The Tour Part 21

"Dig," Lucius commanded, suddenly turning round.

Tarrar gave a start. He put down the casket in the sand and dug a hole with his hands.

"Deeper," Lucius commanded. "Dig deeper."

The little slave dug; quickly, like a little monkey, he dug the hole deep with his two hands.

"Put the casket in the hole," Lucius commanded.

Tarrar did so and looked at his master.

"Cover the casket up with sand."

Tarrar did as his master commanded. Then Lucius said:

"Now come back."

And he went back to the oasis; but Tarrar, before following him, stamped down the sand under which the casket lay buried and overwhelmed it, amid violent gestures of delight, with native curses, curses not to be averted, in the Libyan tongue.

CHAPTER XXIII

The travellers had returned to Memphis and Caleb displayed the skin of a lion which had been shot in the desert and told the people in the thalamegus terrible tales of desert ghosts and dread visions. The barge was now gliding up the Nile in the night; the sky was softly blue, like dark byssus; the water was a pale blue, like rippling silk; and the waning moon hung above the palm-cl.u.s.ters and country-mansions on the river-bank like a great, overripe fruit which threatened to burst in the sky and whose juice was already trickling in thick orange drops that flowed far over the Nile.

And, while the rowers' monotonous chant resounded with the regular beat of the oars, Thrasyllus, sitting beside Lucius, gave way to melancholy and said:

"Egypt is Egypt no longer. Alexandria is a commercial town; Memphis is a decaying greatness; and the priests are venal and no longer know the Hermetic wisdom. I have sought for five days among the dusty papyri of the neglected library in the temple of Ammon; it is as though all that is worth knowing were hiding itself."

"The priests must be hiding the Hermetic wisdom on purpose," said Lucius.

"They used to do so in other days for Plato and Pythagoras, when their souls were lofty and incorruptible. Nowadays they show what they have and tell what they know for money. But what they have is not more than we in Rome possess in the temple of Isis; and what they know is not the key to happiness. And yet ... and yet I believe in a sacred word, handed down in the wisdom of the Kabbala by word of mouth, from father to son. But I have not yet received it from any priest, neither at Memphis nor in the oasis. And yet I have hopes. There is Thebes; and there are the secrets of Ethiopia ... down to the pillars of Sesostris."

Lucius smiled gently:

"The word," he said, "the secret of happiness ... Thrasyllus, is happiness not an illusion of the brain? Does happiness not lie in resigning one's self piously to one's fate and is the secret word not the proud 'Be a G.o.d unto yourself'?"

The old man started. And he whispered:

"You also? Have you also heard that word, as I heard it at Sais? I took no account of it, it did not satisfy me."

"It satisfied me in the oasis, because it is a proud, strong word and I have needed pride and strength ... since I have known, Thrasyllus."

"Known what, Lucius?"

"That Carus stole Ilia from me."

The old man started violently:

"You know?" he exclaimed. "You know? Who told you? Who betrayed the secret?"

"The voice itself within my own soul, which the oracles caused to speak to me. My own thoughts, tossing this way and that, which the oracles guided. From the sibyl of Rhacotis, who merely guessed my own thoughts, down to the old high-priest of Ammon-Ra, who spoke to me like a father ... and who said to me the word, 'Be a G.o.d unto yourself!'"

"As Nemu-Pha said to me, at Sais. I paid for it in gold."

"I paid for it in gold in the oasis. But what does that matter, Thrasyllus? The word gave me strength and pride."

"O my son, if you could be cured of your sorrow, of your grief!"

"They are no longer in me. I no longer have any grief, no longer any sorrow. I am a G.o.d unto myself."

"The G.o.ds suffer. Isis suffered because of Osiris. All the G.o.ds suffer."

"I suffer no longer. My grief has departed from me. The world and life are beautiful. See, the colours and the light are beautiful. The sky is softly blue, like dark byssus; the water ripples like blue silk; and the moon is like a great, overripe fruit which bursts in the sky and whose juice trickles over the Nile. To-morrow the day will bring another beauty. In these successive beauties, Thrasyllus, I will be a G.o.d unto myself."

"O my son, though I did not tell you the word myself, I am so happy that you yourself found the word!"

In the night there sounded the high, rising tones of a harp, followed by Cora's crystal-clear voice, which was accompanied by other harps and other voices.

