Simalion, constantly growing more enthusiastic over his beloved, dissipated his fortune and his life. He ordered for her from Asia transparent mantles embroidered with fantastic flowers, through which shone her pearly flesh; gold dust to sprinkle upon her hair, making her like the goddesses, which the poets and artists of Greece always painted blonde; he charged the navigators to buy roses in Egypt of marvelous freshness. He was steadily growing more emaciated, his skin more pallid, and his gaze glowing with fever, coughing and lying in the arms of his mistress, his strength slipping away.
Thus two years passed, until one autumn afternoon, stretched on the lawn in his garden, his head resting on the knees of his beautiful inamorata, he heard his verses sung for the last time by the clear voice of Myrrhina, accompanied by the fluttering of her white fingers over the chords of the lyre. The setting sun caused Minerva's lance aloft by the Parthenon, dominating the city, to glow like a coal of fire; his boyish hand could scarce sustain the golden cup of honey and wine. He made an effort to kiss his mistress; the roses which crowned him fell apart, covering Myrrhina's breast with a shower of petals, and, uttering a plaint like that of a woman, he closed his eyes, falling upon that breast where he had lavished the last strength of his life.
The young girl wept for him with the desperation of a widow. She cut her splendid hair to lay it as an offering upon his tomb. She put aside her dazzling costumes, she dressed in dark wool like the Athenian women of virtuous homes, and remained in retirement in her house, which she kept closed and silent as a gynæceum.
The necessity of living, of maintaining the luxury to which she had become accustomed, of keeping a chariot and slaves and grooms, forced her, however, to consider her beauty, and the most celebrated hetæræ became alarmed at the new rival. Covered with a dark red wig to hide the tonsure of mourning, wrapped in fine veils from which her throat emerged adorned with pearls, her fresh and alabastrine arms loaded to the shoulders with bracelets, she showed herself at an upper window of her house with the grave majesty of a goddess awaiting veneration. The richest men of Athens paused by night in the Street of Tripods to gaze at the poet's widow, as the women in the Ceramaeicus sarcastically called her. Some, more daring, or tremulous with desire, raised the index finger in mute question; but vainly they awaited her affirmative reply--the customary sigil of the hetæræ, touching thumb to index finger as it were an annulus.
