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“They can’t eat,” Clara explained. “They can’t reach the meat. Naturally, in such contraptions, it’s understandable. After all, it’s not very new. It’s the torture of Tantalus, redoubled by the horror of the Chinese imagination, eh? Would you believe there were such unhappy people in the world?”

Again she cast through the bars a small bit of carcass which, falling on the edge of one of the collars, made it sway slightly. Hollow groans were the answer to this gesture; a fiercer and more desperate hatred lit up the twenty eyeballs at the same time. Instinctively, Clara recoiled: “You see,” she continued in a less assured tone, “it amuses them for me to give them meat. It helps these poor devils pass the time... it provides them with a little illusion. Come along... come along!”

We passed slowly before the ten cages. Women standing before them shouted, or uttered bursts of laughter, or abandoned themselves to impassioned mimicry. I saw a very blond, Russian woman with a cold, limpid glance, hold out to the sufferers a vile greenish mess, which she alternately extended and withdrew on the tip of her parasol. Baring their fangs like mad dogs, with starving expressions which no longer expressed anything human, they tried to snatch the food which always escaped their sticky, slavering mouths. Curious women watched with attentive and joyful faces all the moves of this cruel game.

From Le Jardin des supplices by Octave Mirbeau

Description

“They can’t eat,” Clara explained. “They can’t reach the meat. Naturally, in such contraptions, it’s understandable. After all, it’s not very new. It’s the torture of Tantalus, redoubled by the horror of the Chinese imagination, eh? Would you believe there were such unhappy people in the world?”

Again she cast through the bars a small bit of carcass which, falling on the edge of one of the collars, made it sway slightly. Hollow groans were the answer to this gesture; a fiercer and more desperate hatred lit up the twenty eyeballs at the same time. Instinctively, Clara recoiled: “You see,” she continued in a less assured tone, “it amuses them for me to give them meat. It helps these poor devils pass the time... it provides them with a little illusion. Come along... come along!”

We passed slowly before the ten cages. Women standing before them shouted, or uttered bursts of laughter, or abandoned themselves to impassioned mimicry. I saw a very blond, Russian woman with a cold, limpid glance, hold out to the sufferers a vile greenish mess, which she alternately extended and withdrew on the tip of her parasol. Baring their fangs like mad dogs, with starving expressions which no longer expressed anything human, they tried to snatch the food which always escaped their sticky, slavering mouths. Curious women watched with attentive and joyful faces all the moves of this cruel game.

From Le Jardin des supplices by Octave Mirbeau