arms grazed the
mosaic, they recoiled like suddenly awakened serpents, and the castanets
clacked and the timbrel beat louder, accompanied by the howls of the
musicians who animated them with lascivious words and exclamations of
supreme abandon.

The guests, red with emotion, their eyes sparkling and their mouths dry,
had rushed into the centre of the triclinium, interrupting the dance,
mixing with the couples and grasping them. Euphobias lay snoring at the
foot of his couch. Sonnica had disappeared long before, leaving the
triclinium, supported by a slave without lifting her head from Actaeon's
shoulder.

The veils of the dancing girls fell to the foot of the table; they
devoured the sweetmeats and fruits, they drank from the amphorae, plunged
their heads into the crater of the nymphs, and laughed on seeing their
faces bespattered with wine. The eunuch continued singing and pounding
furiously on the floor to mark the rhythm for his musicians. In vain!
The girls who tried to dance could not escape from the hands of the
guests, who at every turn slapped them on their buttocks and tore off
their veils. The young men rolled at the foot of the lamps, maddened by
these bacchantes wise in perversion, reared in a port to which
navigators brought both the refinements and the corruptions of the
entire world. Alorcus the Celtiberian, brutalized by his enthusiasm,
walked around the triclinium making a display of his strength by
sustaining in his sinewy hands two dancing girls, who screamed with
fright, while outside could be noted in the darkness of the peristyle
the movement of the slaves, men and women, from the kitchens, creeping
near to enjoy from without the spectacle of the bacchanal.

It was not yet dawn when Actaeon awoke, wondering, no doubt, at the soft
couch and at the perfumes of the dormitory. Sonnica was lying beside
him, and by the light of a lamp hanging near the door he could see a
smile of felicity flitting over her lips.

After the intoxication of the night the Athenian felt a vehement desire
to breathe the fresh, open air. He was stifling where he was, in
Sonnica's room, sunk down in the couch that seemed to burn with the fire
of their recent passion, near the form, which now lay inert and with no
other sign of life than the gentle sighs which inflated her bosom.

The Greek softly tiptoed out to the peristyle. The lamps were still
burning in the triclinium, and an insufferable vapor of viands, wines,
and s