"How piously submissive and thankful are these unclean ones!" thought
Pentaur; and repugnance for the old laws began to take root in his
heart. "Maternal love may exist in the hyaena, but to seek and find
God pertains only to man, who has a noble aim. Up to the limits of
eternity--and God is eternal!--thought is denied to animals; they cannot
even smile. Even men cannot smile at first, for only physical
life--an animal soul--dwells in them; but soon a share of the world's
soul--beaming intelligence--works within them, and first shows itself in
the smile of a child, which is as pure as the light and the truth from
which it comes. The child of the paraschites smiles like any other
creature born of woman, but how few aged men there are, even among the
initiated, who can smile as innocently and brightly as this woman who
has grown grey under open ill-treatment."
Deep sympathy began to fill his heart, and he knelt down by the side of
the poor child, raised her arm, and prayed fervently to that One who
had created the heavens and who rules the world--to that One, whom the
mysteries of faith forbade him to name; and not to the innumerable gods,
whom the people worshipped, and who to him were nothing but incarnations
of the attributes of the One and only God of the initiated--of whom he
was one--who was thus brought down to the comprehension of the laity.
He raised his soul to God in passionate emotion; but he prayed, not
for the child before him and for her recovery, but rather for the
whole despised race, and for its release from the old ban, for the
enlightenment of his own soul, imprisoned in doubts, and for strength to
fulfil his hard task with discretion.
The gaze of the sufferer followed him as he took up his former position.
The prayer had refreshed his soul and restored him to cheerfulness of
spirit. He began to reflect what conduct he must observe towards the
princess.
He had not met Bent-Anat for the first time yesterday; on the contrary,
he had frequently seen her in holiday processions, and at the high
festivals in the Necropolis, and like all his young companions had
admired her proud beauty--admired it as the distant light of the stars,
or the evening-glow on the horizon.
Now he must approach this lady with words of reproof.
He pictured to himself the moment when he must advance to meet her, and
could not help thinking of his little tutor Chufu, above whom he towered
by two heads while he was still a boy, and who used to call up his
admonitions to him from below. It was true, he himself was tall
and slim, but he felt as if to-day he were to play the part towards
Bent-Anat of the much-laughed-at little tutor.
His sense of the comic was touched, and asserted itself at this
serious moment, and with such melancholy surroundings. Life is rich in
contrasts, and a susceptible and highly-strung human soul would break
down like a bridge under the measured tread of soldiers, if it were
allowed to let the burden of the heaviest thoughts and strongest
feelings work upon it in undisturbed monotony; but just as in music
every key-note has its harmonies, so when we cause one chord of our
heart to vibrate for long, all sorts of strange notes respond and clang,
often those which we least expect.
Pentaur's glance flew round the one low, over-filled room of the
paraschites' hut, and like a lightning flash the thought, "How will the
princess and her train find room here?" flew through his mind.
His fancy was lively, and vividly brought before him how the daughter of
the Pharaoh with a crown on her proud head would bustle into the silent
chamber, how the chattering courtiers would follow her, and how the
women by the walls, the physicians by the side of the sick girl, the
sleek white cat from the chest where she sat, would rise and throng
round her. There must be frightful confusion. Then he imagined how the
smart lords and ladies would keep themselves far from the unclean, hold
their slender hands over their mouths and noses, and suggest to the old
folks how they ought to behave to the princess who condescended to bless
them with her presence. The old woman must lay down the head that rested
in her bosom, the paraschites must drop the feet he so anxiously rubbed,
on the floor, to rise and kiss the dust before Bent-Anat. Whereupon--the
"mind's eye" of the young priest seemed to see it all--the courtiers
fled before him, pushing each other, and all crowded together into a
corner, and at last the princess threw a few silver or gold rings into
the laps of the father and mother, and perhaps to the girl too, and he
seemed to hear the courtiers all cry out: "Hail to the gracious daughter
of the Sun!"--to hear the joyful exclamations of the crowd of women--to
see the gorgeous apparition leave the hut of the despised people,
and then to see, instead of the lovely sick child who still breathed
audibly, a silent corpse on the crumpled mat, and in the place of the
two tender nurses at her head and feet, two heart-broken, loud-lamenting
wretches.
Pentaur's hot spirit was full of wrath. As soon as the noisy cortege
appeared actually in sight he would place himself in the doorway, forbid
the princess to enter, and receive her with strong words.
She could hardly come hither out of human kindness.
