re
was even a touch of art in her face, and a certain
haughtiness in her attitude which made her seem to scorn the
captives chained beneath her feet: while the sculptor had so
perfectly realised the indefinable freshness, tenderness,
and _embonpoint_ of beautiful girls, that one almost knew
her age.

Then come two more startling events. A wicked Prince Phraortes bolts
with the unwilling Araminta, and the King of Assyria (_alias_
Philidaspes) slips away in search of Mandane on his own account--two
things inconvenient to Cyrus in some ways, but balancing themselves in
others. For if it is unpleasant to have a very violent and rather
unscrupulous Rival hunting the beloved on the one hand, that beloved's
jealousy, if not cured, is at least not likely to be increased by the
disappearance of its object. This last, however, hits Spithridates, who
is, as it has been and will be seen, the _souffre-douleur_ of the book,
much harder. And the double situation illustrates once more the
extraordinary care taken in systematising--and as one might almost say
_syllabising_--the book. It is almost impossible that there should not
somewhere exist an actual syllabus of the whole, though, my habit being
rather to read books themselves than books about them, I am not aware of
one as a fact.[178]

Another characteristic is also well illustrated in this context, and a
further translated extract will show the curious, if not very recondite,
love-casuistry which plays so large a part. But these French writers of
the seventeenth century[179] did not know one-tenth of the matter that
was known by their or others' mediaeval ancestors, by their English and
perhaps Spanish contemporaries, or by writers in the nineteenth century.
They were not "perfect in love-lore"; their _Liber Amoris_ was, after
all, little more than a fashion-book in divers senses of "fashion." But
let them speak for themselves:

[Sidenote: The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love.]

[_Menecrate and Thrasimede are going to fight, and have,
according to the unqualified legal theory[180] and very
occasional actual practice of seventeenth-century France, if
not of the Medes and Persians, been arrested, though in
honourable fashion. The "dependence" is a certain Arpalice,
who loves Thrasimede and is loved by him. But she is ordered
by her father's will to marry Menecrate, who is now quite
willing to marry