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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of King Candaules, by Theophile Gautier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: King Candaules
+
+Author: Theophile Gautier
+
+Translator: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: September 18, 2007 [EBook #22660]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KING CANDAULES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+KING CANDAULES
+
+By Theophile Gautier
+
+Translated By Lafcadio Hearn
+
+1908
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Five hundred years before the Trojan war, and seventeen hundred and
+fifteen years before our own era, there was a grand festival at Sardes.
+King Candaules was going to marry. The people were affected with that
+sort of pleasurable interest and aimless emotion wherewith any royal
+event inspires the masses, even though it in no wise concerns them,
+and transpires in superior spheres of life which they can never hope to
+reach.
+
+As soon as Phoebus-Apollo, standing in his quadriga, had gilded to
+saffron the summits of fertile Mount Tmolus with his rays, the
+good people of Sardes were all astir, going and coming, mounting or
+descending the marble stairways leading from the city to the waters
+of the Pactolus, that opulent river whose sands Midas filled with tiny
+sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. One would have supposed
+that each one of these good citizens was himself about to marry, so
+solemn and important was the demeanour of all.
+
+Men were gathering in groups in the Agora, upon the steps of the
+temples and along the porticoes. At every street corner one might have
+encountered women leading by the hand little children, whose uneven walk
+ill suited the maternal anxiety and impatience. Maidens were hastening
+to the fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced upon their heads, or
+sustained by their white arms as with natural handles, so as to procure
+early the necessary water provision for the household, and thus obtain
+leisure at the hour when the nuptial procession should pass. Washerwomen
+hastily folded the still damp tunics and chlamidae, and piled them upon
+mule-wagons. Slaves turned the mill without any need of the overseer's
+whip to tickle their naked and scar-seamed shoulders. Sardes was
+hurrying itself to finish with those necessary everyday cares which no
+festival can wholly disregard.
+
+The road along which the procession was to pass had been strewn with
+fine yellow sand. Brazen tripods, disposed along the way at regular
+intervals, sent up to heaven the odorous smoke of cinnamon and
+spikenard. These vapours, moreover, alone clouded the purity of the
+azure above. The clouds of a hymeneal day ought, indeed, to be formed
+only by the burning of perfumes. Myrtle and rose-laurel branches were
+strewn upon the ground, and from the walls of the palaces were suspended
+by little rings of bronze rich tapestries, whereon the needles of
+industrious captives--intermingling wool, silver, and gold--had
+represented various scenes in the history of the gods and heroes:
+Ixion embracing the cloud; Diana surprised in the bath by Actaeon; the
+shepherd Paris as judge in the contest of beauty held upon Mount
+Ida between Hera, the snowy-armed, Athena of the sea-green eyes, and
+Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to
+honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken
+from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles. Others exhibited in
+preference scenes taken from the life of Heracles, the Theban, through
+flattery to Candaules, himself a Heracleid, being descended from the
+hero through Alcaeus. Others contented themselves by decorating the
+entrances of their dwellings with garlands and wreaths in token of
+rejoicing.
+
+Among the multitudes marshalled along the way from the royal house even
+as far as the gates of the city, through which the young queen would
+pass on her arrival, conversation naturally turned upon the beauty of
+the bride, whereof the renown had spread throughout all Asia; and
+upon the character of the bridegroom, who, although not altogether an
+eccentric, seemed nevertheless one not readily appreciated from the
+common standpoint of observation.
+
+Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, was gifted with marvellous
+purity of feature and perfection of form; at least such was the rumour
+spread abroad by the female slaves who attended her, and a few female
+friends who had accompanied her to the bath; for no man could boast
+of knowing aught of Nyssia save the colour of her veil and the elegant
+folds that she involuntarily impressed upon the soft materials which
+robed her statuesque body.
+
+The barbarians did not share the ideas of the Greeks in regard to
+modesty. While the youths of Achaia made no scruples of allowing their
+oil-anointed torsos to shine under the sun in the stadium, and while the
+Spartan virgins danced ungarmented before the altar of Diana, those of
+Persepolis, Ebactana, and Bactria, attaching more importance to chastity
+of the body than to chastity of mind, considered those liberties
+allowed to the pleasure of the eyes by Greek manner as impure and highly
+reprehensible, and held no woman virtuous who permitted men to obtain
+a glimpse of more than the tip of her foot in walking, as it slightly
+deranged the discreet folds of a long tunic.
+
+Despite all this mystery, or rather, perhaps, by very reason of this
+mystery, the fame of Nyssia had not been slow to spread throughout all
+Lydia, and become popular there to such a degree that it had reached
+even Candaules, although kings are ordinarily the most illy informed
+people in their kingdoms, and live like the gods in a kind of cloud
+which conceals from them the knowledge of terrestrial things.
+
+The Eupatridae of Sardes, who hoped that the young king might, perchance,
+choose a wife from their family, the hetairae of Athens, of Samos, of
+Miletus and of Cyprus, the beautiful slaves from the banks of the
+Indus, the blond girls brought at a vast expense from the depths of
+the Cimmerian fogs, were heedful never to utter in the presence of
+Candaules, whether within hearing or beyond hearing, a single word
+which bore any relation to Nyssia. The bravest, in a question of beauty,
+recoil before the prospect of a contest in which they can anticipate
+being outrivalled.
+
+And nevertheless no person in Sardes, or even in Lydia, had beheld this
+redoubtable adversary, no person save one solitary being, who from
+the time of that encounter had kept his lips as firmly closed upon the
+subject as though Harpocrates, the god of silence, had sealed them with
+his finger, and that was Gyges, chief of the guards of Candaules. One
+day Gyges, his mind filled with various projects and vague ambitions,
+had been wandering among the Bactrian hills, whither his master had
+sent him upon an important and secret mission. He was dreaming of the
+intoxication of omnipotence, of treading upon purple with sandals of
+gold, of placing the diadem upon the brows of the fairest of women.
+
+These thoughts made his blood boil in his veins, and, as though to
+pursue the flight of his dreams, he smote his sinewy heel upon the
+foam-whitened flanks of his Numidian horse.
+
+The weather, at first calm, had changed and waxed tempestuous like the
+warrior's soul; and Boreas, his locks bristling with Thracian frosts,
+his cheeks puffed out, his arms folded upon his breast, smote the
+rain-freighted clouds with the mighty beatings of his wings.
+
+A bevy of young girls who had been gathering flowers in the meadow,
+fearing the coming storm, were returning to the city in all haste, each
+carrying her perfumed harvest in the lap of her tunic. Seeing a stranger
+on horseback approaching in the distance, they had hidden their faces
+in their mantles, after the custom of the barbarians; but at the very
+moment that Gyges was passing by the one whose proud carriage and richer
+habiliments seemed to designate her the mistress of the little band,
+an unusually violent gust of wind carried away the veil of the fair
+unknown, and, whirling it through the air like a feather, chased it to
+such a distance that it could not be recovered. It was Nyssia, daughter
+of Megabazus, who found herself thus with face unveiled in the presence
+of Gyges, a humble captain of King Candaules's guard. Was it only the
+breath of Boreas which had brought about this accident, or had Eros, who
+delights to vex the hearts of men, amused himself by severing the string
+which had fastened the protecting tissue? However that may have been,
+Gyges was stricken motionless at the sight of that Medusa of beauty, and
+not till long after the folds of Nyssia's robe had disappeared beyond
+the gates of the city could he think of proceeding on his way. Although
+there was nothing to justify such a conjecture, he cherished the belief
+that he had seen the satrap's daughter; and that meeting, which affected
+him almost like an apparition, accorded so fully with the thoughts that
+were occupying him at the moment of its occurrence, that he could not
+help perceiving therein something fateful and ordained of the gods.
+In truth it was upon that brow that he would have wished to place the
+diadem. What other could be more worthy of it? But what probability was
+there that Gyges would ever have a throne to share? He had not sought
+to follow up this adventure, and assure himself that it was indeed the
+daughter of Megabazus whose mysterious face had been revealed to him by
+Chance, the great filcher. Nyssia had fled so swiftly that it would have
+been impossible for him then to overtake her; and, moreover, he had been
+dazzled, fascinated, thunder-stricken, as it were, rather than charmed
+by that superhuman apparition, by that monster of beauty!
+
+Nevertheless that image, although seen only in the glimpse of a moment,
+had engraved itself upon his heart in lines deep as those which
+the sculptors trace on ivory with tools reddened in the fire. He had
+endeavoured, although vainly, to efface it, for the love which he felt
+for Nyssia inspired him with a secret terror. Perfection in such a
+degree is ever awe-inspiring, and women so like unto goddesses could
+only work evil to feeble mortals; they are formed for divine adulteries,
+and even the most courageous men never risk themselves in such amours
+without trembling. Therefore no hope had blossomed in the soul of
+Gyges, overwhelmed and discouraged in advance by the sentiment of the
+impossible. Ere opening his lips to Nyssia he would have wished to
+despoil the heaven of its robe of stars, to take from Phoebus his crown
+of rays, forgetting that women only give themselves to those unworthy
+of them, and that to win their love one must act as though he desired to
+earn their hate.
+
+From that day the roses of joy no longer bloomed upon his cheeks. By
+day he was sad and mournful, and seemed to wander abroad in solitary
+dreaming, like a mortal who has beheld a divinity. At night he was
+haunted by dreams in which he beheld Nyssia seated by his side upon
+cushions of purple between the golden griffins of the royal throne.
+
+Therefore Gyges, the only one who could speak of his own knowledge
+concerning Nyssia, having never spoken of her, the Sardians were left to
+their own conjectures in her regard; and their conjectures, it must be
+confessed, were fantastic and altogether fabulous. The beauty of Nyssia,
+thanks to the veils which shrouded her, became a sort of myth, a canvas,
+a poem to which each one added ornamentation as the fancy took him.
+
+'If report be not false,' lisped a young debauchee from Athens, who
+stood with one hand upon the shoulder of an Asiatic boy, 'neither
+Plangon, nor Archianassa, nor Thais can be compared with this marvellous
+barbarian; yet I can scarce believe that she equals Theano of Colophon,
+from whom I once bought a single night at the price of as much gold as
+she could bear away, after having plunged both her white arms up to the
+shoulder in my cedar-wood coffer.'
+
+'Beside her,' added a Eupatrid, who pretended to be better informed than
+any other person upon all manner of subjects, 'beside her the daughter
+of Coelus and the Sea would seem but a mere Ethiopian servant.'
+
+'Your words are blasphemy, and although Aphrodite be a kind and
+indulgent goddess, beware of drawing down her anger upon you.'
+
+'By Hercules!--and that ought to be an oath of some weight in a city
+ruled by one of his descendants--I cannot retract a word of it.'
+
+'You have seen her, then?'
+
+'No; but I have a slave in my service who once belonged to Nyssia, and
+who has told me a hundred stories about her.'
+
+'Is it true,' demanded in infantile tones an equivocal-looking woman
+whose pale-rose tunic, painted cheeks, and locks shining with essences
+betrayed wretched pretensions to a youth long passed away--' is it true
+that Nyssia has two pupils in each eye? It seems to me that must be very
+ugly, and I cannot understand how Candaules could fall in love with such
+a monstrosity, while there is no lack, at Sardes and in Lydia, of women
+whose eyes are irreproachable.'
+
+And uttering these words with all sorts of affected airs and simperings,
+Lamia took a little significant peep in a small mirror of cast metal
+which she drew from her bosom, and which enabled her to lead back to
+duty certain wandering curls disarranged by the impertinence of the
+wind.
+
+'As to the double pupil, that seems to me nothing more than an old
+nurse's tale,' observed the well-informed patrician; 'but it is a fact
+that Nyssia's eyes are so piercing that she can see through walls.
+Lynxes are myopic compared with her.'
+
+'How can a sensible man coolly argue about such an absurdity?'
+interrupted a citizen, whose bald skull, and the flood of snowy beard
+into which he plunged his fingers while speaking, lent him an air of
+preponderance and philosophical sagacity. 'The truth is that the
+daughter of Megabazus cannot naturally see through a wall any better
+than you or I, but the Egyptian priest Thoutmosis, who knows so many
+wondrous secrets, has given her the mysterious stone which is found in
+the heads of dragons, and whose property, as every one knows, renders
+all shadows and the most opaque bodies transparent to the eyes of those
+who possess it. Nyssia always carries this stone in her girdle, or
+else set into her bracelet, and in that may be found the secret of her
+clairvoyance.'
+
+The citizen's explanation seemed the most natural one to those of the
+group whose conversation we are endeavouring to reproduce, and the
+opinions of Lamia and the patrician were abandoned as improbable.
+
+'At all events,' returned the lover of Theano, 'we are going to have an
+opportunity of judging for ourselves, for it seems to me that I hear the
+clarions sounding in the distance, and though Nyssia is still invisible,
+I can see the herald yonder approaching with palm branches in his hands,
+to announce the arrival of the nuptial _cortege_, and make the crowd
+fall back.'