"She wants variety," said he to himself, "something new at Court; for
there is little going on there now the king tarries with the troops in
a distant country; it tickles the vanity of the great to find themselves
once in a while in contact with the small, and it is well to have
your goodness of heart spoken of by the people. If a little misfortune
opportunely happens, it is not worth the trouble to inquire whether
the form of our benevolence does more good or mischief to such wretched
people."
He ground his teeth angrily, and thought no more of the defilement which
might threaten Bent-Anat from the paraschites, but exclusively, on
the contrary, of the impending desecration by the princess of the holy
feelings astir in this silent room.
Excited as he was to fanaticism, his condemning lips could not fail to
find vigorous and impressive words.
He stood drawn to his full height and drawing his breath deeply, like
a spirit of light who holds his weapon raised to annihilate a demon of
darkness, and he looked out into the valley to perceive from afar the
cry of the runners and the rattle of the wheels of the gay train he
expected.
And he saw the doorway darkened by a lowly, bending figure, who, with
folded arms, glided into the room and sank down silently by the side of
the sick girl. The physicians and the old people moved as if to rise;
but she signed to them without opening her lips, and with moist,
expressive eyes, to keep their places; she looked long and lovingly in
the face of the wounded girl, stroked her white arm, and turning to the
old woman softly whispered to her
"How pretty she is!"
The paraschites' wife nodded assent, and the girl smiled and moved her
lips as though she had caught the words and wished to speak.
Bent-Anat took a rose from her hair and laid it on her bosom.
The paraschites, who had not taken his hands from the feet of the
sick child, but who had followed every movement of the princess, now
whispered, "May Hathor requite thee, who gave thee thy beauty."
The princess turned to him and said, "Forgive the sorrow, I have caused
you."
The old man stood up, letting the feet of the sick girl fall, and asked
in a clear loud voice:
"Art thou Bent-Anat?"
"Yes, I am," replied the princess, bowing her head low, and in so gentle
a voice, that it seemed as though she were ashamed of her proud name.
The eyes of the old man flashed. Then he said softly but decisively:
"Leave my hut then, it will defile thee."
"Not till you have forgiven me for that which I did unintentionally."
"Unintentionally! I believe thee," replied the paraschites. "The hoofs
of thy horse became unclean when they trod on this white breast. Look
here--" and he lifted the cloth from the girl's bosom, and showed her
the deep red wound, "Look here--here is the first rose you laid on my
grandchild's bosom, and the second--there it goes."
The paraschites raised his arm to fling the flower through the door of
his hut. But Pentaur had approached him, and with a grasp of iron held
the old man's hand.
"Stay," he cried in an eager tone, moderated however for the sake of the
sick girl. "The third rose, which this noble hand has offered you, your
sick heart and silly head have not even perceived. And yet you must know
it if only from your need, your longing for it. The fair blossom of pure
benevolence is laid on your child's heart, and at your very feet, by
this proud princess. Not with gold, but with humility. And whoever the
daughter of Rameses approaches as her equal, bows before her, even if he
were the first prince in the Land of Egypt. Indeed, the Gods shall not
forget this deed of Bent-Anat. And you--forgive, if you desire to be
forgiven that guilt, which you bear as an inheritance from your fathers,
and for your own sins."
The paraschites bowed his head at these words, and when he raised it
the anger had vanished from his well-cut features. He rubbed his wrist,
which had been squeezed by Pentaur's iron fingers, and said in a tone
which betrayed all the bitterness of his feelings:
"Thy hand is hard, Priest, and thy words hit like the strokes of a
hammer. This fair lady is good and loving, and I know; that she did not
drive her horse intentionally over this poor girl, who is my grandchild
and not my daughter. If she were thy wife or the wife of the leech
there, or the child of the poor woman yonder, who supports life by
collecting the feet and feathers of the fowls that are slaughtered for
sacrifice, I would not only forgive her, but console her for having made
herself like to me; fate would have made her a murderess without any
fault of her own, just as it stamped me as unclean while I was still
at my mother's breast. Aye--I would comfort her; and yet I am not very
sensitive. Ye holy three of Thebes!--[The triad of Thebes: Anion, Muth
and Chunsu.]--how should I be? Great and small get out of my way that
I may not touch them, and every day when I have done what it is my
business to do they throw stones at me.
[The paraschites, with an Ethiopian knife, cuts the flesh of the
corpse as deeply as the law requires: but instantly takes to flight,
while the relatives of the deceased pursue him with stones, and
curses, as if they wished to throw the blame on him.]
