the ground with fury.
No sooner has the action occurred than a table makes its appearance, covered with all things that are good to eat.
The byssus cloth, striated like the bandelets of the sphinx, produces of itself luminous undulations. Upon it are enormous quarters of red meats; huge fish; birds cooked in their plumage, and quadrupeds in their skins; fruits with colors and tints almost human in appearance; while fragments of cooling ice, and flagons of violet crystal reflect each other's glittering. Anthony notices in the middle of the table a boar smoking at every pore – with legs doubled up under its belly, and eyes half closed – and the idea of being able to eat so formidable an animal greatly delights him. Then many things appear which he has never seen before – black hashes, jellies, the color of gold, ragouts in which mushrooms float like nenuphars upon ponds, dishes of whipt cream light as clouds.
And the aroma of all this comes to him together with the salt smell of the ocean, the coolness of mountains, the great perfumes of the woods. He dilates his nostrils to their fullest extent; his mouth waters; he thinks to himself that he has enough before him for a year, for ten years, for his whole life!
As he gazes with widely-opened eyes at all these viands, others appear; they accumulate, forming a pyramid crumbling at all its angles. The wines begin to flow over – the fish palpitate – the blood seethes in the dishes – the pulp of the fruit protrudes like amorous lips – and the table rises as high as his breast, up to his very chin at last – now bearing only one plate and a single loaf of bread, placed exactly in front of him.
He extends his hand to seize the loaf. Other loaves immediately present themselves to his grasp.)
"For me!.. all these! But …" (Anthony suddenly draws back.)
"Instead of one which was there, lo! there are many! It must be a miracle, then, the same as our Lord wrought!
"Yet for what purpose?.. Ah! all the rest of these things are equally incomprehensible! Demon, begone from me! depart! begone!"
(He kicks the table from him. It disappears.)
"Nothing more? – no!" (He draws a lung breath.)
"Ah! the temptation was strong! But how well I delivered myself from it!"
(He lifts his head, and at the same time stumbles over some sonorous object.)
"Why! what can that be?" (Anthony stoops down.)
"How! a cup! Some traveller must have lost it here. There is nothing extraordinary…"
(He wets his finger, and rubs.)
"It glitters! – metal! Still, I cannot see very clearly…"
(He lights his torch, and examines the cup.)
"It is silver, ornamented with ovules about the rim, with a medal at the bottom of it."
(He detaches the medal with his nail!)
"It is a piece of money worth about seven or eight drachmas – not more! It matters not! even with that I could easily buy myself a sheepskin."
(A sudden flash of the torch lights up the cup.)
"Impossible! gold? Yes, all gold, solid gold!"
(A still larger piece of money appears at the bottom. Under it he perceives several others.)
"Why, this is a sum … large enough to purchase three oxen … and a little field!"
(The cup is now filled with pieces of gold.)
"What! what!.. a hundred slaves, soldiers, a host … enough to buy…"
(The granulations of the rim, detaching themselves form a necklace of pearls.)
"With such a marvel of jewelry as that, one could win even the wife of the Emperor!"
(By a sudden jerk, Anthony makes the necklace slip down over his wrist. He holds the cup in his left hand, and with his right lifts up the torch so as to throw the light upon it. As water streams overflowing from the basin of a fountain, so diamonds, carbuncles, and sapphires, all mingled with broad pieces of gold bearing the effigies of Kings, overflow from the cup in never ceasing streams, to form a glittering hillock upon the sand.)
"What! how! Staters, cycles, dariacs, aryandics; Alexander, Demetrius, the Ptolemies, Cæsar! – yet not one of them all possessed so much! Nothing is now impossible! no more suffering for me! how these gleams dazzle my eyes! Ah! my heart overflows! how delightful it is! yes – yes! – more yet! never could there be enough! Vainly I might continually fling it into the sea, there would always be plenty remaining for me. Why should I lose any of it? I will keep all, and say nothing to any one about it; I will have a chamber hollowed out for me in the rock, and lined with plates of bronze, and I will come here from time to time to feel the gold sinking down under the weight of my heel; I will plunge my arms into it as into sacks of grain! I will rub my face with it, I will lie down upon it!"
(He flings down the torch in order to embrace the glittering heap, and falls flat upon the ground.
He rises to his feet. The place is wholly empty.)
"What have I done!
"Had I died during those moments, I should have gone to hell – to irrevocable damnation."
(He trembles in every limb.)
"Am I, then, accursed? Ah! no; it is my own fault! I allow myself to be caught in every snare! No man could be more imbecile, more infamous! I should like to beat myself, or rather to tear myself out of my own body! I have restrained myself too long. I feel the want of vengeance – the necessity of striking, of killing! – as though I had a pack of wild beasts within me! Would that I could hew my way with an axe, through the midst of a multitude… Ah, a poniard!.."
(He perceives his knife, and rushes to seize it. The knife slips from his hand; and Anthony remains leaning against the wall of his hut, with wide-open mouth, motionless, cataleptic.
Everything about him has disappeared.
He thinks himself at Alexandria, upon the Paneum – an artificial mountain in the centre of the city, encircled by a winding stairway.
Before him lies Lake Mareolis; on his right hand is the sea, on his left the country; and immediately beneath him a vast confusion of flat roofs, traversed from north to south and from east to west by two streets which intercross, and which offer throughout their entire length the spectacle of files of porticoes with Corinthian columns. The houses overhanging this double colonnade have windows of stained glass. Some of them support exteriorly enormous wooden cages, into which the fresh air rushes from without.
Monuments of various architecture tower up in close proximity. Egyptian pylons dominate Greek temples. Obelisks appear like lances above battlements of red brick. In the middle of public squares there are figures of Hermes with pointed ears, and of Anubis with the head of a dog. Anthony can distinguish the mosaic pavements of the courtyards, and tapestries suspended from the beams of ceilings.
He beholds at one glance, the two ports (the Great Port and the Eunostus), both round as circuses, and separated by a mole connecting Alexandria with the craggy island upon which the Pharos-tower rises – quadrangular, five hundred
