Priscilla of Alexandria by Maurice Magre

Author:Maurice Magre [Magre, Maurice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2018-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Touta watched Priscilla’s silhouette disappear under the pines in the twilight. She saw her again in the meadow, where she was gliding, charming and rapid, like a fleeing hope.

Then Touta returned slowly, the way she had come, through the wild plants. Anyway, exactly what she would have said, she did not know. A vague inspiration had impelled her. Aurelius, her master, was about to leave Alexandria for a voyage from which he would not return. She wanted to retain him at any price. She had thought about the only link that retained him to things of the world, his affection for that young woman, whom he had only glimpsed when she was a child, and to whom he had never spoken.

Touta had often gazed, in her master’s library, at a cameo representing the head of a woman who had Priscilla’s features, with a few years more. She had often surprised Aurelius in contemplation before that portrait, and she had made a connection between that sorrowful contemplation and the news of the young woman with which she was charged with reporting every day.

She did not want him to go. She had traversed Alexandria, and launched forth along the road that ran along the coast, all the way to Diodorus’ villa in order to reach Priscilla, the only creature able to retain the philosopher. She had intended to throw herself at her feet, to tell her that a very wise and very good man who sometimes wept while looking at a cameo in which there was her mother’s face, needed a word from her, or even less, a gaze in passing, of which he would have made the great light of his life.

She had felt a marvelous force of persuasion. She had slipped through a breach in the wall of the flower-garden and had watched for part of the afternoon. Hazard had taken Priscilla to the most solitary place, the most propitious for a conversation.

But Touta had witnessed the murder of the statue. She had seen the charming Priscilla, her forehead furrowed and her lips taut, strike with all her strength the image of the beauty that was an object of veneration for her master.

What unexpected differences there were in souls! Was it worth the trouble of appealing to that one? The words had caught in her throat.

Touta arrived at the place in the wall where she had climbed over. She darted a glance at the garden, which the sun was illuminating with splendor, before disappearing. The parasol pines gave the impression of cups extended toward the sky for offerings by dolorous supplicants. The flower-beds formed enormous iridescent sheaves in which flames were brooding. The jets of water rose up incessantly and perished untiringly against the crimson of the setting sun.

Oh, how far some people were from others!

She leapt on to the road and set forth in the direction of Alexandria.

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