+
+At this news, which spread rapidly through the crowd, the strong men
+elbowed their way toward the front ranks; the agile boys, embracing the
+shafts of the columns, sought to climb up to the capitals and there seat
+themselves; others, not without having skinned their knees against the
+bark, succeeded in perching themselves comfortably enough in the Y of
+some tree-branch. The women lifted their little children upon their
+shoulders, warning them to hold tightly to their necks. Those who had
+the good fortune to dwell on the street along which Candaules and Nyssia
+were about to pass, leaned over from the summit of their roofs, or,
+rising on their elbows, abandoned for a time the cushions upon which
+they had been reclining.
+
+A murmur of satisfaction and gratified expectation ran through the
+crowd, which had already been waiting many long hours, for the arrows of
+the midday sun were commencing to sting.
+
+The heavy-armed warriors, with cuirasses of bull's-hide covered with
+overlapping plates of metal, helmets adorned with plumes of horse-hair
+dyed red, _knemides_ or greaves faced with tin, baldrics studded with
+nails, emblazoned bucklers, and swords of brass, rode behind a line of
+trumpeters who blew with might and main upon their long tubes, which
+gleamed under the sunlight. The horses of these warriors were all white
+as the feet of Thetis, and might have served, by reason of their noble
+paces and purity of breeds, as models for those which Phidias at a later
+day sculptured upon the metopes of the Parthenon.
+
+At the head of this troop rode Gyges, the well-named, for his name
+in the Lydian tongue signifies beautiful. His features, of the most
+exquisite regularity, seemed chiselled in marble, owing to his intense
+pallor, for he had just discovered in Nyssia, although she was veiled
+with the veil of a young bride, the same woman whose face had been
+betrayed to his gaze by the treachery of Boreas under the walls of
+Bactria.
+
+'Handsome Gyges looks very sad,' said the young maidens. 'What proud
+beauty could have secured his love, or what forsaken one has caused some
+Thessalian witch to cast a spell on him? Has that cabalistic ring (which
+he is said to have found hidden within the flanks of a brazen horse
+in the midst of some forest) lost its virtue, and suddenly ceasing to
+render its owner invisible, betrayed him to the astonished eyes of some
+innocent husband, who had deemed himself alone in his conjugal chamber?'
+
+'Perhaps he has been wasting his talents and his drachmas at the game of
+Palamedes, or else it may be that he is disappointed at not having
+won the prize at the Olympian games. He had great faith in his horse
+Hyperion.'
+
+No one of these conjectures was true. A fact is never guessed.
+
+After the battalion commanded by Gyges, there came young boys crowned
+with myrtle-wreaths, and singing epithalamic hymns after the Lydian
+manner, accompanying themselves upon lyres of ivory, which they played
+with bows. All were clad in rose-coloured tunics ornamented with
+a silver Greek border, and their long hair flowed down over their
+shoulders in thick curls.
+
+They preceded the gift-bearers, strong slaves whose half-nude bodies
+exposed to view such interlacements of muscle as the stoutest athletes
+might have envied.
+
+Upon brancards, supported by two or four men or more, according to
+the weight of the objects borne, were placed enormous brazen cratera,
+chiselled by the most famous artists; vases of gold and silver whose
+sides were adorned with bas-reliefs and whose hands were elegantly
+worked into chimeras, foliage, and nude women; magnificent ewers to be
+used in washing the feet of illustrious guests; flagons encrusted with
+precious stones and containing the rarest perfumes; myrrh from Arabia,
+cinnamon from the Indies, spikenard from Persia, essence of roses from
+Smyrna; kamklins or perfuming pans, with perforated covers; cedar-wood
+or ivory coffers of marvellous workmanship, which opened with a secret
+spring that none save the inventor could find, and which contained
+bracelets wrought from the gold of Ophir, necklaces of the most lustrous
+pearls, mantle-brooches constellated with rubies and carbuncles;
+toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons, sea-wolves' teeth
+to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns to a most
+beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and
+eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine coquetry could invent.
+Other litters were freighted with purple robes of the finest linen and
+of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of the rose to the deep
+crimson of the blood of the grape; _calasires_ of the linen of Canopus,
+which is thrown all white into the vat of the dyer, and comes forth
+again, owing to the various astringents in which it had been steeped,
+diapered with the most brilliant colours; tunics brought from the
+fabulous land of Seres, made from the spun slime of a worm which feeds
+upon leaves, and so fine that they might be drawn through a finger-ring.
+
+Ethiopians, whose bodies shone like jet, and whose temples were tightly
+bound with cords, lest they should burst the veins of their foreheads
+in the effort to uphold their burden, carried in great pomp a statue of
+Hercules, the ancestor of Candaules, of colossal size, wrought of ivory
+and gold, with the club, the skin of the Nemean lion, the three apples
+from the garden of the Hesperides, and all the traditional attributes of
+the hero.
+
+Statues of Venus Urania, and of Venus Genitrix, sculptured by the best
+pupils of the Sicyon School. That marble of Paros whose gleaming
+transparency seemed expressly created for the representation of the
+ever-youthful flesh of the immortals, were borne after the statue of
+Hercules, which admirably relieved the harmony and elegance of their
+proportions by contrast with its massive outlines and rugged forms.
+
+A painting by Bularchus, which Candaules had purchased for its weight in
+gold, executed upon the wood of the female larch-tree, and representing
+the defeat of the Magnesians, evoked universal admiration by the beauty
+of its design, the truthfulness of the attitude of its figures, and the
+harmony of its colouring, although the artist had only employed in
+its production the four primitive colours: Attic ochre, white, Pontic
+_sinopis_ and _atramentum_. The young king loved painting and sculpture
+even more, perhaps, than well became a monarch, and he had not
+unfrequently bought a picture at a price equal to the annual revenue of
+a whole city.
+
+Camels and dromedaries, splendidly caparisoned, with musicians seated
+on their necks performing upon drums and cymbals, carried the gilded
+stakes, the cords, and the material of the tent designed for the use of
+the queen during voyages and hunting parties.
+
+These spectacles of magnificence would upon any other occasion have
+ravished the people of Sardes with delight, but their curiosity had been
+enlisted in another direction, and it was not without a certain feeling
+of impatience that they watched this portion of the procession file by.
+The young maidens and the handsome boys, bearing flaming torches, and
+strewing handfuls of crocus flowers along the way, hardly attracted any
+attention. The idea of beholding Nyssia had preoccupied all minds.
+
+At last Candaules appeared, riding in a chariot drawn by four horses,
+as beautiful and spirited as those of the sun, all rolling their golden
+bits in foam, shaking their purple-decked manes, and restrained
+with great difficulty by the driver, who stood erect at the side of
+Candaules, and was leaning back to gain more power on the reins.
+
+Candaules was a young man full of vigour, and well worthy of his
+Herculean origin. His head was joined to his shoulders by a neck massive
+as a bull's, and almost without a curve; his hair, black and lustrous,
+twisted itself into rebellious little curls, here and there concealing
+the circlet of his diadem; his ears, small and upright, were of a ruddy
+hue; his forehead was broad and full, though a little low, like all
+antique foreheads; his eyes full of gentle melancholy, his oval cheeks,
+his chin with its gentle and regular curves, his mouth with its slightly
+parted lips--all bespoke the nature of the poet rather than that of
+the warrior. In fact, although he was brave, skilled in all bodily
+exercises, could subdue a wild horse as well as any of the Lapithae,
+or swim across the current of rivers when they descended, swollen with
+melted snow, from the mountains, although he might have bent the bow of
+Odysseus or borne the shield of Achilles, he seemed little occupied with
+dreams of conquest; and war usually so fascinating to young kings,
+had little attraction for him. He contented himself with repelling the
+attacks of his ambitious neighbours, and sought not to extend his own
+dominions. He preferred building palaces, after plans suggested by
+himself to the architects, who always found the king's hints of no small
+value, or to form collections of statues and paintings by artists of
+the elder and later schools. He had the works of Telephanes of Sicyon,
+Cleanthes, Ardices of Corinth, Hygiemon, Deinias, Charmides, Eumarus,
+and Cimon, some being simple drawings, and others paintings in various
+colours or monochromes. It was even said that Candaules had not
+disdained to wield with his own royal hands--a thing hardly becoming
+a prince--the chisel of the sculptor and the sponge of the encaustic
+painter.
+
+But why should we dwell upon-Candaules? The reader undoubtedly feels
+like the people of Sardes: and it is of Nyssia that he desires to hear.
+
+The daughter of Megabazus was mounted upon an elephant, with wrinkled
+skin and immense ears which seemed like flags, who advanced with a heavy
+but rapid gait, like a vessel in the midst of the waves. His tusks and
+his trunk were encircled with silver rings, and around the pillars of
+his limbs were entwined necklaces of enormous pearls. Upon his back,
+which was covered with a magnificent Persian carpet of striped
+pattern, stood a sort of estrade overlaid with gold finely chased, and
+constellated with onyx stones, carnelians, chrysolites, lapis-lazuli,
+and girasols; upon this estrade sat the young queen, so covered with
+precious stones as to dazzle the eyes of the beholders. A mitre, shaped
+like a helmet, on which pearls formed flower designs and letters after
+the Oriental manner, was placed upon her head; her ears, both the lobes
+and rims of which had been pierced, were adorned with ornaments in the
+form of little cups, crescents, and balls; necklaces of gold and silver
+beads, which had been hollowed out and carved, thrice encircled her neck
+and descended with a metallic tinkling upon her bosom; emerald serpents
+with topaz or ruby eyes coiled themselves in many folds about her arms,
+and clasped themselves by biting their own tails. These bracelets were
+connected by chains of precious stones, and so great was their weight
+that two attendants were required to kneel beside Nyssia and support
+her elbows. She was clad in a robe embroidered by Syrian workmen with
+shining designs of golden foliage and diamond fruits, and over this she
+wore the short tunic of Persepolis, which hardly descended to the knee,
+and of which the sleeves were slit and fastened by sapphire clasps.
+Her waist was encircled from hip to loins by a girdle wrought of narrow
+material, variegated with stripes and flowered designs, which formed
+themselves into symmetrical patterns as they were brought together by
+a certain arrangement of the folds which Indian girls alone know how to
+make. Her trousers of byssus, which the Phoenicians called _syndon_ were
+confined at the ankles by anklets adorned with gold and silver bells,
+and completed this toilet so fantastically rich and wholly opposed to
+Greek taste. But, alas! a saffron-coloured _flammeum_ pitilessly masked
+the face of Nyssia, who seemed embarrassed, veiled though she was, at
+finding so many eyes fixed upon her, and frequently signed to a slave
+behind her to lower the parasol of ostrich plumes, and thus conceal her
+yet more from the curious gaze of the crowd.
+
+Candaules had vainly begged of her to lay aside her veil, even for that
+solemn occasion. The young barbarian had refused to pay the welcome of
+her beauty to his people. Great was the disappointment. Lamia declared
+that Nyssia dared not uncover her face for fear of showing her double
+pupil. The young libertine remained convinced that Theano of Colophon
+was more beautiful than the queen of Sardes; and Gyges sighed when he
+beheld Nyssia, after having made her elephant kneel down, descend upon
+the inclined heads of Damascus slaves as upon a living ladder, to
+the threshold of the royal dwelling, where the elegance of Greek
+architecture was blended with the fantasies and enormities of Asiatic
+taste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In our character of poet we have the right to lift the saffron-coloured
+_flammeum_ which concealed the young bride, being more fortunate in this
+wise than the Sardians, who after a whole day's waiting were obliged
+to return to their houses, and were left, as before, to their own
+conjectures.
+
+Nyssia was really far superior to her reputation, great as it was. It
+seemed as though Nature in creating her had resolved to exhaust her
+utmost powers, and thus make atonement for all former experimental
+attempts and fruitless essays. One would have said that, moved by
+jealousy of the future marvels of the Greek sculptors, she also had
+resolved to model a statue herself, and to prove that she was still
+sovereign mistress in the plastic art.
+
+The grain of snow, the micaceous brilliancy of Parian marble, the
+sparkling pulp of balsamine flowers, would render but a feeble idea
+of the ideal substance whereof. Nyssia had been formed. That flesh,
+so fine, so delicate, permitted daylight to penetrate it, and modelled
+itself in transparent contours, in lines as sweetly harmonious as music
+itself. According to different surroundings, it took the colour of the
+sunlight or of purple, like the aromal body of a divinity, and seemed
+to radiate light and life. The world of perfections inclosed within the
+nobly lengthened oval of her chaste face could have been rendered by no
+earthly art--neither by the chisel of the sculptor, nor the brush of the
+painter, nor the style of any poet--though it were Praxiteles,
+Apelles, or Mimnernus; and on her smooth brow, bathed by waves of
+hair amber-bright as molten electrum and sprinkled with gold filings,
+according to the Babylonian custom, sat as upon a jasper throne the
+unalterable serenity of perfect loveliness.
