PARTISAN REVIEW
white leather. The fastuosity of the queen, who sat in the centre of
the dais, made her most conspicuous of all. Her arms and the front
of her person were bare. Upon her magnificent breasts, pearls, em–
eralds and precious stones were embanked. Long black curls fell on
either side of her face, and smaller ringlets streaked her forehead.
She had the lips of a glutton, an upturned nose, and huge empty eyes
whose expression one might have called bovine. A sort of golden
diadem served her as a crown. It sat, not directly on her hair, but on
a ridiculous hat of some dark material: this came up through the
diadem and tapered into a sharp point, like a horn, which jutted far
out in front of her forehead. Her corsage uncovered her to the waist
in front, but rose high at the back and ended in an enormous cut–
away collar. Her skirt was spread wide around her, and one could
admire, upon their creamy ground, three rows of embroidery, one
above the other-purple irises at the top, saffrons in the centre and
below them violets spread among their leaves.
As
I was sitting imme–
diately below, I had only to turn round to have all this, as one might
say, under my very nose. I marvelled as much at the sense of color
and the beauty of the design, as at the delicate perfection of the work.
Ariadne, the elder daughter, sat at her mother's right hand and
presided over the corrida. She was less sumptuously dressed than the
queen, and she wore different colors. Her skirt, like that of her sister,
had only two circles of embroidery--on the upper one, dogs and
hinds; on the lower, dogs and partridges. Phaedra, perceptibly a much
younger girl, sat on her mother's left. Her dress had a frieze of chil–
dren running after hoops, and another of younger children squatting
on their behinds and playing marbles. She took a childish pleasure
in the spectacle.
As
for me, I could hardly follow what was going on.
It was all so disconcertingly new. But I could not help being amazed
by the suppleness, speed and agility of the acrobats who took their
chance in the arena after the singers, the dancers, and then the
wrestlers had had their turn. Myself about to encounter the Minotaur,
I learnt a good deal from watching the feints and passes which might
help me to baffie and tire the bull.
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