The Magic Mountain Part 40

"Pray!" said Peeperkorn, stretching out his hand with that gesture which held back the flow of words. Having thus made a free s.p.a.ce for what he was about to say, "Let me," he went on, "let me repeat, that I am far from reproaching this Italian gentleman with any actual offence against the rules of chivalry. I levelled this reproach against no one-no one. But it occurs to me-Understand me, young man, I am gratified, very. Your presence rejoices my heart. At the same time, I say to myself: your acquaintance with Madame is older than ours. You were a companion of her earlier sojourn up here. And she is a woman of the rarest charms, and I am only an ailing old man. How does it happen-to-day, as I was unable to accompany her, she goes down unattended to the village to make purchases-there is no harm in that, none at all. But doubtless-am I then to ascribe it to the-what was it you said?-the pedagogic principles of Signor Settembrini that you-I beg you not to misunderstand me-" "Not at all, Mynheer Peeperkorn. Absolutely not. Not in the least. I act independently. On the contrary, Herr Settembrini has even taken occasion to-I regret to see that you have spilled wine on your sheets, Mynheer Peeperkorn. May I not-we usually put salt on while the spots are fresh-" "It does not matter," said Peeperkorn, fixing his guest with his glance.

Hans Castorp changed colour. He said, with a hollow smile: "Everything up here is out of the ordinary. The spirit of the place, if I may put it so, is not conventional. The sufferer, whether man or woman, is privileged. The laws of chivalry are thus forced rather into the background. You are for the moment indisposed, Mynheer Peeperkorn, an acute indisposition. Your companion is is relatively well. I think I do as Madame would wish in representing her here beside you, in her absence-in so far as there can be any talk of representing her, ha ha!-instead of representing you with her and offering to attend her into the village. How indeed should I come to be playing the cavalier to Madame? I have no t.i.tle to the position, no mandate, and I have, I must admit, a strong sense of mine and thine. In short, I find my position is correct, in face of the general situation, and also the very genuine feelings I entertain for you, Mynheer Peeperkorn. You asked me, I believe, a question, and I think what I have said should be a satisfactory answer to it." relatively well. I think I do as Madame would wish in representing her here beside you, in her absence-in so far as there can be any talk of representing her, ha ha!-instead of representing you with her and offering to attend her into the village. How indeed should I come to be playing the cavalier to Madame? I have no t.i.tle to the position, no mandate, and I have, I must admit, a strong sense of mine and thine. In short, I find my position is correct, in face of the general situation, and also the very genuine feelings I entertain for you, Mynheer Peeperkorn. You asked me, I believe, a question, and I think what I have said should be a satisfactory answer to it."

"A very amiable answer," Peeperkorn responded. "I listen with involuntary pleasure, young man, to your fluent little phrases. Your tongue runs on, it springs over stock and stone, and rounds off all the sharp corners. But satisfactory-no. Your answer does not quite satisfy me-you must forgive me for disappointing you. Austere, my dear friend-you used the word with reference to some of my remarks just now. But in yours too I seem to note a certain austerity, they seem a little stiff and forced, and not in harmony with your nature, though I am acquainted with the phenomenon through your bearing in one respect and therefore recognize it now. I mean the formal manner you a.s.sume toward Madame-and toward no one else in our little circle, on our walks and excursions. And of which you owe me an explanation. It is a duty, an obligation. I am not mistaken. I have confirmed my observation too many times, and it is unlikely it has not been remarked by others as well-with the difference that these others may perhaps-or even probably-possess a key which I do not."

Mynheer spoke with uncommon precision and clarity this afternoon, despite the exhaustion consequent upon his fever. There was scarcely a trace of his usual rhapsodic style. He half sat in his bed, his powerful shoulders and splendid head turned toward his guest; one arm was stretched out over the coverlet, with the freckled, sea-captain's hand erect at the end of the woollen sleeve, forming the ring of precision. The lance-tipped fingers were aloft. And his lips formed the words, as precisely, as "plastically," as Herr Settembrini himself could have wished, and rolled the r r in his throat in words like probably and austerity. in his throat in words like probably and austerity.

