The king had a pool in his palace,--an octagonal, fresh pool of white
marble. Steps of dark-green malachite ran down to its bottom. A facing
of Ægyptian jasper, snowy-white, with pink, barely perceptible little
veins, served as a frame for the pool. The best of ebony had gone for
the ornamentation of the walls. Four lions’ heads of pink sardonyx cast
forth the water in thin jets into the pool. Eight mirrors of polished
silver, the height of a man and of excellent Sydonian workmanship, were
set into the walls, between the slender columns of white.
Before Sulamith was to enter the pool, young maid-servants poured
aromatic compounds into it, that made the water to turn white and blue
and to play with all the colours of a milky opal. The female slaves
disrobing Sulamith gazed with delight upon her body; and, when they had
disrobed her, they led her up to a mirror. Not a single blemish was
there upon her beautiful body, made aureate like a tawny, ripe fruit by
the golden down of soft hair. And she, gazing upon her naked self in the
mirror, turned red and thought:
“All this is for thee, my king!”
She came out of the pool fresh, cool, and fragrant, covered with
quivering drops of water. The female slaves put upon her a short white
tunic of the finest Ægyptian linen, and a chiton of precious Sargonian
byssin, of such a refulgent golden colour that the garment seemed woven
out of the rays of the sun. They shod her feet in red sandals made from
the skin of a young kid; they dried her dark, flaming locks and bound
them with strings of large black pearls; and they adorned her arms with
tinkling bracelets.
In such array did she come before Solomon, and the king exclaimed
joyously:
“Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear
as the sun? O, Sulamith, thy beauty is more terrible than an army with
flaunted banners! Seven hundred wives have I known and three hundred
concubines, and virgins without number,--thou art but one, my fair! The
queens shall behold thee and extoll thee, and all women upon earth shall
praise thee. O, Sulamith, that day when thou wilt become my spouse and
queen shall be the happiest my heart has known.”
Whereupon she walked up to the door of carved olive, and, pressing her
cheek against it, said:
“I desire to be but thy slave, Solomon. Behold, I have put my ear to the
post of the door. I beseech thee,--in accordance with the law of Moses,
nail down my ear in witness of my voluntary bondage before thee.”
Then Solomon did command to be brought out of his treasure house
precious pendants of deep-red carbuncles, fashioned to resemble
elongated pears. He himself put them upon the ears of Sulamith, and
said:
“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
And, taking Sulamith by the hand, the king brought her to the banqueting
house, where his companions and familiars were already awaiting him.
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