The promise of erotic debauchery and elegant iniquity beckons... tabac, dark coffee, piquant cloves, rum soaked pears, candied citron, dark caramel, and star anise bathed in intoxicating swirls of opoponax, labdanum, hashish, benzoin resinoid, vanilla incense, and guaiac wood.
My Paris is a land where twilight days
Merge into violent nights of black and gold;
Where, it may be, the flower of dawn is cold:
Ah, but the gold nights, and the scented ways!
-- Arthur Symons
Art: L'irreparable - Les Fleurs du Mal by Jan Frans de Boever, 1921