As to the great She-Devil, I should lie if I did not admit that at the first sight I found a bizarre charm in her. To define this charm, I know nothing better to compare it to than to that of very beautiful women who, though in their decadence, no longer grow older, and whose beauty has the penetrating magic of ruins. Her air was at once imperious and loose; and her eyes, although heavily ringed, were full of the force of fascination. What struck me most was the mystery of her voice, at whose sound I recalled both the most delicious contralto singers, and also a little of that hoarseness which characterizes the throats of very old drunkards.
“Wilt thou know my power?” cried the false goddess with her charming and paradoxical voice; “Listen!” and she put to her mouth a gigantic trumpet covered with ribands like the reed-pipe, on which were written the titles of all the newspapers in the world, and through this trumpet she cried my name, which thus rolled across space with the noise of a hundred thousand thunders, and came back to me on the echo of the most distant of the planets.
“The Devil!” cried I, half conquered, “there is a precious thing!” But, in examining more closely the seductive Amazon, it seemed to me vaguely that I remembered having seen her drinking with some fools of my acquaintance, and the raucous sound of the brass bore to my ears I know not what remembrance of a venal trumpet.
So I replied with all my scorn: “Be off with you; I am not the man to marry the mistress of certain persons whom I will not mention.”
Certainly, of so courageous a self-denial I had every right to be proud; but unfortunately I awoke, and all my strength deserted me. “Indeed,” said I to myself, “I must have been very soundly asleep to show such scruples …”