"You smile," he went on. "You seem to be busy searching the tablets of your memory and finding them blank. But there can be no doubt that you know what I mean. I do not say that you do not sometimes address Madame, or that you do not answer her, as occasion arises. But I repeat, you do so with a definite constraint, an evasiveness, and, in fact, an avoidance of one certain form. One gets the impression that there has been a one-sided wager; it is as though you had eaten a philippina with Madame, and made up that you will not address her with the usual form of address. In short, you never use the third person plural. You never say She She to Madame." "But Mynheer Peeperkorn-how absurd-what sort of philippina would that be?" to Madame." "But Mynheer Peeperkorn-how absurd-what sort of philippina would that be?"

"May I mention the circ.u.mstance-you are surely aware of it yourself-that you have just grown pale to the lips?"

Hans Castorp did not look up. He bent over and busied himself with the red stains on the sheet. "It had to come to that, I suppose," he thought. "It had to come out.- And I suppose I even helped it on myself. I can see that now. Did I really go pale? It may be. For now we've certainly come to grips. What will happen? Shall I keep on lying? It might still go-but I won't. I'll just sit tight a few minutes and look at these blood-stains-I mean wine-stains-on the sheet." They were both silent. The stillness lasted some two or three minutes-and gave evidence how much under such circ.u.mstances these very small units of time can expand.

It was Pieter Peeperkorn who first spoke. "On the evening when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance," he said, beginning in a singsong tone, and letting his voice fall at the end, as though embarked on a long recitative, "we had a little celebration, sat very late eating and drinking and making merry, and then, in an elevated mood, of spirit free and unrestrained, arm in arm we sought our beds. As we parted, here at my door, the idea came to me to ask you to salute Madame on the brow, as a good friend from her former visit up here. You bluntly refused, rejected the idea on the ground that it would be preposterous. You will not deny that the expression itself demanded an explanation-an explanation for which you have remained until now in my debt. Are you willing to absolve yourself of it?"

"Ah, so he noticed that too," Hans Castorp thought, and bent closer over the winestains, one of which he scratched with his middle finger. "The fact is I suppose I wanted him to notice it, or I should not have said it. But what to say now? My heart is pounding. Will there be an exhibition of royal rage? Perhaps I'd best keep an eye on his fist, he may be holding it over me already. Certainly I am in a fine position- between the devil and the deep blue sea, as it were." And suddenly he felt his right wrist grasped by the hand of Peeperkorn.

"Hullo!" he thought. "Why should I be sitting here with my tail between my legs?

Have I done him any injury? Not in the least. Let him talk to the man in Daghestan before he does to me. And after that somebody else, and so on. And then me. And what has he to complain of about me? Nothing, so far. Then why should my heart be pounding like this? It is high time I sit up and look him in the eye-with all due respect to his personality, of course."

He did so. The great man's face was yellow, the eyes pale beneath the forehead's heavy folds, a bitter expression sat on the wounded lips. They looked each other in the eye, the splendid old man and the insignificant young one, and Peeperkorn continued to hold Hans Castorp by the wrist. At last he said, gently: "You were Clavdia's lover when she was here before."

Hans Castorp bowed his head once more but lifted it again straightway, took a deep breath, and began: "Mynheer Peeperkorn! It is in the highest degree repugnant to me to tell you a lie. I am searching for a means of avoiding it, but this is not easy. I should be boasting if I say yes, lying if I say no. Let me explain in what sense this is to be taken. I lived a long time, oh, a very long time in this house with Clavdia-I beg pardon, with the present companion of your travels-before making her acquaintance. Our relations-or, rather, my relation to her was never the social one; I can only say of it that its beginnings are shrouded in darkness. In my thoughts I have never named Clavdia but with the thou-and never in reality either. For on the evening when, casting off certain pedagogic restraints of which we were speaking, I made bold to approach her, upon a pretext furnished me by the long-ago past, it was carnival. It was an evening of masks and freedom, an irresponsible hour, when the thou was in force, and by the power of magic and dreams, somehow had-full sway. And-it was also the eve of Clavdia's departure."

"Full sway," repeated Peeperkorn. "You have put that very-very-well." He released Hans Castorp's hand, and began with his own huge ones to ma.s.sage both sides of his own face, eyes, cheeks, and chin. Then he folded his hands upon the winebespotted sheet, and laid his head on the left shoulder, the one toward his guest, with the effect that his face was lightly turned away.

