Читать книгу The Pharaoh and the Priest - Bolesław Prus - Страница 23

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THUS seemed those moments of approach between Sarah and her princely lover, which were rare enough withal. For after he had given those commands to Patrokles and the steward, Rameses spent the greater part of the day away from the villa, generally in a boat or sailing on the Nile. He caught with a net fish which swam in thousands in the blessed river, or he went into swamps, and hidden among lofty lotus stems brought down with arrows wild birds, which circling in noisy flocks were as numerous as flies are. But even at those times ambitious thoughts did not desert him; so he turned the hunting into a kind of predicting or soothsaying. More than once, when he saw a flock of yellow geese upon the water, he drew his bow and said, “If I hit I shall be like Rameses the Great.”

The arrow made a low whistle, and the stricken bird, fluttering its wings, gave out cries so painful that there was a movement in the whole swampy region. Clouds of geese, ducks, and storks rose in the air, and making a great circle above their dying comrade, dropped down to other places.

When there was silence again, the prince pushed his boat farther, with caution guiding himself by the movement of reeds or the broken calls of birds, and when in the green growth he saw a spot of clear water and a new flock, he drew his bow again, and said,—

“If I hit I shall be pharaoh; if I miss—”

This time the arrow struck the water, and bounding a number of times along its surface, disappeared among lotuses. The excited prince sent more and more arrows, killing birds or only frightening flocks of them. From the villa they knew where he was by the noisy cloud of birds which rose from time to time and circled above the boat in which he was sailing.

When toward evening he returned to the villa wearied, Sarah waited on the threshold with a bronze basin, a pitcher of light wine, and a garland of roses. The prince smiled at her, stroked her face, but looking into her eyes, which were full of tenderness, he thought,—

“Would she beat Egyptian people, like her relatives who look frightened all the time? Oh, my mother is right not to trust Jews, though Sarah may be different from others.”

Once, returning unexpectedly, he saw in the space before the villa a crowd of naked children playing joyously. All were yellow, and at sight of him they vanished with cries like wild geese from a swampy meadow. Before he reached the terrace they were gone, not a trace was left.

“Who are those little things,” asked he, “who rushed away from me?”

“Those are children of my servants,” replied Sarah.

“Of Jews?”

“Of my brothers.”

“Gods, what a numerous people!” laughed Rameses. “And who is that again?” added he, pointing to a man who looked timidly from beyond the wall.

“That is Aod, son of Barak, my relative. He wants to serve thee, lord. May I take him?”

The prince shrugged his shoulders.

“This is thy place,” answered he; “take those who please thee. But if these people increase so, they will soon master Memphis.”

“Thou canst not endure my brethren,” whispered Sarah, as she dropped to his feet frightened.

The prince looked at her with astonishment.

“I do not even think of them,” answered he, proudly.

These little happenings, which fell on Sarah’s soul like drops of fire, did not change Rameses with regard to her. He was kind and as fond as he had been, though his eyes turned more frequently to the other bank of the river, and rested on the mighty pylons of his father’s palace.

Soon he discovered that others were yearning because he was in a banishment of his own choosing. A certain day from the opposite shore a stately royal barge pushed out into the river; it crossed the Nile from Memphis, and then circled near the prince’s villa, so near that Rameses could recognize the persons in it. In fact he recognized beneath the purple baldachin his mother among court ladies, and opposite, on a low stool, the vice-pharaoh, Herhor. They did not look toward the villa, it is true, but the prince divined that they saw him.

“Ha! ha!” thought he. “My worthy mother and his worthiness the minister would be glad to entice me hence before his holiness returns to Memphis.”

The month Tobi (the end of October and beginning of November) came. The Nile had fallen a distance equalling the stature of a man, and one-half in addition, uncovering daily new strips of black clammy earth. Wherever the water withdrew a narrow plough appeared drawn by two oxen. Behind the plough went a naked ploughman, at the side of the oxen a driver with a short club, and behind him a sower, who, wading to his ankles in earth, carried wheat in an apron, and scattered it almost in handfuls.

