The man who came in was a handsome athlete, of average height but of incomparable proportions. He was hairless – or else very closely shaved or epilated, and he had a short, forked chin. His black hair, thick and sleek, was plastered back over his head. His chest was bare, and revealed a mark under the left breast, and his skin was a reddish-copper color, but lusterless, as if it had been powdered. He was draped in a whole, gray bearskin, fastened on one shoulder and at his waist, and its enormous head hung down on his knees. A pipe and a tomahawk were stuck in this crude shoulder belt. He wore long leather gaiters, and moccasins of supple yellow leather, trimmed with porcupine quills. He happened to raise one arm, and the onlookers could distinguish, tattooed in blue on his pumice-stoned armpit, the totem of the llama.

They noticed that the muscles of his armpits and thighs were convex, not concave, a structure that hadn’t been seen since the famous weight-lifter, Thomas Topham.

“What a handsome creature!” the women cried spontaneously.

They were not, of course, referring to the rudely drawn llama, but to the man.

One is always a handsome creature, for such women, when one shows a little bare flesh.

The Indian said not a word, sat down at the table without looking at them and, like a normal person, or even four, ate.

Ladies Only

LADIES ONLY

Shortly before midnight a peculiar shyness seized the women, possibly because of the men’s allusions, though these were comparatively discreet, and they grew increasingly sensitive to them as the time to justify them drew near. Particularly irritated by the “Mohican” impassiveness of the Indian, the girls slipped off and wandered aimlessly through the winding castle. They went up a staircase and found themselves by chance in a spacious portrait gallery, just off the hall which had been set aside for the “record.” It had communicated with the hall in former times, when that vast room had been used for staging entertainments. Imagine an immense box in the first balcony of a theatre, but with its view of the stage walled up.

They almost felt as if they were at home there, as they were alone.

Like parakeets when there is no one near their cage, they began a crystalline chatter, deliciously out of tune, like the sound of love instruments tuning up, one might imagine. Downstairs the violins were likewise warming up.

It goes without saying that they spoke of everything except what was on all their minds: the Indian.

“My dears,” Blanche was saying, “the most marvelous thing they have invented is to bring back the styles of twenty years ago, the system of corsets with four straps, two in front and two on the sides.”

“The ones in front are a waste of space. . . and time,” observed Irène.