On this night the House of Pleasure was unusually quiet. Those who guarded the golden gates denied admission to all who could not conjure with the King’s name, and Lycabetta was alone with her favorite women, fair, Greek-faced girls with fair, Greek names—Glycerium, Hypsipyle, Euphrosyne, Lysidice. The room that shrined her beauty was a marvellous medley of the styles of many architectures, of the arts of many lands, as if the streams of wealth and splendor flowing from all the sources of the world had carried thither its rarest treasures. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the genius of the Saracen, and the vigor of the Norman had shared in the decoration of those walls, gorgeous with gold and color, hung with sumptuous tapestries woven with alluring figures from the legends of love. The floor, inlaid with iridescent tiles that Persian hands had painted, was strewn with costly stuffs and furs. Before a life-size statue in bronze of Venus, a copy of that Venus Callipyge given by Heliogabalus to Syracuse, a fire of shifting, many-tinted flames burned on a metal tripod, whose stems represented the figures of beautiful, nude women. The air was heavily scented from the burning woods and spices in the brazier, sandal and cinnamon and cassia. Hanging lamps, of strangely fantastic design, filled the wide room with delicate light.
Lycabetta, the triumphant jewel of all this gorgeous setting, reclined upon a golden couch that was made soft for her body with rare furs, and bright—to enhance her whiteness—with brilliant silks. Clad in thin, transparent webs, whose shifting shimmer recalled, whenever she stirred her limbs, the glitter of the serpent, Lycabetta lay with a look of weariness on her face, while Hypsipyle fanned her softly with a huge feather fan of black and white ostrich plumes. Glycerium, seated by the head of the couch, was busy in adorning her mistress’s black hair with flowers. At her feet Euphrosyne nursed a kind of lute and sang the Venus song in a small, sweet voice:
“Venus whispered from her nest:
‘White Adonis, bright Adonis!
Love is better than the best,
Heaven is hidden in my breast,
Take delight and leave the rest,
Blithe Adonis, lithe Adonis!’
“Venus stretched her arms and said:
‘Shy Adonis, sly Adonis!
Gather blooms and make a bed
Of the scented petals shed
By the roses, white and red,
Brisk Adonis, frisk Adonis!’
“Venus murmured with a sigh:
‘Dumb Adonis, numb Adonis!
Fast the golden moments fly,
Love and let the world go by,
Be a god before you die,
Child Adonis, wild Adonis!’”
Lycabetta yawned and lifted up her hand. Euphrosyne ceased in her singing.
“There, you have sung enough,” Lycabetta said. “I am neither more sleepy nor more wakeful than I was, and your music wearies me. Have many knocked at our doors to-night?”
She looked at the girl Glycerium as she spoke, and Glycerium answered her.
“The young Duke Ferdinand of Etruria.”