Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/63

Rh of an unknown planet. It came from the world of the great and prosperous. Irradiation amplified her figure. The lady was covered with nocturnal glitterings, like the milky way. Her precious stones were stars. The diamond brooch was perhaps a pleiad. The splendid beauty of her bosom seemed supernatural. They felt, as they looked upon the star-like creature, the momentary but thrilling approach of the regions of felicity. It was out of the heights of a paradise that she leaned towards their insignificant Green Box, and revealed to the gaze of its wretched audience an expression of inexorable serenity. As she satisfied her unbounded curiosity, she fed at the same time the curiosity of the public. It was the Zenith permitting the Abyss to look at it. Ursus, Gwynplaine, Vinos, Fibi, the crowd, every one had succumbed to her dazzling beauty, except Dea, ignorant in her darkness. An apparition was indeed before them; but none of the ideas usually evoked by the word were realized in the lady's appearance. There was nothing diaphanous, nothing undecided, nothing floating, no mist about her. She was a goddess; rose-coloured and fresh, and full of health. Yet, under the optical condition in which Ursus and Gwynplaine were placed, she looked like a vision. There are fleshy phantoms, called vampires. Such a queen as she, though a spirit to the crowd, requires twelve hundred thousand a year, to keep her in health.

Behind the lady, in the shadow, stood her page, el mozo, a child-like youth, fair and pretty, with a serious face. A very young and very grave servant was the fashion of that period. This page was dressed from top to toe in scarlet velvet, and had on his skull-cap, which was embroidered with gold, a bunch of curled feathers. This was the sign of a high class of service, and