Room in the Dragon Volant | Page 5

make out the servants we assisted
today have them to a petit souper, and come back and tell me their
entire history. I have, this moment, seen one of them who knows
nothing, and has communicated it. The other, whose name I forget, is
the unknown nobleman's valet, and knows everything. Him you must
pump. It is, of course, the venerable peer, and not the young lady who
accompanies him, that interests me--you understand? Begone! fly! and
return with all the details I sigh for, and every circumstance that can
possibly interest me."
It was a commission which admirably suited the tastes and spirits of my
worthy St. Clair, to whom, you will have observed, I had accustomed
myself to talk with the peculiar familiarity which the old French
comedy establishes between master and valet.
I am sure he laughed at me in secret; but nothing could be more polite
and deferential.
With several wise looks, nods and shrugs, he withdrew; and looking

down from my window, I saw him with incredible quickness enter the
yard, where I soon lost sight of him among the carriages.

Chapter III
DEATH AND LOVE TOGETHER MATED
When the day drags, when a man is solitary, and in a fever of
impatience and suspense; when the minute hand of his watch travels as
slowly as the hour hand used to do, and the hour hand has lost all
appreciable motion; when he yawns, and beats the devil's tattoo, and
flattens his handsome nose against the window, and whistles tunes he
hates, and, in short, does not know what to do with himself, it is deeply
to be regretted that he cannot make a solemn dinner of three courses
more than once in a day. The laws of matter, to which we are slaves,
deny us that resource.
But in the times I speak of, supper was still a substantial meal, and its
hour was approaching. This was consolatory. Three-quarters of an hour,
however, still interposed. How was I to dispose of that interval?
I had two or three idle books, it is true, as companions-companions; but
there are many moods in which one cannot read. My novel lay with my
rug and walking-stick on the sofa, and I did not care if the heroine and
the hero were both drowned together in the water barrel that I saw in
the inn-yard under my window. I took a turn or two up and down my
room, and sighed, looking at myself in the glass, adjusted my great
white "choker," folded and tied after Brummel, the immortal "Beau,"
put on a buff waist-coat and my blue swallow-tailed coat with gilt
buttons; I deluged my pocket-handkerchief with Eau-de-Cologne (we
had not then the variety of bouquets with which the genius of
perfumery has since blessed us) I arranged my hair, on which I piqued
myself, and which I loved to groom in those days. That dark-brown
chevelure, with a natural curl, is now represented by a few dozen
perfectly white hairs, and its place--a smooth, bald, pink head--knows it
no more. But let us forget these mortifications. It was then rich, thick,

and dark-brown. I was making a very careful toilet. I took my
unexceptionable hat from its case, and placed it lightly on my wise
head, as nearly as memory and practice enabled me to do so, at that
very slight inclination which the immortal person I have mentioned was
wont to give to his. A pair of light French gloves and a rather club-like
knotted walking-stick, such as just then came into vogue for a year or
two again in England, in the phraseology of Sir Walter Scott's
romances "completed my equipment."
All this attention to effect, preparatory to a mere lounge in the yard, or
on the steps of the Belle Étoile, was a simple act of devotion to the
wonderful eyes which I had that evening beheld for the first time, and
never, never could forget! In plain terms, it was all done in the vague,
very vague hope that those eyes might behold the unexceptionable
get-up of a melancholy slave, and retain the image, not altogether
without secret approbation.
As I completed my preparations the light failed me; the last level streak
of sunlight disappeared, and a fading twilight only remained. I sighed
in unison with the pensive hour, and threw open the window, intending
to look out for a moment before going downstairs. I perceived instantly
that the window underneath mine was also open, for I heard two voices
in conversation, although I could not distinguish what they were
saying.
The male voice was peculiar; it was, as I told you, reedy and nasal. I
knew it, of course, instantly. The answering voice spoke in those sweet
tones which I recognized only