CHAPTER III
For a night and day Byblis traversed the mountain. She made anxious inquiries of all the deities of the woods, of the trees, of the glades and the thickets. She recounted her sorrows many times; she tremblingly implored their assistance, and wrung her little hands. But not one of them had seen Caunos.
She climbed up so high that her mother’s holy name was quite unknown to all she met, and the unconcerned nymphs did not understand her.
She wanted to retrace her steps, but she was lost. On every side she was surrounded by a confused colonnade of enormous pine-trees. There were no more paths. There was no horizon. She ran in every direction. She called out in despair.
There was not even an echo to be heard.
Then as her weary eyelids drooped lower and lower she lay down upon the ground and a passing dream told her in measured tones—
“You will never see your brother, you will never set eyes upon him again.”
She awoke with a start, with her arms outstretched and her mouth open, but she was so overwhelmed with sorrow and anguish that she had not the strength to cry out.
The moon rose red like blood behind the high black outlines of the pine-trees. Byblis could hardly see it. It seemed to her that a humid veil had been dropped over her long eyes. An eternal silence had enveloped the sleeping woods.
Then a large tear gathered in the corner of her left eye.
Byblis had never before wept. She believed that she was about to die, and sighed as if divine solace had come to her aid in a mysterious way.
The tear grew, trembled, became larger still and then suddenly trickled down her cheek.
Byblis remained motionless with fixed eyes in the light of the moon.
Then a large tear filled the corner of her right eye. It grew like the other and trickled down her right cheek.
Two other tears came, two burning drops which flowed down the moist track made by the other. They reached the corner of her mouth; a delightful bitterness overcame the worn-out child.
Then never more would her hand touch the beloved hand of Caunos. Never more would she see the gleam of his black eyes, his dear head, and wavy hair. Never again would they sleep side by side in each other’s arms upon the same bed of leaves. The forests no longer knew his name.
An overwhelming outburst of despair made Byblis hide her face in her hands, but such an abundance of tears moistened her inflamed cheeks that she seemed to feel a miraculous spring washing away her sufferings like dead leaves upon the waters of a torrent.
The tears which had been gradually born in her, rose to her eyes, welled up, overflowed, trickled in a warm flood over her cheeks, bathed her tiny breasts and fell upon her entwined legs. She did not feel them trickle one by one between her long lashes: they were a gentle and never-ending stream, an inexhaustible flood, the outpouring of an enchanted sea.
But awakened by the moonlight the deities of the forest had gathered from every side. The bark of the trees became transparent and allowed the faces of the nymphs to be seen; and even the quivering naiads left the water and the rocks and came into the woods.
They all crowded around Byblis and spoke to her, for they were frightened because the river of the child’s tears had traced in the earth a sinuous track which was slowly extending towards the plain.
But now Byblis could hear nothing, neither voices, footsteps, nor the night wind. Her attitude little by little became eternal. Her skin had assumed beneath the deluge of tears the smooth white tint of marble washed by the waters. The wind would not have disturbed one of her hairs which were as long as her arms. She died like pure marble. A vague light still illuminated her vision. Suddenly it went out; but fresh tears still flowed from her eyes.
In that way was Byblis changed into a fountain.
LÊDA
There was not light enough in which to clearly see any creature or thing; it was twilight, the time of the gauzy haze that haunts our dreams.
Moonbeams were beginning to light up the blackest branches of trees: moonlight and the shine of flinching silver stars.
There were four young Corinthians reclining upon the ground near to three young men. They were deep in pleasant thought, but opened their eyes wide when the grave Melandryon said these words—
“I will tell you the story of the Swan and the little Nymph who lived upon the banks of the Eurotas. It is a story in praise of blissful shadows.” He half raised himself, and what he told his companions now follows.