Georg Ebers

“ With a deep breath the artist turned full on the steward’s house, and immediately a clear merry voice called out:
“What, tall Pollux! It really is tall Pollux; how glad I am!”
With these words the girl on the balcony loudly clapped her hands; and as the sculptor hailed her in return, and shouted:
“And you are little Arsinoe, eternal gods! What the little thing has come to!” She stood on tip-toe to seem taller, nodded at him pleasantly, and laughed out: “I have not done growing yet; but as for you, you look quite dignified with the beard on your chin, and your eagle’s nose. ”

“ The old slave-woman came in yawning, her woolly grey hair hung in disorder about her face, and her eyes seemed fixed, her feet carried her unsteadily here and there.
“You are drunk,” cried Keraunus; nor was he mistaken, for when the old woman had waked up, sitting by the house of Pudeus, and had learned from the gate keeper that Arsinoe had quitted the garden, she had gone into a tavern with other slave-women. When her master seized her arm and shook her, she exclaimed with a stupid grin on her wet lips:
“It is the feast-day. Every one is free, to-day is the feast.” ”

“ The hall of the Muses had been turned into a grand banqueting-hall. Papias, who was now on his way to Italy by the Emperor’s command, had restored the damaged shoulder of the Urania. Couches and divans stood between the statues, and under a canopy at the upper end of the vast room stood a throne on which Hadrian sat when he held audience. On these occasions he always appeared in the purple, but in his writing-room, which he had not changed for another, he laid aside the imperial mantle and was no more splendid in his garb than the architect Claudius Venator had been. ”

“ Those who take part in life are actors, and the world is their stage. He who wants to look tall on it wears the cothurnus, and is not a mountain the highest vantage ground that a man can find for the sole of his foot? Kasius there is but a hill, but I have stood on greater giants than he, and seen the clouds rise below me, like Jupiter on Olympus.”
“But you need climb no mountains to feel yourself a god,” cried Antinous; “the godlike is your title—you command and the world must obey. With a mountain beneath his feet a man is nearer to heaven no doubt than he is on the plain.” ”

“ Hadrian sighed deeply, but Antinous went close up to him, fell on his knees before him and asked in a tone of childlike humility:
“May I, a poor foolish lad, teach a great and wise man how to enrich his life with six happy months?” The Emperor smiled, as though he knew what was coming, but his favorite felt encouraged to proceed.
“Leave the future to the future,” he said. “What must come will come, for the gods themselves have no power against Fate. When evil is approaching it casts its black shadow before it; you fix your gaze on it and let it darken the light of day. ”

“ The children would call Selene when they wanted her, but would fly to Arsinoe as soon as they saw her. Their hearts were hers, and Selene felt this bitterly; it seemed to her to be unjust, for she saw clearly that her sister could reap, from mere frivolous play in her idle hours, a sweeter reward than she could earn by the anxiety, trouble and exhausting toil, in which she often spent her nights.
But children are not unjust in this way. It is true that they keep an account in their heart and not in their head. Those who give them the warmth of affection they pay back most honestly. ”

“ While she spoke Hadrian sat with his eyes thoughtfully fixed on the ground, and then, standing in front of his wife, he replied:
“If no sinister catastrophe falls upon this man, the stars and the fate of men have no more to do with one another than the sea with the heart of the desert, than the throb of men’s pulses with the pebbles in the brook. If Ammonius has erred ten times over still more than ten signs remain on this tablet, hostile and fatal to the praetor. I grieve for Verus—but the state suffers with the sovereign’s misfortunes.—This man can never be my successor.” ”

“ What is most horrible to me is sickness in the house, for that increases the anxiety I always feel and swallows up my last coin; the children must not perish for want of it. I do not want to make myself out worse than I am; it grieves me too to see them drooping. But nothing that I do brings me happiness—at most it moderates my fears. You ask what I am afraid of?—of everything, everything that can happen to me, for I have no reason to look forward to anything good. When there is a knock, it may be a creditor; when people look at Arsinoe in the street, I seem to see dishonor lurking round her ”

“ Now if I had to make another star-gazing Urania, or a Sappho full of the deity, and with eyes fixed on the heavens in poetic rapture, that is what I would put into her! She is no longer young, but how pure her face is! It is like a sky when the wind has swept it clear of clouds.”
“Seriously you must go now,” said Arsinoe drawing away her hand, which he had again taken. Pollux saw that his praise of another woman’s beauty annoyed her, and he said soothingly:
“Be easy child. You have not your match here in Alexandria, no, nor so far as Greek is spoken. ”

“ The blind boy had a vision of a distant but glorious light, the maiden of a blissful life made beautiful by love, as she was flung to the ground in front of the statue of Hadrian, and the excited mob rushed upon her and her faithful little brother. The military tribune tried in vain to hold back the populace, and by the time the soldiers had succeeded in driving the excited mob away from their victims, both the young hearts, in the midst of the triumph of their faith, in the midst of their hopes of an eternal and blissful life, had ceased to beat for ever. ”

“ On a very small dark-colored donkey sat a tall, well-dressed slave, who held in his right hand a nosegay of extraordinary size and beauty. By his side walked a smartly dressed-up man with a splendid wreath, and a comic mask over his face followed by two garden-gods of gigantic stature, and four graceful boys. In the slave, Pollux at once recognized the servant of Claudius Venator, and he fancied he must have seen the masked gentlemen too before now, but he could not remember where, and did not trouble himself to retrace him in his mind. ”

