Norse Tales and Sketches | Page 2

If he had only been fair-haired, she would at once have set him down as an Englishman, for he talked like one. But he had dark hair, a thick black moustache, and a nice little figure. His fingers were remarkably long, and he had a peculiar way of trifling with his bread and playing with his dessert-fork.
'He is a musician,' whispered Mademoiselle Ad��le to her stout friend.
'Ah!' replied Monsieur Anatole. 'I am afraid I have eaten too many truffles.'
Mademoiselle Ad��le whispered in his ear some words of good counsel, upon which he laughed and looked very affectionate.
However, she could not relinquish her hold of the interesting foreigner. After she had coaxed him to drink several glasses of champagne, he became livelier, and talked more.
'Ah!' cried she suddenly; 'I hear it in your speech. You are an Englishman!'
The stranger grew quite red in the face, and answered quickly, 'No, madame.'
Mademoiselle Ad��le laughed. 'I beg your pardon. I know that Americans feel angry when they are taken for Englishmen.'
'Neither am I an American,' replied the stranger.
This was too much for Mademoiselle Ad��le. She bent over her plate and looked sulky, for she saw that Mademoiselle Louison opposite was enjoying her defeat.
The foreign gentleman understood the situation, and added, half aloud: 'I am an Irishman, madame.'
'Ah!' said Mademoiselle Ad��le, with a grateful smile, for she was easily reconciled.
'Anatole! Irishman--what is that?' she asked in a whisper.
'The poor of England,' he whispered back.
'Indeed!'
Ad��le elevated her eyebrows, and cast a shrinking, timid glance at the stranger. She had suddenly lost much of her interest in him.
De Silvis's dinners were excellent. The party had sat long at table, and when Monsieur Anatole thought of the oysters with which the feast had begun, they appeared to him like a beautiful dream. On the contrary, he had a somewhat too lively recollection of the truffles.
Dinner was over; hands were reaching out for glasses, or trifling with fruit or biscuits.
That sentimental blonde, Mademoiselle Louison, fell into meditation over a grape that she had dropped in her champagne glass. Tiny bright air-bubbles gathered all round the coating of the fruit, and when it was quite covered with these shining white pearls, they lifted the heavy grape up through the wine to the surface.
'Look!' said Mademoiselle Louison, turning her large, swimming eyes upon the journalist, 'look, white angels are bearing a sinner to heaven!'
'Ah! charmant, mademoiselle! What a sublime thought!' exclaimed the journalist, enraptured.
Mademoiselle Louison's sublime thought passed round the table, and was much admired. Only the frivolous Ad��le whispered to her obese admirer, 'It would take a good many angels to bear you, Anatole.'
Meanwhile the journalist seized the opportunity; he knew how to rivet the general attention. Besides, he was glad to escape from a tiresome political controversy with the German; and, as he wore a red ribbon and affected the superior journalistic tone, everybody listened to him.
He explained how small forces, when united, can lift great burdens; and then he entered upon the topic of the day--the magnificent collections made by the press for the sufferers by the floods in Spain, and for the poor of Paris. Concerning this he had much to relate, and every moment he said 'we,' alluding to the press. He talked himself quite warm about 'these millions, that we, with such great self-sacrifice, have raised.'
But each of the others had his own story to tell. Numberless little touches of nobility--all savouring of self-denial--came to light from amidst these days of luxury and pleasure.
Mademoiselle Louison's best friend--an insignificant little lady who sat at the foot of the table--told, in spite, of Louison's protest, how the latter had taken three poor seamstresses up to her own rooms, and had them sew the whole of the night before the _f��te_ in the hippodrome. She had given the poor girls coffee and food, besides payment.
Mademoiselle Louison suddenly became an important personage at table, and the journalist began to show her marked attention.
The many pretty instances of philanthropy, and Louison's swimming eyes, put the whole company into a quiet, tranquil, benevolent frame of mind, eminently in keeping with the weariness induced by the exertions of the feast. And this comfortable feeling rose yet a few degrees higher after the guests were settled in soft easy-chairs in the cool drawing-room.
There was no other light than the fire in the grate. Its red glimmer crept over the English carpet and up the gold borders in the tapestry; it shone upon a gilt picture-frame, on the piano that stood opposite, and, here and there, on a face further away in the gloom. Nothing else was visible except the red ends of cigars and cigarettes.
The conversation died away. The silence was broken only by an occasional whisper or the sound of a coffee-cup being put aside; each seemed disposed to enjoy, undisturbed, his