The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5

e deep grief of Amense, Hont-Reché, and Twea, his favourites, who had endeavoured to retain him in the Summer Palace by all the resources of feminine coquetry, he now inhabited the N

to be angry with them for having loved them, and to be unable to understand how he could have been smitten by such vulgar charms. When Twea touched his breast with the slender, pink finger of her little hand, shaking with emotion, as if to recall the remembrance of former familiarities; when Hont-Reché placed before him the draught-board supported by two lions back to back, in order to play a game; when Amen

ke a gesture, he walked feverishly up and down through the vast halls. Strange was it to see that tall Pharaoh with imposing mien, as formidable as the granite colossi, his like, making the stone floors resound under his curved sandals. When he passed, the t

his war chariots overthrown and broken, if he had escaped alone from the rout under a shower of arrows, dusty, blood-covered, taking the reins from the hands of his driver dead by his side,-he certainly could not have appeared more gloomy and more desperate. After all, the land of Egypt produces soldiers in abundance; innumerable horses neigh and paw the ground in the palace stables; and workmen could soon bend wood, melt copper, shar

igures of gods, of kings, and of symbolic beings painted on the walls seemed to fix upon him their great eyes, drawn in black upon their profile masks, the ur?us snakes to twist and swell their hoods, the bird-faced divinities to stretch out their necks, the globes to spread over the cornices their fluttering wings of stone. A strange, fantastic life animate

h seeks the track of its prey and scents with its wrinkled nose the moving sand of the desert, the Phar

p. He dreaded the wrath of the master whose favour he had, for a moment, hoped he had gained. Would the skill he h

ther bent, Timopht stretched out h

to descend as the hawk swoops down upon the dove, will doubtless be found; and when, returned to her home, she sees your magnificent gifts, her

g. "The stick loosens the most rebellious tongue, and suffer

ced the bolts of the garden gate drawn back, that probably their mistress had gone out t

boatmen of t

eam with the first light of day; but it could not be the beautiful and rich Tahoser, w

is hand and reflected for a few moments. Poor Timopht waited in silence, fearin

g. I have a great mind to have him thrown to the crocodiles or beaten to death. But what could be her reason? A maid of high birth, the daughter of a high-pri

t to his face. The redness was followed by dreadful pallor; his eyebrows writhed like the ur?us in his diadem, his mouth was contracted,

ined its majestic, weary, placid look, and seeing t

rter, his side open, his stomach emptied, and himself ready to be plunged into a bath of pickle,-when Timopht rai

have the Nile traversed in every direction by boats; go yourself and ask those whom you meet if they have not seen such and such a woman. Violate the tombs, if she has taken refuge in the abodes of death, far within some

of tranquil grandeur which the sculptors love to give to the colossi set up at the gates of the temples and palaces, and calm

very ground. Soon the Pharaoh perceived from the top of the terrace the boats cleaving the stream under the impulse of the rowers, and his messengers scattering on the other bank through the country. The Libyan chain, with its rosy light, and its sapphire blue shadows, bounded the horizon

palms and the cultivated fields, houses and painted kiosks rose here

no doubt, Tahoser was hiding; and by some spell he

ight fell on the city, cool, calm, blue; the stars came out and twinkled in the deep azure. On the corner of the terrace the Pharaoh, silent, impassible, stood out dark like a basalt

by a silvery touch of light. The sacred pools spread out shimmering like polished metal; the human-headed and the ram-headed sphinxes aligned along the avenues, stretched out their hind-quarters; and the flat roofs were multiplied infinitely, white under the moonlight, in masses cut here and there into great slices by the squares and the streets. Red points studded the darkness as if the stars had let spar

. When I pass upon my golden car or in my litter borne by the o?ris, virgins feel their bosoms swell as their long, timid glance follows me; the priests burn incense to me in their censers, the people wave palms and scatter flowers; the whistling of one of my arrows makes the nations tremble; and the walls of pylons huge as precipitous mountains are sc

ld answer them. The first messenger appeared on the terrace and announced to the Pharaoh that Tahoser could not be found. The Pharaoh stretched out his sceptre, and the messenger fell dead, in

d the Pharaoh, without

retch, kneeling in the darkness before the black shadow,

, and the metal sceptre fell like a thunderbolt. The secon

shared the

morning at not seeing the sham Hora. Harphre and the servants who, the night before, had supped with her, did not know what had become of

; had offered her food and shelter; but that she had left in a mysterious fashion for a reason which he could not fathom. In what direction had she gone? That he did not know. No doubt, having rested, she had continued on

the palace, and keeping well out of the reach of the

s Po?ri. And yet, no! for she would not have fled thus, after having been received under his roof.