A multitude of choice and exquisite things, delighting the eye no less than the palate, were disposed with consummate art in various crystal and silver-mounted dishes.

Festoons of camellias and violets hung between the vine-wreathed eighteenth century candelabras, round which sported fairies and nymphs, and on the wall-hangings more fairies and nymphs, and all the charming figures of the pastoral mythology--the Corydons, the Phylises, the Rosalinds--animated with their sylvan loves one of those sunny Cytherean landscapes originated by the fanciful imagination of Antoine Watteau.
The slightly erotic excitement, which is apt to take hold upon the spirits at the end of a dinner graced by fair women and flowers, betrayed itself in the tone of the conversations, and the reminiscences of this bazaar, at which the ladies--urged on by a noble spirit of emulation in collecting the largest sums--employed the most unheard of audacities to attract buyers.
'And did you accept it ?' asked Andrea of the Duchess.
'I sacrificed my hands on the altar of Benevolence,' she replied.
'Twenty-five louis more to my account!' '_All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand._' He laughed as he quoted Lady Macbeth's words, but, in reality, his heart was sore with a confused, ill-defined pain, that bore a strong resemblance to jealousy.

And suddenly he became aware of something excessive, almost--it might be--a touch of the courtesan, defacing the manners of the great lady.

Certain inflections of her voice, certain tones of her laughter, here a gesture, there an attitude, certain glances, exhaled a charm that was perhaps a trifle too Aphrodisiac.

She was, besides, somewhat over-lavish with the visible favours of her graces, and the air she breathed was continually surcharged with the desire she herself excited.
Andrea's heart swelled with bitterness; he could not take his eyes off Elena's hands.