Part 5 (1/2)
The King had long since entered his palace, yet the defile was still proceeding As he passed the revetment on which stood Tahoser and Nofre, the Pharaoh, whose litter, borne upon the shoulders of oeris, placed hiirl, had slowly fixed upon her his dark glance He had not turned his head, not a muscle of his face had olden mask of a mummy, yet his eyes had turned between his painted eyelids towards Tahoser, and a flash of desire had lighted up their soranite eyes of a divine siht He had half raised one of his hands froesture imperceptible to every one, but which one of the servantsnear the litter noticed, and at once looked towards the daughter of Petaht had suddenly fallen, for there is no twilight in Egypt,--night, or rather a blue day, treading close upon the yellow day
In the azure of infinite transparency gleaht reflected confusedly in the waters of the Nile, which was stirred by the boats that brought back to the other shore the population of Thebes; and the last cohorts of the arantic serpent, when the barge landed Tahoser at the gate of her palace
IV
The Pharaoh reached his palace, situated a short distance froround on the left bank of the Nile In the bluish transparency of the night the e outlines stood out with terrifying and soround of the Libyan chain The feeling of absolute poas conveyed by that hty, immovable mass, upon which eternity itself could make no more impression than a drop of water on marble A vast court surrounded by thick walls, adorned at their sus, lay in front of the palace At the end of the court rose two high colu the entrance to a second court Behind these colue ate, intended rather for colossi of granite than forthe end of a third court, the palace proper appeared in its fors projected squarely forward, like the bastions of a fortress, exhibiting on their faces low _bassi-relievi_ of vast size, which represented, in the consecratedhis enees of history carved with a chisel on colossal stone books which the s roseoutwards and topped with great stones so arranged as to forainst the crest of the Libyan Mountains, which forround of the picture
The facade of the palace connected these buildings and filled up the whole of the intervening space Above its giant gateway, flanked with sphinxes, showed three rows of square s, through which streaht from the interior and which formed upon the dark wall a sort of luminous checker-board From the first story projected balconies, supported by statues of crouching prisoners
The officers of the king's household, the eunuchs, the servants, and the slaves, informed of the approach of His Majesty by the blare of the trumpets and the roll of the dru and prostrate, in the court paved with great stone slabs Captives, of the despised race of Scheto, bore urns filled with salt and olive oil, in which was dipped a wick, the flaed in line froate to the entrance of the first court, motionless like bronze lamp-bearers
Soon the head of the procession entered the pylon and the bugles and the drums sounded with a din which, repeated by the echoes, drove the sleeping ibises froate in the facade between the two pavilions; slaves brought a footstool with several steps and placed it by the side of the litter The Pharaoh rose with majestic slowness and stood for a fewon a pedestal of shoulders, he soared above all heads and appeared to be twelve cubits high Strangely lighted, half by the rising old and enamels sparkled intermittently, he resembled Osiris, or Typhon rather
He descended the steps as if he were a statue, and at last entered the palace
A first inner court, fralyphs, that bore a frieze ending in volutes, was slowly crossed by the Pharaoh in the midst of a crowd of prostrate slaves and maids
Then appeared another court surrounded by a covered cloister, and short columns, the capitals of which were formed of a cube of hard sandstone, on which rested the massive architrave The iht lines and the geometric forms of this architecture built with pieces of mountains The pillars and the coluround in order to upbear the weight of the hty stones placed on the cubes of their capitals, the walls to slope inwards so as to have a firether so as to form but one block; but polychromous decorations and _bassi-relievi_ hollowed out and enriched with htness and richness to these vast ht had fallen, recovered all their iyptian style, the unchanging lines of which forram of deep azure, quivered, in the interhted lamps placed at short distances apart The fish-pond in the centre of the court led, as it reflected theleams of the ave out a faint, sweet perfuate of the harem and of the private apartnificence
Below the ceiling ran a frieze of uraeus snakes, standing on their tails and swelling their hoods On the entablature of the door, in the hollow of the cornice, the s; pillars ranged in sy soffits, the blue ground of which was studded with golden stars