"I have given you the best answer I could, Mynheer Peeperkorn," Hans Castorp said. "I have tried to say neither too much nor too little. I was concerned to let you see that it is in a way open to us to count that evening-when the thou had full sway, and it was the eve of Clavdia's departure-or not to count it. It was an extraordinary occasion, almost outside the calendar, intercalated, so to speak, a twenty-ninth of February. It would have been only half a lie if I had simply denied the truth of what you said." Peeperkorn made no answer.

"I preferred," Hans Castorp began again, after a pause, "to tell you the truth, rather than run the risk of losing your favour, which, I openly admit, would be a sensible loss to me, I may say a blow, a real blow, comparable to the one I received when Frau Chauchat returned hither as the companion of your travels. I have risked letting this happen, because I have long wished and hoped that there might be understanding between myself and the man for whom I entertained feelings of the most extraordinary respect and reverence. It seemed finer, more 'human' to me-you know that is Clavdia's favourite word, and how she p.r.o.nounces it, in that enchanting, husky drawl of hers-than silence and dissimulation; and in that sense a weight was lifted from my heart when you put your question." No answer.

"One thing more, Mynheer Peeperkorn," Hans Castorp went on. "There was another thing that made me wish to make a clean breast of it to you: and that was the personal experience I had with the irritating effect of uncertainty, being let in for suspicions that could be neither confirmed nor dismissed. You know now who it was-before this present relations.h.i.+p was established which it would be absurd of me not to respect-with whom Clavdia spent-or experienced, or committed-that twenty-ninth of February. It is clear to you now. But for my part I have never been able to know-though of course I realized that anyone in my situation has to reckon with the past-by which I really mean predecessors-and though I also realized that Hofrat Behrens is an amateur portrait-painter, and had, in the course of many sittings, made a capital portrait of her, with a treatment of the skin so very lively and realistic that-between ourselves-it gave me very seriously to think. I have tormented myself no end with that riddle, and still do."

"You still love her?" Peeperkorn asked, without changing his position, his face still turned away. The large room fell more and more into twilight.

"You will pardon me, Mynheer Peeperkorn," answered Hans Castorp, "but my feeling for you, which is one of the highest respect and admiration, will not permit me to speak of my feeling for the present companion of your travels,"

"And does she-" Peeperkorn asked, with lowered voice, "does she still return your feeling?"

"I do not say," answered Hans Castorp, "I do not say that she ever returned it. That is scarcely credible. We were touching upon this subject earlier in the afternoon, when we spoke of the responsive nature of women. There is nothing much about me to fall in love with. I am not built on a grand scale, as you can see. The possibility of-of a twenty-ninth of February could only be ascribed to feminine receptivity on the basis of the man's choice already made. I must say that when i refer to myself as a man, it seems to me a sort of self-advertising and bad taste-but at all events, Clavdia is a woman."

"She was responsive to your feeling," murmured Peeperkorn, with wry lips.

"How much more so to yours," said Hans Castorp. "And in all probability to many another. One has to face that, when-"

"Stop!" Peeperkorn said, still turned away, but with a gesture of the palm toward his interlocutor. "Is it not rather-common-of us to talk about her?"

"I don't feel it so, Mynheer Peeperkorn. I think I can set your mind at rest on that point. These are human topics we are treating of; human in the sense that they have to do with freedom and the spirituel- spirituel-you must pardon me if I use a rather ambiguous terminology, but I needed the expression lately, and made it my own." "Very good, go on," Peeperkorn said in a low voice.

Hans Castorp spoke in a low voice, too, and sat on the edge of his chair by the bed, bent toward the kingly old man, his hands between his knees.

"For she is certainly a most spirituel spirituel being," he said, "and the husband beyond the Caucasus-you know, of course, that she has a husband beyond the Caucasus-gives her her freedom, whether out of stupidity or intelligence I don't know, I don't know the chap. But it is a good thing he does, for it is her illness grants it to her-and whoever falls into our situation will do well to follow his example, and not complain, either of the past or of the future." being," he said, "and the husband beyond the Caucasus-you know, of course, that she has a husband beyond the Caucasus-gives her her freedom, whether out of stupidity or intelligence I don't know, I don't know the chap. But it is a good thing he does, for it is her illness grants it to her-and whoever falls into our situation will do well to follow his example, and not complain, either of the past or of the future."

"You don't complain?" asked Peeperkorn, and turned his face. It seemed ashen in the twilight, the pale, weary eyes stared out beneath the great folds of brow, the large chapped lips stood half open, like the mouth of a tragic mask.

