— 68 —
one another, join hands and dance round in an enormous circle. The signal is given, they turn round, rise into the air and fly away swift as lightning.
The weaker ones fall down in this mad and giddy flight, this unbridled gallop. Their fall causes others to lose their balance: and there is now but a horrible confusion, a frightful pell-mell of grotesque couplings of hideous love-making, an indescribable chaos of ruined bodies, all soiled with the stains of lust, at last hidden from our sight in a dense cloud of smoke.
GAMIANI
You have a wonderful imagination, Alcide: your dream would look well in a book.
ALCIDE
But listen, I must tell the rest of the story, which is simply the truth, and which really happened. When I came to my senses after this terrible fit, I felt lighter, but weaker. Three women, still young, and attired in only a white dressing gown, were sitting near my bed.
