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Updated: May 18, 2025
It was a picture worthy of the grandest painter's brush, ... that glistening throne black as jet, with the fair form of Lysia shining within it, like a white sea-nymph at rest in a grotto of ocean-stalactites, . . the fantastically attired negresses on each side, with their waving peacock-plumes, the vivid carnation-color of the dais, against which the black and yellow stripes of the tigress showed up in strong and brilliant contrast, . . and the graceful, jewel-decked figure of the Poet Laureate, who, half sitting, half reclining on a black velvet cushion, leaned his handsome head indolently against the silvery folds of Lysia's robe, and looked up at her with eyes in which burned the ardent admiration and scarcely restrained passion of a privileged lover.
To familiarise herself the better with the horrors in view, the princess remained in the company of her negresses, who squinted in the most amiable manner from the only eye they had, and leered with exquisite delight at the skulls and skeletons which Carathis had drawn forth from her cabinets, whose key she entrusted to no one; all of them making contortions, and uttering a frightful jargon, but very amusing to the princess; till at last, being stunned by their gibbering, and suffocated by the potency of their exhalations, she was forced to quit the gallery, after stripping it of a part of its treasures.
Some were to be seen with parasols in their hands, and parrots on their shoulders. They had mastiffs, gazelles, and panthers following behind them. Women of Libyan race, mounted on asses, inveighed against the Negresses who had forsaken the lupanaria of Malqua for the soldiers; many of them were suckling children suspended on their bosoms by leathern thongs.
This evening, the Negresses played their usual sweet innocent little game. They form an alley by taking hands, blocked up at the end. At the top enters one of their number backwards. As she passes along the opposite pairs, each couple put their hands across and form a sort of seat for her, by which she is bumped backwards from one seat to another seat of hands, through the whole alley.
Nothing queerer could be imagined than all these charming fashions and finery of the frivolous century of Louis XV., these Watteau shepherdess costumes, furbelows, plumes and laces, upon these black, ugly-faced, flat-nosed, woolly-headed, frightful people. Thus decked out they were no longer even negroes and negresses; they were apes and monkeys. Add to all this a deafening uproar.
The sturdy negresses, up to their elbows, stirred the foaming syrup after it had boiled. Then it was skimmed and boiled again to purify it. It went through a centrifugal process to crystallize it, and afterward was packed in boxes and stamped in less time than it takes to relate this. I liked to breathe the hot vapors coming from the huge tanks.
Of course, we made for these at once; and there was a lot of chaffering and bargaining between our fellows and the negresses, who were all laughing and showing their white teeth, trying their best to wheedle the `man-o'-war buckras' to buy their luscious wares at double the price, probably, such would fetch in open market from regular customers in Bridgetown.
The officer, a scowl on his face, paused in the doorway and glanced about, then threaded his way to where two negresses stood weeping, and began talking to them. Meanwhile, the clergyman, pushing on through the throng, joined Esquire Hennion and Bagby, who for some reason were suspiciously eying each other on the platform.
At the sound of the jangling chime four negresses appeared goblin creatures that looked as though they had suddenly sprung from some sooty, subterranean region of gnomes and humbly prostrating themselves before Lysia, kissed the ground at her feet.
She had her bedroom and reception-room, her roof terrace, and her garden court. On the ground floor her negresses lived, and cooked for their mistress and themselves. She did not wish to have Victoria with her, night and day, and so she had quietly directed Noura to make up a bed in the room which would have been her boudoir, if she had lived in Europe.
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