-dreams of Odilon Redon. His favourite artist is
Gustave Moreau, and it is on this superb and disquieting picture that he
cares chiefly to dwell.

A throne, like the high altar of a cathedral, rose beneath
innumerable arches springing from columns, thick-set as Roman
pillars, enamelled with vari-coloured bricks, set with mosaics,
incrusted with lapis lazuli and sardonyx, in a palace like the
basilica of an architecture at once Mussulman and Byzantine. In the
centre of the tabernacle surmounting the altar, fronted with rows
of circular steps, sat the Tetrarch Herod, the tiara on his head,
his legs pressed together, his hands on his knees. His face was
yellow, parchment-like, annulated with wrinkles, withered with age;
his long beard floated like a white cloud on the jewelled stars
that constellated the robe of netted gold across his breast. Around
this statue, motionless, frozen in the sacred pose of a Hindu god,
perfumes burned, throwing out clouds of vapour, pierced, as by the
phosphorescent eyes of animals, by the fire of precious stones set
in the sides of the throne; then the vapour mounted, unrolling
itself beneath arches where the blue smoke mingled with the
powdered gold of great sunrays, fallen from the domes.

In the perverse odour of perfumes, in the overheated atmosphere of
this church, Salome, her left arm extended in a gesture of command,
her bent right arm holding at the level of the face a great lotus,
advances slowly to the sound of a guitar, thrummed by a woman who
crouches on the floor.

With collected, solemn, almost august countenance, she begins the
lascivious dance that should waken the sleeping senses of the aged
Herod; her breasts undulate, become rigid at the contact of the
whirling necklets; diamonds sparkle on the dead whiteness of her
skin, her bracelets, girdles, rings, shoot sparks; on her triumphal
robe, sewn with pearls, flowered with silver, sheeted with gold,
the jewelled breast-plate, whose every stitch is a precious stone,
bursts into flame, scatters in snakes of fire, swarms on the
ivory-toned, tea-rose flesh, like splendid insects with dazzling
wings, marbled with carmine, dotted with morning gold, diapered
with steel-blue, streaked with peacock-green.

* * * * *

In the work of