"Seated in a shell drawn over the waters by dolphins, I travel through the grottoes, listening lo the dropping of the water from the stalactites. I go down to the land of diamonds, where my friends the magicians allow me to choose the finest: then I reascend to earth and return to my home."
(_She utters a sharp whistle; and a great bird, descending from the sky, alights upon her hair, from which it makes the blue powder fall._
_Its orange-colored plumage seems formed of metallic scales. Its little head, crested with a silver tuft, has a human face._
_It has four wings, the feet of a vulture, and an immense peacock's tail which it spreads open like a fan._
_It seizes the Queen's parasol in its beak, reels a moment ere obtaining its balance; then it erects all its plumes, and remains motionless._)
"Thanks! my beautiful Simorg-Anka!--thou didst tell me where the loving one was hiding! Thanks! thanks! my heart's messenger!
"He flies swiftly as Desire! He circles the world in his flight. At eve he returns; he perches at the foot of my couch and tells me all he has seen--the seas that have passed far beneath him with all their fishes and ships, the great void deserts he has contemplated from the heights of the sky, the harvests that were bowing in the valleys, and the plants that were growing upon the walls of cities abandoned."
"Oh! if thou wast willing! if thou wast willing!... I have a pavilion on a promontory in the middle of an isthmus dividing two oceans. It is all wain-scoted with sheets of glass, and floored with tortoise shell, and open to the four winds of heaven. From its height I watch my fleets come in, and my nations toiling up the mountain-slopes with burthens upon their shoulders. There would we sleep upon downs softer than clouds; we would drink cool draughts from fruit-shells, and we would gaze at the sun through emeralds! Come!" ...
(_Anthony draws back. She approaches him again, and exclaims in a tone of vexation_:--)
"How? neither the rich, nor the coquettish, nor the amorous woman can charm thee: is it so? None but a lascivious woman, with a hoarse voice and lusty person, with fire-colored hair and superabundant flesh? Dost thou prefer a body cold as the skin of a serpent, or rather great dark eyes deeper than the mystic caverns?--behold them, my eyes!--look into them!"