with an almost human glance. His neck already fell into powerful, heavy folds; his chest was broad; and he lashed his tail like a whip. His hoofs were vermilion. And he trotted round his grass-plot and pushed out the sods with his horns and scratched with his red hoofs. The pleasant-looking priest now went up to him, laughing, and took him, respectfully and yet firmly, by the gold collar and talked to him and laughed; and Apis shook himself; and the priest laughed; and now all the priests began to laugh and the strangers laughed and Caleb roared and Uncle Catullus held his sides. Even Lucius had to laugh and Thrasyllus too; they all laughed at Apis, because he was such a delightful, pretty, playful bull-calf, just like a merry boy, with his human eyes which looked at you naughtily and watchfully and archly ... until all of a sudden he tore himself loose from his little priest and ran, ran like a whirlwind, till the clods of earth flew all around.“Heisso pretty and playful!” said the little priest, glad and happy as a boy, when he came back panting, after locking up thelittle bull again in the sanctuary. “But he is wild, he is very wild: as a rule, we only show him through the windows of his secos; but, when such very distinguished strangers come to look at him, we let him out for a trot, now and again. Yes, then he may come for a trot, once in a way!... And he himself thinks it great fun, to come for a trot, now and then, in the presence of strangers.”Then the pleasant-looking little priest went up to Caleb, who was still laughing aloud because Apis was such a very delightful little bull. And there was a long and protracted discussion, mysterious, jocular and yet weighty. For Caleb was taken aback; but then the little priest knew what it cost to make Apis trot about so prettily for such very distinguished strangers.Chapter XVIThey took the repast provided by Caleb outside the town, in a farmstead beside a canal, under a cluster of palm-trees.There were no dainty dishes, there were no purple-coloured wines thick as ink; but there were omelettes and there was cestreus, the sea-fish that swims up the Nile in certain months: fried in cici-oil, this is a popular, homely dish, it is true, but nevertheless toothsome for hungry travellers picnicking in the grass. There was foaming beer and hydromel, or honey-water; and Uncle Catullus, spoilt though he was, thought the simple meal anything but unpalatable and considered that an idyll of this sort was good for the stomach, once in a way.Lucius told Caleb to have his luncheon with them; and Caleb, after much deprecation and many salaams at the honour shown him, squatted down and crossed his legs and ate with relish and kept on laughing at the thought of dear little Apis trotting round his secos for the strangers who paid so generously. The travellers were to rest under thepalm-trees and allow the midday heat to pass before going on to the pyramids. For Caleb had sent the litters back to the barge and had now hired four good camels at the farm, including two with comfortable saddles of bright tapestry, for his two noble clients.The farmer and his wife, glad at the visit that brought them in money, spread awnings under which the travellers could enjoy their siesta and laid mats on the ground; and Uncle Catullus called for a fly-net, which he wound round his head. And, while he slept and Caleb also closed his eyes, Lucius, with Thrasyllus by his side, gazed at the wonderful, divinely geometrical lines in the distance, the lightly-traced triangles against the golden noonday sky.“The base is square,” said Thrasyllus, “and the summit is square, but looks pointed.”“To me they seem strange, mysterious embodiments of vastness,” said Lucius. “What are they actually?”“We don’t altogether know,” replied Thrasyllus. “Some of the pyramids were sepulchres of kings and sacred animals. Those are the pyramids of Cheops, or Khufu, of Chephren and of Mencheres; and we shall seethe kings’ chambers inside them. They were built twenty, perhaps thirty centuries ago. Herodotus says that the pyramid of Cheops, which is the biggest, took thirty years to build with a hundred thousand slaves, who were changed every three months. The name is derived fromπῦρfire, because, like a flame, the pyramid ends in a point. Many were used as store-houses in the long years of famine; others were dykes against the sands of the desert, which blew towards Memphis and threatened to bury the city, in a succession of ages. Many pyramids have already been swallowed up in the sands.”“What are those ruined palaces over there?” asked Lucius, pointing to crumbled rows of pylons and pillars, surmounted by cracked architraves, impressive ruins which stood on a hill at the outskirts of the town and seemed to be tumbling into the Nile.“The old palaces of the Pharaohs,” said Thrasyllus. “They were ten in number. Joseph, the Jewish interpreter of dreams, was a powerful governor under one of them; Moses, who knew Hermes Trismegistus and learned the occult wisdom from him, all the wisdom that can be known, was saved, as a babe, by the daughter of a Pharaoh, wherehis sister had exposed him in a basket made of bulrushes at the place where the princess was wont to bathe: she was the daughter of Amenophis III., who saw his people smitten with ten plagues sent over Egypt by Jahve, the God of the Jews, because the Pharaoh would not suffer them to leave the country. This Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea and was the father of Sesostris.... I have written on these scrolls everything that is more or less interesting.”And Thrasyllus, glad to see that Lucius’ attention was attracted, handed him the scrolls. Lucius began reading:“This all happened here!” he said, startled and arrested. “This is all ... the past! The age-old past, which is gone, which was swallowed up by the sands ... thousands of years ago!... How small we are when we look into the past ... and when we gaze into the centuries, the centuries that have buried themselves so deeply!”“My son,” said the old tutor, “I am so thankful that your mind is once more capable of receiving these impressions. For the beauty of the past is a comfort for the future; and the sick soul is healed in that beauty when it understands that its own grief is but a grainof sand in a desert which blows in the wind and conceals all things.”Lucius made no further reply, absorbed in what he was reading about Joseph and Moses, about Jahve and Pharaoh Amenophis, who was the father of Sesostris....Chapter XVIIThe golden noonday sky paled; the blinding topaz of the heavens melted away into amber honey; and the sands of the desert stretched out wide, far and endless to the last glittering streak of the horizon, on which the sun had set. Behind the group formed by the travellers—four camels surrounded by drivers and guards, Arabs and Libyans—between the darkening palm-trees the gigantic city of Memphis sank into shadow like some vast extinct monster; and the crumbling palaces of the kings sloped down the hill, as it were tumbling into the Nile, and mirrored their ruins in the clear sapphire of the stream, where the pools lay pink and gold among the tall reeds and the lotuses closing on the face of the water. The last fallen pillars lay, round and immense, in the luxuriant grass, amid a riot of scarlet and crimson poppies. Mysteriously carved with hieroglyphics, they were as felled Titans of rose-red granite; and they pressed heavily on the ground wherein they were sinking. They were of a melancholy majesty, thosehuge overthrown pillars which had supported the golden roofs above the might of the Pharaohs.Caleb rode his camel with a swagger, as though he were bestriding his Sabæan mare. He dug his heel into the camel’s side; and the startled brute took great strides, snorting and grunting; Caleb roared with delight. The Libyans, big-limbed and powerful, went silently; the Arab drivers yelled and shouted.Forty stadia from Memphis rose a broad, hilly dyke, on which the pyramids stood. And Caleb, who, as the guide, also knew a thing or two, cried:“My lord, two of the pyramids yonder, the largest, belong to the seven wonders of the world! They are a stadium high; and the length of their sides is equal to their height. They are the two tombs of the Pharaohs; but the smaller pyramid, higher up on the hill and, as you see, built entirely of black stone, was the costliest of all.”He trotted on his startled camel around the others and cried:“Master Thrasyllus won’t deny it, learned though he is!”Thrasyllus smiled; and Caleb, glad at being allowed to speak, continued:“That black stone comes from Southern Ethiopia and is heavier than any other stone and incredibly hard! That is why the pyramid cost so much. But then it was erected by all the lovers of Queen Cleopatra; and it is she who is buried there!”“Caleb,” cried Master Thrasyllus, “what you have been telling about the black stone I accept; but Cleopatra, who died in Alexandria, was not buried at Memphis.”“Cleopatra, Cleopatra!” Caleb insisted, vigorously; but he now rushed away on his bewildered camel, because he wanted to warn the priest-custodian of the pyramids that there were great lords approaching.“Caleb is wrong,” said Thrasyllus, as the three camels stepped along sedately, among the gigantic Libyans and shouting Arabs, while Caleb tore fantastically over the sands. “The black pyramid yonder is really not the tomb of Cleopatra. The historians speak of Doricha, an hetaira mentioned by Sappho, the famous poetess, as the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who was a wine-merchant at Lésbos and travelled constantly to Naucratis. This costly black tomb is said to have been dedicated to Doricha, who died young, by her lovers....”The cavalcade had drawn near; the camels, in obedience to the drivers’ orders, knelt down; the travellers slipped to the ground. And Caleb at once came to meet them, smiling, at the head of six priest-custodians, whose business it was to keep up the interior of the pyramids and show the shrines to foreigners.“Do many foreigners come here?” Uncle Catullus asked of the oldest priest.“Not a week passes in this present month,” said the old priest, “but foreigners come to admire the sacred pyramids. You are Latins, but we receive visits also from Greek lords and Persians and Indians. When the Nile has subsided to its lowest gauge, however, when the autumnal winds blow and the sand-storms begin, then no more foreigners come. For then death and destruction blow out of the desert, as the hurricanes of fate which one day will cover Memphis with a sandy shroud. See these few sphinxes, whose heads alone still project above these downs. Once they numbered hundreds; and an avenue stretched between their silence to the Pyramids. But the desert swallowed them up, the hurricanes spread them with dust, the sandy shroudcovered up the wisdom of Neith. One day the shroud will cover up all Egypt and veil all her wisdom. What was known will be known no longer. That will be the punishment of the gods, inflicted upon unworthy man, who will be plunged into a night of ignorance and the bestiality of primitive desire. The centuries will turn about!”The priests in attendance, with a simple pressure of the hand, had caused a heavy monolithic door to turn on its hinges in the largest of the pyramids. They lighted torches and went through the syrinx, a winding tunnel painted with gigantic figures of gods and with hieroglyphics. It was strange, but there was a humming and murmur of voices, though the pyramid was uninhabited. It was as though a swarm of ghosts were whirling around like a gale of wind. The impression was given immediately; and, when the travellers exchanged glances, they saw in one another’s eyes that they were all four thinking the same thing; and Caleb muttered saving incantations and repeatedly kissed his amulets.The priests led the way, while the flames of the torches blew and blew in the mysterious draught, as though ghosts were hoveringaround. The travellers entered an enormous square room; huge statues were sculptured in the stone walls; and, though the room was empty, there was a smell of spices, as if the smells of old had lingered eternally. Two bats fluttered to the ceiling and whirled round in a circle.“This is the king’s chamber of Cheops,” said the old priest. “Once upon a time it contained a sarcophagus of azure granite, with the embalmed body of the great King Cheops, or Khufu; and it was surrounded by the sarcophagi of his brothers. He wore out his people with taxes and heavy labour, in order to found this mausoleum for himself. Where is he now? Where is his embalmed body? Where is his azure sarcophagus? Where are the sarcophagi of his brothers Chefren and Schafra? Where are they? Where are they? They are scattered and vanished as grains of sand, the mummies of the proud rulers, covered with scented wax and tightly swathed in narrow bandages; and scattered and vanished are their sarcophagi; and one day these pyramids themselves will be scattered and vanished, swallowed up in the lap of the earth! Everything vanishes, all is vanity: thywisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!”“Thy wisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!” echoed the priests.“And we no longer possess it!”“Alas, alas, we no longer possess it!” echoed the priests, mechanically, indifferently, while they led the way back through the tunnel; and their words blew away in the strange, mysterious draught, because of the invisible ghosts that hovered.But, when they were outside, the priests kept their torches alight; and they led the travellers to the small, black pyramid. They pushed open the stone door; and the old priest went in first. There was a long tunnel, followed by a room with smooth, black, polished walls, in which the torches and the shadows of the travellers and priests themselves were reflected curiously.“The pyramid of Cleopatra,” whispered Caleb to Thrasyllus.“The pyramid of Doricha,” Thrasyllus corrected him, with a smile.But the old priest shook his head gently and, in a low and fond voice, said:“The pyramid of Rhodopis. She lived at Naucratis and was incomparably beautiful and chaste. One day, when she was bathing,an eagle flew through the open ceiling of the bathroom and plucked from her maid’s hands the sandal which she was just about to lace on her mistress’ foot.”Lucius suddenly turned very pale. But the priest continued:“The eagle flew to Memphis, where the king was administering justice in one of the courts of the palace; and, flying above the king, the eagle dropped the sandal, so that it fell into the folds of the king’s garment. The king was much surprised; and he examined the sandal, which was as small as a child’s and yet was the sandal of a woman. And he bade his servants search all Egypt to find the woman whom so small a sandal would fit. His servants then found Rhodopis at Naucratis and carried her to the king and he married her; and, when she died, after a few months’ happiness, the disconsolate king dedicated to her the black pyramid ... which is the costliest of all the pyramids.... Rhodopis’ scented mummy vanished; her sarcophagus vanished. But the sandal, which the king ever worshipped, was preserved by a miracle. Behold it.”And the priests, with their torches, lighted in the middle of the jet-black room a crystalshrine, standing on a black-porphyry table. And in the crystal shrine lay a little sandal, like a child’s and yet a woman’s, a little red-leather sandal with gold ornaments, arabesques that glittered incredibly fresh.“The sandal kept for tourists,” murmured Uncle Catullus, with a sceptical smile. “We shall pay for it presently, Caleb, just as we did for the little Apis.”“But still it is very pretty, my lord,” whispered Caleb, with a smile.But Lucius was trembling in every limb. And he said to Thrasyllus:“This is an omen. I had never heard of this legend. This sandal, in this shrine!... I would be alone with the priest!”The request of so distinguished a noble could not be gainsaid. The others withdrew, after fixing two torches in sconces. Lucius remained alone with the old priest, by the shrine of Rhodopis’ sandal. And then he produced Ilia’s little sandal from his breast and said:“Wise priest and holy father, you possess wisdom, you assuredly still know the past. I have confidence in you: you shall tell me where the girl Ilia is, whom I have lost; you shall tell me who stole her from me. See,this sandal is the only trace that she left behind her. Tell me the past and I will reward you richly.”The priest took the sandal and pressed it to his head, while his other hand trembled above the crystal shrine:“May the spirit of Rhodopis enlighten me,” said the old priest. “I see Ilia....”“Dead?”“No, alive.”“Alone?”“No, with her kidnapper.”“Do you see her kidnapper?”“Yes.”“Describe him to me!”“Give me your hand, here, above Rhodopis’ sandal.”Lucius stretched out his hand to the priest, above the sandal:“Describe him to me!” he repeated.And in his tortured mind he saw before him the image of one of his own sailors, of whom he had been thinking lately, who at that time used to prowl about the villa at Baiæ: a Cypriote whom he had once caught talking to Ilia in the oleanders; she had never been able to explain what he was doing.There was a pause. The priest’s lean hand trembled violently in Lucius’ firm grasp. And at last the priest said, with his eyes closed and his other hand still pressing Ilia’s sandal to his forehead:“I see him, plainly, plainly! Rhodopis’ spirit is enlightening me! I see the kidnapper! I see Ilia’s kidnapper!”“Is he tall?”“He is tall.”“Broad?”“He has broad shoulders ... and a coarse face; he is of a coarse beauty which women sometimes like, which unworthy women prefer to noble beauty, because they prefer rude passion to love.... Rhodopis’ chaste spirit is over me! I see the kidnapper.”“How is he clad? As a slave?”“No.”“As a freedman?”“No.”“As a freeman?”“Yes.”“As a patrician? A knight?”“No.”“As a soldier?”“No.”“As a sailor?”“No. Yes, he is clad as a sailor, I think, my lord. But I no longer see him,” said the priest, opening his eyes. “And I shall never be able to tell you anything more.”He gave Lucius back the sandal. The other priests returned, took up the torches. Quivering with suppressed rage, Lucius walked out of the black pyramid. Uncle Catullus was already sitting on his camel.Lucius also mounted his. The Cypriote’s image now stood clearly before his eyes. But he said nothing; his lips were tightly shut, his forehead frowned; his grief seemed to be restrained and subdued in his heart by his outraged pride.And, while Caleb paid the lordly fee, as he always did, Lucius slipped into the old priest’s hand a purse heavy with gold.Chapter XVIIIThe short twilight had deepened to purple over the desert; night came gliding along the firmament; the stars began to peep. And Caleb, who suspected Lucius’ emotion at each fresh divination, considered that new impressions would be the best medicine for him. After a short deliberation with Uncle Catullus and Thrasyllus, he said:“My noble lord, before the night has quite fallen, I should like to take you to the great Neith ... for the sake both of the statue itself and of the Jewish prophet, a hermit, who dwells in a cave hard by.”Lucius nodded his approval. And in the falling night he sat erect on the saddle-pad of his camel and raised his head towards the stars. Had he guessed the truth? Had the truth gradually been revealed within him? Or had the sibyl, Amphris, the oracle and the priests whom he had consulted really shown him the way to that truth? He did not know, he had so many vague memories that it all grew confused in his seeking, solvingbrain.... But he certainly was the Cypriote, the sailor, Carus ... who, shortly before Ilia’s disappearance, had himself disappeared from the crew of the quadrireme ... and whom he had once found with Ilia among the oleanders! A thing which she had never been able to explain! Carus! A sailor! Not a slave, it was true, but one of his meanest servants! A Cyprian sailor, to have robbed him of the woman who reigned as queen over his house, whom he dressed like a goddess, whom he covered with everything that was precious! And she must have been kidnapped—it could not be otherwise—with her own consent, her own, infatuated consent.Had he guessed the truth? Had his groping brain at last divined the truth? Or had the priests and the oracles and Amphris and the sibyl indeed revealed the truth to him? He decided that they must have done so. His soul was inclined to accept the supernatural. And he knew, heknew, thanks to the wise knowledge of the priests and the oracles.So she had been able to leave him,him, for his hired sailor! He raised his head towards the stars. His lips were tightlyclenched, his forehead frowned. But never, he resolved, would his lips utter to any one, not even to Thrasyllus, the secret truth which the oracles had revealed to him. He would be silent and his pride would suppress his grief.“Look, my lord,” said Caleb, while Lucius still stared straight before him, up, towards the stars.Lucius lowered his eyes. And suddenly he gave a start. The Sphinx loomed before him in the night. In the immense starry night, with the sands glittering all around like a silver sea, loomed the immense Neith, the omniscient wisdom. It was more gigantic than any sphinx that he had ever seen.It had been shaped by Nature herself out of an immense monolith. Human hands had only reshapen it more plainly for human eyes ... into the Sphinx. It was not the veiled Isis of Sais; it was the unveiled, silent knowledge, which had known everything from the beginning of time. It raised its head towards the stars ... as he had done. It was resting: its lioness-body rested and sank into the sand; its fore-paws projected like walls. Its superhuman breasts seemed to heave in the night. Its fixed eyes staredupwards and its granite veil stood out upon its lioness-body. It was awesomely beautiful in the starry night.The travellers had alighted. And Caleb had fetched the Jewish hermit from the cave in which he lived, opposite the Sphinx.“I believe he’s mad,” said Caleb, timidly, a little alarmed by Lucius’ frown. “But it doesn’t matter if he is mad. He is the Jewish hermit; and all distinguished foreigners, such as your lordship, listen to him ... because he says strange things.”“He too!” muttered Lucius.The Jewish hermit came up to them in the fallen night. He was of giant stature and incredibly old; his beard fell in waves down to his waist. His grey robe trailed over the sand. And he exclaimed, in a loud voice:“I am Tsafnath-Paeneach, ‘he who reveals mysteries!’ I am of the tribe of Joseph himself, who took to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On! In me was the wisdom of Joseph, who interpreted dreams, and the wisdom of the priests of On! But all wisdom is dead in me, Jahve be praised, since I beheldHim!”“Whom?” asked Lucius, dismayed by the prophet’s booming voice.“It was a night of twinkling stars!” cried the prophet. “It was thirty years ago! I lived in my cave, as I do now! And I knew everything and I looked Neith in the face and in the eyes.... Along the road, yonder, through the sands ... they came! They came, they came, they drew near.... On an ass that stumbled with fatigue sat a woman. A greybeard, staff in hand, led the stumbling beast. Then I saw that the woman held, pressed to her breast, in the folds of her mantle, a Child! And the woman was like Heva and like Isis; and the Child was like Habel and like Horus. When they came before the mighty Neith, the ass could stumble no farther through the sands of the desert. And the woman alighted and smiled upon the Child through her tears. But the greybeard led the woman to the mighty Neith and helped her to climb into its deep granite lap. There the woman rested against Neith’s bosom and the Child rested against the woman’s bosom. And then ... then I saw, I, Tsafnath-Paeneach, I who reveal mysteries, that the Child that was like Habel and Horus wasradiant in the night, in the folds of the woman’s mantle! The Child was radiant; a wreath of rays, a halo of light shone about the Child! The mother slept, the radiant Child slept, the greybeard slept ... and the mighty Neith watched over their sleep in the starry night! Then, O Jahve, I knew that I had beheld Thy Son; and this happiness was my last wisdom. Since then I know nothing more, O Jahve, be praised! Since then I have discovered no mysteries! Since then the knowledge of Joseph has died away within me and that of the priests of On! For I have seen Jahve’s Son, there, there, in the lap of Neith ... and since then I have seen nothing but that vision! And I shall die with the vision of the radiant Child before my eyes!”The prophet’s loud, booming voice had risen to a cry of joy; and Caleb repeated to Lucius, in a whisper:“You see, my lord, he’s mad.”But Thrasyllus, on the other side, whispered:“He’s not mad, Lucius.... He is a seer.... He has seen.... He has perhaps seen the new God of Whom all the sibyls speak....”“Which new God?” asked Lucius.“I don’t know His name,” said Thrasyllus.But Uncle Catullus spoke:“My dear nephew, that great monstrous fellow frightens me, here in the dark, in the desert, in front of this awful statue. Egypt gives me too many impressions. I feel like a sponge full of water, so soaked am I with impressions. Egypt will be the death of me, Lucius, you’ll see it will! Meanwhile I propose to mount my camel.”And Uncle Catullus called his guards and drivers and bade them make his camel kneel down for him.But Lucius went to the prophet and drew him aside:“Do you know the past?” he asked, anxiously.“The past?” echoed the Jewish seer, in an uncertain voice; and his eyes were as though blind.“Do you see and can you tell me if that which I think has happened ... is undoubtedly true?”“I no longer see either the past or the future,” said the seer. “I see nothing but the present. And the present for me isnothing but ... the radiant Child yonder!”“Who is He?” asked Lucius.“I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!” cried the seer. “He was like Habel, he was like Horus. But I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!”Thrasyllus approached:“Lucius,” he said, “let us go. The night is falling and the guards have warned us against wild animals and robbers.”“Let Caleb give the prophet a gold piece,” said Lucius.Caleb produced a stater; but the prophet’s laugh of thunder sent him staggering back:“Gold!” cried the prophet, laughing like thunder. “What do I want with dead gold! I have seen living gold; I have seen the Child That was radiant gold as the sun itself, radiant as the burning bush! What do I want with dead gold!”“He’s mad! He’s mad!” cried Caleb. “He doesn’t want gold!”And, terrified, Caleb slipped back the stater—but into another purse, in which he collected his savings—and rushed to his camel, which was already kneeling in the sand.In the light of the stars that twinkled over the sea of sand the travellers rode back to Memphis.
Chapter XVThe travellers had left Sais, after visiting the temple of Athene and the tomb of Psammetichus, son of Necho, founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty, one of the twelve kings of the Dodecarchy, who divided Egypt among themselves after the death of Sethos in B. C. 671. Psammetichus, in obedience to the oracles, defeated and expelled his eleven fellow-kings and reigned alone at Memphis and afterwards at Sais. Here was his tomb; it was sacred; there was an oracle attached to it; and Lucius had consulted that oracle.After that, Lucius had consulted the manteum, or oracle, of Latona at Butos, on an island in the lake. He had next visited Xois, Hermopolis, Lycopolis, Mendes and all the Sebennytic nome, which contained numberless oracles and shrines. At Mendes the god Pan was worshipped; and there was an oracle which spoke by means of the god’s pipes. Here the goat was held sacred and received public worship at the hands of priestesses in Dionysiac frenzy.The travellers next visited Diospolis and Leontopolis, Busiris and Cunopolis and all the Busiritic nome.All these towns, with numbers of villages in between, covered the islands of the flooded Delta, densely peopled and luxuriously cultivated. The great farmsteads and country-mansions stood linked along the canals, which were filled high to their banks with the flowing waters. The ears of corn swelled with ripeness along the shores; and the cattle gleamed and glanced, grazing in the rich meadows. The fat fields were fragrant, in these last days of the summer month of Epiphi, with a strange, moist scent as of nameless flowers ever drenched in dew. The sun was warm, but not burning, as though the moisture of so many waters tempered all the heat; the fierce rays did not burn, as though they were ever drinking the excessive damp. And from the marshes, which the Nile had turned into lakes, rose no mist, but the scent of the water-flowers: lotus, nymphea and nenuphar.The rains seemed to have ended. The maximum gauge in the Nilometers appeared to have been reached; only the morning dew was often heavy, like rain. But the daysglided past in an immaculate glory of sunshine tempered by moisture, while the rich, fragrant country lay stretched under smooth skies, which changed cloudlessly from morning rose to midday blue and evening gold, in a gradual fusing of tints. There was hardly a breeze in the evening; the atmosphere retained an ideal perfection of heavenly, temperate warmth; this summer warmth was fresh and cool.The thalamegus glided up the Nile. The river was as wide as a sea; everywhere, in the noonday sun, the pools of the waters glittered in among the farmsteads, mansions and shrines. On the horizon, the outlines of the towns, with the needles of the obelisks, shimmered in the damp haze. At every moment, dense palm-clusters or sycamores raised their regular canopies along the river, forming an avenue, or else tamarisks luxuriated and their branches threw fine shadows, like blue stripes upon gold.There lay the Athribitic nome and the Prosopitic nome, whose capital is Aphroditopolis. Lucius went on shore with a great retinue. The town, consecrated to Aphrodite, was peopled by none but hierodules, priestsand priestesses of the goddess. Lucius consulted the oracle.Next morning, after the orgy, he was lying under the triple awning of the barge which was gliding still higher up the river. Around him were screens of plaited, transparent reeds, interwoven with flowers. Thrasyllus sat by his side:“Nemu-Pha told me,” said Thrasyllus, “that both Plato and Pythagoras spent years and years on the steps of the temples of Isis before they were deemed worthy of learning one word of the Hermetic wisdom. Well, I never imagined that Nemu-Pha would unlock the Hermetic wisdom to me. But I did hope perhaps to learn a single word with which, continuing to meditate my own thoughts, I could have unlocked the secret, Lucius, of your happiness. But Nemu-Pha did not speak that word to me. And yet, my son, I had to pay him a high price to be admitted to his sanctuary. I am sorry for wasting your money.”Lucius smiled:“Nevertheless, Thrasyllus, the oracles, even though they never satisfy the questioner wholly, say very strange and impressive things. Shall I make you a confession?I certainly hope that I shall one day know who robbed me of Ilia. And, when I know, I shall not rest until I have tortured him and made him die a thousand deaths.”“It was the pirates, Lucius,” said Thrasyllus, evasively, “unless Ilia was drowned.”“It was one pirate, Thrasyllus,” said Lucius. “All the oracles now never speak except of one pirate. And it is for me ... as though I saw him before me! The dog!”The barge was gliding past Latopolis, on the right; on the left, standing farther back from the river, Heliopolis showed faintly. They were nearing Babylon, but the travellers were to go through to Memphis.“Look!” said Thrasyllus, starting up in rapture. “The Pyramids!”Lucius turned, with real interest. There on the horizon, like an enormous, mystic geometry, the triangles of the Pyramids, which announced Memphis, rose against the pink morning sky. They were like eternal lines drawn by the gods from earth to heaven.“The Pyramids!” echoed Lucius, as though overcome by a mystic impression.On the other side, Heliopolis was now more clearly outlined, standing high on a hill, with the temple of the bull Mnevis.Babylon, a suburb of Memphis, swarmed on the river-bank and, with the battlements of its forts; was visible through a sycamore avenue. And suddenly, after a grove of palms, Memphis loomed into view.“Memphis!” cried Thrasyllus.And Uncle Catullus, appearing from his cabin, pointed and repeated:“Memphis!”The old Egyptian capital lay Cyclopean, like some extinct monster, with heavy lines of squat, bleaching sanctuaries and, on the river, a portico of giant pylons. Behind these age-old, massive buildings the Pyramids showed spectrally.Thrasyllus pointed his long, crystal spy-glass towards the horizon:“There!” he said, with a shiver. “The most sacred monument in Egypt! The great Sphinx, the immense Neith, the ever-silent wisdom! Next to the second pyramid: that looming figure of a gigantic, motionless animal!”The barge hove to and was moored. Caleb proposed that they should go on shore.Here, even on the quays, the riotous bustle of agriculture and commerce had ceased to reign. Under the palms there was not themetropolitan press and throng of Alexandria, the world’s market-place and emporium. Only a few fruit-sellers squatted beside their wares and uttered their cries, now that they saw strangers, offering sliced melons and coco-nut milk. Here and there an Egyptian cowered, dreaming, with long, split eyes. The quays were old, grey, wide and deserted. Even the foreigners’ barge roused but little curiosity. A few children at play assembled when the two litters were carried on shore.Caleb found it difficult to hire two camels, for himself and Thrasyllus, but he succeeded. The cavalcade started; Caleb’s armed guards—for an escort was needed here, because of the robbers in the desert—surrounded the litters. And the strangers proceeded along the quays, under the palms, to the city. Caleb rode ahead, for he knew the city and the way.The city was gloomy, huge and empty, but Lucius, ever sensitive to impressions, underwent the enchantment of that past. For Memphis was the eternal past. The town had once numbered six hundred thousand inhabitants. It now haply numbered a few thousands; the rare figures in the wide streets were dwarfed and lost. Sometimesa woman’s face peeped out from the half-opened, vermilion shutters of some great grey, dilapidated house.Ye gods, what dimensions! What lines, what spaciousness of deserted squares, what heaven-high rows of pylons! The Serapeum yonder, at the endless end of an avenue of six hundred sphinxes, six rows of a hundred sphinxes, the ever-silent incarnations of wisdom, the lion-women who were the wisdom of Neith! What colossal statues, hewn out of one block of stone and towering to the sky, with the pschent crowns of their diadems! And everywhere the deathly silence and under the feet of the Libyan bearers the dust of ages, which flew up on high in one dense cloud after another!Caleb rode ahead, by the sphinxes in the avenue. They stood in rows, the wise lionesses with fixed women’s faces, eternal guardians of the secret. Some of them were already sinking in the sandy ground, disappearing with their stretched fore-paws. Others shelved to one side, borne down by the pressure of the centuries. Here the Pharaohs themselves had passed in sacred processions! Here Moses had walked and Hermes Trismegistus; here Joseph had wandered,the interpreter of dreams; here, lastly, Cambyses, with his Persian hordes, had ridden sacrilegiously! This was Memphis, thrice-sacred Memphis, profaned long centuries ago and now dead and sinking in the devouring sands of the desert, which approached from the west, out yonder! The city would be swallowed up by the sands! That past would sink back into the lap of the earth!Suddenly Lucius shuddered with the mystic awe of what has been. And his own life and grief seemed small to him.They approached the sanctuary. It rose as a huge shadow. And from every door swarmed serving-priests of Serapis, minor priests and door-keepers ... because they saw the strangers. They ranged themselves in front of the entrance and stood waiting.Caleb said:“These are distinguished Latin lords, cousins of the divine Cæsar Tiberius, blessed be his name. They wish to see the sacred bull....”“Apis ...” said the oldest priest.“Who is Osiris, in the sacred shape of the bull ...” added other priests.And others again, oracularly:“And who drew the plough through thefields of sacred Egypt when he disguised himself with the other gods, under the forms of animals....”“From the eyes of Jupiter Ammon, who wished to reign alone.”“The same,” said Caleb, flinging himself from his camel.The priests arranged themselves in processional order while the travellers alighted and Thrasyllus also slid from his camel. And they sang the Hymn of Apis, as they were wont to do when visitors came. For in the huge dead city of Memphis, inhabited by hardly a few thousands, who were dwarfed and lost in the spaces of the ancient, mystic capital of ancient, mystic Egypt, in truth the worship of Apis was still maintained only because all the travellers came to see the sacred bull. The fees which the travellers paid to the priests formed the principal revenue of their brotherhood. The temple was falling in ruins; the enormous pylons seemed to totter, the gigantic architraves leaned forward; the giant statues were bruised by the rains and eaten away, as though the centuries themselves had mutilated them; the sphinxes were sinking into the sand. But still the worship of the bull Apis was maintained,because of the strangers and their fees.A young priest who spoke a little Latin was allotted to the travellers and took his place by Lucius’ side, respectfully:“It is a pity,” he said, smiling cheerfully, “that Serapis did not bring you to Memphis a month earlier. For then, my noble lord, you would have beheld the death of Apis and his return to life.”“What is this, then?” asked Lucius.“The incarnation of the god in the sacred bull lasts a quarter of a century,” the young, pleasant, smiling priest explained. “After being incarnated in the bull for five-and-twenty years, the god disappears out of the bull and the bull is marked down for death. The priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord, that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a new-born bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great that the country is plunged into mourning andthe disaster foretells universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom delays the new incarnation. This time, after Apis’ obsequies, we were able at once to celebrate his blessed advent.”“And where was Apis found?” asked Lucius.“On the farm belonging to my father, who is a land-owner,” replied the pleasant young priest, smiling mischievously. “I am a land-owner’s son; and, when Apis was born in our stables, my father dedicated me to Osiris, that I might take care of the god. I came here with him; I have been here hardly a month; I came with him.”And he smiled, glad, young and happy; his fresh, young cheeks were still bronzed with the sun and his arms and hands were sturdy as those of a young peasant and shepherd.The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot of grass surrounded by columns.“My lords,” said the pleasant-looking priest, “this is the secos of the mother of Apis and we are going to show her to you.”“So she also comes from your father’s farm?” asked Uncle Catullus.“Most certainly, my lord,” replied the priest, roguishly.“That of course goes without saying,” commented Uncle Catullus.The young priest opened the gate of the secos. At the far end was the sacred stall, like the wide interior of a temple. The priest, vanished in the shadow.And, when he reappeared, he was leading, merely by pressing his hand against her snow-white flank, a handsome, sleek cow.He led her to the strangers. She shone, well-tended and well-fed. She had placid eyes of bluish gold, beautiful, large, soft and womanly, the eyes of Hera herself. Her horns were gilded and her hoofs were painted red.The pleasant-looking priest led her to the strangers and was glad and happy because Apis’ mother was so comely:“Is she not handsome?” he asked proudly.The strangers smiled and agreed that she was very handsome; and the priest, with respectful familiarity, stroked her snow-white flank and pointed out that she had one black foot. Then he kissed her, fondly and reverently, on her moist muzzle and led her back, with the pressure of his hand, to the templethat was her stall. She went, solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed only because of the strangers and their fee.The priest, still smiling, returned; and the other priests sang their hymn.And, by the priest’s pleasant manner, Lucius seemed to observe that he ought to pay. He beckoned to Caleb; and there were mutual, smiling, roguish negotiations between Caleb and the priest. For Caleb always tried to pay the fees which he distributed on Lucius’ behalf a little less liberally than he set them down on the long papyrus scroll of his bill; and he generally succeeded.But the priest was not only roguish, but very crafty and polite; and the transaction, conducted in mysterious and jocular whispers, lasted a long time ... until Lucius said, impatiently, but still smiling:“And may we now see Apis himself?”So Caleb paid, grudgingly. But the priest remained pleasant and the other priests sang while conducting the strangers to Apis’ own secos.This sanctuary was even bigger and more impressive than that of the white bull-mother. There was a square in front of it,with obelisks; and the pleasant-looking priest entered between two sphinxes. But the pillars, the obelisks, the sphinxes seemed to totter, to slant, to burst with old age.The priests sang the hymn; and suddenly, like a whirlwind, a young bull came trotting out of the stable over the grass-plot. It was Apis; and the priests lifted their hands in adoration as they sang.But, if his mother was stately and aware of her dignity, Apis himself carried his divinity with the recklessness of his hot youth. He ran across the lawn, glad to have escaped from his stable; and the pleasant priest, laughing, ran after him. But he could not catch him by his gold collar; and, panting for breath, the little priest said, proudly:“Isn’t he beautiful and playful? Isn’t he most delightful, our Apis?”He was beautiful and playful and most delightful, the visitors granted. He was a splendid bull-calf. His coat gleamed black as jet; and he was painted in accordance with the sacred prescript without which there is no incarnation: a white moon, like a snowy little crown, shone like a sickle between his gilded horns; and two other little white crowns adorned him on either side above the forelegs.His eyes blazed as might carbuncles with a light kindled behind them; and he stared from under his curly forehead with an almost human glance. His neck already fell into powerful, heavy folds; his chest was broad; and he lashed his tail like a whip. His hoofs were vermilion. And he trotted round his grass-plot and pushed out the sods with his horns and scratched with his red hoofs. The pleasant-looking priest now went up to him, laughing, and took him, respectfully and yet firmly, by the gold collar and talked to him and laughed; and Apis shook himself; and the priest laughed; and now all the priests began to laugh and the strangers laughed and Caleb roared and Uncle Catullus held his sides. Even Lucius had to laugh and Thrasyllus too; they all laughed at Apis, because he was such a delightful, pretty, playful bull-calf, just like a merry boy, with his human eyes which looked at you naughtily and watchfully and archly ... until all of a sudden he tore himself loose from his little priest and ran, ran like a whirlwind, till the clods of earth flew all around.“Heisso pretty and playful!” said the little priest, glad and happy as a boy, when he came back panting, after locking up thelittle bull again in the sanctuary. “But he is wild, he is very wild: as a rule, we only show him through the windows of his secos; but, when such very distinguished strangers come to look at him, we let him out for a trot, now and again. Yes, then he may come for a trot, once in a way!... And he himself thinks it great fun, to come for a trot, now and then, in the presence of strangers.”Then the pleasant-looking little priest went up to Caleb, who was still laughing aloud because Apis was such a very delightful little bull. And there was a long and protracted discussion, mysterious, jocular and yet weighty. For Caleb was taken aback; but then the little priest knew what it cost to make Apis trot about so prettily for such very distinguished strangers.
