St. Rose of Lima
He thought of the splendid opening of Racine's "Britannicus."
Of a strange pamphlet he had found in Helen's library, called "A Plea for the Domestication of the Unicorn."
Of the "Bacchanals of Sporion."[3]
Of Morales' Madonnas with their high egg-shaped creamy foreheads and well-crimped silken hair.
Of Rossini's "Stabat Mater" (that delightful démodé piece of decadence, with a quality in its music like the bloom upon wax fruit).
Of love, and of a hundred other things.
Then his half-closed eyes wandered among the prints that hung upon the rose-striped walls. Within the delicate curved frames lived the corrupt and gracious creatures of Dorat and his school, slender children in masque and domino smiling horribly, exquisite letchers leaning over the shoulders of smooth doll-like girls and doing nothing in particular, terrible little Pierrots posing as lady lovers and pointing at something outside the picture, and unearthly fops and huge bird-like women mingling in some rococo room, lighted mysteriously by the flicker of a dying fire that throws great shadows upon wall and ceiling.