Louis Couperus

Ecstasy: a Study of Happiness Louis Couperus

Publisher Marketing: Dolf Van Attema, in the course of an after-dinner stroll, had called on his wife's sister, Cecile van Even, on the Scheveningen Road. He was waiting in her little boudoir, pacing up and down, among the rosewood chairs and the vieux rose moire ottomans, over and over again, with three or four long steps, measuring the width of the tiny room. On an onyx pedestal, at the head of a sofa, burned an onyx lamp, glowing sweetly within its lace shade, a great six-petalled flower of light. Mevrouw was still with the children, putting them to bed, the maid had told him; so he would not be able to see his godson, little Dolf, that evening. He was sorry. He would have liked to go upstairs and romp with Dolf where he lay in his little bed; but he remembered Cecile's request and his promise on an earlier occasion, when a romp of this sort with his uncle had kept the boy awake for hours. So Dolf van Attema waited, smiling at his own obedience, measuring the little boudoir with his steps, the steps of a firmly-built man, short, broad and thick-set, no longer in his first youth, showing symptoms of baldness under his short brown hair, with small blue-grey eyes, kindly and pleasant of glance, and a mouth which was firm and determined, in spite of the smile, in the midst of the ruddy growth of his crisp Teutonic beard.