One of Cleopatra's Nights and Other Fantastic Romances

the young bride, being more fortunate in this wise than the Sardians, who after a whole day's wa

ers, and thus make atonement for all former experimental attempts and fruitless essays. One would have said that, moved by jealousy of the future ma

s music itself. According to different surroundings, it took the color 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 scu

eaven of dark silver which formed those eyes. The irises of those eyes, whose pupils were blacker than atrament, varied singularly in shades of shifting color. 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

s 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 ?tn

nder 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

human passion, such as would have made the moon-bright eyes of Ph?be or the sea-green eyes of Athena appear by comparison more liquidly tempting than those of a y

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

mortality, 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 shell

, 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 im

a, of the Sac?, of Rhapta, the most celebrated courtesans from Ephesus, from Pergamus, from Smyrna, and from Cyprus, he wa

nto 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 labors, 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,

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

, 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 wi

would have borne away the golden apple, not even Aphrodite, despite her cestus and her promise to

, 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 f

painters and sculptors, and have given them the queen for their model, as did afterward Alexander his favorite 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

crown of ivy and linden leaves like a Bacchante of Mount M?nalus, to lie, hardly veiled by a cloud of tissue finer than woven wind, upon a tiger-skin with si

ould have remained thus for whole hours if Nyssia, soon becoming weary of her r?le of model, had not reminded him in chill and disdainful tones that such amusements were unworthy of royal majesty and contrary to the

ame 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; n

liar and cordial manner, and after giving him a look of peculiar significance

h the Sicyon sculptors have just finished chiselling on the geneal

, and I know not how to express my gratitude for the honor you do m

the Cyclopean manner. This ancient architecture was colossally proportioned and weirdly grim. The immeasurable genius of the elder civilizations 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 foreh

ded by a portico whose architecture was ornamented with t

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 h

earlier kings of the dynasty of the Heracleid?, then all the line of intermediate kings, termin

eemed 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

ce at the right hand of Heracles; the dynastic cycle was closed, and in order to find a place for the descendants o

co in silence. He seemed to hesitate to enter into the subject, and had altogether forgot

ul to both, "if you were a diver, and should bring up from the green bosom of the ocean a pearl of in

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 coul

ht of the sun, that I might adorn myself with its splendor 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 lustr

these lyric divagations. The king appeared to be in a state of extraordinary excitement: his eyes sparkled wi

ive 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, w

husband has ever beheld her features, Fame, hundred-tongued and hundred-eared, has celebrated

nceal my amours from all eyes, no shadow was thick enough, no mystery sufficiently impenetrable. Now I can no longer recognize 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 gyn?ceum. Were I to die, then the secret of this beauty would forever 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 pr

hich 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

led by the approach of night amid ancient monuments? As he stepped across the threshold Gyges fancied that he heard deep groans iss