Caesar or Nothing Part 21

"Don't pay any attention," said Caesar, quite aloud; "these middle-cla.s.s people are often very rude."

Mlle. de Sandoval gave Caesar a look half startled and half reproving; and he explained, smiling:

"I was telling Mlle. Cadet a funny story."

Mme. Dawson and her daughters soon became friends with the most distinguished persons in the hotel; only the Marchesa Sciacca, the Maltese, avoided them as if they inspired her with profound contempt.

In a few days the Countess Brenda and Caesar's friends.h.i.+p pa.s.sed beyond the bonds of friends.h.i.+p; but in the course of time it cooled off again.

_INFLUENCE OF THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH'S AXIS ON WHAT IS CALLED LOVE_

One evening, when the Countess Brenda's daughter had left Rome to go with her father to a villa they owned in the North, the Countess and Caesar had a long conversation in the salon. They were alone; a great tenor was singing at the Costanzi, and the whole hotel was at the theatre. The Countess chatted with Caesar, she reclining in a chaise longue, and he seated in a low chair. That evening the Countess was feeling in a provocative humour, and she made fun of Caesar's mode of life and his ideas, not with the phrases and the manners of a great lady, but with the boldness and spice of a woman of the people.

The angle that the earth's axis makes with the trajectory of the ecliptic, and which produces those absurd phenomena that we Spaniards call seasons, determined at that period the arrival of spring, and spring had no doubt shaken the Countess Brenda's nerves.

Spring gave cooling inflexions to the lady's voice and made her express herself with warmth and with a shamelessly libertine air.

No doubt the core of her personality was joyful, provoking, and somewhat licentious.

Her eyes flashed, and on her lips there was a sensual expression of challenge and mockery.

Caesar, that evening, without knowing why, was dull at expressing himself, and depressed. Some of the Countess's questions left him in a stupid unreadiness.

"Poor child; I am sorry for you," she suddenly said.

"Why?"

"Because you are so weak; you have such an air of exhaustion. What do you do to make you like this? I am sure you ought to be given some sort of iron tonic, like the anaemic girls."

"Do you really think I am so weak?" asked Caesar.

"Isn't it written all over you?"

"Well, anyway, I am stronger than you, Countess."

"In a discussion, perhaps. But otherwise.... You have no strength except in your brains."

"And in my hands. Give me your hand."

The Countess gave him her hand and Caesar pressed it tighter and tighter.

"You are strong after all," she said.

"That is nothing. You wait," and Caesar squeezed the Countess's hand until he made her give a sharp scream. A servant entered the salon.

"It's nothing," said the Countess, getting up; "I seemed to have turned my foot."

"I will take you to your room," exclaimed Caesar, offering her his arm.

"No, no. Thanks very much."

"Yes. It has to be."

"Then, all right," she murmured, and added, "Now you frighten me."

"Bah, you will get over that!" and Caesar went into her room with her....

The next day Caesar appeared in the salon looking as if he had been buried and dug up.

"What is the matter?" Mme. Dawson and her daughters asked him.

"Nothing; only I had a headache and I took a big dose of antipyrine."

The relations of the Brenda lady and Caesar soon cooled. Their temperaments were incompatible: there was no harmony between their imaginations or between their skins. In reality, the Countess, with all her romanticism, did not care for long and compromising liaisons, but for hotel adventures, which leave neither vivid memories nor deep imprints. Caesar noted that despite her lyricism and her sentimental talk, there was a great deal of firmness in this plump woman, and a lack of sensitiveness.

Moreover, this woman, so little aristocratic in intimacy, had much vanity about stupid things and a great pa.s.sion for jewelry; but what contributed most to making Caesar feel a profound hatred for her was his discovering what good health she enjoyed. This good health seemed offensive to Caesar, above all when he compared it to his own, to his weak nerves and his restless brain.

From considering her a spiritual and delicate lady he pa.s.sed to considering her a powerful mare, which deserved no more than a whip and spurs.

The love-affair contributed to upsetting Caesar and making him more sarcastic and biting. This spiritual ulceration of Caesar's profoundly astonished Mlle. Cadet.

One day a Roman aristocrat, nothing less than a prince, came to call on Mme. Dawson. He talked with her, with her daughters, and the Countess Brenda, and held forth about whether the hotels in Rome were full or empty, about the _pensions_, and the food in the restaurants, with a great wealth of details; afterwards he lamented that Mme. Dawson, as a relative of his, even though a very distant one, should have gone to a _ricevimento_ at the French Emba.s.sy, and he boasted of belonging to the Black party in Rome.

When he was gone, Mlle. Cadet came over to Caesar, who was sunk in an arm-chair gazing at the ceiling, and asked him:

"What did you think of the prince?"

"What prince?"

"The gentleman who was here talking a moment ago."

"Ah, was he a prince?"

"Yes."

"As he talked about nothing but hotels, I took him to be the proprietor of one."

Mlle. Cadet told Mme. Dawson what Caesar had said, and she and her daughters were amused at his error.

X. A BALL

A little later than the real day, they got up a ball at the hotel in celebration of the French holiday Micareme.

When Caesar was asked if he thought of going to the ball, he said no; but Mlle. de Sandoval warned him that if he didn't go she would never speak to him again, and Mme. Dawson and the governess threatened him with like excommunication.