They passed the houses of the square, between green piles, vegetables, lotus roots, smooth beans, baskets of olives. Chrysis took a handful of mulberries out of a violet heap, and ate them without stopping. Finally, they arrived before a low door and the sailors entered with her for whom had been stolen the True Pearls of Anadyomene.
There was an immense hall there. Five hundred men of the people sat waiting for the day, drinking cups of yellow beer, eating figs, lentils, sesame cakes, olyra bread. In their midst, swarmed a herd of yelping women, a whole field of black hair and multicoloured flowers in an atmosphere of fire. They were poor homeless girls who were the property of all. They came there to beg for scraps, bare-footed, bare-breasted, with a scanty red or blue rag tied round their bellies, carrying, for the most part, a tattered infant on their left arm. There were also dancing-girls, six Egyptians on a dais, with an orchestra of three musicians, the first two of whom smote ox-hide timbrels with drum-sticks, whilst the third wielded a great sistrum of sonorous brass.
“Oh! myxaira sweets!” said Chrysis gleefully.
And she bought two sous’ worth of the little girl who hawked them.
But suddenly she swooned, overcome by the insupportable stink of this den, and the sailors carried her out in their arms.
The fresh air brought her round a little.
“Where are we going to?” she implored. “Let us be quick: I can walk no more. You see that I don’t resist, I am nice to you. But let us find a bed as soon as possible, otherwise I shall drop down in the street.”
IV
THE ORGIE AT BACCHIS’S
When she once more found herself at Bacchis’s door, she was penetrated by the delicious sensation produced by the respite from desire and the silence of the flesh. Her forehead no longer ached. Her mouth no longer twitched. She felt nothing but an intermittent pain which seized her from time to time in the small of the back. She mounted the steps and crossed the threshold.
As soon as Chrysis had left the room the orgie had developed like a flame.