The
house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy on their perspiring
heads. For three hours back the breath of the multitude had filled
and heated the atmosphere with a scent of crowded humanity. Under the
swaying glare of the gas the dust clouds in mid-air had grown constantly
denser as they hung motionless beneath the chandelier. The whole house
seemed to be oscillating, to be lapsing toward dizziness in its fatigue
and excitement, full, as it was, of those drowsy midnight desires which
flutter in the recesses of the bed of passion. And Nana, in front of
this languorous public, these fifteen hundred human beings thronged and
smothered in the exhaustion and nervous exasperation which belong to the
close of a spectacle, Nana still triumphed by right of her marble flesh
and that sexual nature of hers, which was strong enough to destroy the
whole crowd of her adorers and yet sustain no injury.
The piece drew to a close. In answer to Vulcan's triumphant summons all
the Olympians defiled before the lovers with ohs and ahs of stupefaction
and gaiety. Jupiter said, "I think it is light conduct on your part,
my son, to summon us to see such a sight as this." Then a reaction took
place in favor of Venus.
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