The Works of Theophile Gautier Part 9

"Hora herself, who is fairer and more beautiful than any of us, could not manage it. Though he bears an Egyptian name and is in the service of the Pharaoh, he belongs to the barbarous race of Israel, and if he goes out at night, it is no doubt to be present at the sacrifices of children which the Hebrews perform in desert places, where the owl hoots, the hyena howls, and the adder hisses."

Tahoser quietly left the room without a word, and concealed herself in the garden behind the mimosa bushes. After waiting two hours, she saw Poeri issue forth into the country. Light and silent as a shadow, she started to follow him.

IX

Poeri, who was armed with a strong palm stick, walked towards the river along a causeway built over a field of submerged papyrus which, leafy at their base, sent up on either hand their straight stalks six and eight cubits high, ending in a tuft of fibre and looking like the lances of an army in battle array.

Holding in her breath and walking on tiptoe, Tahoser followed him on the narrow road. There was no moon that night, and the thick papyrus would in any case have been sufficient to conceal the young girl, who remained somewhat behind.

An open s.p.a.ce had to be crossed. The sham Hora let Poeri go on first, bent down, made herself as small as she could, and crawled along the ground. Next they entered a mimosa wood, and, concealed by the clumps of trees, Tahoser was able to proceed without having to take as many precautions. She was so close to Poeri, whom she feared to lose sight of in the darkness, that very often the branches that he pushed aside slapped her in the face; but she paid no attention to this. A feeling of burning jealousy drove her to seek the solution of the mystery, which she did not interpret as did the servants in the house. Not for one moment had she believed that the young Hebrew went out thus every night to perform any infamous and profane rite; she believed that a woman was at the bottom of these nocturnal excursions, and she wanted to know who her rival was. The cold kindness of Poeri had proved to her that his heart was already won; otherwise, how could he have remained insensible to charms famous throughout Thebes and the whole of Egypt? Would he have pretended not to understand a love that would have filled with pride oeris, priests, temple scribes, and even princes of the royal blood?

On reaching the river sh.o.r.e, Poeri descended a few steps cut out of the slope of the bank, and bent down as if he were casting off a rope.

Tahoser, lying flat on the summit of the bank, above which the top of her head alone showed, saw to her great despair that the mysterious stroller was casting off a light papyrus bark, narrow and long like a fish, and that he was making ready to cross the river. The next moment he sprang into the boat, shoved off with his foot, and sculled into the open with a single oar placed at the stern of the skiff.

The poor girl was plunged in grief and despair: she was going to lose track of the secret which it was so important that she should learn.

What was she to do? Retrace her steps, her heart a prey to suspicion and uncertainty, the worst of evils? She summoned all her courage and soon made up her mind. It was useless to think of looking for another boat.

She let herself down the bank, drew off her dress in a twinkling, and fastened it in a roll upon her head; then she boldly plunged into the river, taking care not to splash. As supple as a water-snake, she stretched out her lovely arms over the dark waves in which quivered the reflection of the stars, and began to follow the boat at a distance. She swam superbly, for every day she practised with her women in the vast piscina in her palace, and no one cleaved the waters more skilfully than Tahoser.

The current, less swift at this point, did not greatly hinder her, but in the centre of the stream she had to strike out in the boiling water and to swim faster in order to avoid being carried to leeward. Her breath came shorter and quicker, and yet she held it in lest the young Hebrew should hear her. Sometimes a higher wave lapped with its foam her half-open lips, wetted her hair, and even reached her dress rolled up in a bundle. Happily for her,--for her strength was beginning to give way,--she soon found herself in stiller water. A bundle of reeds coming down the river touched her as it pa.s.sed, and filled her with quick terror. The dark, green ma.s.s looked in the darkness like the back of a crocodile; Tahoser thought she had felt the rough skin of the monster; but she recovered from her terror and said, as she swam on, "What matter if the crocodiles eat me up, if Poeri loves me not?"

There was real danger, especially at night. During the day the constant crossing of boats and the work going on along the quays drove away the crocodiles, which went to sh.o.r.es less frequented by man to wallow in the mud and to sun themselves; but at night they became bold again.

Tahoser did not think of them; love is no calculator, and even if she had thought of this form of peril, she would have braved it, timid though she was, and frightened by an obstinate b.u.t.terfly that mistaking her for a flower kept fluttering around her.

