When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-page of the book. It was Gautier’s “Émaux et Camées”, Charpentier’s Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand “du supplice encore mal lavée,” with its downy red hairs and its “doigts de faune.” He glanced at his own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:

Sur une gamme chromatique,
    Le sein de perles ruisselant,
La Vénus de l’Adriatique
    Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.

Les dômes, sur l’azur des ondes
    Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S’enflent comme des gorges rondes
    Que soulève un soupir d’amour.

L’esquif aborde et me dépose,
    Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une façade rose,
    Sur le marbre d’un escalier.

How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself:

“Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.”