CHAPTER IV.
From that time the friendship uniting Cinna and the old Greek becamestill more intimate. They visited each other frequently and exchangedthoughts, like bread in time of a banquet. Besides, Cinna, in spite ofexperience and the weariness which comes of use, had not reached the ageyet when life has ceased to contain the charm of unknown things; andjust this charm he found in Antea, Timon's only daughter.
Her fame was not less in Alexandria than the fame of her father. EminentRomans frequenting Timon's house did her homage, Greeks did her homage,philosophers from the Serapeum did her homage, and so did the people.Timon did not restrict her to the gineceum, after the manner of otherwomen; and he tried to transfer to her everything that he himself knew.When she had passed the years of childhood, he read Greek books withher, and even Latin and Hebrew; for, gifted with an uncommon memory, andreared in many-tongued Alexandria, she learned those languages quickly.She was a companion to him in thoughts; she took frequent part in thediscussions which were held in Timon's house during Symposiums. Often inthe labyrinth of difficult questions, she was able, like Ariadne, toavoid going astray herself and to extricate others. Her father honoredand admired her. The charm of mystery and almost of sacrednesssurrounded her, besides; for she had prophetic dreams, in which she sawthings invisible to common mortals. The old sage loved her as his ownsoul, and the more for this reason, that he was afraid of losing her;for frequently she said that beings appeared in dreams to her,--ominousbeings,--also a certain divine light, and she knew not whether thislight was the source of life or death.
Meanwhile she was met only by love. The Egyptians, who frequentedTimon's house, called her the Lotus; perhaps because that flowerreceived divine honor on the banks of the Nile, and perhaps also becausewhoever saw it might forget the whole world besides.
Her beauty was equal to her wisdom. The Egyptian sun did not darken herface, in which the rosy rays of light seemed to be enclosed intransparent mother-of-pearl. Her eyes had the blueness of the Nile, andtheir glances flowed from a remoteness as unknown as the source of thatmysterious river. When Cinna saw and heard her the first time, onreturning home, he conceived the wish to rear an altar to her in theatrium of his house, and offer a white dove on it. He had met thousandsof women in his life, beginning with virgins from the remote north, withwhite eye-lashes and hair the color of ripe wheat, and ending withNumidians, black as lava; but he had not met hitherto such a figure, orsuch a soul. And the oftener he saw her, the better he knew her, theoftener it happened to him to hear her words, the more did amazementincrease in him. Sometimes he, who did not believe in the gods, thoughtthat Antea could not be the daughter of Timon, but of a god, hence onlyhalf woman, and therefore half immortal.
And soon he loved her with a love unexpected, immense, irresistible, asdifferent from the feeling which he had known up to that time as Anteawas different from other women. He desired to love her only to do herhonor. Hence he was willing to give blood to possess her. He felt thathe would prefer to be a beggar with her than to be Caesar without her.And as a whirlpool of the sea sweeps away with irresistible might allthat comes within its circle, so Cinna's love swept away his soul, hisheart, his thoughts, his days, his nights, and everything out of whichlife is composed.
Till at last it swept away Antea.
"_Tu felix_ (Thou art happy), Cinna!" said his friends.
"_Tu felix_, Cinna," said he to himself; and when at last he marriedher, when her divine lips uttered the sacramental words, "Where thouart, Caius, there am I, Caia," it seemed to him that his felicity waslike the sea,--inexhaustible and boundless.