And she spoke to Mnerfa in a confidential tone, as to a celestial mother, as helpful as Diana was harsh, and who, perhaps, might oppose the anger of the inexorable goddess.
She had stayed longer than she had thought. The passage of a nocturnal bird reminded her of the hour. She returned to Dionys. She went very quietly; a breeze had risen in the trees, which stifled the slight sound of her footsteps.
Suddenly, she stopped, and began to tremble. A few paces away, she had just perceived two enlaced silhouettes. In the gray light, she saw them clearly. She distinguished the movement of their heads. And, recognizing Dionys, she uttered a cry. A great chill passed over her heart.
And she fell to the ground, in a faint.
At the sound, Dionys and Flavia stood up. And the young man recognized, in the starry shadow, the form of Dehva, extended. He uttered an exclamation of anguish. The Umbrian woman, who heart was not hard, was moved. She pushed Dionys, saying: “Go!” And she disappeared into the wood.
The Syracusan was stunned for a moment, and then advanced toward his friend. He knelt down beside her.
Sentiments as vast as the ocean and as soft as evening twilight were agitating in his soul. And his entire adventure, so charming, so bright and so fresh, was represented before his memory like Argos to the dying hero. He saw himself again in the bitter day of misery, when hunger and fatigue were both tormenting his poor body. He heard his plaintive Syrinx proudly singing the indestructible force of Art, and then the pretty silvery voice calling him to the bank of the Volturne. And all the days and all the delightful evenings spent with the old Master and his daughter rose up like a swarm of bees and doves.
It was bitter for him to see unconscious, for love of him, the one from whom all his happiness had come, even his ardent victory over the Umbrian woman. Eros filed him with a tenderness more dangerous than the fury of a wild beast. And with a great sigh he hugged Dehva to his breast and covered her with kisses.
She woke up.
She saw that she was in the Syracusan’s arms. Joy and dolor filed her with tears. Her bright arms and her mouth attached themselves to her lover with a savage violence.
She sobbed: “I want to die, Dionys. I prefer the fury of Diana Etrusca and the inexorable Aidonea to the fear of losing you. I love you more than anything on earth and all the gods... Don’t push me away... Don’t cast your poor little one into despair; everything of her is yours... Your presence has become her life... I love you, Dionys.”
He was increasingly moved by that voice, so plaintive and so pretty, with which sobs mingled, the sound of waves upon a rock. She knew that he was even more troubled than on the evening when he had fled toward the river. And from the depths of her little soul, an implacable will rose. She braved Diana and all the menacing mystery of the world and glacial death. She cast her destiny as a plant casts its seed; she precipitated herself toward intercourse like an ambitious soldier into battle.
Astonished, Dionys, submitted to that superior force. And in the grim silence of the wood, beneath the stars of the Swan and the Eagle, they espoused one another in an ardent and convulsive panic.
It was nearly an hour since Dehva had set off for the altar of the goddess. That time exceeded previsions by half. The elders were becoming anxious and suspicious; a subtle fear slid into the heard of old Tarao, but he did not let anything appear. It was him who, reassuring minds, prevented anyone from setting out in search of her; for he feared a peril a hundred times more terrible than wolves or prowlers. His blood was icy, his breast breathless, when the deadly image appeared before him, and he found no repose except in the oath sworn by Dionys.
When the red star of the oxherd was near to the horizon, Aulei, the priest of Diana Etrusca said, authoritatively: “It is not appropriate for us to wait any longer. Let us designate ten men to go in search of the maiden.”
“Dehva is pious,” the master-potter interjected. “It is not good to interrupt the prayer to Mnerfa; that goddess is just, but she avenges herself cruelly. Let us refrain from offending her.”
“We shall not surpass the sacred boundary,” said a young potter with muscular arms. “And we shall find the Syracusan to inform us.”
Tarao did not continue a dangerous opposition. He only asked, and obtained, to be among the twelve.
Along the route he talked in a loud voice, marching at a slow pace and making tree branches crack as he passed. But the young potter had slipped ahead, as light and furtive as a wildcat. He had keen ears and piercing eyes, and a heart full of hatred against the foreigner, for he coveted the master-potter’s granddaughter and was in despair at not attracting her gaze.
A savage instinct led him to take a different path from his companions. He came to the place where Dehva had quit and rediscovered Dionys. And suddenly, he saw that which horrified him, but which he had nevertheless desired. Then he uttered a great clamor.
And the envoys of Veila saw the shame of the holy virgin and the crime of the foreigner.
Old Tarao had not had the courage to go back to his dwelling. He dragged his weary body over the plain. He felt, for the first time in eighty winters, that life had become intolerable to him. He had known all human dolors. His generation had died around him. He had seen the eyes of his sons, daughters and grandchildren glaze. His heart had cried out in distress, his flesh had writhed in despair, but he had always recognized the Beauty in the Misery. And that terrible world had continued to seduce him. He had not wearied of the form of things, of fabulous tales, of the profound art of those who constructed temples, carved gods in marble or assembled all the confused voices of the forest, the ocean and the sighing night in the harmony of lyres, flutes and winged words. And even after the great groans of suffering, he had not been able to help telling himself that a magical splendor sprang from sad souls and dolorous flesh.
