One of Cleopatra's Nights (2 page)

The noonday sun shot his arrows perpendicularly from above; the
ashen-hued slime of the river banks reflected the fiery glow; a raw
light, glaring and blinding in its intensity, poured down in torrents
of flame; the azure of the sky whitened in the heat as a metal whitens
in the furnace; an ardent and lurid fog smoked in the horizon. Not a
cloud appeared in the sky—a sky mournful and changeless as Eternity.

The water of the Nile, sluggish and wan, seemed to slumber in its
course, and slowly extend itself in sheets of molten tin. No breath of
air wrinkled its surface, or bowed down upon their stalks the cups of
the lotus-flowers, as rigidly motionless as though sculptured; at long
intervals the leap of a bechir or fabaka expanding its belly scarcely
caused a silvery gleam upon the current; and the oars of the cangia
seemed with difficulty to tear their way through the fuliginous film of
that curdled water. The banks were desolate, a solemn and mighty sadness
weighed upon this land, which was never aught else than a vast tomb, and
in which the living appeared to be solely occupied in the work of
burying the dead. It was an arid sadness, dry as pumice stone, without
melancholy, without reverie, without one pearly gray cloud to follow
toward the horizon, one secret spring wherein to lave one's dusty feet;
the sadness of a sphinx weary of eternally gazing upon the desert, and
unable to detach herself from the granite socle upon which she has
sharpened her claws for twenty centuries.

So profound was the silence that it seemed as though the world had
become dumb, or that the air had lost all power of conveying sound. The
only noises which could be heard at intervals were the whisperings and
stifled "chuckling" of the crocodiles, which, enfeebled by the heat,
were wallowing among the bullrushes by the river banks; or the sound
made by some ibis, which, tired of standing with one leg doubled up
against its stomach, and its head sunk between its shoulders, suddenly
abandoned its motionless attitude, and, brusquely whipping the blue air
with its white wings, flew off to perch upon an obelisk or a palm-tree.
The cangia flew like, an arrow over the smooth river-water, leaving
behind it a silvery wake which soon disappeared; and only a few
foam-bubbles rising to break at the surface of the stream bore testimony
to the passage of the vessel, then already out of sight.

The ochre-hued or salmon-colored banks unrolled themselves rapidly, like
scrolls of papyrus, between the double azure of water and sky so similar
in tint that the slender tongue of earth which separated them seemed
like a causeway stretching over an immense lake, and that it would have
been difficult to determine whether the Nile reflected the sky, or
whether the sky reflected the Nile.

The scene continually changed. At one moment were visible gigantic
propylæa, whose sloping walls, painted with large panels of fantastic
figures, were mirrored in the river; pylons with broad-bulging capitals;
stairways guarded by huge crouching sphinxes, wearing caps with lappets
of many folds, and crossing their paws of black basalt below their
sharply projecting breasts; palaces, immeasurably vast, projecting
against the horizon the severe horizontal lines of their entablatures,
where the emblematic globe unfolded its mysterious wings like an eagle's
vast-extending pinions; temples with enormous columns thick as towers,
on which were limned processions of hieroglyphic figures against a
background of brilliant white—all the monstrosities of that Titanic
architecture. Again the eye beheld only land-scapes of desolate
aridity—hills formed of stony fragments from excavations and building
works, crumbs of that gigantic debauch of granite which lasted for more
than thirty centuries; mountains exfoliated by heat, and mangled and
striped with black lines which seemed like the cauterizations of a
conflagration; hillocks humped and deformed, squatting like the
criocephalus of the tombs, and projecting the outlines of their
misshapen attitude against the sky-line; expanses of greenish clay,
reddle, flour-white tufa; and from time to time some steep cliff of dry,
rose-colored granite, where yawned the black mouths of the stone
quarries.

This aridity was wholly unrelieved; no oasis of foliage refreshed the
eye; green seemed to be a color unknown to that nature; only some meagre
palm-tree, like a vegetable crab, appeared from time to time in the
horizon; or a thorny fig-tree brandished its tempered leaves like sword
blades of bronze; or a carthamus-plant, which had found a little
moisture to live upon in the shadow of some fragment of a broken column,
relieved the general uniformity with a speck of crimson.

After this rapid glance at the aspect of the landscape, let us return to
the cangia with its fifty rowers, and, without announcing ourselves,
enter boldly into the
naos
of honor.

