Pharaoh's Wife

by Félicien Champsaur

  The travelers were silent, savoring the joy of the moment; the lovers were holding hands, and their silence seemed to be populated with kisses.

  The old Mage was pensive. His intuition had told him what had happened, and sadness overcame him at the thought that the goal that he had sought for so long would doubtless never be attained. But how could he impede the call of life, of love, between two young people, beautiful and full of health? Destiny is the master, and what can our poor terrestrial desires do against invisible and omnipotent forces? In his Oriental fatalism, Adsum repeated an old Arab proverb: “No one can obtain the fate that is not written for him, and what is written, none can avoid.”

  “Happy, Diana, my darling?” asked Ormus, softly.

  “Very happy, my love. I was asleep, and you have woken me up, and revealed me to myself. Why didn’t you come into my life sooner?”

  “I came when I heard your call.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have already belonged to one either in the course of the ages, as you know. Diana, for me you are what is known as ‘the duality,’ my complementary soul, the other half of my divided being, the one who was and always will be mine through successive incarnations, because she reestablishes the unity of our original self. All the people on Earth have their dualities, for which they search unconsciously, without ever encountering them. That is what explains infidelities and abandonments, which are simply the disappointments of an unrealized ideal, the fleeting glimmer mistaken for the pure flame of love. This time, once again, the superior forces have permitted us to meet and to belong to one another, for the first of a new series, in this Egypt where we have already loved one another so much and possessed one another.”

  At that moment, the silence was disturbed by the rhythmic throb of an aircraft engine, and in the blue sky a large white bird gilded by the sun passed over the roadster.

  Where had that airplane come from? Perhaps from Japan, making a tour of the world, and flying over that millenarian ground: a symbol of progress, the most beautiful effort furnished by the human brain: human wings. Discovery or remembrance? Had not Leonardo da Vinci also attempted the construction of a aircraft?

  The travelers watched the great seagull draw away, and, as the Duchess was beginning to be anxious about Adsum’s continued silence, she asked him, timidly: “What are you thinking about, Father?”

  The old mage turned round toward he young people and enveloped them with a gaze of indulgent generosity. “What am I thinking about, my Daughter? About the Flower of Truth! About the Sun!” He raised his white head toward the dazzling star and said: “Our Father, who art in Heaven...”

  Then, lowering his gaze toward Ormus and Diana, he sketched a gesture that might have been a blessing.

  “Thy will be done...”

  Emotional but untroubled, the lovers lowered their eyes, smiling. There was not only the sky, the soul and survival; there was us, the present, desire, the transient moments of a plenitude in which one forgets the world, in which the couple becomes a god holding infinity in the conjugal bond.

  The lovers had turned down the lamp of occultism. Her Double was him; his Double, her. Their love killed the ancient world, creating a world of their own.

  Adsum turned round again.

  Rapidly, they embraced. They summarized their blessings, to the rhythm of the growing light, in a kiss that never ended, into which the dawn, between their ephemeral lips put its eternal roses.

  And their hands clasped, in expectation of the evening.

  Notes

  1 Included in the Black Coat Press edition of The Tower of Destiny, ISBN 978-1-61227-101-9.

  2 A more detailed account of Champsaur’s career can be found in the introduction to the Black Coat Press edition of The Human Arrow (2011; tr. of Les Ailes de l’homme), ISBN 978-1-61227-045-6.

  3 The latter distinction surely belongs to Ouha, roi des singes (1923; tr. as Ouha, King of the Apes), Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-115-6.

  4 The Duke of Rutland is a real English title and was in use when Champsaur wrote the novel; if the ninth duke, John Henry Montagu Manners (1886-1940), was aware of his fictional counterpart he evidently made no complaint. The additional title created for Edward of Norwich, Duke of Aumerle by Richard II was actually Earl of Rutland, but that title fell into disuse after his death until its recreation in the 16th century, when it became the prerogative of the Manners family.

  5 The painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) was famous for sentimental family scenes and rather sickly portraits.

  6 Helios was, of course, a Greek sun god, but French writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries often used Greek names for their “equivalent” Egyptian gods—as, of course, the Greeks had when they ruled Egypt; thus the Greeks named an important Egyptian city Heliopolis because it seemed to have been the center of worship of the Egyptian sun god, usually known as Amon-Ra or Amun-Re.

