Pierre Louÿs

“ He put his hand to his brow like a man who did not desire to awaken lest he might find himself alive. At last he had the courage to look.
In a gleam of bright moonlight the Goddess was visible upon a pedestal of red stone loaded with hanging treasures. She was naked and tenderly tinted like a woman; in one hand she held her mirror and with the other she was adorning her beauty with a necklace of seven rows of pearls. A pearl, larger than the rest, long and silvery, gleamed at her breast like a crescent. These were the actual holy pearls. ”

“ If my face has gained in beauty, it is because I have loved you. O Rhodis! well you know that my singular virginity is like the lips of Pan eating a sprig of myrtle; yours is the colour of roses, and dainty as the mouth of a little child. I do not know why you love me; but if you ceased to love me for a day; if, like your sister Theano who plays the flute by your side, you ever stayed to sleep in the houses that employ us, then I should never even think of sleeping alone in our bed, and when you came in you would find me strangled with my girdle. ”

“ It lay on the horizon line like a vast swollen orange.
A great gnarled palm-tree stood with its thicket of green leaves hanging over the balustrade. Chrysis ensconced her tingling nudity in its shade, and shivered, with her breasts in her hands.
Her eyes wandered over the gradually whitening town. The violet vapours of the dawn rose from the silent streets and disappeared in the pellucid air.
Suddenly, an idea burst upon her mind, grew upon her, took possession of her. Demetrios, who had already done so much, why should he not kill the Queen, Demetrios who might be the king? ”

“ Then daylight came and the statue in turn assumed the living rose colour of the dawn and the golden tint of the sunlight.
Demetrios could no longer think. The ivory comb and the silver mirror which he carried within his tunic had disappeared from his memory. He gently abandoned himself to serene contemplation.
Outside the confused singing and twittering of the birds sounded in the gardens. The talking and laughing of women’s voices could be heard outside the walls. The life and movement of the morning was spreading over the awakened land. Demetrios was full of pleasant ideas. ”

“ I, who have never denied anyone, I could not dream that should change so quickly. I had only sold you my body upon the bed, now I give you all my excellence, all my purity, my sincerity, my passion, my virgin soul, Demetrios. Come with me; let us leave this town for a time; let us go into a hidden place, where there are only you and I. We will spend days such as the world has never seen. Never did a lover do what you have done for me. Never did a woman love as I love: it is not possible! ”

“ The sun sinking behind the harbour, that incomparable glory of a coast town, the calm sky, the purple waters, were they not enough to bring silence to any soul bursting with joy or sorrow! What footsteps would they not stay, what pleasure suspend and what voice they not hush? Demetrios watched: a swell of torrent-like flame seemed to leap out from the sun which had half sunk into the sea and to flow straight to the curved edge of the wood of Aphrodite. ”

“ He had done everything for her, certainly more than any lover had ever done for any woman. She repeated it unceasingly and reiterated her triumph again and again. Demetrios, the Well-Beloved, the impossible and hopeless dream of so many feminine hearts, had run every sort of peril for her, every kind of shame, of willing remorse. He had even abjured the ideal of his thought, he had despoiled his handiwork of the miraculous necklace, and that day which was just dawning would see the lover of the goddess at the feet of his new idol. ”

“ In the grotto from which the river emerged in a mysterious way the nymph Cyanée gave birth to twins; one was a son who was named Caunos, and the other a girl to whom the name of Byblis was given.
They both grew up upon the banks of the Méandre, and sometimes Cyanée showed them beneath its transparent surface the divine appearance of their father, whose soul disturbed its flowing stream.
The only world the children knew was the forest in which they were born. They had never seen the sun except through the network of its branches. ”

“ CHRYSIS IMMORTAL
When Demetrios found himself alone in his red studio, littered with marble statuary, rough models, trestles, and scaffoldings, he endeavoured to apply himself once more to his work.
With his chisel in his left hand and his mallet in his right, he resumed, but without ardour, an interrupted rough study. It was the breast and shoulders of a gigantic horse intended for the temple of Poseidon. Under the close-cropped mane, the skin of the neck, puckered by a movement of the head, curved in geometrically like an undulating marine basin. ”

“ She drew herself up slowly to her full height and offered a bronze mirror which hung from her girdle.
“To thee, Astarte of the Night, that joinest hand to hand and lip to lip, and whose symbol is like to the footprint of the deer upon the pale soil of Syria, Chrysis consecrates her mirror. It has seen the haggard darkness of the eyelids and the glitter of the eyes after love, the hair glued to the temples by the sweat of thy battles, O! warrior-queen of ruthless hand, thou that joinest body to body and mouth to mouth.” ”

“ I have, too, a thousand foreign slaves: those you desire shall be given to you. I will dress them like myself, in yellow silk, gold and silver.
“No, you are the handsomest and coldest of men. You love no one, you lend yourself simply out of charity for those whom your eyes have filled with love. You allow me to obtain my happiness from your presence, but only in the way a beast allows itself to be led, looking elsewhere. ”

“ O women! if you wish to be loved, show yourselves, return, present yourselves! The emotion he had felt on her entrance was so entire and overwhelming that it was out of the question to dream of struggling against it by a violent effort of the will. Demetrios was bound like a barbarian slave to a triumphal car. The idea of escape was an illusion. Without knowing it, and quite naturally, she had made him her captive.
He had seen her coming in the distance, for she wore the same yellow robe she had had on the quay. She walked with low, supple steps and with languid undulations of the hips. ”

