lips seemed like warm caskets of perfume, 
whence he exhaled a subtle scent, and every 
time he signed, musk-scented butterflies gat 
light, on their winged way, from the ardour of 
his breath. 
Around his purple tonic was twisted as a 
belt a gleaming serpent, who, with raised 
head, turned languorously toward him eyes 
that were like glowing coals. From this living 
girdle were suspended alternatively phials full 
of deadly liquids, shining knives, and surgical 
instruments. In his right hand he held another 
phial, filled with a luminous red liquid, and 
which bore these strange words: “Drink, this is 
my blood, the perfect cordial.” In the left hand 
he bore a violin, which he used, no doubt, to 
sing his pleasures and his sorrows, and to 
spread the contagion of his folly on the nights 
of the Witches’ Sabbath. 
From his delicate ankles dragged some 
rings of a broken chain of gold and when the 
constraint which this occasioned him made him 
lower his eyes to the ground, he contemplated 
vaingloriously the nails of his feet, brilliant and 
polished like well-worked stones. 
With his inconsolably sad eyes he looked 
upon me, with his eyes whence flowed an in-
sidious intoxication. And he intones these 
words: “If thou wilt, if thou wilt, I will make