“ May the gods bless you!”
“You are right,” said Pollux embracing his mother, “and two together can turn the work out of hand more lightly and enjoy the pleasures of existence better than each alone—can they not?”
“I am sure of it; and you have chosen the right mate,” cried the old woman. “You are a sculptor and used to simple things; you need no riches, only a sweet face which may every day rejoice your heart, and that you have found.”
“There is nowhere a sweeter or a lovelier,” said Pollux.
“No, that there is not,” continued Doris. ”

“ A moist brilliancy sparkled in those eyes, unapt to tears, and in a soft and appealing tone that no one had ever before heard in her voice she said:
“Even at the summit of fortune, after your adoption, even in the purple all will be the same between us two. Will it? Tell me, will it?”
“Always, always!” cried Verus. “And if our hopes are fulfilled—”
“Then, then,” interrupted Sabina and she shivered as she spoke. “Then, still you will be to me the same that you are now; but to be sure, to be sure—the temples of the gods would be empty if mortals had nothing left to wish for.” ”

“ In this hour Hadrian thought of none but his evil deeds, and vowed to the gods—whom he mocked at with his philosophical friends, and to whom he nevertheless addressed himself whenever he felt the insufficiency of his own strength and means—to build a temple here, to offer a sacrifice there, in order to expiate old crimes and divert their malice. He felt like a great man must who is threatened with the disfavor of his superiors, and who hopes to propitiate them with gifts. The haughty Roman quailed at the thought of unknown dangers, but he was far from feeling the wholesome pangs of repentance. ”

“ Why do you cut off this girl, who still stands with both feet in the world, from all that can give her pleasure? Allow the young creature to enjoy every permitted pleasure which can add to the joys of life in youth. Do not hurt Arsinoe needlessly, do not let her feel the hand that guides her. First teach her to love you from her heart, and when she knows nothing dearer than you, a request from you will be worth more than bolts or walled-up windows.”
“At first I wished nothing more than that she should love me,” interrupted Paulina. ”

“ At last his eye fell on Hadrian’s bust of Balbilla. The hideous caricature at which he had laughed only yesterday, made him angry now, and after gazing at it thoughtfully for a few minutes his blood boiled up furiously, he hastily pulled a lath out of the partition and struck at the monstrosity with such fury that the dry clay flew in pieces, and the fragments were strewed far and wide about the workshop. ”

“ It pained Pontius keenly, for like all noble natures, he could not bear to discover anything mean or vulgar in a man to whom he had always looked up as to a strong exceptional character. As an artist Hadrian ought not to have vilified beauty, as a man he ought not to have insulted unprotected innocence.
In the soul of the architect, who had hitherto been one of the Emperor’s warmest admirers, a slight aversion began to dawn, and he was glad, when, at last, Hadrian decided to withdraw to rest. ”

“ When the gaudy ship left the gardens of the Paneum and turned into the Canopic way, the crowd pursued it in a dense mass, hallooing and shouting. Like a torrent suddenly swelled by a storm it rushed on, surging and growing at each moment, and carrying with it even those who tried to resist its force. Thus even Hadrian and Pollux were forced to follow in its wake, and it was not till they found themselves in the broad Canopic way that they were able to come to a stand-still. ”

“ The wild noise behind the sculptor’s screen made the Emperor pause in his walk to see what the artist was doing; he looked on at the work of destruction, unobserved by Pollux, and as he looked the blood mounted to his head; he knit his brows in anger, a blue vein in his forehead swelled and stood out, and ominous lines appeared above his brow. The great master of state-craft could more easily have borne to hear himself condemned as a ruler than to see his work of art despised. ”

“ I like your Alexandria, Titianus; still it is not a great capital like Rome. The people have not yet learned not to be astonished; they are perpetually in amazement. When I go out driving—”
“Your runners ought to fly before you with roses in their hair and wings on their shoulders like Cupids.”
“In honor of the Alexandrian ladies?”
“As if the Roman ladies in Rome, and the fair Greeks at Athens,” interrupted Balbilla.
“The praetor’s runners go faster than Parthian horses,” cried the Empress’s chamberlain. “He has named them after the winds.” ”

“ Last night such a blast swept over us and let me see the heart of my Antinous, as plainly as this hand I hold before my eyes. Yes, yes, yes! for the man who will risk his young and happy existence for a thing his friend holds precious would sacrifice ten lives if he had them, for his friend’s person. Never, my friend, shall that night be forgotten. It gives you the right to do much that might pain me, and has graven your name on my heart, the foremost among those to whom I am indebted for any benefit.—They are but few.”
Hadrian held out his hand to Antinous as he spoke. ”

“ They exchanged greetings, and Pollux signed to her to come down to him. She would have obeyed him more than gladly, but her father had also heard the sculptor’s voice and drove her back into the room. Still the mere sight of his beloved fair one had done the artist good. Hardly had he got back to his father’s little house when Antinous came sauntering in—he represented in the artist’s mind the hospitable shores on which he might gaze. Hope revived his soul, and Hope is the sun before which despair flies as the shades of night flee at the rising of the day-star. ”

“ What is known to that Daimon always appears to me the very same when I actually meet it. Thus Alexandria is not unknown to me, because my Genius has seen it in his flights. It has learnt and done much, both in me and for me; a hundred times, face to face with my own finished works I have asked myself: ‘Is it possible that you—Hadrian—your mother’s son-can have achieved this? What then is the mysterious power that aided you to do it?’ Now I also recognize it, and can see it work in others. The man in whom it dwells soon excels his fellows, and it is most manifest in artists. ”