Suddenly the boat stopped, although the bank was still some distance away. Poeri, ceasing to scull, seemed to cast an uneasy glance around him. He had perceived the whitish spot made on the water by Tahoser's rolled up dress. Thinking she was discovered, the intrepid swimmer bravely dived, resolved not to come to the surface, even were she to drown, until Poeri's suspicions had been dispelled.

"I could have sworn somebody was swimming behind me," said Poeri, as he went on sculling again; "but who would venture into the Nile at such a time as this? I must have been crazy. I mistook for a human head covered with linen a tuft of white reeds, or perhaps a mere flake of foam, for I can see nothing now."

When Tahoser, whose temples were beginning to beat violently, and who began to see red flashes in the dark waters of the river, rose hastily to fill her lungs with a long breath of air, the papyrus boat had resumed its confident way, and Poeri was handling the scull with the imperturbable phlegm of the allegorical personages who row the barge of Maut on the _ba.s.si-relievi_ and the paintings of the temples. The bank was only a few strokes off; the vast shadow of the pylons and the huge walls of the Northern Palace--the dark pile of which was faintly seen surmounted by the pyramidions of six obelisks through the violet blue of the night--spread immense and formidable over the river, and sheltered Tahoser, who could swim without fear of being noticed.

Poeri landed a little below the palace and fastened his boat to a post so as to find it on his return. Then he took his palm stick and ascended the slope of the quay with a swift step.

Poor Tahoser, almost worn out, clung with her stiffened hands to the first step of the stair, and with difficulty drew from the stream her dripping limbs, which the contact of the air made heavier as she suddenly felt the fatigue. But the worst of her task was over. She climbed the steps, one hand pressed to her quick-beating heart, the other placed on her head to steady her rolled up and soaked dress. After having noticed the direction in which Poeri was walking, she sat down on top of the bank, untied her dress, and put it on. The contact of the wet stuff made her shudder slightly, yet the night air was soft and the southern breeze blew warm; but she was stiff and feverish, and her little teeth were chattering. She summoned up her energy, and gliding close by the sloping walls of the giant buildings, she managed not to lose sight of the young Hebrew, who turned around the corner of the mighty brick walls of the palace and entered the streets of Thebes.

After walking for some fifteen minutes, the palaces, the temples, the splendid dwellings vanished, and were replaced by humbler houses; granite, sandstone, and limestone were replaced by unbaked bricks and by clay worked with straw. Architectural design disappeared; low huts showed around like blisters or warts upon lonely places, upon waste fields, and were changed by the darkness into monstrous shapes. Pieces of wood and moulded bricks arranged in heaps obstructed the way. Out of the silence rose strange, troubling sounds: an owl whirled through the air, lean dogs, raising their long, pointed noses, followed with plaintive bay the erratic flight of a bat; scorpions and frightened reptiles scurrying by, made the dry gra.s.s rattle.

"Could Harphre have spoken the truth?" thought Tahoser, impressed by the sinister aspect of the place. "Is it possible that Poeri comes here to sacrifice a child to those barbarous G.o.ds who love blood and suffering?

Never was any place better fitted for cruel rites."

Meanwhile, profiting by the shadow of corners, the ends of walls, the clumps of vegetation, and the unevenness of the ground, she kept at the same distance from Poeri.

"Even if I were to be present as an invisible witness at some scene as frightful as a nightmare, to hear the cries of the victim, to see the priest, his hands red with blood, draw from the little body the smoking heart, I should go on to the end," said Tahoser to herself, as she saw the young Hebrew enter a hut built of clay, through the crevices of which shone a few rays of yellow light.

When Poeri was fairly within, the daughter of Petamounoph approached, though not a pebble cracked under her light step, nor a dog marked her presence by a bark. She went around the hut, pressing her hand to her heart and holding in her breath, and discovered, by seeing it shine against the dark ground of the clay wall, a crack wide enough to allow her glance to penetrate the interior. A small lamp lighted the room, which was less bare than might have been supposed from the outward appearance of the cabin. The smooth walls were as polished as stucco.

On wooden pedestals, painted in various colours, were placed vases of gold and silver; jewels sparkled in half-open coffers; dishes of brilliant metal shone on the wall; and a nosegay of rare flowers bloomed in an enamelled jar in the centre of a small table. But it was not these details which interested Tahoser, although the contrast of this concealed luxury with the external poverty of the dwelling had at first somewhat surprised her. Her attention was irresistibly attracted by another object.

