and hands like those of Alcina, 'dove ne nodo appasisce ne vena accede',
and my active imagination fancied that all the rest was in harmony with
those beautiful specimens, for the graceful folds of the muslin, leaving
the outline all its perfection, hid from me only the living satin of the
surface; there was no doubt that everything was lovely, but I wanted to
see, in the expression of her eyes, that all that my imagination created
had life and was endowed with feeling. The Oriental costume is a
beautiful varnish placed upon a porcelain vase to protect from the touch
the colours of the flowers and of the design, without lessening the
pleasure of the eyes. Yusuf's wife was not dressed like a sultana; she
wore the costume of Scio, with a short skirt which concealed neither the
perfection of the leg nor the round form of the thigh, nor the voluptuous
plump fall of the hips, nor the slender, well-made waist encompassed in a
splendid band embroidered in silver and covered with arabesques. Above
all those beauties, I could see the shape of two globes which Apelles
would have taken for the model of those of his lovely Venus, and the
rapid, inequal movement of which proved to me that those ravishing
hillocks were animated. The small valley left between them, and which my
eyes greedily feasted upon, seemed to me a lake of nectar, in which my
burning lips longed to quench their thirst with more ardour than they
would have drunk from the cup of the gods.

Enraptured, unable to control myself, I thrust my arm forward by a
movement almost independent of my will, and my hand, too audacious, was
on the point of lifting the hateful veil, but she prevented me by raising
herself quickly on tiptoe, upbraiding me at the same time for my
perfidious boldness, with a voice as commanding as her attitude.

"Dost thou deserve," she said, "Yusuf's friendship, when thou abusest the
sacred laws of hospitality by insulting his wife?"