"I hardly thought it was a question of myself," Hans Castorp answered modestly. "What I meant was that you should not complain, nor deprive me of your friends.h.i.+p because of events in the past. That is what concerns me at this hour."

"But aside from that," Peeperkorn said, "I must involuntarily have been the cause of much suffering on your part."

"If you put the question," responded Hans Castorp, "and if I answer yes, my answer must not be taken to mean that I did not know how to value the enormous privilege of knowing you; for that privilege was indissolubly bound up with the suffering." "I thank you, young man, I thank you. I value the courtesy of your little phrases. But, aside from our acquaintance-"

"It is difficult," Hans Castorp said, "to divorce the two; and the idea does not commend itself to me that I should divorce them in order to be free to reply in the affirmative to your question. The very fact that it was a personality like you in whose company Clavdia returned could only make more distressing and involved her coming back in the company of anybody whatever. It gave me a quarter of an hour, I a.s.sure you, and still does, that I do not deny; I have purposely kept as much as I could to the positive element, that is my sincere feeling of honour and reverence for you, Mynheer Peeperkorn-in which there mingled a spice of malice against your mistress; for women are never at ease when their lovers come to terms."

"True enough," Peeperkorn said, and ran his hand over mouth and chin to conceal a smile, as though he were afraid Madame Chauchat might see it. Hans Castorp too smiled discreetly-and then they both nodded, in mutual understanding.

"This little revenge," went on Hans Castorp, "was granted me at the end, because, so far as I personally am concerned, I have a quarrel after all, not with Clavdia, not with you, Mynheer Peeperkorn, but with my lot in general, my destiny. I will try to tell you about it, in so far as I can, now that I am secure in the honour of your confidence, and in this altogether exceptional and extraordinary twilight hour." "Pray do so," said Peeperkorn, courteously, and Hans Castorp went on.

"I have been up here a long time, Mynheer Peeperkorn, years. How long I hardly know myself, but it has been years of my life. My cousin, to visit whom I came up, in the first instance, was a soldier, an upright and honourable soul, but that was no help to him-he died, and left me, and I remained here alone. I was no soldier, but a civilian, I had a profession, as you may have heard, a good, two-fisted job, which is even supposed to do its share in drawing together the nations of the earth-but somehow it did not draw me. I admit this freely; but the reasons for it I cannot describe otherwise than to say that they are veiled in obscurity, the same obscurity that envelops the origin of my feeling for Madame your mistress-I call her that expressly to show that I am not thinking of undermining the situation as it exists-my feeling for Clavdia Chauchat, and my intimate sense of her being, which I have had since the first moment her eyes met mine and bewitched me, enchanted me, you understand, beyond all reason. For love of her, in defiance of Herr Settembrini, I declared myself for the principle of unreason, the spirituel principle of disease, under whose aegis I had already, in reality, stood for a long time back; and I remained up here, I no longer know precisely how long. I have forgotten, broken with, everything, my relatives, my calling, all my ideas of life. When Clavdia went away, I waited here for her return, so that now I am wholly lost to life down below, and dead in the eyes of my friends. That is what I meant when I spoke of my destiny, and said there might be some justice in a complaint over my present state. I have read a story-no, I saw it in the theatre: a good-natured youth, a soldier like my cousin, who comes to know a charming gipsy- charming she was, with a flower behind her ear, a wild and fatal creature, who so bewitches him that he goes off altogether, sacrifices everything to her, deserts the colours, joins the smugglers, dishonours himself in every way. Well, when he has got so far, she for her part has had enough of him, and takes up with a matador, a forceful personality with a magnificent baritone voice. The end of it all is that the little soldier, white as a sheet, s.h.i.+rt open at the throat, stabs his mistress with his knife in front of the circus-which, after all, she brought upon herself. It is rather a pointless story after all: how did I come to think of it?" principle of disease, under whose aegis I had already, in reality, stood for a long time back; and I remained up here, I no longer know precisely how long. I have forgotten, broken with, everything, my relatives, my calling, all my ideas of life. When Clavdia went away, I waited here for her return, so that now I am wholly lost to life down below, and dead in the eyes of my friends. That is what I meant when I spoke of my destiny, and said there might be some justice in a complaint over my present state. I have read a story-no, I saw it in the theatre: a good-natured youth, a soldier like my cousin, who comes to know a charming gipsy- charming she was, with a flower behind her ear, a wild and fatal creature, who so bewitches him that he goes off altogether, sacrifices everything to her, deserts the colours, joins the smugglers, dishonours himself in every way. Well, when he has got so far, she for her part has had enough of him, and takes up with a matador, a forceful personality with a magnificent baritone voice. The end of it all is that the little soldier, white as a sheet, s.h.i.+rt open at the throat, stabs his mistress with his knife in front of the circus-which, after all, she brought upon herself. It is rather a pointless story after all: how did I come to think of it?"

