Arachne Volume 07
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 Arachne Volume 07
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.]
ARACHNE
By Georg Ebers
Volume 7.
CHAPTER VIII.
Without a word of explanation, Hermon dragged his guide along in
breathless haste. No one stopped them.
The atrium, usually swarming with guards, servants, and officials until a
far later hour, was completely deserted when the blind man hurried
through it with his friend.
The door leading into the outer air stood open, but Hermon, leaning on
the scholar's arm, had scarcely crossed the threshold and entered the
little courtyard encircled with ornamental plants, which separated this
portion of the palace from the street, when both were surrounded by a
band of armed Macedonian soldiers, whose commander exclaimed: "In the
name of the King! Not a sound, if you value your lives!"
Incensed, and believing that there was some mistake, Hermon announced
himself as a sculptor and Crates as a member of the Museum, but this
statement did not produce the slightest effect upon the warrior; nay,
when the friends answered the officer's inquiry whether they were coming
from Proclus's banquet in the affirmative; he curtly commanded them to be
put in chains.
To offer resistance would have been madness, for even Hermon perceived,
by the loud clanking of weapons around them, the greatly superior power
of the enemy, and they were acting by the orders of the King. "To the
prison near the place of execution!" cried the officer; and now not only
the mythograph, but Hermon also was startled--this dungeon opened only to
those sentenced to death.
Was he to be led to the executioner's block? A cold shudder ran through
his frame; but the next moment he threw back his waving locks, and his
chest heaved with a long breath.
What pleasure had life to offer him, the blind man, who was already dead
to his art? Ought he not to greet this sudden end as a boon from the
immortals?
Did it not spare him a humiliation as great and painful as could be
imagined?
He had already taken care that the false renown should not follow him
to the grave, and Myrtilus should have his just due, and he would do
whatever else lay in his power to further this object. Wherever the
beloved dead might be, he desired to go there also. Whatever might await
him, he desired no better fate. If he had passed into annihilation, he,
Hermon, wished to follow him thither, and annihilation certainly meant
redemption from pain and misery. But if he were destined to meet his
Myrtilus and his mother in the world beyond the grave, what had he not to
tell them, how sure he was of finding a joyful reception there from both!
The power which delivered him over to death just at that moment was not
Nemesis--no, it was a kindly deity.
Only his heart grew heavy at the thought of leaving Daphne to the
tireless wooer Philotas or some other--everything else from which it is
usually hard to part seemed like a burden that we gladly cast aside.
"Forward!" he called blithely and boldly to the officer; while Crates,
with loud lamentations, was protesting his innocence to the warrior who
was putting fetters upon him.
A chain was just being clasped around Hermon's wrists also when he
suddenly started. His keen ear could not deceive him, and yet a demon
must be mocking him, for the voice that had called his name was the
girl's of whom, in the presence of welcome death, he had thought with
longing regret.
Yet it was no illusion that deceived him. Again he heard the beloved
voice, and this time it addressed not only him, but with the utmost haste
the commander of the soldiers.
Back