Chapter XV
The travellers had left Sais, after visiting the temple of Athene and the tomb of Psammetichus, son of Necho, founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty, one of the twelve kings of the Dodecarchy, who divided Egypt among themselves after the death of Sethos in B. C. 671. Psammetichus, in obedience to the oracles, defeated and expelled his eleven fellow-kings and reigned alone at Memphis and afterwards at Sais. Here was his tomb; it was sacred; there was an oracle attached to it; and Lucius had consulted that oracle.After that, Lucius had consulted the manteum, or oracle, of Latona at Butos, on an island in the lake. He had next visited Xois, Hermopolis, Lycopolis, Mendes and all the Sebennytic nome, which contained numberless oracles and shrines. At Mendes the god Pan was worshipped; and there was an oracle which spoke by means of the god’s pipes. Here the goat was held sacred and received public worship at the hands of priestesses in Dionysiac frenzy.The travellers next visited Diospolis and Leontopolis, Busiris and Cunopolis and all the Busiritic nome.All these towns, with numbers of villages in between, covered the islands of the flooded Delta, densely peopled and luxuriously cultivated. The great farmsteads and country-mansions stood linked along the canals, which were filled high to their banks with the flowing waters. The ears of corn swelled with ripeness along the shores; and the cattle gleamed and glanced, grazing in the rich meadows. The fat fields were fragrant, in these last days of the summer month of Epiphi, with a strange, moist scent as of nameless flowers ever drenched in dew. The sun was warm, but not burning, as though the moisture of so many waters tempered all the heat; the fierce rays did not burn, as though they were ever drinking the excessive damp. And from the marshes, which the Nile had turned into lakes, rose no mist, but the scent of the water-flowers: lotus, nymphea and nenuphar.The rains seemed to have ended. The maximum gauge in the Nilometers appeared to have been reached; only the morning dew was often heavy, like rain. But the daysglided past in an immaculate glory of sunshine tempered by moisture, while the rich, fragrant country lay stretched under smooth skies, which changed cloudlessly from morning rose to midday blue and evening gold, in a gradual fusing of tints. There was hardly a breeze in the evening; the atmosphere retained an ideal perfection of heavenly, temperate warmth; this summer warmth was fresh and cool.The thalamegus glided up the Nile. The river was as wide as a sea; everywhere, in the noonday sun, the pools of the waters glittered in among the farmsteads, mansions and shrines. On the horizon, the outlines of the towns, with the needles of the obelisks, shimmered in the damp haze. At every moment, dense palm-clusters or sycamores raised their regular canopies along the river, forming an avenue, or else tamarisks luxuriated and their branches threw fine shadows, like blue stripes upon gold.There lay the Athribitic nome and the Prosopitic nome, whose capital is Aphroditopolis. Lucius went on shore with a great retinue. The town, consecrated to Aphrodite, was peopled by none but hierodules, priestsand priestesses of the goddess. Lucius consulted the oracle.Next morning, after the orgy, he was lying under the triple awning of the barge which was gliding still higher up the river. Around him were screens of plaited, transparent reeds, interwoven with flowers. Thrasyllus sat by his side:“Nemu-Pha told me,” said Thrasyllus, “that both Plato and Pythagoras spent years and years on the steps of the temples of Isis before they were deemed worthy of learning one word of the Hermetic wisdom. Well, I never imagined that Nemu-Pha would unlock the Hermetic wisdom to me. But I did hope perhaps to learn a single word with which, continuing to meditate my own thoughts, I could have unlocked the secret, Lucius, of your happiness. But Nemu-Pha did not speak that word to me. And yet, my son, I had to pay him a high price to be admitted to his sanctuary. I am sorry for wasting your money.”Lucius smiled:“Nevertheless, Thrasyllus, the oracles, even though they never satisfy the questioner wholly, say very strange and impressive things. Shall I make you a confession?I certainly hope that I shall one day know who robbed me of Ilia. And, when I know, I shall not rest until I have tortured him and made him die a thousand deaths.”“It was the pirates, Lucius,” said Thrasyllus, evasively, “unless Ilia was drowned.”“It was one pirate, Thrasyllus,” said Lucius. “All the oracles now never speak except of one pirate. And it is for me ... as though I saw him before me! The dog!”The barge was gliding past Latopolis, on the right; on the left, standing farther back from the river, Heliopolis showed faintly. They were nearing Babylon, but the travellers were to go through to Memphis.“Look!” said Thrasyllus, starting up in rapture. “The Pyramids!”Lucius turned, with real interest. There on the horizon, like an enormous, mystic geometry, the triangles of the Pyramids, which announced Memphis, rose against the pink morning sky. They were like eternal lines drawn by the gods from earth to heaven.“The Pyramids!” echoed Lucius, as though overcome by a mystic impression.On the other side, Heliopolis was now more clearly outlined, standing high on a hill, with the temple of the bull Mnevis.Babylon, a suburb of Memphis, swarmed on the river-bank and, with the battlements of its forts; was visible through a sycamore avenue. And suddenly, after a grove of palms, Memphis loomed into view.“Memphis!” cried Thrasyllus.And Uncle Catullus, appearing from his cabin, pointed and repeated:“Memphis!”The old Egyptian capital lay Cyclopean, like some extinct monster, with heavy lines of squat, bleaching sanctuaries and, on the river, a portico of giant pylons. Behind these age-old, massive buildings the Pyramids showed spectrally.Thrasyllus pointed his long, crystal spy-glass towards the horizon:“There!” he said, with a shiver. “The most sacred monument in Egypt! The great Sphinx, the immense Neith, the ever-silent wisdom! Next to the second pyramid: that looming figure of a gigantic, motionless animal!”The barge hove to and was moored. Caleb proposed that they should go on shore.Here, even on the quays, the riotous bustle of agriculture and commerce had ceased to reign. Under the palms there was not themetropolitan press and throng of Alexandria, the world’s market-place and emporium. Only a few fruit-sellers squatted beside their wares and uttered their cries, now that they saw strangers, offering sliced melons and coco-nut milk. Here and there an Egyptian cowered, dreaming, with long, split eyes. The quays were old, grey, wide and deserted. Even the foreigners’ barge roused but little curiosity. A few children at play assembled when the two litters were carried on shore.Caleb found it difficult to hire two camels, for himself and Thrasyllus, but he succeeded. The cavalcade started; Caleb’s armed guards—for an escort was needed here, because of the robbers in the desert—surrounded the litters. And the strangers proceeded along the quays, under the palms, to the city. Caleb rode ahead, for he knew the city and the way.The city was gloomy, huge and empty, but Lucius, ever sensitive to impressions, underwent the enchantment of that past. For Memphis was the eternal past. The town had once numbered six hundred thousand inhabitants. It now haply numbered a few thousands; the rare figures in the wide streets were dwarfed and lost. Sometimesa woman’s face peeped out from the half-opened, vermilion shutters of some great grey, dilapidated house.Ye gods, what dimensions! What lines, what spaciousness of deserted squares, what heaven-high rows of pylons! The Serapeum yonder, at the endless end of an avenue of six hundred sphinxes, six rows of a hundred sphinxes, the ever-silent incarnations of wisdom, the lion-women who were the wisdom of Neith! What colossal statues, hewn out of one block of stone and towering to the sky, with the pschent crowns of their diadems! And everywhere the deathly silence and under the feet of the Libyan bearers the dust of ages, which flew up on high in one dense cloud after another!Caleb rode ahead, by the sphinxes in the avenue. They stood in rows, the wise lionesses with fixed women’s faces, eternal guardians of the secret. Some of them were already sinking in the sandy ground, disappearing with their stretched fore-paws. Others shelved to one side, borne down by the pressure of the centuries. Here the Pharaohs themselves had passed in sacred processions! Here Moses had walked and Hermes Trismegistus; here Joseph had wandered,the interpreter of dreams; here, lastly, Cambyses, with his Persian hordes, had ridden sacrilegiously! This was Memphis, thrice-sacred Memphis, profaned long centuries ago and now dead and sinking in the devouring sands of the desert, which approached from the west, out yonder! The city would be swallowed up by the sands! That past would sink back into the lap of the earth!Suddenly Lucius shuddered with the mystic awe of what has been. And his own life and grief seemed small to him.They approached the sanctuary. It rose as a huge shadow. And from every door swarmed serving-priests of Serapis, minor priests and door-keepers ... because they saw the strangers. They ranged themselves in front of the entrance and stood waiting.Caleb said:“These are distinguished Latin lords, cousins of the divine Cæsar Tiberius, blessed be his name. They wish to see the sacred bull....”“Apis ...” said the oldest priest.“Who is Osiris, in the sacred shape of the bull ...” added other priests.And others again, oracularly:“And who drew the plough through thefields of sacred Egypt when he disguised himself with the other gods, under the forms of animals....”“From the eyes of Jupiter Ammon, who wished to reign alone.”“The same,” said Caleb, flinging himself from his camel.The priests arranged themselves in processional order while the travellers alighted and Thrasyllus also slid from his camel. And they sang the Hymn of Apis, as they were wont to do when visitors came. For in the huge dead city of Memphis, inhabited by hardly a few thousands, who were dwarfed and lost in the spaces of the ancient, mystic capital of ancient, mystic Egypt, in truth the worship of Apis was still maintained only because all the travellers came to see the sacred bull. The fees which the travellers paid to the priests formed the principal revenue of their brotherhood. The temple was falling in ruins; the enormous pylons seemed to totter, the gigantic architraves leaned forward; the giant statues were bruised by the rains and eaten away, as though the centuries themselves had mutilated them; the sphinxes were sinking into the sand. But still the worship of the bull Apis was maintained,because of the strangers and their fees.A young priest who spoke a little Latin was allotted to the travellers and took his place by Lucius’ side, respectfully:“It is a pity,” he said, smiling cheerfully, “that Serapis did not bring you to Memphis a month earlier. For then, my noble lord, you would have beheld the death of Apis and his return to life.”“What is this, then?” asked Lucius.“The incarnation of the god in the sacred bull lasts a quarter of a century,” the young, pleasant, smiling priest explained. “After being incarnated in the bull for five-and-twenty years, the god disappears out of the bull and the bull is marked down for death. The priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord, that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a new-born bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great that the country is plunged into mourning andthe disaster foretells universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom delays the new incarnation. This time, after Apis’ obsequies, we were able at once to celebrate his blessed advent.”“And where was Apis found?” asked Lucius.“On the farm belonging to my father, who is a land-owner,” replied the pleasant young priest, smiling mischievously. “I am a land-owner’s son; and, when Apis was born in our stables, my father dedicated me to Osiris, that I might take care of the god. I came here with him; I have been here hardly a month; I came with him.”And he smiled, glad, young and happy; his fresh, young cheeks were still bronzed with the sun and his arms and hands were sturdy as those of a young peasant and shepherd.The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot of grass surrounded by columns.“My lords,” said the pleasant-looking priest, “this is the secos of the mother of Apis and we are going to show her to you.”“So she also comes from your father’s farm?” asked Uncle Catullus.“Most certainly, my lord,” replied the priest, roguishly.“That of course goes without saying,” commented Uncle Catullus.The young priest opened the gate of the secos. At the far end was the sacred stall, like the wide interior of a temple. The priest, vanished in the shadow.And, when he reappeared, he was leading, merely by pressing his hand against her snow-white flank, a handsome, sleek cow.He led her to the strangers. She shone, well-tended and well-fed. She had placid eyes of bluish gold, beautiful, large, soft and womanly, the eyes of Hera herself. Her horns were gilded and her hoofs were painted red.The pleasant-looking priest led her to the strangers and was glad and happy because Apis’ mother was so comely:“Is she not handsome?” he asked proudly.The strangers smiled and agreed that she was very handsome; and the priest, with respectful familiarity, stroked her snow-white flank and pointed out that she had one black foot. Then he kissed her, fondly and reverently, on her moist muzzle and led her back, with the pressure of his hand, to the templethat was her stall. She went, solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed only because of the strangers and their fee.The priest, still smiling, returned; and the other priests sang their hymn.And, by the priest’s pleasant manner, Lucius seemed to observe that he ought to pay. He beckoned to Caleb; and there were mutual, smiling, roguish negotiations between Caleb and the priest. For Caleb always tried to pay the fees which he distributed on Lucius’ behalf a little less liberally than he set them down on the long papyrus scroll of his bill; and he generally succeeded.But the priest was not only roguish, but very crafty and polite; and the transaction, conducted in mysterious and jocular whispers, lasted a long time ... until Lucius said, impatiently, but still smiling:“And may we now see Apis himself?”So Caleb paid, grudgingly. But the priest remained pleasant and the other priests sang while conducting the strangers to Apis’ own secos.This sanctuary was even bigger and more impressive than that of the white bull-mother. There was a square in front of it,with obelisks; and the pleasant-looking priest entered between two sphinxes. But the pillars, the obelisks, the sphinxes seemed to totter, to slant, to burst with old age.The priests sang the hymn; and suddenly, like a whirlwind, a young bull came trotting out of the stable over the grass-plot. It was Apis; and the priests lifted their hands in adoration as they sang.But, if his mother was stately and aware of her dignity, Apis himself carried his divinity with the recklessness of his hot youth. He ran across the lawn, glad to have escaped from his stable; and the pleasant priest, laughing, ran after him. But he could not catch him by his gold collar; and, panting for breath, the little priest said, proudly:“Isn’t he beautiful and playful? Isn’t he most delightful, our Apis?”He was beautiful and playful and most delightful, the visitors granted. He was a splendid bull-calf. His coat gleamed black as jet; and he was painted in accordance with the sacred prescript without which there is no incarnation: a white moon, like a snowy little crown, shone like a sickle between his gilded horns; and two other little white crowns adorned him on either side above the forelegs.His eyes blazed as might carbuncles with a light kindled behind them; and he stared from under his curly forehead with an almost human glance. His neck already fell into powerful, heavy folds; his chest was broad; and he lashed his tail like a whip. His hoofs were vermilion. And he trotted round his grass-plot and pushed out the sods with his horns and scratched with his red hoofs. The pleasant-looking priest now went up to him, laughing, and took him, respectfully and yet firmly, by the gold collar and talked to him and laughed; and Apis shook himself; and the priest laughed; and now all the priests began to laugh and the strangers laughed and Caleb roared and Uncle Catullus held his sides. Even Lucius had to laugh and Thrasyllus too; they all laughed at Apis, because he was such a delightful, pretty, playful bull-calf, just like a merry boy, with his human eyes which looked at you naughtily and watchfully and archly ... until all of a sudden he tore himself loose from his little priest and ran, ran like a whirlwind, till the clods of earth flew all around.“Heisso pretty and playful!” said the little priest, glad and happy as a boy, when he came back panting, after locking up thelittle bull again in the sanctuary. “But he is wild, he is very wild: as a rule, we only show him through the windows of his secos; but, when such very distinguished strangers come to look at him, we let him out for a trot, now and again. Yes, then he may come for a trot, once in a way!... And he himself thinks it great fun, to come for a trot, now and then, in the presence of strangers.”Then the pleasant-looking little priest went up to Caleb, who was still laughing aloud because Apis was such a very delightful little bull. And there was a long and protracted discussion, mysterious, jocular and yet weighty. For Caleb was taken aback; but then the little priest knew what it cost to make Apis trot about so prettily for such very distinguished strangers.
