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star-like creature, the momentary but thrilling approach of the regions
of felicity. It was out of the heights of a Paradise that she leant
towards their mean-looking Green Box, and revealed to the gaze of its
wretched audience her expression of inexorable serenity. As she
satisfied her unbounded curiosity, she fed at the same time the
curiosity of the public.
It was the Zenith permitting the Abyss to look at it.
Ursus, Gwynplaine, Vinos, Fibi, the crowd, every one had succumbed to
her dazzling beauty, except Dea, ignorant in her darkness.
An apparition was indeed before them; but none of the ideas usually
evoked by the word were realized in the lady's appearance.
There was nothing about her diaphanous, nothing undecided, nothing
floating, no mist. She was an apparition; rose-coloured and fresh, and
full of health. Yet, under the optical condition in which Ursus and
Gwynplaine were placed, she looked like a vision. There are fleshy
phantoms, called vampires. Such a queen as she, though a spirit to the
crowd, consumes twelve hundred thousand a year, to keep her health.
Behind the lady, in the shadow, her page was to be perceived, el mozo,
a little child-like man, fair and pretty, with a serious face. A very
young and very grave servant was the fashion at that period. This page
was dressed from top to toe in scarlet velvet, and had on his skull-cap,
which was embroidered with gold, a bunch of curled feathers. This was
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