Part 3 (1/2)

_The Romance of a Mummy_

I

Oph (that is the name of the city which antiquity called Thebes of the Hundred Gates, or Diospolis Magna), see sun It was noon A white light fell fro and scintillating, shone like burnished metal; shadows there were none, save a narrow, bluish line at the foot of buildings, like the inky line hich an architect draws upon papyrus; the houses, whose walls sloped well inwards, glowed like bricks in an oven; every door was closed, and no one showed at the hich were closed with blinds of reeds

At the end of the deserted streets and above the terraces stood out in the hot, transparent air the tips of obelisks, the tops of pylons, the entablatures of palaces and temples, whose capitals, formed of hu the horizontal lines of the roofs and rising like reefs as

Here and there above a garden wall shot up the scaly trunk of a pal in a plume of leaves, not one of which stirred, for never a breath blew Acacias, e that cast a narrow blue shadow upon the dazzling brilliancy of the ground These green spots refreshed and enlivened the solemn aridity of the picture, which but for them would have been that of a dead city

A few slaves of the Nahasi race, black coait, alone braving the heat of the day, were bearing to their masters' ho fro but striped drarinkling on their hips, their torsos, brilliant and polished like basalt, streamed with perspiration as they quickened their pace lest they should scorch the thick soles of their feet on the pavements, which were as hot as the floor of a vapour bath The boatmen were asleep in the cabins of their boats moored to the brick wall of the river quay, sure that no one would waken them to cross to the other bank, where lay the Mehest heaven wheeled vultures, whose shrill call, that at any other time would have been lost in the rueneral silence On the cornices of thedrawn up under their body, their long bill resting on their breast, seeainst the calcined, whitish blue which forround

And yet all did not sleep Froreat palace whose entablature, adorned with pal sky, there came a faint murmur of h the diaphanous shi+ht almost have followed their sonorous undulations Deadened by the thickness of the walls, thevoluptuously sad, wearily languorous, expressing bodily fatigue and the discouragement of passion It was full of the eternal weariness of the luminous azure, of the indescribable helplessness of hot countries As the slave passed by the wall, forgetting the master's lash he would suspend his walk and stop to breathe in that song, inated with all the secret homesickness of the soul, which made him think of his far distant country, of his lost love, and of the insurh softly breathed in the silence of the city? What restless soul hen all around was asleep?

The straight lines and the monumental appearance of the facade of the palace, which looked upon the face of the square, were typical of the civil and religious architecture of Egypt The dwelling could belong to a princely or a priestly family only So much was readily seen from the materials of which it was built, the careful construction, and the richness of the ornareat building flanked by tings surle A broad, deeply cutprofile ended the wall, in which was visible no opening other than a door placed, not sy, no doubt to allow ample space for the staircase within A cornice in the sale door The building projected froalleries, reseularly fantastic in style The bases of these pillars represented huge lotus-buds, from the capsule of which, as it opened its dentelated ri below, irdled under the capital by a collar ofin a half-blown flower Between the broad bays were small ith their sashes in two parts filled with stained glass Above ran a terraced roof flagged with huge slabs of stone

On the outer galleries great clay vases, rubbed inside with bitter al upon wooden pedestals, cooled the Nile water in the draughts of air Tables bore pyra-cups of different shapes; for the Egyptians love to eat in the open air, and take their meals, so to speak, upon the public street On either side of the ht of one story only, fored half-way up in a wall divided into panels in such a manner as to foraze of the outer world All these buildings, enlivened by ornas,--for the capitals, the shafts, the cornices, and the panels were coloured,--produced a delightful and superb effect

The door opened into a vast court surrounded by a quadrilateral portico supported by pillars, the capitals of which showed on each face a wohtly flattened noses, and a broad smile; each wore a thick red cushi+on and supported a cap of hard sandstone Under the portico opened the doors of the apartht caalleries In the centre of the court sparkled in the sunshi+ne a pool of water, edged with a ranite On the surface of the pond spread the heart-shaped leaves of the lotus, the rose and blue flowers of which were half closed as if overcoed In the flower-beds around the pool were planted flowers arranged fanlike upon s the narroalks laid out between the beds walked carefully two tame storks, which fros as if about to take flight At the angles of the court the twisted trunks of four huge persaeas exhibited a e At the end a sort of pylon broke the portico, and its large bay, fra avenue a sun In the coht and on the left of the arbour by dwarf trees cut into the shape of cones, blooranates, sycamores, tamarinds, periplocas, mimosas, and acacias, the flowers of which shone like coloured lights on the deep green of the foliage which overhung the walls

