Page:Lovers Legends - The Gay Greek Myths.pdf/94

LOVERS’ LEGENDS Music lesson

If we were to see women as they rose from bed we would consider them uglier than those animals it is thought unlucky to mention before noontime—I speak of the monkeys. That is why they lock themselves in and do not wish to be seen by any man. A gaggle of servants, young and old, equal to them in beauty, swarms around offering up to the disagreeable face all sorts of pomades. They do not, after the sloth of sleep, refresh their mistress with a splash of clear water, then to move on to serious concerns. No, they merely lend, by means of cosmetics, a dash of color to an unpleasant aspect. Just as in public processions, each has her function: One holds a silver plate, another a pincushion, a mirror, a host of little boxes as in a drugstore, vases filled with a thousand secret poisons for whitening teeth or blackening eyelids. 80