robust body and paralyzed his lips and arms, and he could not reply even
by a sound of tenderness to Maria-Gloriosa's wild lamentations and
amorous cries. Neither reply nor smile, alas! But his eyes dilated, and
glistened like the last flame that shoots up from an expiring fire, and
filled them with a world of dying thoughts, of divine recollections, of
delirious love. They appeared to envelope her in kisses, they spoke to
her, they thanked her, they followed her movements, and seemed delighted
at her grief. And as if she were replying to their mute supplications,
as if she had understood them, Maria-Gloriosa suddenly tore off her
lace, threw aside her fur cloak, stood erect beside the dying man, whose
eyes were radiant, desirable in her supreme beauty with her bare
shoulders, her bust like marble and her fair hair, in which diamonds
glistened, surrounding her proud head, like that of the Goddess Diana,
the huntress, and with her arms stretched out towards him in an attitude
of love, of embrace and of blessing. He looked at her in ecstacy, he
feasted on her beauty, and seemed to be having a terrible struggle with
death, in order that he might gaze at her, that apparition of love, a
little longer, see her beyond eternal sleep and prolong this unexpected
dream. And when he felt that it was all over with him, and that even his
eyes were growing dim, two great tears rolled down his cheeks....

"When Maria-Gloriosa saw that he was dead, she piously and devoutly
kissed his lips and closed his eyes, like a priest who closes the gold
tabernacle after service, on an evening after benediction, and then,
without exchanging a word, we returned through the darkness to the
palace where the ball was still going on."

* * * * *

There was a minute's silence, and while Madame de Laumieres, who was
very much touched by this story and whose nerves were rather highly
strung, was drying her tears behind her open fan, suddenly the harsh and
shrill voices of the fast women who were returning from the Casino, by
the strange irony of fate, struck up an idiotic song which was then in
vogue: "_Oh! the poor, oh! the poor, oh! the poor, dear girl!_"

THE RELICS

They had given him a grand public funeral, like they do victorious
soldiers who have added some dazzling pages to the glorious annals of
their country, who have restored courage to desponding heads and cast
over other nations the proud shadow of th