sound of clamorous barbaric music played by their companions.
They danced with stately step, holding themselves majestically erect,
spreading their arms as if swimming in space, their brown bodies
wheeling in slow spirals, seeming to float on the waves of transparent
foam which enwrapped them. Gradually their movements accelerated; they
gracefully extended their bodies, elevating their firm chests, outlining
their contours among the veils--contortions in which the trunk revolved
on the hips, a whirl of forms enclosed in white and floating drapery,
which as it flew into a thousand folds with voluptuous undulations,
fanned up the flames of the lamps.

Suddenly, at a signal from the old crone, the music stopped, and the
dancing ceased.

"More! More!" shouted the guests, sitting up in their couches with
excitement.

It was merely a halt to change the time and to evoke applause by taking
a brief rest. The music assumed a gay and noisy rhythm; the old eunuch
marked time on the floor with the beating staff; he uttered a prolonged
lament, sad, yet with a mild sweetness, which did not seem to come from
his infected mouth; and then followed slow dreamy strophes of love with
words of double meanings, which acted like aphrodisiacs, and were
greeted with a roar of enthusiasm.

The dancers sprang into the centre of the triclinium, whirling swiftly,
as if possessed of a fever. Each song served as a lash further to excite
their nerves, and their bare feet tripped over the mosaic like
snow-white birds, or rose in gentle flight, trailing clouds of gauze,
displaying well modeled limbs with tinkling ornaments which scattered
silvery tones. Their gently curving abdomens seemed to assume a separate
existence, moving like restless animals over their bodies which they
held in sacerdotal rigidity, contracting in circular waves, forming a
whirlpool of voluptuous undulations, of which the umbilicus was the rosy
centre. They accompanied the dance with incessant snapping of fingers.
Gathering the gauzy draperies beneath their arms and adjusting them
around their hips, they moved their amphoral curves with seductive
rhythm, sighing langourously, with bowed heads, as if enchanted by the
contemplation of their own beauty. Suddenly the music grew fainter, as
if drawing away, and the dancers, their feet together and limbs half
opened, descended in a slow spiral, with gentle undulations, until they
touched the floor; the instant their callipygian ch