第22章 THE PAPYRUS(9)

"Friend," she said, "show me this wonderful love.Make haste! Long speeches would be an insult to my beauty; let us not lose a moment.Iam impatient to taste the felicity you announce; but, to say the truth, I fear that I shall always remain ignorant of it, and that all you have promised me will vanish in words.It is easier to promise a great happiness than to give it.Everyone has a talent of some sort.Ifancy that yours is to make long speeches.You speak of an unknown love.It is so long since kisses were first exchanged that it would be very extraordinary if there still remained secrets in love.On this subject lovers know more than philosophers.""Do not jest, Thais.I bring thee the unknown love.""Friend, you come too late.I know every kind of love.""The love that I bring thee abounds with glory, whilst the loves that thou knowest breed only shame."Thais looked at him with an angry eye, a frown gathered on her beautiful face.

"You are very bold, stranger, to offend your hostess.Look at me, and say if I resemble a creature crushed down with shame.No, I am not ashamed, and all others who live like me are not ashamed either, although they are not so beautiful or so rich as I am.I have sown pleasure in my footsteps, and I am celebrated for that all over the world.I am more powerful than the masters of the world.I have seen them at my feet.Look at me, look at these little feet; thousands of men would pay with their blood for the happiness of kissing them.I am not very big, and I do not occupy much space on the earth.To those who look at me from the top of the Serapeium, when I pass in the street, I look like a grain of rice; but that grain of rice has caused among men, griefs, despairs, hates, and crimes enough to have filled Tartarus.Are you not mad to talk to me of shame when all around proclaims my glory?""That which is glory in the eyes of men, is infamy before God.Owoman, we have been nourished in countries so different, that it is not surprising we have neither the same language nor the same thoughts! Yet Heaven is my witness that I wish to agree with thee, and that it is my intention not to leave thee until we share the same sentiments.Who will inspire me with burning words that will melt thee like wax in my breath, O woman, that the fingers of my desires may mould thee as they wish? What virtue will deliver thee to me, Odearest of souls, that the spirit which animates me, creating thee a second time, may imprint on thee a fresh beauty, and that thou mayest cry, weeping for joy, 'It is only now that I am born'? Who will cause to gush in my heart a fount of Siloam, in which thou mayest bathe and recover thy first purity? Who will change me into a Jordan, the waves of which sprinkled on thee, will give thee life eternal?"Thais was no longer angry.

"This man," she thought, "talks of life eternal and all that he says seems written on a talisman.No doubt he is a mage, and knows secret charms against old age and death," and she resolved to offer herself to him.Therefore, pretending to be afraid of him, she retired a few steps to the end of the grotto, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, artfully pulled her tunic across her breast; then, motionless and mute and her eyes cast down, she waited.Her long eyelashes made a soft shadow on her cheeks.Her entire attitude expressed modesty; her naked feet swung gently, and she looked like a child sitting thinking on the bank of a brook.But Paphnutius looked at her, and did not move.His trembling knees hardly supported him, his tongue dried in his mouth, a terrible buzzing rang in his ears.But all at once his sight failed, and he could see nothing before him but a thick cloud.

He thought that the hand of Jesus had been laid on his eyes, to hide this woman from them.Reassured by such succour, strengthened and fortified, he said with a gravity worthy of an old hermit of the desert--"If thou givest thyself to me, thinkest thou it is hidden from God?"She shook her head.

"God? Who forces Him to keep His eye always upon the Grotto of Nymphs?

Let Him go away if we offend Him! But why should we offend Him? Since He has created us, He can be neither angry nor surprised to see us as He made us, and acting according to the nature He has given us.A good deal too much is said on His behalf, and He is often credited with ideas He never had.You yourself, stranger, do you know His true character? Who are you that you should speak to me in His name?"At this question the monk, opening his borrowed robe, showed the cassock, and said--"I am Paphnutius, Abbot of Antinoe, and I come from the holy desert.

The hand that drew Abraham from Chaldaea and Lot from Sodom has separated me from the present age.I no longer existed for the men of this century.But thy image appeared to me in my sandy Jerusalem, and I knew that thou wert full of corruption, and death was in thee.And now I am before thee, woman, as before a grave, and I cry unto thee, 'Thais, arise!' "At the words, Paphnutius, monk, and abbot, she had turned pale with fright.And now, with dishevelled hair and joined hands, weeping and groaning, she dragged herself to the feet of the saint.

"Do not hurt me! Why have you come? What do you want of me? Do not hurt me! I know that the saints of the desert hate women who, like me, are made to please.I am afraid that you hate me, and want to hurt me.