wore them, it is true, with the calm insouciance of pride surfeited with power; but women who had loved him would sometimes gaze at them with sad eyes. Who knows? perhaps they had read what hour of day it was for themselves in that whitening brow? Alas and alas! for them as for him, ’twas the hour for the grim supper with the cold white-marble Commendatore, after which only Hell is left—first the Hell of old age, then the other! And this perhaps is why, before sharing with him this last, bitter meal, they planned to offer him this supper of their own, and made it the miracle of art it was.

Yes, a miracle of good taste and refinement, of patrician luxury, elegance, and pretty conceits; the most charming, the most delicious, the most toothsome, the most heady, and, above all, the most original of suppers. How original, just think for a moment! Commonly it is love of merriment, the thirst for amusement, that supply motives for a supper-party; but this one was dedicated only to fond memories and sad regrets, we might almost say to despair—but despair in full dress, despair hidden beneath smiles and laughter, despair that craved just one more merry night, one more escapade, one last hour of youth, one last intoxication—and so an end of it all for ever.

The fair Amphitryons of this incredible supper, so far removed from the timid habits of the society to which they belonged, must surely have experienced something of the feelings of Sardanapalus on his funeral-pyre when he heaped upon it, to perish with him, wives, slaves, horses, jewels, all the splendid trappings of his life. They too collected at this last supper of farewell all the splendid trappings of their past. To it they brought all their stores of beauty, of wit and wisdom, of magnificence and power, to pour them forth once and for all in one supreme and final conflagration.

The hero before whom they wrapped and robed themselves in this garment of consuming fire counted for more in their eyes than all Asia did for Sardanapalus. They flirted with him as never women flirted with any man before, or with any roomful of men; and their keen coquetry was yet further inflamed by jealousy, which is concealed in good society, but which they had no cause to dissemble here, for they all knew that he had been the lover of each and all of them, and shame shared among so many ceases to be shame at all.…The sole and only rivalry between them was, which should carve his epitaph deepest in her heart?

That night he enjoyed the rich, sovereign, nonchalant, ruminating pleasure of a father confessor and a sultan. There he sat, monarch and master, in the centre of the table, facing the Comtesse de Chiffrevas, in her boudoir with its peach-blossom hangings—or was it the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of evil?—this has always been a moot point. The fiery gaze of his blue eye—heavenly blue many a poor creature has deemed to her cost, to find it later of quite another sort—was fixed on his fair companions. All twelve were beautiful, all were dressed to perfection; and, seated round the festive board, which glistened with crystal lights and flowers, they displayed, from the scarlet of the open rose to the soft gold of the mellow grape, every nuance of ripe and opulent charms.

Only the crude green of extreme youth was absent, the little girls Byron loathed, smelling of bread and butter, thin, weedy, undeveloped creatures. Fine, full-flavoured summer, rich and generous autumn, these were the seasons represented—full curves and ample proportions, dazzling bosoms, beating in majestic swell above liberally cut corsages, and below the clear modelling of the naked shoulder, arms of every type of beauty, but mostly powerful arms, Sabine biceps, that have struggled against the Roman ravisher, vigorous enough, you would think, to grasp the wheels of the car of life and twine around the spokes and stop its course by sheer force.

I have spoken of happy ideas. One of the happiest at this supper was to have all the waiting done by maidservants, that nothing might disturb the harmony of a celebration where women were the only queens, and did all the honours.…Señor Don Juan then was able to bathe his burning gaze in a sea of living and dazzling flesh, such as Rubens delights to flaunt in his strong, fleshy pictures, but, besides, he could plunge his pride in the ether, more or less transparent, more or less turgid, of all these hearts. The fact is, at bottom, and despite all appearances to the contrary, Don Juan is an ardent idealist! He is like the