+
+As for her eyes, though they did not justify what popular credulity said
+of them, they were at least wonderfully strange eyes; brown eyebrows,
+with extremities ending in points elegant as those of the arrows of
+Eros, and which were joined to each other by a streak of henna after
+the Asiatic fashion, and long fringes of silkily-shadowed eyelashes
+contrasted strikingly with the twin sapphire stars rolling in the heaven
+of dark silver which formed those eyes. The irises of those eyes,
+whose pupils were blacker than atrament, varied singularly in shades of
+shifting colour. From sapphire they changed to turquoise, from turquoise
+to beryl, from beryl to yellow amber, and sometimes, like a limpid
+lake whose bottom is strewn with jewels, they offered, through their
+incalculable depths, glimpses of golden and diamond sands upon which
+green fibrils vibrated and twisted themselves into emerald serpents. In
+those orbs of phosphoric lightning the rays of suns extinguished, the
+splendours of vanished worlds, the glories of Olympus eclipsed--all
+seemed to have concentrated their reflections. When contemplating
+them one thought of eternity, and felt himself seized with a mighty
+giddiness, as though he were leaning over the verge of the Infinite.
+
+The expression of those extraordinary eyes was not less variable than
+their tint. At times their lids opened like the portals of celestial
+dwellings; they invited you into elysiums of light, of azure, of
+ineffable felicity; they promised you the realisation, tenfold, a
+hundredfold, of all your dreams of happiness, as though they had divined
+your soul's most secret thoughts; again, impenetrable as sevenfold
+plated shields of the hardest metals, they flung back your gaze like
+blunted and broken arrows. With a simple inflexion of the brow, a
+mere flash of the pupil, more terrible than the thunder of Zeus, they
+precipitated you from the heights of your most ambitious escalades into
+depths of nothingness so profound that it was impossible to rise again.
+Typhon himself, who writhes under AEtna, could not have lifted the
+mountains of disdain with which they overwhelmed you. One felt that
+though he should live for a thousand Olympiads endowed with the beauty
+of the fair son of Latona, the genius of Orpheus, the unbounded might
+of Assyrian kings, the treasures of the Cabeirei, the Telchines, and
+the Dactyli, gods of subterranean wealth, he could never change their
+expression to mildness.
+
+At other times their languishment was so liquidly persuasive, their
+brilliancy and irradiation so penetrating, that the icy coldness of
+Nestor and Priam would have melted under their gaze, like the wax of
+the wings of Icarus when he approached the flaming zones. For one such
+glance a man would have gladly steeped his hands in the blood of his
+host, scattered the ashes of his father to the four winds, overthrown
+the holy images of the gods, and stolen the fire of heaven itself, like
+the sublime thief, Prometheus.
+
+Nevertheless, their most ordinary expression, it must be confessed, was
+of a chastity to make one desperate--a sublime coldness--an ignorance
+of all possibilities of human passion, such as would have made the
+moon-bright eyes of Phoebe or the sea-green eyes of Athena appear by
+comparison more liquidly tempting than those of a young girl of Babylon
+sacrificing to the goddess Mylitta within the cord-circled enclosure of
+Succoth-Benohl. Their invincible virginity seemed to bid love defiance.
+
+The cheeks of Nyssia, which no human gaze had ever profaned, save that
+of Gyges on the day when the veil was blown away, possessed a youthful
+bloom, a tender pallor, a delicacy of grain, and a downiness whereof
+the faces of our women, perpetually exposed to sunlight and air, cannot
+convey the most distant idea. Modesty created fleeting rosy clouds upon
+them like those which a drop of crimson essence would form in a cup of
+milk, and when uncoloured by any emotion they took a silvery sheen, a
+warm light, like an alabaster vessel illumined by a lamp within. That
+lamp was her charming soul, which exposed to view the transparency of
+her flesh.
+
+A bee would have been deceived by her mouth, whose form was so perfect,
+whose corners were so purely dimpled, whose crimson was so rich and
+warm that the gods would have descended from their Olympian dwellings
+in order to touch it with lips humid with immortality, but that the
+jealousy of the goddesses restrained their impetuosity. Happy the wind
+which passed through that purple and pearl, which dilated those
+pretty nostrils, so finely cut and shaded with rosy tints like the
+mother-of-pearl of the shells thrown by the sea on the shore of Cyprus
+at the feet of Venus Anadyomene! But are there not a multitude of
+favours thus granted to things which cannot understand them? What lover
+would not wish to be the tunic of his well-beloved or the water of her
+bath?
+
+Such was Nyssia, if we dare make use of the expression after so vague
+a description of her face. If our foggy Northern idioms had the warm
+liberty, the burning enthusiasm of the Sir Hasirim, we might, perhaps,
+by comparisons--awakening in the mind of the reader memories of flowers
+and perfumes, of music and sunlight, evoking, by the magic of words,
+all the graceful and charming images that the universe can contain--have
+been able to give some idea of Nyssia's features; but it is permitted to
+Solomon alone to compare the nose of a beautiful woman to the tower
+of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. And yet what is there in the
+world of more importance than the nose of a beautiful woman? Had Helen,
+the white Tyndarid, been flat-nosed, would the Trojan War have taken
+place? And if the profile of Semiramis had not been perfectly regular,
+would she have bewitched the old monarch of Nineveh and encircled her
+brow with the mitre of pearls, the symbol of supreme power?
+
+Although Candaules had brought to his palace the most beautiful slaves
+from the people of the Sorse, of Askalon, of Sogdiana, of the Sacse, of
+Rhapta, the most celebrated courtesans from Ephesus, from Pergamus, from
+Smyrna, and from Cyprus, he was completely fascinated by the charms of
+Nyssia. Up to that time he had not even suspected the existence of such
+perfection.
+
+Privileged as a husband to enjoy fully the contemplation of this beauty,
+he found himself dazzled, giddy, like one who leans over the edge of
+an abyss, or fixes his eyes upon the sun; he felt himself seized, as it
+were, with the dilirium of possession, like a priest drunk with the god
+who fills and moves him. All other thoughts disappeared from his soul,
+and the universe seemed to him only as a vague mist in the midst of
+which beamed the shining phantom of Nyssia. His happiness transformed
+itself into ecstasy, and his love into madness. At times his very
+felicity terrified him. To be only a wretched king, only a remote
+descendant of a hero who had become a god by mighty labours, only
+a common man formed of flesh and bone, and without having in aught
+rendered himself worthy of it--without having even, like his ancestor,
+strangled some hydra, or torn some lion asunder--to enjoy a happiness
+whereof Zeus of the ambrosial hair would scarce be worthy, though
+lord of all Olympus! He felt, as it were, a shame to thus hoard up for
+himself alone so rich a treasure, to steal this marvel from the world,
+to be the dragon with scales and claws who guarded the living type of
+the ideal of lovers, sculptors, and poets. All they had ever dreamed of
+in their hope, their melancholy, and their despair, he possessed--he,
+Candaules, poor tyrant of Sardes, who had only a few wretched coffers
+filled with pearls, a few cisterns filled with gold pieces, and thirty
+or forty thousand slaves, purchased or taken in war.
+
+Candaules's felicity was too great for him, and the strength which he
+would doubtless have found at his command in time of misfortune was
+wanting to him in time of happiness. His joy overflowed from his soul
+like water from a vase placed upon the fire, and in the exasperation of
+his enthusiasm for Nyssia he had reached the point of desiring that she
+were less timid and less modest, for it cost him no little effort to
+retain in his own breast the secret of such wondrous beauty.
+
+'Ah,' he would murmur to himself during the deep reveries which absorbed
+him at all hours that he did not spend at the queen's side, 'how strange
+a lot is mine! I am wretched because of that which would make any other
+husband happy. Nyssia will not leave the shadow of the gynaeceum, and
+refuses, with barbarian modesty, to lift her veil in the presence of any
+other than myself. Yet with what an intoxication of pride would my love
+behold her, radiantly sublime, gaze down upon my kneeling people from
+the summit of the royal steps, and, like the rising dawn, extinguish
+all those pale stars who during the night thought themselves suns! Proud
+Lydian women, who believe yourselves beautiful, but for Nyssia's reserve
+you would appear, even to your lovers, as ugly as the oblique-eyed and
+thick-lipped slaves of Nahasi and Kush. Were she but once to pass along
+the streets of Sardes with face unveiled, you might in vain pull your
+adorers by the lappet of their tunic, for none of them would turn his
+head, or, if he did, it would be to demand your name, so utterly would
+he have forgotten you! They would rush to precipitate themselves beneath
+the silver wheels of her chariot, that they might have even the pleasure
+of being crushed by her, like those devotees of the Indus who pave the
+pathway of their idol with their bodies.
+
+'And you, O goddesses, whom Paris-Alexander judged, had Nyssia appeared
+among you, not one of you would have borne away the golden apple,
+not even Aphrodite, despite her cestus and her promise to the
+shepherd-arbiter that she would make him beloved by the most beautiful
+woman in the world!...
+
+'Alas! to think that such beauty is not immortal, and that years will
+alter those divine outlines, that admirable hymn of forms, that poem
+whose strophes are contours, and which no one in the world has ever read
+or may ever read save myself; to be the sole depositary of so splendid a
+treasure! If I knew even by imitating the play of light and shadow with
+the aid of lines and colours, how to fix upon wood a reflection of that
+celestial face; if marble were not rebellious to my chisel, how well
+would I fashion in the purest vein of Paros or Pentelicus an image of
+that charming body, which would make the proud effigies of the goddesses
+fall from their altars! And long after, when deep below the slime of
+deluges, and beneath the dust of ruined cities, the men of future ages
+should find a fragment of that petrified shadow of Nyssia, they would
+cry: "Behold, how the women of this vanished world were formed!" And
+they would erect a temple wherein to enshrine the divine fragment. But I
+have naught save a senseless admiration and a love that is madness! Sole
+adorer of an unknown divinity, I possess no power to spread her worship
+through the world.'
+
+Thus in Candaules had the enthusiasm of the artist extinguished the
+jealousy of the lover. Admiration was mightier than love. If in place
+of Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, all imbued with Oriental
+ideas, he had espoused some Greek girl from Athens or Corinth, he
+would certainly have invited to his court the most skilful painters
+and sculptors, and have given them the queen for their model, as did
+afterward Alexander his favourite Campaspe, who posed naked before
+Apelles. Such a whim would have encountered no opposition from a
+woman of the land where even the most chaste made a boast of having
+contributed--some for the back, some for the bosom--to the perfection of
+a famous statue. But hardly would the bashful Nyssia consent to unveil
+herself in the discreet shadow of the thalamus, and the earnest prayers
+of the king really shocked her rather than gave her pleasure. The
+sentiment of duty and obedience alone induced her to yield at times to
+what she styled the whims of Candaules.
+
+Sometimes he besought her to allow the flood of her hair to flow over
+her shoulders in a river of gold richer than the Pactolus, to encircle
+her brow with a crown of ivy and linden leaves like a bacchante of Mount
+Maenalus, to lie, hardly veiled by a cloud of tissue finer than woven
+wind, upon a tiger-skin with silver claws and ruby eyes, or to stand
+erect in a great shell of mother-of-pearl, with a dew of pearls falling
+from her tresses in lieu of drops of sea-water.
+
+When he had placed himself in the best position for observation,
+he became absorbed in silent contemplation. His hand, tracing vague
+contours in the air, seemed to be sketching the outlines for some
+picture, and he would have remained thus for whole hours if Nyssia, soon
+becoming weary of her role of model, had not reminded him in chill and
+disdainful tones that such amusements were unworthy of royal majesty and
+contrary to the holy laws of matrimony. 'It is thus,' she would exclaim,
+as she withdrew, draped to her very eyes, into the most mysterious
+recesses of her apartment, 'that one treats a mistress, not a virtuous
+woman of noble blood!'
+
+These wise remonstrances did not cure Candaules, whose passion augmented
+in inverse ratio to the coldness shown him by the queen. And it had at
+last brought him to that point that he could no longer keep the secrets
+of the nuptial couch. A confidant became as necessary to him as to the
+prince of a modern tragedy. He did not proceed, you may feel assured,
+to fix his choice upon some crabbed philosopher of frowning mien, with
+a flood of gray-and-white beard rolling down over a mantle in proud
+tatters; nor a warrior who could talk of nothing save ballista,
+catapults, and scythed chariots; nor a sententious Eupatrid full of
+councils and politic maxims; but Gyges, whose reputation for gallantry
+caused him to be regarded as a connoisseur in regard to women.
