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

That evening Rufinus was sitting in the garden with his wife and daughter and their friend Philippus. Paula, too, was there, and from time to time she stroked Pulcheria’s silky golden hair, for the girl had seated herself at her feet, leaning her head against Paula’s knee.

The moon was full, and it was so light out of doors that they could see each other plainly, so Rufinus’ proposition that they should remain to watch an eclipse which was to take place an hour before midnight found all the more ready acceptance because the air was pleasant. The men had been discussing the expected phenomenon, lamenting that the Church should still lend itself to the superstitions of the populace by regarding it as of evil omen, and organizing a penitential procession for the occasion to implore God to avert all ill. Rufinus declared that it was blasphemy against the Almighty to interpret events happening in the course of eternal law and calculable beforehand, as a threatening sign from Him; as though man’s deserts had any connection with the courses of the sun and moon. The Bishop and all the priests of the province were to head the procession, and thus a simple natural phenomenon was forced in the minds of the people into a significance it did not possess.

“And if the little comet which my old foster father discovered last week continues to increase,” added the physician, “so that its tail spreads over a portion of the sky, the panic will reach its highest pitch; I can see already that they will behave like mad creatures.”

“But a comet really does portend war, drought, plague, and famine,” said Pulcheria, with full conviction; and Paula added:

“So I have always believed.”

“But very wrongly,” replied the leech. “There are a thousand reasons to the contrary; and it is a crime to confirm the mob in such a superstition. It fills them with grief and alarms; and, would you believe it—such anguish of mind, especially when the Nile is so low and there is more sickness than usual, gives rise to numberless forms of disease? We shall have our hands full, Rufinus.”

“I am yours to command,” replied the old man. “But at the same time, if the tailed wanderer must do some mischief, I would rather it should break folks’ arms and legs than turn their brains.”

“What a wish!” exclaimed Paula. “But you often say things—and I see things about you too—which seem to me extraordinary. Yesterday you promised....”

“To explain to you why I gather about me so many of God’s creatures who have to struggle under the burden of life as cripples, or with injured limbs.”

“Just so,” replied Paula. “Nothing can be more truly merciful than to render life bearable to such hapless beings....”

“But still, you think,” interrupted the eager old man, “that this noble motive alone would hardly account for the old oddity’s riding his hobby so hard.—Well, you are right. From my earliest youth the structure of the bones in man and beast has captivated me exceedingly; and just as collectors of horns, when once they have a complete series of every variety of stag, roe, and gazelle, set to work with fresh zeal to find deformed or monstrous growths, so I have found pleasure in studying every kind of malformation and injury in the bones of men and beasts.”

“And to remedy them,” added Philippus. “It has been his passion from childhood.

“And the passion has grown upon me since I broke my own hip bone and know what it means,” the old man went on. “With the help of my fellow-student there, from a mere dilettante I became a practised surgeon; and, what is more, I am one of those who serve Esculapius at my own expense. However, there are accessory reasons for which I have chosen such strange companions: deformed slaves are cheap and besides that, certain investigations afford me inestimable and peculiar satisfaction. But this cannot interest a young girl.”

“Indeed it does!” cried Paula. “So far as I have understood Philippus when he explains some details of natural history....”

“Stay,” laughed Rufinus, “our friend will take good care not to explain this. He regards it as folly, and all he will admit is that no surgeon or student could wish for better, more willing, or more amusing house-mates than my cripples.”

“They are grateful to you,” cried Paula.

“Grateful?” asked the old man. “That is true sometimes, no doubt; still, gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons. Now I have told you enough; for the sake of Philippus we will let the rest pass.”

“No, no,” said Paula putting up entreating hands, and Rufinus answered gaily:

“Who can refuse you anything? I will cut it short, but you must pay good heed.—Well then Man is the standard of all things. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I often hear you say so. Things you mean are only what they seem to us.”

“To us, you say, because we—you and I and the rest of us here—are sound in body and mind. And we must regard all things—being God’s handiwork—as by nature sound and normal. Thus we are justified in requiring that man, who gives the standard for them shall, first and foremost, himself be sound and normal. Can a carpenter measure straight planks properly with a crooked or sloping rod?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then you will understand how I came to ask myself: ‘Do sickly, crippled, and deformed men measure things by a different standard to that of sound men? And might it not be a useful task to investigate how their estimates differ from ours?’”

“And have your researches among your cripples led to any results?”

“To many important ones,” the old man declared; but Philippus interrupted him with a loud: “Oho!” adding that his friend was in too great a hurry to deduce laws from individual cases. Many of his observations were, no doubt, of considerable interest.... Here Rufinus broke in with some vehemence, and the discussion would have become a dispute if Paula had not intervened by requesting her zealous host to give her the results, at any rate, of his studies.

“I find,” said Rufinus very confidently, as he stroked down his long beard, “that they are not merely shrewd because their faculties are early sharpened to make up by mental qualifications for what they lack in physical advantages; they are also witty, like AEesop the fabulist and