"I consent with all my heart," said the youth; "but how comes it that a woman so beautiful as you is willing to take a poor man like me for her husband?"
"Beauty is nothing in comparison with the qualities of the heart," said the woman.
"In the second part, the husband and wife are seen working in their master's gardens,—the man cultivating flowers, the wife embroidering a marvellous tissue which she had woven. The master walked about, overlooking his slaves; he approached the young woman and examined her work.
"Oh, what splendid stuff!" he exclaimed; "it is of inestimable value."
"I would gladly exchange it for our liberty."
The master agreed to the bargain, and set them free. Then the husband fell at his wife's feet; he thanked her enthusiastically for having thus delivered him from bondage. But the woman was transformed; she became so brilliant, that the young man, dazzled, could look at her no longer.
"I am the celestial weaver," said she; "your courage and industry and your filial piety touched me, and, seeing your misery, I descended from heaven to help you. All that you may henceforth undertake shall succeed if you never depart from the path of virtue."
So saying, the divine weaver rose to heaven and resumed her place in the house of the silkworms.[1]
The orchestra then played a dance. The curtain fell, and soon rose again. It revealed the garden of a pagoda, with its thickets of bamboos, its light edifices, with their huge roofs supported by a vast number of beams of every hue. Then scene followed upon scene in pantomime, one having no connection with the other. Religious or military legends were represented, fabulous heroes and symbolic characters appeared in antique costume, some wearing the egg-shaped mitre and the tunic with long open sleeves, others having on their head the old-fashioned crestless helmet, with its gold ornaments, which protected the nape of the neck, or wearing a fantastic headdress, broad and high, in the form of a pyramid of gold, decorated with fringes and tiny bells.
Then the stage was cleared; and after a prelude from the orchestra, young and lovely dancing-girls appeared, clad in gorgeous dresses, with the wings of birds or butterflies on their shoulders, and long antennas on their foreheads which quivered gently above their golden crowns, wrought in open-work. They performed a slow graceful dance, full of undulating rocking movements; their figure ended, they formed groups on either side of the stage, while comic dancers, disguised in false noses and extravagant costumes, entered and concluded the spectacle by a wild dance full of blows and tumbles.