Mynheer Peeperkorn, at mention of the knife, had s.h.i.+fted his position in the bed, with a quick motion to one side, turning his face toward his guest, and looking him piercingly in the eye. Now he pulled himself to a more comfortable posture, supporting himself on one elbow, and said: "Well, young man, I have listened to you, and I have the whole picture. On my side, let me make you an honourable declaration. Were my hair not white, my limbs not racked with fever, you would see me ready to give you satisfaction, man to man, weapon to weapon, for the injury I unwittingly did you, and that which my companion added to it, for which likewise it is mine to atone. Positively, my friend-you would see me at your service. But as matters lie, you must let me make a different proposal. It is this: I recall an exalted moment, when our acquaintance was very young, when I felt myself pleasantly impressed by your native parts, and stood ready to offer you the brotherly thou; but then perceived that the moment was premature. Very good. I stand again to-day at that moment, I return to it, I declare that the period of probation has come to an end. Young man, we are brothers. Your phrase was that the thou had full sway-very good, let ours likewise have full sway, let us give free rein to brotherly feeling. The satisfaction which age and incapacity prevent me from giving you, I offer in another form, in the form of a brotherly alliance, such as one forms against a third party, against the world, against all and sundry; let us swear it to each other in the name of our feeling for somebody. Take your winegla.s.s, young man, I will use the water-gla.s.s again, it does the crude new wine no shame-" With his trembling hand he filled the gla.s.ses, Hans Castorp hastening to a.s.sist him.

"Take it," repeated Peeperkorn, "take my arm, let us drink so, let us drink it out- positively, young man. Very. Here is my hand. Art thou satisfied?" Art thou satisfied?"

"That is no word for it, of course, Mynheer Peeperkorn," said Hans Castorp. He had not found it easy to drink out the full gla.s.s at a draught; he spilled a little and dried his knee with his handkerchief. "I might better say that I am immensely happy, and can hardly grasp how this has all come about, it is like a dream. What an immense honour for me! How I have deserved it I scarcely know, certainly in no active sense. It is not surprising that at first it seems entirely too bold, and I doubt if I shall be able to fetch it out-especially in Clavdia's presence, who is not quite so likely to be pleased with the new arrangement, all at once."

"Leave that to me," responded Peeperkorn; "the rest is a matter of practice and habit. Go, now, young man. Leave me, my son. The night has fallen, our loved one may return any moment, and a meeting between you just now would perhaps not be quite well-advised."

"Farewell, Mynheer Peeperkorn," Hans Castorp said, and rose. "Yes, it has grown dark. I can imagine Herr Settembrini coming in suddenly and turning on the light, to let reason and convention reign-it is a weakness of his. Good-bye until to-morrow. I leave you, so proud, so joyful, as I could never have dreamed it was possible for me to be. And now you will have at least three good days, and free of fever, and that rejoices me as much as though it were myself. Brother, goodnight!"

Mynheer Peeperkorn (Conclusion) (Conclusion)

A WATERFALL is always an attractive goal for an excursion. We scarcely know how to explain why Hans Castorp, with all his native love of falling water, had never visited the picturesque cascade in the valley of the Fluela. His cousin's strong sense of duty to the service had probably prevented him, during Joachim's time; the latter's purposeful att.i.tude had tended to confine their activities to the close vicinity of the Berghof. But even since that time-if we except the winter excursions on skis-Hans Castorp's relations with the mountain scenery had been extremely conservative, not to say monotonous. The young man found a curious pleasure in the contrast between the limitations of his physical sphere and the broad scope of his mental operations. However, when it was proposed that his little group of seven people should make a driving excursion to the waterfall, he readily a.s.sented.

It was the blissful month of May, oft celebrated in the pleasant little ditties of the flat-land. Up here the air was fresh, the temperature scarcely ingratiating; but at least the snow was gone. It might, indeed, snow again; during the last few days there had been flurries of gigantic flakes, but it did not lie, it only made wet. The winter drifts had wasted away, they were gone, save for vestiges here and there; and the green slopes, the open paths, tempted the spirit to rove.

