"Spring rain. Rain of light that saturated every new leaf of the trees in the street, every square of paving, drift of rain threading light through the empty darkness itself. And the ball in the Palais Royal.
The king and queen were there, dancing with the people. Talk in the shadows of intrigue. Who cares? Kingdoms rise and fall. Just don't burn the paintings in the Louvre, that's all. Lost in a sea of mortals again; fresh complexions and ruddy cheeks, mounds of powdered hair atop feminine heads with all manner of millinery nonsense in them, even minute ships with three masts, tiny trees, little birds. Landscapes of pearl and ribbon. Broad-chested men like roosters in satin coats like feathered wings.
The diamonds hurt my eyes. The voices touched the surface of my skin at times, the laughter the echo of unholy laughter, wreaths of candles blinding, the froth of music positively lapping the walls.
Gusts of rain from the open doors. Scent of humans gently stoking my hunger. White shoulders, necks, powerful hearts running at that eternal rhythm, so many graduations among these naked children hidden in riches,savages laboring beneath a swaddling of chenille, encrustations of embroidery, feet aching over high heels, masks like scabs about their eyes.
The air comes out of one body and is breathed into another. The music, does it pass out of one ear into another, as the old expression goes? We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us. Now and then eyes settled on me with some vague air of expectation. My white skin made them pause, but what was that when they let blood out of their veins themselves to keep their delicate pallor?
(Let me hold the basin for you and drink it afterwards.) And my eyes, what were those, in this sea of paste jewels?"