She was, in fact, there.
Priscilla contemplated the illustrious neoplatonist with amazement.
The oval of her face was perfect. The large green jewel that she wore in her undulating hair put an emerald reflection into her immobile features. Her eyes were immense, changing and limpid, and one could not say whether they were green, like the jewel in her hair, or blue, like the necklace of sapphires that she wore around her neck. She was enveloped by an Oriental garment whose fabric was a darker blue than her sapphires, the blue of a stormy sea in the dusk, spangled with bright silver gleams that made it shimmer and sparkle, like a wave sown with stars, like the zaimph of a miraculous divinity.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, getting up. “You know how to throw the discus well, you’re my preferred partner.”
And with a gesture of a slightly theatrical grandeur she extended her minuscule hand to Telamon, smiling as she added the formula of salutation of the ancient Greeks, which the Hellenists of Alexandra had adopted: “Rejoice!”
Telamon could indeed rejoice. Hypatia’s face only took on that vivid animation, the active gaiety that it had suddenly acquired on seeing the young man, for ideas that were dear to her. A tall and robust individual covered in jewels, who was sitting beside her, had certainly perceived it. That was the rich poet Palladius. He reddened with surprise and wounded vanity. Beneath his fleecy and curly hair he was reminiscent of a great pink sheep, easily irritated. He thought himself the most handsome and intelligent man in Alexandria and he had a natural pride so great that an amicable gesture or an amiable word addressed by a woman to another man in his presence appeared to him to be a personal insult.
“What a beautiful young woman!” said Hypatia, considering Priscilla and moving slightly aside the veil that the latter wore on her head, which hid a part of her face.
For a second, Priscilla saw the philosopher’s marvelous gaze fixed upon her. There was a sincere admiration therein, a little spontaneous tenderness and perhaps the hint of envy that a woman of thirty always experiences in the presence of a girl of fifteen.
They stood facing one another, almost equal in height, and they offered the image of feminine beauty in its double aspect of knowledge and ingenuousness.
“Child, child,” murmured Hypatia, in a low voice, more for herself than Priscilla, “take as much advantage of existence as you can. Perhaps there is a wisdom that escapes sages, which only those who know nothing possess.”
Everything that she saw and heard thereafter was, for Priscilla, a strange dream from which she would have liked to escape. But how? Marcus was laughing very loudly with two or three young men, amused by his protruding ears and his long nose. She had followed Hypatia and Telamon into the xyste, and imagined the terms in which she would confess, the following day, the sin into which her timidity was causing her to plunge ever deeper.
The xyste was long and narrow, with two rows of plane trees, the crowns of which were illuminated by the setting sun. Two negro slaves who were crouching by the threshold got up and picked up the metal disks attached to a strap that they had beside them.
With a natural gesture, without hesitation and without embarrassment, Hypatia had removed the great blue veil with silver spangles that was wrapped around her body, and then she had taken off a tunic of a paler blue that she was wearing underneath. To Priscilla’s great amazement, she appeared almost naked, in silk shorts and a transparent tunic of a blue that was almost white, which exposed her shoulders, part of her breasts and her legs. Tranquil and splendid, without thinking about the body that she had just unveiled almost entirely, she took a discus from the hands of one of the negroes and advanced in the sunlight.
Telamon had done likewise. He was bronzed, muscular, broad-shouldered, and his ankles were remarkably delicate. Priscilla remembered words heard in sermons on the morals of pagans and their immodesty. The latter term had remained mysterious for her. She understood it now. The surge of sympathy that she had felt for Hypatia was transformed into fear. What was this creature, who did not hesitate to show, before a man and a woman, the forms that God had created for evil and whose shame he ordered to be hidden?
Telamon and Hypatia took turns to throw the discus; they ran to see the distance at which it had fallen; they uttered bursts of laughter; their complexions became animated; their movements gave rise to an aureole of innocent life.
But that only lasted for a few minutes. Abruptly, without warning her partner, Hypatia dropped the discus at her feet and disappeared in three light bounds behind a door that opened to the right and was that of the loutron where cold baths were taken.
Telamon must have been accustomed to such caprices, for he too pushed the door to the men’s bath, which was facing it.
“Don’t be annoyed, little girl,” Priscilla heard, amid a splash of water. “It’s only when you know mathematics and philosophy that you’ll understand the sensuality procured by throwing the discus and cold water on warm skin. But perhaps no sensuality is important to you?”
If she had been certain of finding her brother right away, perhaps Priscilla would have departed at a run for the exit of the gymnasium. The fear of being ridiculous, and an obscure attraction for this society, so new for her, retained her.
In any case, a group had just invaded the xyste and surrounded Hypatia, who emerged from the bath in her garment the color of the sea.
A thin man with illuminated eyes, who was raising a feverish finger toward the sky, was gesticulating and talking loudly. That was Isidore of Gaza, one of Hypatia’s closest friends, who was even reputed to be betrothed to her.
He was expressing himself with an extreme rapidity.
