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| Photo by Craig Sargent |
Orlando,
it is true, was none of those who tread lightly the corantoe and lavolta; he
was clumsy and a little absentminded. He much preferred the plain dances of his
own country, which he danced as a child to these fantastic foreign measures. He
had indeed just brought his feet together about six in the evening of the seventh of January at the
finish of some such quadrille or minuet when he beheld, coming from the
pavilion of the Muscovite Embassy, a figure, which, whether boy's or woman's,
for the loose tunic and trousers of the Russian fashion served to disguise the sex,
filled him with the highest curiosity. The person, whatever the name or sex,
was about middle height, very slenderly fashioned, and dressed entirely in
oyster-coloured velvet, trimmed with some unfamiliar greenish-coloured fur. But
these details were obscured by the extraordinary seductiveness which issued
from the whole person. Images, metaphors of the most extreme and extravagant
twined and twisted in his mind. He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive
tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds whether
he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.
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