The most beautiful season of the year was beginning in Egypt,—the winter. Heat did not go beyond 70° Fahrenheit; the earth was covered quickly with emerald green, from out which sprang narcissus and violets. The odor of them came forth oftener and oftener amid the odor of earth and water.

A number of times the barge bearing the worthy lady Nikotris and the vice-pharaoh Herhor appeared near Sarah’s dwelling. Each time the prince saw his mother conversing with the minister joyously, and convinced himself that they refrained ostentatiously from looking toward him, as if to show indifference.

“Wait!” whispered he, in anger, “I will show you that life does not annoy me, either.”

So when one day, shortly before sunset, the queen’s gilded barge appeared with a purple tent having ostrich plumes on each of its four corners, Rameses gave command to prepare a boat for two persons, and told Sarah that he would sail with her.

“O Jehovah!” cried she, clasping her hands. “But thy mother is there, and the viceroy!”

“But in this boat will be the heir to the throne. Take thy harp, Sarah.”

“And the harp, too?” cried Sarah. “But if her worthiness were to speak to thee! I should throw myself into the river.”

“Be not a child,” replied Rameses, laughing. “My mother and his worthiness love songs immensely. Thou mayest even win their favor if thou sing some splendid song of the Hebrews. Let there be love in it.”

“I know no song of that kind,” answered Sarah, in whom the prince’s words had roused hope of some sort. Her song might please those powerful rulers, and then what?

On the royal barge they saw that the heir to the throne was sitting in a simple boat and rowing.

“Dost thou see, worthiness,” whispered the queen to the minister, “that he is rowing toward us with his Jewess?”

“The heir has borne himself with such correctness toward his warriors and his people, and has shown so much compunction in withdrawing from the limits of the palace, that his mother may forgive small errors,” answered Herhor.

“Oh, if he were not sitting in that boat, I would give command to break it!” said the worthy lady.

“For what reason?” asked the minister. “The prince would be no descendant of high priests and pharaohs if he did not break through restraints which the law, alas, puts on him, or perhaps our mistaken customs. He has given proof in every case that in serious junctures he is able to command himself. He is even able to recognise his errors,—a rare power and priceless in an heir to the throne of Egypt. The very fact that the prince wishes to rouse our curiosity with his favorite shows that the position in which he finds himself pains him; besides, his reasons are among the noblest.”

“But the Jewess!” whispered the lady, crushing her feather fan between her fingers.

“At present I am quite at rest regarding her,” continued Herhor. “She is shapely, but dull; she never thinks of using influence on the prince, nor could she do so. Shut up in a cage which is not over-costly, she takes no gifts, and will not even see any one. In time, perhaps, she might learn to make use of her position even to the extent of decreasing the heir’s treasury by some talents. Before that day comes, however, Rameses will be tired of her.”

“May the all-knowing Amon speak through thy mouth,” said the lady.

“The prince, I am sure of this, has not grown wild over a favorite, as happens often to young lords in Egypt. One keen, intriguing woman may strip a man of property and health, nay, bring him to the hall of judgment. The prince is amused with her as a grown-up man might be amused with a slave girl. And Sarah is pregnant.”

“Is that true?” cried the queen. “How dost thou know?”

“It is not known to his worthiness the heir, or even to Sarah,” said Herhor, smiling. “We must know everything. This secret, however, was not difficult to get at. With Sarah is her relative Tafet, an incomparable gossip.”

“Have they summoned a physician already?”

“Sarah knows nothing of this, I repeat, but the worthy Tafet, from fear lest the prince might grow indifferent to her foster child, would be glad to twist the neck of this secret. But we do not let her. That will be the prince’s child also.”

“But if it is a son? Thou knowest that he may make trouble,” put in the lady.

“All is foreseen,” replied Herhor. “If the child is a daughter, we will give her a dowry and the education proper for young ladies of high station. If a son, he will become a Jew—”

“Oh, my grandson, a Jew!”

“Do not take thy heart too soon from him. Our envoys declare that the people of Israel are beginning to desire a king. Before the child matures their desires will ripen, and then—we may give them a ruler, and of good blood indeed.”

“Thou art like an eagle which takes in East and West at a glance,” said the queen, eying the minister with amazement. “I feel that my repulsion for this maiden begins to grow weaker.”

