King Candaules | Page 9

that he did not spend at the queen's side, 'how
strange a lot is mine! I am wretched because of that which would make
any other husband happy. Nyssia will not leave the shadow of the
gynaeceum, and refuses, with barbarian modesty, to lift her veil in the
presence of any other than myself. Yet with what an intoxication of
pride would my love behold her, radiantly sublime, gaze down upon
my kneeling people from the summit of the royal steps, and, like the
rising dawn, extinguish all those pale stars who during the night
thought themselves suns! Proud Lydian women, who believe
yourselves beautiful, but for Nyssia's reserve you would appear, even to
your lovers, as ugly as the oblique-eyed and thick-lipped slaves of
Nahasi and Kush. Were she but once to pass along the streets of Sardes
with face unveiled, you might in vain pull your adorers by the lappet of
their tunic, for none of them would turn his head, or, if he did, it would
be to demand your name, so utterly would he have forgotten you! They
would rush to precipitate themselves beneath the silver wheels of her
chariot, that they might have even the pleasure of being crushed by her,
like those devotees of the Indus who pave the pathway of their idol
with their bodies.
'And you, O goddesses, whom Paris-Alexander judged, had Nyssia
appeared among you, not one of you would have borne away the
golden apple, not even Aphrodite, despite her cestus and her promise to
the shepherd-arbiter that she would make him beloved by the most
beautiful woman in the world!...
'Alas! to think that such beauty is not immortal, and that years will alter
those divine outlines, that admirable hymn of forms, that poem whose
strophes are contours, and which no one in the world has ever read or
may ever read save myself; to be the sole depositary of so splendid a
treasure! If I knew even by imitating the play of light and shadow with
the aid of lines and colours, how to fix upon wood a reflection of that
celestial face; if marble were not rebellious to my chisel, how well
would I fashion in the purest vein of Paros or Pentelicus an image of
that charming body, which would make the proud effigies of the
goddesses fall from their altars! And long after, when deep below the
slime of deluges, and beneath the dust of ruined cities, the men of

future ages should find a fragment of that petrified shadow of Nyssia,
they would cry: "Behold, how the women of this vanished world were
formed!" And they would erect a temple wherein to enshrine the divine
fragment. But I have naught save a senseless admiration and a love that
is madness! Sole adorer of an unknown divinity, I possess no power to
spread her worship through the world.'
Thus in Candaules had the enthusiasm of the artist extinguished the
jealousy of the lover. Admiration was mightier than love. If in place of
Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, all imbued with Oriental
ideas, he had espoused some Greek girl from Athens or Corinth, he
would certainly have invited to his court the most skilful painters and
sculptors, and have given them the queen for their model, as did
afterward Alexander his favourite Campaspe, who posed naked before
Apelles. Such a whim would have encountered no opposition from a
woman of the land where even the most chaste made a boast of having
contributed--some for the back, some for the bosom--to the perfection
of a famous statue. But hardly would the bashful Nyssia consent to
unveil herself in the discreet shadow of the thalamus, and the earnest
prayers of the king really shocked her rather than gave her pleasure.
The sentiment of duty and obedience alone induced her to yield at
times to what she styled the whims of Candaules.
Sometimes he besought her to allow the flood of her hair to flow over
her shoulders in a river of gold richer than the Pactolus, to encircle her
brow with a crown of ivy and linden leaves like a bacchante of Mount
Maenalus, to lie, hardly veiled by a cloud of tissue finer than woven
wind, upon a tiger-skin with silver claws and ruby eyes, or to stand
erect in a great shell of mother-of-pearl, with a dew of pearls falling
from her tresses in lieu of drops of sea-water.
When he had placed himself in the best position for observation, he
became absorbed in silent contemplation. His hand, tracing vague
contours in the air, seemed to be sketching the outlines for some picture,
and he would have remained thus for whole hours if Nyssia, soon
becoming weary of her rôle of model, had not reminded him