France -- History -- Henry III, 1574-1589 -- Fiction
The beautiful sinner, half-lying on cushions, and with no other covering
than the magnificent hair with which she was afterward to wipe the feet
of Jesus, was having a slave, who had broken a precious vase, thrown
into a pond filled with lampreys, whose eager heads were protruding from
the water: while on the other side, a woman, even less dressed than her
mistress, as her hair was bound up, was being flogged, because she had,
while dressing her mistress's head, pulled out some of those magnificent
hairs, whose profusion might have rendered her more indulgent to such a
fault. In the background were visible some dogs being whipped for having
allowed beggars to pass quietly, and some cocks being murdered for
having crowed too loudly in the morning.
On arriving at the Croix-Faubin, the king had finished this figure, and
was passing to "Magdalene giving way to the sin of gluttony."
This represented a beautiful woman lying on one of those beds of purple
and gold on which the ancients used to take their repasts; all that the
Romans had most recherche in meat, in fish, and in fruit, dormice in
honey, red mullets, lobsters from Stromboli, and pomegranates from
Sicily, ornamented the table, while on the ground some dogs were
disputing for a pheasant, while the air was full of birds, which had
carried off from the table, figs, strawberries, and cherries. Magdalene
held in her hand, filled with white liquor, one of those
singularly-shaped glasses which Petronius has described in his feasts.
Fully occupied with this important work, the king merely raised his eyes
as they passed by the convent of the Jacobins, from which vespers was
sounding on every bell, and of which every window and door was closed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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