One of Cleopatra's Nights (18 page)

I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone which
must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.

She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me, and her eyes shone with
bluish gleams of light.

She took her foot, which surrendered itself willingly this time, like a
woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with
much skill.

This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though to
assure herself that she was really no longer lame.

"Ah, how pleased my father will be! He who was so unhappy because of my
mutilation, and who from the moment of my birth set a whole nation at
work to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me intact
until that last day, when souls must be weighed in the balance of
Amenthi! Come with me to my father. He will receive you kindly, for you
have given me back my foot."

I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in a
dressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonic
aspect, hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and informed the
Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.

Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of green
paste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered the
table.

"It is only fair," she observed, smilingly, "that I should replace your
paper-weight."

She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of a
serpent, and we departed.

We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid
and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly by
us, to right and left.

For an instant we saw only sky and sea.

A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance; pylons
and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined
against the horizon.

We had reached our destination.

The princess conducted me to a mountain of rose-colored granite, in the
face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have
been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not
its location been marked by two stelæ wrought with sculptures.

Hermonthis kindled a torch and led the way before me.

We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock. Their walls,
covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions,
might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in
their formation. These corridors of interminable length opened into
square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through
which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways. These pits again
conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise
decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the
symbols of the
tau
and
pedum
—prodigious works of art which no
living eye can ever examine—interminable legends of granite which only
the dead have time to read through all eternity.

At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so
immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits. Files of
monstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, between
which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame; points of light which
revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.

The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the
mummies of her acquaintance.

My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight, and objects became
discernible.

I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones—grand
old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened
with naphtha and bitumen—all wearing
pshents
of gold, and
breast-plates and gorgets glittering with precious stones, their eyes
immovably fixed like the eyes of spinxes, and their long beards whitened
by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples, in the stiff
and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all eternally
preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these
nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles contemporary with
them—rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands—mewed,
flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.

All the Pharaohs were there—Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus,
Sesostris, Amenotaph—all the dark rulers of the pyramids and syrinxes.
On yet higher thrones sat Chronos and Xixouthros, who was contemporary
with the deluge, and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.

The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite
table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie, and buried in dreams.

Farther back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two
preadamite kings, with their seventy-two peoples, forever passed away.

After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few
moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, who
favored me with a most gracious nod.

"I have found my foot again! I have found my foot!" cried the princess,
clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy. "It
was this gentleman who restored it to me."

The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi—all the black, bronzed, and
copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:

"The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!"

Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.

He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his mustache with his fingers, and
turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.

"By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmeï, daughter of the Sun and of Truth,
this is a brave and worthy lad!" exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with
his sceptre, which was terminated with a lotus-flower.

"What recompense do you desire?"

Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems
impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis. The
hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.

Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty
request.

"What country do you come from, and what is your age?"

"I am a Frenchman, and I am twenty-seven years old, venerable Pharaoh."

"Twenty-seven years old, and he wishes to espouse the Princess
Hermonthis who is thirty centuries old!" cried out at once all the
Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.

Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.

"If you were even only two thousand years old," replied the ancient
king, "I would willingly give you the princess, but the disproportion is
too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will
last well. You do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer. Even
those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a
handful of dust. Behold, my flesh is solid as basalt, my bones are bars
of steel!

"I will be present on the last day of the world with the same body and
the same features which I had during my lifetime. My daughter
Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.

"Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by
the winds, and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of
Osiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.

"See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp," he added,
shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my
rings in the flesh of my fingers.

He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking
me by the arm to make me get up.

"Oh, you everlasting sleeper! Must I have you carried out into the
middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is
afternoon. Don't you recollect your promise to take me with you to see
M. Aguado's Spanish pictures?"

"God! I forgot all, all about it," I answered, dressing myself
hurriedly. "We will go there at once. I have the permit lying there on
my desk."

I started to find it, but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead
of the mummy's foot I had purchased the evening before, the little green
paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!

My uncle, the Chevalier de —, resided in a small mansion which looked
out upon the dismal Rue de Tournelles on one side, and the equally
dismal Boulevard St. Antoine upon the other. Between the Boulevard and
the house itself a few ancient elm-trees, eaten alive by mosses and
insects, piteously extended their skeleton arms from the depth of a
species of sink surrounded by high black walls. Some emaciated flowers
hung their heads languidly, like young girls in consumption, waiting for
a ray of sunshine to dry their half-rotten leaves. Weeds had invaded the
walks, which were almost undistinguishable, owing to the length of time
that had elapsed since they were last raked. One or two goldfish
floated rather than swam in a basin covered with duck-weed and
half-choked by water plants.

