AT THE NUPTIAL HOUR, the servants passed through Charlotte as if she were a shade, a ghostly emanation of her corporeal groom. For the ceremony, attended only by the master craftsman and her regretful father, she had been dressed in filmy white. She had reflected, like the moon, M. Marais's bulky and brilliant mass of figured silks, brocades, velvets, rocaille lace. Now, wandering alone through the corridors, she stopped a scullery maid and begged directions to the bridal chamber.
The oaken door sighed like the entrance to a vault.
Quick, quick! These garters are insufferable!
Through the crack, she could see a naked sliver of M. Marais, flanked by two menservants he was swatting about the head. It's me, Charlotte, she announced through the opening. How strange it sounded finally to say it.
The musician shrieked and clutched himself, girlishly modest, trying to conceal both his breasts and his groin. Go away! he exclaimed, like a woman shooing hens. Go away this instant!
Charlotte hurriedly shut the door and skittered back a few paces: she imagined that she should feel relief but instead was experiencing a peculiar sense of disappointment. Glancing down, she saw the gaping keyhole. It winked at her, wisely, like a friend. Charlotte knelt, and looked inside.
The keyhole was like a telescope, unfolding before her the lush landscape of M. Marais's body. She spied his mossy buttocks, their dark and moist ravine; his nipples peeking out from his breasts, like two rosy cherubs in a cumulus cloud. The menservants had stripped him down to an exoskeleton of garters and restraints, but the more clothes he shed, the less naked he seemed, as if his flesh, freed from its constricting network of laces and stays, could finally embrace him in all its splendor. He stroked his voluptuous stomach and then settled himself, purring, onto the enormous bed. It groaned rapturously beneath him.
Unseen, Charlotte's bright brown eye flickered in the keyhole, wet with pity and desire, guttering like a candle.