+
+One evening he laid his hand upon his shoulder in a more than ordinarily
+familiar and cordial manner, and after giving him a look of peculiar
+significance, he suddenly strode away from the group of courtiers,
+saying in a loud voice:
+
+'Gyges, come and give me your opinion in regard to my effigy, which
+the Sicyon sculptors have just finished chiselling on the genealogical
+bas-relief where the deeds of my ancestors are celebrated.'
+
+'O king, your knowledge is greater than that of your humble subject,
+and I know not how to express my gratitude for the honour you do me in
+deigning to consult me,' replied Gyges, with a sign of assent.
+
+Candaules and his favourite traversed several halls ornamented in the
+Hellenic style, where the Corinthian acanthus and the Ionic volute
+bloomed or curled in the capitals of the columns, where the friezes
+were peopled with little figures in polychromatic plastique representing
+processions and sacrifices, and they finally arrived at a remote portion
+of the ancient palace whose walls were built with stones of irregular
+form, put together without cement in the cyclopean manner. This
+ancient architecture was colossally proportioned and weirdly grim. The
+immeasurable genius of the elder civilisations of the Orient was there
+legibly written, and recalled the granite and brick debauches of Egypt
+and Assyria. Something of the spirit of the ancient architects of
+the tower of Lylax survived in those thick-set pillars with their
+deep-fluted trunks, whose capitals were formed by four heads of bulls,
+placed forehead to forehead, and bound together by knots of serpents
+that seemed striving to devour them, an obscure cosmogonie symbol
+whereof the meaning was no longer intelligible, and had descended into
+the tomb with the hierophants of preceding ages. The gates were neither
+of a square nor rounded form. They described a sort of ogive much
+resembling the mitre of the Magi, and by their fantastic character gave
+still more intensity to the character of the building.
+
+This portion of the palace formed a sort of court surrounded by
+a portico whose architecture was ornamented with the genealogical
+bas-relief to which Can-daules had alluded.
+
+In the midst thereof sat Heracles upon a throne, with the upper part of
+his body uncovered, and his feet resting upon a stool, according to
+the rite for the representation of divine personages. His colossal
+proportions would otherwise have left no doubt as to his apotheosis, and
+the archaic rudeness and hugeness of the work, wrought by the chisel
+of some primitive artist, imparted to his figure an air of barbaric
+majesty, a savage grandeur more appropriate, perhaps, to the character
+of this monster-slaying hero than would have been the work of a sculptor
+consummate in his art.
+
+On the right of the throne were Alcseus, son of the hero and of
+Omphale; Ninus, Belus, Argon, the earlier kings of the dynasty of the
+Heracleidae, then all the line of intermediate kings, terminating with
+Ardys, Alyattes, Meles or Myrsus, father of Candaules, and finally
+Candaules himself.
+
+All these personages, with their hair braided into little strings, their
+beards spirally twisted, their oblique eyes, angular attitudes, cramped
+and stiff gestures, seemed to own a sort of factitious life, due to the
+rays of the setting sun, and the ruddy hue which time lends to marble
+in warm climates. The inscriptions in antique characters, graven beside
+them after the manner of legends, enhanced still more the mysterious
+weirdness of the long procession of figures in strange barbarian garb.
+
+By a singular chance, which Gyges could not help observing, the statue
+of Candaules occupied the last available place at the right hand of
+Heracles; the dynastic cycle was closed, and in order to find a place
+for the descendants of Candaules it would be absolutely necessary to
+build a new portico and commence the formation of a new bas-relief.
+
+Candaules, whose arm still rested on the shoulder of Gyges, walked
+slowly round the portico in silence. He seemed to hesitate to enter into
+the subject, and had altogether forgotten the pretext under which he had
+led the captain of his guards into that solitary place.
+
+'What would you do, Gyges,' said Candaules, at last breaking the silence
+which had been growing painful to both, 'if you were a diver, and should
+bring up from the green bosom of the ocean a pearl of incomparable
+purity and lustre, and of worth so vast as to exhaust the richest
+treasures of the earth?'
+
+'I would inclose it,' answered Gyges, a little surprised at this brusque
+question, 'in a cedar box overlaid with plates of brass, and I would
+bury it under a detached rock in some desert place; and from time to
+time, when I should feel assured that none could see me, I would go
+thither to contemplate my precious jewel and admire the colours of the
+sky mingling with its nacreous tints.'
+
+'And I,' replied Candaules, his eye illuminated with enthusiasm, 'if I
+possessed so rich a gem, I would enshrine it in my diadem, that I might
+exhibit it freely to the eyes of all men, in the pure light of the sun,
+that I might adorn myself with its splendour and smile with pride when
+I should hear it said: "Never did king of Assyria or Babylon, never did
+Greek or Trinacrian tyrant possess so lustrous a pearl as Candaules,
+son of Myrsus and descendant of Heracles, King of Sardes and of Lydia!
+Compared with Candaules, Midas, who changed all things to gold, were
+only a mendicant as poor as Irus."'
+
+Gyges listened with astonishment to this discourse of Candaules, and
+sought to penetrate the hidden sense of these lyric divagations. The
+king appeared to be in a state of extraordinary excitement: his eyes
+sparkled with enthusiasm; a feverish rosiness tinted his cheeks; his
+dilated nostrils inhaled the air with unusual effort.
+
+'Well, Gyges,' continued Candaules, without appearing to notice the
+uneasiness of his favourite, 'I am that diver. Amid this dark ocean of
+humanity, wherein confusedly move so many defective or misshapen beings,
+so many forms incomplete or degraded, so many types of bestial ugliness,
+wretched outlines of nature's experimental essays, I have found beauty,
+pure, radiant, without spot, without flaw, the ideal made real, the
+dream accomplished, a form which no painter or sculptor has ever been
+able to translate upon canvas or into marble--I have found Nyssia!'
+
+'Although the queen has the timid modesty of the women of the Orient,
+and that no man save her husband has ever beheld her features, Fame,
+hundred-tongued and hundred-eared, has celebrated her praise throughout
+the world,' answered Gyges, respectfully inclining his head as he spoke.
+
+'Mere vague, insignificant rumours. They say of her, as of all women not
+actually ugly, that she is more beautiful than Aphrodite or Helen; but
+no person could form even the most remote idea of such perfection. In
+vain have I besought Nyssia to appear unveiled at some public festival,
+some solemn sacrifice, or to show herself for an instant leaning over
+the royal terrace, bestowing upon her people the immense favour of
+one look, the prodigality of one profile view, more generous than the
+goddesses who permit their worshippers to behold only pale simulacra of
+ivory or alabaster. She would never consent to that. Now there is one
+strange thing which I blush to acknowledge even to you, dear Gyges.
+Formerly I was jealous; I wished to conceal my amours from all eyes, no
+shadow was thick enough, no mystery sufficiently impenetrable. Now I can
+no longer recognise myself. I have the feelings neither of a lover nor
+a husband; my love has melted in adoration like thin wax in a fiery
+brazier. All petty feelings of jealousy or possession have vanished. No,
+the most finished work that heaven has ever given to earth, since the
+day that Prometheus held the flame under the right breast of the
+statue of clay, cannot thus be kept hidden in the chill shadow of the
+gynaeceum. Were I to die, then the secret of this beauty would for ever
+remain shrouded beneath the sombre draperies of widowhood! I feel myself
+culpable in its concealment, as though I had the sun in my house, and
+prevented it from illuminating the world. And when I think of those
+harmonious lines, those divine contours which I dare scarcely touch with
+a timid kiss, I feel my heart ready to burst; I wish that some friendly
+eye could share my happiness and, like a severe judge to whom a picture
+is shown, recognise after careful examination that it is irreproachable,
+and that the possessor has not been deceived by his enthusiasm. Yes,
+often do I feel myself tempted to tear off with rash hand those odious
+tissues, but Nyssia, in her fierce chastity, would never forgive me. And
+still I cannot alone endure such felicity. I must have a confidant for
+my ecstasies, an echo which will answer my cries of admiration, and it
+shall be none other than you.'
+
+Having uttered these words, Candaules brusquely turned and disappeared
+through a secret passage. Gyges, left thus alone, could not avoid
+noticing the peculiar concourse of events which seemed to place him
+always in Nyssia's path. A chance had enabled him to behold her beauty,
+though walled up from all other eyes. Among many princes and satraps she
+had chosen to espouse Candaules, the very king he served; and through
+some strange caprice, which he could only regard as fateful, this king
+had just made him, Gyges, his confidant in regard to the mysterious
+creature whom none else had approached, and absolutely sought to
+complete the work of Boreas on the plain of Bactria! Was not the hand
+of the gods visible in all these circumstances? That spectre of beauty,
+whose veil seemed to be lifted slowly, a little at a time, as though to
+enkindle a flame within him, was it not leading him, without his having
+suspected it, toward the accomplishment of some mighty destiny? Such
+were the questions which Gyges asked himself, but being unable to
+penetrate the obscurity of the future, he resolved to await the course
+of events, and left the Court of Images, where the twilight darkness
+was commencing to pile itself up in all the angles, and to render
+the effigies of the ancestors of Candaules yet more and more weirdly
+menacing.
+
+Was it a mere effort of light, or was it rather an illusion produced by
+that vague uneasiness with which the boldest hearts are filled by the
+approach of night amid ancient monuments? As he stepped across the
+threshold Gyges fancied that he heard deep groans issue from the stone
+lips of the bas-reliefs, and it seemed to him that Heracles was making
+enormous efforts to loosen his granite club.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On the following day Candaules again took Gyges aside and continued the
+conversation begun under the portico of the Heracleidae. Having freed
+himself from the embarrassment of broaching the subject, he freely
+unbosomed himself to his confidant; and had Nyssia been able to
+overhear him she might perhaps have been willing to pardon his conjugal
+indiscretions for the sake of his passionate eulogies of her charms.
+
+Gyges listened to all these bursts of praise with the slightly
+constrained air of one who is yet uncertain whether his interlocutor is
+not feigning an enthusiasm more ardent than he actually feels, in order
+to provoke a confidence naturally cautious to utter itself. Can-daules
+at last said to him in a tone of disappointment: 'I see, Gyges, that you
+do not believe me. You think I am boasting, or have allowed myself to be
+fascinated like some clumsy labourer by a robust country girl on whose
+cheeks Hygeia has crushed the gross hues of health. No, by all the gods!
+I have collected within my home, like a living bouquet, the fairest
+flowers of Asia and of Greece. I know all that the art of sculptors and
+painters has produced since the time of Daedalus, whose statues walked
+and spoke. Linus, Orpheus, Homer, have taught me harmony and rhythm. I
+do not look about me with Love's bandage blindfolding my eyes. I
+judge of all things coolly. The passions of youth never influence my
+admiration, and when I am as withered, decrepit, wrinkled, as Tithonus
+in his swaddling bands, my opinion will be still the same. But I forgive
+your incredulity and want of sympathy. In order to understand me fully,
+it is necessary that you should see Nyssia in the radiant brilliancy of
+her shining whiteness, free from jealous drapery, even as Nature with
+her own hands moulded her in a lost moment of inspiration which never
+can return. This evening I will hide you in a corner of the bridal
+chamber... you shall see her!'
+
+'Sire, what do you ask of me?' returned the young warrior with
+respectful firmness. 'How shall I, from the depths of my dust, from
+the abyss of my nothingness, dare to raise my eyes to this sun of
+perfections, at the risk of remaining blind for the rest of my life,
+or being able to see naught but a dazzling spectre in the midst of
+darkness? Have pity on your humble slave, and do not compel him to an
+action so contrary to the maxims of virtue. No man should look upon what
+does not belong to him. We know that the immortals always punish those
+who through imprudence or audacity surprise them in their divine nudity.
+Nyssia is the loveliest of all women; you are the happiest of lovers and
+husbands. Heracles, your ancestor, never found in the course of his many
+conquests aught to compare with your queen. If you, the prince of whom
+even the most skilful artists seek judgment and counsel--if you find her
+incomparable, of what consequence can the opinion of an obscure soldier
+like me be to you? Abandon, therefore, this fantasy, which I presume to
+say is unworthy of your royal majesty, and of which you would repent so
+soon as it had been satisfied.'
+
+'Listen, Gyges,' returned Candaules; 'I perceive that you suspect me;
+you think that I seek to put you to some proof, but by the ashes of that
+funeral pyre whence my ancestor arose a god, I swear to you that I speak
+frankly and without any after-purpose.'
+
+'O Candaules, I doubt not of your good faith; your passion is sincere,
+but perchance, after I should have obeyed you, you would conceive a deep
+aversion to me, and learn to hate me for not having more firmly resisted
+your will. You would seek to take back from these eyes, indiscreet
+through compulsion, the image which you allowed them to glance upon in a
+moment of delirium; and who knows but that you would condemn them to the
+eternal night of the tomb to punish them for remaining open at a moment
+when they ought to have been closed.'
+
+'Fear nothing; I pledge my royal word that no evil shall befall you.'
