This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
ARACHNE
By Georg Ebers
Volume 5.
While the market place in Tennis was filling, Archias's white house hadbecome a heap of smouldering ruins. Hundreds of men and women werestanding around the scene of the conflagration, but no one saw the statueof Demeter, which had been removed from Hermon's studio just in time.The nomarch had had it locked up in the neighbouring temple of thegoddess.
It was rumoured that the divinity had saved her own statue by a miracle;Pamaut, the police officer, said that he had seen her himself as,surrounded by a brilliant light, she soared upward on the smoke thatpoured from the burning house. The strategist and the nomarch used everymeans in their power to capture the robbers, but without the leastsuccess.
As it had become known that Paseth, Gula's husband, had cast off his wifebecause she had gone to Hermon's studio, the magistrates believed thatthe attack had been made by the Biamites; yet Paseth was absent from thecity during the assault, and the innocence of the others could also beproved.
Since, for two entire years, piracy had entirely ceased in thisneighbourhood, no one thought of corsairs, and the bodies of theincendiaries having been consumed by the flames with the white house,it could not be ascertained to what class the marauders belonged.
The blinded sculptor could only testify that one of the robbers was anegro, or at any rate had had his face blackened, and that the size ofanother had appeared to him almost superhuman. This circumstance gaverise to the fable that, during the terrible storm of the previous clay,Hades had opened and spirits of darkness had rushed into the studio ofthe Greek betrayer.
The strategist, it is true, did not believe such tales, but thesuperstition of the Biamites, who, moreover, aided the Greeks reluctantlyto punish a crime which threatened to involve their own countrymen, putobstacles in the way of his measures.
Not until he heard of Ledscha's disappearance, and was informed by thepriest of Nemesis of the handsome sum which had been found in theoffering box of the temple shortly after the attack, did he arrive at aconjecture not very far from the real state of affairs; only it was stillincomprehensible to him what body of men could have placed themselves atthe disposal of a girl's vengeful plan.
On the second day after the fire, the epistrategus of the whole Delta,who had accidentally come to the border fortress, arrived at Tennis onthe galley of the commandant of Pelusium, and with him Proclus, thegrammateus of the Dionysian artists, the Lady Thyone, Daphne, and hercompanion Chrysilla.
The old hero Philippus was detained in the fortress by the preparationsfor war.
Althea had returned to Alexandria, and Philotas, who disliked her, hadgone there himself, as Chrysilla intimated to him that he could hope forno success in his suit to her ward so long as Daphne had to devoteherself to the care of the blinded Hermon.
The epistrategus proceeded with great caution, but his efforts alsoremained futile. He ordered a report to be made of all the vessels whichhad entered the harbours and bays of the northeastern Delta, but thosecommanded by Satabus and his sons gave no cause for investigation; theyhad come into the Tanit