"The word of pride, the word of strength, Thrasyllus," said Lucius, calmly; and the old tutor saw a tranquil smile on his young master's face as he added, "The word that almost makes me happy."

CHAPTER XXIV

After the abundant dews of the night came the delight of the cool-warm summer day. The cl.u.s.tering trees now pressed their way forward more richly and luxuriously along the banks of the Nile. Here, on the Libyan side, lay the town of Acanthus, with its temple of Osiris in a spreading wood of Theban acanthus-trees, of which the natives tap the fragrant gums. Next, on the Arabian bank, came Aphroditopolis, the second town of the name, with the temple of the White Cow; and then the travellers reached the Heracleotic nome, a big island in the Nile, from which a ca.n.a.l cuts through the Arsinoic nome, the most fertile in the whole country. Here and here alone the olive-tree flourished in dense, silvery woods; but here also there twisted and twined, in close festoons, the vine-branches, on which the grapes were beginning to swell; here the fruit-trees bent under their heavy load and the orchards stretched; here the sickles of the husbandmen waved through the abundant ears of corn. Here the fat soil yielded wealth and prosperity; here the innumerable sheep spread in a wave of wool over the hills, like a shadowy white sea. Here, between margins of sands, Lake Moeris stretched exquisite and crystal blue to the horizon, as it were a fresh-water inland sea. In earlier ages, the ocean must have extended to those margins and stolen the whole northern land of Lower Egypt, that gift of the Nile, as Herodotus had called it long ago. Here the double lotus-flowers were trained to blossom in the waters; and here the sacred scarabs were bred and worshipped upon the white flowers.

Lucius would wander alone of a morning, strolling along the banks of the lake. It was so strangely calm here and so divinely beautiful; and a heaven-sent consolation filled the air. These were the regions blest by the G.o.ds; and it pleased Lucius to linger here. The thalamegus lay moored under acanthus-trees; the flowering reeds shot up to a man's height around her. And every afternoon, at sunset, Lucius, sometimes accompanied by Thrasyllus, sometimes alone, walked to the labyrinth.

The road lay along the waterworks of the ca.n.a.l, where daily, under the supervision of the engineers, the quant.i.ty of water that flowed in and out of the lake through the ca.n.a.l was closely gauged. The tilled and inhabited lands around Lake Moeris, large as a sea, were never flooded. If the Nile increased, all that happened was that the blue crystal mirror of the lake rose. If the waters of the river fell, then those of the lake filled them up, by careful management of the sluices. The water was never other than a benevolent deity.

Along the waterworks ran the road to the labyrinth. In the sinking glory of the sun, in blood-red and orange splendours, Lucius saw it daily, the strange t.i.tanic town of monoliths, the linked rows of palaces and courts, projecting their columns endlessly, endlessly, towards the sunlit horizon. Orange and blood-red gleams glowed over the flat stone tables of the roofs, which were not higher than a single pillared storey and which spread out their immense terrace like a paved desert. There were twenty palaces, each surrounded by twenty-seven monolithic columns; and all this wondrous architecture of past centuries was without a beam of wood, was without cement or masonry, was simply stone laid upon stone with faultless precision and column hewn beside column, absolutely circular, each column a single stone. At the end of the palaces, which were a stadium long, rose the square pyramid, the tomb of the builder, King Amenemha.

The holy place was guarded by priests, who led Lucius through the halls and crypts. The twenty palaces represented the former twenty Egyptian nomes, or provinces; and the emissaries of each province used to gather with their priests and priestesses in their palace or court and offer up sacrifices and discuss great questions of policy or local welfare. But nowadays the palaces were deserted, the crypts were deserted, and the priests led Lucius along endless, deserted, winding corridors which meandered from palace to palace. The torches smeared the walls with blood-red light, smeared the smooth stone walls of the corridors and halls and floors and ceilings, stone after stone upon stone of wonderful dimensions all resting one upon another without cement. And to Lucius it was one of the marvels of the world, even more marvellous, because of its sublime human architecture, than the pyramids had been.

Travelling on camels with Uncle Catullus and a great retinue, Lucius went a hundred stadia farther, to Arsinoe-Crocodilopolis. The trees flourished more richly, more luxuriantly, like a richly-wooded park around the travellers, till they came to the sacred lake where the sacred crocodile, named Such, was held in veneration.

"Well," said Uncle Catullus, "here's another of these little pets which are kept for the edification of foreigners!"