King Candaules | Page 5

Persia, essence of roses from
Smyrna; kamklins or perfuming pans, with perforated covers;
cedar-wood or ivory coffers of marvellous workmanship, which opened
with a secret spring that none save the inventor could find, and which
contained bracelets wrought from the gold of Ophir, necklaces of the
most lustrous pearls, mantle-brooches constellated with rubies and
carbuncles; toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons,
sea-wolves' teeth to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which
turns to a most beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken
the eyelashes and eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine
coquetry could invent. Other litters were freighted with purple robes of
the finest linen and of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of
the rose to the deep crimson of the blood of the grape; calasires of the
linen of Canopus, which is thrown all white into the vat of the dyer, and
comes forth again, owing to the various astringents in which it had
been steeped, diapered with the most brilliant colours; tunics brought
from the fabulous land of Seres, made from the spun slime of a worm

which feeds upon leaves, and so fine that they might be drawn through
a finger-ring.
Ethiopians, whose bodies shone like jet, and whose temples were
tightly bound with cords, lest they should burst the veins of their
foreheads in the effort to uphold their burden, carried in great pomp a
statue of Hercules, the ancestor of Candaules, of colossal size, wrought
of ivory and gold, with the club, the skin of the Nemean lion, the three
apples from the garden of the Hesperides, and all the traditional
attributes of the hero.
Statues of Venus Urania, and of Venus Genitrix, sculptured by the best
pupils of the Sicyon School. That marble of Paros whose gleaming
transparency seemed expressly created for the representation of the
ever-youthful flesh of the immortals, were borne after the statue of
Hercules, which admirably relieved the harmony and elegance of their
proportions by contrast with its massive outlines and rugged forms.
A painting by Bularchus, which Candaules had purchased for its weight
in gold, executed upon the wood of the female larch-tree, and
representing the defeat of the Magnesians, evoked universal admiration
by the beauty of its design, the truthfulness of the attitude of its figures,
and the harmony of its colouring, although the artist had only employed
in its production the four primitive colours: Attic ochre, white, Pontic
sinopis and atramentum. The young king loved painting and sculpture
even more, perhaps, than well became a monarch, and he had not
unfrequently bought a picture at a price equal to the annual revenue of a
whole city.
Camels and dromedaries, splendidly caparisoned, with musicians
seated on their necks performing upon drums and cymbals, carried the
gilded stakes, the cords, and the material of the tent designed for the
use of the queen during voyages and hunting parties.
These spectacles of magnificence would upon any other occasion have
ravished the people of Sardes with delight, but their curiosity had been
enlisted in another direction, and it was not without a certain feeling of
impatience that they watched this portion of the procession file by. The

young maidens and the handsome boys, bearing flaming torches, and
strewing handfuls of crocus flowers along the way, hardly attracted any
attention. The idea of beholding Nyssia had preoccupied all minds.
At last Candaules appeared, riding in a chariot drawn by four horses, as
beautiful and spirited as those of the sun, all rolling their golden bits in
foam, shaking their purple-decked manes, and restrained with great
difficulty by the driver, who stood erect at the side of Candaules, and
was leaning back to gain more power on the reins.
Candaules was a young man full of vigour, and well worthy of his
Herculean origin. His head was joined to his shoulders by a neck
massive as a bull's, and almost without a curve; his hair, black and
lustrous, twisted itself into rebellious little curls, here and there
concealing the circlet of his diadem; his ears, small and upright, were
of a ruddy hue; his forehead was broad and full, though a little low, like
all antique foreheads; his eyes full of gentle melancholy, his oval
cheeks, his chin with its gentle and regular curves, his mouth with its
slightly parted lips--all bespoke the nature of the poet rather than that of
the warrior. In fact, although he was brave, skilled in all bodily
exercises, could subdue a wild horse as well as any of the Lapithæ, or
swim across the current of rivers when they descended, swollen with
melted snow, from the mountains, although he might have bent the bow
of Odysseus or borne the shield of Achilles, he seemed little occupied
with dreams of conquest; and war usually