"My heart is stung with happiness. My breast is pierced with seven swords of happiness—how can I help crying?"
"You are a little fool, really you're a little fool," said Sasha with a laugh.
"And you're wise!" replied Liudmilla in sudden vexation and sighed, wiping her tears away. "Understand, little stupid," she said in a quiet, persuasive voice, "that happiness and wisdom are only to be found in madness."
"Yes, yes?" said Sasha incredulously.
"You must forget and forget yourself and then you'll understand everything," whispered Liudmilla. "In your opinion, do wise men think?"
"And what else should they do?"
"They simply know. It's given to them at once; they only have to look and everything's opened to them."
The autumn evening dragged along quietly. A barely audible rustle came now and then through the window when the wind moved the tree branches. Sasha and Liudmilla were alone. Liudmilla had dressed him up as a bare-legged fisher-boy—in a costume of thin blue canvas. He was lying on a low couch and she sat on the floor by his bare feet, herself bare-foot and in a chemise. She sprinkled Sasha's clothes and body with perfume—a dense, grassy smell like the motionless odour of a strangely blossoming valley locked in hills.
Large, bright Roman pearls sparkled on Liudmilla's neck, and golden, figured bracelets rang on her arms. Her body was scented with orris—it was an overpowering, fleshly, provoking perfume, bringing drowsiness and langour, created from the distillations of slow waters. She languished and sighed, looking at his smooth face, at his bluish-black eyelashes and at his night-dark eyes. She laid her head on his bare knees, and her bright hair caressed his smooth skin. She kissed his body, and her head whirled from the strange aroma, mingling with the scent of young flesh.