The Bride of the Nile — Volume 08 by Georg Ebers
page 9 of 74 (12%)
page 9 of 74 (12%)
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that has a short memory. Your head has long been full of other things,
but I--I still remember who it was that made my lost dear one's last hours on earth a hell, even in view of the gates of Heaven!" Her breast heaved with feeble, tearless sobs--a short, convulsive gasping, and Orion did not dare contravene her wishes. He sought to soothe her with loving words and, when she recovered herself, he told her that he proposed to leave her for a short time to look after his estates, as the law required, and this information gladdened her greatly. To be alone-- solitary and unobserved now seemed delightful. Those white pills did more for her, raised her spirits better, than any human society. They brought her dreams, sleeping or waking; dreams a thousand times more delightful than her real, desolate existence. To give herself up to memory, to pray, to dream, to picture herself in the other world among her beloved dead--and besides that to eat and drink, which she was always ready to do very freely--this was all she asked henceforth of life on earth. When, to her further questions, Orion replied that he was going first to the Delta, she expressed her regret, since, if he had gone to Upper Egypt, he might have visited his sister-in-law, Mary's mother, in her convent. She sat up as she spoke, passed her hand across her forehead, and pointed to a little table near the head of the couch, on which, by the side of a cup with fruit syrup, phials, boxes, and other objects, lay a writing-tablet and a letter-scroll. This she took up and handed to Orion, saying: "A letter from your sister-in-law. It came last evening and I began to read it; but the first words are a complaint of your father, and that-- you know, just before going to sleep--I could not read any more; I could not bear it! And to-day; first there was church, and then the physician |
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