rei, the Telchines, and
the Dactyli, gods of subterranean wealth, he could never change their
expression to mildness.

At other times their languishment was so liquidly persuasive, their
brilliancy and irradiation so penetrating, that the icy coldness of
Nestor and Priam would have melted under their gaze, like the wax of
the wings of Icarus when he approached the flaming zones. For one such
glance a man would have gladly steeped his hands in the blood of his
host, scattered the ashes of his father to the four winds, overthrown
the holy images of the gods, and stolen the fire of heaven itself, like
the sublime thief, Prometheus.

Nevertheless, their most ordinary expression, it must be confessed, was
of a chastity to make one desperate--a sublime coldness--an ignorance
of all possibilities of human passion, such as would have made the
moon-bright eyes of Phoebe or the sea-green eyes of Athena appear by
comparison more liquidly tempting than those of a young girl of Babylon
sacrificing to the goddess Mylitta within the cord-circled enclosure of
Succoth-Benohl. Their invincible virginity seemed to bid love defiance.

The cheeks of Nyssia, which no human gaze had ever profaned, save that
of Gyges on the day when the veil was blown away, possessed a youthful
bloom, a tender pallor, a delicacy of grain, and a downiness whereof
the faces of our women, perpetually exposed to sunlight and air, cannot
convey the most distant idea. Modesty created fleeting rosy clouds upon
them like those which a drop of crimson essence would form in a cup of
milk, and when uncoloured by any emotion they took a silvery sheen, a
warm light, like an alabaster vessel illumined by a lamp within. That
lamp was her charming soul, which exposed to view the transparency of
her flesh.

A bee would have been deceived by her mouth, whose form was so perfect,
whose corners were so purely dimpled, whose crimson was so rich and
warm that the gods would have descended from their Olympian dwellings
in order to touch it with lips humid with immortality, but that the
jealousy of the goddesses restrained their impetuosity. Happy the wind
which passed through that purple and pearl, which dilated those
pretty nostrils, so finely cut and shaded with rosy tints like the
mother-of-pearl of the shells thrown by the sea on the shore of Cyprus
at the feet of Venus Anadyomene! But are there not a multitude of
favours thus granted to things which cannot understand them?