Aphrodite, Pierre Louÿs [top 50 books to read .txt] 📗

gray mullet flanked with cuttle-fish, and multicolored scorpoeni. In order that they might be eaten burning hot, slices of fat tunny-fish and soft warm poulps with tender arms were presented in their little casseroles. And at the last, the belly of a white torpedo.

Such was the first course, from which the guests selected the good morsels in little fragments and left the rest for the slaves.

“Love,” began Phrasilas, “is a word which has no meaning or which means everything at once, for it designates in turn two sentiments: Voluptuousness and passion. I do not know in what sense Faustina means it.”

“I wish,” interrupted Chrysis, “voluptuousness for my part and passion for my lover’s. Thou must speak of both or thou wilt but half interest me.”

“Love,” murmured Philodemos, “is neither passion nor voluptuousness. Love is quite another thing…”

“Oh! for pity’s sake,” cried Timon, “let us have, this evening, as an exception, a banquet without philosophies. We know, Phrasilas, that thou canst sustain the superiority of multiple pleasure over exclusive passion with a sweet eloquence and a honeyed persuasion. We know too that, after having spoken a full hour over so difficult a matter, thou wouldst be ready, during the following hour, to sustain the reasons of thine opponent with the same sweet eloquence and the same honeyed persuasion. I…”

“Permit…” said Phrasilas.

“I do not deny,” continued Timon, “the charm of this little game or even the wit thou employest in it. But I question its difficulty and, more than that, its interest. The ‘Banquet’ which thou didst publish some time ago in the course of a less serious tale and also the reflections borrowed by thee from a mythical personage who resembles thine ideal, seemed new and rare under the reign of Ptolemy Auletes; but we have lived for three years under the young queen Berenice, and I fail to understand by what complete change the smiling and harmonious method of thought has suddenly aged an hundred years under thy pen like the fashion of closed sleeves and yellow tinted hair. Excellent master, I deplore it, for though thy tales may need a little fire, though thine experience of the feminine heart is only superficial, on the other hand thou art at least gifted with the comic spirit and I love thee for having made me smile.”

“Timon!” cried Bacchis, indignantly. But Phrasilas stopped her with a gesture.

“Let it pass, my dear. Unlike most men, I retain, of the judgment whose subject I am, only that part of the praises which pleases me. Timon has given me his; others will praise me on other points. I could not live in the midst of a unanimous approbation, and the variety of sentiments which I call forth is, to me, a charming garden where I wish to breathe the roses without touching spurge.”

Chrysis moved her lips in a way that indicated clearly how little she made of this man who was so clever at terminating discussions. She turned toward Timon who was her neighbor on the couch and laid her hand upon his neck.

“What is the object of life?” she asked.

It was the question she asked when she did not know what to say to a philosopher; but this time she put such a tenderness into her voice that Timon almost fancied he heard a declaration of love.

However, he replied with certain calmness, “Each life has its own, my Chrysis. There is no universal object to the existence of beings. As for me, I am the son of a banker among whose patrons are all the great courtesans of Egypt, and, my father having amassed a considerable fortune by ingenious means, I restore it nobly to the victims of his good deeds by such means as the gods permit. I consider myself capable of fulfilling but a single duty in life. Such is the one I have chosen since it reconciles the demand of the rarest virtue with contrary satisfaction which another ideal would not support so well.”

There were a few moments of silence; then Seso took up the word. “Timon, thou art very annoying to interrupt, at the beginning, the only serious conversation whose subject is interesting to us. At least let Naucrates speak, since thou hast such a bad character.”

“What shall I say of love?” replied the invited. “It is the name given to sorrow to console those who suffer. There are but two ways of being unhappy: to desire what one has not or to possess what one desires. Love commences by the first and finishes by the second, in the most lamentable state—that is to say: as soon as it succeeds. May the gods save us from loving!”

“But to possess unexpectedly,” said Philodemos, smiling, “is not that real happiness?”

“What a rarity!”

“Not at all—if one looks for it. Hear this, Naucrates: not to desire, but to take advantage of the occasion which presents itself; not to love, but to cherish from afar some very select persons for whom one feels a liking which the disposition of chance and circumstance might warm into desire; never to adorn a woman with the qualities one would wish in her, nor with the beauties of which she makes a mystery, but to presuppose the insipid in order to be astonished at the exquisite—is not that the best advice a sage could give to lovers? Only those have lived happily who have sometimes known how to arrange in their luxurious existence the inappreciable purity of some unforeseen enjoyment.”

The second course was coming to an end. Pheasants had been served, sand-grouse, a magnificent red and blue porphura and a swan with all its feathers which had been cooked for forty-eight hours in order not to scorch its wings. Upon upcurved platters lay water-plants, pelicans and a white peacock which seemed to brood eighteen roasted and larded white balls—in short, food enough to nourish a hundred persons with the fragments which were left, when the choice morsels had been set aside. But all this was nothing beside the last dish.

