The priests prepare a marriage feast. Behold a marvel! Instant to her arms Her eager husband Cythereia charms; And ever mindful of her ancient fires, With amorous breath his martial breast inspires; Lifts the loved weight, close round his helmet twines Her loving arms, and close embraces joins, Drawn by the mystic influence from afar. Flies to the wedded gem the God of War. The Magnet weds the Steel: the sacred rites Nature attends, and th’ heavenly pair unites.[123] There was current as early as the fourth century a curious belief that a piece of loadstone, if placed beneath the pillow of a sleeping wife, would act as a touchstone of her virtue. This first appears in the Alexandrian poem “Lithica,” and it has been thus quaintly Englished by a fourteenth century translator: Also magnes is in lyke wyse as adamas; yf it be sett under the heed of a chaste wyfe, it makyth her sodenly to beclyppe [embrace] her husbonde; & yf she be a spowse breker, she shall meve her oute of the bed sodenly by drede of fantasy.[124] The same writer attempts an explanation of the popular fancy that when powdered loadstone was thrown upon coals in the four corners of a house, the inmates would feel as though the house were falling down; of this he says: “That seemynge is by mevynge [moving] that comyth by tornynge of the brayn.”[125] In classical writings the fascination exercised by a very beautiful woman is sometimes likened to the attractive power of the loadstone, as notably by Lucian,[126] who says that if such a woman looks at a man she draws him to her, and leads him whither she will, just as the loadstone draws the iron. To the same idea is probably due the fact that in several languages the name given to the loadstone indicates that its peculiar power was conceived to be a manifestation of the sympathy or love of one mineral substance for another. This is commonly believed to be the sense in which we should understand the French designation _aimant_, namely, as the participle of the verb _aimer_, “to love”; however, some etymologists prefer to derive the word from _adamas_, sometimes used in Low Latin for the loadstone, although properly signifying the diamond. It is certainly worthy of note that in two such dissimilar languages as Sanskrit and Chinese, the influence of this idea appears in the names given to the loadstone. In Sanskrit the word is _chumbaka_ or “the kisser,” and in Chinese _t’ su shi_, or “the loving-stone.” Chin T’sang Khi, a Chinese author of the eighth century, wrote that “the loadstone attracts iron just as does a tender mother when she calls her children to her.”[127]