Egypt -- History -- 30 B.C.-640 A.D. -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English; Hadrian, Emperor of Rome, 76-138 -- Fiction
It was now dark and the same light which had allowed of the sculptor's
seeing Selene's features might this evening reveal them to him also.
Full of passion and excitement, he got into the first litter he met with.
The swarthy bearers were far too slow for his longing, and more than once
he flung to them as much money as they were wont to earn in a week, to
urge them to a brisker pace. At last he reached his destination; but
seeing that several men and women robed in white, were going into the
garden, he desired the bearers to carry him farther. Close to a dark
narrow lane which bounded the widow's garden-plot on the east and led
directly to the sea, he desired them to stop, got out of the litter and
bid the slaves wait for him. At the garden door he still found two men
dressed in white, and one of the cynic philosophers who had sat by him on
the bench near the Paneum. He paced impatiently up and clown, waiting
till these people should have disappeared, and thus passing again and
again under the light of the torches that were stuck up by the gate.
The dry cynic's prominent eyes were everywhere at once, and as soon as he
perceived the peripatetic Bithynian he flung up his arm, exclaiming, as
he pointed to him with a long, lean, stiff forefinger--half to the
Christians with whom he had been talking and half to the lad himself:
"What does he want. That fop! that over-dressed minion! I know the
fellow; with his smooth face and the silver quiver on his shoulder he
believes he is Eros in person. Be off with you, you house-rat. The
women and girls in here know how to protect themselves against the sort
who parade the streets in rose-colored draperies. Take yourself off, or
you will make acquaintance with the noble Paulina's slaves and clogs.
Hi! gate-keeper, here! keep an eye on this fellow."
Antinous made no answer, but slowly went back to his litter.
"To-morrow perhaps, if I cannot manage it tonight," he thought to himself
as be went; and he never thought of any other means of attaining his end,
much as he longed for it. A hindrance that came in his way ceased to be
a hindrance as soon as he had left it behind him, and after this
reflection he acted on this occasion as on many former ones. The litter
was no longer standing where he had left it; the bearers had carried it
into the lane leading to the sea, for the only little abode which stood
on the eastern side of it belonged to a fisherman whose wife sold thin
potations of Pelusium beer.
Antinous went down the green alley overarched with boughs of fig, to call
the negroes who were sitting in the dull light of a smoky oil-lamp. Here
it was dark, but at the end of the alley the sea shone and sparkled in
the moonlight; the splashing of the waves tempted him onwards and he
loitered clown to the stone-bound shore. There he spied a boat dancing
on the water between two piles and it came into his head that it might be
possible to see the house where Selene was sleeping, from the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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