These last were of that pink flesh tint which the skies assume
on fine evenings, when Venus lights her fires on the horizon against
the clear background of fading daylight. The golden cords and tassels
hanging in corners and the gold lace-work surrounding the panels were
like little flames of ruddy strands of loosened hair, and they half
covered the wide nakedness of the room while they emphasized its pale,
voluptuous tone. Then over against him there was the gold and silver
bed, which shone in all the fresh splendor of its chiseled workmanship,
a throne this of sufficient extent for Nana to display the outstretched
glory of her naked limbs, an altar of Byzantine sumptuousness, worthy of
the almighty puissance of Nana's sex, which at this very hour lay nudely
displayed there in the religious immodesty befitting an idol of all
men's worship. And close by, beneath the snowy reflections of her bosom
and amid the triumph of the goddess, lay wallowing a shameful, decrepit
thing, a comic and lamentable ruin, the Marquis de Chouard in his
nightshirt.
The count had clasped his hands together and, shaken by a paroxysmal
shuddering, he kept crying:
"My God! My God!"
It was for the Marquis de Chouard, then, that the golden roses
flourished on the side panels, those bunches of golden roses blooming
among the golden leaves; it was for him that the Cupids leaned forth
with amorous, roguish laughter from their tumbling ring on the silver
trelliswork.
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