torn, as it were, from her body that skin upon which the
rays shot from a burning pupil seemed to have left their traces. Taking
from the hands of her waiting-women the thick downy materials which
served to drink up the last pearls of the bath, she wiped herself with
such violence that a slight purple cloud rose to the spots she had
rubbed.

'In vain,' she exclaimed, letting the damp tissues fall, and dismissing
her attendants--'in vain would I pour over myself all the waters of all
the springs and the rivers; the ocean with all its bitter gulfs could
not purify me. Such a stain may be washed out only with blood. Oh, that
look, that look! It has incrusted itself upon me; it clasps me, covers
me, burns me like the tunic dipped in the blood of Nessus; I feel it
beneath my draperies, like an envenomed tissue which nothing can detach
from my body! Now, indeed, would I vainly pile garments upon garments,
select materials the least transparent, and the thickest of mantles. I
would none the less bear upon my naked flesh this infamous robe woven
by one adulterous and lascivious glance. Vainly, since the hour when
I issued from the chaste womb of my mother, have I been brought up in
private, enveloped, like Isis, the Egyptian goddess, with a veil of
which none might have lifted the hem without paying for his audacity
with his life. In vain have I remained guarded from all evil desires,
from all profane imaginings, unknown of men, virgin as the snow on which
the eagle himself could not imprint the seal of his talons, so loftily
does the mountain which it covers lift its head in the pure and icy air.
The depraved caprice of a Lydian Greek has sufficed to make me lose in
a single instant, without any guilt of mine, all the fruit of long years
of precaution and reserve. Innocent and dishonoured, hidden from all yet
made public to all... this is the lot to which Candaules has condemned
me. Who can assure me that, at this very moment, Gyges is not in the act
of discoursing upon my charms with some soldiers at the very threshold
of the palace? Oh shame! Oh infamy! Two men have beheld me naked and yet
at this instant enjoy the sweet light of the sun! In what does
Nyssia now differ from the most shameless hetaira, from the vilest of
courtesans? This body which I have striven to render worthy of being the
habitation of a pure and noble soul, serves for a theme of conversation;
it is talked of like some lascivious idol brought from Sicyon