CHAPTER XII.
It was long since Hermon had felt so free and light-hearted as duringthis voyage.
He firmly believed in his recovery.
A few days before he had escaped death in the royal palace as if by amiracle, and he owed his deliverance to the woman he loved.
In the Temple of Nemesis at Tennis the conviction that the goddess hadceased to persecute him took possession of his mind.
True, his blind eyes had been unable to see her menacing statue, but noteven the slightest thrill of horror had seized him in its presence. InAlexandria, after his departure from Proclus's banquet, she had desistedfrom pursuing him. Else how would she have permitted him to escapeuninjured when he was already standing upon the verge of an abyss, and awave of her hand would have sufficed to hurl him into the death-dealinggulf?
But his swift confession, and the transformation which followed it, hadreconciled him not only with her, but also with the other gods; for theyappeared to him in forms as radiant and friendly as in the days of hisboyhood, when, while Bias took the helm on the long voyage through thecanal and the Bitter Lakes, he recalled the visible world to his memoryand, from the rising sun, Phoebus Apollo, the lord of light andpurity, gazed at him from his golden chariot, drawn by four horses, andAphrodite, the embodiment of all beauty, rose before him from the snowyfoam of the azure waves. Demeter, in the form of Daphne, appeared,dispensing prosperity, above the swaying golden waves of the ripeninggrain fields and bestowing peace beside the domestic hearth. The wholeworld once more seemed peopled with deities, and he felt their rule inhis own breast.
The place of which Bias had told him was situated on a lofty portion ofthe shore. Beside the springs which there gushed from the soil of thedesert grew green palm trees and thorny acacias. Farther on flourishedthe fragrant betharan. About a thousand paces from this spot thefaithful freedman pitched the little tent obtained in Tennis under theshade of several tall palm trees and a sejal acacia.
Not far from the springs lived the same family of Amalekites whom Biashad known from boyhood. They raised a few vegetables in little beds, andthe men acted as guards to the caravans which came from Egypt throughthe peninsula of Sinai to Petrea and Hebron. The daughter of the agedsheik whose men accompanied the trains of goods, a pleasant, middle-agedwoman, recognised the Biamite, who when a boy had recovered under hermother's nursing, and promised Bias to honour his blind master as avalued guest of the tribe.
Not until after he had done everything in his power to render life inthe wilderness endurable, and had placed a fresh bandage over his eyes,would Bias leave his master.
The freedman entered the boat weeping, and Hermon, deeply agitated,turned his face toward him.
When he was left alone with his Egyptian slave, with whom he rarelyexchanged a word, he fancied that, amid the murmur of the waves washingthe strand at his feet, blended the sounds of the street which ledpast his house in Alexandria, and with them all sorts of disagreeablememories crowded upon him; but soon he no longer heard them, and thenext night brought refreshing sleep.
Even on the second day he felt that the profound silence whichsurrounded him was a benefit. The stillness affected him like somethingphysical.
The life was certainly monotonous, and at first there were hours whenthe course of the new existence, so devoid of any change, op pressedhim, but he experienced no tedium. His mental life was too rich, and theunburdening of his anxious soul too great a relief for that.
He had shunned serious thought since he left the philosopher's school;but here it soon afforded him the highest pleasure, for never had hismind moved so freely, so undisturbed by any limit or obstacle.
He did not need to search for what he hoped to find in the wilderness.His whole past life passed before him as if by its own volition. Allthat he had ever experienced, learned, thought, felt, rose before hismind with wonderful distinctness, and when he overlooked all his mentalpossessions, as if from a high watch-tower in the bright sunshine, hebegan to consider how he had used the details and how he could continueto do so.
Whatever he had seen incorrectly forced itself resistlessly upon him,yet here also the Greek nature, deeply implanted in his soul, guardedhim, and it was easy for him to avoid self-torturing remorse. He onlydesired to utilize for improvement what he recognised as false.
When in this delicious silence he listened to the contradictory demandsof his intellect and his senses, it often seemed as though he waspresent at a discussion between two guests who were exchanging theiropinions concerning the subject that occupied his mind.
Here he first learned to deepen sound intellectual power and listen tothe demands of the heart, or to repulse and condemn them.
Ah, yes, he was still blind; but never had he observed and recognisedhuman life and its stage, down to the minutest detail, which his eyesrefused to show him, so keenly as during these clays. The phenomenawhich had attracted or repelled his vision here appeared nearer and moredistinctly.
What he called "reality" and believed he understood thoroughly andestimated correctly, now disclosed many a secret which had previouslyremained concealed.
How defective his visual perception had been! how necessary it nowseemed to subject his judgment to a new test! Doubtless a wealth ofartistic subjects had come to him from the world of reality which he hadplaced far above everything else, but a greater and nobler one from thesphere which he had shunned as unfruitful and corrupting.
