One of Cleopatra's Nights (21 page)

"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
cortège
, 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, have 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-colored 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 incrusted with
precious stones and containing the rarest perfumes; myrrh from Arabia,
cinnamon from the Indies, spikenard from Persia, essence of roses from
Smyrna; klamklins 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 blonde 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 colors; 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 in 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 coloring, although the artist had only employed in its
production the four primitive colors: 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 vigor, 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
Lapithæ, 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 neighbors, 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 other
paintings in various colors 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-colored
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.

In our character of poet we have the right to lift the saffron-colored
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.