XXIV

I HAVE DISCOVERED the secret of that style. The line of that architecture went on repeating for so long in its insistent volubility the same incomprehensible cliché that I came to understand that insidious cypher, that solicitous eye, that ticklish mystiphication. It was a too transparent masquerade indeed — in those elaborate, fluid lines, in their exaggerated refinement, there was some too pungent paprika, some surfeit of hot piquancy. There was something nimble, fervent, and too blatantly gesticulating — in a word, something coloured, colonial, and casting a knowing look... There it is. That style had something stupendously repulsive at the bottom of it. It was licentious; it was ingenious; it was tropical, and stupendously cynical.