And it was there, in a little white house with a terrace and tapering columns, that they left her two months afterwards, with her bronze mirror, carpets, new cushions, and a beautiful Hindoo slave who was learned in the dressing of courtesans’ hair. Others came on the evening of their departure, and others on the morrow.
As she lived at the extreme east of the town, a quarter disdained by the young Greeks of Brouchion, she was long before she made the acquaintance of aught but travellers and merchants, like her mother. Yet she inspired interminable passions. Caravan-masters were known to sell their merchandise dirt cheap in order to stay with her, and ruin themselves in a few nights. With these men’s fortune she bought jewels, bed-cushions, rare perfumes, flowered robes, and four slaves.
She gained a knowledge of many foreign languages, and knew the tales of all countries. Assyrians told her the loves of Douzi and Ishtar; Phœnicians those of Ashtaroth and Adonis. Greek harlots from the isles told her the legend of Iphis, and taught her strange caresses which surprised her at first, but afterwards enchanted her so much that she could not do without them for a whole day. She also knew the loves of Atalanta, and how, like her, flute-girls, while yet virgins, may tire out the strongest men. Finally, her Hindoo slave had taught her patiently, during seven years, the minutest details of the complex and voluptuous art of the courtesans of Palibothra.
For love is an art, like music. It gives emotions of the same order, equally delicate, equally thrilling, sometimes perhaps more intense; and Chrysis, who knew all its rhythms and all its subtilities, regarded herself, with good reason, as a greater artist than Plango herself. Yet Plango was a musician of the temple.
Seven years she lived thus, without dreaming of a life happier or more varied. But shortly before her twentieth year, when she emerged from girlhood to womanhood and saw the first charming line of nascent maturity take form under her breasts, she suddenly conceived other ambitions.
And one morning, waking up two hours after mid-day, languid with too much sleep, she turned over upon her breast, threw out her legs, leaned her cheek upon her hand, and with a long golden pin, pricked little symmetrical holes upon her pillow of green linen.
Her reflexions were profound.
First it was four little pricks which made a square, with a prick in the centre. Then four other pricks to make a bigger square. Then she tried to make a circle. But it was a little difficult. Then, she pricked away aimlessly and began to call:
“Djala! Djala!”
Djala was her Hindoo slave, and was called Djalantachtchandratchapala, which means: “Mobile as the image of the moon upon the water.” Chrysis was too lazy to say the whole name.