But today, he recognized that only those saw reality clearly, one of whom wept and the other laughed at the spectacle to things.
He came, in the ashen night, to the Temple of Diana Etrusca.
That Temple dominated a hill, in an enclosure of lemon trees and oaks. It was built in basalt, square in form, with a double portico, with a harsh and dilapidated, tenebrous appearance. One might have thought it a thousand years old. The fire was continuously maintained on the altar, sometimes by consecrated virgins, sometimes by the priest and his assistants; the rites recalled those of the Roman Vesta, which probably had the same origin.
But the Diana of the vanquished Rasenas, more rustic, was not served by a college of noble virgins, and its regulations had scant refinement. If the fire went out, a fine was sufficient to punish the guilty parties. Virginity could not be demanded after the age of eighteen. But the Etruscan goddess was implacable with regard the violation of the vow, which had to be expiated by the death of the guilty and their accomplices.
The procedure was simple. An intimate visit of the matrons decided the fate of the young woman. The priest immediately pronounced the sentence.
For the accomplice there were only three means of accusation: flagrante delicto observed by two or more witnesses, personal confession and designation by the guilty party. One of those three cases determined an unforgivable condemnation; if not, the accused escaped without return.
There could be no hesitation over the fate of Dehva and Dionys.
Tarao, lost under the lemon trees, contemplated the temple of implacable Diana, and a grim hatred rose in his poor heart. He had cherished that temple for its age, because, because it had the form in which people built in the time of the Lucumons and because venerable rites were observed there. He loved, on days of rest to indulge his reveries there and his prayers for the renaissance of the Rasenas. In the great red moons he addressed, confusedly, a prayer to the Life that guided the skiff through the Ether. His beliefs were veiled, numerous, full of contradictions, but nevertheless, he recognized the presence of a Power and a Will.
That night, he rose up against that Power, and he said: “You ought not to ta
ke that daughter from the race that adores you, for she is of the purest and most ancient of our blood. That blood flowed not only for our cities, our hearths and our customs, but for you, a thousand times. And she is the last one who can transmit it to the vast Future.
In the distance, were dogs howling. The stars seemed to be illuminated in an immense cavern. And the old man saw the light that preceded the half-moon spreading slowly toward the zenith. He awaited the advent of the star. He watched it surge forth, still indented, like one of the red ships of Odysseus.
He clamored in his despair: “I cry toward your justice, navigator of darkness, somber and violent queen, terror of forests and mountains. I adjure you not to sacrifice my race. It has merited your being favorable to it! You appeared once to save one of my ancestors on Lake Regillus; you cannot deny it today without meriting execration. And my clamor will rise up against you from the depths of the profound earth!”
He spoke, and he wept. He had the vision of his charming child awaiting death, He cursed deadly hospitality.
“Why did you come, stranger with the beautiful tones? Your magical art was accursed and your smile poisoned. You ought to have been swallowed in the Sicilian sea, since you were unable to be propitious either to others or to yourself. And I should have mistrusted you like the gulf of Charybdis, for those whose parents have died in misfortune are baneful.”
The moon rose, decreasing as it did so, over the dark blue waters of the firmament. It was rising through a gap between tall trees, the crowns of which were outlined jaggedly like a black and savage coast. The little wrinkles of a spring divided its image; and the silent beauty of the hour still astonished the old man accustomed to admiration. He remembered the delightful Syrinx singing in the depths of his garden. He no longer found any hatred against the foreigner; rather, he felt sorry for him, a victim of fatality more powerful than the force of oaths. It was against the argentine star and the obscure energies that his rancor and his plaint rose up.
“Jealous goddess, whose makes the abysms of the sea and the blood of women raise, protectress of wolves and she-bears, with the inflexible arrow, Diana, Artemis, Phoebe, who killed the great Orion but saved pale Iphigenia.... Silver Selene, Eurynome, mysterious light of Lake Stymphale, weaver of nights with the golden distaff, I implore you for my old age without descendancy!”
Thus he assembled, at hazard, the names of the goddess, and it seemed that she ought to have heard him better; but the star, rising above the highest treetops, cast a glacial light. The old man despaired. He resumed marching through the clear and profound night.
He wandered for a long time, at the hazard of chagrin, talking to the grass, the trees and the water. For his dolor, like his joy, was full of words.
Instinct brought him to the door of the priest Aulei. It was there that the two captives were detained.
Tarao looked fearfully at the blue door, guarded by an earthenware dog. Then he remembered that the priest was the most assiduous of his guests. He saw again the luminous banquets in which Aulei showed so much pleasure in savoring the culinary art; and a faint hope rose in his heart.
He knocked and shouted his name through the door.
But Aulei, fearful of the old man’s discourse, did not open it.
Only a faint and plaintive voice replied, and the master-potter fled toward the river.
His thought had departed. A funereal lassitude covered him like the earth of a tomb. He gazed for a long time at the flowing water full of stars, and memories passed by, as confused as the silvery bodies of fish in the abyss or the delicate flight of insects.
