Invitation to a Beheading

by Vladimir Nabokov

only he was sorry for the downy back where the fuzz had rubbed off leaving a bald spot, as shiny as a chestnut – but the great dark wings, with their ashen edges and perpetually open eyes, were inviolable – the forewings, lowered, slightly lapped over the hind ones, and this drooping attitude might have been one of somnolent fragility, were it not for the monolithic straightness of the upper margins and the perfect symmetry of all the diverging lines – and this was so enchanting that Cincinnatus, unable to restrain himself, stroked with his fingertip the hoary ridge near the base of the right wing, then the ridge of the left one (what gentle firmness! what unyielding gentleness!);