The travellers had left Sais, after visiting the temple of Athene and the tomb of Psammetichus, son of Necho, founder of the twenty-sixth dynasty, one of the twelve kings of the Dodecarchy, who divided Egypt among themselves after the death of Sethos in B. C. 671. Psammetichus, in obedience to the oracles, defeated and expelled his eleven fellow-kings and reigned alone at Memphis and afterwards at Sais. Here was his tomb; it was sacred; there was an oracle attached to it; and Lucius had consulted that oracle.
After that, Lucius had consulted the manteum, or oracle, of Latona at Butos, on an island in the lake. He had next visited Xois, Hermopolis, Lycopolis, Mendes and all the Sebennytic nome, which contained numberless oracles and shrines. At Mendes the god Pan was worshipped; and there was an oracle which spoke by means of the god’s pipes. Here the goat was held sacred and received public worship at the hands of priestesses in Dionysiac frenzy.The travellers next visited Diospolis and Leontopolis, Busiris and Cunopolis and all the Busiritic nome.
All these towns, with numbers of villages in between, covered the islands of the flooded Delta, densely peopled and luxuriously cultivated. The great farmsteads and country-mansions stood linked along the canals, which were filled high to their banks with the flowing waters. The ears of corn swelled with ripeness along the shores; and the cattle gleamed and glanced, grazing in the rich meadows. The fat fields were fragrant, in these last days of the summer month of Epiphi, with a strange, moist scent as of nameless flowers ever drenched in dew. The sun was warm, but not burning, as though the moisture of so many waters tempered all the heat; the fierce rays did not burn, as though they were ever drinking the excessive damp. And from the marshes, which the Nile had turned into lakes, rose no mist, but the scent of the water-flowers: lotus, nymphea and nenuphar.
The rains seemed to have ended. The maximum gauge in the Nilometers appeared to have been reached; only the morning dew was often heavy, like rain. But the daysglided past in an immaculate glory of sunshine tempered by moisture, while the rich, fragrant country lay stretched under smooth skies, which changed cloudlessly from morning rose to midday blue and evening gold, in a gradual fusing of tints. There was hardly a breeze in the evening; the atmosphere retained an ideal perfection of heavenly, temperate warmth; this summer warmth was fresh and cool.
The thalamegus glided up the Nile. The river was as wide as a sea; everywhere, in the noonday sun, the pools of the waters glittered in among the farmsteads, mansions and shrines. On the horizon, the outlines of the towns, with the needles of the obelisks, shimmered in the damp haze. At every moment, dense palm-clusters or sycamores raised their regular canopies along the river, forming an avenue, or else tamarisks luxuriated and their branches threw fine shadows, like blue stripes upon gold.
There lay the Athribitic nome and the Prosopitic nome, whose capital is Aphroditopolis. Lucius went on shore with a great retinue. The town, consecrated to Aphrodite, was peopled by none but hierodules, priestsand priestesses of the goddess. Lucius consulted the oracle.
Next morning, after the orgy, he was lying under the triple awning of the barge which was gliding still higher up the river. Around him were screens of plaited, transparent reeds, interwoven with flowers. Thrasyllus sat by his side:
“Nemu-Pha told me,” said Thrasyllus, “that both Plato and Pythagoras spent years and years on the steps of the temples of Isis before they were deemed worthy of learning one word of the Hermetic wisdom. Well, I never imagined that Nemu-Pha would unlock the Hermetic wisdom to me. But I did hope perhaps to learn a single word with which, continuing to meditate my own thoughts, I could have unlocked the secret, Lucius, of your happiness. But Nemu-Pha did not speak that word to me. And yet, my son, I had to pay him a high price to be admitted to his sanctuary. I am sorry for wasting your money.”
Lucius smiled:
“Nevertheless, Thrasyllus, the oracles, even though they never satisfy the questioner wholly, say very strange and impressive things. Shall I make you a confession?I certainly hope that I shall one day know who robbed me of Ilia. And, when I know, I shall not rest until I have tortured him and made him die a thousand deaths.”
“It was the pirates, Lucius,” said Thrasyllus, evasively, “unless Ilia was drowned.”
“It was one pirate, Thrasyllus,” said Lucius. “All the oracles now never speak except of one pirate. And it is for me ... as though I saw him before me! The dog!”
The barge was gliding past Latopolis, on the right; on the left, standing farther back from the river, Heliopolis showed faintly. They were nearing Babylon, but the travellers were to go through to Memphis.
“Look!” said Thrasyllus, starting up in rapture. “The Pyramids!”
Lucius turned, with real interest. There on the horizon, like an enormous, mystic geometry, the triangles of the Pyramids, which announced Memphis, rose against the pink morning sky. They were like eternal lines drawn by the gods from earth to heaven.
“The Pyramids!” echoed Lucius, as though overcome by a mystic impression.
On the other side, Heliopolis was now more clearly outlined, standing high on a hill, with the temple of the bull Mnevis.Babylon, a suburb of Memphis, swarmed on the river-bank and, with the battlements of its forts; was visible through a sycamore avenue. And suddenly, after a grove of palms, Memphis loomed into view.
“Memphis!” cried Thrasyllus.
And Uncle Catullus, appearing from his cabin, pointed and repeated:
“Memphis!”
The old Egyptian capital lay Cyclopean, like some extinct monster, with heavy lines of squat, bleaching sanctuaries and, on the river, a portico of giant pylons. Behind these age-old, massive buildings the Pyramids showed spectrally.
Thrasyllus pointed his long, crystal spy-glass towards the horizon:
“There!” he said, with a shiver. “The most sacred monument in Egypt! The great Sphinx, the immense Neith, the ever-silent wisdom! Next to the second pyramid: that looming figure of a gigantic, motionless animal!”
The barge hove to and was moored. Caleb proposed that they should go on shore.
Here, even on the quays, the riotous bustle of agriculture and commerce had ceased to reign. Under the palms there was not themetropolitan press and throng of Alexandria, the world’s market-place and emporium. Only a few fruit-sellers squatted beside their wares and uttered their cries, now that they saw strangers, offering sliced melons and coco-nut milk. Here and there an Egyptian cowered, dreaming, with long, split eyes. The quays were old, grey, wide and deserted. Even the foreigners’ barge roused but little curiosity. A few children at play assembled when the two litters were carried on shore.
Caleb found it difficult to hire two camels, for himself and Thrasyllus, but he succeeded. The cavalcade started; Caleb’s armed guards—for an escort was needed here, because of the robbers in the desert—surrounded the litters. And the strangers proceeded along the quays, under the palms, to the city. Caleb rode ahead, for he knew the city and the way.
The city was gloomy, huge and empty, but Lucius, ever sensitive to impressions, underwent the enchantment of that past. For Memphis was the eternal past. The town had once numbered six hundred thousand inhabitants. It now haply numbered a few thousands; the rare figures in the wide streets were dwarfed and lost. Sometimesa woman’s face peeped out from the half-opened, vermilion shutters of some great grey, dilapidated house.
Ye gods, what dimensions! What lines, what spaciousness of deserted squares, what heaven-high rows of pylons! The Serapeum yonder, at the endless end of an avenue of six hundred sphinxes, six rows of a hundred sphinxes, the ever-silent incarnations of wisdom, the lion-women who were the wisdom of Neith! What colossal statues, hewn out of one block of stone and towering to the sky, with the pschent crowns of their diadems! And everywhere the deathly silence and under the feet of the Libyan bearers the dust of ages, which flew up on high in one dense cloud after another!
Caleb rode ahead, by the sphinxes in the avenue. They stood in rows, the wise lionesses with fixed women’s faces, eternal guardians of the secret. Some of them were already sinking in the sandy ground, disappearing with their stretched fore-paws. Others shelved to one side, borne down by the pressure of the centuries. Here the Pharaohs themselves had passed in sacred processions! Here Moses had walked and Hermes Trismegistus; here Joseph had wandered,the interpreter of dreams; here, lastly, Cambyses, with his Persian hordes, had ridden sacrilegiously! This was Memphis, thrice-sacred Memphis, profaned long centuries ago and now dead and sinking in the devouring sands of the desert, which approached from the west, out yonder! The city would be swallowed up by the sands! That past would sink back into the lap of the earth!
Suddenly Lucius shuddered with the mystic awe of what has been. And his own life and grief seemed small to him.
They approached the sanctuary. It rose as a huge shadow. And from every door swarmed serving-priests of Serapis, minor priests and door-keepers ... because they saw the strangers. They ranged themselves in front of the entrance and stood waiting.
Caleb said:
“These are distinguished Latin lords, cousins of the divine Cæsar Tiberius, blessed be his name. They wish to see the sacred bull....”
“Apis ...” said the oldest priest.
“Who is Osiris, in the sacred shape of the bull ...” added other priests.
And others again, oracularly:
“And who drew the plough through thefields of sacred Egypt when he disguised himself with the other gods, under the forms of animals....”
“From the eyes of Jupiter Ammon, who wished to reign alone.”
“The same,” said Caleb, flinging himself from his camel.
The priests arranged themselves in processional order while the travellers alighted and Thrasyllus also slid from his camel. And they sang the Hymn of Apis, as they were wont to do when visitors came. For in the huge dead city of Memphis, inhabited by hardly a few thousands, who were dwarfed and lost in the spaces of the ancient, mystic capital of ancient, mystic Egypt, in truth the worship of Apis was still maintained only because all the travellers came to see the sacred bull. The fees which the travellers paid to the priests formed the principal revenue of their brotherhood. The temple was falling in ruins; the enormous pylons seemed to totter, the gigantic architraves leaned forward; the giant statues were bruised by the rains and eaten away, as though the centuries themselves had mutilated them; the sphinxes were sinking into the sand. But still the worship of the bull Apis was maintained,because of the strangers and their fees.
A young priest who spoke a little Latin was allotted to the travellers and took his place by Lucius’ side, respectfully:
“It is a pity,” he said, smiling cheerfully, “that Serapis did not bring you to Memphis a month earlier. For then, my noble lord, you would have beheld the death of Apis and his return to life.”
“What is this, then?” asked Lucius.
“The incarnation of the god in the sacred bull lasts a quarter of a century,” the young, pleasant, smiling priest explained. “After being incarnated in the bull for five-and-twenty years, the god disappears out of the bull and the bull is marked down for death. The priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord, that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a new-born bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great that the country is plunged into mourning andthe disaster foretells universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom delays the new incarnation. This time, after Apis’ obsequies, we were able at once to celebrate his blessed advent.”
“And where was Apis found?” asked Lucius.
“On the farm belonging to my father, who is a land-owner,” replied the pleasant young priest, smiling mischievously. “I am a land-owner’s son; and, when Apis was born in our stables, my father dedicated me to Osiris, that I might take care of the god. I came here with him; I have been here hardly a month; I came with him.”
And he smiled, glad, young and happy; his fresh, young cheeks were still bronzed with the sun and his arms and hands were sturdy as those of a young peasant and shepherd.
The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot of grass surrounded by columns.
“My lords,” said the pleasant-looking priest, “this is the secos of the mother of Apis and we are going to show her to you.”
“So she also comes from your father’s farm?” asked Uncle Catullus.
“Most certainly, my lord,” replied the priest, roguishly.
“That of course goes without saying,” commented Uncle Catullus.
The young priest opened the gate of the secos. At the far end was the sacred stall, like the wide interior of a temple. The priest, vanished in the shadow.
And, when he reappeared, he was leading, merely by pressing his hand against her snow-white flank, a handsome, sleek cow.
He led her to the strangers. She shone, well-tended and well-fed. She had placid eyes of bluish gold, beautiful, large, soft and womanly, the eyes of Hera herself. Her horns were gilded and her hoofs were painted red.
The pleasant-looking priest led her to the strangers and was glad and happy because Apis’ mother was so comely:
“Is she not handsome?” he asked proudly.
The strangers smiled and agreed that she was very handsome; and the priest, with respectful familiarity, stroked her snow-white flank and pointed out that she had one black foot. Then he kissed her, fondly and reverently, on her moist muzzle and led her back, with the pressure of his hand, to the templethat was her stall. She went, solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed only because of the strangers and their fee.
The priest, still smiling, returned; and the other priests sang their hymn.
And, by the priest’s pleasant manner, Lucius seemed to observe that he ought to pay. He beckoned to Caleb; and there were mutual, smiling, roguish negotiations between Caleb and the priest. For Caleb always tried to pay the fees which he distributed on Lucius’ behalf a little less liberally than he set them down on the long papyrus scroll of his bill; and he generally succeeded.
But the priest was not only roguish, but very crafty and polite; and the transaction, conducted in mysterious and jocular whispers, lasted a long time ... until Lucius said, impatiently, but still smiling:
“And may we now see Apis himself?”
So Caleb paid, grudgingly. But the priest remained pleasant and the other priests sang while conducting the strangers to Apis’ own secos.
This sanctuary was even bigger and more impressive than that of the white bull-mother. There was a square in front of it,with obelisks; and the pleasant-looking priest entered between two sphinxes. But the pillars, the obelisks, the sphinxes seemed to totter, to slant, to burst with old age.
The priests sang the hymn; and suddenly, like a whirlwind, a young bull came trotting out of the stable over the grass-plot. It was Apis; and the priests lifted their hands in adoration as they sang.
But, if his mother was stately and aware of her dignity, Apis himself carried his divinity with the recklessness of his hot youth. He ran across the lawn, glad to have escaped from his stable; and the pleasant priest, laughing, ran after him. But he could not catch him by his gold collar; and, panting for breath, the little priest said, proudly:
“Isn’t he beautiful and playful? Isn’t he most delightful, our Apis?”
