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This did not make her uneasy, for the girl could not be far away, and Semestre was used to calling her name more than once before she obeyed. True, to-day the answer was delayed longer than usual. The maiden heard the old woman's shrill, resounding voice very clearly, but heeded it no more than the cackling of the hens, the screams of the peacocks, and the cooing of the doves in the court-yard.
Oh! they look just like everybody else ... they strut like peacocks.... No, when I said peacocks ... I made a mistake, for they could not display themselves." "Oh! my dear...." "As to the timid, they are sometimes unspeakably stupid. They are the sort of men, who ought not to undress themselves, even when they are going to bed alone, when there is a looking-glass in their room.
The images of gods and goddesses sometimes laugh, sometimes tremble, and sometimes again these vomit blood through their mouths and sometimes they sweat and sometimes fall down. Kokilas, wood-peckers, jaws, water-cocks, parrots, crows, and peacocks, utter terrible cries. Here and there, cavalry soldiers, cased in mail, armed with weapons, send forth fierce shouts.
The description of the feast takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where we find a minute list of the dishes wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted whole; peeled oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for washing; and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought in pastry tutte in vivande.
"Liars, cowards, ingrates, strutting peacocks, bladders of wind boring me and one another with their empty phrases, cringing lick-spittles they make me sick to look at them! They fawn on me like hungry dogs. By Jupiter, I make myself ridiculous too often, pandering to a lot of courtiers! If they despise me then as I despise myself, I am in a bad way! I must make haste and live again!
Yet this miser, who denied himself many of the ordinary comforts and conveniences of life, and who would argue and haggle for hours over a trivial sum, allowed himself one expensive indulgence expensive for him, at least. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs.
I have said elsewhere that a roupie is almost equivalent to half a crown, a lecque to a hundred thousand roupies and a kourour to a hundred lecques, so that the throne is valued at forty millions of roupies, which are worth about sixty millions of French livres. That which I find upon it best devised are two peacocks covered with precious stones and pearls.
When she stood there she hung over, over the gardens and the woods all of which drowsed below her, at this hour, in the immensity of light. The miles of shade looked hot, the banks of flowers looked dim; the peacocks on the balustrades let their tails hang limp and the smaller birds lurked among the leaves.
In the Feather Street are innumerable shops containing nothing but feathers of all kinds for mandarins, actors, and ordinary mortals; but the great ambition of every Chinaman is to have a feather from the Emperor. They are all called peacocks' feathers, one-eyed, two-eyed, or three-eyed; but, in reality, many are pheasants' feathers.
All I maintain is that he is certainly no better. I have known many poets in my day, and they are all more or less alike petulant as babes, peevish as women, selfish as misers, and conceited as peacocks. They SHOULD be different? Oh, yes! they SHOULD be the perpetual youth of mankind, the faithful singers of love idealized and made perfect. But then none of us are what we ought to be!
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