+
+'Pardon your slave if he still dares to offer some objection, even after
+such a promise. Have you reflected that what you propose to me is a
+violation of the sanctity of marriage, a species of visual adultery? A
+woman often lays aside her modesty with her garments; and once violated
+by a look, without having actually ceased to be virtuous, she might deem
+that she had lost her flower of purity. You promise, indeed, to feel
+no resentment against me; but who can ensure me against the wrath of
+Nyssia, she who is so reserved and chaste, so apprehensive, fierce, and
+virginal in her modesty that she might be deemed still ignorant of the
+laws of Hymen? Should she ever learn of the sacrilege which I am about
+to render myself guilty of in deferring to my master's wishes, what
+punishment would she condemn me to suffer in expiation of such a crime?
+Who could place me beyond the reach of her avenging anger?'
+
+'I did not know you were so wise and prudent,' said Candaules, with
+a slightly ironical smile; 'but such dangers are all imaginary, and I
+shall hide you in such a way that Nyssia will never know she has been
+seen by any one except her royal husband.'
+
+Being unable to offer any further defence, Gyges made a sign of assent
+in token of complete submission to the king's will. He had made all the
+resistance in his power, and thenceforward his conscience could feel
+at ease in regard to whatever might happen; besides, by any further
+opposition to the will of Candaules, he would have feared to oppose
+destiny itself, which seemed striving to bring him still nearer to
+Nyssia for some grim ulterior purpose into which it was not given to him
+to see further.
+
+Without actually being able to foresee any result, he beheld a thousand
+vague and shadowy images passing before his eyes. That subterranean
+love, so long crouched at the foot of his soul's stairway, had climbed
+a few steps higher, guided by some fitful glimmer of hope. The weight of
+the impossible no longer pressed so heavily upon his breast, now that
+he believed himself aided by the gods. In truth, who would have dreamed
+that the much-boasted charms of the daughter of Megabazus would ere long
+cease to own any mystery for Gyges?
+
+'Come, Gyges,' said Candaules, taking him by the hand, 'let us make
+profit of the time. Nyssia is walking in the garden with her women; let
+us look at the place, and plan our stratagems for this evening.'
+
+The king took his confidant by the hand and led him along the winding
+ways which conducted to the nuptial apartment. The doors of the
+sleeping-room were made of cedar planks so perfectly put together that
+it was impossible to discover the joints. By dint of rubbing them with
+wool steeped in oil, the slaves had rendered the wood as polished as
+marble. The brazen nails, with heads cut in facets, which studded them,
+had all the brilliancy of the purest gold. A complicated system of
+straps and metallic rings, whereof Candaules and his wife alone knew
+the combination, served to secure them, for in those heroic ages the
+locksmith's art was yet in its infancy.
+
+Candaules unloosed the knots, made the rings slide back upon the thongs,
+raised with a handle which fitted into a mortise the bar that fastened
+the door from within, and bidding Gyges place himself against the wall,
+turned back one of the folding-doors upon him in such a way as to hide
+him completely; yet the door did not fit so perfectly to its frame of
+oaken beams, all carefully polished and put up according to line by a
+skilful workman, that the young warrior could not obtain a distinct view
+of the chamber interior through the interstices contrived to give room
+for the free play of the hinges.
+
+Facing the entrance, the royal bed stood upon an estrade of several
+steps, covered with purple drapery. Columns of chased silver supported
+the entablature, all ornamented with foliage wrought in relief, amid
+which Loves were sporting with dolphins, and heavy curtains embroidered
+with gold surrounded it like the folds of a tent.
+
+Upon the altar of the household gods were placed vases of precious
+metal, paterae enamelled with flowers, double-handled cups, and all
+things needful for libations.
+
+Along the walls, which were faced with planks of cedar-wood,
+marvellously worked, at regular intervals stood tall statues of black
+basalt in the constrained attitudes of Egyptian art, each sustaining in
+its hand a bronze torch into which a splinter of resinous wood had been
+fitted.
+
+An onyx lamp, suspended by a chain of silver, hung from that beam of the
+ceiling which is called the black beam, because more exposed than the
+others to the embrowning smoke. Every evening a slave carefully filled
+this lamp with odoriferous oil.
+
+Near the head of the bed, on a little column, hung a trophy of arms,
+consisting of a visored helmet, a twofold buckler made of four bulls'
+hides and covered with plates of brass and tin, a two-edged sword, and
+several ashen javelins with brazen heads.
+
+The tunics and mantles of Candaules were hung upon wooden pegs. They
+comprised garments both simple and double; that is, capable of going
+twice around the body. A mantle of thrice-dyed purple, ornamented with
+embroidery representing a hunting scene wherein Laconian hounds were
+pursuing and tearing deer, and a tunic whereof the material, fine and
+delicate as the skin which envelops an onion had all the sheen of woven
+sunbeams, were especially noticeable. Opposite to the trophy stood
+an armchair inlaid with silver and ivory upon which Nyssia hung her
+garments. Its seat was covered with a leopard skin more eye-spotted than
+the body of Argus, and its foot-support was richly adorned with openwork
+carving.
+
+'I am generally the first to retire,' observed Candaules to Gyges, 'and
+I always leave this door open as it is now. Nyssia, who has invariably
+some tapestry flower to finish, or some order to give her women, usually
+delays a little in joining me; but at last she comes, and slowly takes
+off, one by one, as though the effort cost her dearly, and lays upon
+that ivory chair, all those draperies and tunics which by day envelop
+her like mummy bandages. From your hiding-place you will be able to
+follow all her graceful movements, admire her unrivalled charms, and
+judge for yourself whether Candaules be a young fool prone to vain
+boasting, or whether he does not really possess the richest pearl of
+beauty that ever adorned a diadem.'
+
+'O King, I can well believe your words without such a proof as this,'
+replied Gyges, stepping forth from his hiding-place. 'When she has
+laid aside her garments,' continued Candaules, without heeding the
+exclamation of his confidant, 'she will come to lie down with me. You
+must take advantage of the moment to steal away, for in passing from the
+chair to the bed she turns her back to the door. Step lightly as though
+you were treading upon ears of ripe wheat; take heed that no grain
+of sand squeaks under your sandals; hold your breath, and retire as
+stealthily as possible. The vestibule is all in darkness, and the feeble
+rays of the only lamp which remains burning do not penetrate beyond the
+threshold of the chamber. It is, therefore, certain that Nyssia cannot
+possibly see you; and to-morrow there will be some one in the world who
+can comprehend my ecstasies, and will feel no longer astonished at my
+bursts of admiration. But see, the day is almost spent; the Sun will
+soon water his steeds in the Hesperian waves at the further end of the
+world, and beyond the Pillars erected by my ancestors. Return to your
+hiding-place, Gyges, and though the hours of waiting may seem long, I
+can swear by Eros of the Golden Arrows that you will not regret having
+waited.'
+
+After this assurance Candaules left Gyges again hidden behind the door.
+'The compulsory quiet which the king's young confidant found himself
+obliged to maintain left him ample leisure for thought. His situation
+was certainly a most extraordinary one. He had loved Nyssia as one loves
+a star. Convinced of the hopelessness of the undertaking, he had made
+no effort to approach her. And, nevertheless, by a succession of
+extraordinary events he was about to obtain a knowledge of treasures
+reserved for lovers and husbands only. Not a word, not a glance had
+been exchanged between himself and Nyssia, who probably ignored the very
+existence of the one being for whom her beauty would so soon cease to be
+a mystery. Unknown to her whose modesty would have naught to sacrifice
+for you, how strange a situation! To love a woman in secret and find
+oneself led by her husband to the threshold of the nuptial chamber, to
+have for guide to that treasure the very dragon who should defend all
+approach to it, was there not in all this ample food for astonishment
+and wonder at the combination of events wrought by destiny?
+
+In the midst of these reflections, he suddenly heard the sound of
+footsteps on the pavement. It was only the slaves coming to replenish
+the oil in the lamp, throw fresh perfumes upon the coals of the
+kamklins, and arrange the purple and saffron-tinted sheepskins which
+formed the royal bed.
+
+The hour approached, and Gyges felt his heart beat faster, and the
+pulsation of his arteries quicken. He even felt a strong impulse
+to steal away before the arrival of the queen, and, after averring
+subsequently to Candaules that he had remained, abandon himself
+confidently to the most extravagant eulogiums. He felt a strong
+repugnance (for, despite his somewhat free life, Gyges was not without
+delicacy) to take by stealth a favour for the free granting of which he
+would gladly have paid with his life. The husband's complicity rendered
+this theft more odious in a certain sense, and he would have preferred
+to owe to any other circumstance the happiness of beholding the marvel
+of Asia in her nocturnal toilet. Perhaps, indeed, the approach of
+danger, let us acknowledge as veracious historians, had no little to
+do with his virtuous scruples. Undoubtedly Gyges did not lack courage.
+Mounted upon his war-chariot, with quiver rattling upon his shoulder,
+and bow in hand, he would have defied the most valiant warriors; in the
+chase he would have attacked without fear the Calydon boar or the Nemean
+lion; but--explain the enigma as you will--he trembled at the idea of
+looking at a beautiful woman through a chink in a door. No one possesses
+every kind of courage. He felt likewise that he could not behold Nyssia
+with impunity. It would be a decisive epoch in his life. Through having
+obtained but a momentary glimpse of her he had lost all peace of mind;
+what, then, would be the result of that which was about to take place?
+Could life itself continue for him when to that divine head which fired
+his dreams should be added a charming body formed for the kisses of
+the immortals? What would become of him should he find himself unable
+thereafter to contain his passion in darkness and silence as he had done
+till that time? Would he exhibit to the court of Lydia the ridiculous
+spectacle of an insane love, or would he strive by some extravagant
+action to bring down upon himself the disdainful pity of the queen? Such
+a result was strongly probable, since the reason of Candaules himself,
+the legitimate possessor of Nyssia, had been unable to resist the
+vertigo caused by that superhuman beauty--he, the thoughtless young king
+who till then had laughed at love, and preferred pictures and statues
+before all things. These arguments were very rational but wholly
+useless, for at the same moment Candaules entered the chamber, and
+exclaimed in a low but distinct voice as he passed the door:
+
+'Patience, my poor Gyges, Nyssia will soon come.' When he saw that
+he could no longer retreat, Gyges, who was but a young man after all,
+forgot every other consideration, and no longer thought of aught save
+the happiness of feasting his eyes upon the charming spectacle which
+Candaules was about to offer him. One cannot demand from a captain of
+twenty-five the austerity of a hoary philosopher.
+
+At last a low whispering of raiment sweeping and trailing over marble,
+distinctly audible in the deep silence of the night, announced the
+approach of the queen. In effect it was she. With a step as cadenced and
+rhythmic as an ode, she crossed the threshold of the thalamus, and the
+wind of her veil with its floating folds almost touched the burning
+cheek of Gyges, who felt wellnigh on the point of fainting, and found
+himself compelled to seek the support of the wall; but soon recovering
+from the violence of his emotions, he approached the chink of the door,
+and took the most favourable position for enabling him to lose nothing
+of the scene whereof he was about to be an invisible witness.
+
+Nyssia advanced to the ivory chair and commenced to detach the pins,
+terminated by hollow balls of gold, which fastened her veil upon her
+head; and Gyges from the depths of the shadow-filled angle where he
+stood concealed could examine at his ease the proud and charming face of
+which he had before obtained only a hurried glimpse; that rounded neck,
+at once delicate and powerful, whereon Aphrodite had traced with the
+nail of her little finger those three faint lines which are still at
+this very day known as the 'necklace of Venus'; that white nape on
+whose alabaster surface little wild rebellious curls were disporting
+and entwining themselves; those silver shoulders, half rising from the
+opening of the chlamys, like the moon's disc emerging from an opaque
+cloud. Candaules, half reclining upon his cushions, gazed with fondness
+upon his wife, and thought to himself: 'Now Gyges, who is so cold, so
+difficult to please, and so sceptical, must be already half convinced.'
+
+Opening a little coffer which stood on a table supported by one leg
+terminating in carven lion's paws, the queen freed her beautiful arms
+from the weight of the bracelets and jewellery wherewith they had been
+overburdened during the day--arms whose form and whiteness might well
+have enabled them to compare with those of Hera, sister and wife of
+Zeus, the lord of Olympus. Precious as were her jewels, they were
+assuredly not worth the spots which they concealed, and had Nyssia been
+a coquette, one might have well supposed that she only donned them
+in order that she should be entreated to take them off. The rings and
+chased work had left upon her skin, fine and tender as the interior pulp
+of a lily, light rosy imprints, which she soon dissipated by rubbing
+them with her little taper-fingered hand, all rounded and slender at its
+extremities.
