"Let us measure it!
Let us measure it!"
"All right," said Emile; "let us measure it!"
The two friends spread out the table-napkin and laid the Magic Skin upon it.
As Emile's hand appeared to be steadier than Raphael's, he drew a line with pen and ink round the talisman, while his friend said:
"I wished for an income of two hundred thousand livres, didn't I?
Well, when that comes, you will observe a mighty diminution of my chagrin."
"Yes—now go to sleep.
Shall I make you comfortable on that sofa?
Now then, are you all right?"
"Yes, my nursling of the press.
You shall amuse me; you shall drive the flies away from me.
The friend of adversity should be the friend of prosperity.
So I will give you some Hava—na—cig——"
"Come, now, sleep. Sleep off your gold, you millionaire!"
"You! sleep off your paragraphs!
Good-night!
Say good-night to Nebuchadnezzar!—Love!
Wine!
France!—glory and tr—treas——"
Very soon the snorings of the two friends were added to the music with which the rooms resounded—an ineffectual concert!
The lights went out one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare.
Night threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael's narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of ideas for which words had often been lacking.
Towards noon, next day, the fair Aquilina bestirred herself. She yawned wearily. She had slept with her head upon a painted velvet footstool, and her cheeks were mottled over by contact with the surface.
Her movement awoke Euphrasia, who suddenly sprang up with a hoarse cry; her pretty face, that had been so fresh and fair in the evening, was sallow now and pallid; she looked like a candidate for the hospital.
The rest awoke also by degrees, with portentous groanings, to feel themselves over in every stiffened limb, and to experience the infinite varieties of weariness that weighed upon them.
A servant came in to throw back the shutters and open the windows.
There they all stood, brought back to consciousness by the warm rays of sunlight that shone upon the sleepers' heads.
Their movements during slumber had disordered the elaborately arranged hair and toilettes of the women. They presented a ghastly spectacle in the bright daylight. Their hair fell ungracefully about them; their eyes, lately so brilliant, were heavy and dim; the expression of their faces was entirely changed. The sickly hues, which daylight brings out so strongly, were frightful. An olive tint had crept over the lymphatic faces, so fair and soft when in repose; the dainty red lips were grown pale and dry, and bore tokens of the degradation of excess.
Each disowned his mistress of the night before; the women looked wan and discolored, like flowers trampled under foot by a passing procession.
The men who scorned them looked even more horrible.
Those human faces would have made you shudder. The hollow eyes with the dark circles round them seemed to see nothing; they were dull with wine and stupefied with heavy slumbers that had been exhausting rather than refreshing. There was an indescribable ferocious and stolid bestiality about these haggard faces, where bare physical appetite appeared shorn of all the poetical illusion with which the intellect invests it.
Even these fearless champions, accustomed to measure themselves with excess, were struck with horror at this awakening of vice, stripped of its disguises, at being confronted thus with sin, the skeleton in rags, lifeless and hollow, bereft of the sophistries of the intellect and the enchantments of luxury.
Artists and courtesans scrutinized in silence and with haggard glances the surrounding disorder, the rooms where everything had been laid waste, at the havoc wrought by heated passions.
Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the image of a crime that knows no remorse (see L'Auberge rouge). The picture was complete.
A picture of a foul life in the midst of luxury, a hideous mixture of the pomp and squalor of humanity; an awakening after the frenzy of Debauch has crushed and squeezed all the fruits of life in her strong hands, till nothing but unsightly refuse is left to her, and lies in which she believes no longer.
You might have thought of Death gloating over a family stricken with the plague. The sweet scents and dazzling lights, the mirth and the excitement were all no more; disgust with its nauseous sensations and searching philosophy was there instead.
The sun shone in like truth, the pure outer air was like virtue; in contrast with the heated atmosphere, heavy with the fumes of the previous night of revelry.
Accustomed as they were to their life, many of the girls thought of other days and other wakings; pure and innocent days when they looked out and saw the roses and honeysuckle about the casement, and the fresh countryside without enraptured by the glad music of the skylark; while earth lay in mists, lighted by the dawn, and in all the glittering radiance of dew.
Others imagined the family breakfast, the father and children round the table, the innocent laughter, the unspeakable charm that pervaded it all, the simple hearts and their meal as simple.
An artist mused upon his quiet studio, on his statue in its severe beauty, and the graceful model who was waiting for him.
A young man recollected a lawsuit on which the fortunes of a family hung, and an important transaction that needed his presence.
The scholar regretted his study and that noble work that called for him.
Emile appeared just then as smiling, blooming, and fresh as the smartest assistant in a fashionable shop.
"You are all as ugly as bailiffs.
You won't be fit for anything to-day, so this day is lost, and I vote for breakfast."
At this Taillefer went out to give some orders.
The women went languidly up to the mirrors to set their toilettes in order.
Each one shook herself.
The wilder sort lectured the steadier ones.