woman before or after me can ever love a man as I loved Assa. Why dost
thou not laugh? It must seem odd, too, to hear such a thing from the
toothless mouth of an old witch. He is dead, long since dead. I hate
him! and yet--wild as it sounds--I believe I love him yet. And he loved
me--for two years; then he went to the war with Seti, and remained a long
time away, and when I saw him again he had courted the daughter of some
rich and noble house. I was handsome enough still, but he never looked
at me at the banquets. I came across him at least twenty times, but he
avoided me as if I were tainted with leprosy, and I began to fret, and
fell ill of a fever. The doctors said it was all over with me, so I sent
him a letter in which there was nothing but these words: 'Beki is dying,
and would like to see Assa once more,' and in the papyrus I put his first
present--a plain ring. And what was the answer? a handful of gold!
Gold--gold! Thou may'st believe me, when I say that the sight of it was
more torturing to my eyes than the iron with which they put out the eyes
of criminals. Even now, when I think of it--But what do you men, you
lords of rank and wealth, know of a breaking heart? When two or three of
you happen to meet, and if thou should'st tell the story, the most
respectable will say in a pompous voice: 'The man acted nobly indeed; he
was married, and his wife would have complained with justice if he had
gone to see the singer.' Am I right or wrong? I know; not one will
remember that the other was a woman, a feeling human being; it will occur
to no one that his deed on the one hand saved an hour of discomfort, and
on the other wrought half a century of despair. Assa escaped his wife's
scolding, but a thousand curses have fallen on him and on his house. How
virtuous he felt himself when he had crushed and poisoned a passionate
heart that had never ceased to love him! Ay, and he would have come if
he had not still felt some love for me, if he had not misdoubted himself,
and feared that the dying woman might once more light up the fire he had
so carefully smothered and crushed out. I would have grieved for him--