He was beautiful and playful and most delightful, the visitors granted. He was a splendid bull-calf. His coat gleamed black as jet; and he was painted in accordance with the sacred prescript without which there is no incarnation: a white moon, like a snowy little crown, shone like a sickle between his gilded horns; and two other little white crowns adorned him on either side above the forelegs.His eyes blazed as might carbuncles with a light kindled behind them; and he stared from under his curly forehead with an almost human glance. His neck already fell into powerful, heavy folds; his chest was broad; and he lashed his tail like a whip. His hoofs were vermilion. And he trotted round his grass-plot and pushed out the sods with his horns and scratched with his red hoofs. The pleasant-looking priest now went up to him, laughing, and took him, respectfully and yet firmly, by the gold collar and talked to him and laughed; and Apis shook himself; and the priest laughed; and now all the priests began to laugh and the strangers laughed and Caleb roared and Uncle Catullus held his sides. Even Lucius had to laugh and Thrasyllus too; they all laughed at Apis, because he was such a delightful, pretty, playful bull-calf, just like a merry boy, with his human eyes which looked at you naughtily and watchfully and archly ... until all of a sudden he tore himself loose from his little priest and ran, ran like a whirlwind, till the clods of earth flew all around.
“Heisso pretty and playful!” said the little priest, glad and happy as a boy, when he came back panting, after locking up thelittle bull again in the sanctuary. “But he is wild, he is very wild: as a rule, we only show him through the windows of his secos; but, when such very distinguished strangers come to look at him, we let him out for a trot, now and again. Yes, then he may come for a trot, once in a way!... And he himself thinks it great fun, to come for a trot, now and then, in the presence of strangers.”
Then the pleasant-looking little priest went up to Caleb, who was still laughing aloud because Apis was such a very delightful little bull. And there was a long and protracted discussion, mysterious, jocular and yet weighty. For Caleb was taken aback; but then the little priest knew what it cost to make Apis trot about so prettily for such very distinguished strangers.
Chapter XVIThey took the repast provided by Caleb outside the town, in a farmstead beside a canal, under a cluster of palm-trees.There were no dainty dishes, there were no purple-coloured wines thick as ink; but there were omelettes and there was cestreus, the sea-fish that swims up the Nile in certain months: fried in cici-oil, this is a popular, homely dish, it is true, but nevertheless toothsome for hungry travellers picnicking in the grass. There was foaming beer and hydromel, or honey-water; and Uncle Catullus, spoilt though he was, thought the simple meal anything but unpalatable and considered that an idyll of this sort was good for the stomach, once in a way.Lucius told Caleb to have his luncheon with them; and Caleb, after much deprecation and many salaams at the honour shown him, squatted down and crossed his legs and ate with relish and kept on laughing at the thought of dear little Apis trotting round his secos for the strangers who paid so generously. The travellers were to rest under thepalm-trees and allow the midday heat to pass before going on to the pyramids. For Caleb had sent the litters back to the barge and had now hired four good camels at the farm, including two with comfortable saddles of bright tapestry, for his two noble clients.The farmer and his wife, glad at the visit that brought them in money, spread awnings under which the travellers could enjoy their siesta and laid mats on the ground; and Uncle Catullus called for a fly-net, which he wound round his head. And, while he slept and Caleb also closed his eyes, Lucius, with Thrasyllus by his side, gazed at the wonderful, divinely geometrical lines in the distance, the lightly-traced triangles against the golden noonday sky.“The base is square,” said Thrasyllus, “and the summit is square, but looks pointed.”“To me they seem strange, mysterious embodiments of vastness,” said Lucius. “What are they actually?”“We don’t altogether know,” replied Thrasyllus. “Some of the pyramids were sepulchres of kings and sacred animals. Those are the pyramids of Cheops, or Khufu, of Chephren and of Mencheres; and we shall seethe kings’ chambers inside them. They were built twenty, perhaps thirty centuries ago. Herodotus says that the pyramid of Cheops, which is the biggest, took thirty years to build with a hundred thousand slaves, who were changed every three months. The name is derived fromπῦρfire, because, like a flame, the pyramid ends in a point. Many were used as store-houses in the long years of famine; others were dykes against the sands of the desert, which blew towards Memphis and threatened to bury the city, in a succession of ages. Many pyramids have already been swallowed up in the sands.”“What are those ruined palaces over there?” asked Lucius, pointing to crumbled rows of pylons and pillars, surmounted by cracked architraves, impressive ruins which stood on a hill at the outskirts of the town and seemed to be tumbling into the Nile.“The old palaces of the Pharaohs,” said Thrasyllus. “They were ten in number. Joseph, the Jewish interpreter of dreams, was a powerful governor under one of them; Moses, who knew Hermes Trismegistus and learned the occult wisdom from him, all the wisdom that can be known, was saved, as a babe, by the daughter of a Pharaoh, wherehis sister had exposed him in a basket made of bulrushes at the place where the princess was wont to bathe: she was the daughter of Amenophis III., who saw his people smitten with ten plagues sent over Egypt by Jahve, the God of the Jews, because the Pharaoh would not suffer them to leave the country. This Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea and was the father of Sesostris.... I have written on these scrolls everything that is more or less interesting.”And Thrasyllus, glad to see that Lucius’ attention was attracted, handed him the scrolls. Lucius began reading:“This all happened here!” he said, startled and arrested. “This is all ... the past! The age-old past, which is gone, which was swallowed up by the sands ... thousands of years ago!... How small we are when we look into the past ... and when we gaze into the centuries, the centuries that have buried themselves so deeply!”“My son,” said the old tutor, “I am so thankful that your mind is once more capable of receiving these impressions. For the beauty of the past is a comfort for the future; and the sick soul is healed in that beauty when it understands that its own grief is but a grainof sand in a desert which blows in the wind and conceals all things.”Lucius made no further reply, absorbed in what he was reading about Joseph and Moses, about Jahve and Pharaoh Amenophis, who was the father of Sesostris....
Chapter XVI
They took the repast provided by Caleb outside the town, in a farmstead beside a canal, under a cluster of palm-trees.There were no dainty dishes, there were no purple-coloured wines thick as ink; but there were omelettes and there was cestreus, the sea-fish that swims up the Nile in certain months: fried in cici-oil, this is a popular, homely dish, it is true, but nevertheless toothsome for hungry travellers picnicking in the grass. There was foaming beer and hydromel, or honey-water; and Uncle Catullus, spoilt though he was, thought the simple meal anything but unpalatable and considered that an idyll of this sort was good for the stomach, once in a way.Lucius told Caleb to have his luncheon with them; and Caleb, after much deprecation and many salaams at the honour shown him, squatted down and crossed his legs and ate with relish and kept on laughing at the thought of dear little Apis trotting round his secos for the strangers who paid so generously. The travellers were to rest under thepalm-trees and allow the midday heat to pass before going on to the pyramids. For Caleb had sent the litters back to the barge and had now hired four good camels at the farm, including two with comfortable saddles of bright tapestry, for his two noble clients.The farmer and his wife, glad at the visit that brought them in money, spread awnings under which the travellers could enjoy their siesta and laid mats on the ground; and Uncle Catullus called for a fly-net, which he wound round his head. And, while he slept and Caleb also closed his eyes, Lucius, with Thrasyllus by his side, gazed at the wonderful, divinely geometrical lines in the distance, the lightly-traced triangles against the golden noonday sky.“The base is square,” said Thrasyllus, “and the summit is square, but looks pointed.”“To me they seem strange, mysterious embodiments of vastness,” said Lucius. “What are they actually?”“We don’t altogether know,” replied Thrasyllus. “Some of the pyramids were sepulchres of kings and sacred animals. Those are the pyramids of Cheops, or Khufu, of Chephren and of Mencheres; and we shall seethe kings’ chambers inside them. They were built twenty, perhaps thirty centuries ago. Herodotus says that the pyramid of Cheops, which is the biggest, took thirty years to build with a hundred thousand slaves, who were changed every three months. The name is derived fromπῦρfire, because, like a flame, the pyramid ends in a point. Many were used as store-houses in the long years of famine; others were dykes against the sands of the desert, which blew towards Memphis and threatened to bury the city, in a succession of ages. Many pyramids have already been swallowed up in the sands.”“What are those ruined palaces over there?” asked Lucius, pointing to crumbled rows of pylons and pillars, surmounted by cracked architraves, impressive ruins which stood on a hill at the outskirts of the town and seemed to be tumbling into the Nile.“The old palaces of the Pharaohs,” said Thrasyllus. “They were ten in number. Joseph, the Jewish interpreter of dreams, was a powerful governor under one of them; Moses, who knew Hermes Trismegistus and learned the occult wisdom from him, all the wisdom that can be known, was saved, as a babe, by the daughter of a Pharaoh, wherehis sister had exposed him in a basket made of bulrushes at the place where the princess was wont to bathe: she was the daughter of Amenophis III., who saw his people smitten with ten plagues sent over Egypt by Jahve, the God of the Jews, because the Pharaoh would not suffer them to leave the country. This Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea and was the father of Sesostris.... I have written on these scrolls everything that is more or less interesting.”And Thrasyllus, glad to see that Lucius’ attention was attracted, handed him the scrolls. Lucius began reading:“This all happened here!” he said, startled and arrested. “This is all ... the past! The age-old past, which is gone, which was swallowed up by the sands ... thousands of years ago!... How small we are when we look into the past ... and when we gaze into the centuries, the centuries that have buried themselves so deeply!”“My son,” said the old tutor, “I am so thankful that your mind is once more capable of receiving these impressions. For the beauty of the past is a comfort for the future; and the sick soul is healed in that beauty when it understands that its own grief is but a grainof sand in a desert which blows in the wind and conceals all things.”Lucius made no further reply, absorbed in what he was reading about Joseph and Moses, about Jahve and Pharaoh Amenophis, who was the father of Sesostris....
They took the repast provided by Caleb outside the town, in a farmstead beside a canal, under a cluster of palm-trees.There were no dainty dishes, there were no purple-coloured wines thick as ink; but there were omelettes and there was cestreus, the sea-fish that swims up the Nile in certain months: fried in cici-oil, this is a popular, homely dish, it is true, but nevertheless toothsome for hungry travellers picnicking in the grass. There was foaming beer and hydromel, or honey-water; and Uncle Catullus, spoilt though he was, thought the simple meal anything but unpalatable and considered that an idyll of this sort was good for the stomach, once in a way.
Lucius told Caleb to have his luncheon with them; and Caleb, after much deprecation and many salaams at the honour shown him, squatted down and crossed his legs and ate with relish and kept on laughing at the thought of dear little Apis trotting round his secos for the strangers who paid so generously. The travellers were to rest under thepalm-trees and allow the midday heat to pass before going on to the pyramids. For Caleb had sent the litters back to the barge and had now hired four good camels at the farm, including two with comfortable saddles of bright tapestry, for his two noble clients.
The farmer and his wife, glad at the visit that brought them in money, spread awnings under which the travellers could enjoy their siesta and laid mats on the ground; and Uncle Catullus called for a fly-net, which he wound round his head. And, while he slept and Caleb also closed his eyes, Lucius, with Thrasyllus by his side, gazed at the wonderful, divinely geometrical lines in the distance, the lightly-traced triangles against the golden noonday sky.
“The base is square,” said Thrasyllus, “and the summit is square, but looks pointed.”
“To me they seem strange, mysterious embodiments of vastness,” said Lucius. “What are they actually?”
“We don’t altogether know,” replied Thrasyllus. “Some of the pyramids were sepulchres of kings and sacred animals. Those are the pyramids of Cheops, or Khufu, of Chephren and of Mencheres; and we shall seethe kings’ chambers inside them. They were built twenty, perhaps thirty centuries ago. Herodotus says that the pyramid of Cheops, which is the biggest, took thirty years to build with a hundred thousand slaves, who were changed every three months. The name is derived fromπῦρfire, because, like a flame, the pyramid ends in a point. Many were used as store-houses in the long years of famine; others were dykes against the sands of the desert, which blew towards Memphis and threatened to bury the city, in a succession of ages. Many pyramids have already been swallowed up in the sands.”
“What are those ruined palaces over there?” asked Lucius, pointing to crumbled rows of pylons and pillars, surmounted by cracked architraves, impressive ruins which stood on a hill at the outskirts of the town and seemed to be tumbling into the Nile.
“The old palaces of the Pharaohs,” said Thrasyllus. “They were ten in number. Joseph, the Jewish interpreter of dreams, was a powerful governor under one of them; Moses, who knew Hermes Trismegistus and learned the occult wisdom from him, all the wisdom that can be known, was saved, as a babe, by the daughter of a Pharaoh, wherehis sister had exposed him in a basket made of bulrushes at the place where the princess was wont to bathe: she was the daughter of Amenophis III., who saw his people smitten with ten plagues sent over Egypt by Jahve, the God of the Jews, because the Pharaoh would not suffer them to leave the country. This Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea and was the father of Sesostris.... I have written on these scrolls everything that is more or less interesting.”
And Thrasyllus, glad to see that Lucius’ attention was attracted, handed him the scrolls. Lucius began reading:
“This all happened here!” he said, startled and arrested. “This is all ... the past! The age-old past, which is gone, which was swallowed up by the sands ... thousands of years ago!... How small we are when we look into the past ... and when we gaze into the centuries, the centuries that have buried themselves so deeply!”
“My son,” said the old tutor, “I am so thankful that your mind is once more capable of receiving these impressions. For the beauty of the past is a comfort for the future; and the sick soul is healed in that beauty when it understands that its own grief is but a grainof sand in a desert which blows in the wind and conceals all things.”
Lucius made no further reply, absorbed in what he was reading about Joseph and Moses, about Jahve and Pharaoh Amenophis, who was the father of Sesostris....
