“What is this, then?” asked Lucius.
“The incarnation of the god in the sacred bull lasts a quarter of a century,” the young, pleasant, smiling priest explained. “After being incarnated in the bull for five-and-twenty years, the god disappears out of the bull and the bull is marked down for death. The priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord, that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a newborn bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great that the country is plunged into mourning and the disaster foretells universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom delays the new incarnation. This time, after Apis’ obsequies, we were able at once to celebrate his blessed advent.”
“And where was Apis found?” asked Lucius.
“On the farm belonging to my father, who is a landowner,” replied the pleasant young priest, smiling mischievously. “I am a landowner’s son; and, when Apis was born in our stables, my father dedicated me to Osiris, that I might take care of the god. I came here with him; I have been here hardly a month; I came with him.”
And he smiled, glad, young and happy; his fresh, young cheeks were still bronzed with the sun and his arms and hands were sturdy as those of a young peasant and shepherd.
The singing priests drew themselves up before a secos, a square plot of grass surrounded by columns.
“My lords,” said the pleasant-looking priest, “this is the secos of the mother of Apis and we are going to show her to you.”
“So she also comes from your father’s farm?” asked Uncle Catullus.
“Most certainly, my lord,” replied the priest, roguishly.
“That of course goes without saying,” commented Uncle Catullus.
The young priest opened the gate of the secos. At the far end was the sacred stall, like the wide interior of a temple. The priest, vanished in the shadow.
And, when he reappeared, he was leading, merely by pressing his hand against her snow-white flank, a handsome, sleek cow.
He led her to the strangers. She shone, well-tended and well-fed. She had placid eyes of bluish gold, beautiful, large, soft and womanly, the eyes of Hera herself. Her horns were gilded and her hoofs were painted red.
The pleasant-looking priest led her to the strangers and was glad and happy because Apis’ mother was so comely:
“Is she not handsome?” he asked proudly.
The strangers smiled and agreed that she was very handsome; and the priest, with respectful familiarity, stroked her snow-white flank and pointed out that she had one black foot. Then he kissed her, fondly and reverently, on her moist muzzle and led her back, with the pressure of his hand, to the temple that was her stall. She went, solemnly, as though aware of her high, sacred dignity, which existed only because of the strangers and their fee.
The priest, still smiling, returned; and the other priests sang their hymn.
And, by the priest’s pleasant manner, Lucius seemed to observe that he ought to pay. He beckoned to Caleb; and there were mutual, smiling, roguish negotiations between Caleb and the priest. For Caleb always tried to pay the fees which he distributed on Lucius’ behalf a little less liberally than he set them down on the long papyrus scroll of his bill; and he generally succeeded.
But the priest was not only roguish, but very crafty and polite; and the transaction, conducted in mysterious and jocular whispers, lasted a long time … until Lucius said, impatiently, but still smiling:
“And may we now see Apis himself?”
So Caleb paid, grudgingly. But the priest remained pleasant and the other priests sang while conducting the strangers to Apis’ own secos.
This sanctuary was even bigger and more impressive than that of the white bull-mother. There was a square in front of it, with obelisks; and the pleasant-looking priest entered between two sphinxes. But the pillars, the obelisks, the sphinxes seemed to totter, to slant, to burst with old age.
The priests sang the hymn; and suddenly, like a whirlwind, a young bull came trotting out of the stable over the grass-plot. It was Apis; and the priests lifted their hands in adoration as they sang.
But, if his mother was stately and aware of her dignity, Apis himself carried his divinity with the recklessness of his hot youth. He ran across the lawn, glad to have escaped from his stable; and the pleasant priest, laughing, ran after him. But he could not catch him by his gold collar; and, panting for breath, the little priest said, proudly:
“Isn’t he beautiful and playful? Isn’t he most delightful, our Apis?”
He was beautiful and playful and most delightful, the visitors granted. He was a splendid bull-calf. His coat gleamed black as jet; and he was painted in accordance with the sacred prescript without which there is no incarnation: a white moon, like a snowy little crown, shone like a sickle between his gilded horns; and two other little white crowns adorned him on either side above the forelegs. His eyes blazed as might carbuncles with a light kindled behind them; and he stared from under his curly forehead with an almost human glance. His neck already fell into powerful, heavy folds; his chest was broad; and he lashed his tail like a whip. His hoofs were vermilion. And he trotted round his grass-plot and pushed out the sods with his horns and scratched with his red hoofs. The pleasant-looking priest now went up to him, laughing, and took him, respectfully and yet firmly, by the gold collar and talked to him and laughed; and Apis shook himself; and the priest laughed; and now all the priests began to laugh and the strangers laughed and Caleb roared and Uncle Catullus held his sides. Even Lucius
