"Hadn't we better tell the king?"
"Heaven forbid! If he learns it, all is lost, he will not believe a word of it. We must catch the scoundrel red-handed.... Ah, there he is!"
Merira came in. Tuta almost fainted.
"Here he is, at last!" said the king, getting up to greet Merira.
He made him sit down next to the queen and began asking him about his health. Merira answered calmly, almost jokingly. But when a Nubian brought him a cup of perfume he sent her away with a grimace of disgust.
The little girls who sang and played the lute, the tambourine, the flute and the cithern sat down in a circle on the floor. Miruit, Pentaur's pupil whom Dio had brought with her from Thebes, stood in the middle. Her dark amber-coloured body could be seen through the flowing folds of the transparent dress. Her face, ugly, charming and dangerous, like the head of a snake, seemed tiny under the mass of the dull black hair powdered with blue.
The girls played and sang:
"Sweet one, you are sweet for love
Fairer than any woman,
Fairer than any girl,
Your hair is blacker than abed berries,
Your teeth are whiter than sunny flint.
Your lips are the bud of a flower,
Your arms are slender branches.
Two flowering crowns,
Your breasts are hardly formed,
Your nipples smell of myrrh."
Miruit was dancing the dance de venire. The upper part of the body remained motionless and the lower moved rapidly, although she stood on the same spot. Her head was thrown back, her lips open, her eyes dark and fixed, and the slender waist moved like a serpent's tongue; the belly rose and fell, the narrow, childish hips moved slower and slower as though prolonging the last tremours of passion. If she had really done before everyone the things her dance pictured, it would not have been so innocently shameless.
The women looked down, the men smiled, beating measure with their hands and the girls sang: