near Bactria, and preserved some memory
of the young captain in one of those secret recesses of the heart where
even the most virtuous women always have something buried? Was the
desire to avenge her modesty goaded by some other unacknowledged desire?
And if Gyges had not been the handsomest young man in all Asia would she
have evinced the same ardour in punishing Candaules for having outraged
the sanctity of marriage? That is a delicate question to resolve,
especially after a lapse of three thousand years; and although we have
consulted Herodotus, Hephaestion, Plato, Dositheus, Archilochus of Paros,
Hesychius of Miletus, Ptolomaeus, Euphorion, and all who have spoken
either at length or in only a few words concerning Candaules, Nyssia,
and Gyges, we have been unable to arrive at any definite conclusion. To
pursue so fleeting a shadow through so many centuries, under the ruins
of so many crumpled empires, under the dust of departed nations, is a
work of extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility.

At all events, Nyssia's resolution was implacably taken; this murder
appeared to her in the light of the accomplishment of a sacred duty.
Among the barbarian nations every man who has surprised a woman in her
nakedness is put to death. The queen believed herself exercising her
right; only inasmuch as the injury had been secret, she was doing
herself justice as best she could. The passive accomplice would become
the executioner of the other, and the punishment would thus spring from
the crime itself. The hand would chastise the head.

The olive-tinted monsters shut Gyges up in an obscure portion of the
palace, whence it was impossible that he could escape, or that his cries
could be heard.

He passed the remainder of the day there in a state of cruel anxiety,
accusing the hours of being lame, and again of walking too speedily. The
crime which he was about to commit, although he was only, in some sort,
the instrument of it, and though he was only yielding to an irresistible
influence, presented itself to his mind in the most sombre colours. If
the blow should miss through one of those circumstances which none could
foresee? If the people of Sardes should revolt and seek to avenge
the death of the king? Such were the very sensible though useless
reflections which Gyges made while waiting to be taken from his prison
and led to the place whence he could only depart to strike his master.

At last the night unfolded her starry