Caesar or Nothing Part 23

_THE WORLD AS A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN_

Carminatti was the first on the floor with his partner, who was the Marchesa Sciacca.

The Maltese lady danced with an abandon and a feline languor that imposed respect. One of the San Martino girls, dressed in white, like a vaporous fairy, danced with an officer in a blue uniform, a slim, distinguished person with languid eyes and rosy cheeks, who caused a veritable sensation among the ladies.

The other San Martino, in pale pink, was on a sofa chatting with a man of the cut-throat type, of jaundiced complexion, with bright eyes and a moustache so long as almost to touch his eyebrows.

"He is a Sicilian," Mlle. Cadet told Caesar; "behind us here they are saying rather curious things about the two of them."

The Countess Brenda's daughter was magnificent, with her milk-white skin, and her arms visible through gauze. Despite her beauty she didn't count many admirers; she was too insipid, and the majority of the young men turned with greater enthusiasm to the married women and to those of a very provocative type.

Mlle. de Sandoval, the most sought after of all, didn't wish to dance.

"My daughter is really very stiff," Mme. Dawson remarked. "Spanish women are like that."

"Yes, they often are," said Caesar.

Among all these Italians, who were rather theatrical and ridiculous, insincere and exaggerated, but who had great pliancy and great agility in their movements and their expression, there was one German family, consisting of several persons: a married couple with sons and daughters who seemed to be all made from one piece, cut from the same block. While the rest were busy with the little incidents of the ball, they were talking about the Baths of Caracalla, the aqueducts, the Colosseum. The father, the mother, and the children repeated their lesson in Roman archeology, which they had learned splendidly.

"What very absurd people they are," murmured Caesar, watching them.

"Why?" said Mlle. de Sandoval.

"It appeals to these Germans as their duty to make one parcel of everything artistic there is in a country and swallow it whole; which seems to an ignoramus like me, a stupid piece of pretentiousness. The French, on the contrary, are on more solid ground; they don't understand anything that is not French, and they travel to have the pleasure of saying that Paris is the finest thing on earth."

"It's great luck to be so perfect as you are," retorted Mlle. de Sandoval, violently, "you can see other people's faults so clearly."

"You mistake," replied Caesar, coldly, "I do not rely on my own good qualities to enable me to speak badly of others."

"Then what do you rely on?"

"On my defects."

"Ah, have you defects? Do you admit it?"

"I not only admit it, but I take pride in having them."

Mlle. de Sandoval turned her head away contemptuously; the twist Caesar gave to her questions appeared to irritate her.

"Mlle. de Sandoval doesn't like me much," said Caesar to Mlle. Cadet.

"No? She generally says nice things about you."

"Perhaps my clothes appeal to her, or the way I tie my cravat; but my ideas displease her."

"Because you say such severe things."

"Why do you say that at this moment? Because I spoke disparagingly of those Germans? Are they attractive to you?"

"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."