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Updated: May 29, 2025
But think, Phorenice, he is Deucalion; and if you slay him here for this one thing, there is no other man within all the marches of Atlantis who would so worthily serve " The Empress took the words from her. "You slut," she cried out. "I have you near me to appoint my wardrobe, and carry my fan, and do you dare to put a meddling finger on my policies?
But it would be of service to me if I could land on her shores with some knowledge of this Phorenice, for at present I am as ignorant concerning her as some savage from Europe or mid-Africa." "What would you have me tell?" "Tell all.
But, if these clumsy fishers could run, Phorenice was like a legged snake for speed. She was down beside the boat before any could reach it, laughing and shouting out that she could beat them at every point.
"I am an ignorant fellow," said he, "and heaven was robbed of its brightest ornament when Phorenice came down to Atlantis. But if reparation is permitted me, I have two prisoners in the cabin of the boat here who shall be sacrificed to the mammoth forthwith. Doubtless it would please him to make sport with them, and spill out the last lees of his rage upon their bodies."
Indeed, when Phorenice herself appeared, and all sent up their cries and made lawful obeisance, there was the same artificiality in the welcome. They meant well enough, it is true; but this was the new fashion. Heartiness had come to be accounted a barbarism by this new culture.
"Pah, my lord, your scruples are most decorous. But I did no more than repeat what the Empress had made public by proclamation. She is minded to take to herself a husband, and nothing short of the best is good enough for Phorenice. One after another has been put up in turn as favourite and been found wanting. Oh, I tell you, we here in Atlantis have watched her courtship with jumping hearts.
But I ask you this: keep back your worst judgment of me, old friend, till after you have seen Phorenice herself in the warm and lovely flesh. Then your own ears and your own senses will be my advocates, to win me back your old esteem." The words of Tatho were no sleeping draught for me that night.
We were here on ceremonial to-day; a ghastly enough affair throughout all its acts, if you choose, but still ceremonial; and I was minded to show Phorenice a grand manner that would leave her nothing to cavil at.
Followed a punishment. That child the Gods in their infinite wisdom fashioned into a scourge for Atlantis, and you who have felt the weight of Phorenice's hand, know with what completeness the High Gods can fashion their instruments. "Yet, even as they set up, so can they throw down, and those that shall debase Phorenice are even now appointed.
Our Lord the Sun was riding towards the end of His day, and the smoke from a burning mountain fanned black and forbidding before His face. Phorenice wrung the water from her clothes and shivered. "Work hard with those paddles, Deucalion, and take me in through the water-gate and let me be restored to my comforts again.
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