The Project Gutenberg EBook of King Candaules, by Theophile Gautier

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Title: King Candaules

Author: Theophile Gautier

Translator: Lafcadio Hearn

Release Date: September 18, 2007 [EBook #22660]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KING CANDAULES ***

Produced by David Widger

KING CANDAULES

By Theophile Gautier

Translated By Lafcadio Hearn

1908

CHAPTER I

Five hundred years before the Trojan war, and seventeen hundred and
fifteen years before our own era, there was a grand festival at Sardes.
King Candaules was going to marry. The people were affected with that
sort of pleasurable interest and aimless emotion wherewith any royal
event inspires the masses, even though it in no wise concerns them,
and transpires in superior spheres of life which they can never hope to
reach.

As soon as Phoebus-Apollo, standing in his quadriga, had gilded to
saffron the summits of fertile Mount Tmolus with his rays, the
good people of Sardes were all astir, going and coming, mounting or
descending the marble stairways leading from the city to the waters
of the Pactolus, that opulent river whose sands Midas filled with tiny
sparks of gold when he bathed in its stream. One would have supposed
that each one of these good citizens was himself about to marry, so
solemn and important was the demeanour of all.

Men were gathering in groups in the Agora, upon the steps of the
temples and along the porticoes. At every street corner one might have
encountered women leading by the hand little children, whose uneven walk
ill suited the maternal anxiety and impatience. Maidens were hastening
to the fountains, all with urns gracefully balanced upon their heads, or
sustained by their white arms as with natural handles, so as to procure
early the necessary water provision for the household, and thus obtain
leisure at the hour when the nuptial procession should pass. Washerwomen
hastily folded the still damp tunics and chlamidae, and piled them upon
mule-wagons. Slaves turned the mill without any need of the overseer's
whip to tickle their naked and scar-seamed shoulders. Sardes was
hurrying itself to fin