So Runs the World

"Eryfile. She is a baker's wife."

"A baker's wife!" answered the Radiant, making a grimace, "I don't like that."

"I can't help it. It's the kind of people I know best. Eryfile's husband is not at home at present; he went to Megara. His wife is the prettiest woman who ever walked on Mother-Earth."

"I am very anxious to see her."

"One condition more, my Silver-arrowed, you must promise that you will use only means worthy of you, and that you will not act as would act such a ruffian as Ares, for instance, or even, speaking between ourselves, as acts our common father, the Cloud-gathering Zeus."

"For whom do you take me?" asked Apollo.

"Then all conditions are understood, and I can show you Eryfile."

Both gods were immediately carried through the air from Pnyx, and in a few moments they were over a house situated not far from Stoa. The Argo-robber raised the whole roof with his powerful hand as easily as a woman cooking a dinner raises a cover from a saucepan, and pointing to a woman sitting in a store, closed from the street by a copper gate, said:

"Look!"

Apollo looked and was astonished.

Never Attica – never the whole of Greece, produced a lovelier flower than was this woman. She sat by a table on which was a lighted lamp, and was writing something on marble tables. Her long drooping eyelashes threw a shadow on her cheeks, but from time to time she raised her head and her eyes, as though she were trying to remember what she had to write, and then one could see her beautiful eyes, so blue that compared with them the turquoise depths of the Archipelago would look pale and faded. Her face was white as the sea-foam, pink as the dawn, with purplish Syrian lips and waves of golden hair. She was beautiful, the most beautiful being on earth – beautiful as the dawn, as a flower, as light, as song! This was Eryfile.

When she dropped her eyes she appeared quiet and sweet; when she lifted them, inspired. The Radiant's divine knees began to tremble; suddenly he leaned his head on Hermes' shoulder, and whispered:

"Hermes, I love her! This one or none!"

Hermes smiled ironically, and would have rubbed his hands for joy under cover of his robe if he had not held in his right hand the caduceus.

In the mean while the golden-haired woman took a new tablet and began to write on it. Her divine lips were disclosed and her voice whispered; it was like the sound of Apollo's lyre.

"The member of the Areopagus Melanocles for the bread for two months, forty drachmas and four obols; let us write in round numbers forty-six drachmas. By Athena! let us write fifty; my husband will be satisfied! Ah, that Melanocles! If you were not in a position to bother us about false weight, I never would give you credit. But we must keep peace with that locust."

Apollo did not listen to the words. He was intoxicated with the woman's voice, the charm of her figure, and whispered:

"This one or none!"

The golden-haired woman spoke again, writing further:

"Alcibiades, for cakes on honey from Hymettus for Hetera Chrysalis, three minae. He never verifies bills, and then he once gave me in Stoa a slap on the shoulder – we will write four minae. He is stupid; let him pay for it. And then that Chrysalis! She must feed with cakes her carp in the pond, or perhaps Alcibiades makes her fat purposely, in order to sell her afterwards to a Phoenician merchant for an ivory ring for his harness."

Again Apollo paid no attention to the words – he was enchanted with the voice alone and whispered to Hermes:

"This one or none!"

But Maya's son suddenly covered the house, the apparition disappeared, and it seemed to the Radiant Apollo that with it disappeared the stars, that the moon became black, and the whole world was covered with the darkness of Chimera.

"When shall we decide the wager?" asked Hermes.

"Immediately. To-day!"

"During her husband's absence she sleeps in the store. You can stand in the street before the door. If she raises the curtain and opens the gate, I have lost my wager."

"You have lost it already!" exclaimed the Far-darting Apollo.

The summer lightning does not pass from the East to the West as quickly as he rushed over the salt waves of the Archipelago. There he asked Amphitrite for an empty turtle-shell, put around it the rays of the sun, and returned to Athens with a ready formiga.

In the city everything was already quiet. The lights were out, and only the houses and temples shone white in the light of the moon, which had risen high in the sky.

The store was dark, and in it, behind a gate and a curtain, the beautiful Eryfile was asleep. Apollo the Radiant began to touch the strings of his lyre. Wishing to awake softly his beloved, he played at first as gently as swarms of mosquitoes singing on a summer evening on Illis. But the song became gradually stronger like a brook in the mountain after a rain; then more powerful, sweeter, more intoxicating, and it filled the air voluptuously.

The secret Athena's bird flew softly from the Acropolis and sat motionless on the nearest column.

Suddenly a bare arm, worthy of Phidias or Praxiteles, whiter than Pantelican marble, drew aside the curtain. The Radiant's heart stopped beating with emotion. And then Eryfile's voice resounded:

"Ha! You booby, why do you wander about and make a noise during the night? I have been working all day, and now they won't let me sleep!"

"Eryfile! Eryfile!" exclaimed Silver-arrowed. And he began to sing:

"From lofty peaks of Parnas – where there ring

In all the glory of light's brilliant rays

The grand sweet songs which inspired muses sing

To me, by turns, in rapture and praise —

I, worshiped god – I fly, fly to thee,

Eryfile! And on thy bosom white

I shall rest, and the Eternity will be

A moment to me – the God of Light!"

"By the holy flour for sacrifices," exclaimed the baker's wife, "that street boy sings and makes love to me. Will you go home, you impudent!"

The Radiant, wishing to pursuade her that he was not a common mortal, threw so much light from his person, that all the earth was lighted. But Eryfile, seeing this, exclaimed:

"That scurrilous fellow has hidden a lantern under his robe, and he tries to make me believe that he is a god. O daughter of mighty Dios! they press us with taxes, but there is no Scythian guard to protect us from such stupid fellows!"

Apollo, who did not wish yet to acknowledge defeat, sang further:

"Ah, open thine arms – rounded, gleaming, white —

To thee eternal glory I will give.

Over goddess of earth, fair and bright,

Thy name above immortal shall live.