It was a golden age, when all things were fair; nothing had grown old; even the tragic and the terrible were comely then. Wonder lay on everything. Merely to exist was to be happy. It was a world of unextinguished youth; life was brimful to the lips with delight.
In the gardens rare flowers bloomed, and rare fruits ripened,—pomegranates, oranges, medlars, figs, jujubes, and the purple Indian peach; and among the flowers, like winged flames, small and bright, sped the harlequins, the painted nonpareils, delicately beating the soft wind with their pied wings; while in the pomegranate-tree, among the dull bronze fruit, the mocking-bird sang his love and rapture. Through the green-hedged close, women, beautiful and stately, paced the shade, with men beside them, slender and straight, passionate and haughty, with fierce, bright eyes as ardent as the goshawk’s and as bold; and lovely girls, with dark hair and skins of alabaster, as graceful and as timid as fawns, and with fawn’s eyes, slipped among the green leaves like flowers alive.
Those were charmed days indeed. The town has changed since then. The world seems to have grown weary and gray, and the hearts of men bitter. The young were younger then; the old not so sorry for everything as they have been since. Then, somehow, it seemed to be always summer morning, morning before the sun had burned the world to a dun crisp with his meridian heat, scorching bitter and blinding bright; before the advent of gasping afternoon with its languid leafage and evaporated sap. The calendar seemed to have paused among the daffodils, between the jessamine and the June, in that paradise of the year. The delicate and virginal camellia bloomed then, untarnished by rough wind or rain; its petals were sweet, which since then have grown so bitter. The elm-trees did not then bloom thrice for one green coat. And no one ever paused to think that no good and lovely thing exists on earth without its corresponding shadow.
The world was full of the sound of sweet, flute-like voices of young women calling after their lovers; and the singing of small birds made slender, pleasant melodies among the cool myrtles. Life was simpler; perhaps more child-like though more passionate. Two who loved each other might walk together, hand in hand, along the path, singing their happiness, without reproach, save, perchance, from some lugubrious, gray-bearded presbyter mourning, among mossy tombstones, life’s evanescence.
And happy youth was without a fault, unless it were a trivial one, some péché mignon, a guileless, guiltless, girlish sin, like kissing oneself in the looking-glass for lack of another lover.
In all the town there were none so pretty, none so graceful or so sweet, as the golden girls of San Domingo. They flowed along the windy streets, their turbans nodding, like a stream of tulips. They fluttered down the byways in their white muslin dresses like bevies of butterflies. The loveliness of their slender bodies and the beauty of their youthful faces were far beyond all dull description; they were a bed of tiger-lilies in the sun. The earth loved the tread of their flying feet, which seemed to be forever dancing pastourelles; and the narrow lanes of the city laughed with the lilt of their Creole tongue.
Among the golden San Domingans the loveliest of all admittedly was Marguerite Lagoux, the milliner, by her patronage called Rita, by her familiars Margoton, by envious rivalry Madame Margot; and, after all was over and done, known merely as Old Mother Go-go.
Hers was glorious physical loveliness in its fullest maturity. It was in an hour of inspiration the indolent god of beauty drew the lines on which her body was built.
Her passionate, rich-colored, handsome face was like a line from an old enchantment which took men’s souls captive, then cast them away without the least regret, or with a Circean spell turned them into beasts. Her neck was a deep-colored, ivory tower poised perfectly over her breast. The dazzling, orange-tawny skin of her broad bust turned to golden-russet before it reached her cheeks, and was there flushed to dusky rose, like the skin of a ruddy-gold peach. In the burnt splendor of her cheek the darkly eloquent blood in her veins made its golden proclamation. Her mouth was long and strangely curved like a retroverted bow; the lips of a queer fruit-color, not crimson, carmine, nor magenta, but a little of all three. The upper lip was brief to a fault, and curled back on itself like a rich-pulped fruit which has parted in ripening. The full under-lip cast a heavier shade than the lips the old masters chose, when they painted a picture of the Madonna. Her hair, like a dark, uncertain cloud, fell down in heavy coils, gathered and knotted at the nape of the neck, bound there in a golden net; or lay in an unfilleted band across the broad, low brow, drawn back into braids over her ears, or collected into a turban tied with peculiar dexterity. Her body was cast in a glorious mould: she was tall; in figure perfect, and full of a stately, tiger-like grace, the envy of other women. She moved, when she walked, as an empress might if heaven but gave her grace, with an exquisite, perfect motion, devoid of every appearance of effort,—not striding, but seeming to glide like a swan swimming on untroubled water. In the sluggish grace of her heavy lips and deep-lidded, brooding eyes, she was as full of an indolent, sleepy beauty as midsummer afternoon. Dressed in bright merino, crimson, orange, and blue, with a kerchief of blood-colored silk around her head bound in oriental fashion, beads of amber around her neck, and in each ear a hoop of gold, she looked like a great golden lily dusted with sang-dieu.