Page:One of Cleopatra's nights, and Other Fantastic Romances.djvu/14

viii of their bright contrasts; a faint perfume of unknown balm seems to hover over the open pages; and mysterious sphinxes appear to look on "with that undefinable rose-granite smile that mocks our modern wisdom,"

Excepting Omphale and La Morte Amoreuse, the stories selected for translation are mostly antique in composition and coloring; the former being Louis-Quinze, the latter mediaeval rather than aught else. But all alike frame some exquisite delineation of young love-fancies; some admirable picture of what Gautier in the Histoire du Romantisme has prettily termed "the graceful succubi that haunt the happy slumbers of youth."

And what dreamful student of the Beautiful has not been once enamoured of an Arria Marcella, and worshipped on the altar of his heart those ancient gods "who loved life and youth and beauty and pleasure"? How many a lover of mediæval legend has in fancy gladly bartered the blood of his veins for some phantom Clarimonde? What true artist has not at some time been haunted by