for you alone, ever over and over. And the tray was
always full. One wall of the dining-room farther on was laden with
delicate novelties in the way of food. A string quartette played for the
dancers in the music-room. There were a dozen corners in different rooms
screened with banks of flowers and concealing divans. The dancing and
singing were superb, individual, often abandoned in character, as was
the conversation. As the morning wore on (for it did not begin until
after midnight) the moods of all were either so mellowed or inflamed as
to make intentions, hopes, dreams, the most secret and sybaritic, the
order of expression. One was permitted to see human nature stripped of
much of its repression and daylight reserve or cant. At about four in
the morning came the engaged dancers, quite the piece de
resistance--with wreaths about heads, waists and arms for clothing and
well, really nothing more beyond their beautiful figures--scattering
rose leaves or favors. These dancers the company itself finally joined,
single file at first, pellmell afterwards--artists, writers,
poets--dancing from room to room in crude Bacchic imitation of their
leaders--the women too--until all were singing, parading, swaying and
dancing in and out of the dozen rooms. And finally, liquor and food
affecting them, I suppose, many fell flat, unable to do anything
thereafter but lie upon divans or in corners until friends assisted them
elsewhere--to taxis finally. But mine host, as I recall him, was always
present, serene, sober, smiling, unaffected, bland and gracious and
untiring in his attention. He was there to keep order where otherwise
there would have been none.

I mention this merely to indicate the character of a long series of such
events which covered the years 19-- to 19--. During that time, for the
reason that I have first given (his curious pleasure in my company), I
was part and parcel of a dozen such more or less vivid affairs and
pleasurings, which stamped on my mind not only X---- but life itself,
the possibilities and resources of luxury where taste and appetite are
involved, the dreams of grandeur and happiness which float in some
men's minds and which work out to a wild fruition--dreams so outre and
so splendid that only the tyrant of an obedient empire, with all the
resources of an enslaved and obedient people, could indulge with safety.
Thus once, I remember, that a dozen of us--writers and artists--being
assembled in his s