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There, behind the tradesman's counter, she seemed rather a dancing nymph, a bacchante of the opera, stripped of her lynx skin and thyrsus, imprisoned, and travestied by a magician's spell under the modest trappings of a housewife by Chardin. "My father is not at home," she told the painter; "wait a little, he will not be long."
When a youth crowned with ferns began to play a series of flageolets with his nose, the poet put his foot on mine. "We are on Mount Parnassus," he whispered. "The women in faun skins will enter in a moment, swinging the thyrsus and beating the cymbals. Pan peeps from behind that palm. Those are his pipes, as sure as Linus went to the dogs."
Hers was the Great Primitive Church of the world, without Popes or Muftis sinecures, pluralities and hierarchies. Her servants spoke to the earth as the prophets of old, anxious only to be heard and believed. Full of this fanaticism, Ernest Maltravers pursued his way in the great procession of the myrtle-bearers to the sacred shrine. He carried the thyrsus, and he believed in the god.
And if you would like to know wherein the son of Severus resembles the giant of Macedon, you shall hear." He thrummed his thyrsus as though he struck the strings of a lyre, and, having ended the dumb prelude, he sang: "Wherein hath the knave Caracalla outdone Alexander? He killed a brother, the hero a friend, in his rage."
The thyrsus was always used in the rites and festivities celebrated in honor of Bacchus. Silius himself, dressed like the rest in a fantastic and theatrical costume, danced by the side of Messalina, in the center of a ring of dancing girls which was formed around them.
Evoe! my mind trembles with recent dread, and my soul, replete with Bacchus, has a tumultuous joy, Evoe! spare me, Bacchus; spare me, thou who art formidable for thy dreadful thyrsus. It is granted me to sing the wanton Bacchanalian priestess, and the fountain of wine, and rivulets flowing with milk, and to tell again of the honeys distilling from the hollow trunks.
Hence, a similitude is recognized in a pillar, a heap of stones, a tree between two rocks, a club between two pine cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied around with two ribbons with the ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers.
The left arm was raised in a graceful curve, and his fingers lightly grasped a thyrsus which rested on the ground and stood taller than the god's head; by the side of this magnificent figure stood a mighty wine-jar, half hidden by the drapery. For a whole week Pollux had devoted himself to this task during all the hours of daylight with unflagging zeal and diligence.
A man may be convinced that he has useful, or beautiful, or entertaining ideas within him, he may hold that he can express them in fresh and charming language. He may, in short, have a "vocation," or feel conscious of a vocation, which is not exactly the same thing. There are "many thyrsus bearers, few mystics," many are called, few chosen.
And if you would like to know wherein the son of Severus resembles the giant of Macedon, you shall hear." He thrummed his thyrsus as though he struck the strings of a lyre, and, having ended the dumb prelude, he sang: "Wherein hath the knave Caracalla outdone Alexander? He killed a brother, the hero a friend, in his rage."
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