And from his chariot he sprang and stood
before her.

But she shrinks from his smile. She shrinks from the riot and ribaldry
that encompass her. She is but a young bride whom the bridegroom has
betrayed, and she would fain be alone in the bitterness of her anguish
and her humiliation. Why have they come, these creatures who are
stamping and reeling round her, these flushed women who clap the
cymbals, and these wild men with the hoofs and the horns of goats? How
should they comfort her? She is not of their race; no! nor even of
their time. She stands among them, just as Bergeron saw her, a
delicate, timid figurine du dix-huitie'me sie'cle. With her powdered
hair and her hooped skirt and her stiff bodice of rose silk, she seems
more fit for the consolations of some old Monsignore than for the
homage of these frenzied Pagans and the amorous regard of their master.
At him, pressing her shut fan to her lips, she is gazing across her
shoulder. With one hand she seems to ward him from her. Her whole body
is bent to flight, but she is 'affear'd of her own feet.' She is well
enough educated to know that he who smiles at her is no mortal, but
Bacchus himself, the very lord of Naxos. He stands before her, the
divine debauchee racemiferis frontem circumdatus uvis; and all around
her, a waif on his territory, are the symbols of his majesty and his
power. It is in his honour that the ivy trails down the cliff, and are
not the yews and the firs and the fig-trees that overshadow the cliff's
edge all sacred to him? and the vines beyond, are they not all his? His
four panthers are clawing the sand, and four tipsy Satyrs hold them,
the impatient beasts, by their bridles. Another Satyr drags to
execution a goat that he has caught cropping the vine; and in his
slanted eyes one can see thirst for the blood of his poor cousin. The
Maenads are dancing in one another's arms, and their tresses are coiled
and crowned with tiny serpents. One of them kneels apart, sucking a
great wine-skin. And yonder, that old cupster, Silenus, that horrible
old favourite, wobbles along on a donkey, and would tumble off, you may
be sure, were he not upheld by two fairly sober Satyrs. But the eyes of
Ariadne are fixed only on the smooth-faced god. See how he smiles back
at her with that lascivious condescension which is all that a god's
love can be for a mortal girl! In his hand he holds a long thyrsus.
Behind him is borne aloft a chaplet of seven gold stars.

A