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He now contrived to equip Leucippe with an artfully constructed false stomach, and being further assisted in his humane stratagem by the discovery of a knife with a sliding blade, among some theatrical properties which the robbers had acquired in the course of casual plunder, succeeded in appearing to perform the sacrifice without any real injury to the victim, who at his call rises from the sarcophagus, and throws herself into her lover's arms.
But Clitophon and Leucippe, clinging to the forecastle, are comfortably wafted by the winds and waves to the coast of Egypt, and landed near Pelusium, where they hire a vessel to carry them to Alexandria; but their voyage through the tortuous branches of the Nile is intercepted by marauders of the same class, Bucoli or buccaniers, as those who figure so conspicuously in the adventures of Chariclea and Theagenes.
He begins by informing his hearer, that he is the son of Hippias, a noble and wealthy denizen of Tyre, and that he had been betrothed from his childhood, as was not unusual in those times, to his own half-sister Calligone: but Leucippe, the daughter of Sostratus, a brother of Hippias, resident at Byzantium, having arrived with her mother Panthia, to claim the hospitality of their Tyrian relatives during a war impending between their native city and the Thracian tribes, Clitophon at once becomes enamoured of his cousin, whose charms are described in terms of glowing panegyric: "She seemed to me like the representation of Europa, which I see in the picture before me her eye beaming with joy and happiness her locks fair, and flowing in natural ringlets, but her eyebrows and eyelashes jetty black her complexion fair, but with a blush in her cheeks like that faint crimson with which the Lydian women stain ivory, and her lips like the hue of a fresh-opened rose."
Thersander, maddened at the prospect of being thus doubly baulked of his prey, throws gross aspersions on the purity of Leucippe, and even demands that Clitophon, in spite of his now manifest innocence, shall be executed in pursuance of the previous sentence! but the high-priest of Diana takes the lovers under his protection, and the cause is adjourned to the morrow.
Here are three of the very finest Ornithopterae priamus, helena, and remiss; three of the handsomest and largest Papilios ulysses, deiphobus, and gambrisius; one of the handsomest Pieridae, Iphias leucippe; the largest of the Danaidae, Hestia idea; and two unusually large and handsome Nymphalidae Diadema pandarus, and Charaxes euryalus.
An understanding is at last effected between them, and Clitophon is in sad perplexity how to defer or evade his approaching nuptials with his sister-bride, when Calligone is most opportunely carried off by a band of pirates employed by Callisthenes, a young Byzantine, who, having fallen in love with Leucippe from the mere report of her beauty, and having been refused her hand by her father, has followed her to Tyre, and seeing Calligone in a public procession chaperoned by Panthia, has mistaken her for Leucippe!
The lovers are thus left in the unrestrained enjoyment of each other's society; but Clitophon is erelong detected by Panthia in an attempt to penetrate by night into her daughter's chamber; and though the darkness prevents the person of the intruder from being recognised, the confusion which this untoward occurrence occasions in the family is such, that Clitophon and Leucippe, feeling their secret no longer safe, determine on an elopement.
Accompanied by the faithful Satyrus, and by Clinias, a kinsman and confident of Clitophon, who generously volunteers to share their adventures, they accordingly set sail for Egypt; and the two gentlemen, having struck up an acquaintance with a fellow passenger, a young Alexandrian named Menelaus, beguile the voyage by discussing with their new friend the all-engrossing subject of love, the remarks on which at last take so antiplatonic a tone, that we can only hope Leucippe was out of hearing.
Even in her ingenious scenes of comedy with Leucippe and with Chrysos, there is no more dramatic vivacity than might be looked for in a temporarily animated block of stone. Her love for the sculptor who has given her vitality is perfectly cold in its purity. There is no spontaneity in the accents in which it is told, no amorous impulse to which it gives rise.
The only thing that, in this immense catastrophe, has preserved its likeness to its former state, is this mountain, the mountain where Neptune shut up his well-beloved Clito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, the mother of Atlas, and the ancestress of Antinea, the sovereign under whose dominion you are about to enter forever."
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