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frozen, adrift upon the winds!
Now of my deeds at this period it is almost too horrible to tell.
For I performed great penance, in the hope of vitalizing that dead
principle in me which men call the soul.
I starved myself shamefully, in this manner. First surrounding
myself with all possible luxuries of food, brought in steaming and
savoury from hour to hour, I yet condemned myself to subsist
upon a little garlic and a little salt, with a little water in which oats
had been bruised.
Then if any wish arose in me to eat of the dainties around me I
gashed myself with a sharp stone.
Moreover I kindled a great fire in the cave so that the slaves
stumbled and fainted as they approached. And the smoke choked
me so that I constantly vomited a black and ill-smelling mucus
from my lungs, stained here and there with frothing blood.
Again, I suffered my hair to grow exceeding long, and therein
I harboured vermin. Also, when I lay down to sleep, though this I
did not till with swollen tongue and blackened throat I could no
longer howl the name of my dead Lady, then (I say) did I smear
my limbs with honey, that the rats of the cave might gnaw them as
I slept. Moreover, I pillowed mine head upon a corpse dead of
leprosy, and whenever that dead soul of mine stirred at all with
love toward my Lady, then I caressed and kissed that corpse, and
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ACROSS THE GULF
sang soft songs to it, playing with gracious words and gestures.
All this spoke loudly to my soul, rebuking it for its weakness and
corruption. So too the bitterness and foulness of my life would
often overleap the limit of sensibility; and then for hours together
would I be lost in a raging whirlwind of laughter. At this time my
slaves would be afraid to come anigh me, and then darting out of
the cave I would catch one by the hair and dragging him within
put him to exquisite torture. This indeed was of great use to me;
for I would devise atrocious things, and if they served to excite his
utmost anguish I would then try them on myself. Thus I would
run needles steeped in Nile mud beneath my finger-vails, so that
the sores festering might produce a sickening agony. Or again I
would cut strips of skin and tear them off; but this failed, though it
acted well enough upon the slave, for my own skin had become
too brittle. Then I would take a piece of hard wood, and hammer
it with a stone against the bones, hurting the membrane that
covers them, and causing it to swell. This too I had to abandon,
for the limb of the slave died, and he swelled up and rotted and
turned green, and in shocking agony he died.
So then I was compelled to cure myself magically, and this
was a great loss of force.
Yet was I Far from the Happy Ones, although my lips hung
on my fleshless face like bean-pods withered and blackened, and
although there was not one inch of skin upon all my body that was
not scarred.
Yet my trial was nigh its end. For the people of Memphis,
wondering at the frequent purchases of dead lepers made always
by the same slave, began, as is the wont of the ignorant, to spread
foolish rumours. At last they said openly there is an holy hermit
in the old cave by Nile. Then the barren women of the city came
out stealthily to me in the hope that by my sanctity their dry sticks
might blossom.
But I showed them my dead leper, and said Let me first beget
children upon this, and after I will do your business. This liked
them not; yet they left me not alone, for they went home and cried
out that I was an horror, a ghoul, a vampire. . . . And at that all the
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LIBER LIX
young and beautiful women of the city, leaving their lovers and
their husbands, flocked to me, bringing gifts. But I took them to
the dead leper and said, When you are beautiful as that is
beautiful, and when I am weary of its beauty and its delight, then
will I do your pleasure.
Then they all raged vehemently against me, and stirred up the
men of the city to destroy me. And I, not being minded to display
my magic force, went by night (so soon as I heard of this) and
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