“I know that story. Continue,” said Bryaxis.
“Very well; I will be short with it. Clesides was very angry, but did not show it. He finished his study of the back, and the Queen rose, asking him to return on the morrow; he accepted, and left. Very good. On the morrow what awaited him? A servant, saying that the Queen Stratonice was fatigued, and would not pose any more. The servant was to pose for her until the portrait was finished. That was what the Queen had desired!”
We shook with mirth, and Bryaxis joined us therein.
Ophelion then continued gaily—
“The slave was not badly made. Clesides gave her the same reason to be cramped that her mistress had, and then said in a dry way that he did not want her any more, and took himself and his drawings home.”
“He certainly did right that time,” I said. “The Queen was merely mocking him all the while.”
“Well, on the way home, as he passed near the port, he saw a mariner whom some one had told him the Queen had given herself to—though there was no proof of it. The man was Glaucon—you know him well by sight. Clesides got the fellow to come home with him, and pose for four days. At the end of that time he had finished painting two scandalous little pictures, representing the Queen in the arms of the sailor, firstly facing the beholder, and then with the back showing. These pictures he fastened at night to the wall of the Palace of Seleucus. He then doubtless fled, after this public vengeance, on some vessel, for there is said to be no trace of him. The Queen knows of it already, and if she is furious at heart she hides it marvellously.
“During the whole of the morning an enormous crowd defiled before these scandalous paintings. Stratonice was told of it, and desired to see them herself. Accompanied by twenty-five people of her court, she stopped before the two subjects, approaching and then retreating as though the better to judge of their artistic or truthful aspect in detail and in general. I was there, and as I followed her glances with a feeling of horror, wondering whom she was going to slay when her anger reached its highest point, she said: “I do not know which is the best; both are excellent!”