Egypt -- History -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English
"My faithful friend, you who call me your son, whom I am glad to hear
speak to me as 'boy,' and 'child,' who have taken the place of the father
I lost so young--there is but one issue: I must leave you and this city--
flee from her neighborhood--seek a new home far from her with whom I
could have been as happy as the Saints in bliss, and who has made me more
wretched than the damned in everlasting fire. Away, away! I will go--I
must go unless you, who can do so much, can teach me to kill this passion
or to transmute it into calm, brotherly regard."
He stood still, close in front of the old man and hid his face in his
hands. At his favorite's concluding words, Horapollo had started to his
feet with all the vigor of youth; he now snatched his hand down from his
face, and exclaimed in a voice hoarse with indignation and the deepest
concern:
"And you can say that in earnest? Can a sensible man like you have sunk
so deep in folly? Is it not enough that your own peace of mind should
have been sacrificed, flung at the feet of this--what can I call her?--
Do you understand at last why I warned you against the Patrician brood?
--The faith, gratitude, and love of a good man!--What does she care for
them? Unhook the whiting; away with him in the dust! Here comes a fine
large fish who perhaps may swallow the bait!--Do you want to ruin, for
her sake, and the sake of that rascally son of the governor, the comfort
and happiness of an old man's last years when he has become accustomed to
love you, who so well deserve it, as his own son? Will you--an energetic
student, you--a man of powerful intellect, zealous in your duty, and in
favor with the gods--will you pine like a deserted maiden or spring from
the Leucadian rock like love-sick Sappho in the play while the spectators
shake with laughter? You must stay, Boy, you must stay; and I will show
you how a man must deal with a passion that dishonors him."
"Show me," replied Philippus in a dull voice. "I ask no more. Do you
suppose that I am not myself ashamed of my own weakness? It ill beseems
me of all men, formed by fate for anything rather than to be a sighing
and rapturous lover. I will struggle with it, wrestle with it with all
the strength that is in me; but here, in Memphis, close to her and as her
Kyrios, I should be forced every day to see her, and day after day be
exposed to fresh and humiliating defeat! Here, constantly near her and
with her, the struggle must wear me out--I should perish, body and soul.
The same place, the same city, cannot hold her and me."
"Then she must make way for you," croaked Horus. Philippus raised his
bowed head and asked, in some surprise and with stern reproof:
"What do you mean by that?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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