...of ecstasy

She slowly descended the steps, and with a silent joy that contained not an atom of torment or yearning, I could watch her dipping up and down in the crystalline liquid, watch the small waves agitated by her and amorously playing around her.

Our nihilistic aesthetician is right: A real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a live woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone.

And when she then emerged from the bath, and the silvery drops and the rosy light trickled down her body - I was overwhelmed with mute ecstasy. I wrapped her in linen cloths, drying her magnificent body; and that quiet bliss lingered with me now, when she, placing her one foot upon me as if on a footstool, rested on the cushions in the large velvet mantle. The supple fur lasciviously snuggled around her cold marble body, and her left arm, on which she propped herself like a slumbering swan, remained in the dark sable of the sleeve, while her right hand carelessly played with the whip.

[Venus In Furs, Sascher-Masoch, L. v.]