Chapter XVIIThe golden noonday sky paled; the blinding topaz of the heavens melted away into amber honey; and the sands of the desert stretched out wide, far and endless to the last glittering streak of the horizon, on which the sun had set. Behind the group formed by the travellers—four camels surrounded by drivers and guards, Arabs and Libyans—between the darkening palm-trees the gigantic city of Memphis sank into shadow like some vast extinct monster; and the crumbling palaces of the kings sloped down the hill, as it were tumbling into the Nile, and mirrored their ruins in the clear sapphire of the stream, where the pools lay pink and gold among the tall reeds and the lotuses closing on the face of the water. The last fallen pillars lay, round and immense, in the luxuriant grass, amid a riot of scarlet and crimson poppies. Mysteriously carved with hieroglyphics, they were as felled Titans of rose-red granite; and they pressed heavily on the ground wherein they were sinking. They were of a melancholy majesty, thosehuge overthrown pillars which had supported the golden roofs above the might of the Pharaohs.Caleb rode his camel with a swagger, as though he were bestriding his Sabæan mare. He dug his heel into the camel’s side; and the startled brute took great strides, snorting and grunting; Caleb roared with delight. The Libyans, big-limbed and powerful, went silently; the Arab drivers yelled and shouted.Forty stadia from Memphis rose a broad, hilly dyke, on which the pyramids stood. And Caleb, who, as the guide, also knew a thing or two, cried:“My lord, two of the pyramids yonder, the largest, belong to the seven wonders of the world! They are a stadium high; and the length of their sides is equal to their height. They are the two tombs of the Pharaohs; but the smaller pyramid, higher up on the hill and, as you see, built entirely of black stone, was the costliest of all.”He trotted on his startled camel around the others and cried:“Master Thrasyllus won’t deny it, learned though he is!”Thrasyllus smiled; and Caleb, glad at being allowed to speak, continued:“That black stone comes from Southern Ethiopia and is heavier than any other stone and incredibly hard! That is why the pyramid cost so much. But then it was erected by all the lovers of Queen Cleopatra; and it is she who is buried there!”“Caleb,” cried Master Thrasyllus, “what you have been telling about the black stone I accept; but Cleopatra, who died in Alexandria, was not buried at Memphis.”“Cleopatra, Cleopatra!” Caleb insisted, vigorously; but he now rushed away on his bewildered camel, because he wanted to warn the priest-custodian of the pyramids that there were great lords approaching.“Caleb is wrong,” said Thrasyllus, as the three camels stepped along sedately, among the gigantic Libyans and shouting Arabs, while Caleb tore fantastically over the sands. “The black pyramid yonder is really not the tomb of Cleopatra. The historians speak of Doricha, an hetaira mentioned by Sappho, the famous poetess, as the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who was a wine-merchant at Lésbos and travelled constantly to Naucratis. This costly black tomb is said to have been dedicated to Doricha, who died young, by her lovers....”The cavalcade had drawn near; the camels, in obedience to the drivers’ orders, knelt down; the travellers slipped to the ground. And Caleb at once came to meet them, smiling, at the head of six priest-custodians, whose business it was to keep up the interior of the pyramids and show the shrines to foreigners.“Do many foreigners come here?” Uncle Catullus asked of the oldest priest.“Not a week passes in this present month,” said the old priest, “but foreigners come to admire the sacred pyramids. You are Latins, but we receive visits also from Greek lords and Persians and Indians. When the Nile has subsided to its lowest gauge, however, when the autumnal winds blow and the sand-storms begin, then no more foreigners come. For then death and destruction blow out of the desert, as the hurricanes of fate which one day will cover Memphis with a sandy shroud. See these few sphinxes, whose heads alone still project above these downs. Once they numbered hundreds; and an avenue stretched between their silence to the Pyramids. But the desert swallowed them up, the hurricanes spread them with dust, the sandy shroudcovered up the wisdom of Neith. One day the shroud will cover up all Egypt and veil all her wisdom. What was known will be known no longer. That will be the punishment of the gods, inflicted upon unworthy man, who will be plunged into a night of ignorance and the bestiality of primitive desire. The centuries will turn about!”The priests in attendance, with a simple pressure of the hand, had caused a heavy monolithic door to turn on its hinges in the largest of the pyramids. They lighted torches and went through the syrinx, a winding tunnel painted with gigantic figures of gods and with hieroglyphics. It was strange, but there was a humming and murmur of voices, though the pyramid was uninhabited. It was as though a swarm of ghosts were whirling around like a gale of wind. The impression was given immediately; and, when the travellers exchanged glances, they saw in one another’s eyes that they were all four thinking the same thing; and Caleb muttered saving incantations and repeatedly kissed his amulets.The priests led the way, while the flames of the torches blew and blew in the mysterious draught, as though ghosts were hoveringaround. The travellers entered an enormous square room; huge statues were sculptured in the stone walls; and, though the room was empty, there was a smell of spices, as if the smells of old had lingered eternally. Two bats fluttered to the ceiling and whirled round in a circle.“This is the king’s chamber of Cheops,” said the old priest. “Once upon a time it contained a sarcophagus of azure granite, with the embalmed body of the great King Cheops, or Khufu; and it was surrounded by the sarcophagi of his brothers. He wore out his people with taxes and heavy labour, in order to found this mausoleum for himself. Where is he now? Where is his embalmed body? Where is his azure sarcophagus? Where are the sarcophagi of his brothers Chefren and Schafra? Where are they? Where are they? They are scattered and vanished as grains of sand, the mummies of the proud rulers, covered with scented wax and tightly swathed in narrow bandages; and scattered and vanished are their sarcophagi; and one day these pyramids themselves will be scattered and vanished, swallowed up in the lap of the earth! Everything vanishes, all is vanity: thywisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!”“Thy wisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!” echoed the priests.“And we no longer possess it!”“Alas, alas, we no longer possess it!” echoed the priests, mechanically, indifferently, while they led the way back through the tunnel; and their words blew away in the strange, mysterious draught, because of the invisible ghosts that hovered.But, when they were outside, the priests kept their torches alight; and they led the travellers to the small, black pyramid. They pushed open the stone door; and the old priest went in first. There was a long tunnel, followed by a room with smooth, black, polished walls, in which the torches and the shadows of the travellers and priests themselves were reflected curiously.“The pyramid of Cleopatra,” whispered Caleb to Thrasyllus.“The pyramid of Doricha,” Thrasyllus corrected him, with a smile.But the old priest shook his head gently and, in a low and fond voice, said:“The pyramid of Rhodopis. She lived at Naucratis and was incomparably beautiful and chaste. One day, when she was bathing,an eagle flew through the open ceiling of the bathroom and plucked from her maid’s hands the sandal which she was just about to lace on her mistress’ foot.”Lucius suddenly turned very pale. But the priest continued:“The eagle flew to Memphis, where the king was administering justice in one of the courts of the palace; and, flying above the king, the eagle dropped the sandal, so that it fell into the folds of the king’s garment. The king was much surprised; and he examined the sandal, which was as small as a child’s and yet was the sandal of a woman. And he bade his servants search all Egypt to find the woman whom so small a sandal would fit. His servants then found Rhodopis at Naucratis and carried her to the king and he married her; and, when she died, after a few months’ happiness, the disconsolate king dedicated to her the black pyramid ... which is the costliest of all the pyramids.... Rhodopis’ scented mummy vanished; her sarcophagus vanished. But the sandal, which the king ever worshipped, was preserved by a miracle. Behold it.”And the priests, with their torches, lighted in the middle of the jet-black room a crystalshrine, standing on a black-porphyry table. And in the crystal shrine lay a little sandal, like a child’s and yet a woman’s, a little red-leather sandal with gold ornaments, arabesques that glittered incredibly fresh.“The sandal kept for tourists,” murmured Uncle Catullus, with a sceptical smile. “We shall pay for it presently, Caleb, just as we did for the little Apis.”“But still it is very pretty, my lord,” whispered Caleb, with a smile.But Lucius was trembling in every limb. And he said to Thrasyllus:“This is an omen. I had never heard of this legend. This sandal, in this shrine!... I would be alone with the priest!”The request of so distinguished a noble could not be gainsaid. The others withdrew, after fixing two torches in sconces. Lucius remained alone with the old priest, by the shrine of Rhodopis’ sandal. And then he produced Ilia’s little sandal from his breast and said:“Wise priest and holy father, you possess wisdom, you assuredly still know the past. I have confidence in you: you shall tell me where the girl Ilia is, whom I have lost; you shall tell me who stole her from me. See,this sandal is the only trace that she left behind her. Tell me the past and I will reward you richly.”The priest took the sandal and pressed it to his head, while his other hand trembled above the crystal shrine:“May the spirit of Rhodopis enlighten me,” said the old priest. “I see Ilia....”“Dead?”“No, alive.”“Alone?”“No, with her kidnapper.”“Do you see her kidnapper?”“Yes.”“Describe him to me!”“Give me your hand, here, above Rhodopis’ sandal.”Lucius stretched out his hand to the priest, above the sandal:“Describe him to me!” he repeated.And in his tortured mind he saw before him the image of one of his own sailors, of whom he had been thinking lately, who at that time used to prowl about the villa at Baiæ: a Cypriote whom he had once caught talking to Ilia in the oleanders; she had never been able to explain what he was doing.There was a pause. The priest’s lean hand trembled violently in Lucius’ firm grasp. And at last the priest said, with his eyes closed and his other hand still pressing Ilia’s sandal to his forehead:“I see him, plainly, plainly! Rhodopis’ spirit is enlightening me! I see the kidnapper! I see Ilia’s kidnapper!”“Is he tall?”“He is tall.”“Broad?”“He has broad shoulders ... and a coarse face; he is of a coarse beauty which women sometimes like, which unworthy women prefer to noble beauty, because they prefer rude passion to love.... Rhodopis’ chaste spirit is over me! I see the kidnapper.”“How is he clad? As a slave?”“No.”“As a freedman?”“No.”“As a freeman?”“Yes.”“As a patrician? A knight?”“No.”“As a soldier?”“No.”“As a sailor?”“No. Yes, he is clad as a sailor, I think, my lord. But I no longer see him,” said the priest, opening his eyes. “And I shall never be able to tell you anything more.”He gave Lucius back the sandal. The other priests returned, took up the torches. Quivering with suppressed rage, Lucius walked out of the black pyramid. Uncle Catullus was already sitting on his camel.Lucius also mounted his. The Cypriote’s image now stood clearly before his eyes. But he said nothing; his lips were tightly shut, his forehead frowned; his grief seemed to be restrained and subdued in his heart by his outraged pride.And, while Caleb paid the lordly fee, as he always did, Lucius slipped into the old priest’s hand a purse heavy with gold.
Chapter XVII
The golden noonday sky paled; the blinding topaz of the heavens melted away into amber honey; and the sands of the desert stretched out wide, far and endless to the last glittering streak of the horizon, on which the sun had set. Behind the group formed by the travellers—four camels surrounded by drivers and guards, Arabs and Libyans—between the darkening palm-trees the gigantic city of Memphis sank into shadow like some vast extinct monster; and the crumbling palaces of the kings sloped down the hill, as it were tumbling into the Nile, and mirrored their ruins in the clear sapphire of the stream, where the pools lay pink and gold among the tall reeds and the lotuses closing on the face of the water. The last fallen pillars lay, round and immense, in the luxuriant grass, amid a riot of scarlet and crimson poppies. Mysteriously carved with hieroglyphics, they were as felled Titans of rose-red granite; and they pressed heavily on the ground wherein they were sinking. They were of a melancholy majesty, thosehuge overthrown pillars which had supported the golden roofs above the might of the Pharaohs.Caleb rode his camel with a swagger, as though he were bestriding his Sabæan mare. He dug his heel into the camel’s side; and the startled brute took great strides, snorting and grunting; Caleb roared with delight. The Libyans, big-limbed and powerful, went silently; the Arab drivers yelled and shouted.Forty stadia from Memphis rose a broad, hilly dyke, on which the pyramids stood. And Caleb, who, as the guide, also knew a thing or two, cried:“My lord, two of the pyramids yonder, the largest, belong to the seven wonders of the world! They are a stadium high; and the length of their sides is equal to their height. They are the two tombs of the Pharaohs; but the smaller pyramid, higher up on the hill and, as you see, built entirely of black stone, was the costliest of all.”He trotted on his startled camel around the others and cried:“Master Thrasyllus won’t deny it, learned though he is!”Thrasyllus smiled; and Caleb, glad at being allowed to speak, continued:“That black stone comes from Southern Ethiopia and is heavier than any other stone and incredibly hard! That is why the pyramid cost so much. But then it was erected by all the lovers of Queen Cleopatra; and it is she who is buried there!”“Caleb,” cried Master Thrasyllus, “what you have been telling about the black stone I accept; but Cleopatra, who died in Alexandria, was not buried at Memphis.”“Cleopatra, Cleopatra!” Caleb insisted, vigorously; but he now rushed away on his bewildered camel, because he wanted to warn the priest-custodian of the pyramids that there were great lords approaching.“Caleb is wrong,” said Thrasyllus, as the three camels stepped along sedately, among the gigantic Libyans and shouting Arabs, while Caleb tore fantastically over the sands. “The black pyramid yonder is really not the tomb of Cleopatra. The historians speak of Doricha, an hetaira mentioned by Sappho, the famous poetess, as the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who was a wine-merchant at Lésbos and travelled constantly to Naucratis. This costly black tomb is said to have been dedicated to Doricha, who died young, by her lovers....”The cavalcade had drawn near; the camels, in obedience to the drivers’ orders, knelt down; the travellers slipped to the ground. And Caleb at once came to meet them, smiling, at the head of six priest-custodians, whose business it was to keep up the interior of the pyramids and show the shrines to foreigners.“Do many foreigners come here?” Uncle Catullus asked of the oldest priest.“Not a week passes in this present month,” said the old priest, “but foreigners come to admire the sacred pyramids. You are Latins, but we receive visits also from Greek lords and Persians and Indians. When the Nile has subsided to its lowest gauge, however, when the autumnal winds blow and the sand-storms begin, then no more foreigners come. For then death and destruction blow out of the desert, as the hurricanes of fate which one day will cover Memphis with a sandy shroud. See these few sphinxes, whose heads alone still project above these downs. Once they numbered hundreds; and an avenue stretched between their silence to the Pyramids. But the desert swallowed them up, the hurricanes spread them with dust, the sandy shroudcovered up the wisdom of Neith. One day the shroud will cover up all Egypt and veil all her wisdom. What was known will be known no longer. That will be the punishment of the gods, inflicted upon unworthy man, who will be plunged into a night of ignorance and the bestiality of primitive desire. The centuries will turn about!”The priests in attendance, with a simple pressure of the hand, had caused a heavy monolithic door to turn on its hinges in the largest of the pyramids. They lighted torches and went through the syrinx, a winding tunnel painted with gigantic figures of gods and with hieroglyphics. It was strange, but there was a humming and murmur of voices, though the pyramid was uninhabited. It was as though a swarm of ghosts were whirling around like a gale of wind. The impression was given immediately; and, when the travellers exchanged glances, they saw in one another’s eyes that they were all four thinking the same thing; and Caleb muttered saving incantations and repeatedly kissed his amulets.The priests led the way, while the flames of the torches blew and blew in the mysterious draught, as though ghosts were hoveringaround. The travellers entered an enormous square room; huge statues were sculptured in the stone walls; and, though the room was empty, there was a smell of spices, as if the smells of old had lingered eternally. Two bats fluttered to the ceiling and whirled round in a circle.“This is the king’s chamber of Cheops,” said the old priest. “Once upon a time it contained a sarcophagus of azure granite, with the embalmed body of the great King Cheops, or Khufu; and it was surrounded by the sarcophagi of his brothers. He wore out his people with taxes and heavy labour, in order to found this mausoleum for himself. Where is he now? Where is his embalmed body? Where is his azure sarcophagus? Where are the sarcophagi of his brothers Chefren and Schafra? Where are they? Where are they? They are scattered and vanished as grains of sand, the mummies of the proud rulers, covered with scented wax and tightly swathed in narrow bandages; and scattered and vanished are their sarcophagi; and one day these pyramids themselves will be scattered and vanished, swallowed up in the lap of the earth! Everything vanishes, all is vanity: thywisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!”“Thy wisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!” echoed the priests.“And we no longer possess it!”“Alas, alas, we no longer possess it!” echoed the priests, mechanically, indifferently, while they led the way back through the tunnel; and their words blew away in the strange, mysterious draught, because of the invisible ghosts that hovered.But, when they were outside, the priests kept their torches alight; and they led the travellers to the small, black pyramid. They pushed open the stone door; and the old priest went in first. There was a long tunnel, followed by a room with smooth, black, polished walls, in which the torches and the shadows of the travellers and priests themselves were reflected curiously.“The pyramid of Cleopatra,” whispered Caleb to Thrasyllus.“The pyramid of Doricha,” Thrasyllus corrected him, with a smile.But the old priest shook his head gently and, in a low and fond voice, said:“The pyramid of Rhodopis. She lived at Naucratis and was incomparably beautiful and chaste. One day, when she was bathing,an eagle flew through the open ceiling of the bathroom and plucked from her maid’s hands the sandal which she was just about to lace on her mistress’ foot.”Lucius suddenly turned very pale. But the priest continued:“The eagle flew to Memphis, where the king was administering justice in one of the courts of the palace; and, flying above the king, the eagle dropped the sandal, so that it fell into the folds of the king’s garment. The king was much surprised; and he examined the sandal, which was as small as a child’s and yet was the sandal of a woman. And he bade his servants search all Egypt to find the woman whom so small a sandal would fit. His servants then found Rhodopis at Naucratis and carried her to the king and he married her; and, when she died, after a few months’ happiness, the disconsolate king dedicated to her the black pyramid ... which is the costliest of all the pyramids.... Rhodopis’ scented mummy vanished; her sarcophagus vanished. But the sandal, which the king ever worshipped, was preserved by a miracle. Behold it.”And the priests, with their torches, lighted in the middle of the jet-black room a crystalshrine, standing on a black-porphyry table. And in the crystal shrine lay a little sandal, like a child’s and yet a woman’s, a little red-leather sandal with gold ornaments, arabesques that glittered incredibly fresh.“The sandal kept for tourists,” murmured Uncle Catullus, with a sceptical smile. “We shall pay for it presently, Caleb, just as we did for the little Apis.”“But still it is very pretty, my lord,” whispered Caleb, with a smile.But Lucius was trembling in every limb. And he said to Thrasyllus:“This is an omen. I had never heard of this legend. This sandal, in this shrine!... I would be alone with the priest!”The request of so distinguished a noble could not be gainsaid. The others withdrew, after fixing two torches in sconces. Lucius remained alone with the old priest, by the shrine of Rhodopis’ sandal. And then he produced Ilia’s little sandal from his breast and said:“Wise priest and holy father, you possess wisdom, you assuredly still know the past. I have confidence in you: you shall tell me where the girl Ilia is, whom I have lost; you shall tell me who stole her from me. See,this sandal is the only trace that she left behind her. Tell me the past and I will reward you richly.”The priest took the sandal and pressed it to his head, while his other hand trembled above the crystal shrine:“May the spirit of Rhodopis enlighten me,” said the old priest. “I see Ilia....”“Dead?”“No, alive.”“Alone?”“No, with her kidnapper.”“Do you see her kidnapper?”“Yes.”“Describe him to me!”“Give me your hand, here, above Rhodopis’ sandal.”Lucius stretched out his hand to the priest, above the sandal:“Describe him to me!” he repeated.And in his tortured mind he saw before him the image of one of his own sailors, of whom he had been thinking lately, who at that time used to prowl about the villa at Baiæ: a Cypriote whom he had once caught talking to Ilia in the oleanders; she had never been able to explain what he was doing.There was a pause. The priest’s lean hand trembled violently in Lucius’ firm grasp. And at last the priest said, with his eyes closed and his other hand still pressing Ilia’s sandal to his forehead:“I see him, plainly, plainly! Rhodopis’ spirit is enlightening me! I see the kidnapper! I see Ilia’s kidnapper!”“Is he tall?”“He is tall.”“Broad?”“He has broad shoulders ... and a coarse face; he is of a coarse beauty which women sometimes like, which unworthy women prefer to noble beauty, because they prefer rude passion to love.... Rhodopis’ chaste spirit is over me! I see the kidnapper.”“How is he clad? As a slave?”“No.”“As a freedman?”“No.”“As a freeman?”“Yes.”“As a patrician? A knight?”“No.”“As a soldier?”“No.”“As a sailor?”“No. Yes, he is clad as a sailor, I think, my lord. But I no longer see him,” said the priest, opening his eyes. “And I shall never be able to tell you anything more.”He gave Lucius back the sandal. The other priests returned, took up the torches. Quivering with suppressed rage, Lucius walked out of the black pyramid. Uncle Catullus was already sitting on his camel.Lucius also mounted his. The Cypriote’s image now stood clearly before his eyes. But he said nothing; his lips were tightly shut, his forehead frowned; his grief seemed to be restrained and subdued in his heart by his outraged pride.And, while Caleb paid the lordly fee, as he always did, Lucius slipped into the old priest’s hand a purse heavy with gold.
