ILSE: Last Carnival I went for three days and three nights without getting into b

ed, or even out of my clothes. From masquerade ball to caf; noontimes at Bellavis
ta, evenings at the cabaret, nights to another ball! Lena was along, and fatty V
iola. -- The third night, Henry found me. He'd stumbled over my arm. I was lying
senseless in the gutter-snow. -- So then I joined up with him. For two weeks I
never left his lodgings. That was a horrible time! -- Mornings I had to throw on
his Persian dressing-gown, and evenings walk about the room in a black page's c
ostume--white lace at the collar, cuffs, and knees. Every day he'd photograph me
in a new arrangement: one time on the back of the sofa, as Ariadne, another tim
e as Leda, another as Ganymede, and once on all fours as a female Nebuchadnezzar
. And then he would rave about killing--about shooting, suicide, and charcoal fu
mes. Early mornings he'd bring a pistol into bed, load it full of cartridges and
poke it into my breast: one wink, and I'll fire! --Oh, he would have fired, Mor
itz; he would have fired! -- Then he'd stick the thing in his mouth like a beanshooter. Brrr! The bullet would have gone through my spine. Over the bed was a m
irror let into the ceiling. You saw yourself actually hanging down from the sky.
I had the most frightful dreams at night. God, O God! One day when he went to g
et some absynth I threw my cloak on and slipped out into the street. The Carniva
l was over. The police snapped me up. What was I after in men's clothes? -- They
took me to headquarters, and there came Nohl, Fehrendorf, Padinsky, Sphler, Oiko
nomopulos, the whole Priapia, and bailed me out. In a cab they transported me to
Adolar's studio. Ever since I've been true to the gang. Fehrendorf is a monkey,
Nohl is a pig, Boyokevitch an owl, Loison a hyena, Oikonomopulos a camel--but t
hat's why I love them one and all the same, and don't care to take up with anyon
e else, though the world were full of archangels and millionaires!