“There are correspondences between the dreams of individuals linked by a bond of sympathy. What the invisible world designs for me during sleep it also designs or others of whom my mind has formed the image before going to sleep. The dreams complete one another, and if one succeeds in grasping the relationships that exist between them one can read the future as easily as the past. I can affirm that I am in the process of making oneiromancy an exact science. Would you like me to give you a striking example? I haven’t consulted Hypatia. I haven’t seen her all day. I’m going to tell her what she dreamed shortly before dawn, which is the moment when dreams are almost always symbolic.”
“Well?” voices around him said.
He turned toward Hypatia. “There appeared to you in a dream,” he said, “and with extreme clarity, I’m sure, a lion crouching between two empty urns, not far from a ruined tower. And I’ll add that there were black birds above the tower.”
Hypatia smiled and declared that not only had she not dreamed anything similar, but that she had not had any dream at all.
“Recall your memories,” said Isidore.
No, her sleep had been profound and exempt from dreams.
“That doesn’t change anything of what I’m advancing,” said Isidore then, casting a glance at his audience full of the joyful delight that only absolute faith can give. “The image existed, but the sleep was too profound for consciousness to be able to retain it. I’ve contrived to see almost all of Hypatia’s life unfolding before me. I know that she will soon return to Athens and that she will speak in Rome, and will also live for a time in Syracuse. And what longevity! I know that she will attain her hundredth year...”
“Many thanks!” said Hypatia.
They started to walk under the plane trees.
Priscilla heard Isidore affirm that when he was able to publish his treatise on the correspondences between nocturnal images, everyone would know his future, and because of that, would be able to make better usage of the present. She looked at him with terror, because he was one of the magicians that the Church reproved.
Telamon leaned toward her and, showing her a man of about thirty who was now conversing with Hypatia, he said: “That’s Proclus.” But that name was unknown to Priscilla.
“He was initiated in Chaldea,” Telamon added, with admiration. �
�Minerva appeared to him twice during his childhood.”
The setting sun was spreading an inexpressibly soft light. The exclamations and laughter of young men were audible, coming from the stadium, and the sonority of their voices was musical. Others, in white mantles, were debating under the porticos. The group that Priscilla was following penetrated into a garden whose sandy pathways were ordered with clumps of spindle trees that had just been watered and where brilliant droplets were shining like as many little pearls.
Jets of water swayed in onyx fountains surrounded by white laurels.
Priscilla understood very little of what she heard and her remorse increased because she was conscious of experiencing pleasure in meeting Telamon’s gaze.
Proclus’ face reflected enthusiasm. He had devoted himself to divine matters and he lived in an atmosphere of the marvelous that his imagination created around him. He had been admitted in Babylon as an epopt to the mysteries of the great Hecate. He communicated by intuition with superior intelligences and genii. He practiced the lustrations customary in the Orphic mysteries, he observed the auspicious and inauspicious days, like the Egyptian priests, purified himself in honor of Vesta, fasted in honor of Astarte, and recited prayers in honor of the sun at dawn and dusk. All forms of adoration were familiar to him, and all rites were dear to him.
“Jesus was merely an initiate who was mistaken,” he said to Hypatia. “He betrayed the mysteries. He revealed them too soon for them to be profitable to humans. We are only seeing the commencement of the deadly results of his error, but we cannot know what disastrous consequences might yet flow from the hatred of culture and scorn for intelligence and beauty that are preached in his name. But it is necessary not to manipulate forces whose range one does not know and cast over the world a flame of which one is not the master. It was Apollonius of Tyana who was in the right when he went from sanctuary to sanctuary to unify religions and teach that the same God inhabits all temples. It is the same for initiates as for other men in other branches of life. It is never the greatest who carry off the palm. Renown wears a blindfold, and a certain portion of popular mediocrity is even necessary to attain the hearts of men.”
“Apollonius certainly had the advantage over Jesus for the grandeur of his thought and the teachings of his life,” replied Hypatia, turning aside to dart a long glance at Telamon, as if she wanted to take him as a witness., “but he was wrong to work miracles like him. He cured the sick, he prophesied, he rendered himself invisible and resuscitated the dead. What good did it do? Only the truth matters. It’s not in vain that it is always represented naked emerging from a well. Woe betide the sage who dresses in the robe of the magician and the miter of the mage. His work will perish.”
Proclus’ eyes sparkled. He considered Hypatia’s hair, undulated with so much care, the folds of her pallium, so artistically draped, and her harmonious movements, as if her person were a living contradiction of her words.
“Do you believe that your beauty does not add to the force of your teaching and does not serve to propagate the truths that you express? It is, at any rate, a gift that has only been made to you with that goal by the intelligences that rule us. But do not those intelligences make themselves concrete in material forms in order to reach the vulgar human mind? Pallas Athene really exists and will exist as long as we are enveloped in such a demanding material body. Do you not take account of the inconceivable stupidity of men, their baseness, and their reckless love of matter? What a time for an idea to grow! What an ocean of darkness in which we are trying to make a spark shine! For a long time yet it will be necessary for the sage and the charlatan to resemble one another. Jesus did well to reawaken Lazarus publicly. Apollonius did well to announce the death of Domitian at Ephesus. And I am following their example by composing a magical globe, with the aid of which I will be able to make rain at will and cast into astonishment men who could only believe in my wisdom afterwards.”
