第19章 THE PAPYRUS(6)

She met with but indifferent success, for she was inexperienced, and the admiration of the spectators had not been aroused by hearing her praises sung.But after she had played small parts for a few months, the power of her beauty burst forth with such effect that all the city was moved.All Antioch crowded to the theatre.The imperial magistrates and the chief citizens were compelled, by the force of public opinion, to show themselves there.The porters, sweepers, and dock labourers went without bread and garlic, that they might pay for their places.Poets composed epigrams in her honour.Bearded philosophers inveighed against her in the baths and gymnasia; when her litter passed, Christian priests turned away their heads.The threshold of her door was wreathed with flowers, and sprinkled with blood.She received so much money from her lovers that it was no longer counted, but measured by the medimnus, and all the treasure hoarded by miserly old men was poured out at her feet.But she was placid and unmoved.She rejoiced, with quiet pride, in the admiration of the public and the favour of the gods, and was so much loved that she loved herself.

After she had several years enjoyed the admiration and affection of the Antiochians, she was taken with a desire to revisit Alexandria, and show her glory in that city in which, as a child, she had wandered in want and shame, hungry and lean as a grasshopper in the middle of a dusty road.The golden city joyfully welcomed her, and loaded her with fresh riches; when she appeared in the games it was a triumph.

Countless admirers and lovers came to her.She received them with indifference, for she at last despaired of meeting another Lollius.

Amongst many others, she met the philosopher Nicias, who desired to possess her, although he professed to have no desires.In spite of his riches, he was intelligent and modest.But his delicate wit and beautiful sentiments failed to charm her.She did not love him and sometimes his refined irony even irritated her.His perpetual doubts hurt her, for he believed in nothing, and she believed in everything.

She believed in divine providence, in the omnipotence of evil spirits, in spells, exorcisms, and eternal justice; she believed in Jesus Christ, and in the goddess of good of the Syrians; she believed also that bitches barked when black Hecate passed through the streets, and that a woman could inspire love by pouring a philtre into a cup wrapped in the bleeding skin of a sheep.She thirsted for the unknown;she called on nameless gods, and lived in perpetual expectation.The future frightened her, and yet she wished to know it.She surrounded herself with priests of Isis, Chaldean magi, pharmacopolists, and professors of the black arts, who invariably deceived her, though she never tired of being deceived.She feared death, and she saw it everywhere.When she yielded to pleasure, it seemed to her that an icy finger would suddenly touch her on the bare shoulder, and she turned pale, and cried with terror, in the arms which embraced her.

Nicias said to her--

"What does it matter, O my Thais, whether we descend to eternal night with white locks and hollow cheeks, or, whether this very day, now laughing to the vast sky, shall be our last? Let us enjoy life; we shall have greatly lived if we have greatly loved.There is no knowledge except that of the senses; to love is to understand.That which we do not know does not exist.What good is it to worry ourselves about nothing?"She replied angrily--

"I despise men like you, who hope for nothing and fear nothing.I wish to know! I wish to know!"In order to understand the secret of life, she set to work to read the books of the philosophers, but she did not understand them.The further the years of her childhood receded from her, the more anxious she was to recall them.She loved to traverse at night, in disguise, the alleys, squares, and places where she had grown up so miserably.

She was sorry she had lost her parents, and especially that she had not been able to love them.When she met any Christian priest, she thought of her baptism, and felt troubled.One night, when enveloped in a long cloak, and her fair hair hidden under a black hood, she was wandering, according to custom, about the suburbs of the city, she found herself--without knowing how she came there--before the poor little church of St.John the Baptist.They were singing inside the church, and a bright light glimmered through the chinks of the door.

There was nothing strange in that, as, for the past twenty years, the Christians, protected by the conqueror of Maxentius, had publicly solemnised their festivals.But these hymns seemed more like an ardent appeal to the soul.As if she had been invited to the mysteries, she pushed the door open with her arm, and entered the building.She found a numerous assembly of women, children, and old men, on their knees before a tomb, which stood against the wall.The tomb was nothing but a stone coffer, roughly sculptured with vine tendrils and bunches of grapes; yet it had received great honours, and was covered with green palms and wreaths of red roses.All round, innumerable lights gleamed out of the heavy shadow, in which the smoke of Arabian gums seemed like the folds of angels' robes, and the paintings on the walls visions of Paradise.Priests, clad in white, were prostrate at the foot of the sarcophagus.The hymns they sang with the people expressed the delight of suffering, and mingled, in a triumphal mourning, so much joy with so much grief, that Thais, in listening to them, felt the pleasures of life and the terrors of death flowing, at the same time, through her re-awakened senses.