Part 9 (2/2)

The last round of the gong sounded and various persons entered the salon. Laura knew the majority of them and introduced them, as they came, to her brother.

_OBSERVATIONS BY CaeSAR_

The waiter appeared at the door, announced that lunch was ready, and they all pa.s.sed into the dining-room.

Laura and her brother were installed at a small table beside the window.

The dining-room, very large and very high, flaunted decorations copied from some palace. They consisted of a tapestry with garlands of flowers, and medallions. In each medallion were the letters S.P.Q.R. and various epicurean phrases of the Romans: ”_Carpe diem. Post mortem nulla voluptas_,” et cetera.

”Beautiful decoration, but very cold,” said Caesar. ”I should prefer rather fewer mottoes and a little more warmth.”

”You are very hard to please,” retorted Laura.

Shortly after getting seated, everybody began to talk from table to table and even from one end of the room to the other. There was none of that cla.s.sic coolness among the people in the hotel which the English have spread everywhere, along with underdone meat and bottled sauces.

Caesar devoted himself for the first few moments to ethnology.

”Even from the people you find here, you can see that there is a great diversity of ethnic type in Italy,” he said to Laura. ”That blond boy and the Misses San Martino are surely of Saxon origin; the waiter, on the other hand, swarthy like that, is a Berber.”

”Because the blond boy and the San Martines are from the North, and the waiter must be Neapolitan or Sicilian.

”Besides, there is still another type: shown by that dark young woman over there, with the melancholy air. She must be a Celtic type. What is obvious is that there is great liveliness in these people, great elegance in their movements. They are like actors giving a good performance.”

Caesar's observations were interrupted by the arrival of a dark, plump woman, who came in from the street, accompanied by her daughter, a blond girl, fat, smiling, and a bit timid.

This lady and Laura bowed with much ceremony.

”Who is she?” asked Caesar in a low tone.

”It is the Countess Brenda,” said Laura.

”Another countess! But are all the women here countesses?”

”Don't talk nonsense.”

At the other end of the dining-room a young Neapolitan with the expression of a Pulcinella and violent gestures, raised his sing-song voice, talking very loud and making everybody laugh.

After lunching, Caesar went out to post some cards, and as it was raining buckets, he took refuge in the arcades of the Piazza Esedra.

When he was tired of walking he returned to the hotel, went to his room, turned on the light, and started to continue his unfinished perusal of Proudhon's book on the speculator.

And while he read, there came from the salon the notes of a Tzigane waltz played on the piano.

_ART, FOR DECEIVED HUSBANDS_

Caesar was writing something on the margin of a page when there came a knock at his door. ”Come in,” said Caesar.

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