BOOK THE FIRST
4. Chapter IV
(continued)
'Thou knowest,' said Arbaces, in a voice that scarcely stirred the air, so
soft and inward was its sound, 'that it has ever been my maxim to attach
myself to the young. From their flexile and unformed minds I can carve out
my fittest tools. I weave--I warp--I mould them at my will. Of the men I
make merely followers or servants; of the women...'
'Mistresses,' said Calenus, as a livid grin distorted his ungainly features.
'Yes, I do not disguise it: woman is the main object, the great appetite, of
my soul. As you feed the victim for the slaughter, I love to rear the
votaries of my pleasure. I love to train, to ripen their minds--to unfold
the sweet blossom of their hidden passions, in order to prepare the fruit to
my taste. I loathe your ready-made and ripened courtesans; it is in the
soft and unconscious progress of innocence to desire that I find the true
charm of love; it is thus that I defy satiety; and by contemplating the
freshness of others, I sustain the freshness of my own sensations. From the
young hearts of my victims I draw the ingredients of the caldron in which I
re-youth myself. But enough of this: to the subject before us. You know,
then, that in Neapolis some time since I encountered Ione and Apaecides,
brother and sister, the children of Athenians who had settled at Neapolis.
The death of their parents, who knew and esteemed me, constituted me their
guardian. I was not unmindful of the trust. The youth, docile and mild,
yielded readily to the impression I sought to stamp upon him. Next to
woman, I love the old recollections of my ancestral land; I love to keep
alive--to propagate on distant shores (which her colonies perchance yet
people) her dark and mystic creeds. It may be, that it pleases me to delude
mankind, while I thus serve the deities. To Apaecides I taught the solemn
faith of Isis. I unfolded to him something of those sublime allegories
which are couched beneath her worship. I excited in a soul peculiarly alive
to religious fervor that enthusiasm which imagination begets on faith. I
have placed him amongst you: he is one of you.'
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