The group had been less socially occupied of late weeks owing to the illness of its ruling spirit, the prepotent Pieter Peeperkorn. His fever refused to yield to the beneficent working of the climate or the skilled ministrations of so excellent a doctor as Hofrat Behrens. He was obliged to spend much time in bed, not only on the days when the quartan fever held sway, but on others too. There was trouble with his liver and spleen, Behrens told those who tended him; the digestion was not what it should be-in short, the Hofrat did not neglect to point out that the condition seemed to indicate a danger of chronic debility, not to be ignored.

Mynheer Peeperkorn had presided at only one evening festivity in all these weeks; and the group had taken but one short walk. Hans Castorp was rather relieved than otherwise at this state of affairs; for the pledge he had drunk with Clavdia Chauchat's protector made him difficulties, in general conversation, of the same kind he had to deal with in the case of Frau Chauchat herself, namely the avoidance of the formal mode of address-as though, as Peeperkorn said, they had eaten a philippina together. He was fertile in expedients to get round it or simply leave it out; nevertheless, the favour accorded him by Peeperkorn had doubled his present dilemma.

But now the excursion to the waterfall was the order of the day; Peeperkorn himself had arranged it, and felt equal to the effort. It was the third day after the usual attack, and he announced that he wished to take advantage of it. He did not, indeed, appear at the early meals of the day, but took them, in company with Madame Chauchat, in their salon, as they often did of late. But Hans Castorp received word, through the lame concierge, to be ready for a drive an hour after the midday meal, and further, to communicate with Ferge and Wehsal, Settembrini and Naphta, and to engage two landaus for three o'clock.

Accordingly, at this hour they a.s.sembled before the portal of the Berghof-Hans Castorp, Ferge and Wehsal. and awaited the pair from the appartements de luxe; appartements de luxe; whiling the time by holding out lumps of sugar on the palms of their hands, for the horses to nip them up with thick, moist black lips. Their companions appeared with no great delay on the threshold; Peeperkorn's kingly head seemed narrower; he lifted his hat as he stood in a long, rather shabby ulster, by Madame Chauchat's side, and his lips shaped a vague form of greeting to the company in general. Then he descended and shook hands with the three gentlemen, who met him at the foot of the steps. He laid his left hand on Hans Castorp's shoulder, saying: "Well, young man, and how goes it, my son?" "Topping, thanks, I hope it's mutual," responded the young man. whiling the time by holding out lumps of sugar on the palms of their hands, for the horses to nip them up with thick, moist black lips. Their companions appeared with no great delay on the threshold; Peeperkorn's kingly head seemed narrower; he lifted his hat as he stood in a long, rather shabby ulster, by Madame Chauchat's side, and his lips shaped a vague form of greeting to the company in general. Then he descended and shook hands with the three gentlemen, who met him at the foot of the steps. He laid his left hand on Hans Castorp's shoulder, saying: "Well, young man, and how goes it, my son?" "Topping, thanks, I hope it's mutual," responded the young man.

The sun shone, the day was beautiful and bright. But they had done well to don overcoats, driving would be cool. Madame Chauchat too wore a warm belted mantle of some woolly stuff with a pattern of large checks, and a small fur about her shoulders. The rim of her felt hat was turned down at one side by the olive-green veil she wore bound under her chin; an effect so charming that it was actual pain to most of the beholders-Ferge being the only man there not in love with her. To his disinterested state was probably due the temporary advantage he presently enjoyed, of being selected to sit opposite Mynheer and Madame in the first landau, while Hans Castorp mounted with Wehsal into the second, catching as he did so a mocking smile that for a moment visited Frau Chauchat's face. The others would be called for at their lodgings. The Malayan servant joined the party with a capacious basket, from the top of which protruded the necks of two winebottles. He bestowed it under the back seat of the first landau, took his place by the coachman on the box and folded his arms; the horses started up, and the carriages, with the brakes against their wheels, drove down the drive.

Wehsal had seen Frau Chauchat's smile, and expressed himself on the subject to his companion, showing his bad teeth as he talked.

"Did you see," he asked, "how she was laughing at you for having to drive alone with me? Yes, yes, a man like me is always fair game. Do you find it so disgusting to have to sit next to me?"