"The fulfilment of duty--which brings a living to other men, which makes
their happiness, and at the same time earns them honor, brings me every
day fresh disgrace and painful sores. But I complain to no man, and
must forgive--forgive--forgive, till at last all that men do to me seems
quite natural and unavoidable, and I take it all like the scorching of
the sun in summer, and the dust that the west wind blows into my face.
It does not make me happy, but what can I do? I forgive all--"
The voice of the paraschites had softened, and Bent-Anat, who looked
down on him with emotion, interrupted him, exclaiming with deep feeling:
"And so you will forgive me?--poor man!"
The old man looked steadily, not at her, but at Pentaur, while he
replied: "Poor man! aye, truly, poor man. You have driven me out of the
world in which you live, and so I made a world for myself in this hut.
I do not belong to you, and if I forget it, you drive me out as an
intruder--nay as a wolf, who breaks into your fold; but you belong just
as little to me, only when you play the wolf and fall upon me, I must
bear it!"
"The princess came to your hut as a suppliant, and with the wish of
doing you some good," said Pentaur.
"May the avenging Gods reckon it to her, when they visit on her the
crimes of her father against me! Perhaps it may bring me to prison, but
it must come out. Seven sons were mine, and Rameses took them all from
me and sent them to death; the child of the youngest, this girl, the
light of my eyes, his daughter has brought to her death. Three of my
boys the king left to die of thirst by the Tenat,
[Literally the "cutting" which, under Seti I., the father of
Rameses, was the first Suez Canal; a representation of it is found
on the northern outer wall of the temple of Karnak. It followed
nearly the same direction as the Fresh-water canal of Lesseps, and
fertilized the land of Goshen.]
which is to join the Nile to the Red Sea, three were killed by the
Ethiopians, and the last, the star of my hopes, by this time is eaten by
the hyaenas of the north."
At these words the old woman, in whose lap the head of the girl rested,
broke out into a loud cry, in which she was joined by all the other
women.
The sufferer started up frightened, and opened her eyes.
"For whom are you wailing?" she asked feebly. "For your poor father,"
said the old woman.
The girl smiled like a child who detects some well-meant deceit, and
said:
"Was not my father here, with you? He is here, in Thebes, and looked at
me, and kissed me, and said that he is bringing home plunder, and that
a good time is coming for you. The gold ring that he gave me I was
fastening into my dress, when the chariot passed over me. I was just
pulling the knots, when all grew black before my eyes, and I saw and
heard nothing more. Undo it, grandmother, the ring is for you; I meant
to bring it to you. You must buy a beast for sacrifice with it, and wine
for grandfather, and eye salve
[The Egyptian mestem, that is stibium or antimony, which was
introduced into Egypt by the Asiatics at a very early period and
universally used.]
for yourself, and sticks of mastic,
[At the present day the Egyptian women are fond of chewing them, on
account of their pleasant taste. The ancient Egyptians used various
pills. Receipts for such things are found in the Ebers Papyrus.]
which you have so long lead to do without."
The paraschites seemed to drink these words from the mouth of his
grandchild. Again he lifted his hand in prayer, again Pentaur observed
that his glance met that of his wife, and a large, warm tear fell from
his old eyes on to his callous hand. Then he sank down, for he thought
the sick child was deluded by a dream. But there were the knots in her
dress.
With a trembling hand he untied them, and a gold ring rolled out on the
floor.
Bent-Anat picked it up, and gave it to the paraschites. "I came here in
a lucky hour," she said, "for you have recovered your son and your child
will live."
"She will live," repeated the surgeon, who had remained a silent witness
of all that had occurred.
"She will stay with us," murmured the old man, and then said, as he
approached the princess on his knees, and looked up at her beseechingly
with tearful eyes:
"Pardon me as I pardon thee; and if a pious wish may not turn to a curse
from the lips of the unclean, let me bless thee."
"I thank you," said Bent-Anat, towards whom the old man raised his hand
in blessing.
Then she turned to Nebsecht, and ordered him to take anxious care of
the sick girl; she bent over her, kissed her forehead, laid her gold
bracelet by her side, and signing to Pentaur left the hut with him.
CHAPTER VI.
During the occurrence we have described, the king's pioneer and the
young wife of Mena were obliged to wait for the princess.
The sun stood in the meridian, when Bent-Anat had gone into the hovel of
the paraschites.
