Part 18 (1/2)
”Pardon me, my daughter, but I must go on with my work”; and immediately, without a look at his nephew or his niece, he called the secretary, who brought him a portfolio of papers.
Caesar opened the gla.s.s door for Laura to pa.s.s.
”Would you like to see the palace?” Preciozi asked them. ”There are some antique statues, magnificent marbles, and a chapel where Saint Aniceto's body is preserved.”
”Let's leave Saint Aniceto's body for another day,” Caesar replied sardonically.
Laura and Caesar went down the stairway.
”There was no need to come, to behave like that,” she said, upset.
”How so?”
”How so! You behaved like a savage, no more nor less.” ”No, he was the one that behaved like a savage. I bowed to him, and he wasn't willing even to look at me.”
”You made up for it by staring at him as if he had been some curious insect in a cage.”
”It was his fault for not being even barely polite to me.”
”Do you think that a Cardinal is an ordinary person to whom you say: 'h.e.l.lo! How are you? How's business?'”
”I met an English Cabinet Minister in a club once and he was like anybody else.”
”It's not the same thing.”
”Do you believe that perhaps our uncle considers that he fulfils a providential mission, a divine mission?”
”What a question! Of course he does.”
”Then he is a poor idiot. However, it's nothing to me. Our uncle is a stupid fool.”
”You discovered that in such a little while?”
”Yes. Fanatical, vain, fatuous, pleased with himself.... He is of no use to me.”
”Ah, so you thought he would be of some use to you?”
”Why not?”
Her brother's arbitrary manner of taking things irritated and at the same time amused Laura.
She believed that he made it a rule to persist in always doing the contrary to other people.
Laura and her friends of both s.e.xes used to run across one another in museums, out walking in the popular promenades, and at the races. Caesar didn't go to museums, because he said he had no artistic feeling; races didn't interest him either; and when it came to walking, he preferred to wander at random in the streets.
As his memory was not full of historical facts, he experienced no great esthetic or archeological thrills, and no sympathy whatsoever with the various herds of tourists that went about examining old stones.
At night, in the salon, he used to give burlesque descriptions, in his laconic French, of street scenes: the Italian soldiers with c.o.c.k-feathers drooping from a sort of bowler hat, the porters of the Emba.s.sies and great houses, with their c.o.c.ked hats, their blue great-coats, and the staff with a silver k.n.o.b in their hands.
The precise, jocose, biting report of his observations offended Laura and her lady friends.