“The least drop of the pharaoh’s blood should raise itself above nations, like a star above the earth,” added Herhor.

At that moment the heir’s boat moved at a few tens of paces from the royal barge, and the queen, shielded by her fan, looked at Sarah through its feathers.

“In truth the girl is shapely,” whispered Queen Nikotris.

“Thou art saying those words for the second time, worthy lady.”

“So thou hast noted that?” laughed her worthiness.

Herhor dropped his eyes.

In the boat was heard a harp, and Sarah began a hymn, with trembling voice,—

“How great is Jehovah, O Israel! how great is Jehovah, thy God.”

“A most beautiful voice,” whispered the queen.

The high priest listened with attention.

“His days have no beginning,” sang Sarah, “and His dwelling has no limit. The eternal heavens change beneath His eye, like a garment which a man puts on his body and then casts away from him. The stars flash up, and are quenched, like sparks from fuel, and the earth is like a brick which a traveller touches once with his foot while going ever farther.

“How great is thy Lord, O Israel! There is no being who can say to Him, ‘Do this!’ there is no womb which could have given birth to Him. He created the bottomless deeps above which He moves when He wishes. He brings light out of darkness, and from the dust of the earth He creates living things which have voices.

“For Him savage lions are as locusts, the immense elephant He looks on as nothing, before Him the whale is as weak as an infant.

“His tricolored bow divides the heavens into two parts and rests on the ends of the earth plain. Where are the gates which could equal Him in loftiness? Nations are in terror at the thunder of His chariot, and there is naught beneath the sun which could stand His flashing arrows.

“His breath is the north wind at midnight, which freshens trees when withering, His anger is like the chamsin which burns what it touches.

“When He stretches His hands above the waters, they are petrified. He pours the sea into new places, as a woman pours out leaven. He rends the earth as if it were old linen, and clothes in silvery snow the naked tops of mountains.

“In a grain of wheat He hides one hundred other grains, and causes birds to incubate. From the drowsy chrysalis He leads to life a golden butterfly, and makes men’s bodies wait in tombs until the day of resurrection.”

The rowers, absorbed in the song, raised their oars, and the purple barge dropped slowly down with the sweep of the river. All at once Herhor rose, and commanded,—

“Turn now toward Memphis!”

The oars fell; the barge turned where it stood, and raised the water with noise. After it followed Sarah’s hymn decreasing gradually,—

“He sees the movement of hearts, the silent hidden ways on which pass the innermost thoughts in men’s breasts. But no man can gaze into His heart and spy out His purposes.

“Before the gleam of His garments mighty spirits hide their faces. Before His glance the gods of great cities and nations turn aside and shrink like withering leaves.

“He is power, He is life, He is wisdom. He is thy Lord, thy God, O Israel!”

“Why command, worthiness, to turn away our barge?” asked the worthy Nikotris.

“Lady, dost thou know that hymn?” asked Herhor, in a language understood by priests alone. “That stupid girl is singing in the middle of the Nile a prayer permitted only in the most secret recesses of our temples.”

“Is that blasphemy then?”

“There is no priest in the barge except me,” replied the minister. “I have not heard the hymn, and if I had I should forget it. Still I am afraid that the gods will lay hands on that girl yet.”

“But whence does she know that awful prayer, for Rameses could not have taught it to her?”

“The prince is not to blame. But forget not, lady, that the Jews have taken from our Egypt many such treasures. That is why, among all nations on earth, we consider them alone as sacrilegious.”

The queen seized the hand of the high priest.

“But my son—will no evil strike him?” whispered she, looking into his eyes.

“I say, worthiness, that no evil will happen to any one. I heard not the hymn, and I know nothing. The prince must be separated from that Jewess.”

“But separated mildly; is that not the way?” asked the mother.

“In the mildest way possible and the simplest, but separation is imperative. It seemed to me,” continued the high priest, as if to himself, “that I foresaw everything. Everything save an action for blasphemy, which threatens the heir while he is with that strange woman.”

Herhor thought awhile, and added,—

“Yes, worthy lady! It is possible to laugh at many of our prejudices; still the son of a pharaoh should not be connected with a Jewess.”