As if by magic, the world of ideality opened before him in thisexquisite silence. He again found in his own soul the joyous creativeforces of Nature, and the surrounding stillness increased tenfold hiscapacity of perceiving it; nay, he felt as if creative energy dwelt insolitude itself.
His mind had always turned toward greatness. The desire to impress hisworks with the stamp of his own overflowing power had carried him farbeyond moderation in modelling his struggling Maenads.
Now, when he sought for subjects, beside the smaller and more simpleones appeared mighty and manifold ones, often of superhuman grandeur.
Oh, if a higher power would at some future day permit him to modelwith his strong hands this battle of the Amazons, this Phoebus Apollo,radiant in beauty and the glow of victory, conquering the dragons ofdarkness!
Arachne, too, returned to his mind, and also Demeter. But she did nothover before him as the peaceful dispenser of blessings, the preserverof peace, but as the maternal earth goddess, robbed of her daughterProserpina. How varied in meaning was this myth!--and he strove tofollow it in every direction.
Nothing more could come to the blind artist from Nature by the aid ofhis physical vision. The realm of reality was closed to him; but he hadfound the key to that of the ideal, and what he found in it proved to beno less true than the objects the other had offered.
How rich in forms was the new world which forced itself unbidden on hisimagination! He who, a short time before, had believed whatever couldnot be touched by the hands was useless for his art, now had the choiceamong a hundred subjects, full of glowing life, which were attainable byno organ of the senses. He need fear to undertake none, if only it wasworthy of representation; for he was sure of his ability, and difficultydid not alarm him, but promised to lend creating for the first time itstrue charm.
And, besides, without the interest of animated conversation, withoutfestal scenes where, with garlanded head and intoxicating pleasuresoaring upward from the dust of earth, existence had seemed to himshallow and not worth the trouble it imposed upon mortals, solitude nowoffered him hours as happy as he had ever experienced while revellingwith gay companions.
At first many things had disturbed them, especially the dissatisfied,almost gloomy disposition of his Egyptian slave, who, born in the cityand accustomed to its life, found it unbearable to stay in the desertwith the strange blind master, who lived like a porter, and ordered himto prepare his wretched fare with the hands skilled in the use of thepen.
But this living disturber of the peace was not to annoy the recluselong.
Scarcely a fortnight after Bias's departure, the slave Patran, whohad cost so extravagant a sum, vanished one morning with the sculptor'smoney and silver cup.
This rascally trick of a servant whom he had treated with almostbrotherly kindness wounded Hermon, but he soon regarded the morosefellow's disappearance as a benefit.
When for the first time he drank water from an earthen jug, instead ofa silver goblet, he thought of Diogenes, who cast his cup aside when hesaw a boy raise water to his lips in his hand, yet with whom the greatMacedonian conqueror of the world would have changed places "if he hadnot been Alexander."
The active, merry son of Bias's Amalekite friend gladly rendered himthe help and guidance for which he had been reluctant to ask hisill-tempered slave, and he soon became accustomed to the simple fare ofthe nomads. Bread and milk, fruits and vegetables from his neighbour'slittle garden, satisfied him, and when the wine he had drunk was used,he contented himself, obedient to old Tabus's advice, with pure water.
As he still had several gold coins on his person, and wore two costlyrings on his finger, he doubtless thought of sending to Clysma for meat,poultry, and wine, but he had refrained from doing so through the adviceof the Amalekite woman, who anointed his eyes with Tabus's salve andprotected them by a shade of fresh leaves from the dazzling rays ofthe desert sun. She, like the sorceress on the Owl's Nest, warned himagainst all viands that inflamed the blood, and he willingly allowed herto take away what she and her gray-haired father, the experienced headof the tribe, pronounced detrimental to his recovery.
At first the "beggar's fare" seemed repulsive, but he soon felt that itwas benefiting him after the riotous life of the last few months.
One day, when the Amalekite took off his bandage, he thought he sawa faint glimmer of light, and how his heart exulted at this faintforetaste of the pleasure of sight!
In an instant hope sprang up with fresh power in his excitable soul,and his lost cheerfulness returned to him like a butterfly to the newlyopened flower. The image of his beloved Daphne rose before him in sunnyradiance, and he saw himself in his studio in the service of his art.
He had always been fond of children, and the little ones in theAmalekite family quickly discovered this, and crowded around their blindfriend, who played all sorts of games with them, and in spite of thebandaged eyes, over which spread a broad shade of green leaves, couldmake whistles with his skilful artist hands from the reeds and willowbranches they brought.
He saw before him the object to which his heart still clung asdistinctly as if he need only stretch out his hand to draw it nearer,and perhaps--surely and certainly, the Amalekite said--the time wouldcome when he would behold it also with his bodily eyes.
