On making acquaintance with these people, I remarked, not without a pleasant surprise, that all the collars were immaculate, and none turned down; that not one tie was eccentric, not one head of hair superabundant. On the contrary, their dress was in good taste, their behaviour unaffected, their bearing quietly refined. Seen in the midst of this company, Emma was a far greater anachronism—twice as striking, twice as fantastic.
They all speak under their breath; no one contradicts, no one is excited. There is no general conversation, only a few utterances here and there. They talk neither of literature, nor of painting; life, and the present day, is all they speak of. They hold discourse about frivolous or ordinary matters, with elaborate elegance; and their fashion of taking things, their tone and temper, shows at once what manner of men they are. They are of those who have now left behind them the Past—the stress and storm of finally triumphant Decadentism—and have arrived at some sort of fragmentary synthesis, which they have set up as their standard. Their mental equilibrium has bestowed upon them an amazing excellence of form, a philosophical calm in their way of looking upon the world, and an ecstatic cult of life, which, from their standpoint, becomes all but synonymous with the Beautiful. They are all characterized by great enlightenment, mental distinction, contempt for all unsightly mediocrity, picturesque in their life, and a moderation inexpressibly artistic and reposeful—something like the Greek soul.
One of the painters exclaimed: “I should like to remind Emma of the promise she made us last night, which was so gratifying to us all.”
“Ah, yes: we are all expectant.”
“Emma is something of a littérateur, and writes poetry,” a slender fair-haired young man beside me explained.
An exception to the universal custom took place. She made no bashful excuses.
“As you like,” she said.
With exquisite grace in every movement, she rose from the sofa, and traversed the studio slowly, that we might feast our enchanted eyes on the spectacle of that fairy-like beauty.
Enamoured, not unlike Narcissus, of her own goodly form, and radiant with her lofty queen-like head, her shoulders moulded as perfectly as a Greek statue, her cream-hued limbs just visible beneath the clinging tissue that she wore—she came to a standstill opposite me. With a motion as harmoniously entrancing as a strain of music, she adjusted the golden fillet on her superbly chiselled Pagan brow, and began her recitation:
“She is in love, the Ice-Queen,—charmed and spell-bound;