Reine de la nuit (feuilleton)

Queen of the Night / VII (part 2)

"She had Pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries, and their light, as it came and went, and came again, was partially hampered by their oppressive lids and lashes; and of these the under lid was much fuller than it usually is with English women. This enabled her to indulge in reverie without seeming to do so: she might have been believed capable of sleeping without closing them up. Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia's soul to be flame-like. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.

The mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver than to kiss. Some might have added, less to kiss than to cul. Viewed sideways, the closing-line of her lips formed, with almost geometric precision, the curve so well known in the art of design as the cima-recta, or ogee. The sight of such a flexible bend as that on a grim Egdon was quite an apparition. It was felt at once that that mouth did not come from Sleswig with a band of Saxon pirates whose lips met like the two halves of a muffin. One had fancied that such lip-curves were mostly lurking underground in the South as fragments of forgoten marbles. So fine were the lines of her lips that, though full, each corner of her mouth was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. This keenness of corner was only blunted when she was given over the sudden fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment which she knew too well for her years."

Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Natives, 1878

[image - Gilles Berquet, couverture du livre nouveau "Le muscle du sommeil"]