Don Riccardo descanted on their beauty and had no words fair enough for one-for her eyes and hair and her legs which he showed to the Prince though she tried to stop him; but then he turned to the other and praised her in equally flattering terms so that she should not feel left in the cold. “All women are beautiful!” he cried. “They are the source of all the sweetness of life! But sweetest of all is the courtesan whose life is dedicated to love and who never plays it false.” His behavior was so idiotic and tasteless that even I, who have always regarded him as the stupidest of vulgarians, would never have believed him capable of such grotesque buffoonery.
They drank a great deal of wine and gradually it took effect. Don Riccardo became sickly sentimental and began to babble of love and recite reams of appalling poetry, mostly love sonnets, to somebody whom he called Laura, so that the women’s eyes filled with tears. He and the Prince lay with their heads on the laps of these trollops who tenderly stroked their hair and sighed sweetly as they listened to Don Riccardo’s flummery. He had chosen the prettier of the two, and I could not avoid seeing the peculiar way in which the Prince looked at him both then and later on during the evening, when the stupid women seemed most bewitched by him and his antics. Women always prefer the silliest and most insignificant men, because they remind them of themselves.
But suddenly he sprang up and declared that now they had had enough of lachrymose lyrics, now they were going to drink and be merry 1 This marked the beginning of an orgy of wine-bibbing and jesting and laughter and indecent gestures and foul stories of a coarseness that I cannot reproduce. When the carousal was at its height the Prince raised his glass and toasted Don Riccardo: “Tomorrow you shall be my standard-bearer in the battle!” The other was delighted at this unexpected honor and his eyes glittered. “I hope it will be dangerous!” he exclaimed, preening himself before the women so that they should see how brave he was. “One never knows, it may well be,” replied the Prince. Don Riccardo seized his hand and kissed it in humble gratitude like a squire before his liege lord. “Beloved Prince, remember what you have promised me in the midst of the festal gaiety.” “Rest assured that I shall not forget it.”
The courtesans found all this Very impressive and looked on with eager eyes, but their first glance was for him who should bear the standard in the battle.
After this interlude they went on with their disgusting orgy and their behavior became more and more offensive and shameless, so that I who was forced to witness it was filled with confusion and nausea. They kissed and hugged each other, with flushed faces, hot and panting with lust. It was indescribably nasty. Despite the women’s pretended resistance, they pulled down their dresses, exposing their naked breasts. The prettier had rose pink nipples with a mole beside one of them, not very big, but it was impossible to avoid noticing it. When I came forward to serve her I was nauseated by the smell of her body which was just the same as that of the Princess when she lies in bed in the morning, though I have never been so close to her. When Don Riccardo took hold of her breasts I felt such a distaste and hatred for the lecher that I would fain have throttled him with my bare hands or killed him with my dagger so as to drain the prurient blood from his body and stop him from ever embracing a woman again. I stood there filled with sick loathing and pondered over the offensive-ness of mankind. May all these beings end up in the fires of hell!
At last Don Riccardo had one of his idiotic ideas. He had been most with the prettier, for she would not leave him in peace, but now he proposed that he and the Prince throw dice to see which one should have her. Everybody approved of this, including the Prince, and the woman shrieked with laughter and wriggled her naked torso in her delight at being the object of such a duel. I found her disgusting and I could not understand how they could consider her beautiful and desirable, or how they could compete for such a repulsive prize. She was blonde and fair-skinned with great blue eyes and quantities of hair in her armpits. I found her loathsome. I have never known why it is people have hair under their arms, and I feel squeamish when I see it, particularly if it is moist. We dwarfs have nothing like that and we find it nasty and offensive. If I had hair there or on any part of my body except my head, where hair is meant to grow, I should feel intensely ashamed.
I had to fetch the dice, and the Prince threw first and turned up a six and a one. She was to go to the one who first reached fifty. They went on turn and about, and the women hung over them, deeply interested in the result and commenting on the fluctuations of the game with shameless remarks, squeals and guffaws. The Prince won, and they all arose, screeching and laughing at each other.
Immediately afterward they flung themselves upon the women, each on his chosen one, dragged off their clothes and began to behave in such an incredibly abhorrent fashion that I could bear it no longer, but rushed out of the tent and had scarcely passed its door before I vomited the soul out of my body. I was cold all over and my skin felt granulated like that of a plucked chicken. Shaking violently, I huddled down in the hay between the cook and the horrible groom who stinks of horses and always kicks me in the morning when he gets up. I don’t know why; he says that he likes kicking me just then.
I cannot understand the love that human beings feel for each other. It merely revolts me. All that I have witnessed this evening has revolted me.
It may be because I am another kind of being, subtler, more sensitive, and therefore I react against many things which do not appear to affect them. I do not know. I have no experience of what they call love, nor do I wish to try it. Once they offered me a female dwarf, a lovely woman with small penetrating eyes like mine and a withered face and body like ancient parchment, exactly as a human being should be. But she aroused no passion in me, though I could see that there was nothing repellent about her beauty, that it was not like theirs. It may have been because it was the Princess who offered her, wanting to bring us together like any old procuress, for she hoped that we would produce a dwarf child for her, and at that moment she had set her heart on having one. It was before Angelica was born and she wanted something to play with. She said that she thought a dwarf child would be so amusing. But I had no wish to pander to her whims, nor would I degrade our tribe by falling in with her shameful proposal.
Incidentally, she was wrong when she thought we would give her a child. We dwarfs beget no young, we are sterile by virtue of our own nature. We have nothing to do with the perpetuation of life; we do not even desire it. We have no need to be fertile, for the human race itself produces its own dwarfs, of that one may be sure. We let ourselves be born of these haughty creatures, with the same pangs as they. Our race is perpetuated through them, and thus and thus only can we enter this world. That is the inner reason for our sterility. We belong to that race and at the same time we stand outside it. We are guests on a visit. Ancient wizened guests on a visit which has lasted for thousands of years.
But my reflections have carried me away from the subject of my present narrative. I did not mean to write about all that.
Sure enough, next morning Don Riccardo bore the princely standard. There has been a great deal of talk about the events connected with this and certain circumstances in the battle, but, of course, I have my own opinion about all this and what there may be behind it. They say that by an unaccountable order the Prince unnecessarily jeopardized Don Riccardo’s life, that at one time it was taken for granted that he must be killed when, with his comparatively small troop of horses, he was forced into an extremely perilous situation. And they say that he fought with the utmost gallantry, though I do not believe a word of that. He is said to have assembled his few remaining men around the standard and defended it against the superior enemy forces. But when the fighting took such a dangerous turn the Prince rushed there, cither because he could not resist the lure of such hazardous play, or for some other reason. Followed by a handful of men he plunged into the midst of the enemy surrounding Don Riccardo as though to succor him, when suddenly his horse received a pike in the ribs and fell to the ground. The Prince was thrown and lay there in the thick of the melee. This inspired Don Riccardo to such frenzy and “courage” that he and his men broke their way out of the ring and, with the strength of despair and the aid of the Prince’s horsemen, contrived to hold the adversary in check until they were relieved by fresh troops. By then Don Riccardo was covered with wounds. It is insinuated that he must have realized that the Prince wanted him to be killed, but nevertheless he acted as he did and saved his master’s life.