The interior was painted white with green arabesques, bands of
vermilion, and gilt flowers fantastically shaped; an exceedingly fine
rush matting covered the floor; at the further end stood a little bed,
supported upon griffin's feet, having a back resembling that of a modern
lounge or sofa; a stool with four steps to enable one to climb into bed;
and (rather an odd luxury according to our ideas of comfort) a sort of
hemicycle of cedar wood, supported upon a single leg, and designed to
fit the nape of the neck so as to support the head of the person
reclining.

Upon this strange pillow reposed a most charming head, one look of
which once caused the loss of half a world; an adorable, a divine head;
the head of the most perfect woman that ever lived; the most womanly and
most queenly of all women; an admirable type of beauty which the
imagination of poets could never invest with any new grace, and which
dreamers will find forever in the depths of their dreams—it is not
necessary to name Cleopatra.

Beside her stood her favorite slave Charmion, waving a large fan of ibis
feathers; and a young girl was moistening with scented water the little
reed blinds attached to the windows of the
naos
, so that the air might
only enter impregnated with fresh odors.

Near the bed of repose, in a striped vase of alabaster with a slender
neck and a peculiarly elegant, tapering shape, vaguely recalling the
form of a heron, was placed a bouquet of lotus-flowers, some of a
celestial blue, others of a tender rose-color, like the finger-tips of
Isis the great goddess.

Either from caprice or policy, Cleopatra did not wear the Greek dress
that day. She had just attended a panegyris,
[1]
and was returning to
her summer palace still clad in the Egyptian costume she had worn at the
festival.

Perhaps our fair readers will feel curious to know how Queen Cleopatra
was attired on her return from the Mammisi of Hermonthis whereat were
worshipped the holy triad of the god Mandou, the goddess Ritho, and
their son, Harphra; luckily we are able to satisfy them in this regard.

For headdress Queen Cleopatra wore a kind of very light helmet of beaten
gold, fashioned in the form of the body and wings of the sacred
partridge. The wings, opening downward like fans, covered the temples,
and extending below, almost to the neck, left exposed on either side,
through a small aperture, an ear rosier and more delicately curled than
the shell whence arose that Venus whom the Egyptians named Athor; the
tail of the bird occupied that place where our women wear their
chignons; its body, covered with imbricated feathers, and painted in
variegated enamel, concealed the upper part of the head; and its neck,
gracefully curving forward over the forehead of the wearer, formed
together with its little head a kind of horn-shaped ornament, all
sparkling with precious stones; a symbolic crest, designed like a tower,
completed this odd but elegant headdress. Hair dark as a starless night
flowed from beneath this helmet, and streamed in long tresses over the
fair shoulders whereof the commencement only, alas! was left exposed by
a collarette, or gorget, adorned with many rows of serpentine stones,
azodrachs, and chrysoberyls; a linen robe diagonally cut—a mist of
material, of woven air,
ventus textilis
as Petronius says, undulated
in vapory whiteness about a lovely body whose outlines it scarcely
shaded with the softest shading. This robe had half-sleeves, tight at
the shoulder, but widening toward the elbows like our
manches-à-sabot
,
and permitting a glimpse of an adorable arm and a perfect hand, the arm
being clasped by six golden bracelets, and the hand adorned with a ring
representing the sacred scarabæus. A girdle, whose knotted ends hung
down in front, confined this free-floating tunic at the waist; a short
cloak adorned with fringing completed the costume; and, if a few
barbarous words will not frighten Parisian ears, we might add that the
robe was called
schenti,
and the short cloak,
calisiris
.

Finally, we may observe that Queen Cleopatra wore very thin, light
sandals, turned up at the toes, and fastened over the instep, like the
Souliers-à-la-poulaine
of the mediæval
chatelaines
.

But Queen Cleopatra did not wear that air of satisfaction which becomes
a woman conscious of being perfectly beautiful and perfectly well
dressed. She tossed and turned in her little bed, and her sudden
movements momentarily disarranged the folds of her gauzy
conopeum
,
which Charmion as often rearranged with inexhaustible patience, and
without ceasing to wave her fan.

"This room is stifling," said Cleopatra; "even if Pthah the God of Fire
established his forges in here, he could not make it hotter; the air is
like the breath of a furnace!" And she moistened her lips with the tip
of her little tongue, and stretched out her hand like a feverish patient
seeking an absent cup.

