Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. II.djvu/107

, the sound of smothered sighs, the groans of pleasure, the smack of eager kisses expressing the never-satiated lust of youth, made my brain reel, whilst my blood was parched by the sight of those ever-changing lascivious attitudes, expressing the most maddening paroxysm of debauchery, which tried to soothe itself or to invent a more thrilling and intenser sensuality, or sickening and fainting away under their excess of feeling, whilst milky sperm and ruby drops of blood dappled their naked thighs."

"It must have been a rapturous sight."

"Yes, but just then it seemed to me as if I were in some rank jungle, where everything that is beautiful brings about instant death; where gorgeous, venomous snakes cluster together and look like bunches of variegated flowers, where sweet blossoms are ever dropping wells of fiery poison.

"Here, likewise, everything pleased the eye and galled the blood; here the silvery streaks on the dark-green satin, and there the argentine tracery on the smooth, prasinous leaves of the water-lilies were only the slimy trail—here of