The bare limestone rocks on each side of the valley and the sandy soil
between, shone with a vivid whiteness that hurt the eyes; not a hand's
breadth of shade was anywhere to be seen, and the fan-beaters of the
two, who were waiting there, had, by command of the princess, staid
behind with the chariot and litters.
For a time they stood silently near each other, then the fair Nefert
said, wearily closing her almond-shaped eyes:
"How long Bent-Anat stays in the but of the unclean! I am perishing
here. What shall we do?"
"Stay!" said Paaker, turning his back on the lady; and mounting a block
of stone by the side of the gorge, he cast a practised glance all round,
and returned to Nefert: "I have found a shady spot," he said, "out
there."
Mena's wife followed with her eyes the indication of his hand, and shook
her head. The gold ornaments on her head-dress rattled gently as she did
so, and a cold shiver passed over her slim body in spite of the midday
heat.
"Sechet is raging in the sky," said Paaker.
[A goddess with the head of a lioness or a cat, over which the Sun-
disk is usually found. She was the daughter of Ra, and in the form
of the Uraeus on her father's crown personified the murderous heat
of the star of day. She incites man to the hot and wild passion of
love, and as a cat or lioness tears burning wounds in the limbs of
the guilty in the nether world; drunkenness and pleasure are her
gifts She was also named Bast and Astarte after her sister-divinity
among the Phoenicians.]
"Let us avail ourselves of the shady spot, small though it be. At this
hour of the day many are struck with sickness."
"I know it," said Nefert, covering her neck with her hand. Then she went
towards two blocks of stone which leaned against each other, and between
them afforded the spot of shade, not many feet wide, which Paaker had
pointed out as a shelter from the sun. Paaker preceded her, and rolled
a flat piece of limestone, inlaid by nature with nodules of flint,
under the stone pavilion, crushed a few scorpions which had taken refuge
there, spread his head-cloth over the hard seat, and said, "Here you are
sheltered."
Nefert sank down on the stone and watched the Mohar, who slowly and
silently paced backwards and forward in front of her. This incessant to
and fro of her companion at last became unendurable to her sensitive and
irritated nerves, and suddenly raising her head from her hand, on which
she had rested it, she exclaimed
"Pray stand still."
The pioneer obeyed instantly, and looked, as he stood with his back to
her, towards the hovel of the paraschites.
After a short time Nefert said, "Say something to me!"
The Mohar turned his full face towards her, and she was frightened at
the wild fire that glowed in the glance with which he gazed at her.
Nefert's eyes fell, and Paaker, saying:
"I would rather remain silent," recommenced his walk, till Nefert called
to him again and said,
"I know you are angry with me; but I was but a child when I was
betrothed to you. I liked you too, and when in our games your mother
called me your little wife, I was really glad, and used to think how
fine it would be when I might call all your possessions mine, the house
you would have so splendidly restored for me after your father's death,
the noble gardens, the fine horses in their stables, and all the male
and female slaves!"
Paaker laughed, but the laugh sounded so forced and scornful that it cut
Nefert to the heart, and she went on, as if begging for indulgence:
"It was said that you were angry with us; and now you will take my words
as if I had cared only for your wealth; but I said, I liked you. Do you
no longer remember how I cried with you over your tales of the bad
boys in the school; and over your father's severity? Then my uncle
died;--then you went to Asia."
"And you," interrupted Paaker, hardly and drily, "you broke your
bethrothal vows, and became the wife of the charioteer Mena. I know it
all; of what use is talking?"
"Because it grieves me that you should be angry, and your good mother
avoid our house. If only you could know what it is when love seizes one,
and one can no longer even think alone, but only near, and with, and in
the very arms of another; when one's beating heart throbs in one's very
temples, and even in one's dreams one sees nothing--but one only."
"And do I not know it?" cried Paaker, placing himself close before her
with his arms crossed. "Do I not know it? and you it was who taught me
to know it. When I thought of you, not blood, but burning fire, coursed
in my veins, and now you have filled them with poison; and here in this
breast, in which your image dwelt, as lovely as that of Hathor in her
holy of holies, all is like that sea in Syria which is called the
Dead Sea, in which every thing that tries to live presently dies and
perishes."
Paaker's eyes rolled as he spoke, and his voice sounded hoarsely as he
went on.
