Hence, ye stars! ... puny glow-worms lazily crawling in the fields
of ether! Lysia invests the heaven and earth, and in her smile we
live! Ha! art thou there, Sah-luma? Come, praise me for my
improvised love-lines; they are as good as thine, I warrant thee!
Canst compose when thou art drunk, my dainty Laureate? Drain a cup
then, and string me a stanza! Where is thy fool Zebastes? I would
fain tickle his long ears with ribald rhyme, and hearken to the
barbarous braying forth of his asinine reflections! Lysia! what,
Lysia! ... dost thou frown at me? Frown not, sweet queen, but
rather laugh! ... thy laughter kills, 'tis true, but thy frown
doth torture spirits after death! Unbend thy brows! Night looms
between them like a chaos! ... we will have no more night, I say,
but only noon! ... a long, languorous, lovely noon, flower-girdled
and sunbeam-clad!

"'With roses, roses, roses crown my head, For my days are few! And
remember, sweet, when I am dead, That my heart was true!'"

Singing unsteadily, with the empty goblet upside-down in his hand,
he looked up laughing,--his bright eyes flashing with a wild
feverish fire, his fair hair tossed back from his brows and
entangled in a half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves,--his rich
garments disordered, his whole demeanor that of one possessed by a
semi-delirium of sensuous pleasure...when all at once, meeting
Lysia's keen glance, he started as though he had been suddenly
stabbed,--the goblet fell from his clasp, and a visible shudder
ran through his strong, supple frame. The low, cold, merciless
laughter of the beautiful Priestess cut through the air hissingly
like the sweep of a scimetar.