Pull down the shades. Turn out the lights. So. We do not want loud electricity. We shall have a jewelled light. For I am rich to-night. Come, let us recline on Bagdad cushions and Teheran rugs (“Only savages sit”, Mme. Zinovyeva, the Russian Lesbian, told us), and I shall scatter over the fantastic patterns jewels and stones. How softly they illumine the thick dark—these varicolored glowflies, these streams of wine, emerald wine, and amethyst wine, and wine of topazes “yellow as the eyes of tigers, and topazes pink as the eyes of a wood pigeon, and green topazes that are as the eyes of cats”, and wine of opals “that burn always with an icelike flame”, and wine of onyxes that are like “the eyeballs of a dead woman”, and wine streams of sapphires and chrysolites and rubies and turquoises and ambers and pearls.... I am rich to-night, and we shall bathe our eyes in quivering rainbows, and our fingers shall wander lightly through dimly-jewelled ripples, stirring up old visions, exotic unhuman faces, enchanting monsters, dancing rhythmic words, fantastic moonlit thoughts.
What songless tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of the night?
“In exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world are passing in dumb show before us. Things that we have dimly dreamed of are suddenly made real. Things of which we have never dreamed are gradually revealed.”
Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx, and sing me all your memories!
A symphony of memories. A life as brilliant and as swift as a meteor. A life of no shadows. Sun and flowers. A continuous rainbow. An Apollonian race over iridescent rose-and-azure-clouds. A sudden plunge over hideous precipice. The song broken. Yet the chord vibrates.
Uneasiness. The moon filters through the stained embrasure.
Regardez la lune ... On dirait une femme qui sort d’un tombeau. Elle ressemble à une femme morte. On dirait qu’elle cherche des mortes.
... Elle ressemble à une petite princesse qui porte un voile jaune, et des pieds d’argent. Elle ressemble à une princesse qui a des petites colombes blanches.... On dirait qu’elle danse.