On a low platform covered with matting was a marvellously beautiful woman of an unknown race. She was fairer than any of the maids of Egypt, as white as milk, as white as a lily, as white as the ewes which have just been washed. Her eyebrows were curved like ebony bows, and their points met at the root of the thin, aquiline nose, the nostrils of which were as rosy as the interior of a sh.e.l.l; her eyes were like doves' eyes, bright and languorous; her lips were like two bands of purple, and as they parted showed rows of pearls; her hair hung on either side of her rosy cheeks in black, l.u.s.trous locks like two bunches of ripe grapes.

Earrings shimmered in her ears, and necklaces of golden plates inlaid with silver sparkled around a neck that was round and polished like an alabaster column. Her dress was peculiar. It consisted of a full tunic embroidered with stripes and symmetrical designs of various colours, falling from her shoulders half-way down her legs and leaving her arms free and bare.

The young Hebrew sat down by her on the matting, and spoke to her words which Tahoser could not understand, but the meaning of which she unfortunately guessed too well; for Poeri and Ra'hel spoke in the language of their country, so sweet to the exile and captive. Yet hope dies hard in the loving breast.

"Perhaps it is his sister," said Tahoser, "and he goes to see her in secret, being unwilling that it should be known that he belongs to that enslaved race."

Then she put her eye to the crevice and listened with painful and intense attention to the harmonious and rhythmic language, every syllable of which held a secret which she would have given her life to learn, and which sounded in her ears vague, swift, and unmeaning like the wind in the leaves and the water on the bank.

"She is very beautiful for a sister," she murmured, as she cast a jealous glance upon the strange and charming face with its red lips and its pale complexion that was set off by ornaments of exotic shapes, and the beauty of which had something fatally mysterious about it.

"Oh, Ra'hel, my beloved Ra'hel!" repeated Poeri often.

Tahoser remembered having heard him whisper that name while she was fanning him in his sleep.

"He thought of her even in his dreams. No doubt Ra'hel is her name." And the poor child felt in her breast a sharp pang as if all the uraeus snakes of the entablatures, all the royal asps of the Pharaonic crowns, had struck their venomous fangs in her heart.

Ra'hel bowed her head on Poeri's shoulder like a flower overladen with sunshine and love; the lips of the young man touched the hair of the lovely Jewess, who fell back slowly, yielding her brow and half-closed eyes to his earnest and timid caress. Their hands, which had sought each other, were now clasped and feverishly pressed together.

"Oh, why did I not surprise him in some impious and mysterious ceremony, slaying with his own hands a human victim, drinking its blood in a cup of black ware, rubbing his face with it? It seems to me that I should have suffered less than at the sight of that lovely woman whom he embraces so timidly," murmured Tahoser in a faint voice as she sank on the ground in a corner by the hut.

Twice she strove to rise, but she fell back on her knees. Darkness came over her, her limbs gave way, and she fell in a swoon.

Meanwhile Poeri issued from the hut, giving a last kiss to Ra'hel.

X

The Pharaoh, raging and anxious on hearing of the disappearance of Tahoser, had given way to that desire for change which possesses a heart tormented by an unsatisfied pa.s.sion. To the deep grief of Amense, Hont-Reche, and Twea, his favourites, who had endeavoured to retain him in the Summer Palace by all the resources of feminine coquetry, he now inhabited the Northern Palace on the other side of the Nile. His fierce preoccupation was irritated by the presence and the chatter of his women; they displeased him because they were not Tahoser. He now thought ugly those beauties who had seemed to him formerly so fair; their young, slender, graceful bodies, their voluptuous att.i.tudes, their long eyes brightened by antimony and flashing with desire, their purple lips, white teeth, and languishing smiles,--everything in them, even the perfume of their cool skin, as delicate as a bouquet of flowers or a box of scent, had become odious to him. He seemed to be angry with them for having loved them, and to be unable to understand how he could have been smitten by such vulgar charms. When Twea touched his breast with the slender, pink finger of her little hand, shaking with emotion, as if to recall the remembrance of former familiarities; when Hont-Reche placed before him the draught-board supported by two lions back to back, in order to play a game; when Amense presented him with a lotus-flower with respectful, supplicating grace, he could scarcely refrain from striking them with his sceptre, and his royal eyes flashed with such disdain that the poor women who had ventured on such boldness, withdrew abashed, their eyes wet with tears, and leaned silently against the painted wall, trying by their motionlessness to appear to be part of the paintings on the frescoes.

