A little later than the real day, they got up a ball at the hotel in
celebration of the French holiday Micarême.
When Cæsar was asked if he thought of going to the ball, he said no;
but Mlle. de Sandoval warned him that if he didn’t go she would never
speak to him again, and Mme. Dawson and the governess threatened him
with like excommunication.
“But you know, these balls are very amusing,” said Mme. Dawson.
“Do you think so?”
“I do, and so do you.”
“Besides, an observer like you,” added Mlle. Cadet, “can devote himself
to taking notes.”
“And why do you conclude that I am an observer?” asked Cæsar.
“The idea! Because it is evident.”
“And an observer with very evil intentions,” insisted Mlle. de Sandoval.
“You credit me with qualities I haven’t got.”
Cæsar had to accede, and the Dawson ladies and he were the first to
enter the salon and take their seats. In one corner was a glass vase
hung from the ceiling by a pulley.
“What is that?” Mme. Dawson asked a servant.
“It is a glass vase full of bonbons, which you have to break with a pole
with your eyes closed.”
“Ah, yes.”
Since nobody else came in, the Dawson girls and Cæsar wandered about
looking into the cupboards and finding the Marchesa Sciacca’s music and
the Neapolitan’s. They looked out one of the salon windows. It was a
detestable night, raining and hailing; the great drops were bouncing on
the sidewalks of the Piazza Esedra. Water and hail fell mixed together,
and for moments at a time the ground would stay white, as if covered
with a thin coating of pearls.
The fountain in the centre cast up its streams of water, which mingled
with the rain, and the central jet shone in the lays of the arc-lights;
now and again the livid brilliance of lightning illuminated the stone
arches and the rumbling of thunder was heard...
Still nobody else came to the salon. Doubtless the ladies were preparing
their toilets very carefully.
The first to appear, dressed for the ball, were the Marchesa Sciacca and
her husband, accompanied by the inevitable Carminatti.
The Marchesa, with her habitual brutality toward everybody that lived in
the house, bowed with formal coolness to Mme. Dawson, and sat down by
the piano, as far away as possible from the French ladies.
She wore a gown of green silk, with lace and gold ornaments. She was
very décolletée and had a fretful air. Her husband was small and
stooped, with a long moustache and shiny eyes; on his cheek-bones were
the red spots frequent in consumptives, and he spoke in a sharp voice.
“Are you acquainted with the Marquis?” Mme. Dawson asked Cæsar.
“Yes, he is a tiresome busybody,” said Cæsar, “the most boresome fellow
you could find. He stops you in the street to tell you things. The
other day he made me wait a quarter of an hour at the door of a tourist
agency, while he inquired the quickest way of getting to Moscow. ‘Are
you thinking of going there?’ I asked him. ‘No; I just wanted to find
out....’ He is an idiot.”
“God preserve us from your comments. What will you be saying about us?”
exclaimed Mlle. de Sandoval.
The Countess Brenda entered, with her husband, her daughter, and a
friend. She was dressed in black, low in the neck, and wore a collar of
brilliants as big as filberts, which surrounded her bosom with rays of
light and blinding reflections.
Her friend was a young lady of consummate beauty; a brunette with colour
in her skin and features of flawless perfection; with neither the
serious air nor the statuesqueness of a great beauty, and with none
of the negroid tone of most brunettes. When she smiled she showed her
teeth, which were a burst of whiteness. She was rather loaded with
jewels, which gave her the aspect of an ancient goddess.
“You, who find everything wrong,” said Mlle. Cadet to Cæsar, “what have
you to say of that woman? I have been looking at her ever since she came
in, and I don’t find the slightest defect.”
“Nor I. It is a face which gives no indication that the least shadow of
sorrow has ever crossed it. It is beauty as serene as a landscape or as
the sea when calm. Moreover, that very perfection robs it of character.
It seems to be less a human face than a symbol of an apathetic being and
an apathetic beauty.”
“We have found her defect,” said Mlle. Cadet.
After introducing her friend to the ladies and to the young men, who
were all dazzled, the Countess Brenda sat down near Mme. Dawson, in an
antique arm-chair.
She was imposing.
“You look like a queen holding audience,” Mlle. de Sandoval said to her.
“Your beloved is like an actual monument,” Mlle. Cadet murmured
jokingly, aside to Cæsar.
