Serapis Volume 04
Ebers, Georg, 1837-1898
English
We will print you a perfectly bound paperback of your selected title and send it to you at your nominated address
Below is a summary of Serapis Volume 04
This eBook was produced by David Widger
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]
SERAPIS
By Georg Ebers
Volume 4.
CHAPTER XVI.
The day had flown swiftly for Dada under the roof of Medius; there were
costumes and scenery in wonderful variety for her to look over; the
children were bright and friendly, and she had enjoyed playing with them,
for all her little tricks and rhymes, which Papias was familiar with by
this time, were to them new and delightful. It amused her, too, to see
what the domestic difficulties were of which the singer had described
himself as being a victim.
Medius was one of those men who buy everything that strikes them as
cheap--for instance, that very morning, at Kibotus he had stood to watch
a fish auction and had bought a whole tub-full of pickled fish for "a
mere trifle;" but when, presently, the cargo was delivered, his wife flew
into a great rage, which she vented first on the innocent lad who brought
the fish, and then on the less innocent purchaser. They would not get to
the bottom of the barrel and eat the last herring, she asserted, till
they were a century old. Medius, while he disputed so monstrous a
statement, vehemently declared that such wholesome and nutritious food as
those fish was undoubtedly calculated to prolong the lives of the whole
family to an exceptionally great age.
This discussion, which was not at all by way of a jest, amused Dada
far more than the tablets, cylinders and cones covered with numbers
and cabalistic signs, to which Medius tried to direct her attention.
She darted off in the midst of his eager explanations to show his
grandchildren how a rabbit sniffs and moves his ears when he is offered
a cabbage-leaf.
The report, which reached them in the afternoon, of the proceedings in
the square by the Prefect's house, disturbed Medius greatly, and he set
off at once for the scene of action.
He did not return till evening, and then he looked like an altered man.
He must have witnessed something very terrible, for his face was as pale
as death, and his usually confident and swaggering manner had given place
to a stricken and care-worn air. He walked up and down the room,
groaning as he went; he flung himself on the divan and stared fixedly at
the ground; he wandered into the atrium and gazed cautiously out on the
street. Dada's presence seemed suddenly to be the source of much anxiety
to him, and the girl, painfully conscious of this, hastened to tell him
that she would prefer to return home at once to her uncle and aunt.
"You can please yourself," was all he said, with a shrug and a sigh.
"You may stay for aught I care. It is all the same now!"
So far his wife had left him to himself, for she was used to his violent
and eccentric behavior whenever anything had crossed him; but now she
peremptorily desired to be informed what had happened to him and he at
once acceded. He had been unwilling to frighten them sooner than was
needful, but they must learn it sooner or later: Cynegius had arrived to
overthrow the image of Serapis, and what must ensue they knew only too
well. "To-day," he cried, "we will live; but by to-morrow--a thousand to
one-by to-morrow there will be an end of all our joys and the earth will
swallow up the old home and us with it!"
His words fell on prepared ground; his wife and daughter were appalled,
and as Medius went on to paint the imminent catastrophe in more vivid
colors, his energy growing in proportion to its effect on them, they
began at first to sob and whimper and then to wail loudly. When the
children, who by this time were in bed, heard the lamentations of their
elders, they, too, set up a howl, and even Dada caught the infection.
As for Medius himself, he had talked himself into such a state of terror
by his own descriptions of the approaching destruction of the world that
he abandoned all claim to his proud reputation as a strong-minded man,
and quite forgot his favorite theory that everything that went by the
name of God was a mere invention of priests and rulers to delude and
oppress the ignorant; at last he even went so far as to mutter a, prayer,
and when his wife begged to be allowed to join a family of neighbors in
sacrificing a black lamb at daybreak, he recklessly gave her a handful
of money.
Back