To avoid these scenes of tears and violence, he had withdrawn to the palace of Thebes, alone, taciturn, and sombre; and there, instead of remaining seated on his throne in the solemn att.i.tude of the G.o.ds and of kings, who, being almighty, neither move nor make a gesture, he walked feverishly up and down through the vast halls. Strange was it to see that tall Pharaoh with imposing mien, as formidable as the granite colossi, his like, making the stone floors resound under his curved sandals. When he pa.s.sed, the terrified guards seemed to be petrified and to turn to stone. They remained breathless, and not even the double ostrich-feather in their headgear dared tremble. When he had pa.s.sed, they scarce ventured to whisper, "What is the matter to-day with the Pharaoh?"

Had he returned from his expedition a beaten man, he could not have been more morose and sombre. If, instead of having won ten victories, slain twenty thousand enemies, brought back two thousand virgins chosen from among the fairest, a hundred loads of gold-dust, a thousand loads of ebony and elephants' tusks, without counting the rare products and the strange animals,--if, instead of all this, Pharaoh had seen his army cut to pieces, his war chariots overthrown and broken, if he had escaped alone from the rout under a shower of arrows, dusty, blood-covered, taking the reins from the hands of his driver dead by his side,--he certainly could not have appeared more gloomy and more desperate. After all, the land of Egypt produces soldiers in abundance; innumerable horses neigh and paw the ground in the palace stables; and workmen could soon bend wood, melt copper, sharpen bra.s.s. The fortune of war is changeable, but a disaster may be atoned for. To have, however, wished for a thing which did not at once come to him, to have met with an obstacle between his will and the carrying out of that will, to have hurled like a javelin a desire which had not struck its mark,--that was what amazed the Pharaoh who dwelt in the higher plane of almightiness.

For one moment it occurred to him that he was only a man.

So he wandered through the vast courts, down the avenues of giant pillars, pa.s.sed under the mighty pylons, between the lofty monolithic obelisks and the colossi which gazed upon him with their great, frightened eyes. He traversed the hypostyle hall and the maze of the granitic forest with its one hundred and sixty-two pillars tall and strong as towers. The figures of G.o.ds, of kings, and of symbolic beings painted on the walls seemed to fix upon him their great eyes, drawn in black upon their profile masks, the uraeus snakes to twist and swell their hoods, the bird-faced divinities to stretch out their necks, the globes to spread over the cornices their fluttering wings of stone. A strange, fantastic life animated these curious figures, and peopled with living swarms the solitudes of the vast hall, which was as large as an ordinary palace. The divinities, the ancestors, the chimerical monsters, eternally motionless, were amazed to see the Pharaoh, ordinarily as calm as themselves, striding up and down as though he were a man of flesh, and not of porphyry and basalt.

Weary of roaming about that mysterious forest of pillars that upbore a granite heaven, like a lion which seeks the track of its prey and scents with its wrinkled nose the moving sand of the desert, the Pharaoh ascended one of the terraces of the palace, stretched himself on a low couch, and sent for Timopht.

Timopht appeared at once, and advanced from the top of the stairs to the Pharaoh, prostrating himself at every step. He dreaded the wrath of the master whose favour he had, for a moment, hoped he had gained. Would the skill he had shown in discovering the home of Tahoser be a sufficient excuse for the crime of losing track of the lovely maid?

Raising one knee and leaving the other bent, Timopht stretched out his arms with a supplicating gesture.

"O King, do not doom me to death or to be beaten beyond measure. The beauteous Tahoser, the daughter of Petamounoph, on whom your desire deigned to descend as the hawk swoops down upon the dove, will doubtless be found; and when, returned to her home, she sees your magnificent gifts, her heart will be touched, and she will come of herself to take, among the women that dwell in your harem, the place which you will a.s.sign to her."

"Did you question her servants and her slaves?" said the King. "The stick loosens the most rebellious tongue, and suffering makes men and women say what they would otherwise hide."