"Not at all, if one is careful. Listen to me, Naukrates: not to desire, but to act in such a way that the opportunity offers itself; not to love, but to cherish from a distance certain well-chosen women for whom one feels one might have a taste in the long run, if chance and circ.u.mstances combined to throw them into one's arms; never to adorn a woman with qualities one wants her to have, or with beauties of which she makes a mystery, but always to take the insipid for granted in order to be astonished by the exquisite. Is not this the best advice a sage can give to lovers? They only have lived happily who, in the course of their dear existences, have been wise enough occasionally to reserve for themselves the priceless purity of unforeseen joys."

The second course was drawing to a close. There had been pheasants, attagas, a magnificent blue and red porphyris, and a swan with all its feathers, the cooking of which had been spread over forty-eight hours so as not to burn its wings. Upon curved plates one saw phlexids, pelicans, a while peac.o.c.k which seemed to be sitting on a dozen and a half of roast and stuffed spermologues; in a word, enough food to feed a hundred persons on the fragments left behind after the choice pieces had been set aside. But all this was nothing compared with the last dish.

This chef-d'ouvre (such a work of art had not been seen for many a long day at Alexandria) was a young pig, of which one half had been roasted and the other boiled. It was impossible to distinguish the wound which had provoked its death, or by what means its belly had been stuffed with everything it contained. It was stuffed with round quails, chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, field-larks, succulent sauces, and slices of v.u.l.v.a and mince-meat. The presence of all these things in an animal apparently intact seemed inexplicable.

The guests uttered an unanimous cry of admiration, and Faustina asked for the recipe. Phrasilas smilingly delivered himself of sententious metaphorical maxims; Philodemos improvised a distich in which the word [Greek: choiros] was taken alternately in both senses. This made Seso, already drunk, laugh till the tears flowed, but Bacchis having given the order to pour seven rare wines into seven cups for the use of each guest, the conversation strayed.

Timon turned to Bacchis:

"Why," he asked, "should you have been so hard on the poor girl I wanted to bring with me? She was a colleague, nevertheless. If I were in your place, I should respect a poor courtesan more highly than a rich matron."

"You are mad," said Bacchis, without discussing the question.

"Yes, I have often noticed that those who, once in a way, venture to utter striking truths, are taken for lunatics. Paradoxes find everybody agreed."

"Nonsense, my friend; ask your neighbours, where is the man of birth who would choose a girl without jewels as his mistress."

"I have done it," said Philodemos with simplicity.

And the women despised him.

"Last year," he went on, "at the end of spring, Cicero's exile gave me good reason to fear for my own safety, and I took a little journey. I retired lo the foot of the Alps, to a charming place named Orobia, on the borders of the little lake Clisius. It was a simple village with barely three hundred women, and one of them had become a courtesan in order to protect the virtue of the others. Her house was to be recognised by a bouquet of flowers hanging over the door, but she herself was indistinguishable from her sisters or cousins. She was ignorant of the very existence of paint, perfumes, cosmetics, transparent veils and curling-tongs. She did not know how to preserve her beauty, and depilitated herself with pitchy resin just as one pulls up weeds from a courtyard of white marble. One shudders at the thought that she walked without boots, so that it was impossible to kiss her naked feet as one kisses Faustina's, softer than one's hand. And yet I discovered so many charms in her that beside her brown body I forgot Rome for a whole month and blessed Tyre and Alexandria."

Naukrates nodded approval, took a draught of wine, and said:

"The great event in love is the instant when nudity is revealed.

Courtesans should know this and spare us surprises. Now, it would seem on the contrary that they devote all their efforts to disillusioning us.

Is there anything more painful than a ma.s.s of hair bearing traces of the curling irons? Is there anything more disagreeable than painted cheeks that leave the marks of the cosmetics on the mouth that kisses them! Is there anything more pitiable than a pencilled eye with the charcoal half rubbed off? Strictly speaking, I can understand chaste women using these illusory devices: every woman likes to surround herself with a circle of male adorers, and the chaste ones amongst them do not run the risk of familiarities which would unmask the secrets of their physique. But that courtesans whose end and resource is the bed, should venture to show themselves less beautiful in it than in the street is really inconceivable."

"You know nothing about it, Naukrates," said Chrysis with a smile. "I know that one does not keep one lover out of twenty; but one does not seduce one man out of five hundred, and before pleasing in the bed one must please in the street. No one would notice us if we did not rouge our faces and darken our eyes. The little peasant-girl Philodemos speaks of, attracted him without difficulty because she was alone in her village. There are fifteen thousand courtesans here. The compet.i.tion is quite another thing."

"Don't you know that pure beauty has no need of adornment, and suffices for itself?"

