The Bride of the Nile — Complete by Georg Ebers (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📖

a skirmish between the Moslems and the deliverers of the nuns, which had cost the lives of several combatants on both sides.

And Paula! If only he could have seen her happy—But she was pale; and that which robbed the young girl—healthy as she was in mind and body—of her proud, frank, independent bearing was not the heat, which tormented all creation, but a secret, devouring sorrow; and this sorrow was the work of one alone—of him on whom she had set her heart, and who made, ah! what a return, for the royal gift of her love.

Philippus had frequent business at the governor’s residence, and a fortnight since he had plainly perceived what it was that had brought Neforis into this strange state. She was taking the opium that her husband had had, taking it in excessive quantities; and she could easily procure more through some other physician. However, her piteous prayer that Philippus would not abandon her to her fate had prevailed to induce him to continue to see her, in the hope of possibly restricting her use of the drug.

The senator’s wife, Martina, also required his visits to the palace. She was not actually ill, but she suffered cruelly from the heat, and she had always been wont to see her worthy old house-physician every day, to hear all the latest gossip, and complain of her little ailments when anything went wrong with her usually sound health. Philippus was indeed too much overburdened to chatter, but his professional advice was good and helped her to endure the fires of this pitiless sky. She liked this incisive, shrewd, plain-spoken man—often indeed sharp and abrupt in his freedom—and he appreciated her bright, natural ways. Now and then Martina even succeeded in winning a smile from “Hermes Trismegistus,” who was “generally as solemn as though there was no such thing on earth as a jest,” and in spurring him to a rejoinder which showed that this dolorous being had a particularly keen and ready wit.

Heliodora attracted him but little. There was, to be sure, an unmistakable likeness in her “imploring eyes” to those of Pulcheria; but the girl’s spoke fervent yearning for the grace and love of God, while the widow’s expressed an eager desire for the admiration of the men she preferred. She was a graceful creature beyond all question, but such softness, which never even attempted to assert a purpose or an opinion, did not commend itself to his determined nature; it annoyed him, when he had contradicted her, to hear her repeat his last statement and take his side, as if she were ashamed of her own silliness. Her society, indeed, did not seem to satisfy the clever older woman, who at home, was accustomed to a succession of visitors, and to whom the word “evening” was synonymous with lively conversation and a large gathering. She spoke of the leech’s visits as the oasis in the Egyptian desert, and little Katharina even she regarded as a Godsend.

The water-wagtail was her daily visitant, and the girl’s gay and often spiteful gossip helped to beguile her during this terrific heat. Katharina’s mother made no difficulties; for Heliodora had gone to see her in all her magnificence, and had offered her and her daughter hospitality, some day, at Constantinople. They were very likely going thither; at any rate they would not remain in Memphis, and then it would be a piece of good fortune to be introduced to the society of the capital by such people as their new acquaintances.

Martina thus heard a great deal about Paula; and though it was all adverse and colored to her prejudice she would have liked to see the daughter of the great and famous Thomas whom she had known; besides, after all she had heard, she could fear nothing from Paula for her niece: uncommonly handsome, but haughty, repellent, unamiable, and—like Heliodora herself—of the orthodox sect.—What could tempt “great Sesostris” to give her the preference?

Katharina herself proposed to Martina to make them acquainted; but nothing would have induced Dame Martina to go out of her rooms, protected to the utmost from the torrid sunshine, so she left it to Heliodora to pay the visit and give her a report of the hero’s daughter. Heliodora had devoted herself heart and soul to the little heiress, and humored her on many points.

This was carried out. Katharina actually had the audacity to bring the rivals together, even after she had reported to each all she knew of Orion’s position with regard to the other. It was exquisite sport; still, in one respect it did not fulfil her intentions, for Paula gave no sign of suffering the agonies of jealousy which Katharina had hoped to excite in her. Heliodora, on the other hand, came home depressed and uneasy; Paula had received her coldly and with polite formality, and the young widow had remained fully aware that so remarkable a woman might well cast her own image in Orion’s heart into the shade, or supplant it altogether.

Like a wounded man who, in spite of the anguish, cannot resist touching the wound to assure himself of its state, Heliodora went constantly to see Katharina in order to watch her rival from the garden or to be taken to call on her, though she was always very coldly received.

At first Katharina had pitied the young woman whose superior in intelligence she knew herself to be; but a certain incident had extinguished this feeling; she now simply hated her, and pricked her with needle-thrusts whenever she had a chance. Paula seemed invulnerable; but there was not a pang which Katharina would not gladly have given her to whom she owed the deepest humiliation her young life had ever known. How was it that Paula failed to regard Heliodora as a rival? She had reflected that, if Orion had really returned the widow’s passion, he could not have borne so long a separation. It was on purpose to avoid Heliodora, and to remain faithful to what he was and must always be to Paula, that he had gone with the senator, far from Memphis. Heliodora—her instinct assured her—was the poor, forsaken woman with whom he had trifled at Byzantium, and for whom he had committed that fatal theft of the emerald. If Fate would but bring him home to her, and if she then yielded all he asked—all her own soul urged her to grant, then she would be the sole mistress and queen of his heart—she must be, she was sure of it! And though, even as she thought of it, she bowed her head in care, it was not from fear of losing him; it was only her anxiety about her father, her good old friend, Rufinus, and his family, whom she had made so entirely her own.

This was the state of affairs this morning, when to his old friend’s vexation, Philippus had so hastily and silently drunk off his after-breakfast draught; just as he set down the cup, the black door-keeper announced that a hump-backed man wished to see his master at once on important business.

“Important business!” repeated the leech. “Give me four more legs in addition to my own two, or a machine to make time longer than it is, and then I will take new patients-otherwise no! Tell the fellow....”

“No, not sick....” interrupted the negro. “Come long way. Gardener to Greek man Rufinus.”

Philippus started: he could guess what this messenger had to say, and his heart sank with dread as he desired that he might be shown in.

A glance at Gibbus told him what he had rightly feared. The poor fellow was hardly recognizable. He was coated with dust from head to foot, and this made him look like a grey-haired old man; his sandals hung to his