Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/17

 fairies, with complexions like the snows of Mount Rosa when flushed by the first faint rays of the dawning sun.

A few of them, albeit, are portly, highbosomed damsels, with powerful hips and jet black shaggy hair. Still, it was not these lust-stirring girls who attracted his glance.

Although most of them were mother-naked, some few were veiled in delicately-tinted diaphanous garments, as vaporous as a morning mist; and these dim draperies only served to enhance those transcendent gifts with which Nature had endowed them.

As he sees them in his mind's eye, dancing in the most lascivious attitudes, fluttering amorously to and fro for his delight, a pleasant quivering sensation creeps softly over all his limbs. He is young, exuberant with health, and it is already very long since he has tasted the shattering intoxication of a women's dewy lips.

Though not much of a dreamer, his erotic fancy is roused to the highest pitch, so that he makes all these fairies act like puppets, and obey his slightest whim; so—while this host