Part 28 (1/2)

”No. Susanna is more European every day, and she doesn't care for the shrieking elegance of her compatriots. Besides, her father is here, and that makes her feel less American.”

”It is an odd form of filial enthusiasm,” remarked Caesar.

”It doesn't shock me. I almost think it's the rule,” replied Marchmont; ”at home I could see that my brothers and sisters hated one another cordially, and that every member of the family wanted to get away from the others. You two who are so fond of each other are a very rare instance. Is it frequent in Spain that brothers and sisters like one another?”

”Yes, there are instances of it,” answered Caesar, laughing.

Mrs. Marchmont arrived, accompanied by an old man who evidently was her father, and two other men. Susanna was most smart; she greeted Laura and Caesar very affably, and presented her father, Mr. Russell; then she presented an English author, tall, skinny, with blue eyes, a white beard, and hair like a halo; and then a young Englishman from the Emba.s.sy, a very distinguished person named Kennedy, who was a Catholic.

_TEA_

After the introductions they pa.s.sed into the dining-room, which was most impressive. It was an exhibition of very smart women, some of them ideally beautiful, and idle men. All about them resounded a nasal English of the American sort.

Susanna Marchmont served the tea and did the honours to her guests.

They all talked French, excepting Mr. Russell, who once in a long while uttered some categorical monosyllable in his own language.

Mr. Russell was not of the cla.s.sic Yankee type; he looked like a vulgar Englishman. He was a serious man, with a short moustache, grey-headed, with three or four gold teeth.

What to Caesar seemed wonderful in this gentleman was his economy of words. There was not one useless expression in his vocabulary, and not the slightest redundancy; whatever partook of merit, prestige, or n.o.bility was condensed, for him, to the idea of value; whatever partook of arrangement, cleanliness, order, was condensed to the word ”comfort”; so that Mr. Russell, with a very few words, had everything specified.

To Susanna, imbued with her preoccupation in supreme _chic_, her father no doubt did not seem a completely decorative father; but he gave Caesar the impression of a forceful man.

Near them, at a table close by, was a little blond man, with a hooked nose and a scanty imperial, in company with a fat lady. They bowed to Marchmont and his wife.

”That gentleman looks like a Jew,” said Caesar.

”He is,” replied Marchmont, ”that is Senor Pereyra, a rich Jew; of Portuguese origin, I think.”

”How quickly you saw it!” exclaimed Susanna.

”He has that air of a sick goat, so frequent in Jews.”

”His wife has nothing sickly about her, or thin either,” remarked Laura.

”No,” said Caesar; ”his wife represents another Biblical type; one of the fat kine of somebody's dream, which foretold abundance and a good harvest.”

The Englishman, Kennedy, had also little liking for Jews.

”I do not hate a Jew as anti-Christian,” said Caesar; ”but as super-Christian. Nor do I hate the race, but the tendency they have never to be producers, but always middlemen, and because they incarnate so well for our era the love of money, and of joy and pleasure.”

The English author was a great partisan of Jews, and he a.s.serted that they were more distinguished in science and the arts than any other race. The Jewish question was dropped in an instant, when they saw a smart lady come in accompanied by a pale man with a black shock of hair and an uneasy eye.

”That is the Hungarian violinist Kolozsvar,” said Susanna.

”Kolozsvar, Kolozsvar!” they heard everybody saying.

”Is he a great virtuoso?” Caesar asked Kennedy.