ing to thy pleasure"? And so, I affirm that as soon
as she had closed her lips, having already harvested within my
understanding all her words, and feeling that every word was charged
with ample excuse for what I might do, and knowing now how mighty she
was and how resistless, I resolved at once to submit to her guidance;
and instantly rising from my couch, and kneeling on the ground, with
humbled heart, I thus began, in abashed and tremulous accents:

"O peerless and eternal loveliness! O divinest of deities! O sole
mistress of all my thoughts! whose power is felt to be most invincible
by those who dare to try to withstand it, forgive the ill-timed
obstinacy wherewith I, in my great folly, attempted to ward off from my
breast the weapons of thy son, who was then to me an unknown divinity.
Now, I repeat, be it done unto me according to thy pleasure, and
according to thy promises withal. Surely, my faith merits a due reward
in time and space, seeing that I, taking delight in thee more than do
all other women, wish to see the number of thy subjects increase forever
and ever."

Hardly had I made an end of speaking these words, when she moved from
the place where she was standing, and came toward me. Then, her face
glowing with the most fervent expression of affection and sympathy, she
embraced me, and touched my forehead with her divine lips. Next, just as
the false Ascanius, when panting in the arms of Dido, breathed on her
mouth, and thereby kindled the latent flame, so did she breathe on my
mouth, and, in that wise, rendered the divine fire that slumbered in my
heart more uncontrollable than ever, and this I felt at that very
moment. Thereafter, opening a little her purple robe, she showed me,
clasped in her arms against her ravishing breast, the very counterpart
of the youth I loved, wrapped in the transparent folds of a Grecian
mantle, and revealing in the lineaments of his countenance pangs that
were not unlike those I suffered.

"O damsel," she said, "rivet thy gaze on the youth before thee: we have
not given thee for lover a Lissa, a Geta, or a Birria, or anyone
resembling them, but a person in every way worthy of being loved by
every goddess in the heavens. Thee he loves more than himself, as we
have ordained, and thee will he ever love; therefore do thou, joyfully
and securely, abandon thyself to his love. Thy prayers have moved us to
pity, as it is meet that prayers so deserving should, and so, be of good
hop