If the longing should be fulfilled! If his eyes were again permittedto convey to him what formerly filled his soul with delight! Yes,beauty--was entitled to a higher place than truth, and if it againunfolded itself to his gaze, how gladly and gratefully he would payhomage to it with his art!
The hope that he might enjoy it once more now grew stronger, for theglimmer of light became brighter, and one day, when his skilful nurseagain took the bandage from his milk-white pupils, he saw something longappear, as if through, a mist. It was only the thorny acacia tree athis tent; but the sight of the most beautiful of beautiful things neverfilled him with more joyful gratitude.
Then he ordered the less valuable of his two rings to be sold to offer asacrifice to health-bestowing Isis, who had a little temple in Clysma.
How fervently he now prayed also to the great Apollo, the foe ofdarkness and the lord of everything light and pure! How yearningly hebesought Aphrodite to bless him again with the enjoyment of eternalbeauty, and Eros to heal the wound which his arrow had inflicted uponhis heart and Daphne's, and bring them together after so much distressand need!
When, after the lapse of another week, the bandage was again removed,his inmost soul rejoiced, for his eyes showed him the ripplingemerald-green surface of the Red Sea, and the outlines of the palms, thetents, the Amalekite woman, her boy, and her two long-eared goats.
How ardently he thanked the gracious deities who, in spite of Straton'sprecepts, were no mere figments of human imagination and, as if hehad become a child again, poured forth his overflowing heart with mutegratitude to his mother's soul!
The artist nature, yearning to create, began to stir within moreceaselessly than ever before. Already he saw clay and wax assuming formsbeneath his skilful hands; already he imagined himself, with fresh powerand delight, cutting majestic figures from blocks of marble, or, byhammering, carving, and filing, shaping them from gold and ivory.
And he would not take what he intended to create solely from the worldof reality perceptible to the senses. Oh, no! He desired to show throughhis art the loftiest of ideals. How could he still shrink from using theliberty which he had formerly rejected, the liberty of drawing from hisown inner consciousness what he needed in order to bestow upon the idealimages he longed to create the grandeur, strength, and sublimity inwhich he beheld them rise before his purified soul!
Yet, with all this, he must remain faithful to truth, copy from Naturewhat he desired to represent. Every finger, every lock of hair, mustcorrespond with reality to the minutest detail, and yet the whole mustbe pervaded and penetrated, as the blood flows through the body, by thethought that filled his mind and soul.
A reflected image of the ideal and of his own mood, faithful to truth,free, and yet obedient to the demands of moderation--in this sentenceHermon summed up the result of his solitary meditations upon art andworks of art. Since he had found the gods again, he perceived that theMuse had confided to him a sacerdotal office. He intended to perform itsduties, and not only attract and please the beholder's eyes through hisworks, but elevate his heart and mind, as beauty, truth, grandeur, andeternity uplifted his own soul. He recognised in the tireless creativepower which keeps Nature ever new, fresh, and bewitching, the presenceof the same deity whose rule manifested itself in the life of his ownsoul.
So long as he denied its existence, he had recognised no being morepowerful than himself; now that he again felt insignificant beside it,he knew himself to be stronger than ever before, that the greatestof all powers had become his ally. Now it was difficult for him tounderstand how he could have turned away from the deity. As an artisthe, too, was a creator, and, while he believed those who consideredthe universe had come into existence of itself, instead of having beencreated, he had robbed himself of the most sublime model. Besides, thegreatest charm of his noble profession was lost to him. Now he knew it,and was striving toward the goal attainable by the artist alone amongmortals--to hold intercourse with the deity, and by creations full ofits essence elevate the world to its grandeur and beauty.
One day, at the end of the second month of his stay in the desert,when the Amalekite woman removed the bandage, her boy, whose form hedistinguished as if through a veil, suddenly exclaimed: "The white coveron your eyes is melting! They are beginning to sparkle a little, andsoon they will be perfectly well, and you can carve the lion's head onmy cane."
Perhaps the artist might really have succeeded in doing so, but heforbade himself the attempt.
He thought that the time for departure had now arrived, and anirresistible longing urged him back to the world and Daphne.
But he could not resist the entreaties of the old sheik and his daughternot to risk what he had gained, so he continued to use the shade ofleaves, and allowed himself to be persuaded to defer his departure untilthe dimness which still prevented his seeing anything distinctly passedaway.
True, the beautiful peace which he had enjoyed of late was over and,besides, anxiety for the dear ones in distant lands was constantlyincreasing. He had had no news of them for a long time, and when heimagined what fate might have overtaken Archias, and his daughter withhim, if he had been carried back to the enraged King in Alexandria, aterrible dread took possession of him, which scattered even joy inhis wonderful recovery to the four winds, and finally led him to
theresolution to return to the world at any risk and devote himself tothose whose fate was nearer to his heart than his own weal and woe.