Quickly the man La Fleur took out a small phial and poured some few drops of a dark liquid on the girl’s tongue. Half consciously swallowing it, she sank back again––this time, into a deeper nirvana.
They were coming now to a large estate, the grounds of which were brightly illuminated. Outside the iron palings a crowd of beggars shrieked and gesticulated. Within, all was gayety. La Fleur and his fellows dismounted with their burden. They laid the inanimate form of the Norman girl on a litter and covered it with a white canopy. As this strange pallet awaits the Master’s wishes in anteroom, let us take a peep at the celebrated Sunken Gardens.
Bel-Air had been beautified in the lovely exedra style for which Petit Trianon is noted. Art blended so cunningly with Nature one might almost mistake marble Venus for live goddess or flesh-and-blood naiads of the lake for carved caryatides. The very musicians seemed children of Pan as they tuned their lyres and fiddles in woodland nook.
Before the splashing fountain supported by little naked Loves in marble––flanked by balustrades and bordered by screens of myriad crystalline glass drops––a cool white pavement invited the gay minuet. Beyond, a huge banquet table groaned with delicacies and wines the cost of which would have gone far to rationing the thirty thousand hungry of the nearby City. Indeed, enough was wasted to have fed many. With bizarre and often gross entertainment Marquis de Praille amused his guests who themselves presented a wanton and amorous scene that seemed itself a part of the elaborately staged revels.
What gallantry, what passion, what low asides and snatched kisses! as the squirming dancers intoxicated the spectators’ sense or gauzily draped coryphees plunged 22 in the pool now converted into a fountain of wine. The elegant gentlemen and the audacious women guests––themselves miracles of bold costuming and sixty-inch snow-white coiffures––knew the play foretold the coarser revels that all would indulge in after midnight.
Around the banqueting tables a number of ladies and gentlemen were seated, some still toying with the savory viands and drinking rare vintages of Champagne, whilst others idly watched the dancers or discussed the latest court news and high life scandal.
“Well, what do you think of my retreat from the whirl and bustle of Paris?” asked Marquis de Praille of his vis-a-vis, who was a dashing sort of beauty.
“My dear Marquis,” replied that lady, “I am delighted. It is a satisfaction to find a gentleman who maintains the customs of his rank.”
“And yet there are fools who want to change them,” exclaimed a young nobleman from the opposite table.