n down the stairs, leaving
the haughty Princess's mind a vortex of tumultuous feelings."

A few words of description should undoubtedly be vouchsafed to the
decoration of her apartments at Versailles. Artistic from birth, Julie
de Poopinac inaugurated almost a revolution in colour schemes: her
_salle des populaces_ (room of the people), where she received
supplicants for alms and various other favours, was upholstered in
Godstone blue, with hangings of griffin pink; her _salle a manger_
(dining-room) was a tasteful _melange_ of elephant green, cerise, and
burnt umber. Her _salle de bain_ (bathroom) deserves special mention,
owing to its bizarre mixture of mustard colour and vetch purple--while
her _chambre a coucher_ (bedroom) was a truly fitting setting for so
brilliant a gem. The walls were lined with costly Bridgeport tapestries
in brown and black, picked out here and there with beads and tufts of
gloriously coloured wool. The bed curtains were of soft Norwegian
yellow, with massive tassels of crab mauve, while the carpet and
upholstery were almost entirely Spanish crimson with head-rests of
Liverpool plush! It was here, of course, that she wrote most of her
poems.[3]

Her world-renowned "Idyl to Summer":--

"Dawn,
The poplars droop and sway and droop,
A lazy bee
With wings athread with gold and green
His merry way with esctasy
He takes, amid the garden blooms--
Ah me, ah God, ah God, ah me!
Dawn...."

And the perfectly delicious light poem dedicated to Louis--

"Beloved, it is morn--I rise
To smell the roses sweet;
Emphatic are my hips and thighs,
Phlegmatic are my feet.
Ten thousand roses have I got
Within a garden small,
Give me but strength to smell the lot,
Oh, let me sniff them all!"

Then her rather sordid realistic poem to Louis's death-bed commencing

"Oh, Bed
Wherein he frequently disposed
His weary limbs when day was done,
His last long sleep has murmured down--
Oh Bed--beneath your silken pall,
His eyes aglaze with death, and dim
With age--are closed.
Oh, Bed!"

It was of course after Louis's death that Julie was forced to seek
retirement in her chateau in Old Brittany. There for many years she
lived in almost complete seclusion, writing her books which were the
inspired outpourings of a tortured soul: "Lilith: the Story of a Woman";
"Th