HOW TANNHÄUSER AWAKENED AND TOOK HIS MORNING ABLUTIONS IN THE VENUSBERG
It is always delightful to wake up in a new bedroom. The fresh
wall paper, the strange pictures, the positions of doors and
windows--imperfectly grasped the night before--are revealed with all
the charm of surprise when we open our eyes the next morning.
It was about eleven o'clock when Tannhäuser awoke and stretched himself
deliciously in his great plumed four-post bed, and nursed his waking
thoughts, and stared at the curious patterned canopy above him. He was
very pleased with the room, which certainly was chic and fascinating,
and recalled the voluptuous interiors of the elegant amorous Baudouin.
Through the tiny parting of the long, flowered window curtains, the
Chevalier caught a peep of the sun-lit lawns outside, the silver
fountains, the bright flowers, and the gardeners at work.
"Quite sweet," he murmured, and turned round to freshen the frilled
silk pillows behind him; "and what delightful pictures," he continued,
wandering with his eyes from print to print that hung upon the
rose-striped walls. Within the delicate, curved frames lived the
corrupt and gracious creatures of Dorat and his school; slim children
in masque and domino, smiling horribly, exquisite letchers leaning over
the shoulders of smooth doll-like ladies, and doing nothing particular,
terrible little pierrots posing as mulierasts, or pointing at something
outside the picture, and unearthly fops and strange women mingling in
some rococo room lighted mysteriously by the flicker of a dying fire
that throws huge shadows upon wall and ceiling. One of the prints
showing how an old marquis practised the five-finger exercise, while in
front of him his mistress offered her warm fesses to a panting poodle,
made the chevalier stroke himself a little.
After the chevalier got up, he slipped off his dainty night-dress,
posturing elegantly before a long mirror, and made much of himself. Now
he would bend forward, now lie upon the floor, now stand upright, and
now rest upon one leg and let the other hang loosely till he looked as
if he might have been drawn by some early Italian master. Anon he would
lie upon the floor with his back to the glass, and glance amorously
over his shoulder. Then with a white silk sash he draped himself in a
hundred charming ways. So engrossed was he with his mirrored shape that
he had not noticed the entrance of a troop of serving boys, who stood
admiringly but respectfully at a distance, ready to receive his waking
orders. As soon as the chevalier observed them he smiled sweetly, and
bade them prepare his bath.
The bathroom was the largest and perhaps the most beautiful apartment
in his splendid suite. The well-known engraving by Lorette that forms
the frontispiece to Millevoye's "Architecture du XVIIIme siècle," will
give you a better idea than any words of mine of the construction and
decoration of the room. Only, in Lorette's engraving, the bath sunk
into the middle of the floor is a little too small.
Tannhäuser stood for a moment, like Narcissus, gazing at his reflection
in the still scented water, and then just ruffling its smooth surface
with one foot, stepped elegantly into the cool basin, and swam round it
twice, very gracefully.
"Won't you join me?" he said, turning to those beautiful boys who stood
ready with warm towels and perfume. In a moment they were free of their
light morning dress, and jumped into the water and joined hands, and
surrounded the Chevalier with a laughing chain.
"Splash me a little," he cried, and the boys teased him with water
and quite excited him. He chased the prettiest of them and bit his
fesses, and kissed him upon the perineum till the dear fellow banded
like a Carmelite, and its little bald top-knot looked like a great pink
pearl under the water. As the boy seemed anxious to take up the active
attitude, Tannhäuser graciously descended to the passive--a generous
trait that won him the complete affections of his valets de bain, or
pretty fish, as he called them, because they loved to swim between his
legs.
However, it is not so much at the very bath itself, as in the drying
and delicious frictions, that a bather finds his chiefest pleasures,
and Tannhäuser was more than satisfied with the skill his attendants
displayed in the performance of those quasi amorous functions. The
delicate attention they paid his loving parts aroused feelings within
him that almost amounted to gratitude; and when the rites were ended,
any touch of home-sickness he might have felt before was utterly
dispelled.
After he had rested a little, and sipped his chocolate, he wandered
into the dressing-room. Daucourt, his valet de chambre, Chenille, the
perruquier and barber, and two charming young dressers, were awaiting
him and ready with suggestions for the morning toilet. The shaving
over, Daucourt commanded his underlings to step forward with the suite
of suits from which he proposed Tannhäuser should make a choice. The
final selection was a happy one. A dear little coat of pigeon rose silk
that hung loosely about his hips, and showed off the jut of his behind
to perfection; trousers of black lace in flounces, falling--almost
like a petticoat--as far as the knee; and a delicate chemise of white
muslin, spangled with gold and profusely pleated.
The two dressers, under Daucourt's direction, did their work superbly,
beautifully, leisurely, with an exquisite deference for the nude, and a
really sensitive appreciation of Tannhäuser's scrumptious torso.