"But Mena was near to the king--nearer than I, and your mother--"
"My mother!"--Nefert interrupted the angry Mohar. "My mother did not
choose my husband. I saw him driving the chariot, and to me he resembled
the Sun God, and he observed me, and looked at me, and his glance
pierced deep into my heart like a spear; and when, at the festival of
the king's birthday, he spoke to me, it was just as if Hathor had thrown
round me a web of sweet, sounding sunbeams. And it was the same with
Mena; he himself has told me so since I have been his wife. For your
sake my mother rejected his suit, but I grew pale and dull with longing
for him, and he lost his bright spirit, and was so melancholy that the
king remarked it, and asked what weighed on his heart--for Rameses loves
him as his own son. Then Mena confessed to the Pharaoh that it was love
that dimmed his eye and weakened his strong hand; and then the king
himself courted me for his faithful servant, and my mother gave way,
and we were made man and wife, and all the joys of the justified in the
fields of Aalu
[The fields of the blest, which were opened to glorified souls. In
the Book of the Dead it is shown that in them men linger, and sow
and reap by cool waters.]
are shallow and feeble by the side of the bliss which we two have
known--not like mortal men, but like the celestial gods."
Up to this point Nefert had fixed her large eyes on the sky, like a
glorified soul; but now her gaze fell, and she said softly--
"But the Cheta
[An Aramaean race, according to Schrader's excellent judgment. At
the time of our story the peoples of western Asia had allied
themselves to them.]
disturbed our happiness, for the king took Mena with him to the war.
Fifteen times did the moon, rise upon our happiness, and then--"
"And then the Gods heard my prayer, and accepted my offerings," said
Paaker, with a trembling voice, "and tore the robber of my joys from
you, and scorched your heart and his with desire. Do you think you can
tell me anything I do not know? Once again for fifteen days was Mena
yours, and now he has not returned again from the war which is raging
hotly in Asia."
"But he will return," cried the young wife.
"Or possibly not," laughed Paaker. "The Cheta, carry sharp weapons, and
there are many vultures in Lebanon, who perhaps at this hour are tearing
his flesh as he tore my heart."
Nefert rose at these words, her sensitive spirit bruised as with stones
thrown by a brutal hand, and attempted to leave her shady refuge to
follow the princess into the house of the parascllites; but her feet
refused to bear her, and she sank back trembling on her stone seat.
She tried to find words, but her tongue was powerless. Her powers
of resistance forsook her in her unutterable and soul-felt
distress--heart-wrung, forsaken and provoked.
A variety of painful sensations raised a hot vehement storm in
her bosom, which checked her breath, and at last found relief in a
passionate and convulsive weeping that shook her whole body. She saw
nothing more, she heard nothing more, she only shed tears and felt
herself miserable.
Paaker stood over her in silence.
There are trees in the tropics, on which white blossoms hang close by
the withered fruit, there are days when the pale moon shows itself near
the clear bright sun;--and it is given to the soul of man to feel love
and hatred, both at the same time, and to direct both to the same end.
Nefert's tears fell as dew, her sobs as manna on the soul of Paaker,
which hungered and thirsted for revenge. Her pain was joy to him, and
yet the sight of her beauty filled him with passion, his gaze lingered
spell-bound on her graceful form; he would have given all the bliss of
heaven once, only once, to hold her in his arms--once, only once, to
hear a word of love from her lips.
After some minutes Nefert's tears grew less violent. With a weary,
almost indifferent gaze she looked at the Mohar, still standing before
her, and said in a soft tone of entreaty:
'My tongue is parched, fetch me a little water."
"The princess may come out at any moment," replied Paaker.
"But I am fainting," said Nefert, and began again to cry gently.
Paaker shrugged his shoulders, and went farther into the valley, which
he knew as well as his father's house; for in it was the tomb of his
mother's ancestors, in which, as a boy, he had put up prayers at every
full and new moon, and laid gifts on the altar.
The hut of the paraschites was prohibited to him, but he knew that
scarcely a hundred paces from the spot where Nefert was sitting, lived
an old woman of evil repute, in whose hole in the rock he could not fail
to find a drink of water.
He hastened forward, half intoxicated with had seen and felt within the
last few minutes.
The door, which at night closed the cave against the intrusions of the
plunder-seeking jackals, was wide open, and the old woman sat outside
under a ragged piece of brown sail-cloth, fastened at one end to the
rock and at the other to two posts of rough wood. She was sorting a heap
of dark and light-colored roots, which lay in her lap. Near her was a
wheel, which turned in a high wooden fork. A wryneck made fast to it
by a little chain, and by springing from spoke to spoke kept it in
continual motion.--[From Theocritus' idyl: The Sorceress.]--A large
black cat crouched beside her, and smelt at some ravens' and owls'
heads, from which the eyes had not long since been extracted.
