The Tour Part 15

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 G.o.ds 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, ma.s.sive buildings the Pyramids showed spectrally.

Thrasyllus pointed his long, crystal spy-gla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e.

Here, even on the quays, the riotous bustle of agriculture and commerce had ceased to reign. Under the palms there was not the metropolitan 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 a.s.sembled when the two litters were carried on sh.o.r.e.

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. Sometimes a woman's face peeped out from the half-opened, vermilion shutters of some great grey, dilapidated house.

Ye G.o.ds, what dimensions! What lines, what s.p.a.ciousness 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 pa.s.sed 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 Caesar 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 the fields of sacred Egypt when he disguised himself with the other G.o.ds, 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 s.p.a.ces 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 princ.i.p.al 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 n.o.ble lord, you would have beheld the death of Apis and his return to life."

"What is this, then?" asked Lucius.

"The incarnation of the G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.dhead 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 and the 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 G.o.d. 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 st.u.r.dy as those of a young peasant and shepherd.

The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot of gra.s.s 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 temple that was her stall. She went, solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed only because of the strangers and their fee.