Part 23 (2/2)
”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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s vase, and the pieces fell on his head.
”Have you hurt yourself?” people asked him.
”No,” said Caesar, rea.s.suringly, but aside; ”his head is protected.”
_CHIROMANTIC INTERLUDE_
After this cornucopia number, there was a series of other games and amus.e.m.e.nts, which required a hand-gla.s.s, 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 Caesar 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 Caesar, and he said whatsoever his imagination suggested, foolishness, absurdities, impertinences; a little of everything.
When anybody was a bit puzzled at Caesar's words, he said:
”Don't pay any attention to it; these are absurdities.”
Afterwards Mlle. Cadet told Caesar that she was going to cast his horoscope. ”Good! Out with it.”
The governess, who was clever, studied Caesar'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.”
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