One of Cleopatra's Nights (20 page)

And then I am no longer so young or so pretty that tapestries should
come down from their walls to honor me.

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 demeanor 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 chlamidæ, 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 every-day 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 vapors, 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 Actæon; 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
honor 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 Alcæus. 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 rumor
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 color 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 scruple 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 Eupatridæ of Sardes, who hoped that the young king might,
perchance, choose a wife from their family, the hetairæ of Athens, of
Samos, of Miletus and of Cyprus, the beautiful slaves from the banks of
the Indus, the blonde 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, an humble captain of King Candaules' 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 which
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 whether 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 endeavored, 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 endeavoring to reproduce, and the
opinions of Lamia and the patrician were abandoned as improbable.