The repast began. The dishes, brought by Ethiopians from the vast kitchens of the palace, where a thousand slaves were busy preparing the feast in a fiery atmosphere, were placed on tables close by the guests. The dishes, of scented wood admirably carved, of bronze, of earthenware or porcelain enamelled in brilliant colours, held large pieces of beef, antelope legs, trussed geese, siluras from the Nile, dough drawn out into long tubes and rolled, cakes of sesamum and honey, green watermelons with rosy meat, pomegranates full of rubies, grapes the colour of amber or of amethyst. Wreaths of papyrus crowned these dishes with their green foliage. The cups were also wreathed in flowers, and in the centre of the table, amid a vast heap of golden-coloured bread stamped with designs and marked with hieroglyphs, rose a tall vase whence emerged, spraying as it fell, a vast sheaf of persolutas, myrtles, pomegranates, convolvulus, chrysanthemums, heliotropes, seriphiums, and periplocas, a mingling of colours and of scents. Under the tables, around the supporting pillar, were arranged pots of lotus. Flowers, flowers everywhere, even under the seats of the guests! The women wore them on their arms, round their necks, on their heads in the shape of bracelets, necklaces, and crowns; the lamps burned amid huge bouquets, the dishes disappeared under leaves, the wines sparkled amid violets and roses. It was a most characteristic, gigantic debauch of flowers, a colossal orgy of scents, unknown to other nations.
Slaves constantly brought from the gardens, which they plundered without diminishing their wealth, armfuls of rose laurel, of pomegranate, of lotus, to renew the flowers which had faded, while servants cast grains of nard and cinnamon upon the red-hot coals of the censers.
When the dishes and the boxes carved in the shape of birds, fishes, and chimeras, which held the sauces and condiments, had been cleared away, as well as the ivory, bronze, or wooden spatulæ, and the bronze and flint knives, the guests washed their hands, and cups of wine and fermented drinks kept on passing around.
The cup-bearer drew with a long-handled ladle the dark wine and the transparent wine from two great, golden vases adorned with figures of horses and rams, which were held in equilibrium in front of the Pharaoh by means of tripods on which they were set.
Female musicians appeared—for the orchestra of male musicians had withdrawn. A wide gauze tunic covered their slender, youthful bodies, veiling them no more than the pure water of a pool conceals the form of the bather who plunges into it. Papyrus wreaths bound their thick hair and fell to the ground in long tendrils; lotus flowers bloomed on top of their heads; great golden rings sparkled in their ears, necklaces of enamel and pearl encircled their necks, and bracelets clanked and rattled on their wrists. One played on the harp, another on the lute, a third on the double flute, crossing her arms and using the right for the left flute and the left for the right flute; a fourth placed horizontally against her breast a five-stringed lyre; a fifth struck the onager-skin of a square drum; and a little girl seven or eight years of age, with flowers in her hair and a belt drawn tight around her, beat time by clapping her hands.
The dancers came in. They were slight, slender, and as lithe as serpents; their great eyes shone between the black lines of their lids, their pearly teeth between the red bars of their lips. Long curls floated down on their cheeks. Some wore full tunics striped white and blue, which floated around them like a mist; others wore mere pleated short skirts falling over the hips to the knees, which allowed their beautiful, slender legs and round muscular thighs to be easily seen. They first assumed poses of languid voluptuousness and indolent grace, then, waving branches of bloom and clinking castanets, shaped like the head of Hathor, striking tambourines with their little closed hands, or making the tanned skin of drums resound under their thumbs, they gave themselves up to swifter steps and to bolder postures; they pirouetted, they whirled with ever-increasing ardour. But the Pharaoh, thoughtful and dreamy, did not condescend to bestow a glance of satisfaction upon them; his fixed gaze did not even fall upon them.
They withdrew, blushing and confused, pressing their palpitating breasts with their hands.
Dwarfs with twisted feet, with swollen and deformed bodies, whose grimaces were fortunate enough at times to bring a smile to the majestic, stony face of the Pharaoh, were no more successful; their contortions did not bring a single smile to his lips, the corners of which remained obstinately fixed.
