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Needless to say, it was not he who showed them. There was the half-nude baby, with eyes already sparkling and eager, then the schoolboy with the fine carriage of the head, then the lad fresh from school with a singularly calm expression, and well filled-out cheeks. A little later the expression appeared more mature and tense, though still ingenuous.
It seems impossible to deny that the sexual instincts of young men are often provoked to an extreme degree by the sight upon the stage of beautiful, half-nude young women; and it must be remembered that the spectacle is frequently accompanied by music of an erotic character.
It was no longer a battle of coldly calculated method. Here at least it had become a conflict where individual nerve and ability alone could win out. Already some dozen of the half-nude savages had forced themselves across the embankment, and more were pressing on behind. It was a moment to blast the sternest courage.
Through the multitude gravely marched shaven-headed priests with a panther's-skin twisted around their body in such a way that the head of the animal formed a sort of belt-buckle, byblos shoes on their feet, in their hand a tall acacia-stick on which were engraved hieroglyphic characters; soldiers, their silver-studded daggers by their side, their bucklers on their backs, their bronze axes in their hands; distinguished personages, their breasts adorned with neck-plates of honour, to whom the slaves bowed low, bringing their hands close to the ground; and sliding along the walls with humble and sad mien, poor, half-nude women travelling along bowed under the weight of their children suspended from their neck in rags of stuff or baskets of espartero; while handsome girls, accompanied by three or four maids, passed proudly with their long, transparent dresses knotted under their breasts with long, floating scarfs, sparkling with enamels, pearls, and gold, and giving out a fragrance of flowers and aromatic essences.
"How disgusting!" he again repeated to himself, glancing at the half-nude woman with splendid marble shoulders and arms and a triumphant smile on her lips. The bared bosom of that portrait reminded him of another young woman whom he had seen dressed in a similar way a few days before.
She took it from his hands and stared long and earnestly at the reproduction. "Do you think it like me?" she inquired innocently. "Amazingly like you," he declared with conviction. She turned the page. He was watching her closely. As she looked upon the sketches of the half-nude figure a warm blush covered her face and neck.
On the walls there was a lamentable medley of landscapes in dim and gaudy colors, painted in Canton or Hongkong, mingled with tawdry chromos of odalisks, half-nude women, effeminate lithographs of Christ, the deaths of the just and of the sinners made by Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries.
From its polished ceiling of black billion wood hung great white punkahs, which half-nude Indians on the outside kept gently swaying back and forth. In the centre of the vast table stood a golden urn filled with delicate maidenhair ferns and dragon orchids.
Quickly the earth was shovelled in, and soon two mounds showed on the sward. Then came the clank of arms, and the mourners were again surrounded by their half-nude guards. "Follow," said Adams shortly. He led them for a distance of about a hundred yards, then halted, and the prisoners found themselves in a hollow square.
Maybe, too, it is true as he says, that he is voudoued." One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever. The third noon after the sad wife sitting by the bedside suddenly, right in the centre of the room, with the door open behind him, stood the magnificent, half-nude form of Bras-Coupé. He did not fall down as the mistress's eyes met his, though all his flesh quivered.
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