angular attitudes, cramped
and stiff gestures, seemed to own a sort of factitious life, due to the
rays of the setting sun, and the ruddy hue which time lends to marble
in warm climates. The inscriptions in antique characters, graven beside
them after the manner of legends, enhanced still more the mysterious
weirdness of the long procession of figures in strange barbarian garb.

By a singular chance, which Gyges could not help observing, the statue
of Candaules occupied the last available place at the right hand of
Heracles; the dynastic cycle was closed, and in order to find a place
for the descendants of Candaules it would be absolutely necessary to
build a new portico and commence the formation of a new bas-relief.

Candaules, whose arm still rested on the shoulder of Gyges, walked
slowly round the portico in silence. He seemed to hesitate to enter into
the subject, and had altogether forgotten the pretext under which he had
led the captain of his guards into that solitary place.

'What would you do, Gyges,' said Candaules, at last breaking the silence
which had been growing painful to both, 'if you were a diver, and should
bring up from the green bosom of the ocean a pearl of incomparable
purity and lustre, and of worth so vast as to exhaust the richest
treasures of the earth?'

'I would inclose it,' answered Gyges, a little surprised at this brusque
question, 'in a cedar box overlaid with plates of brass, and I would
bury it under a detached rock in some desert place; and from time to
time, when I should feel assured that none could see me, I would go
thither to contemplate my precious jewel and admire the colours of the
sky mingling with its nacreous tints.'

'And I,' replied Candaules, his eye illuminated with enthusiasm, 'if I
possessed so rich a gem, I would enshrine it in my diadem, that I might
exhibit it freely to the eyes of all men, in the pure light of the sun,
that I might adorn myself with its splendour and smile with pride when
I should hear it said: "Never did king of Assyria or Babylon, never did
Greek or Trinacrian tyrant possess so lustrous a pearl as Candaules,
son of Myrsus and descendant of Heracles, King of Sardes and of Lydia!
Compared with Candaules, Midas, who changed all things to gold, were
only a mendicant as poor as Irus."'

Gyges listened with astonishment to this discourse of Candaules, and
sought to penetrate the hidden sense of these lyric divagations. The
king appeared to be