In the morning, dolor woke him up. He no longer had the strength to feel it in his heart and his entrails. He uttered a final plaint, and confided his body to the river.
V. The Execution
It was evening, by the light of torches, before the Temple of Diana Etrusca. Dehva and Dionys, covered in black veils, charged with bonds, were crouched before the peristyle.
The people of Veila, including the little children, had assembled around them to charge them with opprobrium. Their faces were uncovered.
They contemplated them, in the beginning, with a kind of surprise. Many felt pity for the maiden, issue of the Lucumons. The elegance of her face was brightened even further in the barbarous light of resin torches. She moved the woman, peaceful adolescents and men who had not suffered from seeing her beautiful. But only the women felt pity for Dionys. Even those who believed, once, that they did not see him with displeasure, sensed a leaven of hatred and that it was good to put a foreigner to death. A thousand furious things, coming from ancestral depths, a thousand souls within them as in the black earth, rose up with amorous jealousy. They were animated by the insult and the outrage, without any need to look at one another or to look at the pale Syracusan.
A deformed adolescent, thin with twisted legs, approached first, who said: “He merits death twice over, who insults both the goddess and hospitality!”
More impatient, the young potter with the bronzed arms shouted: “Death to the Sicilian dog!”
That speech unleashed the clamors of the crowd. Like a waves pursuing waves, the same word ran from mouth to mouth, colliding with the Peristyle and the Sacred Wood: “Death! Death!”
Gradually, the sanguinary thirst rose up as in the soul of a hunter when the dogs howl at the sight of a wild boar or a stag.
The young potter approached Dionys. He spat in his face. And with great cries, animated by the example, the others rushed forward. But the priest of Diana and his assistants had advanced.
“This man belongs to the goddess,” said Aulei, “and his execution must not be the game of the multitude. You will give a white kid, young man, for having misunderstood the law.”
Dionys maintained an impassive face, like the Sarmate chiefs sacrificed on the eve of a battle. He searched in his soul for the teaching of a Stoic sophist, an old blind man who recited maxims on the harbor wall of Syracuse, but he could not defend himself against the terror of dying; for he, among all men, had experienced the magnificence of life.
It was hard to quit the light country where the Umbrian woman and the brilliant potter’s daughter had flourished. The idea that it is excellent to die young, in order not to know burdensome old age, did not bring him any consolation.
Full of fear, he turned toward Dehva. His sole consolation was not to perish without her. He did not recognize himself as culpable; he knew that he had not acted voluntarily, but solely by virtue of the force of the virgin. She alone had led him to futile death. He accused her bitterly, and yet he loved her still. In his anguish, he saw again the delightful garden, the divine flowers, the plains of roses in which his friend had scintillated. It was there that he would have possessed her, without chagrin and without anxiety, if she had been able to wait.
Dehva had no dread. She did not form any gripping image of death. She would have been joyful if Dionys had shown joy, but she saw her lover’s despair with despair, and she began to weep when he turned his pale face toward her. She sighed confused and supplicant words. All of her simple little soul was agitated by the distress of beloved eyes, indifferent to the movement and insults of the crowd. But for her too, it would have been unbearable to die without her accomplice.
The blade of Phoebe rose into the firmament. The star rose, almost a streak, among the black branches. It seemed tragic through the smoke of the torches. There was a tremor, which extinguished the clamors one by one, and became silence. An odor of incense rose up.
Aulei straightened his corpulent torso and sang:
“O Diana Etrusca, who reigns powerfully over the Abyss and the Darkness, we fear your image and your long arrows of darkness. Those who have offended you must die before your face, and their crime will not return against your servants.”
The executioner advanced with the sacrificial knife; the assistants bound the limbs of the condemned more tightly. Then Aulei said: “You may make a prayer. If it is not excessive or contrary to the gods, w
e will grant it.”
Dionys replied: “Cursed be you and all your generations, and your infamous goddess!”
Dehva repeated those words.
Then the priest said to the sacrificer: “Do what must be done.”
The other ripped Dionys’ veil.
Aulei cried: “Let the sex that has braved the goddess be cut off!”
The executioner bent down. The Syracusan uttered a frightful plaint and his thighs we seen to be full of red blood.
“Let the mouth that has murmured sacrilegious words be cleaved.”
The executioner sliced the mouth.
“Let the eyes that have coveted the sacred virgin be deprived of light.”
And the executioner punctured the eyes.
Dionys uttered another great lugubrious cry. His breast heaved; a convulsion shook his shoulders, but he created within himself a resignation as vast as the void.
He heard Dehva weeping, and saying to him: “Forgive me Dionys. I know my crime!”
He replied: “It was fated. Have a little patience. This will finish forever.”
The multitude, with sighs and murmurs, were satisfied by the torture. Each individual had become a crowd, in which the barbaric fury of beasts and men agitated. Now they desired to see the daughter of their Lucumons attained in her turn by the sacrificer’s knife.
A respiration of joy went up when Aulei resumed speaking.
“Let this one be subjected to the punishment in her turn.”
The executioner tore the young woman’s veil.
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