Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs (readera ebook reader .txt) 📕
er twentieth year, when from a young girl she became a woman, ambition suddenly awoke in her with maturity.
And one morning as she came out of a deep sleep, two hours past mid-day, quite tired from having slept too much, she turned over on her breast across the bed, her feet apart, rested her cheek in her hand and with a long golden pin pierced with little symmetrical holes her pillow of green linen.
She reflected profoundly.
There were at first four little points which made a square and a point in the middle. Then four other points to make a larger square. Then she tried to make a circle--but that was a little difficult.
Then she pierced points at random and began to call, "Djala! Djala!"
Djala was her Hindu slave whose name was Djalantachtchandrapchapala, which means: "Changeful-as-the-image-of-the-moon-upon-the-water." Chrysis was too lazy to say the entire name.
The slave entered and stood near the door without quite shutting it.
"Djala, who came yesterday?
Read free book «Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs (readera ebook reader .txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Pierre Louÿs
- Performer: -
Read book online «Aphrodite by Pierre Louÿs (readera ebook reader .txt) 📕». Author - Pierre Louÿs
Ah! to think of it, repeat it, cry it aloud, to be alone! Chrysis precipitated herself from the clamor-filled house and ran quickly, straight before her, met full in the face by the morning breeze, cooled at last.
She followed to the Agora the street which led to the sea and at whose end the spars of eight hundred vessels huddled like gigantic reeds. Then she turned to the right, before the immense avenue of the Drome where the dwelling of Demetrios stood. A tremor of pride enveloped her and she passed before the windows of her future lover; but she was too clever to seek him before he sought her. She traversed the long road to the Canopic Gate and threw herself upon the ground between two aloes.
He had done it. He had done all for her, doubtless more than any lover had ever done for any woman. She could not weary of repeating it and affirming her triumph. Demetrios, the Well-Beloved, the impossible and hopeless dream of so many feminine hearts, had exposed himself, for her, to every peril, every shame, every voluntary remorse. He had even denied the ideal of his thoughts, he had despoiled his work of the miraculous necklace, and this day, already dawning, would see the lover of the goddess at the feet of his new idol.
“Take me! take me!” she cried. She adored him now. She called him, she desired him. The three crimes, in her spirit, transformed themselves into heroic actions, for which, in return, she would never have enough tenderness, enough passion, to give. With what an incomparable flame, then, would burn this unique love of two beings equally young, equally fair, equally loved by each other and united forever after surmounting so many obstacles?
Together they would depart, they would leave the queen’s city, they would set sail for mysterious lands, for Amathus, for Epidaurus or even for the unknown Rome which was the second city of the world after immense Alexandria, and which was undertaking the conquest of the earth. What would they not do, wherever they might be! What joy would be foreign to them, what human felicity would not envy theirs and pale before their enchanted passage!
Chrysis arose, dazzled. She stretched out her arms, raised her shoulders, breathed deeply. A sensation of languor and of increasing joy swelled in her heart. She resumed her homeward journey.
Opening the door of her room, she was surprised to see that nothing, since the day before, had changed beneath her roof. The little objects of her toilette, the table, the shelves, appeared to her insufficient to surround her new life. She broke some which reminded her too directly of old, useless lovers and for which she conceived a sudden hatred. If she spared others, it was not that she cared more for them but because she feared to denude her room in case Demetrios had formed the project of passing the night there.
She undressed slowly. The vestige of the orgy fell from her tunic, crumbs of cake, hairs, rose leaves.
With her hand, she freed her waist from the girdle and plunged her fingers into her hair to loosen its mass. But before lying down on the bed, the desire seized her to repose an instant upon the rugs of the terrace where the coolness of the air was so delicious.
She ascended.
The sun, risen only a few instants before, reposed upon the horizon like a huge, swollen orange.
A great palm tree with a curved trunk dropped its mass of dewy green leaves over the parapet. Chrysis crushed them to her tingling skin and shivered, her arms folded before her.
Her eyes wandered over the town, which whitened little by little. The violet mists of the dawn arose from the silent streets and fainted in the lucid air.
Suddenly an idea sprang forth in her mind, increased, dominated, made her delirious: Demetrios, he who had already done so much, why should he not kill the queen, he who could be king? And then…
And then, this enduring ocean of houses, of palaces, temples, porticoes, colonnades, which floated before her eyes from the Western Necropolis to the Gardens of the Goddess: Bruchion, the Hellenic town, dazzling and regular; Rhacotis, the Egyptian town, before which the light-flooded Paneion arose like an acropolitan mountain; the Great Temple of Serapis with a facade horned by two long rosy obelisks; the Great Temple of Aphrodite, surrounded by the murmurs of three hundred thousand palm trees and of numberless waters; the Temple of Persephone and the Temple of Arsinoe, the two sanctuaries of Poseidon, the three towers of Isis Pharis, the seven columns of Isis Lochias, and the Theater and the Hippodrome and the Stadion where Psittacos had run against Nicosthene, and the tomb of Stratonice and the tomb of the god Alexander—Alexandria! Alexandria—the sea, the men, the colossal marble Pharos whose mirrors saved men from the sea! Alexandria—the city of Berenice and of the eleven Ptolemaic kings, Physcos, Philometor, Epiphanios, Philadelphos! Alexandria—fulfillment of all dreams, the crown of all glories conquered during three thousand years in Memphis, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, by the chisel, by the reed, by the compass and by the sword!
