Part 15 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ver. ”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.