(A divagation from Jules Laforgue)
There arose, as from a great ossified sponge, the comic-opera,
Florence-Nightingale light-house, with junks beneath it clicking in
vesperal meretricious monotony; behind them the great cliff obtruded
solitary into the oily, poluphloisbious ocean, lifting its confection of
pylons; the poplar rows, sunk yards, Luna Parks, etc., of the Tetrarchal
Palace polished jasper and basalt, funereal undertakerial, lugubrious,
blistering in the highlights under a pale esoteric sun-beat; encrusted,
bespattered and damascened with cynocephali, sphinxes, winged bulls,
bulbuls, and other sculptural by-laws. The screech-owls from the jungle
could only look out upon the shadowed parts of the sea, which they did
without optic inconvenience, so deep was the obscured contagion of their
afforested blackness.
The two extraneous princes went up toward the stable-yard, gaped at the
effulgence of peacocks, glared at the derisive gestures of the
horse-cleaners, adumbrated insults, sought vainly for a footman or any
one to take up their cards.
The tetrarch appeared on a terrace, removing his ceremonial gloves.
The water, sprinkled in the streets in anticipation of the day's parade,
dried in little circles of dust. The tetrarch puffed at his hookah with
an exaggeration of dignity; he was disturbed at the presence of princes,
he was disturbed by the presence of Jao; he desired to observe his own
ruin, the slow deliquescence of his position, with a fitting detachment
and lassitude. Jao had distributed pamphlets, the language was
incomprehensible; Jao had been stored in the cellarage, his following
distributed pamphlets.
In the twentieth century of his era the house of Emeraud Archytypas was
about to have its prize bit of fireworks: a war with the other world ...
after so many ages of purely esoteric culture!
Jao had declined both the poisoned coffee and the sacred sword of the
Samurai, courtesies offered, in this case, to an incomprehensible
foreigner. Even now, with a superlation of form, the sacred kriss had
been sent to the court executioner, it was no mere every-day implement.
The princes arrived at this juncture. There sounded from the back alleys
the preparatory chirping of choral societies, and the wailing of
pink-lemonade sellers. To-morrow the galley would be gone.
Leaning over the syrupy clematis, Emeraud crumbled brioches for the
fishes, reminding himself that he had not yet collected the remains of
his wits. There was no galvanization known to art, science, industry or
the ministrations of sister-souls that would rouse his long since
respectable carcass.
Yet at his birth a great tempest had burst above the dynastic manor;
credible persons had noticed the lightnings scrolling Alpha and Omega
above it; and nothing had happened. He had given up flagellation. He
walked daily to the family necropolis: a cool place in the summer. He
summoned the Arranger of Inanities.