To the sound of strange music produced by triangular harps, sistra, castanets, cymbals, and bugles, Egyptian clowns wearing high, white mitres of ridiculous shape advanced, closing two fingers of their hand and stretching out the other three, repeating their grotesque gestures with automatic accuracy, and singing extravagant songs full of dissonances. His Majesty never changed countenance.
Women wearing a small helmet from which depended three long cords ending in a tassel, their wrists and ankles bound with black leather bands, and wearing close fitting drawers suspended by a single brace passed over their shoulders, performed tricks of strength and contortions each more surprising than another; posturing, throwing themselves back, bending their supple bodies like willow branches, and touching the ground with their necks without displacing their heels, supporting in that impossible attitude the weight of their companions; others juggled with a ball, two balls, three balls, before, behind, their arms crossed, astride of or standing upon the loins of one of the women of the company. One, indeed, the cleverest, put on blinkers like Tmei, the goddess of justice, and caught the globes in her hands without letting a single one fall. The Pharaoh was not moved by these marvels.
He cared no more either for the prowess of two combatants who, wearing a cestus on the left arm, fought with sticks. Men throwing at a block of wood knives which struck with miraculous accuracy the spot indicated did not interest him either. He even refused the draught-board which the lovely Twea, whom he looked upon usually with favour, presented to him as she offered herself as an adversary. In vain Amense, Taïa, Hont-Reché ventured upon timid caresses. He rose and withdrew to his apartments without having uttered a word.
Motionless on the threshold stood the servant who, during the triumphal procession, had noticed the imperceptible gesture of His Majesty.
He said: “O King, loved of the gods! I left the procession, crossed the Nile on a light papyrus-bark and followed the vessel of the woman on whom your hawk glance deigned to fall. She is Tahoser, the daughter of the priest Petamounoph.”
The Pharaoh smiled and said: “It is well. I give thee a chariot and its horses, a pectoral ornament of beads of lapis-lazuli and cornelian, with a golden circle weighing as much as the green basalt weight.”
Meanwhile the sorrowing women pulled the flowers from their hair, tore their gauze robes, and sobbed, stretched out upon the polished stone floors which reflected, mirror-like, the image of their beautiful bodies, saying, “One of these accursed barbaric captives must have stolen our master’s heart.”
CHAPTER V
On the left bank of the Nile stood the villa of Poëri, the young man who had filled Tahoser with such emotion when, proceeding to view the triumphal return of the Pharaoh, she had passed in her ox-drawn car under the balcony whereon leaned carelessly the handsome dreamer.
It was a vast estate, having something of the farm and something of the house of pleasaunce, which stretched between the banks of the river and the foothills of the Libyan chain, over an immense extent of ground, covered during the inundation by the reddish waters laden with fertilising mud, and which during the rest of the year was irrigated by skilfully planned canals.
A wall, built of limestone drawn from the neighbouring mountains, enclosed the garden, the store-houses, the cellars, and the dwelling. The walls sloped slightly inwards and were surmounted by an acroter with metal spikes, capable of stopping whosoever might attempt to climb over. Three doors, the leaves of which were hung on massive pillars, each adorned with a giant lotus-flower planted on top of the capital, were cut in the wall on three of the sides. In place of the fourth door rose a building which looked out into the garden fr
om one of its façades, and on the road from the other.
The building in no respect resembled the houses in Thebes. The architect had not sought to reproduce either the heavy foundations, the great monumental lines, or the rich materials of city buildings, but had striven to attain elegant lightness, refreshing simplicity, and pastoral gracefulness in harmony with the verdure and the peacefulness of the country.
The lower courses of the building, which the Nile reached in times of high flood, were of sandstone, and the rest of the building of sycamore wood. Tall, fluted columns, extremely slender and resembling the staffs of the standards before the king’s palace, sprang from the ground and rose unbroken to the palm-leaved cornice, where swelled out, under a simple cube, their lotus-flowered capitals.
The single story built above the ground-floor did not rise as high as the mouldings which bordered the terraced roof, and thus left an empty space between the ceiling and the flat roof of the villa. Short, small pillars, with flowery capitals, divided into groups of four by the tall columns, formed an open gallery around this aerial apartment open to every wind.
