Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/93

 with truffles and mushrooms, his companion fed on the passing beauty of his athletic limbs. She poured him out the contents of a bottle of Burgundy and he quaffed it down with pleasure, for—although the Hebe was old and fat—the wine was good. She would willingly have gone for another bottle, hoping thereby that the tool of delight which was now so limp and lifeless would lift up its head, but he refused to drink any more.

She patted it and paddled it as it lay there so round, so fat and chubby, looking like a well-fed baby, gorged with milk to the mouth. She toyed with it and fondled it, but it was too weary to wake; she tickled it with one finger, she rubbed it up and down with two and then with three fingers, with the whole hand, still it always remained nerveless and limp. Then she went down on her knees before it, she rubbed it on her nipples, pressed it between the parting of her breast, but it was proof against all blandishments, her caresses were of no avail, nothing seemed able to rouse it from its torpor.

She made one last effort. She unhooded