[La-bas by J. K. Huysmans]@TWC D-Link bookLa-bas CHAPTER VIII 16/45
There were great beds reached by carpeted steps.
There were tasselled pillows and counterpanes heavily perfumed, and canopies and curtains embroidered with armories or sprinkled with stars. So one must reconstruct the decorations of the other rooms, in which nothing was standing but the walls and the high, basket-funneled fireplaces, whose spacious hearths, wanting andirons, were still charred from the old fires.
One could easily imagine the dining-rooms and those terrible repasts which Gilles deplored in his trial at Nantes.
Gilles admitted with tears that he had ordered his diet so as to kindle the fury of his senses, and these reprobate menus can be easily reproduced. When he was at table with Eustache Blanchet, Prelati, Gilles de Sille, all his trusted companions, in the great room, the plates and the ewers filled with water of medlar, rose, and melilote for washing the hands, were placed on credences.
Gilles ate beef-, salmon-, and bream-pies; levert-and squab-tarts; roast heron, stork, crane, peacock, bustard, and swan; venison in verjuice; Nantes lampreys; salads of briony, hops, beard of judas, mallow; vehement dishes seasoned with marjoram and mace, coriander and sage, peony and rosemary, basil and hyssop, grain of paradise and ginger; perfumed, acidulous dishes, giving one a violent thirst; heavy pastries; tarts of elder-flower and rape; rice with milk of hazelnuts sprinkled with cinnamon; stuffy dishes necessitating copious drafts of beer and fermented mulberry juice, of dry wine, or wine aged to tannic bitterness, of heady hypocras charged with cinnamon, with almonds, and with musk, of raging liquors clouded with golden particles--mad drinks which spurred the guests in this womanless castle to frenzies of lechery and made them, at the end of the meal, writhe in monstrous dreams. "Remain the costumes to be restored," said Durtal to himself, and he imagined Gilles and his friends, not in their damaskeened field harness, but in their indoor costumes, their robes of peace.
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