Windows broader at the base than at the top of the opening, in accordance with the Egyptian style, and closed with double sashes, lighted the first story. The ground-floor was lighted by narrower windows placed closer to each other.
Above the door, which was adorned with deep mouldings, was a cross planted in a heart and framed in a parallelogram cut in the lower part to allow the sign of favourable omen to pass; the meaning being, as every one knows, “A good house.”
The whole building was painted in soft, pleasant colours; the lotus of the capitals showed alternately red and blue in the green capsules; the gilded palm-leaves of the cornices stood out upon a blue background; the white walls of the façades set off the painted framework of the windows, and lines of red and green outlined panels and imitated the joints of the stone.
Outside the enclosing wall, which was built flush with the dwelling, stood a row of trees cut to a point, which formed a screen against the dusty southern wind, always laden with the desert heat.
In front of the building grew a vast vineyard. Stone shafts with lotus capitals placed at symmetrical distances outlined, through the vineyard, walks cutting each other at right angles. Boughs of vine leaves joined one plant to another and formed a succession of leafy arches under which one could walk erect. The ground, carefully raked and heaped up at the foot of each plant, contrasted by its brown colour with the bright green of the leaves, amid which played the sunbeams and the breeze.
On either side of the building two oblong pools bore upon their transparent surface aquatic birds and flowers. At the corners of these pools four great palm-trees spread out fanwise their green wreath of leaves at the top of their scaly trunks.
Compartments, regularly traced by narrow paths, divided the garden around the vineyard, marking the place of each different crop. Along a sort of belt walk which ran entirely around the enclosure dôm palms alternated with sycamores, squares of ground were planted with fig, peach, almond, olive, pomegranate and other fruit trees; others, again, were planted with ornamental trees only: the tamarisk, the cassia, the acacia, the myrtle, the mimosa, and some still rarer gum-trees found beyond the cataracts of the Nile, under the Tropic of Cancer, in the oases of the Libyan Desert, and upon the shores of the Erythrean Gulf; for the Egyptians are very fond of cultivating shrubs and flowers, and they exact new species as a tribute from the peoples they have conquered.
Flowers of all kinds, and many varieties of watermelons, lupines, and onions adorned the beds. Two other pools of greater size, fed by the covered canal leading from the Nile, each bore a small boat to enable the master of the estate to enjoy the pleasure of fishing. Fishes of divers forms and brilliant colours played in the limpid waters among the stalks and the broad leaves of the lotus. Banks of luxuriant vegetation surrounded these pools and were reflected in their green mirror.
Near each pool rose a kiosk formed of slender columns bearing a light roof and surrounded by an open balcony whence one could enjoy the sight of the waters and breathe the coolness of the morning and the evening while reclining on a rustic seat of wood and reeds.
The garden, lighted by the rising sun, had a bright, happy, restful look. The green of the trees was so brilliant, the colours of the flowers so splendid, air and light filled so joyously the vast enclosure with breeze and sunbeams, the contrast of the rich greenness with the bare whiteness of the chalky sterility of the Libyan chain, the crest of which was seen above the walls cutting into the blue sky, was so marked that one felt the wish to stop and set up one’s tent there. It looked like a nest purposely built for a longed-for happiness.
Along the walks travelled servants bearing on their shoulders a yoke of bent wood, from the ends of which hung by ropes two clay jars filled at the reservoirs, the contents of which they poured into small basins dug at the foot of each plant. Others, handling a jar suspended from a pole working on a post, filled with water a wooden gutter which carried it to the parts of the garden that needed irrigating. Gardeners were clipping the trees to a point or into an elliptical shape. With the help of a hoe formed of two pieces of hard wood bound by a cord and thus making a hook, other workmen were preparing the ground for planting.
It was a delightful sight to see these men with their black, woolly hair, their bodies the colour of brick, dressed only in a pair of white drawers, going and coming amid the greenery with orderly activity, singing a rustic song to which their steps kept time. The birds perched on the trees seemed to know them, and scarcely to fly off when, as they passed, they rubbed against the branches.
