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 Ætna, 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 rôle 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.