Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/76

 only tasted the night before, and which he was again longing to enjoy.

He therefore sat her upon the chair, and kneeling down before her, took her lovely legs upon his shoulders, having thus his head between them. Her thighs being in this way sufficiently opened, he placed his mouth upon her slit. For a moment he breathed the sweet smell that emanated from the golden hair that grew all around.

It was a smell he knew, the scent of a plant that grew in his country and bloomed at Whitsuntide; yes, they called it the snake's flower.

When he had had his fill of that intoxicating smell, then he kissed those lips eagerly, and placed the tip of his tongue on the top of the slit, the most sensitive spot of a woman's body; he seemed at first to sting it rather than to caress and soothe it, and again stirred it almost to pain. She screamed for him to stop, she could not bear it any longer; soon she found herself swimming in a sea of sensual bliss, feeling herself floating in regions of ethereal delight; soon the living berry wept