“Yes, I think we ought to station a veteran at the door,” retorted
Cæsar.
“A veteran! No, for mercy’s sake! Poor lady! A warrior in active
service, one on whom all the antipyrine in the world would make no
impression,” Mlle. Cadet replied maliciously.
Cæsar smiled at the allusion.
_SILENO MACARRONI_
Among the people there was one gentlerman that attracted Mlle. Cadet’s
special attention. He was apart from any group, but he knew everybody
that arrived. This gentleman was fat, smiling, smooth-shaven, with a
round, chubby, rosy face and the body of a Silenus. When he spoke
he arched and lowered his eyebrows alternately, rolled his eyes,
gesticulated with his fat, soft hands, and smiled and showed his teeth.
His way of greeting people was splendid.
“Come sta, marchesa?” he would say. “Cavaliere!” “Commendatore!”
“La contessina va bene?” “Oh! Egregio!”
And the good gentleman would spread his arms, and close them, and
look as if he wanted to embrace the whole of humanity to his abdomen,
covered with a white waistcoat.
“Who can that gentleman be?” Mlle. Cadet asked various times.
“That? That is Signor Sileno Macarroni,” said Cæsar, “Commander of the
Order of the Mighty Belly, Knight of the Round Buttocks, and of other
distinguished Orders.”
“He is a singer,” said the Countess Brenda to Mlle. de Sandoval in a low
tone.
“He is a singer,” repeated Mlle. de Sandoval to her governess in a
similar tone.
“Sileno Macarroni is a singer,” said Mlle. Cadet, with equal
mysteriousness, addressing Cæsar.
“But is our friend Macarroni going to sung?” asked Cæsar.
The question was passed from one person to another, and it was
discovered that Macarroni was going to sing. As a matter of fact, the
fat Silenus did sing, and everybody was startled to hear a high tenor
voice issue from within that voluminous human being. The fat Silenus had
the misfortune to sing false in the midst of his bravest trills, and the
poor soul was overcome, despite the applause.
“Poor Macarroni!” said Cæsar, “his high tenor heart must be broken
to bits.” “He is going,” put in Mlle. Cadet. “What a shame!” Sileno
vanished and the pianist began to play waltzes.
_THE WORLD AS A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN_
Carminatti was the first on the floor with his partner, who was the
Marchesa Sciacca.
The Maltese lady danced with an abandon and a feline languor that
imposed respect. One of the San Martino girls, dressed in white, like
a vaporous fairy, danced with an officer in a blue uniform, a slim,
distinguished person with languid eyes and rosy cheeks, who caused a
veritable sensation among the ladies.
The other San Martino, in pale pink, was on a sofa chatting with a man
of the cut-throat type, of jaundiced complexion, with bright eyes and a
moustache so long as almost to touch his eyebrows.
“He is a Sicilian,” Mlle. Cadet told Cæsar; “behind us here they are
saying rather curious things about the two of them.”
The Countess Brenda’s daughter was magnificent, with her milk-white
skin, and her arms visible through gauze. Despite her beauty she didn’t
count many admirers; she was too insipid, and the majority of the young
men turned with greater enthusiasm to the married women and to those of
a very provocative type.
Mlle. de Sandoval, the most sought after of all, didn’t wish to dance.
“My daughter is really very stiff,” Mme. Dawson remarked. “Spanish women
are like that.”
“Yes, they often are,” said Cæsar.
Among all these Italians, who were rather theatrical and ridiculous,
insincere and exaggerated, but who had great pliancy and great agility
in their movements and their expression, there was one German family,
consisting of several persons: a married couple with sons and daughters
who seemed to be all made from one piece, cut from the same block. While
the rest were busy with the little incidents of the ball, they were
talking about the Baths of Caracalla, the aqueducts, the Colosseum. The
father, the mother, and the children repeated their lesson in Roman
archeology, which they had learned splendidly.
“What very absurd people they are,” murmured Cæsar, watching them.
“Why?” said Mlle. de Sandoval.
“It appeals to these Germans as their duty to make one parcel of
everything artistic there is in a country and swallow it whole; which
seems to an ignoramus like me, a stupid piece of pretentiousness. The
French, on the contrary, are on more solid ground; they don’t understand
anything that is not French, and they travel to have the pleasure of
saying that Paris is the finest thing on earth.”
