ide, loose trowsers; silent, bashful Moabites, whose
magnificent breasts were cool on the sultriest nights of summer;
care-free and profligate Ammonites, with fiery hair, and flesh of such
whiteness that it glowed in the dark; frail, blue-eyed women with flaxen
hair, and skin of a delicate fragrance, who were brought from the north,
through Baalbec, and whose tongue was incomprehensible to all the
dwellers in Palestine. The king loved many daughters of Judaea and Israel
besides.

Also shared he his couch with Balkis-Makkedah, the Queen of Sheba, who
had surpassed all women on earth in beauty, wisdom, riches, and her
diversified art in passion; and with Abishag the Shunamite, who had
warmed the old age of David,--a kindly, quiet beauty, for whose sake
Solomon had put to death his elder brother Adonijah, at the hands of
Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada.

And also with the poor maiden of the vineyard, by the name of Sulamith,
whom alone among all women the king had loved with all his heart.

Solomon made himself a litter of the best cedar wood, with pillars of
silver, with arm-rests of gold in the form of recumbent lions, with a
covering of purple Tyrian stuff, while the entire inner side of the
covering was ornamented with gold embroidery and with precious
stones,--the love-gifts of the women and virgins of Jerusalem. And when
well-built black slaves bore Solomon among his people on grand festal
days, truly was the king glorious, like the lilies that are in the
Valley of Sharon!

Pale was his face; his lips like unto a vivid thread of scarlet; his
wavy locks a bluish black, and in them--the adornment of wisdom--gleamed
gray hairs, like to the silver threads of mountain streams, falling down
from the dark crags of Hermon; gray hairs glistened in his dark beard
also, curled, after the custom of the kings of Assyria, in regular,
small rows.

As for the eyes of the king, they were dark, like the darkest agate, like
the heavens on a moonless night in summer; while his eye-lashes, that
spread upward and downward like arrows, resembled dark rays around dark
stars. And there was no man in all the universe who could bear the gaze
of Solomon without casting down his eyes. And the lightnings of wrath in
the eyes of the king would prostrate people to the earth.

But there were moments of heartfelt merriment, when the king would grow
intoxicated with love, or wine, or the delight of power, or when he
rejoiced over words of wisdom o