My uncle called that his garden!

Besides all the fine things above described in my uncle's garden, there
was also a rather unpleasant pavilion, which he had entitled the
Délices
, doubtless by antiphrasis. It was in a state of extreme
dilapidation. The walls were bulging outwardly. Great masses of detached
plaster still lay among the nettles and wild oats where they had fallen.
The lower portions of the wall surfaces were green with putrid mould.
The woodwork of the window-shutters and doors had been badly sprung, and
they closed only partially or not at all. A species of decoration,
strongly suggestive of an immense kitchen-pot with various effluvia
radiating from it, ornamented the main entrance, for in the time of
Louis XV., when it was the custom to build
Délices
, there were always
two entrances to such pleasure houses for precaution's sake. The
cornice, overburdened with ovulos, foliated arabesques, and volutes, had
been badly dismantled by the infiltration of rain-water. In short, the
Délices
of my uncle, the Chevalier de —, presented a rather
lamentable aspect.

This poor ruin, dating only from yesterday, although wearing the
dilapidated look of a thousand years' decay—a ruin of plaster, not of
stone, all cracked and warped, covered with a leprosy of lichen growth,
moss-eaten and mouldy—seemed to resemble one of those precociously old
men worn out by filthy debauches. It inspired no feeling of respect, for
there is nothing in the world so ugly and so wretched as either an old
gauze robe or an old plaster wall, two things which ought not to endure,
yet which do.

It was in this pavilion that my uncle had lodged me.

The interior was not less rococo than the exterior, although remaining
in a somewhat better state of preservation. The bed was hung with yellow
lampas, spotted over with large white flowers. An ornamental shell-work
clock ticked away upon a pedestal inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl.
A wreath of ornamental roses coquettishly twined around a Venetian
glass. Above the door the Four Seasons were painted in cameo. A fair
lady with thickly powdered hair, a sky-blue corset, and an array of
ribbons of the same hue, who had a bow in her right hand, a partridge in
her left, a crescent upon her forehead, and a leverette at her feet,
strutted and smiled with ineffable graciousness from within a large oval
frame. This was one of my uncle's mistresses of old, whom he had had
painted as Diana. It will scarcely be necessary to observe that the
furniture itself was not of the most modern style. There was, in fact,
nothing to prevent one from fancying himself living at the time of the
Regency, and the mythological tapestry with which the Avails were hung
rendered the illusion complete.

The tapestry represented Hercules spinning at the feet of Omphale. The
design was tormented after the fashion of Vanloo, and in the most
Pompadour style possible to imagine. Hercules had a spindle decorated
with rose-colored favors. He elevated his little finger with a peculiar
and special grace, like a marquis in the act of taking a pinch of
snuff, while turning a white flake of flax between his thumb and index
finger. His muscular neck was burdened with bows of ribbons, rosettes,
strings of pearls, and a thousand other feminine gew-gaws, and a large
gorge-de-pigeon
colored petticoat, with two very large panniers, lent
quite a gallant air to the monster-conquering hero.

Omphale's white shoulders were half covered by the skin of the Nemean
lion. Her slender hand leaned upon her lover's knotty club. Her lovely
blonde hair, powdered to ash-color, fell loosely over her neck—a neck
as supple and undulating in its outlines as the neck of a dove. Her
little feet, true realizations of the typical Andalusian or Chinese
foot, and which would have been lost in Cinderella's glass slippers,
were shod with half-antique buskins of a tender lilac color, sprinkled
with pearls. In truth, she was a charming creature. Her head was thrown
back with an adorable little mock swagger, her dimpled mouth wore a
delicious little pout, her nostrils were slightly expanded, her cheeks
had a delicate glow—an
assassin
[9]

cunningly placed there relieved their beauty in a wonderful way; she
only needed a little mustache to make her a first-class mousquetaire.

There were many other personages also represented in the tapestry—the
kindly female attendant, the indispensable little Cupid—but they did
not leave a sufficiently distinct outline in my memory to enable me to
describe them.

In those days I was quite young—not that I wish to be understood as
saying that I am now very old; but I was fresh from college, and was to
remain in my uncle's care until I could choose a profession. If the good
man had been able to foresee that I should embrace that of a fantastic
story-writer, he would certainly have turned me out of doors forthwith
and irrevocably disinherited me, for he always entertained the most
aristocratic contempt for literature in general and authors in
particular. Like the fine gentleman that he was, it would have pleased
him to have had all those petty scribblers who busy themselves in
disfiguring paper, and speaking irreverentially about people of
quality, hung or beaten to death by his attendants. Lord have mercy on
my poor uncle! He really esteemed nothing in the world except the
epistle to Zetulba.