and opening on the transformed
garden with its ash-powdered walks, its little pool now bordered with
basalt and filled with ink, its clumps of cypresses and pines, the
dinner had been served on a table draped in black, adorned with
baskets of violets and scabiouses, lit by candelabra from which green
flames blazed, and by chandeliers from which wax tapers flared.

To the sound of funeral marches played by a concealed orchestra, nude
negresses, wearing slippers and stockings of silver cloth with
patterns of tears, served the guests.

Out of black-edged plates they had drunk turtle soup and eaten Russian
rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, smoked Frankfort black
pudding, game with sauces that were the color of licorice and
blacking, truffle gravy, chocolate cream, puddings, nectarines, grape
preserves, mulberries and black-heart cherries; they had sipped, out
of dark glasses, wines from Limagne, Roussillon, Tenedos, Val de Penas
and Porto, and after the coffee and walnut brandy had partaken of kvas
and porter and stout.

The farewell dinner to a temporarily dead virility--this was what he
had written on invitation cards designed like bereavement notices.

But he was done with those extravagances in which he had once gloried.
Today, he was filled with a contempt for those juvenile displays, the
singular apparel, the appointments of his bizarre chambers. He
contented himself with planning, for his own pleasure, and no longer
for the astonishment of others, an interior that should be comfortable
although embellished in a rare style; with building a curious, calm
retreat to serve the needs of his future solitude.

When the Fontenay house was in readiness, fitted up by an architect
according to his plans, when all that remained was to determine the
color scheme, he again devoted himself to long speculations.

He desired colors whose expressiveness would be displayed in the
artificial light of lamps. To him it mattered not at all if they were
lifeless or crude in daylight, for it was at night that he lived,
feeling more completely alone then, feeling that only under the
protective covering of darkness did the mind grow really animated and
active. He also experienced a peculiar pleasure in being in a richly
illuminated room, the only patch of light amid the shadow-haunted,
sleeping houses. This was a form of enjoyment in which perhaps entered
an element of vanity, that peculiar pleasure known to late workers
when, dr