“I don’t believe in the gods, Thrasyllus, not even in Bacchus,” said Catullus. “You know I don’t. Since the gods ordained that I should be born as poor as a rat and my nephew surrounded by every earthly treasure, since ... since I was a babe at the breast, I have not believed in the gods! And least of all in Venus ... though I could almost begin to believe in her when Cora sings to her as she has been doing.”
The Greek slave raised her head from the harp on which she was leaning:
“Did I sing well?” she asked. “Thrasyllus, did I sing well?”
“Very well indeed, Cora,” said Thrasyllus.
“Did he say anything about my song?”
“No,” said Thrasyllus, “he did not.”
“Has he never said anything about my singing?”
“No, Cora; he is suffering too much to take notice of it.”
“Poor Cora!” said Catullus. “She has been singing hymns to Aphrodite for three months now, ever since Ilia went away and since you, Thrasyllus, bought Cora for her beautiful voice, to divert Lucius a little; and I believe that Lucius has not even observed that Cora can sing ... much less realized that she exists!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Greek slave, leaning her head against the harp again.
Catullus yawned and puffed out his stomach:
“I shall stay and sleep here in my cushions,” he said. “I shall not go to my pavilion. I shall stay and sleep here, under the stars. To-morrow we shall be at Alexandria! Alexandria! The city with the most exquisite cooking, so they say! I am tired of Rome and Baiæ; I am really tired of roast peacock and oysters. Nothing but Rome and roast peacock; nothing but Baiæ and oysters: I shall end by turning into a peacock or an oyster! Change of diet is the secret of good health. I was losing my gaiety and had not a joke left in me to charm an occasional laugh out of Lucius. He did not even listen to me, Cora, when I was witty ... and you expect him to listen to your song! He listens to nothing and nobody since Ilia is gone.”
“Was she so very beautiful?” asked Cora.
“She was very beautiful,” said Thrasyllus, with grave appreciation.
“She was beautiful,” Catullus echoed, in airy praise, “but she was too heavy and too big. Her ankles were not slender. Her wrists were as thick as a man’s.”
“She was very beautiful,” Thrasyllus repeated. “She was as beautiful as a goddess.”
“That is just where I never agreed,” cried Catullus, vehemently, “either with you or with my nephew. You both said that she was like a goddess....”
“She was like the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles,” Thrasyllus persisted.
“I could never see it!” Catullus persisted, in his turn. “I could never see it. There may have been something of Praxiteles’ Venus in the lines of her body ... something, perhaps, though much coarser; but her face certainly lacked the charm, the smile of that divine statue. Now, though I do not believe in the gods, though I do not believe in Venus, I do believe in my own correct and sometimes sober opinion! I was not in love with Ilia as Thrasyllus and Lucius were! And really, between ourselves, I can understand her bolting, though she did reign as queen in the house. She was far too much admired for her divine ankles and wrists and for her big feet and hands! Did she not sometimes have to turn and turn for a hour, while Lucius lay looking at her, to turn on a revolving pedestal, which two slaves under the floor moved round and round and round, and did not Lucius grow angry if she stirred? ‘I can’t endure this, uncle!’ she would often declare to me; and I can well understand it. To play at being a living statue strikes me as wearisome; and I also should say, ‘Thank you for nothing,’ if my nephew were to take it into his head, because nature has at least blessed me with a fairly perfect form, to make me turn and turn on a revolving pedestal as Cupid with his bow and arrow or as Ganymede with a drinking-cup in his hand! What do you say, dreamy Cora?”
“I don’t know,” said Cora. “No one will ask me to pose as the Cnidian Venus. I have nothing but my voice....”
“And I nothing but a terrible sleepy feeling!” yawned Catullus. “I shall stay and sleep here, under the stars....”
He stretched himself and heaved his body over; two slaves approached and covered him carefully with silken sheets and woollen blankets and pushed pillows under his head, his loins and his feet. He accepted their attentions like a child. And, when he had turned over, he at once fell asleep like a child, with not a wrinkle of care in his bald forehead, which shone like ivory in the soft light of the stars.
Cora had risen to her feet:
“Good-night, Thrasyllus,” she said.
“Good-night, Cora,” said the tutor, paternally.
The Greek slave, her harp tucked into her arm, moved away slowly. She lifted the hanging of a cabin which she shared above-deck with some other slaves. These were sleeping in six or seven narrow beds close together. A rose-coloured lantern shed a vague glimmer, here over a hip rounded in sleep, there over a face with shut eyes, framed in black tresses and white, raised arms.
The slave undressed in silence. Her muslin peplos woven with gold flowers fell from her. She stood naked. She looked at her wrists, which were slim, like a patrician’s. She stooped and looked at her ankles. She arched the instep of her narrow, shapely foot. And she passed her slender fingers over her hips, which were like a virgin’s, and over her waist, round which she could almost make her two hands meet. Then she took up a metal hand-mirror and looked at herself in the light of the rose-coloured lantern. She half-closed her big eyes, which were like gigantic sapphires in mother-o’-pearl shells, very soft, very bright, very big, with the streak of antimony stretching to the temples. Then she smiled.
But next she gave a very deep sigh. She lay down on her little narrow bed between two other beds. A slave had moved slightly in her sleep, muttering. Cora drew a sheet over herself; and her great eyes stared, without seeing, into the rose-coloured lantern.
In the windless night the ship glided over the sea, which was calm as a lake; and there was nothing but the beating of the oars and the lulling melodious phrase of the rowers....
Sometimes ... a sing-song order from the steersman, up in his look-out turret....
And then a creaking of heavy ropes over great pulleys....
Chapter III
Next morning, the soft, even light of a tea-rose dawn spread over a magic spectacle, beautiful as a marvellous dream, flimsy as a vision, compelling as an enchantment. The ship had glided past the monumental, marble, nine-storeyed Pharos into the Great Harbour; and Alexandria lay before the eyes of the delighted travellers, Lucius, Thrasyllus, Catullus, shining pink through diaphanous, mother-o’-pearl gleams and a slowly-lifting silvery mist, like a city of magic and fairy-tale. A long, long row of white palaces, with irregular gables, loomed through the mist and the gleam.
On the left, on the rocks of Lochias, the pillars of the former royal palace shone magical and fairylike in the silvery mist. Thrasyllus knew that, since Egypt had become a Roman province, the legate resided there, surrounded with royal honours. Under the palace the little square basin of the palace-harbour showed, gay with the purple sails of the legate’s triremes; with the little island of Antirrhodos, behind which pillars and yet more pillars outlined more and more clearly the white theatre; with the bight of the Posidium, where stood the Temple of Poseidon and the great Emporium, the great market of the merchant shippers, while a pier ran into the harbour on which, dainty as a marble ornament, stood the villa