The door of the building opened, and Poëri appeared on the threshold. Though he was dressed in the Egyptian fashion, his features were not in accordance with the national type, and it took no long observation to see that he did not belong to the native race of the valley of the Nile. He was assuredly not a Rot’en’no. His thin aquiline nose, his flat cheeks, his serious-looking, closed lips, the perfect oval of his face, were essentially different from the African nose, the projecting cheek-bones, the thick lips, and broad face characteristic of the Egyptians. Nor was his complexion the same; the copper tint was replaced by an olive pallor, which the rich, pure blood flushed slightly; his eyes, instead of showing black between their lines of antimony, were of a dark blue like the sky of night; his hair, silkier and softer, curled in less crisp undulations, and his shoulders did not exhibit that rigid, transversal line which is the characteristic sign of the race as represented on the statues of the temples and the frescoes of the tombs.
All these characteristics went to form a remarkable beauty, which Petamounoph’s daughter had been unable to resist. Since the day when Poëri had by chance appeared to her, leaning upon the gallery of the building—which was his favourite place when he was not busy with the farm work—she had returned many times under pretext of driving, and had made her chariot pass under the balcony of the villa; but although she had put on her handsomest tunics, fastened around her neck her richest necklaces and encircled her wrists with her most wondrously chased bracelets, wreathed her hair with the freshest lotus-flowers, drawn to the temples the black line of her eyes, and brightened her cheeks with rouge, Poëri had never seemed to pay the smallest attention to her.
And yet Tahoser was rarely beautiful, and the love which the pensive tenant of the villa disdained, the Pharaoh would willingly have purchased at a great price. In exchange for the priest’s daughter he would have given Twea, Taïa, Amense, Hont-Reché, his Asiatic captives, his vases of gold and silver, his necklaces of gems, his war chariots, his invincible army, his sceptre—all, in a word, even his tomb, on which since the beginning of his reign had been working in the darkness thousands upon thousands of workmen.
Love is not the same in the hot regions swept by a fiery wind as on the icy shores where calm descends from heaven with the cold; it is not blood but fire that flows in the veins. So Tahoser languished and fainted, though
she breathed perfumes, surrounded herself with flowers, and drank draughts that bring forgetfulness. Music wearied her or overexcited her feelings; she had ceased to take any pleasure in the dances of her companions; at night, sleep fled from her eyelids, and breathless, stifling, her breast heaving with sighs, she would leave her sumptuous couch and stretch herself out upon the broad slabs of the pavement, pressing her bosom against the hard granite as if she wished to breathe in its coolness.
On the night which followed the triumphal entry of the Pharaoh, Tahoser felt so unhappy and life seemed so empty that she determined not to die without having made at least one last effort.
She wrapped herself up in a piece of common stuff, kept on but a single bracelet of odoriferous wood, twisted a piece of striped gauze around her head, and with the first light of the dawn, without being heard by Nofré, who was dreaming of the handsome Ahmosis, she left her room, crossed the garden, drew the bolts of the water gate, proceeded to the quay, waked a waterman asleep in his papyrus boat, and had herself transported to the other bank of the stream.
Staggering and pressing her little hand to her heart to still its beating, she drew near Poëri’s dwelling.
It was now broad daylight, and the gates were opening to give passage to the ox teams going to work, and to the flocks going forth to pasture.
Tahoser knelt on the threshold and placed her hand above her head with a supplicating gesture, more beautiful, perhaps, even in this humble attitude and in her mean dress. Her bosom rose and fell and tears streamed down her pale cheeks.
Poëri saw her and took her for what she was, indeed, a most unhappy woman.
“Enter,” said he; “enter without fear. This house is hospitable.”
CHAPTER VI
Tahoser, encouraged by the friendly words of Poëri, abandoned her supplicating attitude and rose. A rich glow flushed her cheek but now so pale; shame came back to her with hope; she blushed at the strange action to which love had driven her; she hesitated to pass the threshold which she had crossed so often in her dreams. Her maidenly scruples, stifled for a time by passion, resumed their power in the presence of reality.
The Mummy Megapack Page 33