One of Cleopatra's Nights by Théophile Gautier Read Free Book Online Page B

which
appears in it, have prompted us to these reflections, so ill-sounding,
doubtless, to modern ears. But the spectacle of the antique world is
something so crushingly discouraging, even to those imaginations which
deem themselves exhaustless, and those minds which fancy themselves to
have conceived the utmost limits of fairy magnificence, that we cannot
here forbear recording our regret and lamentation that we were not
cotemporaries of Sardanapalus; of Teglathphalazar; of Cleopatra, queen
of Egypt; or even of Elagabalus, emperor of Rome and priest of the Sun.
    It is our task to describe a supreme orgie—a banquet compared with
which the splendors of Belshazzar's feast must pale—one of Cleopatra's
nights. How can we picture forth in this French tongue, so chaste, so
icily prudish, that unbounded transport of passions, that huge and
mighty debauch which feared not to mingle the double purple of wine and
blood, those furious outbursts of insatiate pleasure, madly leaping
toward the Impossible with all the wild ardor of senses as yet untamed
by the long fast of Christianity?
    The promised night should well have been a splendid one, for all the
joys and pleasures possible in a human lifetime were to be concentrated
into the space of a few hours. It was necessary that the life of
Meïamoun should be converted into a powerful elixir which he could
imbibe at a single draught. Cleopatra desired to dazzle her voluntary
victim, and plunge him into a whirlpool of dizzy pleasures; to
intoxicate and madden him with the wine of orgie, so that death, though
freely accepted, might come invisibly and unawares.
    Let us transport our readers to the banquet-hall.
    Our existing architecture offers few points for comparison with those
vast edifices whose very ruins resemble the crumblings of mountains
rather than the remains of buildings. It needed all the exaggeration of
the antique life to animate and fill those prodigious palaces, whose
halls were too lofty and vast to allow of any ceiling save the sky
itself—a magnificent ceiling, and well worthy of such mighty
architecture.
    The banquet-hall was of enormous and Babylonian dimensions; the eye
could not penetrate its immeasurable depth. Monstrous columns—short,
thick, and solid enough to sustain the pole itself—heavily expanded
their broad-swelling shafts upon socles variegated with hieroglyphics,
and sustained upon their bulging capitals gigantic arcades of granite
rising by successive tiers, like vast stairways reversed. Between each
two pillars a colossal sphinx of basalt, crowned with the
pshent
, bent
forward her oblique-eyed face and horned chin, and gazed into the hall
with a fixed and mysterious look. The columns of the second tier,
receding from the first, were more elegantly formed, and crowned in lieu
of capitals with four female heads addorsed, wearing caps of many folds
and all the intricacies of the Egyptian headdress. Instead of sphinxes,
bull-headed idols—impassive spectators of nocturnal frenzy and the
furies of orgie—were seated upon thrones of stone, like patient hosts
awaiting the opening of the banquet.
    A third story, constructed in a yet different style of architecture,
with elephants of bronze spouting perfume from their trunks, crowned the
edifice; above, the sky yawned like a blue gulf, and the curious stars
leaned over the frieze.
[4]
    Prodigious stairways of porphyry, so highly polished that they reflected
the human body like a mirror, ascended and descended on every hand, and
bound together these huge masses of architecture.
    We can only make a very rapid sketch here, in order to convey some idea
of this awful structure, proportioned out of all human measurements. It
would require the pencil of Martin,
[5]
the great painter of enormities
passed away, and we can present only a weak pen-picture in lieu of the
Apocalyptic depth of his gloomy style; but imagination may supply our
deficiencies. Less fortunate than the painter and the musician, we can
only