THOU art loved of the gods," said the old gaoler. "If I, a poor slave, had done the hundredth part of thy crimes, I would have seen myself tied on a wooden horse, hung by the feet, torn by blows, flayed by pincers. They would have poured vinegar in my nostrils, they would have laden me with bricks until I stifled, and, if I were dead of pain, my body would already feed the jackals of the burned plains. But for thee who hast stolen everything, killed everything, profaned everything, they reserve the gentle hemlock and they lend thee a good room in the meantime. Zeus blast me if I know why! Thou must know someone at the palace." "Give me some figs," said Chrysis. "My mouth is dry." The old slave brought her, in a green basket, a dozen figs at the point of perfect ripeness. Chrysis remained alone. She sat down and rose again, she made a circuit of her room, she struck the walls with the palm of her hand without thinking of what she was doing. She unrolled her hair to refresh it, then knotted it up almost immediately. They had made her put on a long vestment of white wool. The stuff was warm. Chrysis was quite bathed in perspiration. And there returned to her memory fragments of sacred verses
"It is written:
"It is written: "It is written:THE SUPREME NIGHT
"I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth,
The love of thine espousals,
When thou wentest after me in the wilderness,
In a land that was not sown.
For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bonds.
And thou saidst, I will not transgress;
When upon every high hill and under every green tree,
Thou wanderest, playing the harlot. 1"And she shall follow after her lovers,
And she shall seek them.
For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil,
And multiplied her silver and gold.
Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof,
And my wine in the season thereof,
And will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. 2"She had played the harlot in the land of Egypt,
For she doted upon their paramours,
Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses,
And whose issue is like the issue of horses.
Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth,
In bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth. 4
"Oh!" she cried. "It is I! It is I! And it is written again:
"But my chastisement is written also:
"And again:
"I will not punish thy daughters. 8
"And elsewhere does not the scripture counsel:
She shuddered and repeated in a low voice:
"Truly, the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. 10
"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was." 11
And as she clutched her head in her hands, to repress her thought, she felt suddenly, without having foreseen it, the mortuary form of her skull through the living skin: the hollow temples, the enormous orbits, the shortened nose under the cartilage and the projecting jaws.
Horror! Then it was that she was to become! With a terrifying lucidity she had the vision of her corpse and she drew her hands over her body to go to the depths of this idea which, although so simple, had but just come to her—that she bore her skeleton in her, that it was not a result of death, a metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing which one carries about always, an inseparable specter of the human form—and that the scaffolding of life is already the symbol of the tomb.
A furious desire to live, to see all again, to recommence everything, seized her suddenly. It was a revolt in the face of death; the impossibility of admitting that she would not see the evening of this day now being born; the impossibility of understanding how this beauty, this body, this active thought, this luxurious life of her flesh were, in full ardor, to cease their being and fall into decay.
The door opened quietly.
Demetrios entered.
225:1 Jeremiah, 2: 2, 20.
225:2 Hosea, 2: 7, 8, 9.
226:3 Jeremiah, 2: 23, 24.
226:4 Ezekiel, 23: 22, 25.
226:5 Ezekiel, 23: 20, 21.
226:6 Nahum, 3: 7.
226:7 Jeremiah, 3: 1.
227:8 Hosea, 4: 14.
227:9 Ecclesiastes, 9: 7-10.
227:10 Ecclesiastes, 11: 7.
227:11 Ecclesiastes, 11: 9; 12 5-7.
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