She took her bath, breakfasted on a cup of chocolate, glanced over her part, read the Countess' letter a dozen times, grew excited over it, dined on some consomme, a couple of stewed truffles and four crawfish a la Bordelaise.
Then she went to the theatre in a state of great excitement.
The handsome young man (or rather the Countess) was in his box, and had a large bouquet on a chair close by.
At the fourth act in the course of a pathetic scene, the Countess threw the bouquet.
Florence picked it up, looked for the note inside, and read it without taking time to return to her box.
The note ran thus:
"Have I obtained your pardon? My impatience is such that I have come in person to seek for an answer. If you have forgiven me, place one of the flowers of my bouquet in your hair. In this case I shall be the most tender of lovers, the most happy of women; and I shall wait for you at the stage door with my carriage, for I hope
that instead of going home sadly alone, you will do me the pleasure of supping at my house. Odette."
Florence, without a moment's reflection, plucked a red camellia from the bouquet, put it in her hair, and returned to the stage.
Odette almost threw herself out of the box to applaud, and Florence managed to kiss her hand to her.
Half an hour later, the Countess' carriage, with drawn blinds, was stationed in the rue de Bondy.
Florence hastily got rid of her rouge and stage ornaments, put on a Caucasian dressing gown, and rushed out of the theatre.
The black groom opened the door of the carriage and resumed his place on the box, the coachman put his horses to a rapid trot.
The Countess took Florence in her arms. But the reader is already acquainted with the latter's views concerning her own dignity. Instead of accepting the place which the Countess had provided for her in her arms and on her knees, she seized the Countess in her vigorous grasp, lifted her like a child, and with one movement of her strong arm, like a wrestler who lays low his adversary, she placed Odette across her knees, pressing her lips to hers, put her tongue in her mouth, and her hand between her thighs.
"Surrender, my handsome cavalier, rescue or no rescue!" said Florence, laughing.
"I surrender!" said the Countess, "and I only ask one thing. I do not wish to be rescued, I wish to succumb and die by your hand."
"Then die!" said Florence, with a kind of fury.
Indeed, five minutes later, the Countess, almost in a swoon murmured:
"Oh, dear Florence, how sweet it is to expire in your arms! I die… I die… I die…"
She heaved the last sigh just as the carriage stopped at No…
The two women went up leaning on one another and quite panting with their exertions.
The Countess had the key of her apartments. She opened the door and closed it after them. They crossed the ante-chamber, which was lighted up by a Chinese lantern. Thence they entered the bedroom, which received the light from a lamp of rose-coloured Bohemian glass, and at last the Countess opened the door of a dining room, with a table ready served.
"Dear love," said she "by your leave we will be our own attendants. I should be glad to keep on my gentleman's attire in order to wait upon you, but it would be inconvenient. I will therefore lay aside that horrid masculine dress, and appear in my war harness. Here is the dressing room. I believe it has every convenience, and that you will find all that is necessary."
We have already been introduced to the dressing room of the Countess. It was the very same to which she had taken Violette. A slab of white marble bore bottles of the finest scents from Dubues, Laboullee and Guerlain.
Five minutes after, Odette joined her friend there.
She was nude; at least very nearly so, for she had kept on her rose-coloured silk stockings, blue velvet garters, and slippers of the same material and colour.
It goes without saying that the whole place was heated by a well-regulated warming apparatus.
"You must excuse my dress," said the Countess, laughingly, "but I wish to make a toilette which you rendered necessary, and ask you what scent you prefer."
"Can I make my own choice?" said Florence.
"Please yourself," replied the Countess.
"Well, I perceive there a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. What say you?"
That is not my business," said the Countess. "Let your choice be guided by your own taste."
Florence poured out the contents of an immense water bottle into a charming bidet of Sevres porcelain, mixed a fourth part of the bottle of eau-de-Cologne with it, and proceeded to the Countess' toilette.
"Well," asked the latter, laughing, "what are you doing?"
"I am looking at you, my beautiful mistress, and I admire you!"
"So much the better for you, since I am yours, all in all."
"What marvellous hair! What teeth! What a neck! Oh, let me kiss those pretty nipples. You will think I am hideous, I am sure. I shall never dare to undress in your presence. What a satin-like skin! I shall look like a Negress! And all this beautiful fiery-coloured hair! How marvellous! I shall look like a sweep in comparison."
"You are joking; but do not make me wait. If my hair is the colour of fire, it is because the house is on fire! Now, you must put it out."
The Countess bent forward and her lips met those of Florence, whom she clasped in her arms, then, suddenly rising and resting both hands on her shoulders, she brought her streaming and perfumed body on a level with her lips.
Florence at once pressed her lips to that second mouth, more perfumed still than the other, and which presented itself so unexpectedly; then advancing on her knees while the Countess walked backwards, she pushed the latter to a couch where she fell back, like one of the gladiators of old, with all the gracefulness required in such circumstances.
However little the Countess was used to playing a passive part in encounters of this description, she quickly understood that the dark complexioned and thin woman was endowed with a power of manhood superior to that which she herself possessed. She surrendered in this instance with the same readiness as before, and as the new agent of pleasure was more active and more complicated than its predecessor, she acknowledged its superiority by motions of her body which could not possibly leave Florence in doubt as to the intensity of the pleasurable sensations which she gave the Countess.
For a few seconds the two beautiful women remained motionless. Everybody knows that, in this peculiar mode of procuring Love's pleasures, the sensations of both giver and recipient are alike.
Florence was the first to recover from her trance. She remained for some few seconds on her knees before the Countess, and her eyes, her countenance, her smile, her arms, which in her exhaustion, hung motionless by her sides, all seemed to bear witness to her delight.
Wholly insensible to beauty in man, because she was almost a man herself, Florence worshipped beauty in women; however, she now felt a little uneasy fearing that her type of beauty might not be altogether to the taste of the Countess, a circumstance which the proud girl would have deemed very humiliating.
Thus, when she had recovered, and when the Countess began to disrobe her, Florence set herself to tremble in all her limbs, like a virgin whose unsullied body is about to be defiled by eyes other than her mother's.
But the Countess was impatient. The delightful emanations from Florence's body got into her head and seemed to intoxicate her.
"Come!" she said with a feverish impatience: "Art thou not a woman? Art thou a flower? So be it; then, instead of drinking I shall inhale. Oh! the beautiful, curious thing!" she exclaimed, when she saw Florence's naked body. "Why, that is like silk, like perfumed silk! What is the meaning of it?"