Two sparrow-hawks sat huddled up over the door of the cave, out of which
came the sharp odor of burning juniper-berries; this was intended
to render the various emanations rising from the different strange
substances, which were collected and preserved there, innocuous.
As Paaker approached the cavern the old woman called out to some one
within:
"Is the wax cooking?"
An unintelligible murmur was heard in answer.
Then throw in the ape's eyes,
[The sentences and mediums employed by the witches, according to
papyrus-rolls which remain. I have availed myself of the Magic
papyrus of Harris, and of two in the Berlin collection, one of which
is in Greek. ]
and the ibis feathers, and the scraps of linen with the black signs on
them. Stir it all a little; now put out the fire,
"Take the jug and fetch some water--make haste, here comes a stranger."
A sooty-black negro woman, with a piece of torn colorless stuff hanging
round her hips, set a large clay-jar on her grey woolly matted hair, and
without looking at him, went past Paaker, who was now close to the cave.
The old woman, a tall figure bent with years, with a sharply-cut and
wrinkled face, that might once have been handsome, made her preparations
for receiving the visitor by tying a gaudy kerchief over her head,
fastening her blue cotton garment round her throat, and flinging a fibre
mat over the birds' heads.
Paaker called out to her, but she feigned to be deaf and not to hear his
voice. Only when he stood quite close to her, did she raise her shrewd,
twinkling eyes, and cry out:
"A lucky day! a white day that brings a noble guest and high honor."
"Get up," commanded Paaker, not giving her any greeting, but throwing a
silver ring among the roots that lay in her lap,
[The Egyptians had no coins before Alexander and the Ptolemies, but
used metals for exchange, usually in the form of rings.]
"and give me in exchange for good money some water in a clean vessel."
"Fine pure silver," said the old woman, while she held the ring, which
she had quickly picked out from the roots, close to her eyes; "it is too
much for mere water, and too little for my good liquors."
"Don't chatter, hussy, but make haste," cried Paaker, taking another
ring from his money-bag and throwing it into her lap.
"Thou hast an open hand," said the old woman, speaking in the dialect
of the upper classes; "many doors must be open to thee, for money is
a pass-key that turns any lock. Would'st thou have water for thy good
money? Shall it protect thee against noxious beasts?--shall it help thee
to reach down a star? Shall it guide thee to secret paths?--It is thy
duty to lead the way. Shall it make heat cold, or cold warm? Shall
it give thee the power of reading hearts, or shall it beget beautiful
dreams? Wilt thou drink of the water of knowledge and see whether thy
friend or thine enemy--ha! if thine enemy shall die? Would'st thou a
drink to strengthen thy memory? Shall the water make thee invisible? or
remove the 6th toe from thy left foot?"
"You know me?" asked Paaker.
"How should I?" said the old woman, "but my eyes are sharp, and I can
prepare good waters for great and small."
"Mere babble!" exclaimed Paaker, impatiently clutching at the whip in
his girdle; "make haste, for the lady for whom--"
"Dost thou want the water for a lady?" interrupted the old woman. "Who
would have thought it?--old men certainly ask for my philters much
oftener than young ones--but I can serve thee."
With these words the old woman went into the cave, and soon returned
with a thin cylindrical flask of alabaster in her hand.
"This is the drink," she said, giving the phial to Paaker. "Pour half
into water, and offer it to the lady. If it does not succeed at first,
it is certain the second time. A child may drink the water and it will
not hurt him, or if an old man takes it, it makes him gay. Ah, I know
the taste of it!" and she moistened her lips with the white fluid. "It
can hurt no one, but I will take no more of it, or old Hekt will be
tormented with love and longing for thee; and that would ill please the
rich young lord, ha! ha! If the drink is in vain I am paid enough, if
it takes effect thou shalt bring me three more gold rings; and thou wilt
return, I know it well."
Paaker had listened motionless to the old woman, and siezed the flask
eagerly, as if bidding defiance to some adversary; he put it in his
money bag, threw a few more rings at the feet of the witch, and once
more hastily demanded a bowl of Nile-water.
"Is my lord in such a hurry?" muttered the old woman, once more going
into the cave. "He asks if I know him? him certainly I do? but
the darling? who can it be hereabouts? perhaps little Uarda at the
paraschites yonder. She is pretty enough; but she is lying on a mat, run
over and dying. We must see what my lord means. He would have pleased
me well enough, if I were young; but he will reach the goal, for he is
resolute and spares no one."
