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"Well, he chooses strange hours to visit us. But he is right; his visits cannot be too private. Cleonice, you look provokingly at your ease."
Cursed be the hour when the Spartan saw thee; but since the Fates have so served us, let us not make bad worse. I love thee, Cleonice, more dearly than the apple of my eye; it is for thee I fear, for thee I speak. Alas! it is not dishonour I recommend, it is force I would shun." "Force!" said the girl, drawing up her form with sudden animation. "Fear not that. It is not Pausanias I dread, it is "
In that visit I saw and loved Cleonice. Fain would I have told my love, but then my father lived, and I feared lest he should oppose my suit; therefore, as became me, I was silent. On my return home, my fears were confirmed; my father desired that I, a Chian, should wed a Chian. Since I have been with the fleet, news has reached me that the urn holds my father's ashes."
Alcman looked at the girl surprised. "Art thou not, maiden," said he, "one of the many female disciples whom the successors of Pythagoras the Samian have enrolled?" "Nay," said Cleonice, modestly; "but my mother had listened to great teachers of wisdom, and I speak imperfectly the thoughts I have heard her utter when she told me she had no terror of the grave."
"And yet thou hast never loved me," said Cleonice; and there was something soft and tender in the tone of her voice, and the rough Spartan was again subdued. "I never loved thee! What, then, is love? Is not thine image always before me? amidst schemes, amidst perils of which thy very dreams have never presented equal perplexity or phantoms so uncertain, I am occupied but with thee.
As these reflexions occurred to him, he placed his right hand in the Chian's, and said: "Be it as thou wilt; I consent to betroth thee to Cleonice. Follow me; thou art free to woo her." So saying, he rose, and, as if in fear of his own second thoughts, he traversed the hall with hasty strides to the interior of the mansion.
This is by far the best of the stories in which we find a vision of the dead in sleep playing an important part; but there is also the well-known tale of the Byzantine maiden Cleonice. She was of high birth, but had the misfortune to attract the attention of the Spartan Pausanias, who was in command of the united Greek fleet at the Hellespont after the battle of Platæa.
The Mothon bowed his head gratefully, but the expression on his face retained the same calm and sombre resignation. "Alas," said Cleonice, with the delicacy of female consolation, "who in this life is really free? Have citizens no thraldom in custom and law? Are we not all slaves?" "True. All slaves!" murmured the royal victor. "Envy none, O Alcman.
"Danger is but as the breeze of my native air," said the Spartan, smiling; "thus I draw it in and thus breathe it away. I follow thee, Gongylus. Take my greeting, Cleonice the Good to the Beautiful. Well, then, keep Alcman yet awhile to sing thy kind face to repose, and this time let him tune his lyre to songs of a more Dorian strain songs that show what a Heracleid thinks of danger."
Cleonice said you would come, Pausanias, though I began to distrust you. The hours seem long to those who expect pleasure." "And, Cleonice, you knew that I should come," said Pausanias, approaching the fair Byzantine; but his step was timid, and there was no pride now in his anxious eye and bended brow.
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