Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/34

 when she felt that sensation which had made the young man writhe when the tiny lips of his phallus had gaped and a pearly drop of that cream of delight had oozed slowly out. Then, both their souls seemed at the same moment to leave their bodies and commingle in an ineffable embrace. Thereupon the fire within them grew more intense, the transient pleasure they had felt—a pain rather than a pleasure —serving only to excite their craving instead of satisfying their carnal appetite. Both remained for some moments overcome by the fever of lust.

The youth had hardly recovered his senses, when—upon opening his eyes—he saw a big white poodle come out of the opposite house.

It was a huge dog all shaven and shorn, with a skin of a delicate pinkish hue, like that of a new-born baby, but freckled all over like a sun-burnt girl. The hair of his mane, the fringe around his ankles and the tuft of his tail, all as white as cotton-wool, were frizzled and combed and scented with lavende-ambrée, This foolish abortion of a lion, this loathsome catamite of animals, this old maid’s pet,