Fiat Allis Motograder 65b Service Manual 73125943
Fiat Allis Motograder 65b Service Manual 73125943
Fiat Allis Motograder 65b Service Manual 73125943
Demetrios casts the dark lump of clay upon the table. He presses
it, kneads it, lengthens it out into human form: a sort of barbarous
monster takes shape under his burning fingers: he looks.
The motionless corpse preserves its attitude of passion. But a thin
thread of blood trickles from the right nostril, flows upon the lip, and
falls, drop by drop, under the half-opened mouth.
Demetrios continues. The rough figure takes life and precision. A
prodigious left arm circles over the body as if it were clasping
someone in a tight embrace. The muscles of the thigh stand out
violently. The heels are bent upwards.
When night mounted from the earth and darkened the low
chamber, Demetrios had finished the statue.
He had it carried to his studio by four slaves. That very evening,
by lamplight, he had a block of Parian marble rough-hewed, and a
year after that day he was still working at the marble.
IV
PITY
“Gaoler, open! Gaoler, open!”
Rhodis and Myrtocleia knocked at the closed door.
The door opened half way.
“What do you want?”
“To see our friend,” said Myrto. “To see Chrysis, poor Chrysis, who
died this morning.”
“It is not allowed; go away!”
“Oh, let us enter. No one will know. We will tell no one. She was
our friend, let us see her once more. We will go out again. We will
go out again quickly. We will make no noise.”
“And supposing I am caught, my little girls? Supposing I am
punished on your account? You will not pay the fine?”
“You will not be caught. You are alone here. There are no other
inmates of the prison. You have sent away the soldiers. We know
this. Let us enter.”
“Well, well! Do not stay too long. Here is the key. It is the third
door. Tell me when you go away. It is late and I want to go to bed.”
The kindly old man handed them a key of beaten iron which hung
from his girdle, and the two little virgins ran immediately, on their
noiseless sandals, along the obscure corridors.
Then the gaoler re-entered his lodge, and did not insist any
further upon a useless surveillance. The penalty of imprisonment
was not applied in Greek Egypt, and the little white house that was
placed under the care of the gentle old man served merely for the
reception of culprits condemned to death. In the interval between
executions it remained almost deserted.
The moment the great key entered the lock, Rhodis arrested her
friend’s hand:
“I do not know whether I dare see her,” she said. “I loved her
well, Myrto . . . I am afraid . . . Go in first, will you?”
Myrtocleia pushed open the door; but as soon as she had cast a
glance into the chamber she cried:
“Do not enter, Rhodis! Wait for me here.”
“Oh! What is there? You are afraid too . . . What is there on the
bed? Is she not dead?”
“Yes, wait for me . . . I will tell you . . . Stay in the corridor and do
not look.”
The body was still in the ecstatic attitude in which Demetrius had
arranged it for his Statue of Immortal Life. But the transports of
extreme joy confine upon the convulsions of extreme pain, and
Myrtocleia asked herself what atrocious sufferings, what agonies had
produced such an upheaval in the corpse.
She approached the bed on tiptoe.
The thread of blood continued to flow from the diaphanous nostril.
The skin of the body was perfectly white; the pale tips of the breasts
receded like delicate navels; not a single rose-coloured reflection
gave life to the ephemeral recumbent statue; but some emerald-
coloured spots that tinted the smooth belly signified that millions of
new lives were germinating in the scarcely-cold flesh, and were
demanding “the right of succession!”
Myrtocleia took the dead arm and laid it flat along the hip. She
tried also to pull out the left leg; but the knee was almost rigid, and
she did not succeed in pulling it out completely.
“Rhodis,” she said, in a troubled voice, “come; you can enter now.”
And Myrto took the head between her two hands, buried them in
the hair, and spoke to her thus:
“Chrysis, my Chrysis, you who were the most beautiful and the
most adored of women, who were so like the goddess that the
people took you for her, where are you now, what have they done
with you? You lived to impart beneficent joy. No fruit was ever
sweeter than your mouth, no light brighter than your eyes; your skin
was a glorious robe that you would not veil; voluptuousness floated
upon it like a perpetual odour; and when you unclasped your hair, all
desires flowed from it; and when you clasped your naked arms, one
implored the gods for permission to die.”
She enveloped the beautiful body and then she said to Rhodis:
“Help me.”
They lifted her up gently; but the burden was a heavy one for the
little musicians, and they laid it down upon the ground.
“Let us take off our sandals,” said Myrto. “Let us walk bare-footed
in the corridors. The gaoler is surely asleep. If we do not wake him
we shall pass, but if he sees us he will prevent us . . . To-morrow
matters not: when he sees the empty bed, he will say to the Queen’s
soldiers that he has thrown the body into a ditch, according to the
law. Let us fear nothing, Rhodis! . . . Put your sandals in your girdle,
like me. And come! Take the body under the knees. Let the feet
hang behind. Walk without noise, slowly, slowly . . .”
V
PIETY
After the turning of the second street, they laid the body down a
second time in order in put on their sandals. Rhodis’s feet, too
delicate to walk naked, were torn and bleeding.
The night was full of brilliancy. The town was full of silence. The
iron-coloured shadows lay in square blocks in the middle of the
streets, according to the profile of the houses.
The little virgins resumed their load.
“Where are we going to?” asked the child. “Where are we going to
bury it?”
“In the cemetery of Hermanubis. It is always deserted, it will be in
peace there.”
“Poor Chrysis! Could I ever have thought that on her last day, I
should bear her body without torches and without funeral car,
secretly, like a thing stolen.”
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