King Candaules | Page 2

While the youths of Achaia made no scruples of allowing
their oil-anointed torsos to shine under the sun in the stadium, and
while the Spartan virgins danced ungarmented before the altar of Diana,
those of Persepolis, Ebactana, and Bactria, attaching more importance
to chastity of the body than to chastity of mind, considered those
liberties allowed to the pleasure of the eyes by Greek manner as impure
and highly reprehensible, and held no woman virtuous who permitted
men to obtain a glimpse of more than the tip of her foot in walking, as
it slightly deranged the discreet folds of a long tunic.
Despite all this mystery, or rather, perhaps, by very reason of this
mystery, the fame of Nyssia had not been slow to spread throughout all
Lydia, and become popular there to such a degree that it had reached
even Candaules, although kings are ordinarily the most illy informed
people in their kingdoms, and live like the gods in a kind of cloud
which conceals from them the knowledge of terrestrial things.
The Eupatridæ of Sardes, who hoped that the young king might,
perchance, choose a wife from their family, the hetairæ of Athens, of
Samos, of Miletus and of Cyprus, the beautiful slaves from the banks of
the Indus, the blond girls brought at a vast expense from the depths of
the Cimmerian fogs, were heedful never to utter in the presence of
Candaules, whether within hearing or beyond hearing, a single word
which bore any relation to Nyssia. The bravest, in a question of beauty,
recoil before the prospect of a contest in which they can anticipate
being outrivalled.
And nevertheless no person in Sardes, or even in Lydia, had beheld this
redoubtable adversary, no person save one solitary being, who from the
time of that encounter had kept his lips as firmly closed upon the
subject as though Harpocrates, the god of silence, had sealed them with
his finger, and that was Gyges, chief of the guards of Candaules. One
day Gyges, his mind filled with various projects and vague ambitions,
had been wandering among the Bactrian hills, whither his master had
sent him upon an important and secret mission. He was dreaming of the
intoxication of omnipotence, of treading upon purple with sandals of

gold, of placing the diadem upon the brows of the fairest of women.
These thoughts made his blood boil in his veins, and, as though to
pursue the flight of his dreams, he smote his sinewy heel upon the
foam-whitened flanks of his Numidian horse.
The weather, at first calm, had changed and waxed tempestuous like the
warrior's soul; and Boreas, his locks bristling with Thracian frosts, his
cheeks puffed out, his arms folded upon his breast, smote the
rain-freighted clouds with the mighty beatings of his wings.
A bevy of young girls who had been gathering flowers in the meadow,
fearing the coming storm, were returning to the city in all haste, each
carrying her perfumed harvest in the lap of her tunic. Seeing a stranger
on horseback approaching in the distance, they had hidden their faces
in their mantles, after the custom of the barbarians; but at the very
moment that Gyges was passing by the one whose proud carriage and
richer habiliments seemed to designate her the mistress of the little
band, an unusually violent gust of wind carried away the veil of the fair
unknown, and, whirling it through the air like a feather, chased it to
such a distance that it could not be recovered. It was Nyssia, daughter
of Megabazus, who found herself thus with face unveiled in the
presence of Gyges, a humble captain of King Candaules's guard. Was it
only the breath of Boreas which had brought about this accident, or had
Eros, who delights to vex the hearts of men, amused himself by
severing the string which had fastened the protecting tissue? However
that may have been, Gyges was stricken motionless at the sight of that
Medusa of beauty, and not till long after the folds of Nyssia's robe had
disappeared beyond the gates of the city could he think of proceeding
on his way. Although there was nothing to justify such a conjecture, he
cherished the belief that he had seen the satrap's daughter; and that
meeting, which affected him almost like an apparition, accorded so
fully with the thoughts that were occupying him at the moment of its
occurrence, that he could not help perceiving therein something fateful
and ordained of the gods. In truth it was upon that brow that he would
have wished to place the diadem. What other could be more worthy of
it? But what probability was there that Gyges would ever have a throne

to share? He had not sought to follow up this adventure, and