With absolutely none. The maidens were dressed—but not all of them—in robes of that very distressing electric blue that bites into the eye, that blue which never was on sky or sea, and which was absolutely banished from every colour-combination
in Olympus. It was employed in Hades as a form of punishment, if you recollect.
Aphrodite.
No doubt, then, this procession was a penitential one, and its object to appease my offended deity. But what a mistake, poor things! No one ever regained my favour by making a frump of herself.
Circe.
After these couples, came, in a very slow but formless moving group, figures of a sombre and spectral kind, draped, both males and females, in dull black, with little ornaments of gold in their hands. It was with the utmost amazement that, on their coming closer, I recognised some of the faces as those of the ruddy, gentle barbarians to whom we owe our existence here. You cannot think how painful it was to see them thus
travestied. In their well-fitting daily dress they look very attractive in a rustic mode; there is one large one that labours in the barn, who reminds me, when his sleeves are turned up, of Ulysses. But, oh! Aphrodite, you must contrive to let them know that you pardon their shortcomings, and relieve them from the horrors of this remorseful costume. I know not which is more depressing to the heart, the blue of the young or the black of the aged.
Aphrodite.
I expect that at this distance from the centre of things, all manner of misconception has crept into my ritual. Of course, I cannot now demand any rites, and that the dear good people should pay them at all is very touching.
Circe.