King Candaules

King Candaules, by Théophile
Gautier

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Title: King Candaules
Author: Théophile Gautier
Translator: Lafcadio Hearn
Release Date: September 18, 2007 [EBook #22660]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CANDAULES ***

Produced by David Widger

KING CANDAULES
By Théophile Gautier

Translated By Lafcadio Hearn
1908
CHAPTER I
Five hundred years before the Trojan war, and seventeen hundred and
fifteen years before our own era, there was a grand festival at Sardes.
King Candaules was going to marry. The people were affected with
that sort of pleasurable interest and aimless emotion wherewith any
royal event inspires the masses, even though it in no wise concerns
them, and transpires in superior spheres of life which they can never
hope to reach.
As soon as Phoebus-Apollo, standing in his quadriga, had gilded to
saffron the summits of fertile Mount Tmolus with his rays, the good
people of Sardes were all astir, going and coming, mounting or
descending the marble stairways leading from the city to the waters of
the Pactolus, that opulent river whose sands Midas filled with tiny
sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. One would have supposed
that each one of these good citizens was himself about to marry, so
solemn and important was the demeanour of all.
Men were gathering in groups in the Agora, upon the steps of the
temples and along the porticoes. At every street corner one might have
encountered women leading by the hand little children, whose uneven
walk ill suited the maternal anxiety and impatience. Maidens were
hastening to the fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced upon their
heads, or sustained by their white arms as with natural handles, so as to
procure early the necessary water provision for the household, and thus
obtain leisure at the hour when the nuptial procession should pass.
Washerwomen hastily folded the still damp tunics and chlamidæ, and
piled them upon mule-wagons. Slaves turned the mill without any need
of the overseer's whip to tickle their naked and scar-seamed shoulders.
Sardes was hurrying itself to finish with those necessary everyday cares
which no festival can wholly disregard.
The road along which the procession was to pass had been strewn with

fine yellow sand. Brazen tripods, disposed along the way at regular
intervals, sent up to heaven the odorous smoke of cinnamon and
spikenard. These vapours, moreover, alone clouded the purity of the
azure above. The clouds of a hymeneal day ought, indeed, to be formed
only by the burning of perfumes. Myrtle and rose-laurel branches were
strewn upon the ground, and from the walls of the palaces were
suspended by little rings of bronze rich tapestries, whereon the needles
of industrious captives--intermingling wool, silver, and gold--had
represented various scenes in the history of the gods and heroes: Ixion
embracing the cloud; Diana surprised in the bath by Actaeon; the
shepherd Paris as judge in the contest of beauty held upon Mount Ida
between Hera, the snowy-armed, Athena of the sea-green eyes, and
Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to
honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken
from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles. Others exhibited in
preference scenes taken from the life of Heracles, the Theban, through
flattery to Candaules, himself a Heracleid, being descended from the
hero through Alcaeus. Others contented themselves by decorating the
entrances of their dwellings with garlands and wreaths in token of
rejoicing.
Among the multitudes marshalled along the way from the royal house
even as far as the gates of the city, through which the young queen
would pass on her arrival, conversation naturally turned upon the
beauty of the bride, whereof the renown had spread throughout all Asia;
and upon the character of the bridegroom, who, although not altogether
an eccentric, seemed nevertheless one not readily appreciated from the
common standpoint of observation.
Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, was gifted with marvellous
purity of feature and perfection of form; at least such was the rumour
spread abroad by the female slaves who attended her, and a few female
friends who had accompanied her to the bath; for no man could boast of
knowing aught of Nyssia save the colour of her veil and the elegant
folds that she involuntarily impressed upon the soft materials which
robed her statuesque body.

The barbarians did not share the ideas of the Greeks in regard to
modesty.