This masterpiece (for nothing such had been seen at Alexandria for a long time) was a young pig, half of which had been roasted and the other half stewed in bouillon. It was impossible to distinguish where it had been killed or how they had filled its belly with all it contained. It was stuffed with round quails, the breasts of fowls, larks, succulent sauces, and minced meat, the presence of which, in the intact animal, seemed inexplicable.

There was a general cry of admiration and Faustina resolved to ask for the recipe. Phrasilas smilingly uttered metaphorical sentences; Philodemos improvised a distich where the word <<xoiros>> was taken by turns in its two meanings, which made the already drunken Seso laugh until she cried; but as Bacchis had given the order to pour out seven rare wines in seven cups for each banqueter, the conversation degenerated.

Timon turned toward Bacchis. “Why,” he demanded, “wert thou so unkind to that poor girl I wished to bring? She was, at least, a colleague. In thy place, I would respect a poor courtesan more than a rich matron.”

“Thou art mad,” said Bacchis, without discussing it.

“Yes, I have often remarked that those who occasionally hazard astounding truths are considered eccentric. Paradoxes find everybody in agreement.”

“Come, my friend, ask thy neighbors. Who is the well-born man who would take a girl without jewels for his mistress?” “I have done it,” Philodemos said, simply.

The women sniffed at him.

“Last year,” he continued, “toward the end of spring, since the exile of Cicero gave me cause to fear for my own safety, I took a little journey. I withdrew to the foot of the Alps, to a charming place named Orobia, on the shores of little Lake Clisios. It was a simple village where there were less than three hundred women, and one of them had become a priestess of Aphrodite to protect the others. Her house was known by a bouquet of flowers hung over the door, but she herself could not be distinguished from her sisters or her cousins. She did not know there were such things as paints, perfumes and cosmetics, intriguing veils and curling irons. She did not know how to care for her beauty. She depilated herself with sticky resin as one uproots weeds in a white marble court. It makes one shudder to think that she went without shoes, so that one could never kiss her bare feet as one does Faustina’s, which are softer than hands. Yet in her company I found so many charms that I forgot Rome and happy Tyre and Alexandria for a whole month.”

Naucrates approved with a sign of his head, and said, after having drunk, “The great moment of love is the instant when the true self is revealed. Women should know this and spare us disappointing surprises. But it seems, on the contrary, that they make every effort to disillusion us. Is there anything more painful than flowing hair on which one sees the traces of hot irons? anything more disagreeable than painted cheeks whose color clings to a kiss? anything more piteous than a penciled eye whose darkness smears? In the last analysis, I might understand how women could sometimes use these illusory devices; every woman loves to surround herself with a circle of admiring men, and if they meet no more intimately they need not reveal their true appearance. But it is inconceivable that any woman should seek to attract admiration by means which will destroy it as soon as it brings the admirer to her. Can any woman wish to be less attractive in private than in public?”

“Thou knowest nothing about it, Naucrates,” said Chrysis, with a smile. “I know one cannot hold one lover out of twenty; yet one does not attract one man out of five hundred, and before pleasing him alone, he must be pleased in public. No one would see us pass if we neither rouged nor penciled. The little peasant of whom Philodemos spoke attracted him without difficulty because she was alone in her village; there are fifteen thousand beautiful women here; it is quite another competition.”

“Dost thou not know that pure beauty has no need of adornment and is sufficient unto itself?”

“Yes. Very well, make a pure beauty compete, as thou sayest, with Gnathene who is ugly and old. Put the first in a torn tunic in the last rows of the theater and the second in her robe of stars in a place reserved by her slaves and note their admirers when they leave; a handful would pay court to the pure beauty and two hundred to Gnathene.”

“Men are stupid,” concluded Seso.

“No—simply lazy. They give themselves no trouble in choosing their mistresses. The most loved are the most deceitful.”

“What if,” insinuated Phrasilas, “what if, on the one side, I would willingly praise…” And he maintained, with great charm, two theses utterly without interest.

One by one, twelve dancing girls appeared, the first two playing the flute and the last the tambourine, the others clapping crotals.

They adjusted their fillets, rubbed their little sandals with white resin, waited with outstretched arms for the music to commence… One note… two notes… a Lydian scale… and upon a light rhythm the twelve young girls sprang forward.

The dance was soft, slow and without apparent order, though all its figures had been fixed in advance. They maneuvered in a small space, they mingled like waves. Soon they grouped themselves into couples and without interrupting their steps, untied their girdles and let their rose-colored outer tunics fall. The odor of the dancer’s perfume diffused around the men, dominating the scents of the flowers and the steam of the broken meats. They threw themselves backward with sudden movements, arms over eyes, then straightened and touched hands in passing. Timon’s