The evening goes off with a hitch, and it’s time for the final course. Cora beams with pride as she entreats her guests to dig in. She then disappears from the dining room, only to return a few moments later, naked and splayed out on an enormous sliver platter that has been hoisted onto the shoulders of four men. She has garnished herself with parsley.
“Though they have the same origin, the same appearance and the same prejudices as women of society, they do not belong in it: they constitute the demimonde or “half-world”, a veritable floating island on the ocean of Paris, which calls to itself, welcomes, accepts, everything that falls from the mainland — not to mention those who have been shipwrecked or who come from God knows where.”