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Updated: May 3, 2025
"Lysia! ... pardon! ... spare me! ... For the sake of past love have pity!" At this Sah-luma sprang up from his lounging posture on the dais, his hand on the hilt of his dagger, his whole face flaming with wrath. "By my soul!" he cried, "what doth this fellow prate of? ... Past love? ... Thou profane boaster! ... how darest thou speak of love to the Priestess of the Faith?"
Will none undo it?" and springing forward nearer the Shrine, he raised his angry, impassioned eyes to the dark, inscrutable ones of the High Priestess, who met his troubled look with serene and irresponsive gravity ... "Is there no touch of human pity in things divine? ... no mercy in the icy fate that rules our destinies? ... This child knows naught of what she does; she hath been led astray in a moment of excitement and religious exaltation, . . her mind hath lost its balance, her thoughts float disconnectedly on a sea of vague illusions, ... Ah! ... by the gods! ... I understand it all now!" and he suddenly threw himself on his knees, his appealing gaze resting, not on the Snake-Deity, but on the lovely countenance of Lysia, fair and brilliant as a summer morn, with a certain waving light of triumph about it, like the reflected radiance of sunbeams, ... "She is under the influence of Raphon! ... O withering madness! ... O cureless misery.. She is ruled by that most horrible secret force, unknown as yet to the outer world of men! ... and she hears things that are not, and sees what has no existence!
With wild, straining eyes Theos gazed upon her thus, ... for the last time! ... For with a crash that seemed to rend the very heavens, the great bronze columns surrounding her, which had, up to the present, resisted the repeated onslaughts of the flames, bent together all at once and fell in a melting ruin.. and the victorious fire roared loudly above them, enveloping the whole Shrine anew in dense clouds of smoke and jets of flame, Lysia had perished!
These two stories are combined by the dramatists, with no very conspicuous skill, into one plot. Plangus and Erona, under the names of Leucippus and Hidaspes, are represented as brother and sister, children of the old widowed duke of Lysia. They make common cause in seeking to abolish the worship of Cupid, and their tragedies are represented as alike due to his offended deity.
The Shrine of Nagaya was enveloped in thick black smoke, crossed here and there by flashes of flame, the bare outline of its Titanic architecture was scarcely discernible! Yet the thought of the dreadful end of Lysia, the loveliest woman he had ever seen, moved him now to no emotion whatever save..gladness!
I bind her no longer to my service; nevertheless, like the jessamine-flower, she clings, and will not easily unwind the tendrils of her heart from mine." "Poor jessamine-flower!" murmured Lysia negligently, with a touch of malice in her tone. "What a rock it doth embrace; how little vantage-ground it hath wherein to blossom!"
Just then Lysia ascended her black crystal throne in all her statuesque majesty, and sinking indolently amid its sable cushions, where she shone in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl set in ebony, she signed to her guests to resume their places at table. She was instantly obeyed.
"In, in, my lad!" he urged with rough kindliness, "Thou hast a face fairer than that of the King's own minstrel, and why wouldst thou die for sake of an extra cup of wine? If Lysia is to blame for this scattering of thy wits, take heed thou do not venture near her more it is ill jesting with the Serpent's sting!
To Lysia all things are made manifest; she reads human nature as one reads an open scroll, and with merciless analysis she judges men as being very poor creatures, limited in their capabilities, disappointing and monotonous in their passions, unproductive and circumscribed in their destinies.
I have lived as a man should live, fearing nothing and conquered by none, except perchance by Love, that hath brought many kings ere now to untimely ruin!" Here his moody eyes lighted on Lysia.
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