The golden noonday sky paled; the blinding topaz of the heavens melted away into amber honey; and the sands of the desert stretched out wide, far and endless to the last glittering streak of the horizon, on which the sun had set. Behind the group formed by the travellers—four camels surrounded by drivers and guards, Arabs and Libyans—between the darkening palm-trees the gigantic city of Memphis sank into shadow like some vast extinct monster; and the crumbling palaces of the kings sloped down the hill, as it were tumbling into the Nile, and mirrored their ruins in the clear sapphire of the stream, where the pools lay pink and gold among the tall reeds and the lotuses closing on the face of the water. The last fallen pillars lay, round and immense, in the luxuriant grass, amid a riot of scarlet and crimson poppies. Mysteriously carved with hieroglyphics, they were as felled Titans of rose-red granite; and they pressed heavily on the ground wherein they were sinking. They were of a melancholy majesty, thosehuge overthrown pillars which had supported the golden roofs above the might of the Pharaohs.
Caleb rode his camel with a swagger, as though he were bestriding his Sabæan mare. He dug his heel into the camel’s side; and the startled brute took great strides, snorting and grunting; Caleb roared with delight. The Libyans, big-limbed and powerful, went silently; the Arab drivers yelled and shouted.
Forty stadia from Memphis rose a broad, hilly dyke, on which the pyramids stood. And Caleb, who, as the guide, also knew a thing or two, cried:
“My lord, two of the pyramids yonder, the largest, belong to the seven wonders of the world! They are a stadium high; and the length of their sides is equal to their height. They are the two tombs of the Pharaohs; but the smaller pyramid, higher up on the hill and, as you see, built entirely of black stone, was the costliest of all.”
He trotted on his startled camel around the others and cried:
“Master Thrasyllus won’t deny it, learned though he is!”
Thrasyllus smiled; and Caleb, glad at being allowed to speak, continued:
“That black stone comes from Southern Ethiopia and is heavier than any other stone and incredibly hard! That is why the pyramid cost so much. But then it was erected by all the lovers of Queen Cleopatra; and it is she who is buried there!”
“Caleb,” cried Master Thrasyllus, “what you have been telling about the black stone I accept; but Cleopatra, who died in Alexandria, was not buried at Memphis.”
“Cleopatra, Cleopatra!” Caleb insisted, vigorously; but he now rushed away on his bewildered camel, because he wanted to warn the priest-custodian of the pyramids that there were great lords approaching.
“Caleb is wrong,” said Thrasyllus, as the three camels stepped along sedately, among the gigantic Libyans and shouting Arabs, while Caleb tore fantastically over the sands. “The black pyramid yonder is really not the tomb of Cleopatra. The historians speak of Doricha, an hetaira mentioned by Sappho, the famous poetess, as the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who was a wine-merchant at Lésbos and travelled constantly to Naucratis. This costly black tomb is said to have been dedicated to Doricha, who died young, by her lovers....”
The cavalcade had drawn near; the camels, in obedience to the drivers’ orders, knelt down; the travellers slipped to the ground. And Caleb at once came to meet them, smiling, at the head of six priest-custodians, whose business it was to keep up the interior of the pyramids and show the shrines to foreigners.
“Do many foreigners come here?” Uncle Catullus asked of the oldest priest.
“Not a week passes in this present month,” said the old priest, “but foreigners come to admire the sacred pyramids. You are Latins, but we receive visits also from Greek lords and Persians and Indians. When the Nile has subsided to its lowest gauge, however, when the autumnal winds blow and the sand-storms begin, then no more foreigners come. For then death and destruction blow out of the desert, as the hurricanes of fate which one day will cover Memphis with a sandy shroud. See these few sphinxes, whose heads alone still project above these downs. Once they numbered hundreds; and an avenue stretched between their silence to the Pyramids. But the desert swallowed them up, the hurricanes spread them with dust, the sandy shroudcovered up the wisdom of Neith. One day the shroud will cover up all Egypt and veil all her wisdom. What was known will be known no longer. That will be the punishment of the gods, inflicted upon unworthy man, who will be plunged into a night of ignorance and the bestiality of primitive desire. The centuries will turn about!”
The priests in attendance, with a simple pressure of the hand, had caused a heavy monolithic door to turn on its hinges in the largest of the pyramids. They lighted torches and went through the syrinx, a winding tunnel painted with gigantic figures of gods and with hieroglyphics. It was strange, but there was a humming and murmur of voices, though the pyramid was uninhabited. It was as though a swarm of ghosts were whirling around like a gale of wind. The impression was given immediately; and, when the travellers exchanged glances, they saw in one another’s eyes that they were all four thinking the same thing; and Caleb muttered saving incantations and repeatedly kissed his amulets.
The priests led the way, while the flames of the torches blew and blew in the mysterious draught, as though ghosts were hoveringaround. The travellers entered an enormous square room; huge statues were sculptured in the stone walls; and, though the room was empty, there was a smell of spices, as if the smells of old had lingered eternally. Two bats fluttered to the ceiling and whirled round in a circle.
“This is the king’s chamber of Cheops,” said the old priest. “Once upon a time it contained a sarcophagus of azure granite, with the embalmed body of the great King Cheops, or Khufu; and it was surrounded by the sarcophagi of his brothers. He wore out his people with taxes and heavy labour, in order to found this mausoleum for himself. Where is he now? Where is his embalmed body? Where is his azure sarcophagus? Where are the sarcophagi of his brothers Chefren and Schafra? Where are they? Where are they? They are scattered and vanished as grains of sand, the mummies of the proud rulers, covered with scented wax and tightly swathed in narrow bandages; and scattered and vanished are their sarcophagi; and one day these pyramids themselves will be scattered and vanished, swallowed up in the lap of the earth! Everything vanishes, all is vanity: thywisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!”
“Thy wisdom alone, O Neith, is needful to man!” echoed the priests.
“And we no longer possess it!”
“Alas, alas, we no longer possess it!” echoed the priests, mechanically, indifferently, while they led the way back through the tunnel; and their words blew away in the strange, mysterious draught, because of the invisible ghosts that hovered.
But, when they were outside, the priests kept their torches alight; and they led the travellers to the small, black pyramid. They pushed open the stone door; and the old priest went in first. There was a long tunnel, followed by a room with smooth, black, polished walls, in which the torches and the shadows of the travellers and priests themselves were reflected curiously.
“The pyramid of Cleopatra,” whispered Caleb to Thrasyllus.
“The pyramid of Doricha,” Thrasyllus corrected him, with a smile.
But the old priest shook his head gently and, in a low and fond voice, said:
“The pyramid of Rhodopis. She lived at Naucratis and was incomparably beautiful and chaste. One day, when she was bathing,an eagle flew through the open ceiling of the bathroom and plucked from her maid’s hands the sandal which she was just about to lace on her mistress’ foot.”
Lucius suddenly turned very pale. But the priest continued:
“The eagle flew to Memphis, where the king was administering justice in one of the courts of the palace; and, flying above the king, the eagle dropped the sandal, so that it fell into the folds of the king’s garment. The king was much surprised; and he examined the sandal, which was as small as a child’s and yet was the sandal of a woman. And he bade his servants search all Egypt to find the woman whom so small a sandal would fit. His servants then found Rhodopis at Naucratis and carried her to the king and he married her; and, when she died, after a few months’ happiness, the disconsolate king dedicated to her the black pyramid ... which is the costliest of all the pyramids.... Rhodopis’ scented mummy vanished; her sarcophagus vanished. But the sandal, which the king ever worshipped, was preserved by a miracle. Behold it.”
And the priests, with their torches, lighted in the middle of the jet-black room a crystalshrine, standing on a black-porphyry table. And in the crystal shrine lay a little sandal, like a child’s and yet a woman’s, a little red-leather sandal with gold ornaments, arabesques that glittered incredibly fresh.
“The sandal kept for tourists,” murmured Uncle Catullus, with a sceptical smile. “We shall pay for it presently, Caleb, just as we did for the little Apis.”
“But still it is very pretty, my lord,” whispered Caleb, with a smile.
But Lucius was trembling in every limb. And he said to Thrasyllus:
“This is an omen. I had never heard of this legend. This sandal, in this shrine!... I would be alone with the priest!”
The request of so distinguished a noble could not be gainsaid. The others withdrew, after fixing two torches in sconces. Lucius remained alone with the old priest, by the shrine of Rhodopis’ sandal. And then he produced Ilia’s little sandal from his breast and said:
“Wise priest and holy father, you possess wisdom, you assuredly still know the past. I have confidence in you: you shall tell me where the girl Ilia is, whom I have lost; you shall tell me who stole her from me. See,this sandal is the only trace that she left behind her. Tell me the past and I will reward you richly.”
The priest took the sandal and pressed it to his head, while his other hand trembled above the crystal shrine:
“May the spirit of Rhodopis enlighten me,” said the old priest. “I see Ilia....”
“Dead?”
“No, alive.”
“Alone?”
“No, with her kidnapper.”
“Do you see her kidnapper?”
“Yes.”
“Describe him to me!”
“Give me your hand, here, above Rhodopis’ sandal.”
Lucius stretched out his hand to the priest, above the sandal:
“Describe him to me!” he repeated.
And in his tortured mind he saw before him the image of one of his own sailors, of whom he had been thinking lately, who at that time used to prowl about the villa at Baiæ: a Cypriote whom he had once caught talking to Ilia in the oleanders; she had never been able to explain what he was doing.
There was a pause. The priest’s lean hand trembled violently in Lucius’ firm grasp. And at last the priest said, with his eyes closed and his other hand still pressing Ilia’s sandal to his forehead:
“I see him, plainly, plainly! Rhodopis’ spirit is enlightening me! I see the kidnapper! I see Ilia’s kidnapper!”
“Is he tall?”
“He is tall.”
“Broad?”
“He has broad shoulders ... and a coarse face; he is of a coarse beauty which women sometimes like, which unworthy women prefer to noble beauty, because they prefer rude passion to love.... Rhodopis’ chaste spirit is over me! I see the kidnapper.”
“How is he clad? As a slave?”
“No.”
“As a freedman?”
“No.”
“As a freeman?”
“Yes.”
“As a patrician? A knight?”
“No.”
“As a soldier?”
“No.”
“As a sailor?”
“No. Yes, he is clad as a sailor, I think, my lord. But I no longer see him,” said the priest, opening his eyes. “And I shall never be able to tell you anything more.”
He gave Lucius back the sandal. The other priests returned, took up the torches. Quivering with suppressed rage, Lucius walked out of the black pyramid. Uncle Catullus was already sitting on his camel.
Lucius also mounted his. The Cypriote’s image now stood clearly before his eyes. But he said nothing; his lips were tightly shut, his forehead frowned; his grief seemed to be restrained and subdued in his heart by his outraged pride.
And, while Caleb paid the lordly fee, as he always did, Lucius slipped into the old priest’s hand a purse heavy with gold.
Chapter XVIIIThe short twilight had deepened to purple over the desert; night came gliding along the firmament; the stars began to peep. And Caleb, who suspected Lucius’ emotion at each fresh divination, considered that new impressions would be the best medicine for him. After a short deliberation with Uncle Catullus and Thrasyllus, he said:“My noble lord, before the night has quite fallen, I should like to take you to the great Neith ... for the sake both of the statue itself and of the Jewish prophet, a hermit, who dwells in a cave hard by.”Lucius nodded his approval. And in the falling night he sat erect on the saddle-pad of his camel and raised his head towards the stars. Had he guessed the truth? Had the truth gradually been revealed within him? Or had the sibyl, Amphris, the oracle and the priests whom he had consulted really shown him the way to that truth? He did not know, he had so many vague memories that it all grew confused in his seeking, solvingbrain.... But he certainly was the Cypriote, the sailor, Carus ... who, shortly before Ilia’s disappearance, had himself disappeared from the crew of the quadrireme ... and whom he had once found with Ilia among the oleanders! A thing which she had never been able to explain! Carus! A sailor! Not a slave, it was true, but one of his meanest servants! A Cyprian sailor, to have robbed him of the woman who reigned as queen over his house, whom he dressed like a goddess, whom he covered with everything that was precious! And she must have been kidnapped—it could not be otherwise—with her own consent, her own, infatuated consent.Had he guessed the truth? Had his groping brain at last divined the truth? Or had the priests and the oracles and Amphris and the sibyl indeed revealed the truth to him? He decided that they must have done so. His soul was inclined to accept the supernatural. And he knew, heknew, thanks to the wise knowledge of the priests and the oracles.So she had been able to leave him,him, for his hired sailor! He raised his head towards the stars. His lips were tightlyclenched, his forehead frowned. But never, he resolved, would his lips utter to any one, not even to Thrasyllus, the secret truth which the oracles had revealed to him. He would be silent and his pride would suppress his grief.“Look, my lord,” said Caleb, while Lucius still stared straight before him, up, towards the stars.Lucius lowered his eyes. And suddenly he gave a start. The Sphinx loomed before him in the night. In the immense starry night, with the sands glittering all around like a silver sea, loomed the immense Neith, the omniscient wisdom. It was more gigantic than any sphinx that he had ever seen.It had been shaped by Nature herself out of an immense monolith. Human hands had only reshapen it more plainly for human eyes ... into the Sphinx. It was not the veiled Isis of Sais; it was the unveiled, silent knowledge, which had known everything from the beginning of time. It raised its head towards the stars ... as he had done. It was resting: its lioness-body rested and sank into the sand; its fore-paws projected like walls. Its superhuman breasts seemed to heave in the night. Its fixed eyes staredupwards and its granite veil stood out upon its lioness-body. It was awesomely beautiful in the starry night.The travellers had alighted. And Caleb had fetched the Jewish hermit from the cave in which he lived, opposite the Sphinx.“I believe he’s mad,” said Caleb, timidly, a little alarmed by Lucius’ frown. “But it doesn’t matter if he is mad. He is the Jewish hermit; and all distinguished foreigners, such as your lordship, listen to him ... because he says strange things.”“He too!” muttered Lucius.The Jewish hermit came up to them in the fallen night. He was of giant stature and incredibly old; his beard fell in waves down to his waist. His grey robe trailed over the sand. And he exclaimed, in a loud voice:“I am Tsafnath-Paeneach, ‘he who reveals mysteries!’ I am of the tribe of Joseph himself, who took to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On! In me was the wisdom of Joseph, who interpreted dreams, and the wisdom of the priests of On! But all wisdom is dead in me, Jahve be praised, since I beheldHim!”“Whom?” asked Lucius, dismayed by the prophet’s booming voice.“It was a night of twinkling stars!” cried the prophet. “It was thirty years ago! I lived in my cave, as I do now! And I knew everything and I looked Neith in the face and in the eyes.... Along the road, yonder, through the sands ... they came! They came, they came, they drew near.... On an ass that stumbled with fatigue sat a woman. A greybeard, staff in hand, led the stumbling beast. Then I saw that the woman held, pressed to her breast, in the folds of her mantle, a Child! And the woman was like Heva and like Isis; and the Child was like Habel and like Horus. When they came before the mighty Neith, the ass could stumble no farther through the sands of the desert. And the woman alighted and smiled upon the Child through her tears. But the greybeard led the woman to the mighty Neith and helped her to climb into its deep granite lap. There the woman rested against Neith’s bosom and the Child rested against the woman’s bosom. And then ... then I saw, I, Tsafnath-Paeneach, I who reveal mysteries, that the Child that was like Habel and Horus wasradiant in the night, in the folds of the woman’s mantle! The Child was radiant; a wreath of rays, a halo of light shone about the Child! The mother slept, the radiant Child slept, the greybeard slept ... and the mighty Neith watched over their sleep in the starry night! Then, O Jahve, I knew that I had beheld Thy Son; and this happiness was my last wisdom. Since then I know nothing more, O Jahve, be praised! Since then I have discovered no mysteries! Since then the knowledge of Joseph has died away within me and that of the priests of On! For I have seen Jahve’s Son, there, there, in the lap of Neith ... and since then I have seen nothing but that vision! And I shall die with the vision of the radiant Child before my eyes!”The prophet’s loud, booming voice had risen to a cry of joy; and Caleb repeated to Lucius, in a whisper:“You see, my lord, he’s mad.”But Thrasyllus, on the other side, whispered:“He’s not mad, Lucius.... He is a seer.... He has seen.... He has perhaps seen the new God of Whom all the sibyls speak....”“Which new God?” asked Lucius.“I don’t know His name,” said Thrasyllus.But Uncle Catullus spoke:“My dear nephew, that great monstrous fellow frightens me, here in the dark, in the desert, in front of this awful statue. Egypt gives me too many impressions. I feel like a sponge full of water, so soaked am I with impressions. Egypt will be the death of me, Lucius, you’ll see it will! Meanwhile I propose to mount my camel.”And Uncle Catullus called his guards and drivers and bade them make his camel kneel down for him.But Lucius went to the prophet and drew him aside:“Do you know the past?” he asked, anxiously.“The past?” echoed the Jewish seer, in an uncertain voice; and his eyes were as though blind.“Do you see and can you tell me if that which I think has happened ... is undoubtedly true?”“I no longer see either the past or the future,” said the seer. “I see nothing but the present. And the present for me isnothing but ... the radiant Child yonder!”“Who is He?” asked Lucius.“I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!” cried the seer. “He was like Habel, he was like Horus. But I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!”Thrasyllus approached:“Lucius,” he said, “let us go. The night is falling and the guards have warned us against wild animals and robbers.”“Let Caleb give the prophet a gold piece,” said Lucius.Caleb produced a stater; but the prophet’s laugh of thunder sent him staggering back:“Gold!” cried the prophet, laughing like thunder. “What do I want with dead gold! I have seen living gold; I have seen the Child That was radiant gold as the sun itself, radiant as the burning bush! What do I want with dead gold!”“He’s mad! He’s mad!” cried Caleb. “He doesn’t want gold!”And, terrified, Caleb slipped back the stater—but into another purse, in which he collected his savings—and rushed to his camel, which was already kneeling in the sand.In the light of the stars that twinkled over the sea of sand the travellers rode back to Memphis.