While she muttered these and similar words, she filled a graceful cup of
glazed earthenware with filtered Nile-water, which she poured out of a
large porous clay jar, and laid a laurel leaf, on which was scratched
two hearts linked together by seven strokes, on the surface of the
limpid fluid. Then she stepped out into the air again.
As Paaker took the vessel from her looked at the laurel leaf, she said:
"This indeed binds hearts; three is the husband, four is the wife,
seven is the chachach, charcharachacha."--[This jargon is fund in a
magic-papyrus at Berlin.]
The old woman sang this spell not without skill; but the Mohar appeared
not to listen to her jargon. He descended carefully into the valley, and
directed his steps to the resting place of the wife of Mena.
By the side of a rock, which hill him from Nefert, he paused, set the
cup on a flat block of stone, and drew the flask with the philter out of
his girdle.
His fingers trembled, but a thousand voices seemed to surge up and cry:
"Take it!--do it!--put in the drink!--now or never." He felt like a
solitary traveller, who finds on his road the last will of a relation
whose possessions he had hoped for, but which disinherits him. Shall he
surrender it to the judge, or shall he destroy it.
Paaker was not merely outwardly devout; hitherto he had in everything
intended to act according to the prescriptions of the religion of his
fathers. Adultery was a heavy sin; but had not he an older right to
Nefert than the king's charioteer?
He who followed the black arts of magic, should, according to the law,
be punished by death, and the old woman had a bad name for her evil
arts; but he had not sought her for the sake of the philter. Was it not
possible that the Manes of his forefathers, that the Gods themselves,
moved by his prayers and offerings, had put him in possession by an
accident--which was almost a miracle--of the magic potion efficacy he
never for an instant doubted?
Paaker's associates held him to be a man of quick decision, and, in
fact, in difficult cases he could act with unusual rapidity, but what
guided him in these cases, was not the swift-winged judgment of a
prepared and well-schooled brain, but usually only resulted from the
outcome of a play of question and answer.
Amulets of the most various kinds hung round his neck, and from his
girdle, all consecrated by priests, and of special sanctity or the
highest efficacy.
There was the lapis lazuli eye, which hung to his girdle by a gold
chain; When he threw it on the ground, so as to lie on the earth, if its
engraved side turned to heaven, and its smooth side lay on the ground,
he said "yes;" in the other case, on the contrary, "no." In his purse
lay always a statuette of the god Apheru, who opened roads; this he
threw down at cross-roads, and followed the direction which the pointed
snout of the image indicated. He frequently called into council the
seal-ring of his deceased father, an old family possession, which the
chief priests of Abydos had laid upon the holiest of the fourteen graves
of Osiris, and endowed with miraculous power. It consisted of a gold
ring with a broad signet, on which could be read the name of Thotmes
III., who had long since been deified, and from whom Paaker's ancestors
had derived it. If it were desirable to consult the ring, the Mohar
touched with the point of his bronze dagger the engraved sign of the
name, below which were represented three objects sacred to the Gods, and
three that were, on the contrary, profane. If he hit one of the former,
he concluded that his father--who was gone to Osiris--concurred in his
design; in the contrary case he was careful to postpone it. Often he
pressed the ring to his heart, and awaited the first living creature
that he might meet, regarding it as a messenger from his father;--if it
came to him from the right hand as an encouragement, if from the left as
a warning.
By degrees he had reduced these questionings to a system. All that he
found in nature he referred to himself and the current of his life. It
was at once touching, and pitiful, to see how closely he lived with the
Manes of his dead. His lively, but not exalted fancy, wherever he gave
it play, presented to the eye of his soul the image of his father and of
an elder brother who had died early, always in the same spot, and almost
tangibly distinct.
But he never conjured up the remembrance of the beloved dead in order
to think of them in silent melancholy--that sweet blossom of the thorny
wreath of sorrow; only for selfish ends. The appeal to the Manes of
his father he had found especially efficacious in certain desires and
difficulties; calling on the Manes of his brother was potent in certain
others; and so he turned from one to the other with the precision of a
carpenter, who rarely doubts whether he should give the preference to a
hatchet or a saw.
These doings he held to be well pleasing to the Gods, and as he was
convinced that the spirits of his dead had, after their justification,
passed into Osiris that is to say, as atoms forming part of the
great world-soul, at this time had a share in the direction of the
universe--he sacrificed to them not only in the family catacomb, but
also in the temples of the Necropolis dedicated to the worship of
ancestors, and with special preference in the House of Seti.
