Free French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) by Unknown Page B

the full rose to the softened amber glow of the grape cluster, every nuance of maturity.
    Excluded from this company were the green young things that Byron * abhorred, the little misses who smell of tartlet and whose figures are still wispy; here were resplendent and delicious summers, voluptuous autumns, lavish and full-bodied, their dazzling breasts at the full, overflowing the corsetry, with shoulders and arms of every plumpness, but powerful too, with biceps worthy of the Sabines who fought off the Romans, and who were ready to intertwine themselves between the spokes of the chariot of life, and stop it dead.
    I spoke of pretty ideas. Among the most charming at this supper was to have it served by chambermaids, so nothing could be said to have interrupted the harmony of a feast at which women were the undisputed sovereigns, since they also served… His lordship Don Juan—of the Ravila line—could thus plunge his ferocious gaze into a sea of luminous and living flesh, of the kind Rubens plies in his formidable paintings; but he could also plunge his pride into the elixir—be it clear or cloudy—of these hearts. Because at bottom, despite all indications to the contrary, Don Juan is a masterly psychologist! Like the demon himself, he loves souls more even than bodies, and like the infernal slaver that he is, would rather traffic in the former than the latter!
    Witty, noble, and while remaining impeccably Faubourg Saint-Germain in tone, so daring were the women that evening they were like the king’s pages, when there was a king with pages; they were brilliantly animated, full of incomparable repartee and
brio
. They felt more invincible than they had ever felt, even at their most triumphant. They experienced an unfamiliar power which came from thevery core of their beings, and whose existence, until that moment, they had never suspected.
    The happiness occasioned by this discovery was a feeling that tripled their sense of being alive; added to this, there was the physical ambience, which always has a decisive impact on the nervous system, the brilliance of the lights, the heady perfume of all the flowers that swooned in the close atmosphere heated by these beautiful creatures, the stirring effect of the wines, the very idea of the supper which had about it a sulphurous piquancy, of the kind the Neapolitan required of his sorbet to make it perfect; add to this the intoxicating thought of being accomplices in this
risqué
little supper—a supper that never descended into the vulgarity of the Regency period; * indeed, it remained throughout very much a nineteenth-century, Faubourg Saint-Germain supper, and nothing came loose or undone in those adorable
décolletées
, pressed against hearts that had felt the fire and desired to stoke it even more. In a word, all these things acted together, and strung to the utmost degree the mysterious harp contained within each of these wondrous organisms, as tight as it was possible to string without its breaking, so it produced ineffable octaves and harmonies… It must have been extraordinary, don’t you agree? One of the most vibrant pages of Ravila’s memoirs, if he ever gets round to writing them?… I ask the question, but he alone can write it… As I explained to the Marquise Guy de Ruy, I was not present at the supper, and if I give these details, and recount the story he told at the end, I am only repeating what de Ravila told me himself; for true to the tradition of the Juan clan, he is indiscreet, and he went to the trouble one evening of telling me everything.
III
    B Y now it was late—or rather, early! It was dawn. Against the ceiling, and concentrated at a certain spot on the pink silk curtains of the boudoir, which were drawn tight closed, an opal-tinted droplet started to grow, like a widening eye, curious to see what was going on in this fiery boudoir. A certain languor had begun to invade these valiant dame Knights of the Round Table, these carousers, who had