Charmion, ever attentive, at once clapped her hands. A black slave
clothed in a short tunic hanging in folds like an Albanian petticoat,
and a panther-skin thrown over his shoulders, entered with the
suddenness of an apparition; with his left hand balancing a tray laden
with cups, and slices of watermelon, and carrying in his right a long
vase with a spout like a modern teapot.

The slave filled one of these cups, pouring the liquor into it from a
considerable height with marvellous dexterity, and placed it before the
queen. Cleopatra merely touched the beverage with her lips, laid the cup
down beside her, and turning upon Charmion her beautiful liquid black
eyes, lustrous with living light, exclaimed:

"O Charmion, I am weary unto death!"

Charmion, at once anticipating a confidence, assumed a look of pained
sympathy, and drew nearer to her mistress.

"I am horribly weary!" continued Cleopatra, letting her arms fall like
one utterly discouraged. "This Egypt crushes, annihilates me; this sky
with its implacable azure is sadder than the deep night of Erebus; never
a cloud, never a shadow, and always that red, sanguine sun, which glares
down upon you like the eye of a Cyclops. Ah, Charmion, I would give a
pearl for one drop of rain! From the inflamed pupil of that sky of
bronze no tear has ever yet fallen upon the desolation of this land; it
is only a vast covering for a tomb—the dome of a necropolis; a sky dead
and dried up like the mummies it hangs over; it weighs upon my shoulders
like an over-heavy mantle; it constrains and terrifies me; it seems to
me that I could not stand up erect without striking my forehead against
it. And, moreover, this land is truly an awful land; all things in it
are gloomy, enigmatic, incomprehensible. Imagination has produced in it
only monstrous chimeras and monuments immeasurable; this architecture
and this art fill me with fear; those colossi, whose stone-entangled
limbs compel them to remain eternally sitting with their hands upon
their knees, weary me with their stupid immobility; they trouble my eyes
and my horizon. When, indeed, shall the giant come who is to take them
by the hand and relieve them from their long watch of twenty centuries?
For even granite itself must grow weary at last! Of what master, then,
do they await the coming, to leave their mountain-seats and rise in
token of respect? Of what invisible flock are those huge sphinxes the
guardians, crouching like dogs on the watch, that they never close their
eyelids, and forever extend their claws in readiness to seize? Why are
their stony eyes so obstinately fixed upon eternity and infinity? What
weird secret do their firmly locked lips retain within their breasts? On
the right hand, on the left, whithersoever one turns, only frightful
monsters are visible—dogs with the heads of men; men with the heads of
dogs; chimeras begotten of hideous couplings in the shadowy depths of
the labyrinths; figures of Anubis, Typhon, Osiris; partridges with great
yellow eyes that seem to pierce through you with their inquisitorial
gaze, and see beyond and behind you things which one dare not speak
of—a family of animals and horrible gods with scaly wings, hooked
beaks, trenchant claws, ever ready to seize and devour you should you
venture to cross the threshold of the temple, or lift a corner of the
veil.

"Upon the walls, upon the columns, on the ceilings, on the floors, upon
palaces and temples, in the long passages and the deepest pits of the
necropoli, even within the bowels of the earth where light never comes,
and where the flames of the torches die for want of air, forever and
everywhere are sculptured and painted interminable hieroglyphics,
telling in language unintelligible of things which are no longer known,
and which belong, doubtless, to the vanished creations of the
past—prodigious buried works wherein a whole nation was sacrificed to
write the epitaph of one king! Mystery and granite—this is Egypt! Truly
a fair land for a young woman, and a young queen.

"Menacing and funereal symbols alone meet the eye—the emblems of the
pedum,
the
tau
, allegorical globes, coiling serpents, and the scales
in which souls are weighed—the Unknown, death, nothingness. In the
place of any vegetation only
stelæ
limned with weird characters;
instead of avenues of trees, avenues of granite obelisks; in lieu of
soil, vast pavements of granite for which whole mountains could each
furnish but one slab; in place of a sky, ceilings of granite—eternity
made palpable, a bitter and everlasting sarcasm upon the frailty and
brevity of life—stairways built only for the limbs of Titans, which the
human foot cannot ascend save by the aid of ladders; columns that a
hundred arms cannot encircle; labyrinths in which one might travel for
years without discovering the termination—the vertigo of enormity, the
drunkenness of the gigantic, the reckless efforts of that pride which
would at any cost engrave its name deeply upon the face of the world.