  7 Whether accidentally or deliberately, Ormus appears to be confusing Amon/Amun, who was the equivalent of Helios, with Aten, whose worship displaced that of Amun-Re for a while during the eighteenth dynasty. Both were sun gods, but the one whose monotheistic worship was instituted by the Pharaoh Akhenaten was his personal deity. Osiris, on the other hand, was not a sun god at all but the god of the afterlife. Akhenaten’s son Tutankhamun was originally named Tutankhaten, but Amun’s name was substituted for Aten’s, reflecting the reversion to older rites that Ormus draws upon in his fictitious account of Tutankhamun’s life.

  8 Roger Manners, the fifth Earl of Rutland (after the recreation of the title) married the daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, the author of Arcadia. He was suggested as a possible author of Shakespeare’s plays by Karl Bleibtreu in Der Wahre Shakespeare (1907), but the briefly fashionable theory soon fell out of favor.

  9 The third name might be misrendered, but is more probably a joke. The English equivalent of the name would be Cuckoo.

  10 It had not been confirmed in 1929 that Akhenaten was Tutanhkamun’s father, but the two pharaohs who reigned briefly in between the two were Semkhkare and Nerferneferuaten, so this name appears to have been improvised, like the others cited. Tutankhamun’s actual consort was Ankhsenamun.

  11 All three of the names attached to these temples appear to be improvised, although “Aminothis” might coonceivably be a misrendering of “Amenophis.”

  12 It is not obvious whether this reference is to the mathematician Henri Poincaré or the statesman Raymond Poincaré, but Champsaur’s readers would have been far more familiar with the latter.

  13 As this name is presumably intended to evoke an image in the reader’s mind it seems unlikely that it is improvised, but if it is not, it must be misrendered.

  14 Champsaur’s 1903 novel; his most successful book.

  15 The reference is to a song popular in the trenches during the Great War, known simply “la chanson du chef du gare” [the station-master song] whose refrain was “il est cocu le chef de gare” [he’s cuckolded the station-master]; its theme was subsequently recycled—long after 1929—into the much more elegant Jacques Ferrat/Guy Thomas song “Le chef de gare est amoureux,” which is now far better known.

  16 This is a sly reference to Champsaur’s novel Les Ailes de l’homme [Human Wings] (1917 but revised by necessity, having been written before the outbreak of the war; tr. as The Human Arrow), about a transatlantic crossing by air. The original version was restored, with a new and much briefer addendum, for reissue a few weeks after Lindbergh’s flight.

  17 Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who lived in the second century B.C., was not Alexandrian, although Diaphantus, the “father of algebra,” who lived in the third century A.D., was. William Herschel (1738-1822) died before Edison was born in 1847 but the other name cited is very puzzling, given that there does not seem to have been time for another significant incarnation between Herschel’s death and Edison’s birth. I have rendered the name as the French text does, but there never was a physicist of that name; it looks like
a misrendering of the name of the Danish physicist Christian Ørsted, or Oersted, but that would make no sense, as his dates (1777-1851) overlapped both Herschel’s and Edison’s.

  18 The only actual 15th century caliph of Cairo with a name remotely similar to this was Al-Qa’im, who accomplished nothing during his four-year rule.

  19 Fuad I (1868-1936) had previously been the Sultan of Egypt, but when the United Kingdom recognized Egypt’s theoretical (but not yet practical) independence in 1922 he changed his title to King and introduced a new Constitution giving him enormous powers; that Constitution was still in force in 1928 although he was forced to withdraw it in 1935 and restore power to parliament. His appearance as a character in the novel—especially in view of the role he plays when he reappears on the scene—is a trifle surprising, but it is possible that Champsaur had met him long before in Paris, when both men were young, and felt entitled to exercise a certain familiarity.

  20 This name, more commonly rendered Menes, was attributed to the founder of the first dynasty by the Egyptian historian Manetho; it was, however, Herodotus who named the hypothetical first pharaoh as the founder of Memphis. The rest of the story is improvised, although Menes was credited with a son named Athothis, whose name in vaguely echoed in Adsum’s story.

  21 This description does not match the great sphinx of Giza, but includes features typical of Greek sphinxes.

  22 “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”—the first words of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, often quote in Latin by virtue of their use by the Roman Church.

