or from
Corinth; it is commended or found fault with. The shoulder is perfect,
the arm is charming, perhaps a little thin--what know I? All the blood
of my heart leaps to my cheeks at such a thought. Oh beauty, fatal gift
of the gods! why am I not the wife of some poor mountain goatherd of
innocent and simple habits? He would not have suborned a goatherd like
himself at the threshold of his cabin to profane his humble happiness!
My lean figure, my unkempt hair, my complexion faded by the burning
sun, would then have saved me from so gross an insult, and my honest
homeliness would not have been compelled to blush. How shall I dare,
after the scene of this night, to pass before those men, proudly erect
under the folds of a tunic which has no longer aught to hide from either
of them. I should drop dead with shame upon the pavement. Candaules,
Candaules, I was at least entitled to more respect from you, and there
was nothing in my conduct which could have provoked such an outrage.
Was I one of those ones whose arms for ever cling like ivy to their
husbands' necks, and who seem more like slaves bought with money for a
master's pleasure than free-born women of noble blood? Have I ever after
a repast sung amorous hymns accompanying myself upon the lyre, with
wine-moist lips, naked shoulders, and a wreath of roses about my hair,
or given you cause, by any immodest action, to treat me like a mistress
whom one shows after a banquet to his companions in debauch?' While
Nyssia was thus buried in her grief, great tears overflowed from her
eyes like rain-drops from the azure chalice of a lotus-flower after
some storm, and rolling down her pale cheeks fell upon her fair forlorn
hands, languishingly open, like roses whose leaves are half-shed, for no
order came from the brain to give them activity. The attitude of Niobe,
beholding her fourteenth child succumb beneath the arrows of Apollo and
Diana, was not more sadly despairing, but soon starting from this state
of prostration, she rolled herself upon the floor, rent her garments,
covered her beautiful dishevelled hair with ashes, tore her bosom and
cheeks with her nails amid convulsive sobs, and abandoned herself to
all the excesses of Oriental grief, the more violently that she had
been forced so long to contain her indignation, shame, pangs of wounded
dignity, and all the agony that convulsed her soul, for the pride of her
whole life had been broken, and the idea that she had nothing