“I cannot bear it!” he shouted out aloud.
Then, as if the Devil had changed the scene and raised the curtain on another act, he saw instead the women he had chosen for their attractions and who had held his interest for a short while.
Each one had seemed to have a particular perfection.
Like the paintings he had chosen to hang in the Palace to complement those that were already there, like the jewels he had given in payment for the favours he had received and like the beauty his eyes sought in architecture, the women had been each in her individual way been perfect.
It was ugliness, the King thought, that he disliked more than anything else and he knew that he had inherited his love of beauty, not only from his father, but also from his mother, who with her Hungarian blood had been one