+
+Then with the movement of a dove trembling in the snow of its feathers,
+she shook her hair, which being no longer held by the golden pins,
+rolled down in languid spirals like hyacinth flowers over her back
+and bosom. Thus she remained for a few moments ere reassembling the
+scattered curls and finally re-uniting them into one mass. It was
+marvellous to watch the blond ringlets streaming like jets of liquid
+gold between the silver of her fingers; and her arms undulating like
+swans' necks as they were arched above her head in the act of twisting
+and confining the natural bullion. If you have ever by chance examined
+one of those beautiful Etruscan vases with red figures on a black
+ground, and decorated with one of those subjects which are designated
+under the title of 'Greek Toilette,' then you will have some idea of the
+grace of Nyssia in that attitude which, from the age of antiquity to our
+own era, has furnished such a multitude of happy designs for painters
+and statuaries.
+
+Having thus arranged her coiffure, she seated herself upon the edge
+of the ivory footstool and commenced to untie the little bands which
+fastened her buskins. We moderns, owing to our horrible system of
+footgear, which is hardly less absurd than the Chinese shoe, no longer
+know what a foot is. That of Nyssia was of a perfection rare even in
+Greece and antique Asia. The great toe, a little apart like the thumb
+of a bird, the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged in charming
+symmetry, the nails well shaped and brilliant as agates, the ankles well
+rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted with a rosy hue--nothing
+was wanting to the perfection of the little member. The leg attached to
+this foot, and which gleamed like polished marble under the lamp-light,
+was irreproachable in the purity of its outlines and the grace of its
+curves.
+
+Gyges, lost in contemplation, though all the while fully comprehending
+the madness of Candaules, said to himself that had the gods bestowed
+such a treasure upon him he would have known how to keep it to himself.
+
+'Well, Nyssia, are you not coming to sleep with me?' exclaimed
+Candaules, seeing that the queen was not hurrying herself in the least,
+and feeling desirous to abridge the watch of Gyges.
+
+'Yes, my dear lord, I will soon be ready,' answered Nyssia.
+
+And she detached the cameo which fastened the peplum upon her shoulder.
+There remained only the tunic to let fall. Gyges, behind the door, felt
+his veins hiss through his temples; his heart beat so violently that
+he feared it must make itself heard in the chamber, and to repress its
+fierce pulsations he pressed his hand upon his bosom; and when Nyssia,
+with a movement of careless grace, unfastened the girdle of her tunic,
+he thought his knees would give way beneath him.
+
+Nyssia--was it an instinctive presentiment, or was her skin, virginally
+pure from profane looks, so delicately magnetic in its susceptibility
+that it could feel the rays of a passionate eye though that eye was
+invisible?--Nyssia hesitated to strip herself of that tunic, the last
+rampart of her modesty. Twice or thrice her shoulders, her bosom,
+and bare arms shuddered with a nervous chill, as though they had been
+suddenly grazed by the wings of a nocturnal butterfly, or as though an
+insolent lip had dared to touch them in the darkness.
+
+At last, seeming to nerve herself for a sudden resolve she doffed
+the tunic in its turn; and the white poem of her divine body suddenly
+appeared in all its splendour, like the statue of a goddess unveiled on
+the day of a temple's inauguration. Shuddering with pleasure the light
+glided and gloated over those exquisite forms, and covered them with
+timid kisses, profiting by an occasion, alas, rare indeed! The rays
+scattered through the chamber, disdaining to illuminate golden arms,
+jewelled clasps, or brazen tripods, all concentrated themselves upon
+Nyssia, and left all other objects in obscurity. Were we Greeks of the
+age of Pericles we might at our ease eulogise those beautiful serpentine
+lines, those polished flanks, those elegant curves, those breasts which
+might have served as moulds for the cup of Hebe; but modern prudery
+forbids such descriptions, for the pen cannot find pardon for what is
+permitted to the chisel; and besides, there are some things which can be
+written of only in marble.
+
+Candaules smiled in proud satisfaction. With a rapid step, as though
+ashamed of being so beautiful, for she was only the daughter of a man
+and a woman, Nyssia approached the bed, her arms folded upon her bosom;
+but with a sudden movement she turned round ere taking her place upon
+the couch beside her royal spouse, and beheld through the aperture of
+the door a gleaming eye flaming like the carbuncle of Oriental legend;
+for if it were false that she had a double pupil, and that she possessed
+the stone which is found in the heads of dragons, it was at least true
+that her green glance penetrated darkness like the glaucous eye of the
+cat and tiger.
+
+A cry, like that of a fawn who receives an arrow in her flank while
+tranquilly dreaming among the leafy shadows, was on the point of
+bursting from her lips, yet she found strength to control herself, and
+lay down beside Candaules, cold as a serpent, with the violets of death
+upon her cheeks and lips. Not a muscle of her limbs quivered, not a
+fibre of her body palpitated, and soon her slow, regular breathing
+seemed to indicate that Morpheus had distilled his poppy juice upon her
+eyelids.
+
+She had divined and comprehended all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Gyges, trembling and distracted with passion, had retired, following
+exactly the instructions of Candaules; and if Nyssia, through some
+unfortunate chance, had not turned her head ere taking her place upon
+the couch, and perceived him in the act of taking flight, doubtless
+she would have remained for ever unconscious of the outrage done to her
+charms by a husband more passionate than scrupulous.
+
+Accustomed to the winding corridors of the palace, the young warrior had
+no difficulty in finding his way out. He passed through the city at a
+reckless pace like a madman escaped from Anticyra, and by making himself
+known to the sentinels who guarded the ramparts, he had the gates opened
+for him and gained the fields beyond. His brain burned, his cheeks
+flamed as with the fires of fever; his breath came hotly panting through
+his lips; he flung himself down upon the meadow-sod humid with the tears
+of the night; and at last hearing in the darkness, through the thick
+grass and water-plants, the silvery respiration of a Naiad, he dragged
+himself to the spring, plunged his hands and arms into the crystal
+flood, bathed his face, and drank several mouthfuls of the water in the
+hope to cool the ardour which was devouring him. Any one who could have
+seen him thus hopelessly bending over the spring in the feeble starlight
+would have taken him for Narcissus pursuing his own shadow; but it was
+not of himself assuredly that Gyges was enamoured.
+
+The rapid apparition of Nyssia had dazzled his eyes like the keen zigzag
+of a lightning flash. He beheld her floating before him in a luminous
+whirlwind, and felt that never through all his life could he banish that
+image from his vision. His love had grown to vastness; its flower had
+suddenly burst, like those plants which open their blossoms with a clap
+of thunder. To master his passion were henceforth a thing impossible: as
+well counsel the empurpled waves which Poseidon lifts with his trident
+to lie tranquilly in their bed of sand and cease to foam upon the rocks
+of the shore. Gyges was no longer master of himself, and he felt a
+miserable despair, as of a man riding in a chariot, who finds his
+terrified and uncontrollable horses rushing with all the speed of a
+furious gallop toward some rock-bristling precipice. A hundred thousand
+projects, each wilder than the last, whirled confusedly through his
+brain. He blasphemed Destiny, he cursed his mother for having given him
+life, and the gods that they had not caused him to be born to a throne,
+for then he might have been able to espouse the daughter of the satrap.
+
+A frightful agony gnawed at his heart; he was jealous of the king. From
+the moment of the tunic's fall at the feet of Nyssia, like the flight
+of a white dove alighting upon a meadow, it had seemed to him that she
+belonged to him; he deemed himself despoiled of his wealth by Candaules.
+In all his amorous reveries he had never until then thought of the
+husband; he had thought of the queen only as of a pure abstraction,
+without representing to himself in fancy all those intimate details of
+conjugal familiarity, so poignant, so bitter for those who love a woman
+in the power of another. Now he had beheld Nyssia's blond head bending
+like a blossom beside the dark head of Candaules. The very thought of
+it had inflamed his anger to the highest degree, although a moment's
+reflection should have convinced him that things could not have come
+to pass otherwise, and he felt growing within him a most unjust hatred
+against his master. The act of having compelled his presence at the
+queen's dishabille seemed to him a barbarous irony, an odious refinement
+of cruelty, for he did not remember that his love for her could not have
+been known by the king, who had sought in him only a confidant of easy
+morals and a connoisseur in beauty. That which he ought to have regarded
+as a great favour affected him like a mortal injury for which he was
+meditating vengeance. While thinking that to-morrow the same scene of
+which he had been a mute and invisible witness would infallibly renew
+itself, his tongue clove to his palate, his forehead became imbeaded
+with drops of cold sweat, and his hand convulsively grasped the hilt of
+his great double-edged sword.
+
+Nevertheless, thanks to the freshness of the night, that excellent
+counsellor, he became a little calmer, and returned to Sardes before
+the morning light had become bright enough to enable a few early rising
+citizens and slaves to notice the pallor of his brow and the disorder of
+his apparel. He betook himself to his regular post at the palace, well
+suspecting that Can-daules would shortly send for him; and, however
+violent the agitation of his feelings, he felt he was not powerful
+enough to brave the anger of the king, and could in no way escape
+submitting again to this role of confidant, which could thenceforth only
+inspire him with horror. Having arrived at the palace, he seated himself
+upon the steps of the cypress-panelled vestibule, leaned his back
+against a column, and, under the pretext of being fatigued by the long
+vigil under arms, he covered his head with his mantle and feigned sleep,
+to avoid answering the questions of the other guards.
+
+If the night had been terrible to Gyges, it had not been less so to
+Nyssia, as she never for an instant doubted that he had been purposely
+hidden there by Candaules. The king's persistency in begging her not to
+veil so austerely a face which the gods had made for the admiration of
+men, his evident vexation upon her refusal to appear in Greek costume at
+the sacrifices and public solemnities, his unsparing raillery at what he
+termed her barbarian shyness, all tended to convince her that the young
+Heracleid had sought to admit some one into those mysteries which should
+remain secret to all, for without his encouragement no man could have
+dared to risk himself in an undertaking the discovery of which would
+have resulted in the punishment of a speedy death.
+
+How slowly did the black hours seem to her to pass! How anxiously did
+she await the coming of dawn to mingle its bluish tints with the yellow
+gleams of the almost exhausted lamp! It seemed to her that Apollo
+would never mount his chariot again, and that some invisible hand was
+sustaining the sand of the hourglass in air. Though brief as any other,
+that night seemed to her like the Cimmerian nights, six long months of
+darkness.
+
+While it lasted she lay motionless and rigid at full length on the very
+edge of her couch in dread of being touched by Candaules. If she had not
+up to that night felt a very strong love for the son of Myrsus, she had,
+at least, ever exhibited toward him that grave and serene tenderness
+which every virtuous woman entertains for her husband, although the
+altogether Greek freedom of his morals frequently displeased her,
+and though he entertained ideas at variance with her own in regard to
+modesty; but after such an affront she could only feel the chilliest
+hatred and most icy contempt for him; she would have preferred even
+death to one of his caresses. Such an outrage it was impossible to
+forgive, for among the barbarians, and above all among the Persians and
+Bactrians, it was held a great disgrace, not for women only, but even
+for men, to be seen without their garments.
+
+At length Candaules arose, and Nyssia, awaking from her simulated sleep,
+hurried from that chamber now profaned in her eyes as though it had
+served for the nocturnal orgies of Bacchantes and courtesans. It was
+agony for her to breathe that impure air any longer, and that she
+might freely give herself up to her grief she took refuge in the upper
+apartments reserved for the women, summoned her slaves by clapping her
+hands, and poured ewers of water over her shoulders, her bosom, and
+her whole body, as though hoping by this species of lustral ablution
+to efface the soil imprinted by the eyes of Gyges. She would have
+voluntarily torn, as it were, from her body that skin upon which the
+rays shot from a burning pupil seemed to have left their traces. Taking
+from the hands of her waiting-women the thick downy materials which
+served to drink up the last pearls of the bath, she wiped herself with
+such violence that a slight purple cloud rose to the spots she had
+rubbed.
+
+'In vain,' she exclaimed, letting the damp tissues fall, and dismissing
+her attendants--'in vain would I pour over myself all the waters of all
+the springs and the rivers; the ocean with all its bitter gulfs could
+not purify me. Such a stain may be washed out only with blood. Oh, that
+look, that look! It has incrusted itself upon me; it clasps me, covers
+me, burns me like the tunic dipped in the blood of Nessus; I feel it
+beneath my draperies, like an envenomed tissue which nothing can detach
+from my body! Now, indeed, would I vainly pile garments upon garments,
+select materials the least transparent, and the thickest of mantles. I
+would none the less bear upon my naked flesh this infamous robe woven
+by one adulterous and lascivious glance. Vainly, since the hour when
+I issued from the chaste womb of my mother, have I been brought up in
+private, enveloped, like Isis, the Egyptian goddess, with a veil of
+which none might have lifted the hem without paying for his audacity
+with his life. In vain have I remained guarded from all evil desires,
+from all profane imaginings, unknown of men, virgin as the snow on which
+the eagle himself could not imprint the seal of his talons, so loftily
+does the mountain which it covers lift its head in the pure and icy air.
