She went on her way towards the sky.
Slowly, with bended head, moving with infinite grace and majesty, she mounted the outer staircase which wound around the high vermilion tower like a spiral. Her veil flickered like a flame. The rosy sunset reddened the pearl necklace like a river of rubies.
She mounted, and in this glory, her gleaming skin took on all the magnificence of flesh, blood, fire, blue carmine, velvety red, bright pink, and revolving upwards with the great purple walls, she went on her way towards the sky.
BOOK V
I
THE SUPREME NIGHT
“You are loved of the gods,” said the old gaoler. “If I, a poor slave, had committed the hundredth part of your crimes, I should have been bound upon the rack, hung up by the feet, lashed with thongs, burnt with pincers. They would have poured vinegar into my nostrils, overwhelmed and crushed me with bricks, and if I had died under the agony, my body would already be food for the jackals of the burning plains. But you who have stolen, assassinated, profaned, you may expect nothing more than the gentle hemlock, and in the meanwhile you enjoy a good room. May Zeus blast me with his thunderbolt if I can tell why! You probably know somebody at the palace.”
“Give me figs,” said Chrysis; “my mouth is dry.”
The old slave brought her a dozen ripe figs in a green basket.
Chrysis was left alone.
She sat down and got up again, she walked round the room, she struck the walls with the palms of her hands without thinking of anything whatever. She let down her hair to cool it, and then put it up again almost immediately.