Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873

Отрывок из книги

My first dinner in the avenue of Ettlingen followed upon the twelve-barreled bath, but was far from being so glacial a refreshment. As I descended, quite pink and glowing, I found eight or ten individuals in the dining-room. They were French and Belgians, and exchanged a lively conversation in half a dozen provincial accents. The servants too talked French in levying on the cook for provisions: for this, as I have since learned, the domestics of my snug little boarding-house were deemed somewhat pretentious by the serving-people of the vicinity, who considered the tongue of Paris a sort of court language, for circulation among aristocrats only, and supposed that even in France the hired folk all talked German. My reception at the cheerful board was as cordial as possible.

Placed opposite me, our young hostess was looking in my direction with an intentness that struck me as singular. My passport was uppermost in my mind. I was not, however, very uneasy, for the reply of Sylvester Berkley would soon arrive and put an official seal upon my standing. It occurred to me, however, that I was a traveler accompanied by no other baggage than a tin box and an umbrella, and introduced by a coachman who had no reason whatever for forming lofty notions of my respectability. The landlady, whom I had scarcely seen on my arrival, was pretty, neat and quick, and an argument suggested itself that seemed adapted to her station and habits. I was base enough to take out my watch, a very fine Poitevin, and make an advertisement of that pledge under pretence of comparing time with the mantel-clock. This precious manoeuvre appeared quite successful.

.....

"Such is the true and authentic story of Bettina," concluded my narrator. "You may see Bettina any day at Ettlingen, a yellow old maid forty years of age. Every Sunday she goes to mass at Durlach, where she employs the rest of the day in tending flowers on a grave, the first grave in the line to the right of the gateway."

I returned to the house with this grim and tender little idyll crooning through my brains. I took my key and bed-candle, and asked the porter if a letter had arrived for me from Sylvester Berkley. Not a line! This silence became inconvenient. Not only did I rely upon Berkley for my passport, the certificate of my character, but likewise for the revictualing of my purse. As I passed the small throne-room of Francine, where she sat vis-à-vis with all her keys and bells, a light, a presence, an amicable little nod informed me that a friend was there for me, and sent a bath of warm and comfortable emotion all over my poor old heart.

.....