While talking, the group had made a tour of the garden and had arrived at a door that opened to the first courtyard of the gymnasium.
Hypatia paused for a moment on the threshold, pensively.
“Yes, as Plato said, the last veil that the sage strips away, the one he removes with the greatest difficulty, is that of personal pride. I do not flatter myself with having gone so far. But I believe that your magic ball, if it makes rain fall from the sky, might make error fall into minds. Men are avid for tricks, for proofs, for miracles. So much the worse! Reason ought to present itself entirely pure and cause its light to spring forth without material proof. Only for a small number, assuredly. Truth intoxicates the ignorant and gives them a taste for killing. It is not in vain that in the temple, secrecy was always the first principle of higher knowledge. The world will suffer from Jesus’ error and his pride.”
Behind Hypatia and Proclus, Priscilla was about to cross the threshold of the portal and emerge from the garden, now deserted, where the shadow was beginning to fill the pathways and to veil the jets of water and the pallor of the laurel. Abruptly, but gently, Telamon drew her toward him. He had taken her by the shoulders and he inclined his smiling face toward her. Without haste, tilting Pricilla’s head with his arm, he placed his lips on hers and caressed her momentarily.
She did not have time to defend herself against such an unexpected action. She awakened, respiring in the young man’s mouth a slightly inebriating perfume of honey and acacia that left her faint.
Telamon was now looking at her without emotion, with a slightly affectionate glint of victory in his eyes. She was a fruit that he had bitten, a cup of precious wine from which he had taken a sip, nothing more.
Priscilla straightened up, her eyelids fluttering, but in the movement she made, a little golden cross given to her by Bishop Cyril, which she had around her neck, emerged from her tunic, under which she had hidden it.
Telamon looked at that jewel in surprise, and even touched it to make sure that it was a cross.
“You’re a Christian!” he said.
She did not have time to respond affirmatively. Telamon’s smile had become bitter. He pulled the young girl to him with an almost savage movement and kissed her again on the lips; but it was a different kiss, long and profound, which parted her lips, which she felt on her teeth, while two hands clutched her breasts and ran audaciously over her entire body.
She struggled and escaped the young man’s embrace. She felt a horror all the greater because sensuality, unknown to her until then, had penetrated her with a frisson, and she believed that she had experienced a physical pain.
She suddenly remembered that the Angel of Evil borrows for his temptations the form of the most beautiful children of men. Satan was standing before her in a garden full of enchantments, with the slim upper body and the perverse face of an adolescent coiffed like a Greek of the time of Plato.
The landscape changed for her. She glimpsed beneath the climbing roses inscriptions more obscene than those in the port of Kibotos. In the fountains, the faces of demons stared, sniggering, at the sexual design of her loins, which the folds of her garments no longer seemed to shelter. Living warmth, like wings, glided through the air and descended along her back. They were forms agitated by coupling that were making the white laurels quiver.
She went through the door, ran into the courtyard, where she recognized the ogival exit among the busts of the philosophers. Her brother was there. She seized him forcefully by the arm and drew him away.
Outside, she started to run. She felt withered and desperate, but she believed that she was only bearing away the pollution of the kiss, the demonic mark of the beast upon her.
Only a little later was she to discover that nothing is more dolorous for a virtuous soul than the nostalgia of the inferno glimpsed and voluntarily forsaken.
And that evening, at the hour when, before the bas-relief of Phidias, the philosophers exchange the formula of vesperal farewell, a great flight of birds made a white streak on the obscured sky. They came from beyond Thebes
, and were migrating from Upper Egypt with the spring, heading for a less fiery region.
Suddenly grave and silent, the young men clad in white, with a single impulse, raised their open right hand toward them. The birds were flying toward Greece; they were going to brush the golden cupola of the Temple of the Sun in Corinth, the Doric columns of the Parthenon in Athens and its dome, as blue as Minerva’s buckler. Perhaps they would pause to drink at Delphi in the marble basin where the pythoness dipped her hands and moistened her immortal lips. They would pass everywhere that the philosophers sent their pious thoughts from afar.
For a long time they remained immobile in the twilight, until night had covered with its shadow the two white groups, the one on the ground and the one in the sky.
IV. The Blood of Christians
That evening, old Amoraim was hastening toward the Jewish quarter.
He had just been haggling with a merchant in Rhacotis over a purchase of wax for the candle shop that he had in the side-street in the Delta, and he had probably never been so late returning home.
He had just gone around the public gardens when he stopped for a few seconds. Should he turn left on to a narrow street that rose up in a straight line and was rather ill-famed? He usually avoided it, for he was a pious and placid Jew and he could not pass the door of a brothel without being internally scandalized. Or should he take the street along the gardens, which was longer, but on which all the houses were respectable?
He did not know that he was deciding in those few moments the life and death of his forty thousand coreligionists in Alexandria.
If he had known, he would have fallen in the dust and asked God to preserve the humility that he had always had, to permit him not to play any role except that of a trader in wax candles in the most modest shop in the narrowest street in the Delta quarter.
But a man is completely ignorant of his destiny, especially when he is as simple and uneducated as Amoraim was.
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