servant in charge of the meal was a copper-colored man with a long down-curling mustache. He was dressed in a black tuxedo, with a white cloth wrapped around his legs like a skirt. He had long hair, done up on his head like a woman's and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. The Asiatic was placing the huge trays containing the food on the floor: Some of the dishes were of ancient hammered silver, others of many colored lacquer, or of semi-transparent materials made in imitation of emerald, topaz, and red sealing wax.
For Michael the meal looked like something a great chef might have prepared if he had suddenly gone mad and made up the dishes in the midst of his ravings. There was not a single item that suggested the harmonious course of an ordinary dinner. The palate acted on the imagination, awakening memories of distant travels, visions of far off lands. Exotic preserves alternated with hot dishes. Pastry flavored with penetrating perfumes was served along with sharp, biting, or intensely bitter sauces.
Alicia, half reclining on the cushions, looking at the dishes without appetite, extended her hand carelessly toward the most unusual delicacies, and those with the most pungent and racy savors. Clearly the perversion of her palate was profound. She herself saw to it that Michael's glass was always filled. It was a drink of her own invention, having a champagne base. It burned and rasped his mouth, paralyzing all other sensation with its stinging coolness. It penetrated his nostrils with a lingering scent of the rarest flowers and of Asiatic spices.
Speaking of the dead Princess, Alicia came to mention her own mother. They were now on terms of open hostility. Her eyes began to gleam with defiance as she was reminded of Doña Mercedes, confined in the Champs-Élysée residence with her court of clericals, and showing herself in public only for the organizing of pious works. She was trying to starve her only daughter to death!.. And as Michael smiled at this explosion of anger, she explained her grievances.
"She gives me hardly anything; a mere nothing: half a million francs. And I have to hand two hundred and fifty thousand a year over to my husband: a rather expensive lover, whom I avoid seeing. You are really rich, my dear, and don't understand such things… Since the fortune is all in her name, she tries to starve me out and keeps her money to squander it with the priests… Poor Señora! She can't find any admirers now except that Monsignor and other sponges like him… And I, her own daughter, have to implore her like a beggar for the crumbs she gives me, seasoned with sermons… Oh, if it hadn't been for your mother! She really was a great lady: I never lamented my poverty to her in vain; she gave me even more than I asked for. You know of course that I owe you some money. A little… I don't know how much. Didn't you really know that?.. I shall pay you back when I get my inheritance."
And with brutal frankness she expounded her full thought.
"When will that bigot leave me in peace?.. Old people ought to make way for the young. What fun do they get out of going on living?"
They had finished eating. She went on filling both their glasses with her special drink. At first Michael had found it repugnant, but in the end he was attracted to its refreshing fragrance which gently troubled the senses, like an intoxication with perfumes.
"Of course you use the pipe," said Alicia simply.
He shook his head and thought of the odor which struck him on entering. He knew what sort of a "pipe" it was, and gazed about the study. The smoking den must be in some hidden corner!
"A man like you!" she went on. "A sailor! And I fooled myself into thinking we'd smoke together!"
She even gave him to understand that the hope of being able to give him that forbidden pleasure was the principal reason for her invitation. She became resigned when she learned that the Prince, vigorous as he was, suffered nausea every time he attempted to experiment with that Asiatic vice. And while he lighted a havana, Alicia took from a silver case the cigarettes which she smoked in the presence of the "uninitiated": Oriental tobacco, but heavily dosed with opium. Suddenly Michael was convinced of something of which he had a presentiment the moment he entered the place, or even earlier, the moment their glances had met in the cemetery. He saw her half rising from the cushions, with a panther-like contraction of her muscles, as though she were ready to spring at him. It was the concentrated impulse of the beast, beautiful and sure of its power, unable to wait, and not knowing how to feign.
Alicia had forgotten the demi-tasse she held in her hand, as she sat there, looking at him fixedly. The tiny blue electric spark dancing in her eyes was something well known to Michael.
It was the offering glance of female silence, inviting violence, and mastery. He had encountered that glance often along his path of triumph as a conquering millionaire… He felt he must say something at once to break the silent charm of the beautiful witch, who, sure of her final victory, was smiling and blowing puffs of cigarette smoke toward him. So Michael alluded to her amorous fame, to the great number of lovers she was supposed to have had. That might widen the distance between them.
"Ah! You too?" said Alicia laughing, with masculine frankness. "I don't suppose your morals are the same as Mamma's! You are not going to read me a sermon on my behavior. Although, after all, Mamma doesn't blame me for what I do. What makes her angry is the fact that I am not afraid of what people say, and that sometimes I am attracted to unknown men of low birth. Poor Señora! If I were to have an affair with a king or a crown prince, perhaps she'd even let us see each other in her house, and have her Monsignor mount guard into the bargain."
She remained silent for a moment. That disturbing glance was still fixed on Michael.
"It is true; I have had a lot of men. And how about you? Do you think I don't know about your wanderings all over the planet in quest of types of women unknown to the novels and capable of giving new sensations?.. We have both done the same: only it wasn't necessary for me to travel around so much to learn just what you have learned… And you are not so absurd as to imagine, as certain men do, that our cases are not to be compared because we are of different sexes."
The Prince listened silently as she expounded her ideas. She was deeply in love with life, and in return she demanded all that life could give her… The minds of other women were occupied with questions of a material nature: desire for wealth, longings for luxury, domestic cares… As for her, she possessed everything; to-morrow held no worries for her; not even in regard to her beauty, sustained as it was by wonderful health, and seeming to increase in spite of age and her prodigal waste of energies.
In her life, made up of caprices, always completely satisfied, even to the point of satiety, only one thing interested her, from its infinite variety and from its many phases, which might seem to vulgar people a monotonous repetition of one another, but which in reality were distinct for a mind attuned, as hers was, to exquisite sensations. That thing was love.
"Oh please understand me, Michael; don't sit there laughing to yourself. You know me too well ever to imagine that I believe in love as the majority of women do. I know that a certain amount of illusion is necessary to color the material aspect of love; we all lie about it a little, and we enjoy the lie even though we know it as such; but way down deep, I laugh at love as the world understands it, just as I laugh at so many things which people venerate… I don't want lovers, I want admirers. I am not looking for love; I care more for adoration."
She was proud of her beauty. She spoke of Venus as though the goddess were a real person. She admired the Olympic serenity with which the Deity of Passion gave herself to gods and men, never surrendering her superiority even at the moment when she was submitting to the domination of the stronger sex. Alicia considered herself a super-beauty, belonging to a sphere outside the ordinary limits of vice and virtue. She thought herself a living work of art; and art is neither moral nor immoral; its mission is fulfilled when it is beautiful.
"Poets, painters, and musicians seek to abandon themselves to the greatest number of admirers. They do