+The depraved caprice of a Lydian Greek has sufficed to make me lose in
+a single instant, without any guilt of mine, all the fruit of long years
+of precaution and reserve. Innocent and dishonoured, hidden from all yet
+made public to all... this is the lot to which Candaules has condemned
+me. Who can assure me that, at this very moment, Gyges is not in the act
+of discoursing upon my charms with some soldiers at the very threshold
+of the palace? Oh shame! Oh infamy! Two men have beheld me naked and yet
+at this instant enjoy the sweet light of the sun! In what does
+Nyssia now differ from the most shameless hetaira, from the vilest of
+courtesans? This body which I have striven to render worthy of being the
+habitation of a pure and noble soul, serves for a theme of conversation;
+it is talked of like some lascivious idol brought from Sicyon or from
+Corinth; it is commended or found fault with. The shoulder is perfect,
+the arm is charming, perhaps a little thin--what know I? All the blood
+of my heart leaps to my cheeks at such a thought. Oh beauty, fatal gift
+of the gods! why am I not the wife of some poor mountain goatherd of
+innocent and simple habits? He would not have suborned a goatherd like
+himself at the threshold of his cabin to profane his humble happiness!
+My lean figure, my unkempt hair, my complexion faded by the burning
+sun, would then have saved me from so gross an insult, and my honest
+homeliness would not have been compelled to blush. How shall I dare,
+after the scene of this night, to pass before those men, proudly erect
+under the folds of a tunic which has no longer aught to hide from either
+of them. I should drop dead with shame upon the pavement. Candaules,
+Candaules, I was at least entitled to more respect from you, and there
+was nothing in my conduct which could have provoked such an outrage.
+Was I one of those ones whose arms for ever cling like ivy to their
+husbands' necks, and who seem more like slaves bought with money for a
+master's pleasure than free-born women of noble blood? Have I ever after
+a repast sung amorous hymns accompanying myself upon the lyre, with
+wine-moist lips, naked shoulders, and a wreath of roses about my hair,
+or given you cause, by any immodest action, to treat me like a mistress
+whom one shows after a banquet to his companions in debauch?' While
+Nyssia was thus buried in her grief, great tears overflowed from her
+eyes like rain-drops from the azure chalice of a lotus-flower after
+some storm, and rolling down her pale cheeks fell upon her fair forlorn
+hands, languishingly open, like roses whose leaves are half-shed, for no
+order came from the brain to give them activity. The attitude of Niobe,
+beholding her fourteenth child succumb beneath the arrows of Apollo and
+Diana, was not more sadly despairing, but soon starting from this state
+of prostration, she rolled herself upon the floor, rent her garments,
+covered her beautiful dishevelled hair with ashes, tore her bosom and
+cheeks with her nails amid convulsive sobs, and abandoned herself to
+all the excesses of Oriental grief, the more violently that she had
+been forced so long to contain her indignation, shame, pangs of wounded
+dignity, and all the agony that convulsed her soul, for the pride of her
+whole life had been broken, and the idea that she had nothing wherewith
+to reproach herself afforded her no consolation. As a poet has said,
+only the innocent know remorse. She was repenting of the crime which
+another had committed.
+
+Nevertheless she made an effort to recover herself, ordered the baskets
+filled with wools of different colours, and the spindles wrapped with
+flax, to be brought to her, and distributed the work to her women as she
+had been accustomed to do; but she thought she noticed that the slaves
+looked at her in a very peculiar way, and had ceased to entertain the
+same timid respect for her as before. Her voice no longer rang with the
+same assurance; there was something humble and furtive in her demeanour;
+she felt herself interiorly fallen.
+
+Doubtless her scruples were exaggerated, and her virtue had received
+no stain from the folly of Candaules; but ideas imbibed with a mother's
+milk obtain irresistible sway, and the modesty of the body is carried
+by Oriental nations to an extent almost incomprehensible to Occidental
+races. When a man desired to speak to Nyssia in the palace of Megabazus
+at Bactria, he was obliged to do so keeping his eyes fixed upon the
+ground, and two eunuchs stood beside him, poniard in hand, ready to
+plunge their keen blades through his heart should he dare lift his head
+to look at the princess, notwithstanding that her face was veiled. You
+may readily conceive, therefore, how deadly an injury the action of
+Candaules would seem to a woman thus brought up, while any other would
+doubtless have considered it only a culpable frivolity. Thus the idea
+of vengeance had instantly presented itself to Nyssia, and had given her
+sufficient self-control to strangle the cry of her offended modesty ere
+it reached her lips, at the moment when, turning her head, she beheld
+the burning eyes of Gyges flaming through the darkness. She must have
+possessed the courage of the warrior in ambush, who, wounded by a random
+dart, utters no syllable of pain through fear of betraying himself
+behind his shelter of foliage or river-reeds, and in silence permits his
+blood to stripe his flesh with long red lines. Had she not withheld that
+first impulse to cry aloud, Candaules, alarmed and forewarned, would
+have kept upon his guard, which must have rendered it more difficult, if
+not impossible, to carry out her purpose.
+
+Nevertheless, as yet she had conceived no definite plan, but she had
+resolved that the insult done to her honour should be fully expiated. At
+first she had thought of killing Candaules herself while he slept, with
+the sword hung at the bedside. But she recoiled from the thought of
+dipping her beautiful hands in blood; she feared lest she might miss her
+blow; and, with all her bitter anger, she hesitated at so violent and
+unwomanly an act.
+
+Suddenly she appeared to have decided upon some project. She summoned
+Statira, one of the waiting-women who had come with her from Bactria,
+and in whom she placed much confidence, and whispered a few words close
+to her ear in a very low voice, although there were no other persons in
+the room, as if she feared that even the walls might hear her.
+
+Statira bowed low, and immediately left the apartment.
+
+Like all persons who are actually menaced by some great peril, Candaules
+presumed himself perfectly secure. He was certain that Gyges had stolen
+away unperceived, and he thought only upon the delight of conversing
+with him about the unrivalled attractions of his wife.
+
+So he caused him to be summoned, and conducted him to the Court of the
+Heracleidae.
+
+'Well, Gyges,' he said to him with laughing mien, 'I did not deceive you
+when I assured you that you would not regret having passed a few hours
+behind that blessed door. Am I right? Do you know of any living woman
+more beautiful than the queen? If you know of any superior to her, tell
+me so frankly, and go bear her in my name this string of pearls, the
+symbol of power.'
+
+'Sire,' replied Gyges in a voice trembling with emotion, 'no human
+creature is worthy to compare with Nyssia. It is not the pearl fillet
+of queens which should adorn her brows, but only the starry crown of the
+immortals.'
+
+'I well knew that your ice must melt at last in the fires of that sun.
+Now can you comprehend my passion, my delirium, my mad desires? Is it
+not true, Gyges, that the heart of a man is not great enough to contain
+such a love? It must overflow and diffuse itself.'
+
+A hot blush overspread the cheeks of Gyges, who now but too well
+comprehended the admiration of Candaules.
+
+The king noticed it, and said, with a manner half smiling, half serious:
+
+'My poor friend, do not commit the folly of becoming enamoured of
+Nyssia; you would lose your pains. It is a statue which I have enabled
+you to see, not a woman. I have allowed you to read some stanzas of a
+beautiful poem, whereof I alone possess the manuscript, merely for the
+purpose of having your opinion; that is all.'
+
+'You have no need, sire, to remind me of my nothingness. Sometimes the
+humblest slave is visited in his slumbers by some radiant and lovely
+vision, with ideal forms, nacreous flesh, ambrosial hair. I--I have
+dreamed with open eyes; you are the god who sent me that dream.'
+
+'Now,' continued the king, 'it will scarcely be necessary for me to
+enjoin silence upon you. If you do not keep a seal upon your lips
+you might learn to your cost that Nyssia is not as good as she is
+beautiful.'
+
+The king waved his hand in token of farewell to his confidant, and
+retired for the purpose of inspecting an antique bed sculptured by
+Ikmalius, a celebrated artisan, which had been offered him for purchase.
+
+Candaules had scarcely disappeared when a woman, wrapped in a long
+mantle so as to leave but one of her eyes exposed, after the fashion of
+the barbarians, came forth from the shadow of a column behind which
+she had kept herself hidden during the conversation of the king and
+his favourite, walked straight to Gyges, placed her finger upon his
+shoulder, and made a sign to him to follow her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Statira, followed by Gyges, paused before a little door, of which she
+raised the latch by pulling a silver ring attached to a leathern strap,
+and commenced to ascend a stairway with rather high steps contrived
+in the thickness of the wall. At the head of the stairway was a second
+door, which she opened with a key wrought of ivory and brass. As soon as
+Gyges entered she disappeared without any further explanation in regard
+to what was expected of him.
+
+The curiosity of Gyges was mingled with uneasiness. He could form no
+idea as to the significance of this mysterious message. He had a vague
+fancy that he could recognise in the silent Iris one of Nyssia's women;
+and the way by which she had made him follow her led to the queen's
+apartments. He asked himself in terror whether he had been perceived in
+his hiding-place or betrayed by Candaules, for both suppositions seemed
+probable.
+
+At the idea that Nyssia knew all, he felt his face bedewed with a sweat
+alternately burning and icy. He sought to fly, but the door had been
+fastened upon him by Statira, and all escape was cut off; then he
+advanced into the chamber, which was shadowed by heavy purple hangings,
+and found himself face to face with Nyssia. He thought he beheld a
+statue rise before him, such was her pallor. The hues of life had
+abandoned her face; a feeble rose tint alone animated her lips; on her
+tender temples a few almost imperceptible veins intercrossed their azure
+network; tears had swollen her eyelids, and left shining furrows upon
+the down of her cheeks; the chrysoprase tints of her eyes had lost their
+intensity. She was even more beautiful and touching thus. Sorrow had
+given soul to her marmorean beauty.
+
+Her disordered robe, scarcely fastened to her shoulders, left visible
+her beautiful bare arms, her throat, and the commencement of her
+death-white bosom. Like a warrior vanquished in his first conflict, her
+beauty had laid down its arms. Of what use to her would have been the
+draperies which conceal form, the tunics with their carefully fastened
+folds? Did not Gyges know her? Wherefore defend what has been lost in
+advance?
+
+She walked straight to Gyges, and fixing upon him an imperial look,
+clear and commanding, said to him in a quick, abrupt voice:
+
+'Do not lie; seek no vain subterfuges; have at least the dignity and
+courage of your crime. I know all; I saw you! Not a word of excuse. I
+would not listen to it. Candaules himself concealed you behind the door.
+Is it not so the thing happened? And you fancy, doubtless, that it
+is all over? Unhappily I am not a Greek woman, pliant to the whims of
+artists and voluptuaries. Nyssia will not serve for any one's toy. There
+are now two men, one of whom is a man too much upon the earth. He must
+disappear from it! Unless he dies, I cannot live. It will be either you
+or Candaules. I leave you master of the choice. Kill him, avenge me, and
+win by that murder both my hand and the throne of Lydia, or else shall
+a prompt death henceforth prevent you from beholding, through a cowardly
+complaisance, what you have not the right to look upon. He who commanded
+is more culpable than he who has only obeyed; and, moreover, should
+you become my husband, no one will have ever seen me without having the
+right to do so. But make your decision at once, for two of those four
+eyes in which my nudity has reflected itself must before this very
+evening be for ever extinguished.'
+
+This strange alternative, proposed with a terrible coolness, with an
+immutable resolution, so utterly surprised Gyges, who was expecting
+reproaches, menaces, and a violent scene, that he remained for several
+minutes without colour and without voice, livid as a shade on the shores
+of the black rivers of hell.
+
+'I! to dip my hands in the blood of my master! Is it indeed you, O
+queen, who demand of me so great a penalty? I comprehend all your anger,
+I feel it to be just, and it was not my fault that this outrage took
+place; but you know that kings are mighty, they descend from a divine
+race. Our destinies repose on their august knees; and it is not
+we, feeble mortals, who may hesitate at their commands. Their will
+overthrows our refusal, as a dyke is swept away by a torrent By your
+feet that I kiss, by the hem of your robe which I touch as a suppliant,
+be clement! Forget this injury, which is known to none, and which shall
+remain eternally buried in darkness and silence! Candaules worships you,
+admires you, and his fault springs only from an excess of love.'
+
+'Were you addressing a sphinx of granite in the arid sands of Egypt,
+you would have more chance of melting her. The winged words might fly
+uninterruptedly from your lips for a whole Olympiad; you could not move
+my resolution in the slightest. A heart of brass dwells in this marble
+breast of mine. Die or kill! When the sunbeam which has passed through
+the curtains shall touch the foot of this table let your choice have
+been made. I wait.'
+
+And Nyssia crossed her arms upon her breast in an attitude replete with
+sombre majesty.