On the walls vast pictures, carved in low, flat relief and coloured with the most brilliant tints, represented the usual scenes of the hareravely playing at draughts with one of his women who stood nude before him, her head bound with a broad band from which rose a mass of lotus flowers In another the Pharaoh, without parting with any of his sovereign and sacerdotal impassibility, stretched out his hand and touched the chin of a young maid dressed in a collar and bracelet, who held out to him a bouquet of flowers Elsewhere he was seen undecided and s a choice, in the ravity by all sorts of caressing and graceful coquetries
Other panels represented fe, flooded with perfuant, the forms so youthfully suave, and the outlines so pure, that no art has ever surpassed thens, adreen, blue, red, yellow, and white, covered the spaces left empty On cartouches and bands in the shape of stelae were inscribed the titles of the Pharaoh and inscriptions in his honour
On the shafts of the huge colu the pschent, ar each other in procession, and whose eyes, showing full upon a side face, seemed to look inquisitively into the hall Lines of perpendicular hieroglyphs separated the zones of personages Areen leaves carved on the drum of the capital, buds and lotus flowers stood out in their natural colours, i baskets of blooant table of cedar bore on its platform a bronze cup filled with scented oil, froht Groups of tall vases, bound together reaths, alternated with the larain rasses and balsamic plants
In the centre of the hall a round porphyry table, the disc of which was supported by the statue of a captive, disappeared under heaped-up urns, vases, flagons, and pots, whence rose a forest of gigantic artificial flowers; for real floould have appeared mean in the centre of that vast hall, and nature had to be proportioned to the hty work of olden yellow, azure, and purple
At the back rose the throne, or chair, of the Pharaoh, the feet of which, curiously crossed and bound by encircling ribbing, had in their re-entering angles four statuettes of barbaric Asiatic or African prisoners recognisable by their beards and their dress These figures, their elbows tied behind their backs, and kneeling in constrained attitudes, their bodies bowed, bore upon their huold, red, and black, on which sat their conqueror Faces of chiue, a long red tuft, adorned the crossbars of the throne
On either side of it were ranged, for the princes, less splendid, though still extreyptians are no less clever at carving cedar, cypress, and syca it with ena in the Philoe or Syene quarries ranite blocks for the palaces of the Pharaohs and the sanctuaries of the Gods
The King crossed the hall with a slow,onceindicated that he heard the cries of love that welco or prostrate, whose broere touched by the folds of the calasiris that fell around his feet He sat down, placing his ankles close together and his hands on his knees in the sole princes, handsoht and left of their father The servants took off their enaons of scent upon their hair, rubbed their arms with aromatic oils, and presented them reaths of flowers, cool, perfumed collars, odorous luxuries better suited to the festival than the heavy richness of gold, of precious stones and pearls, which, for the matter of that, harmonise admirably with flowers
Lovely nude slaves, whose slender forraceful transition from childhood to youth, their hips circled with a narrow belt that concealed none of their charons of wavy alabaster in their hands, timidly pressed around the Pharaoh and poured palm oil over his shoulders, his arms, and his torso, polished like jasper Other maids waved around his head broad fans of painted ostrich-feathers on long ivory or sandal-wood handles, that, as they arhtful odour Others placed before the Pharaoh stalks of nymphoea that bloomed like the cup of the censers All these attentions were rendered with a deep devotion, and a sort of respectful awe, as if to a divine, ie, called down by pity fro is the Son of the Gods, the favoured of Phre, the protege of Ammon Ra
The women of the harem had risen from their prostrate attitude, and seated theilded chairs, with red-leather cushi+ons filled with thistle-down Thus ranged, they for heads which a painter would have loved to reproduce
Soauze with stripes alternately opaque and transparent, the narrow sleeves of which left bare the delicate, round arms covered with bracelets from the wrist to the elbow: others, bare to the waist, wore a skirt of pale lilac rayed with darker stripes, and covered with a fillet of little rose beads which showed in the diaper the cartouche of the Pharaoh traced on the stuff; others wore red skirts with black-pearl fillets; others again, draped in a tissue as light as woven air, as transparent as glass, wound the folds around theed to show off coquettishly the shape of their lovely bosoreen, or red scales which ain had their shoulders covered with a sort of pleated cape, and their fringed skirts were fastened below the breast with a scarf with long, floating ends