The faint, sweet music of which we have spoken proceeded from one of the rooh the sun shone full into the court, the ground of which blazed in the flood of light, a blue, cool shadow, transparently intense, filled the apart reverberation, sought to distinguish shapes and at last ht A tender lilac tone overspread the walls of the room, around which ran a cornice painted in brilliant tones and enriched with sns skilfully combined formed on the plain spaces panels which framed in ornaments, sheaves of flowers, birds, diapers of contrasted colours, and scenes of doely shaped bed, representing an ox wearing ostrich-feathers with a disc between its horns, broadening its back to receive the sleeper upon a thin redin green hoofs, while its curled-up tail was divided into two tufts This quadruped bed, this piece of anie in any other country than Egypt, where lions and jackals are also turned into beds by the fancy of the workmen

In front of the couch was placed a stool with four steps, which gave access to it: at the head, a pillow of Oriental alabaster, destined to support the neck without deranging the head-dress, was hollowed out in the shape of a half moon In the centre a table of precious wood carved with exceeding care, stood upon a richly carved pedestal A number of objects were placed upon it: a pot of lotus flowers, a ate filled with antimony powder, a perfume spatula of syca out as if she were swi to attempt to hold her box above the water

Near the table, on an arilded wood picked out with red, with blue feet, and with lions for arms, covered with a thick cushi+on of purple stuff starred with gold and crossed with black, the end of which fell over the back, was seated a young woraceful attitude of nonchalance and melancholy

Her features, of ideal delicacy, were of the purest Egyptian type, and sculptors es of Isis and Hathor, even at the risk of breaking the rigorous hieratic laws Golden and rosy reflections coloured her war black eyes, uorous, inexpressible sadness Those great dark eyes, with the eyebrows strongly e expression to the dainty, almost childish face The half-parted lips, soranate flower, showed a gleam of polished white and preserved the involuntary and almost painful syptian face The nose, slightly depressed at the root, where the eyebrows melted one into another in a velvety shadow, rose in such pure lines, such delicate outlines, and with such well-cut nostrils that any woman or Goddess would have been satisfied with it in spite of its slightly African profile The chin was rounded with ance and shone like polished ivory The cheeks, rather rounder than those of the beauties of other nations, added to the face an expression of extreirl wore for head-dress a sort of hels of which fell upon her temples, and the pretty, small head of which came down to the centre of her brohile the tail, marked hite spots, spread out on the back of her neck A clever coe of the bird Ostrich-feathers, planted in the helrette, coins, as the vulture, the symbol of irl, of a brilliant black, plaited into tresses, hung in masses on either side of her smooth, round cheeks, and fell down to her shoulders In the shadowy reat discs of gold worn as earrings Fro bands of stuff with fringed ends A broad pectoral ornaold and cornelian beads, and fishes and lizards of staold, covered her breast from the lower part of the neck to the upper part of the bosoh the thin warp of the calasiris The dress, of a large checkered pattern, was fastened under the boso ends, and ended in a broader border of transverse stripes edged with a fringe Triple bracelets of lapis-lazuli beads, divided here and there by golden balls, encircled her slender wrists, delicate as those of a child; and her lovely, narrow feet with long, supple toes, were shod with sandals of white kid staold, and rested on a cedar stool incrusted with red and green enayptian) knelt, one leg drawn back under the thigh and the other forle, in the attitude which the painters love to reproduce on the walls of hypogea, a female harpist placed upon a sort of low pedestal, destined no doubt to increase the resonance of the instrument A piece of stuff striped with coloured bands, the ends of which, thrown back, hung in fluted lappets, bound her hair and fra mysteriously like that of a sphinx A narrow dress, or rather sheath, of transparent gauze outlined closely the youthful contours of her elegant, slender form Her dress, cut below the breast, left her shoulders, chest, and arms free in their chaste nudity A support, fixed to the pedestal on which was placed the player, and traversed by a bolt in the shape of a key, forht of which, but for that, would have borne wholly upon the shoulders of the young woman The harp, which ended in a sort of keyboard, rounded like a shell and covered with ornas, bore at its upper end a sculptured head of Hathor surmounted by an ostrich-pluonally and quivered under the long, slender hands of the harpist, who often, in order to reach the lower notes, bent with a sinuous motion as if she were about to float on the waves ofharht have been thought nude but for the faint white haze which toned the bronze colour of her body She played on a sort of guitar with an exceedingly long handle, the three cords of which were coquettishly adorned at their extremity with coloured tufts One of her arrasped the top of the handle with a sculptural pose, while the other upheld the instru woman, whose enormous mass of hair made her look all the more slender, beat tihtly curved inward, on which was stretched an onager-skin