Farther yet, the Delta, riven by the seven tongues of the Nile, Sais, Bubastis, Heliopolis; then, rising toward the south, the ribbon of fertile earth, the Heptanome where twelve hundred temples to all the gods lay in a vista along the banks of the river; and, farther, the Thebaid, Diospolis, the Elephantine Isle, the impassable cataracts, the Isle of Argo… Meroe… the Unknown; and even, could one believe the traditions of the Egyptians, the land of fabulous lakes whence escapes the antique Nile, lakes so vast that one loses the horizon while traversing their purple floods and so high in the mountains that the stars, distant no more, reflect in them like golden fruits—all that, all, would be the kingdom, the domain, the property of Chrysis the courtesan!
She raised her arms, suffocating, as though she thought herself able to touch the sky. And as she moved thus she saw, slowly passing at her left, a huge bird with black wings, flying toward the high seas.
QUEEN BERENICE had a young sister named Cleopatra. Many other princesses of Egypt were called by this name, but this one was later the great Cleopatra who slew her empire and killed herself upon its corpse.
She was then twelve years old and no one could say what her beauty would be. Her long, thin build was disconcerting in a family where all the women were plump. She ripened like a badly grafted crossed fruit of foreign, obscure origin. Some of her features were violent as those of the Macedonians; others seemed to come to her from the depths of gentle, brown Nubia, for her mother had been a woman of inferior race and her origin was still doubtful. One was astonished to see lips almost thick under the curved, thin nose. Her young bosom alone marked her as a daughter of the Nile.
The little princess dwelt in a spacious chamber open upon the expanse of the sea and connected with that of the queen by a pillared vestibule.
There she passed the hours of the night upon a bed of blue-tinted silk where the skin of her finely toned young limbs took a still more somber hue.
Now in the night during which—far from her thoughts—the events just described took place, Cleopatra arose long before the dawn., She had slept but little and ill, uneasy from the extreme heat of the air.
Without waking her guardian women, she placed her feet gently upon the ground, slipped on her golden anklets, girdled her little brown body with a strand of enormous pearls, dressed, and issued from the room.
In the monumental vestibule, the guards, also, slept, except one who stood sentinel at the queen’s door. This one fell upon his knees and whispered, full of terror, as though he had never found himself caught in such a conflict of duties and perils, “Princess Cleopatra, thy pardon… I cannot let thee pass.”
The girl drew herself up, frowned violently, struck the soldier’s temple with her fist, and exclaimed softly but ferociously, “Thou, if thou touchest me, I will cry out and I will have thee quartered.”
Then she silently entered the queen’s chamber.
Berenice slept, her head upon her arm, her hand hanging down. A lamp, suspended above the great crimson bed, mingled its feeble light with that of the moon which reflected the whiteness of the walls. The yielding outline of the young woman, vague and luminous, was bathed in a slight shadow between the two lights. Slender and straight, Cleopatra seated herself upon the edge of the bed. She took her sister’s face between her little hands and awakened her with gesture and voice, saying, “Where is thy lover?”
With a start, Berenice opened her beautiful eyes. “Cleopatra… What art thou doing here?… What dost thou wish?”
The little girl repeated insistently, “Where is thy lover?”
“He is not…”
“Certainly not, thou knowest.”
Click to enlarge
“It is true. He is never here… Oh, Cleopatra, how cruel thou art to awaken me and tell me so!”
“And why is he never here?”
Berenice sighed mournfully. “I see him when he wishes… in the daytime… an instant.”
“Didst thou not see him yesterday?”
“Yes… I met him on the road… I was in my litter. He entered it.”
“Not as far as the Palace?”
“No… not quite; but almost at the door I still saw him…”
“And thou saidst to him…”
“Oh, I was furious… I said the most evil things… Yes, my dear.”
“Really?” said the young girl ironically.
“Too evil, doubtless, for he did not reply… At the moment when I was quite red with anger, he told me a long fable and as I did not quite understand it I did not know how to answer in my turn… He slipped out of the litter although I thought I could keep him.”
“Why didst thou not have him ordered back?”
“For fear of displeasing him.”
Cleopatra, swelling with indignation, caught her sister by the shoulders and spoke, looking into her eyes: “What! Thou art queen; thou art the goddess of a people; thou possessest a half of the world; all that is not Rome’s is thine; thou reignest over the Nile and over all the sea; thou reignest even over the heaven since thou speakest to the gods from nearer than any other—and thou canst not reign over the man thou lovest?”
“Reign…” said Berenice, drooping her head, “that is easy to say, but, seest thou, one does not reign over a lover as over a slave.”
“And why not?”
“Because… but thou canst not understand… To love is to prefer the happiness of another to that which one formerly wished for one’s self… If Demetrios is pleased, I will be also, even in tears and far from him… I can no longer desire a joy which may not at the same time be his, and I am happy with all that I give him.”
“Thou dost not know how to love,” said the child.
Berenice smiled sadly at her, then stretched sleepily and breathed deeply.
“Ah! presumptuous little maiden!” she sighed. “When thou wilt have swooned for the first time in a loving embrace, then thou wilt understand why one is never the queen of the man in whose arms one has been.”
“One is when one wishes.”
“But one can no longer wish.”
“I can! Why canst not thou, who art older than I?”
Berenice smiled again. “And where, little girl, wilt thou exercise thy power? Among thy dolls?”
“With
Comments (0)