an servant.'

'Your words are blasphemy, and although Aphrodite be a kind and
indulgent goddess, beware of drawing down her anger upon you.'

'By Hercules!--and that ought to be an oath of some weight in a city
ruled by one of his descendants--I cannot retract a word of it.'

'You have seen her, then?'

'No; but I have a slave in my service who once belonged to Nyssia, and
who has told me a hundred stories about her.'

'Is it true,' demanded in infantile tones an equivocal-looking woman
whose pale-rose tunic, painted cheeks, and locks shining with essences
betrayed wretched pretensions to a youth long passed away--' is it true
that Nyssia has two pupils in each eye? It seems to me that must be very
ugly, and I cannot understand how Candaules could fall in love with such
a monstrosity, while there is no lack, at Sardes and in Lydia, of women
whose eyes are irreproachable.'

And uttering these words with all sorts of affected airs and simperings,
Lamia took a little significant peep in a small mirror of cast metal
which she drew from her bosom, and which enabled her to lead back to
duty certain wandering curls disarranged by the impertinence of the
wind.

'As to the double pupil, that seems to me nothing more than an old
nurse's tale,' observed the well-informed patrician; 'but it is a fact
that Nyssia's eyes are so piercing that she can see through walls.
Lynxes are myopic compared with her.'

'How can a sensible man coolly argue about such an absurdity?'
interrupted a citizen, whose bald skull, and the flood of snowy beard
into which he plunged his fingers while speaking, lent him an air of
preponderance and philosophical sagacity. 'The truth is that the
daughter of Megabazus cannot naturally see through a wall any better
than you or I, but the Egyptian priest Thoutmosis, who knows so many
wondrous secrets, has given her the mysterious stone which is found in
the heads of dragons, and whose property, as every one knows, renders
all shadows and the most opaque bodies transparent to the eyes of those
who possess it. Nyssia always carries this stone in her girdle, or
else set into her bracelet, and in that may be found the secret of her
clairvoyance.'

The citizen's explanation seemed the most natural one to those of the
group whose conversation we are endeavouring to reproduce, and the
opinions of Lamia and the patrician were abandoned as improbable.

'At all events,' returned the lover of Theano, 'we are goin