Chapter XVIII
The short twilight had deepened to purple over the desert; night came gliding along the firmament; the stars began to peep. And Caleb, who suspected Lucius’ emotion at each fresh divination, considered that new impressions would be the best medicine for him. After a short deliberation with Uncle Catullus and Thrasyllus, he said:“My noble lord, before the night has quite fallen, I should like to take you to the great Neith ... for the sake both of the statue itself and of the Jewish prophet, a hermit, who dwells in a cave hard by.”Lucius nodded his approval. And in the falling night he sat erect on the saddle-pad of his camel and raised his head towards the stars. Had he guessed the truth? Had the truth gradually been revealed within him? Or had the sibyl, Amphris, the oracle and the priests whom he had consulted really shown him the way to that truth? He did not know, he had so many vague memories that it all grew confused in his seeking, solvingbrain.... But he certainly was the Cypriote, the sailor, Carus ... who, shortly before Ilia’s disappearance, had himself disappeared from the crew of the quadrireme ... and whom he had once found with Ilia among the oleanders! A thing which she had never been able to explain! Carus! A sailor! Not a slave, it was true, but one of his meanest servants! A Cyprian sailor, to have robbed him of the woman who reigned as queen over his house, whom he dressed like a goddess, whom he covered with everything that was precious! And she must have been kidnapped—it could not be otherwise—with her own consent, her own, infatuated consent.Had he guessed the truth? Had his groping brain at last divined the truth? Or had the priests and the oracles and Amphris and the sibyl indeed revealed the truth to him? He decided that they must have done so. His soul was inclined to accept the supernatural. And he knew, heknew, thanks to the wise knowledge of the priests and the oracles.So she had been able to leave him,him, for his hired sailor! He raised his head towards the stars. His lips were tightlyclenched, his forehead frowned. But never, he resolved, would his lips utter to any one, not even to Thrasyllus, the secret truth which the oracles had revealed to him. He would be silent and his pride would suppress his grief.“Look, my lord,” said Caleb, while Lucius still stared straight before him, up, towards the stars.Lucius lowered his eyes. And suddenly he gave a start. The Sphinx loomed before him in the night. In the immense starry night, with the sands glittering all around like a silver sea, loomed the immense Neith, the omniscient wisdom. It was more gigantic than any sphinx that he had ever seen.It had been shaped by Nature herself out of an immense monolith. Human hands had only reshapen it more plainly for human eyes ... into the Sphinx. It was not the veiled Isis of Sais; it was the unveiled, silent knowledge, which had known everything from the beginning of time. It raised its head towards the stars ... as he had done. It was resting: its lioness-body rested and sank into the sand; its fore-paws projected like walls. Its superhuman breasts seemed to heave in the night. Its fixed eyes staredupwards and its granite veil stood out upon its lioness-body. It was awesomely beautiful in the starry night.The travellers had alighted. And Caleb had fetched the Jewish hermit from the cave in which he lived, opposite the Sphinx.“I believe he’s mad,” said Caleb, timidly, a little alarmed by Lucius’ frown. “But it doesn’t matter if he is mad. He is the Jewish hermit; and all distinguished foreigners, such as your lordship, listen to him ... because he says strange things.”“He too!” muttered Lucius.The Jewish hermit came up to them in the fallen night. He was of giant stature and incredibly old; his beard fell in waves down to his waist. His grey robe trailed over the sand. And he exclaimed, in a loud voice:“I am Tsafnath-Paeneach, ‘he who reveals mysteries!’ I am of the tribe of Joseph himself, who took to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On! In me was the wisdom of Joseph, who interpreted dreams, and the wisdom of the priests of On! But all wisdom is dead in me, Jahve be praised, since I beheldHim!”“Whom?” asked Lucius, dismayed by the prophet’s booming voice.“It was a night of twinkling stars!” cried the prophet. “It was thirty years ago! I lived in my cave, as I do now! And I knew everything and I looked Neith in the face and in the eyes.... Along the road, yonder, through the sands ... they came! They came, they came, they drew near.... On an ass that stumbled with fatigue sat a woman. A greybeard, staff in hand, led the stumbling beast. Then I saw that the woman held, pressed to her breast, in the folds of her mantle, a Child! And the woman was like Heva and like Isis; and the Child was like Habel and like Horus. When they came before the mighty Neith, the ass could stumble no farther through the sands of the desert. And the woman alighted and smiled upon the Child through her tears. But the greybeard led the woman to the mighty Neith and helped her to climb into its deep granite lap. There the woman rested against Neith’s bosom and the Child rested against the woman’s bosom. And then ... then I saw, I, Tsafnath-Paeneach, I who reveal mysteries, that the Child that was like Habel and Horus wasradiant in the night, in the folds of the woman’s mantle! The Child was radiant; a wreath of rays, a halo of light shone about the Child! The mother slept, the radiant Child slept, the greybeard slept ... and the mighty Neith watched over their sleep in the starry night! Then, O Jahve, I knew that I had beheld Thy Son; and this happiness was my last wisdom. Since then I know nothing more, O Jahve, be praised! Since then I have discovered no mysteries! Since then the knowledge of Joseph has died away within me and that of the priests of On! For I have seen Jahve’s Son, there, there, in the lap of Neith ... and since then I have seen nothing but that vision! And I shall die with the vision of the radiant Child before my eyes!”The prophet’s loud, booming voice had risen to a cry of joy; and Caleb repeated to Lucius, in a whisper:“You see, my lord, he’s mad.”But Thrasyllus, on the other side, whispered:“He’s not mad, Lucius.... He is a seer.... He has seen.... He has perhaps seen the new God of Whom all the sibyls speak....”“Which new God?” asked Lucius.“I don’t know His name,” said Thrasyllus.But Uncle Catullus spoke:“My dear nephew, that great monstrous fellow frightens me, here in the dark, in the desert, in front of this awful statue. Egypt gives me too many impressions. I feel like a sponge full of water, so soaked am I with impressions. Egypt will be the death of me, Lucius, you’ll see it will! Meanwhile I propose to mount my camel.”And Uncle Catullus called his guards and drivers and bade them make his camel kneel down for him.But Lucius went to the prophet and drew him aside:“Do you know the past?” he asked, anxiously.“The past?” echoed the Jewish seer, in an uncertain voice; and his eyes were as though blind.“Do you see and can you tell me if that which I think has happened ... is undoubtedly true?”“I no longer see either the past or the future,” said the seer. “I see nothing but the present. And the present for me isnothing but ... the radiant Child yonder!”“Who is He?” asked Lucius.“I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!” cried the seer. “He was like Habel, he was like Horus. But I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!”Thrasyllus approached:“Lucius,” he said, “let us go. The night is falling and the guards have warned us against wild animals and robbers.”“Let Caleb give the prophet a gold piece,” said Lucius.Caleb produced a stater; but the prophet’s laugh of thunder sent him staggering back:“Gold!” cried the prophet, laughing like thunder. “What do I want with dead gold! I have seen living gold; I have seen the Child That was radiant gold as the sun itself, radiant as the burning bush! What do I want with dead gold!”“He’s mad! He’s mad!” cried Caleb. “He doesn’t want gold!”And, terrified, Caleb slipped back the stater—but into another purse, in which he collected his savings—and rushed to his camel, which was already kneeling in the sand.In the light of the stars that twinkled over the sea of sand the travellers rode back to Memphis.
The short twilight had deepened to purple over the desert; night came gliding along the firmament; the stars began to peep. And Caleb, who suspected Lucius’ emotion at each fresh divination, considered that new impressions would be the best medicine for him. After a short deliberation with Uncle Catullus and Thrasyllus, he said:
“My noble lord, before the night has quite fallen, I should like to take you to the great Neith ... for the sake both of the statue itself and of the Jewish prophet, a hermit, who dwells in a cave hard by.”
Lucius nodded his approval. And in the falling night he sat erect on the saddle-pad of his camel and raised his head towards the stars. Had he guessed the truth? Had the truth gradually been revealed within him? Or had the sibyl, Amphris, the oracle and the priests whom he had consulted really shown him the way to that truth? He did not know, he had so many vague memories that it all grew confused in his seeking, solvingbrain.... But he certainly was the Cypriote, the sailor, Carus ... who, shortly before Ilia’s disappearance, had himself disappeared from the crew of the quadrireme ... and whom he had once found with Ilia among the oleanders! A thing which she had never been able to explain! Carus! A sailor! Not a slave, it was true, but one of his meanest servants! A Cyprian sailor, to have robbed him of the woman who reigned as queen over his house, whom he dressed like a goddess, whom he covered with everything that was precious! And she must have been kidnapped—it could not be otherwise—with her own consent, her own, infatuated consent.
Had he guessed the truth? Had his groping brain at last divined the truth? Or had the priests and the oracles and Amphris and the sibyl indeed revealed the truth to him? He decided that they must have done so. His soul was inclined to accept the supernatural. And he knew, heknew, thanks to the wise knowledge of the priests and the oracles.
So she had been able to leave him,him, for his hired sailor! He raised his head towards the stars. His lips were tightlyclenched, his forehead frowned. But never, he resolved, would his lips utter to any one, not even to Thrasyllus, the secret truth which the oracles had revealed to him. He would be silent and his pride would suppress his grief.
“Look, my lord,” said Caleb, while Lucius still stared straight before him, up, towards the stars.
Lucius lowered his eyes. And suddenly he gave a start. The Sphinx loomed before him in the night. In the immense starry night, with the sands glittering all around like a silver sea, loomed the immense Neith, the omniscient wisdom. It was more gigantic than any sphinx that he had ever seen.
It had been shaped by Nature herself out of an immense monolith. Human hands had only reshapen it more plainly for human eyes ... into the Sphinx. It was not the veiled Isis of Sais; it was the unveiled, silent knowledge, which had known everything from the beginning of time. It raised its head towards the stars ... as he had done. It was resting: its lioness-body rested and sank into the sand; its fore-paws projected like walls. Its superhuman breasts seemed to heave in the night. Its fixed eyes staredupwards and its granite veil stood out upon its lioness-body. It was awesomely beautiful in the starry night.
The travellers had alighted. And Caleb had fetched the Jewish hermit from the cave in which he lived, opposite the Sphinx.
“I believe he’s mad,” said Caleb, timidly, a little alarmed by Lucius’ frown. “But it doesn’t matter if he is mad. He is the Jewish hermit; and all distinguished foreigners, such as your lordship, listen to him ... because he says strange things.”
“He too!” muttered Lucius.
The Jewish hermit came up to them in the fallen night. He was of giant stature and incredibly old; his beard fell in waves down to his waist. His grey robe trailed over the sand. And he exclaimed, in a loud voice:
“I am Tsafnath-Paeneach, ‘he who reveals mysteries!’ I am of the tribe of Joseph himself, who took to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On! In me was the wisdom of Joseph, who interpreted dreams, and the wisdom of the priests of On! But all wisdom is dead in me, Jahve be praised, since I beheldHim!”
“Whom?” asked Lucius, dismayed by the prophet’s booming voice.
“It was a night of twinkling stars!” cried the prophet. “It was thirty years ago! I lived in my cave, as I do now! And I knew everything and I looked Neith in the face and in the eyes.... Along the road, yonder, through the sands ... they came! They came, they came, they drew near.... On an ass that stumbled with fatigue sat a woman. A greybeard, staff in hand, led the stumbling beast. Then I saw that the woman held, pressed to her breast, in the folds of her mantle, a Child! And the woman was like Heva and like Isis; and the Child was like Habel and like Horus. When they came before the mighty Neith, the ass could stumble no farther through the sands of the desert. And the woman alighted and smiled upon the Child through her tears. But the greybeard led the woman to the mighty Neith and helped her to climb into its deep granite lap. There the woman rested against Neith’s bosom and the Child rested against the woman’s bosom. And then ... then I saw, I, Tsafnath-Paeneach, I who reveal mysteries, that the Child that was like Habel and Horus wasradiant in the night, in the folds of the woman’s mantle! The Child was radiant; a wreath of rays, a halo of light shone about the Child! The mother slept, the radiant Child slept, the greybeard slept ... and the mighty Neith watched over their sleep in the starry night! Then, O Jahve, I knew that I had beheld Thy Son; and this happiness was my last wisdom. Since then I know nothing more, O Jahve, be praised! Since then I have discovered no mysteries! Since then the knowledge of Joseph has died away within me and that of the priests of On! For I have seen Jahve’s Son, there, there, in the lap of Neith ... and since then I have seen nothing but that vision! And I shall die with the vision of the radiant Child before my eyes!”
The prophet’s loud, booming voice had risen to a cry of joy; and Caleb repeated to Lucius, in a whisper:
“You see, my lord, he’s mad.”
But Thrasyllus, on the other side, whispered:
“He’s not mad, Lucius.... He is a seer.... He has seen.... He has perhaps seen the new God of Whom all the sibyls speak....”
“Which new God?” asked Lucius.
“I don’t know His name,” said Thrasyllus.
But Uncle Catullus spoke:
“My dear nephew, that great monstrous fellow frightens me, here in the dark, in the desert, in front of this awful statue. Egypt gives me too many impressions. I feel like a sponge full of water, so soaked am I with impressions. Egypt will be the death of me, Lucius, you’ll see it will! Meanwhile I propose to mount my camel.”
And Uncle Catullus called his guards and drivers and bade them make his camel kneel down for him.
But Lucius went to the prophet and drew him aside:
“Do you know the past?” he asked, anxiously.
“The past?” echoed the Jewish seer, in an uncertain voice; and his eyes were as though blind.
“Do you see and can you tell me if that which I think has happened ... is undoubtedly true?”
“I no longer see either the past or the future,” said the seer. “I see nothing but the present. And the present for me isnothing but ... the radiant Child yonder!”
“Who is He?” asked Lucius.
“I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!” cried the seer. “He was like Habel, he was like Horus. But I do not know, unless He be Jahve’s Son!”
Thrasyllus approached:
“Lucius,” he said, “let us go. The night is falling and the guards have warned us against wild animals and robbers.”
“Let Caleb give the prophet a gold piece,” said Lucius.
Caleb produced a stater; but the prophet’s laugh of thunder sent him staggering back:
“Gold!” cried the prophet, laughing like thunder. “What do I want with dead gold! I have seen living gold; I have seen the Child That was radiant gold as the sun itself, radiant as the burning bush! What do I want with dead gold!”
“He’s mad! He’s mad!” cried Caleb. “He doesn’t want gold!”
And, terrified, Caleb slipped back the stater—but into another purse, in which he collected his savings—and rushed to his camel, which was already kneeling in the sand.
In the light of the stars that twinkled over the sea of sand the travellers rode back to Memphis.