The Sisters of Serapis (Historical Novel). Georg Ebers
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them to the king’s beast-garden at Alexandria, or the taverns at Hanopus, but don’t bring them here, for we are neither pheasants, nor flute-playing women, nor miraculous beasts, who take a pleasure in being stared at. You, gentlemen, ought to choose a better guide than this chatter-mag that keeps up its perpetual rattle when once you set it going. As to yourselves I will tell you one thing: Inquisitive eyes are intrusive company, and every prudent house holder guards himself against them by keeping his door shut.”
Irene shrank back and flattened herself against the pilaster which concealed her, for the shutter closed again with a slam, the recluse pulling it to with a rope attached to its outer edge, and he was hidden from the gaze of the strangers; but only for an instant, for the rusty hinges on which the shutter was hanging were not strong enough to bear such violent treatment, and slowly giving way it was about to fall. The blustering hermit stretched out an arm to support it and save it; but it was heavy, and his efforts would not have succeeded had not the young man in Roman dress given his assistance and lifted up the shutter with his hand and shoulder, without any effort, as if it were made of willow laths instead of strong planks.
“A little higher still,” shouted the recluse to his assistant. “Let us set the thing on its edge! so, push away, a little more. There, I have propped up the wretched thing and there it may lie. If the bats pay me a visit to-night I will think of you and give them your best wishes.”
“You may save yourself that trouble,” replied the young man with cool dignity. “I will send you a carpenter who shall refix the shutter, and we offer you our apologies for having been the occasion of the mischief that has happened.”
The old man did not interrupt the speaker, but, when he had stared at him from head to foot, he said: “You are strong and you speak fairly, and I might like you well enough if you were in other company. I don’t want your carpenter; only send me down a hammer, a wedge, and a few strong nails. Now, you can do nothing more for me, so pack off!”
“We are going at once,” said the more handsomely dressed visitor in a thin and effeminate voice. “What can a man do when the boys pelt him with dirt from a safe hiding-place, but take himself off.”
“Be off, be off,” said the person thus described, with a laugh. “As far off as Samothrace if you like, fat Eulaeus; you can scarcely have forgotten the way there since you advised the king to escape thither with all his treasure. But if you cannot trust yourself to find it alone, I recommend you your interpreter and guide there to show you the road.”
The Eunuch Eulaeus, the favorite councillor of King Ptolemy—called Philometor (the lover of his mother)—turned pale at these words, cast a sinister glance at the old man and beckoned to the young Roman; he however was not inclined to follow, for the scolding old oddity had taken his fancy—perhaps because he was conscious that the old man, who generally showed no reserve in his dislikes, had a liking for him. Besides, he found nothing to object to in his opinion of his companions, so he turned to Eulaeus and said courteously:
“Accept my best thanks for your company so far, and do not let me detain you any longer from your more important occupations on my account.”
Eulaeus bowed and replied, “I know what my duty is. The king entrusted me with your safe conduct; permit me therefore to wait for you under the acacias yonder.”
When Eulaeus and the guide had reached the green grove, Irene hoped to find an opportunity to prefer her petition, but the Roman had stopped in front of the old man’s cell, and had begun a conversation with him which she could not venture to interrupt. She set down the platter with the bread and dates that had been entrusted to her on a projecting stone by her side with a little sigh, crossed her arms and feet as she leaned against the wall, and pricked up her ears to hear their talk.
“I am not a Greek,” said the youth, “and you are quite mistaken in thinking that I came to Egypt and to see you out of mere curiosity.”
“But those who come only to pray in the temple,” interrupted the other, “do not—as it seems to me—choose an Eulaeus for a companion, or any such couple as those now waiting for you under the acacias, and invoking anything rather than blessings on your head; at any rate, for my own part, even if I were a thief I would not go stealing in their company. What then brought you to Serapis?”
“It is my turn now to accuse you of curiosity!”
“By all means,” cried the old man, “I am an honest dealer and quite willing to take back the coin I am ready to pay away. Have you come to have a dream interpreted, or to sleep in the temple yonder and have a face revealed to you?”
“Do I look so sleepy,” said the Roman, “as to want to go to bed again now, only an hour after sunrise?”
“It may be,” said the recluse, “that you have not yet fairly come to the end of yesterday, and that at the fag-end of some revelry it occurred to you that you might visit us and sleep away your headache at Serapis.”
“A good deal of what goes on outside these walls seems to come to your ears,” retorted the Roman, “and if I were to meet you in the street I should take you for a ship’s captain or a master-builder who had to manage a number of unruly workmen. According to what I heard of you and those like you in Athens and elsewhere, I expected to find you something quite different.”
“What did you expect?” said Serapion laughing. “I ask you notwithstanding the risk of being again considered curious.”
“And I am very willing to answer,” retorted the other, “but if I were to tell you the whole truth I should run into imminent danger of being sent off as ignominiously as my unfortunate guide there.”
“Speak on,” said the old man, “I keep different garments for different men, and the worst are not for those who treat me to that rare dish—a little truth. But before you serve me up so bitter a meal tell me, what is your name?”
“Shall I call the guide?” said the Roman with an ironical laugh. “He can describe me completely, and give you the whole history of my family. But, joking apart, my name is Publius.”
“The name of at least one out of every three of your countrymen.”
“I am of the Cornelia gens and of the family of the Scipios,” continued the youth in a low voice, as though he would rather avoid boasting of his illustrious name.
“Indeed, a noble gentleman, a very grand gentleman!” said the recluse, bowing deeply out of his window. “But I knew that beforehand, for at your age and with such slender ankles to his long legs only a nobleman could walk as you walk. Then Publius Cornelius—”
“Nay, call me Scipio, or rather by my first name only, Publius,” the youth begged him. “You are called Serapion, and I will tell you what you wish to know. When I was told that in this temple there were people who had themselves locked into their little chambers never to quit them, taking thought about their dreams and leading a meditative life, I thought they must be simpletons or fools or both at once.”
“Just so, just so,” interrupted Serapion. “But there is a fourth alternative you did not think of. Suppose now among these men there should be some shut up against their will, and what if I were one of those prisoners? I have asked you a great many questions and you have not hesitated to answer, and you may know how I got into this miserable cage and why I stay in it. I am the son of a good family, for my father was overseer of the granaries of this temple and was of Macedonian origin, but my mother was an Egyptian. I was born in an evil hour, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of Paophi, a day which it is said in the sacred books that it is an evil day and that the child that is born in it must be kept shut up or else it will die of a snake-bite. In consequence of this luckless prediction many of those born on the same day as myself were, like me, shut up at an early age in this cage. My father would very willingly have left me at liberty, but my uncle, a caster of horoscopes in the temple of Ptah, who was all in all in my mother’s estimation, and his friends with him, found many other evil signs about my body, read misfortune for me in the stars, declared that the Hathors had destined me to nothing but evil, and set upon her so persistently that at last I was