+
+To behold her standing erect, motionless and pale, her eyes fixed, her
+brows contracted, her hair in disorder, her foot firmly placed upon
+the pavement, one would have taken her for Nemesis descended from her
+griffin, and awaiting the hour to smite a guilty one.
+
+'The shadowy depths of Hades are visited by none with pleasure,'
+answered Gyges. 'It is sweet to enjoy the pure light of day; and the
+heroes themselves who dwell in the Fortunate Isles would gladly return
+to their native land. Each man has the instinct of self-preservation,
+and since blood must flow, let it be rather from the veins of another
+than from mine.'
+
+To these sentiments, avowed by Gyges with antique frankness, were added
+others more noble whereof he did not speak. He was desperately in love
+with Nyssia and jealous of Candaules. It was not, therefore, the fear
+of death alone that had induced him to undertake this bloody task.
+The thought of leaving Candaules in free possession of Nyssia was
+insupportable to him: and, moreover, the vertigo of fatality had seized
+him. By a succession of irregular and terrible events he beheld himself
+hurried toward the realisation of his dreams; a mighty wave had lifted
+him and borne him on in despite of his efforts; Nyssia herself was
+extending her hand to him, to help him to ascend the steps of the royal
+throne. All this had caused him to forget that Candaules was his master
+and his benefactor; for none can flee from Fate, and Necessity walks on
+with nails in one hand and whip in the other, to stop your advance or to
+urge you forward.
+
+'It is well,' replied Nyssia; 'here is the means of execution.' And she
+drew from her bosom a Bactrian poniard, with a jade handle enriched with
+inlaid circles of white gold. 'This blade is not made of brass, but with
+iron difficult to work, tempered in flame and water, so that Hephaistos
+himself could not forge one more keenly pointed or finely edged.
+It would pierce, like thin papyrus, metal cuirasses and bucklers of
+dragon's skin.
+
+'The time,' she continued, with the same icy coolness, 'shall be while
+he slumbers. Let him sleep and wake no more!'
+
+Her accomplice, Gyges, hearkened to her words with stupefaction, for he
+had never thought he could find such resolution in a woman who could not
+bring herself to lift her veil.
+
+'The ambuscade shall be laid in the very same place where the infamous
+one concealed you in order to expose me to your gaze. At the approach
+of night I shall turn back one of the folding-doors upon you, undress
+myself, lie down, and when he shall be asleep I will give you a signal.
+Above all things, let there be no hesitancy, no feebleness; and take
+heed that your hand does not tremble when the moment shall have come!
+And now, for fear lest you might change your mind, I propose to make
+sure of your person until the fatal hour. You might attempt to escape,
+to forewarn your master. Do not think to do so.'
+
+Nyssia whistled in a peculiar way, and immediately from behind a
+Persian tapestry embroidered with flowers, there appeared four monsters,
+swarthy, clad in robes diagonally striped, which left visible arms
+muscled and gnarled as trunks of oaks. Their thick pouting lips, the
+gold rings which they wore through the partition of their nostrils,
+their great teeth sharp as the fangs of wolves, the expression of stupid
+servility on their faces, rendered them hideous to behold.
+
+The queen pronounced some words in a language unknown to Gyges,
+doubtless in Bactrian, and the four slaves rushed upon the young man,
+seized him, and carried him away, even as a nurse might carry off a
+child in the fold of her robe.
+
+Now, what were Nyssia's real thoughts? Had she, indeed, noticed Gyges at
+the time of her meeting with him near Bactria, and preserved some memory
+of the young captain in one of those secret recesses of the heart where
+even the most virtuous women always have something buried? Was the
+desire to avenge her modesty goaded by some other unacknowledged desire?
+And if Gyges had not been the handsomest young man in all Asia would she
+have evinced the same ardour in punishing Candaules for having outraged
+the sanctity of marriage? That is a delicate question to resolve,
+especially after a lapse of three thousand years; and although we have
+consulted Herodotus, Hephaestion, Plato, Dositheus, Archilochus of Paros,
+Hesychius of Miletus, Ptolomaeus, Euphorion, and all who have spoken
+either at length or in only a few words concerning Candaules, Nyssia,
+and Gyges, we have been unable to arrive at any definite conclusion. To
+pursue so fleeting a shadow through so many centuries, under the ruins
+of so many crumpled empires, under the dust of departed nations, is a
+work of extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility.
+
+At all events, Nyssia's resolution was implacably taken; this murder
+appeared to her in the light of the accomplishment of a sacred duty.
+Among the barbarian nations every man who has surprised a woman in her
+nakedness is put to death. The queen believed herself exercising her
+right; only inasmuch as the injury had been secret, she was doing
+herself justice as best she could. The passive accomplice would become
+the executioner of the other, and the punishment would thus spring from
+the crime itself. The hand would chastise the head.
+
+The olive-tinted monsters shut Gyges up in an obscure portion of the
+palace, whence it was impossible that he could escape, or that his cries
+could be heard.
+
+He passed the remainder of the day there in a state of cruel anxiety,
+accusing the hours of being lame, and again of walking too speedily. The
+crime which he was about to commit, although he was only, in some sort,
+the instrument of it, and though he was only yielding to an irresistible
+influence, presented itself to his mind in the most sombre colours. If
+the blow should miss through one of those circumstances which none could
+foresee? If the people of Sardes should revolt and seek to avenge
+the death of the king? Such were the very sensible though useless
+reflections which Gyges made while waiting to be taken from his prison
+and led to the place whence he could only depart to strike his master.
+
+At last the night unfolded her starry robe in the sky, and its shadow
+fell upon the city and the palace. A light footstep became audible,
+a veiled woman entered the room and conducted him through the obscure
+corridors and multiplied mazes of the royal edifice with as much
+confidence as though she had been preceded by a slave bearing a lamp or
+a torch.
+
+The hand which held that of Gyges was cold, soft, and small;
+nevertheless those slender fingers clasped it with a bruising force,
+as the fingers of some statue of brass animated by a prodigy would
+have done. The rigidity of an inflexible will betrayed itself in that
+ever-equal pressure as of a vice--a pressure which no hesitation of head
+or heart came to vary. Gyges, conquered, subjugated, crushed, yielded to
+that imperious traction, as though he were borne along by the mighty arm
+of Fate.
+
+Alas! it was not thus he had wished to touch for the first time that
+fair royal hand, which had presented the poniard to him, and was leading
+him to murder, for it was Nyssia herself who had come for Gyges, to
+conceal him in the place of ambuscade.
+
+No word was exchanged between the sinister couple on the way from the
+prison to the nuptial chamber.
+
+The queen unfastened the thongs, raised the bar of the entrance, and
+placed Gyges behind the folding-door as Candaules had done the evening
+previous. This repetition of the same acts, with so different a purpose,
+had something of a lugubrious and fatal character. Vengeance, this
+time, had placed her foot upon every track left by the insult. The
+chastisement and the crime alike followed the same path. Yesterday it
+was the turn of Candaules, to-day it was that of Nyssia; and Gyges,
+accomplice in the injury, was also accomplice in the penalty. He had
+served the king to dishonour the queen; he would serve the queen to kill
+the king, equally exposed by the vices of the one and the virtues of the
+other.
+
+The daughter of Megabazus seemed to feel a savage joy, a ferocious
+pleasure, in employing only the same means chosen by the Lydian king,
+and turning to account for the murder those very precautions which had
+been adopted for voluptuous fantasy.
+
+'You will again this evening see me take off these garments which are
+so displeasing to Candaules. This spectacle should become wearisome to
+you,' said the queen in accents of bitter irony, as she stood on the
+threshold of the chamber; 'you will end by finding me ugly.' And
+a sardonic, forced laugh momentarily curled her pale mouth; then,
+regaining her impassible severity of mien, she continued: 'Do not
+imagine you will be able to steal away this time as you did before;
+you know my sight is piercing. At the slightest movement on your part I
+shall awake Candaules; and you know that it will not be easy for you to
+explain what you are doing in the king's apartments, behind a door, with
+a poniard in your hand. Further, my Bactrian slaves, the copper-coloured
+mutes who imprisoned you a short time ago, guard all the issues of
+the palace, with orders to massacre you should you attempt to go out.
+Therefore let no vain scruples of fidelity cause you to hesitate. Think
+that I will make you King of Sardes, and that... I will love you if you
+avenge me. The blood of Candaules will be your purple, and his death
+will make for you a place in that bed.'
+
+The slaves came according to their custom to change the fuel in the
+tripod, renew the oil in the lamps, spread tapestry and the skins of
+animals upon the royal couch; and Nyssia hurried into the chamber as
+soon as she heard their footsteps resounding in the distance.
+
+In a short time Candaules arrived all joyous. He had purchased the bed
+of Ikmalius and proposed to substitute it for the bed wrought after the
+Oriental fashion, which he declared had never been much to his taste.
+He seemed pleased to find that Nyssia had already retired to the nuptial
+chamber.
+
+'The trade of embroidery, and spindles, and needles seems not to have
+the same attraction for you to-day as usual. In fact, it is a monotonous
+labour to perpetually pass one thread between other threads, and I
+wonder at the pleasure which you seem ordinarily to take in it. To tell
+the truth, I am afraid that some fine day Pallas-Athene, on finding you
+so skilful, will break her shuttle over your head as she once did to
+poor Arachne.'
+
+'My lord, I felt somewhat tired this evening, and so came downstairs
+sooner than usual. Would you not like before going to sleep to drink
+a cup of black Samian wine mixed with the honey of Hymettus?' And
+she poured from a golden urn, into a cup of the same metal, the
+sombre-coloured beverage which she had mingled with the soporiferous
+juice of the nepenthe.
+
+Candaules took the cup by both handles and drained it to the last drop;
+but the young Heracleid had a strong head, and sinking his elbow into
+the cushions of his couch he watched Nyssia undressing without any sign
+that the dust of sleep was commencing to gather upon his eyes.
+
+As on the evening before, Nyssia unfastened her hair and permitted its
+rich blond waves to ripple over her shoulders. From his hiding-place
+Gyges fancied that he saw those locks slowly becoming suffused with
+tawny tints, illuminated with reflections of blood and flame; and their
+heavy curls seemed to lengthen with viperine undulations, like the hair
+of the Gorgons and Medusas.
+
+All simple and graceful as that action was in itself, it took from the
+terrible events about to transpire a frightful and ominous character,
+which caused the hidden assassin to shudder with terror.
+
+Nyssia then unfastened her bracelets, but agitated as her hands had been
+by nervous straining, they ill served her will. She broke the string
+of a bracelet of beads of amber inlaid with gold, which rolled over
+the floor with a loud noise, causing Candaules to reopen his gradually
+closing eyes.
+
+Each one of those beads fell upon the heart of Gyges as a drop of molten
+lead falls upon water.
+
+Having unlaced her buskins, the queen threw her upper tunic over the
+back of an ivory chair. This drapery, thus arranged, produced upon Gyges
+the effect of one of those sinister-folding winding-sheets wherein the
+dead were wrapped ere being borne to the funeral pyre. Every object
+in that room, which had the evening before seemed to him one scene of
+smiling splendour, now appeared to him livid, dim, and menacing. The
+statues of basalt rolled their eyes and smiled hideously. The lamp
+flickered weirdly, and its flame dishevelled itself in red and sanguine
+rays like the crest of a comet. Far back in the dimly lighted corners
+loomed the monstrous forms of the Lares and Lemures. The mantles hanging
+from their hooks seemed animated by a factitious life, and assumed a
+human aspect of vitality; and when Nyssia stripped of her last garment,
+approached the bed, all white and naked as a shade, he thought that
+Death herself had broken the diamond fetters wherewith Hercules of old
+enchained her at the gates of hell when he delivered Alcestes, and had
+come in person to take possession of Candaules.
+
+Overcome by the power of the nepenthe-juice, the king at last slumbered.
+Nyssia made a sign for Gyges to come forth from his retreat; and
+laying her finger upon the breast of the victim, she directed upon her
+accomplice a look so humid, so lustrous, so weighty with languishment,
+so replete with intoxicating promise, that Gyges, maddened and
+fascinated, sprang from his hiding-place like the tiger from the summit
+of the rock where it has been couching, traversed the chamber at a
+bound, and plunged the Bactrian poniard up to the very hilt in the heart
+of the descendant of Hercules. The chastity of Nyssia was avenged, and
+the dream of Gyges accomplished.
+
+Thus ended the dynasty of the Heracleidae, after having endured for
+five hundred and five years, and commenced that of the Mermnades in the
+person of Gyges, son of Dascylus. The Sardians, indignant at the
+death of Candaules, threatened revolt; but the oracle of Delphi having
+declared in favour of Gyges, who had sent thither a vast number of
+silver vases and six golden cratera of the value of thirty talents, the
+new king maintained his seat on the throne of Lydia, which he occupied
+for many long years, lived happily, and never showed his wife to any
+one, knowing too well what it cost.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of King Candaules, by Theophile Gautier
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