“ Listen, listen, Rhodis! By the girdle of Aphrodite upon which all desires are embroidered, all desires are unknown to me; for you are more than my dream! By the horn of Amaltheia whence flow all the good things of the world, the world is a matter of indifference to me; for you are the only good I have found in it! When I look at you and when I see myself, I know not why you love me in return. Your hair is as fair as ears of corn; mine is black as a ram’s fleece. Your skin is as white as shepherd’s cheese ”

“ It is exactly like me, it has my eyes, my mouth, my breasts, but it is the statue that you treasure. I am a poor deserted woman. I weary you, and I see it well. You think of your marble and your ugly statues as if I were not more beautiful than all of them, and, in addition, alive, amorous, and tender, ready to grant you whatever you are willing to accept, resigned whenever you refuse. But you want nothing. You have refused to be a king, you have refused to be a god and be adored in a temple of your own. ”

“ Have you counted the men who think they are loved by Chrysis? Show me the way! I shall not show it you, if you please. Stay here or go away, but you shall not go home with me!”
“You do not know who I am.”
“You? Of course I do! You are Demetrios of Saïs; you made the statue of my goddess; you are the lover of my queen and the lord of my town. But for me you are nothing but a handsome slave, because you have seen me and you love me.” ”

“ Chrysis did not answer.
“We had given doves,” said the little flute-player; “will the goddess remember? The goddess must be very angry. And you, my poor Chryse! you who were to be very happy to-day or very powerful . . .”
“All is accomplished,” said the courtesan.
“What do you mean?”
Chrysis took two steps backwards and lifted her right hand to her mouth.
“Look well, Rhodis; look, Myrtocleia. Human eyes have never beheld what you are to behold to-day, since the day, when the goddess descended upon Ida. And such a sight will never be seen again upon the earth.” ”

“ This little noise enhanced the immense silence of the harbour. Leaning against the cold parapet, he tried to drive away all thought, and began to look at the things around him.
He had a horror of life. He only left his house when the life of the day was dying down, and he returned home when the dawn began to draw the fishermen and market-gardeners to the town. The pleasure of seeing nought in the world but the ghost of the town and his own stature had become a voluptuous passion with him, and he did not remember having seen the mid-day sun for months.
He was wearied. The queen was tedious. ”

“ The statue of Aphrodite was for him the sublime pretext of this moral conversion. The highest realization of the queen’s beauty, all the idealism it was possible to read into the supple lines of her body, Demetrios had evoked it all from the marble, and from that day onward he imagined that no other woman on earth would ever attain to the level of his dream. His statue became the object of his passion. He adored it only, and madly divorced from the flesh the supreme idea of the goddess, all the more immaterial because he had attached it to life. ”

“ Thus it was that the soul of Chrysis, limpid as a little child’s, appeared to Demetrios more mysterious than a problem in metaphysics. After leaving this woman upon the quay, he went back to his house like a man in a dream, incapable of answering all the questions which tormented him. What did she want with these three gifts? It was impossible for her either to wear or to sell a celebrated mirror, acquired by theft, the comb of an assassinated woman, the pearl necklace of the goddess. If she kept them at home, she would expose herself every day to the possibility of a fatal discovery. ”

“ She has heavy hair, the colour of dull gold, and of a length one may surmise to be marvellous, judging by the mass of the great coil that lies on her drooping neck. A black tunic envelopes this woman, and a robe blacker still is draped upon the tunic, and the iris whose perfume she breathes with downcast eyelids is of the same hue as night.
In all this mourning garb, Demetrios sees but the hair, like a golden vase on an ebony column. He recognises Chrysis. ”

“ Demetrios gazed at her without understanding.
“Yes, all that is a pure matter of indifference to you, is it not?” continued Chrysis. “You did not love her. It is I that you love. You have not even listened to what I have just told you. I am sure you could not repeat a single word. You are absorbed in wondering how my eyelids are made up, speculating on the sweetness of my mouth, on the softness of my hair. Ah! how many others know all this! All who have desired me have had their pleasure upon me: men, young men, old men, children, women, young girls. ”

“ For your enlightened souls, love is not a sacrifice, it is an equal favour exchanged by two lovers, and so the sums we confide to you do not serve to compensate you for your priceless caresses, but to pay at its proper price for the multiple and charming luxury with which, by a supreme complaisance, you pacify nightly our ravenous passions. As you are innumerable, we always find amongst you both the dream of our lives and our fancy for the evening, all women at a day’s notice, hair of every shade, eyes of every colour, lips of every savour. ”

“ Their kiss is endless. Chrysis would seem to have under her tongue, not milk and honey, as in Holy Writ, but living, mobile, enchanted water. And this multiform tongue itself, now incurved like an arch, now rolled up like a spiral, now shrinking into its hiding-place, now darting forth like a flame, more caressing than the hand, more expressive than the eyes, circling, flower-like, into a pistil, or thinning away into a petal, this ribbon of flesh that hardens when it quivers and softens when it licks, Chrysis animates it with all the resources of her endearing and passionate fantasy . ”