The Bride of the Nile — Complete by Georg Ebers (top novels txt) 📕
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- Author: Georg Ebers
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“And what ‘if’ or ‘but’ remains behind?” asked the old man. “Let us be reckless for once, brother! If the whole business were not so diabolically serious, it would be quite laughable. The young one for me and the old one for you in our leisure hours, my son; better washed linen; clothes without holes in them; no dust on our books; a pleasant ‘Rejoice’ every morning, or at meal-times;—only look at the fruit on that dish! No better than the oats they strew before horses. At the old man’s everything was as nice as it used to be in my own home at Philae: Supper a little work of art, a feast for the eye as well as the appetite! Pulcheria seems to understand all that as well as my poor dead sister did. And then, when I want to rise, such a kind, pretty little hand to help one up! I have long hated this dwelling. Lime and dust fall from the ceiling in my bedroom, and here there are wide gaps in the flooring-I stumbled over one yesterday—and our niggardly landlords, the officials, say that if we want anything repaired we may do it ourselves, that they have no money left for such things. Now, under that worthy old man’s roof everything was in the best order.” The philosopher chuckled aloud and rubbed his hands as he went on: “Supposing we kick over the traces for once, Philip. Supposing we were to carry out our friend’s dying wish? Merciful Isis! It would certainly be a good action, and I have not many to boast of. But cautiously—what do you say? We can always throw it up at a month’s notice.”
Then he grew grave again, shook his head, and said meditatively: “No, no; such plans only disturb one’s peace of mind. A pleasant vision! But scarcely feasible.”
“Not for the present, at any rate,” replied the leech.
“So long as Paula’s fate remains undecided, I beg you to let the matter rest.”
The old man muttered a curse on her; then he said with a vicious, sharp flash in his eyes: “That patrician viper! Every where in everything—she spoils it all! But wait a while! I fancy she will soon be removed from our path, and then.... No, even now, at the present time, I will not allow that we should be deprived of what would embellish life, of doing a thing which may turn the scale in my favor in the day of judgment. The wishes of a dying man are sacred: So our fathers held it; and they were right. The old man’s will must be done! Yes, yes, yes. It is settled. As soon as that hindrance is removed, we will keep house with the two women. I have said; and I mean it.”
At this point the gardener came in again, and the old man called out to him:
“Listen, man. We shall live together after all; you shall hear more of this later. Stay with my people till sundown, but you must keep your own counsel, for they are all listeners and blabs. The physician here will now take the melancholy tidings to the unfortunate widow, and then you can talk it all over with her at night. Nothing startling must take place at the house there; and with regard to your master, even his death must remain a secret from every one but us and his family.”
The gardener knew full well how much depended on his silence; Philippus tacitly agreed to the old man’s arrangement, but for the present he avoided discussing the matter with the women. When, at length he set off on his painful errand to the widow, Horapollo dismissed him saying:
“Courage, courage, my Son.—And as you pass by, just glance at our little garden;—we grieved to see the fine old palm-tree perish; but now a young and vigorous shoot is growing from the root.”
“It has been drooping since yesterday and will die away,” replied Philippus shrugging his shoulders.
But the old man exclaimed: “Water it, Gibbus! the palm-tree must be watered at once.”
“Aye, you have water at hand for that!” retorted the leech, but he added bitterly as he reached the stairs, “If it were so in all cases!”
“Patience and good purpose will always win,” murmured the old man; and when he was alone he growled on angrily: “Only be rid of that dry old palm-tree—his past life in all its relations to that patrician hussy Away with it, into the fire!—But how am I to get her? How can I manage it?”
He threw himself back in his arm-chair, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He had come to no result when the negro requested an audience for some visitors. These were the heads of the senate of Memphis, who had come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage. He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate, mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even if heathen magic should be the last resource.
CHAPTER X.
All Katharina’s sympathy with Heliodora had died finally in the course of the past, moonless night. She had secretly accompanied her, with her maid and an old deaf and dumb stable-slave, to a soothsayer—for there still were many in Memphis, as well as magicians and alchemists; and this woman had told the young widow that her line of life led to the greatest happiness, and that even the wildest wishes of her heart would find fulfilment. What those wishes were Katharina knew only too well; the probability of their accomplishment had roused her fierce jealousy and made her hate Heliodora.
Heliodora had gone to consult the sorceress in a simple but rich dress. Her peplos was fastened on the shoulder, not by an ordinary gold pin, but by a button which betrayed her taste for fine jewels, as it consisted of a sapphire of remarkable size; this had at once caught the eye of the witch, showing her that she had to deal with a woman of rank and wealth. She had taken Katharina, who had come very plainly dressed, for her companion or poor friend, so she had promised her no more than the removal of certain hindrances, and a happy life at last, with a husband no longer young and a large family of children.
The woman’s business was evidently a paying one; the interior of her house was conspicuously superior to the wretched hovels which surrounded it, in the poorest and most squalid part of the town. Outside, indeed, it differed little from its neighbors; in fact; it was intentionally neglected, to mislead the authorities, for witchcraft and the practice of magic arts were under the penalty of death. But the fittings of the roofless centre-chamber in which she was wont to perform her incantations and divinations argued no small outlay. On the walls were hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up and down, wax images of men and women—some with needles through their hearts, a cage full of bats, and glass jars containing spiders, frogs, leeches, beetles, scorpions, centipedes and other foul creatures; and
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