He accepted advice, nay even blame, from Ameni and the other priests
under his direction; and so lived full of a virtuous pride in being one
of the most zealous devotees in the land, and one of the most pleasing
to the Gods, a belief on which his pastors never threw any doubt.
Attended and guided at every step by supernatural powers, he wanted no
friend and no confidant. In the fleld, as in Thebes, he stood apart, and
passed among his comrades for a reserved man, rough and proud, but with
a strong will.
He had the power of calling up the image of his lost love with as much
vividness as the forms of the dead, and indulged in this magic, not only
through a hundred still nights, but in long rides and drives through
silent wastes.
Such visions were commonly followed by a vehement and boiling overflow
of his hatred against the charioteer, and a whole series of fervent
prayers for his destruction.
When Paaker set the cup of water for Nefert on the flat stone and felt
for the philter, his soul was so full of desire that there was no room
for hatred; still he could not altogether exclude the idea that he would
commit a great crime by making use of a magic drink. Before pouring the
fateful drops into the water, he would consult the oracle of the ring.
The dagger touched none of the holy symbols of the inscription on the
signet, and in other circumstances he would, without going any farther,
have given up his project.
But this time he unwillingly returned it to its sheath, pressed the
gold ring to his heart, muttered the name of his brother in Osiris, and
awaited the first living creature that might come towards him.
He had not long to wait, from the mountain slope opposite to him rose,
with heavy, slow wing-strokes, two light-colored vultures.
In anxious suspense he followed their flight, as they rose, higher
and higher. For a moment they poised motionless, borne up by the air,
circled round each other, then wheeled to the left and vanished behind
the mountains, denying him the fulfilment of his desire.
He hastily grasped the phial to fling it from him, but the surging
passion in his veins had deprived him of his self-control. Nefert's
image stood before him as if beckoning him; a mysterious power clenched
his fingers close and yet closer round the phial, and with the same
defiance which he showed to his associates, he poured half of the
philter into the cup and approached his victim.
Nefert had meanwhile left her shady retreat and come towards him.
She silently accepted the water he offered her, and drank it with
delight, to the very dregs.
"'Thank you," she said, when she had recovered breath after her eager
draught.
"That has done me good! How fresh and acid the water tastes; but your
hand shakes, and you are heated by your quick run for me--poor man."
With these words she looked at him with a peculiar expressive glance of
her large eyes, and gave him her right hand, which he pressed wildly to
his lips.
"That will do," she said smiling; "here comes the princess with a
priest, out of the hovel of the unclean. With what frightful words you
terrified me just now. It is true I gave you just cause to be angry with
me; but now you are kind again--do you hear?--and will bring your
mother again to see mine. Not a word. I shall see, whether cousin Paaker
refuses me obedience."
She threatened him playfully with her finger, and then growing grave she
added, with a look that pierced Paaker's heart with pain, and yet with
ecstasy, "Let us leave off quarrelling. It is so much better when people
are kind to each other."
After these words she walked towards the house of the paraschites, while
Paaker pressed his hands to his breast, and murmured:
"The drink is working, and she will be mine. I thank ye--ye Immortals!"
But this thanksgiving, which hitherto he had never failed to utter when
any good fortune had befallen him, to-day died on his lips. Close before
him he saw the goal of his desires; there, under his eyes, lay the magic
spring longed for for years. A few steps farther, and he might slake at
its copious stream his thirst both for love and for revenge.
While he followed the wife of Mena, and replaced the phial carefully in
his girdle, so as to lose no drop of the precious fluid which, according
to the prescription of the old woman, he needed to use again, warning
voices spoke in his breast, to which he usually listened as to a
fatherly admonition; but at this moment he mocked at them, and even gave
outward expression to the mood that ruled him--for he flung up his right
hand like a drunken man, who turns away from the preacher of morality on
his way to the wine-cask; and yet passion held him so closely ensnared,
that the thought that he should live through the swift moments which
would change him from an honest man into a criminal, hardly dawned,
darkly on his soul. He had hitherto dared to indulge his desire for
love and revenge in thought only, and had left it to the Gods to act
for themselves; now he had taken his cause out of the hand of the
Celestials, and gone into action without them, and in spite of them.
The sorceress Hekt passed him; she wanted to see the woman for whom she
had given him the philter. He perceived her and shuddered, but soon the
old woman vanished among the rocks muttering.
"Look at the fellow with six toes. He makes himself comfortable with the heritage of Assa." |
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