Explore "The Mask" by Guy De Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was a fancy-dress ball that evening at the Élysée-Montmartre. It was to celebrate Mid-Lent, and the crowd was pouring, like the water rushing over a weir, down the illuminated corridor that led to the dance room. The overpowering clamour of the orchestra, crashing like a storm of music, split walls and roof, spread abroad through the neighbourhood, and roused in the streets, and even in the nearby houses, the irresistible desire to leap, to be warm and amused, that slumbers in the depths of the human animal.
The regular frequenters of the place were arriving from all the four corners of Paris, people of all classes, who were fond of vulgar, roistering amusements that were a little vicious and not a little debauched. There were shop assistants, pimps, prostitutes, prostitutes in every sort of dress, from the common cotton to the finest batiste, wealthy prostitutes, the old wealthy ones, old and covered with diamonds, and the penniless sixteen-year-olds longing to enjoy themselves, to find men, to spend money. Elegants in tailed coats, in search of youthful flesh, deflowered of its primal innocence but still desirable, roved through the overheated crowd, peering, seemingly scenting it out, while the masks appeared absorbed in their desire for amusement. The famous quadrilles had already gathered round their caperings a crowded circle of people. The swaying hedge, the quivering mass of women and men who encircled the four dancers, knotted itself round like a serpent, advancing and withdrawing in time to the swerving movements of the dancers. The two women, whose thighs seemed fastened to their bodies by india-rubber springs, executed the most amazing movements with their legs. They flung them up in the air with such vigour that the limbs seemed to be flying towards the sky, then suddenly, parting them as if they were open to the navel, sliding one in front and the other behind, they touched the ground with the centre of their bodies in a quick wide split, revolting and comical to watch.