rhuman apparition, by that monster of beauty!

Nevertheless that image, although seen only in the glimpse of a moment,
had engraved itself upon his heart in lines deep as those which
the sculptors trace on ivory with tools reddened in the fire. He had
endeavoured, although vainly, to efface it, for the love which he felt
for Nyssia inspired him with a secret terror. Perfection in such a
degree is ever awe-inspiring, and women so like unto goddesses could
only work evil to feeble mortals; they are formed for divine adulteries,
and even the most courageous men never risk themselves in such amours
without trembling. Therefore no hope had blossomed in the soul of
Gyges, overwhelmed and discouraged in advance by the sentiment of the
impossible. Ere opening his lips to Nyssia he would have wished to
despoil the heaven of its robe of stars, to take from Phoebus his crown
of rays, forgetting that women only give themselves to those unworthy
of them, and that to win their love one must act as though he desired to
earn their hate.

From that day the roses of joy no longer bloomed upon his cheeks. By
day he was sad and mournful, and seemed to wander abroad in solitary
dreaming, like a mortal who has beheld a divinity. At night he was
haunted by dreams in which he beheld Nyssia seated by his side upon
cushions of purple between the golden griffins of the royal throne.

Therefore Gyges, the only one who could speak of his own knowledge
concerning Nyssia, having never spoken of her, the Sardians were left to
their own conjectures in her regard; and their conjectures, it must be
confessed, were fantastic and altogether fabulous. The beauty of Nyssia,
thanks to the veils which shrouded her, became a sort of myth, a canvas,
a poem to which each one added ornamentation as the fancy took him.

'If report be not false,' lisped a young debauchee from Athens, who
stood with one hand upon the shoulder of an Asiatic boy, 'neither
Plangon, nor Archianassa, nor Thais can be compared with this marvellous
barbarian; yet I can scarce believe that she equals Theano of Colophon,
from whom I once bought a single night at the price of as much gold as
she could bear away, after having plunged both her white arms up to the
shoulder in my cedar-wood coffer.'

'Beside her,' added a Eupatrid, who pretended to be better informed than
any other person upon all manner of subjects, 'beside her the daughter
of Coelus and the Sea would seem but a mere Ethiopi