One of Cleopatra's Nights (27 page)

"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 realization 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 ardor 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, Hephæstion, Plato, Dositheus, Archilochus of
Paros, Hesychius of Miletus, Ptolomæus, 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 crumbled 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 colors. 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,
aveiled 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 vise—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 dishonor 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-colored
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
labor 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-Athena, 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 down-stairs
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-colored 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 blonde 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 splendor, 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.