Part 15 (1/2)

_Apollonius_--”I will first describe to you the long road I travelled to gain doctrine; and, if you find in all my life one bad action, you will stop me--for he must scandalise by his words who has offended by his actions.”

_Damis_ to Antony:

”What a just man! eh?”

_Antony_--”Decidedly, I believe he is sincere.”

_Apollonius_--”The night of my birth, my mother thought she saw herself gathering flowers on the border of a lake. A flash of lightning appeared; and she brought me into the world amid the cries of swans who were singing in her dream. Up to my fifteenth year, they plunged me three times a day into the fountain Asbadeus, whose waters render perjurers dropsical; and they rubbed my body with leaves of cnyza, to make me chaste. A princess from Palmyra sought me out, one evening, and offered me treasures, which she knew were hidden in tombs. A priest of the temple of Diana cut his throat in despair with the sacrificial knife; and the Governor of Cilicia, after repeated promises, declared before my family that he would put me to death; but it was he who died three days after, a.s.sa.s.sinated by the Romans.”

_Damis_, to Antony, striking him on the elbow--”Eh? Just as I told you!

What a man!”

_Apollonius_--”I have for four years in succession observed the complete silence of the Pythagoreans. The most unforeseen calamity did not draw one sigh from me; and, at the theatre, when I entered, they turned aside from me as from a phantom.”

_Damis_--”Would you have done that--you?”

_Apollonius_--”The time of my ordeal ended, I undertook to instruct the priests who had lost the tradition.”

_Antony_--”What tradition?”

_Damis_--”Let him continue. Be silent!”

_Apollonius_--”I have conversed with the Samaneans of the Ganges, with the astrologers of Chaldea, with the magi of Babylon, with the Gaulish druids, with the priests of the negroes. I have climbed the fourteen Olympi; I have sounded the Lakes of Sythia; I have measured the vastness of the desert!”

_Damis_--”All this is undoubtedly true. I was there myself!”

_Apollonius_--”At first, I went as far as the Hyrcanian Sea. I have gone all round it, and through the country of the Baraomatae, where Bucephalus is buried. I have gone down to Nineveh. At the gates of the city a man came up to me.”

_Damis_--”I! I! my good Master! I loved you from the very beginning. You were sweeter than a girl, and more beautiful than a G.o.d!”

_Appollonius_, without listening to him--”He wished to accompany me, in order to act as an interpreter for me.”

_Damis_--”But you replied that you understood every language, and that you divined all thoughts. Then I kissed the end of your mantle, and I walked behind you.”

_Apollonius_--”After Ctesiphon, we entered into the land of Babylon.”

_Damis_--”And the satrap uttered an exclamation on seeing a man so pale.”

_Antony_, to himself--”Which signifies----?”

_Apollonius_--”The King received me standing near a throne of silver, in a circular hall studded with stars, and from a cupola hung, from unseen threads, four great golden birds, with both wings extended.”

_Antony_, musing--”Are there such things on the earth?”

_Damis_--”That is, indeed, a city--Babylon! Everyone is rich there! The houses, painted blue, have gates of bronze, with staircases that lead down to the river.”

Making a sketch with his stick on the ground:

”Like that, do you see? And then there are temples, squares, baths, aqueducts! The palaces are covered with copper! and then the interior, if you only saw it!”

_Apollonius_--”On the northern wall rises a tower, which supports a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth; and there are three others besides!