Melitta fled without looking where she went.

Twenty paces farther on, she burst out laughing, as she caught sight of a ridiculous couple hidden between two bushes. That sufficed to change the current of her young thoughts.

She took the longest road before returning to her hut, and then decided not to go home at all. It was a magnificent, warm, moonlight night. The gardens were full of many voices and songs. Satisfied with what she had earned through the visit of Demetrios, she was seized with a sudden fancy to play the part of a vagrant girl of roads and ditches, in the depths of the wood, with pauper pa.s.sers-by. In this way, she was enjoyed twice or three against a tree, a stone pillar, or on a bench, and found amus.e.m.e.nt as if the game was new, because the scene kept changing. A soldier, standing in the middle of a pathway, lifted her bodily up in his robust arms and identified himself with the G.o.d of the Gardens who joins himself to the wenches who tend the rose-trees without needing to let the hussies feet touch the ground. At this, Melitta uttered a cry of triumph.

Escaping again, she continued her flight through an avenue of palms, where she met a lad, named Mikyllos, seemingly lost in the forest. She offered to be his guide, but led him astray designedly, so as to keep him with her for her own purposes. Mikyllos was not long in fathoming Melitta's intentions, as well as her tiny talents and capabilities. Soon becoming companions, rather than lovers, they ran along side by side in solitude that grew more and more silent. Suddenly, they came in front of the sea.

The spot where they found themselves was far distant from the parts where the courtesans generally celebrated the rites of their religious profession. Why they chose other trysting-places in preference to this--the most admirable of all--they could not have told you. The part of the wood where the crowd gathered soon became a notorious central alley, surrounded by a network of bypaths and starry glades. On the outskirts, despite the charm or the beauty of the sites, there reigned eternal solitude where luxuriant vegetation flourished peacefully.

Thus strolling, hand in hand, Mikyllos and Melitta reached the limit of the public park, a low hedge of aloes, forming a useless dividing line between the gardens of Aphrodite and those of her High Priest.

Encouraged by the hushed solitude of this flowery wilderness, the young couple easily climbed over the irregular wall formed by the quaint twisted plants. The Mediterranean, at their feet, slowly swept the sh.o.r.e, with wavelets like the fringes of a river. The two children waded in breast-high and chased each other, laughing meanwhile, as they tried to effect difficult conjunctions in the water. They soon put an end to these sports, which failed like games insufficiently rehea.r.s.ed. Alter that, luminous and dripping wet, wriggling their frog-like legs in the moonlight, they sprang upon the dark edge of the sea.

Traces of footprints on the sand urged the boy and girl onwards. They walked, ran, and struggled, pulling each other by the hand; their black, well-defined shadows sketching bold outlines of their two figures. How far were they to go in this wise? They saw no other living things on the immense azure horizon.

"Ah! Look!" exclaimed Melitta, all of a sudden.

"What's the matter?"

"There's a woman!"

"A courtesan! Oh, the shameless thing! She has fallen asleep in the open."

"No, no!" rejoined Melitta, shaking her head. "I dare not go near her, Mikyllos. She's no courtesan."

"I should have thought she was.

"No, I say, Mikyllos, she's not one of us. It's Touni, wife of the High Priest. Look well at her. She is not asleep. Oh, I'm afraid to approach her. Her eves are wide open! Let us go away! I'm afraid--oh, so afraid!"

Mikyllos made three steps forward on tip-toe.

"You're right, Melitta. She is not sleeping, poor woman! She is dead."

"Dead?"

"There is a pin in her heart."

He stretched out his hand to draw it from her breast, but Melitta was terrified.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"No, no! Touch her not! She is sacred! Remain by her side, watch over her, protect her. I'll call for help. I'll tell the others."

She fled with all the strength of her legs into the deep shadow of the black trees.

Alone and trembling, Mikyllos wandered round the corpse of the young woman. He touched the pierced breast with his finger. Then, either scared by death, or more likely fearing to be taken for an accomplice of the murder, he suddenly took to his heels, resolved to apprise no one.

The icy nakedness of Touni remained as before, abandoned in the bright light of the moon.

A long time afterwards, the woods near where she lay became filled with murmurs which were frightful because almost imperceptible.

On all sides, between tree-trunks and bushes, a thousand courtesans, huddled together like frightened sheep, advanced slowly, their ma.s.ses quivering with a unanimous shudder.

By a movement as regular as that of the sea striking the sandy foresh.o.r.e, the front rank of this army made way for those following behind. It seemed as if n.o.body wanted to be the first to find the dead woman.

A great cry, taken up by a thousand mouths and dying away at a distance, arose to salute the poor corpse when it was perceived stretched out at the foot of a tree.

A thousand naked arms were first uplifted and then as many others.

"G.o.ddess! Not on us!" now sobbed many voices. "G.o.ddess, not on us! If thou wreakest vengeance, G.o.ddess, spare our lives!"

"To the Temple!" was the rallying-cry arising from one despairing throat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Open the gates for us!"]

"To the Temple! To the Temple!" repeated all the other women.

At this juncture, a new eddy convulsed the surging mult.i.tude. Without daring to cast another look at the dead woman, stretched out on her back on the ground, her eyes upturned and her arms thrown back, all the courtesans in one great mob, black women and white, those of the East and the West, some in sumptuous robes and others in vague nudity, scampered through the trees, rushing across glades, paths, and roads; swarming into the vast open s.p.a.ces in front of the houses, until they mounted the gigantic pink marble staircase that gleamed deeply red in the light of coming day. With their weak clenched fists, they battered the lofty bronze doors, squalling childishly:

"Open the gates for us! Open! Let us in!"

III

THE CROWD

The morning the orgie at Bacchis's came to an end an event took place at Alexandria: rain fell.

Immediately, contrarily to what usually happens in countries less African, everybody went out to welcome the shower.

The phenomenon was neither torrent-like nor stormy. Large warm drops fell from a violet cloud and traversed the air. The men looked at the sky with interest. The little children roared with laughter, and went about splashing their tiny naked feet in the surface-mud.

Then the cloud faded away in the light, the sky remained implacably pure, and a short time after midday the mud had once more turned into dust under the sun.

But this momentary shower had sufficed. It filled the town with gaiety.

The men congregated on the pavement of the Agora, and the women thronged together in groups, intermingling their shrill voices.