The harpist sang a plaintive melody, accoue aspirations, vague regrets, a hyour of the Gods and the cruelty of fate Tahoser, leaning upon one of the lions of her arainst her temple, listened with inattentionof the h made her breast heave and raised the enarowing tear shone in her eye between the lines of antihting her own e her delicate hands together to silence the musician, who at once deadened with her pal enervates iddy like overpowerful perfus of your harp seem to be twisted with the vibrations of my heart and sound painfully within my breast You make me almost ashamed, for it is my soul that mourns in your music Who can have told you my secrets?”

”Mistress,” replied the harpist, ”the poet and the s to theht scarcely conceives and what the tongue confusedly sta its hter ideas to your mind” And Satou struck the cords of her harp with joyous energy, and with a quick measure which the tympanum marked withpraising the charht of the dance So-stools formed of the necks of blue swans, whose yellow bills clasped the fra upon scarlet cushi+ons filled with the down of thistles, had assuuor, shi+vered; their nostrils swelled; they breathed in the ic rhythm; they rose to their feet, and, an to dance A head-dress, in the shape of a helmet cut out around the ear, enclosed their hair, some locks of which escaped and fell upon their brown cheeks, which the ardour of the dance soon turned rosy Broad golden circles beat upon their necks, and through their long gauze shi+fts, eolden bronze bodies which moved with the ease of an adder They twisted, turned, swayed their hips, bound with a narrow black girdle, threw theht and left as if they found a secret voluptuousness in touching their polished chins with their cold, bare shoulders, swelled out their breasts like doves, knelt and rose, pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their ars of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato movements, and followed every undulation of the ainst the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the dancers,their hands together Some of these maids, absolutely nude, had no other raiment than a bracelet of enamelled ware; others wore a narrow cloth held by straps, and a few sprays of flowers twisted in their hair It was a strange and graceful sight The buds and the flowers, gentlywoested fortunate comparisons to poets

But Satou had overestimated the power of her art The joyous rhythm seemed to increase Tahoser's melancholy A tear rolled down her fair cheek like a drop of Nile water on a ny her face in the breast of her favourite maid, who leaned upon the armchair of her mistress, she uttered with a sob, dovelike in its sadness, ”Oh, my dear Nofre, I am very sad and very unhappy!”

II

Nofre, anticipating son, and the harpist, the two musicians, the dancers, and the ures painted on frescoes When the last had gone, the favourite said to herrief,--

”What is the matter, dear , so fair that the loveliest envy you, and free to do what you please? And did not your father, the high-priest Petamounoph, whose mumreat wealth to do with as you please? Your palace is splendid, your gardens vast and watered by transparent streams, your coffers of enamelled ware and sycamore wood are filled with necklaces, pectorals, neck-plates, anklets, finely wrought seal-rings Your gowns, your calasiris, your head-dresses are greater in number than the days of the year Hopi, the father of waters, regularly covers with his fertilisingat top speed could scarce traverse fro joyously like a lotus bud in the month of Hathor or of Choeak, closes and contracts painfully”