  23 Khenti-Amenti translates as “Leader of the Westerners.” He was the god of Abydos, who stood guard over the necropolis, and seems to have been subsequently combined with Osiris.

  24 An oblique reference to the symbolism of Champsaur’s 1924 novel Homo deus, subtitled le satyre invisible [the invisible satyr].

  25 A fictitious citation; “avoir la berlue” means to suffer from delusions.

  26 Maria de Mariategui, Lady Caithness, Duchesse de Medina Pomar (1830-1895) was an occultist and spiritualist who spent much of her time in Paris, although theoretically resident in England with her Scottish husband.

  27 As You Like It, Act IV, scene 1.

  FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION

  02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm

  14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company

  61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life

  23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse

  26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller

  06 Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future

  39 Alphonse Brown. City of Glass

  89. Alphonse Brown. The Conquest of the Air

  40 Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow

  81 Félicien Champsaur. Ouha, King of the Apes

  91. Félicien Champsaur. The Pharaoh’s Wife

  03 Didier de Chousy. Ignis

  67 Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey

  17 C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)

  05 Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole

  68 Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men

  49 Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut

  -- J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid;

  -- J.-C. Dunyach. The Thieves of Silence

  10 Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself

  08 Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus

  01 Henri Falk. The Age of Lead

  51 Charles de Fieux. Lamékis

  31 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega

  70 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega & The Shadowmen

  88 Judith Gautier. Isoline and the Serpent-Flower

  57 Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality

  24 Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods

  29 Michel Jeury. Chronolysis

  55 Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence

  30 Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye

  90 Fernand Kolney. Love in 5000 Years

  87 Louis-Guillaume de La Follie. The Unpretentious Philosopher

  50 André Laurie. Spiridon

  52 Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

  82 Alain Le Drimeur. The Future City

  27-28 Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)

  07 Jules Lermina. Mysteryville

  25 Jules Lermina. Panic in Paris

  32 Jules Lermina. The Secret of Zippelius

  66 Jules Lermina. To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers

  15 Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars

  73 Gustave Le Rouge. The Plutocratic Plot

  74 Gustave Le Rouge. The Transatlantic Threat

  75 Gustave Le Rouge. The Psychic Spies

  76 Gustave Le Rouge. The Victims Victorious

  72 Xavier Mauméjean. The League of Heroes

  78 Joseph Méry. The Tower of Destiny

  77 Hippolyte Mettais. The Year 5865

  83 Louise Michel. The Human Microbes

  84 Louise Michel. The New World

  11 José Moselli. Illa’s End

  38 John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force

  04 Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars

  21 Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension

  56 Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years

  79 Pierre Pelot. The Child Who Walked On The Sky

  85 Ernest Perochon. The Frenetic People

  60 Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors

  33 Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril

  34 Maurice Renard. Doctor Lerne

  35 Maurice Renard. The Doctored Man

  36 Maurice Renard. A Man Among the Microbes

  37 Maurice Renard. The Master of Light

  41 Jean Richepin. The Wing

  12 Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries

  62 Albert Robida. Chalet in the Sky

  69 Albert Robida. The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

  46 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Givreuse Enigma

  45 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Mysterious Force

  43 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Navigators of Space

  48 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Vamireh

  44 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The World of the Variants

  47 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Young Vampire

  71 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Helgvor of the Blue River

  24 Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World

  09 Han Ryner. The Superhumans

  20 Brian Stableford. The Germans on Venus

  19 Brian Stableford. News from the Moon

  63 Brian Stableford. The Supreme Progress

  64 Brian Stableford. The World Above the World

  65 Brian Stableford. Nemoville

  80 Brian Stableford. Investigations of the Future

  42 Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory

  13 Kurt Steiner. Ortog

  18 Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror

  58 C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec

  53 Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion (w/Octave Joncquel)

  16 Théo Varlet. The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin)

  59 Théo Varlet. Timeslip Troopers

  86Théo Varlet. The Golden Rock

  54 Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid

  English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2013 by Brian Stableford.

  Cover illustration Copyright 2013 Mike Hoffman.

  Visit our website at www.blackcoatpress.com

  ISBN 978-1-61227-156-9. First Printing. March 2013. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.

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