Olympia derided as sick prostitute with black familiars

In the journal La Fraternité Littéraire, 1865

What verse! What a picture! Olympia awakes, weary from … dreaming. She has had a bad night, that is evident. Insomnia and colic have disturbed her serenity; her color indicates as much. There are two “black messengers”: a cat which has been unfortunately flattened between two railway sleepers; a negress who has nothing about her that “recalls the amourous night” unless it be a bouquet bought at the florist’s on the corner, and paid for by Monsieur Arthur, which tells me a great deal about Olympia. Arthur is certainly in the antechamber waiting.