"Yes. Well, inst.i.tute a compet.i.tion between a pure beauty, as you say, and Gnathene, who is old and plain. Dress the former in a tunic covered with holes and set her in the last row at the theatre, and put the latter in her star-embroidered robe in the places reserved by her slaves, and note their prices at the end of the performance: the pure beauty will get eight obols and Gnathene two minae."

"Men are stupid," Seso concluded.

"No, simply lazy. They do not take the trouble to choose their mistresses. The best-loved women are the most mendacious."

"But if," suggested Phrasilas, "but if, on the one hand, I should willingly applaud . . ."

And he delivered himself, with great charm, of two set discourses entirely devoid of interest.

One by one, twelve dancing girls appeared, the two first playing the flute and the last the timbrel, the others manipulating castanets. They arranged their bandelets, rubbed their little sandals with white resin, and waited with extended arms for the music to begin . . . A note . . . two notes . . . a Lydian scale, and the twelve young girls shot forward to the accompaniment of a light rhythm.

Their dance was voluptuous, languorous, and without apparent order, although all the figures had been settled beforehand. They confined their evolutions to a small s.p.a.ce: they intermingled like waves. Soon they formed in couples, and without interrupting the step, unfastened their girdles and let their pink tunics glide to the ground. An odour of naked women spread about the men, dominating the perfume of the flowers and the steam of the gaping viands. They threw themselves backwards with brusque movements, with their bellies tightly drawn, and their arms over their eyes. Then they straightened themselves up again and hollowed their loins, and touched one another, as they pa.s.sed, with the points of their dancing b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Timon's hand received the fugitive caress of a hot thigh.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soon they formed in couples.]

"What does our friend think about it?" said Phrasilas with his piping voice.

"I feel perfectly happy," answered Timon.

"I have never before so clearly understood the supreme mission of women."

"And what is it?"

"Prost.i.tution, either with or without art."

"That is only an opinion."

"Phrasilas, once again, we know that nothing can be proved: worse still, we know that nothing exists, and that even that is not certain. This being conceded and in order to satisfy your celebrated mania, permit me to hold a theory at once contestable and antiquated, as all of them are, but interesting to me, who affirm it, and to the majority of men, who deny it. In the ease of thought, originality is an ideal still more chimerical than cert.i.tude. You are aware of that."

"Give me some Lesbian wine," said Seso to the slave. "It is stronger than the other."

"I maintain," Timon went on, "that the married woman, by devoting herself to a man who deceives her, by refusing herself to all others (or by committing adultery very rarely, which comes to the same thing), by giving birth to children who deform her before they see the light and monopolise her when they are born,--I maintain that by living thus a woman destroys her life without merit, and that on her wedding-day a young girl concludes a dupe's bargain."

"She acts in fancied obedience to a duty," said Naukrates without conviction.

"A duty? and to whom? Is she not free to settle a question which concerns n.o.body but herself? She is a woman, and in virtue of her s.e.x is generally insensible to the pleasures of the intellect; and not content with remaining a stranger to one half of human joys, she excludes herself, by her marriage, from the other aspect of pleasure. Thus a young girl can say to herself, at the age when she is all pa.s.sion: 'I shall know my husband, and in addition, ten lovers, perhaps twelve', and believe that she will die without having regretted anything? Three thousand women will not be enough for me on the day I take my leave of life."

"You are ambitious," said Chrysis.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"But with what incense, with what golden poesy," exclaimed the gentle Philodemos, "should we not praise to eternity the beneficent courtesans!

Thanks to them, we escape all the complicated precautions, the jealousies, the stratagems, the throbbings of the heart that accompany adultery. It is they who spare us hours of waiting in the rain, rickety ladders, secret doors, interrupted meetings, and intercepted letters and misunderstood signals. O! dear creatures, how I love you! With you there are no sieges to be undertaken: for a few little coins you give us what another would hardly be capable of granting us as a condescension, after three weeks of coldness. 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 pa.s.sions. 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. There is no love under heaven so pure that you cannot feign it, nor so revolting that you dare not propose it. You are tender to the disreputable, consolatory to the afflicted, hospitable to all, and beautiful! That is why I tell you, Chrysis, Bacchis, Seso, Faustina, that it is a just law of the G.o.ds which decrees that courtesans shall be the eternal desire of lovers and the eternal envy of virtuous spouses."

The dancing-girls had ceased dancing.

A young girl-acrobat had just entered, who juggled with daggers and walked on her hands between the upright blades.

As the attention of the guest was entirely absorbed by the la.s.sie's dangerous sport, Timon looked at Chrysis, and gradually, without being seen, manoevered so that he lay behind her at full length and touched her with his feet and mouth.

"No," said Chrysis in a low voice, "no, my friend."

But he had slipped his arm around her through the large slit in her robe and was carefully caressing the reclining courtesan's delicate, burning skin.

"Wait," she implored. "We shall be seen. Bacchis will be angry."

[Ill.u.s.tration: She let herself slip down from the bed.]