Another--"I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with rapture
of my adorers."

A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to blush. "I
feel remorse in the depths of my heart! I am a Catholic, and
afraid of hell. But I love you, I love you so that I can
sacrifice my hereafter to you."

The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. "Give me a joyous life!"
she cried; "I begin life afresh each day with the dawn. Forgetful
of the past, with the intoxication of yesterday's rapture still
upon me, I drink deep of life--a whole lifetime of pleasure and
of love!"

The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked at him with a
feverish glitter in her eyes. She was silent. Then--"I should
need no hired bravo to kill my lover if he forsook me!" she cried
at last, and laughed, but the marvelously wrought gold comfit box
in her fingers was crushed by her convulsive clutch.

"When are you to be Grand Duke?" asked the sixth. There was the
frenzy of a Bacchante in her eyes, and her teeth gleamed between
the lips parted with a smile of cruel glee.

"Yes, when is that father of yours going to die?" asked the
seventh, throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with bewitching
playfulness. It was a childish girl who spoke, and the speaker
was wont to make sport of sacred things.