Columns of Corinthian marble stretching away in mighty perspective
and rearing their acanthus capitals a hundred feet above the
polished marble from which they rose;--antique mosaics from
the years of Hadrian;--Pompeiian frescoes limning all the
sacrifices made to Aphrodite;--naked bronzes uplifting marvelous
candelabra;--fantastically beautiful oddities in terra cotta;--miracles
of art in Pentelic marble;--tripods supporting vessels of burning
spices which filled the palace with perfumes as intoxicating as
the Song of Solomon;--and in the midst of all a range of melodious
fountains amid whose waters white nymphs showed their smooth thighs
of stone and curved their marble figures into all the postures that
harmonize with beauty. Vast gardens of myrtle and groves of laurel,
mystic and shadowy as those of Daphne, surrounded the palace with a
world of deep green, broken only at intervals by the whiteness of
Parian dryads;--flowers formed a living carpet upon the breadth of the
terraces, and a river washed the eastern walls and marble stairways of
the edifice. It was a world of wonders and of marvels, of riches and
rarities, though created by the vengeance of a king. There was but one
human life amid all that enchantment of Greek marble, of petrified
loveliness and beauty made motionless in bronze. No servants were ever
seen;--no voice was ever heard;--there was no exit from that strange
paradise. It was said that the king's prisoner was served by invisible
hands;--that tables covered with luxurious viands rose up through the
marble pavements at regular hours;--and the fumes of the richest wines
of the Levant, sweetened with honey, perfumed the chamber chosen for
his repasts. All that art could inspire, all that gold might obtain,
all that the wealth of a world could create were for him--save only
the sound of a human voice and the sight of a human face. To madden in
the presence of unattainable loveliness, to consume his heart in wild
longings to realize the ravishing myth of Pygmalion, to die of a dream
of beauty--such was the sentence of the king!
Lovelier than all other lovelinesses created in stone or gem or eternal
bronze by the hands of men whose lives were burnt out in longings
for a living idol worthy of their dreams of perfect beauty--a figure
of Aphrodite displayed the infinite harmony of her naked loveliness
upon a pedestal of black marble, so broad and so highly polished that
it reflected the divine poem of her body like a mirror of ebony--the
Foam-born rising from the silent deeps of a black Ægean. The delicate
mellowness of the antique marble admirably mocked the tint of human
flesh;--a tropical glow, a golden warmth seemed to fill the motionless
miracle--this dream of love frozen into marble by a genius greater than
Praxiteles; no modern restorer had given to the attitude of this bright
divinity the Christian anachronism of shame. With arms extended as if
to welcome a lover, all the exquisite curves of her bosom faced the
eyes of the beholder; and with one foot slightly advanced she seemed in
the act of stepping forward to bestow a kiss. And a brazen tablet let
into the black marble of the pedestal bore, in five learned tongues,
the strange inscription:
Created by the hand of one maddened by love, I madden all
who gaze upon me. Mortal, condemned to live in solitude with
me, prepare thyself to die of love at my feet. The old gods,
worshiped by youth and beauty, are dead; and no immortal
power can place a living heart in this stony bosom or lend
to these matchless limbs the warm flexibility and rosiness
of life.
Around the chamber of the statue ran a marble wainscoting chiseled
with Bacchanal bas-reliefs--a revel of rude dryads and fauns linking
themselves in amorous interlacings;--upon an altar of porphyry
flickered the low flame of the holy fire fed with leaves of the myrtle
sacred to love;--doves for the sacrifice were cooing and wooing in
the marble court without;--a sound of crystal water came from a
fountain near the threshold, where beautiful feminine monsters, whose
lithe flanks blended into serpent coils, upheld in their arms of
bronze the fantastic cup from which the living waters leapt; a balmy,
sensuous air, bearing on its wings the ghosts of perfumes known to the
voluptuaries of Corinth, filled the softly lighted sanctuary;--and on
either side of the threshold stood two statues, respectively in white
and black marble--Love, the blond brother of Death; Death, the dark
brother of Love, with torch forever extinguished.
And the King knew that the Prisoner kept alive the sacred fire,
and poured out the blood of the doves at the feet of the goddess,
who smiled with the eternal smile of immortal youth and changeless
loveliness and the consciousness of the mighty witchery of her
enchanting body. For secret watchers came to the palace and said:
"When he first beheld the awful holiness of her beauty, he fell
prostrate as one bereft of life, and long so remained."
And the King musingly made answer:
"Aphrodite is no longer to be appeased with the blood of doves, but
only with the blood of men--men of mighty hearts and volcanic passion.
He is youthful and strong and an artist!--and he must soon die. Let the
weapons of death be mercifully placed at the feet of Aphrodite, that
her victim may be able to offer himself up in sacrifice."
Now the secret messengers were eunuchs. And they came again to the
palace, and whispered in the ears of the silver-bearded King:
"He has again poured out the blood of the doves, and he sings the
sacred Hymn of Homer, and kisses her marble body until his lips
bleed;--and the goddess still smiles the smile of perfect loveliness
that is pitiless."
And the King answered:
"It is even as I desire."
A second time the messengers came to the palace, and whispered in the
ears of the iron-eyed King:
"He bathes her feet with his tears: his heart is tortured as though
crushed by fingers of marble; he no longer eats or slumbers, neither
drinks he the waters of the Fountain of Bronze;--and the goddess still
smiles the mocking smile of eternal and perfect loveliness that is
without pity and without mercy."
And the King answered:
"It is even as I had wished."
So one morning, in the first rosy flush of sunrise, they found the
Prisoner dead, his arms madly flung about the limbs of the goddess in
a last embrace, and his cheek resting upon her marble foot. All the
blood of his heart, gushing from a wound in his breast, had been poured
out upon the pedestal of black marble; and it trickled down over the
brazen tablet inscribed with five ancient tongues, and over the mosaic
pavement, and over the marble threshold past the statue of Love who is
the brother of Death, and the statue of Death who is the brother of
Love, until it mingled with the waters of the Fountain of Bronze from
which the sacrificial doves did drink.
And around the bodies of the serpent-women the waters blushed rosily;
and above the dead, the goddess still smiled the sweet and mocking
smile of eternal and perfect loveliness that hath no pity.
"Thrice seven days he has lived at her feet," muttered the King; "yet
even I, hoary with years, dare not trust myself to look upon her for
an hour!" And a phantom of remorse, like a shadow from Erebus, passed
across his face of granite. "Let her be broken in pieces," he said,
"even as a vessel of glass is broken."
But the King's servants, beholding the white witchery of her rhythmic
limbs, fell upon their faces; and there was no man found to raise his
hand against the Medusa of beauty whose loveliness withered men's
hearts as leaves are crisped by fire. And Aphrodite smiled down upon
them with the smile of everlasting youth and immortal beauty and
eternal mockery of human passion.