“It’s great luck to be so perfect as you are,” retorted Mlle. de
Sandoval, violently, “you can see other people’s faults so clearly.”
“You mistake,” replied Cæsar, coldly, “I do not rely on my own good
qualities to enable me to speak badly of others.”
“Then what do you rely on?”
“On my defects.”
“Ah, have you defects? Do you admit it?”
“I not only admit it, but I take pride in having them.”
Mlle. de Sandoval turned her head away contemptuously; the twist Cæsar
gave to her questions appeared to irritate her.
“Mlle. de Sandoval doesn’t like me much,” said Cæsar to Mlle. Cadet.
“No? She generally says nice things about you.”
“Perhaps my clothes appeal to her, or the way I tie my cravat; but my
ideas displease her.”
“Because you say such severe things.”
“Why do you say that at this moment? Because I spoke disparagingly of
those Germans? Are they attractive to you?”
“Oh, no! Not at all.”
“They look like hunting dogs.” “But whom do you approve of? The
English?”
“Not the English, either. They are a herd of cattle; sentimental,
ridiculous people who are in ecstatics over their aristocracy and over
their king. Latin peoples are something like cats, they are of the
feline race; a Frenchman is like a fat, well-fed cat; an Italian is like
an old Angora which has kept its beautiful fur; and the Spaniard is like
the cats on a roof, skinny, bare of fur, almost too weak to howl with
despair and hunger.... Then there are the ophidians, the Jews, the
Greeks, the Armenians....”
“Then for you the world is a zoological garden?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
At midnight they tried to break the glass jar of bonbons. They
blindfolded various men, and one by one they made them turn around a
couple of times and then try to break the jar with a stick.
It was the Marquis Sciacca that did break the glass vase, and the pieces
fell on his head.
“Have you hurt yourself?” people asked him.
“No,” said Cæsar, reassuringly, but aside; “his head is protected.”
_CHIROMANTIC INTERLUDE_
After this cornucopia number, there was a series of other games and
amusements, which required a hand-glass, a candle, and a bottle. The
conversation in Mlle. de Sandoval’s group jumped from one thing to
another and finally arrived at palmistry.
Mlle. de Sandoval asked Cæsar if he, as a Spaniard, knew how to tell
fortunes by the hand, and he jokingly replied that he did. Three or
four hands were stretched out toward Cæsar, and he said whatsoever his
imagination suggested, foolishness, absurdities, impertinences; a little
of everything.
When anybody was a bit puzzled at Cæsar’s words, he said:
“Don’t pay any attention to it; these are absurdities.”
Afterwards Mlle. Cadet told Cæsar that she was going to cast his
horoscope. “Good! Out with it.”
The governess, who was clever, studied Cæsar’s hand and expressed
herself in sibylline terms:
“You have something of everything, a little of some things and a great
deal of others; you are not a harmonious individual.”
“No?”
“No. You are very intelligent.”
“Thank you.”
“Let the sibyl talk,” said the Sandoval girl.
“You have a strong sense of logic,” the governess went on.
“That’s possible.”
“You are good and bad! You have much imagination and very little; you
are at the same time very brave and very timid. You have a loving
nature, but it is asleep, and little will-power.”
“Little and... a great deal,” said Cæsar.
“No, little.”
“Do you believe that I have little will-power?”
“I am telling you what your hand says.”
“Look here. My hand’s opinion doesn’t interest me so much as yours,
because you are an intelligent woman. Do you believe I have no
will-power?”
“A sibyl doesn’t discuss her affirmations.”
“Now you are worried about your lack of will-power,” said Mlle. de
Sandoval, mockingly.
“Yes, I am, a bit.”
“Well, I think you have will-power enough,” she retorted; “what you do
lack is a little more amiability.”
“Fortunately for you and for me, you are not so perspicacious in
psychology as this young lady.”
“I don’t expect to earn my living telling fortunes.”
“I don’t believe this young lady expects to, either. You have told me
what I am,” Cæsar pursued; “now tell me what is going to happen to me.”
“Let me look,” said Mlle. Cadet; “close your hand. You will make a
journey.” “Very good! I like that.”
“You will get into a desperate struggle....”
“I like that, too.”
“And you will win, and you will be defeated....”
“I don’t like that so much.”
Mile. Cadet could not give other details. Her sibylline science extended
no further. During this chiromantic interlude, the dancing kept up,
until finally, about three in the morning, the party ended.