By degrees his excitement calmed down; still, when the chamberlain made his appearance, he was so vigorous and eager, that Parthenius allowed himself to make a somewhat broad allusion to the evening’s adventure.
“You are a precious witty fellow!” laughed the Emperor. “But I feel myself that you have, in jest, hit the truth. Up then to deeds of glory! I only hope that Isis, the celestial Egyptian, may be content with her new brother.”
CHAPTER IV.
Cornelia, meanwhile, awaited this evening with feverish anxiety. The red-gold shafts of light, thrown by the setting sun on the eastern wall of the peristyle, had never lingered there so long as they mounted to the top. And when at last—at last they had disappeared, how slowly the darkness fell! How long it was before the night-sky had decked itself in its glory of stars.
She gazed eagerly into the blue depths, seeking the constellation of Cassiopeia.[42] From that spot the god, veiled in invisible clouds, was to float eastwards through the air. The stars seem to twinkle and smile at her, as though they were conscious of the favor the immortals were about to grant her. To-night! to-night at two hours before midnight—what an unfathomable mystery. So potent were the prayers of Barbillus, the initiated minister of the gods, Osiris himself, the incomprehensible, had vouchsafed to meet a mortal woman, to appear in all the glory of his divine majesty, splendid and radiant as he once stood, risen from the dead, when the man-headed bird, Amun, had restored him to life. His face, to be sure, must remain hidden from a creature of earthly birth—that divine face of the sun, before whose fires a mortal would melt away as Semele,[43] in the Greek legend, had died in the arms of Zeus. Isis, the all-merciful mother, had made her brother swear never to appear on earth, without hiding the flaming glory of his countenance behind a hawk’s head, which the people believed to be the real head of that inscrutable divinity, but which the initiated knew to be a benevolent mask.
Cornelia sighed—a sigh of longing ecstasy. Her reason was altogether lulled to sleep. A passionate desire for release from all earthly burdens, a vague but fervent craving for some spiritual rapture wholly possessed her lofty and ardent soul. Barbillus might well congratulate himself; the success of his fantastic arts was beyond all he could have expected.
It grew darker and darker.—“Go to bed, Cornelia,” said her uncle, rising from his seat. “It is late. Come and kiss me, child! I feel strangely this evening, sad at heart! Generally, when I see folly prevailing over truth, it makes me angry, the blood boils in my veins. But to-day it all makes me melancholy; I feel something like pity for the myriad-bodied sufferer we call humanity. Enslaved to all that is base, mean, and common—that is its eternal and pitiable fate!... Sleep well, Cornelia; I am weary of these struggles, weary with this day’s work, weary with the weight of long years.”
He clasped the girl in his arms, and kissed her forehead; then he retired to his own room. What was that light-colored object in front of the iron lamp! A note! Again, at this late hour! It was strange.
“Charicles!” he called into the anteroom. The slave appeared.