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As he could not this time possibly object to any levity in my subject, he now found fault with its gloomy solemnity and refused to accept it. As I had met Councillor Kustner, at that time manager of the Munich Court Theatre, when he was making arrangements about La Reine de Chypre in Paris, I now sent him the text of the Dutchman with a similar request.
I paid another visit, the last for a long time to come, to the Grand Opera to hear this Reine de Chypre. There was, indeed, much for me to smile at. My eyes were no longer shut to the extreme weakness of this class of work, and the caricature of it that was often produced by the method of rendering it. I was sincerely rejoiced to see the better side of Halevy again.
From my place by the stove, I could see the scalloped edges of the paper with a flaring monogram in the corner and could even smell the reek of chypre. At each page he turned toward the toilet-water lady of the advertisement and devoured her with over-luminous eyes.
Our visits were always long, as most of the châteaux were at a certain distance, and we were obliged to stay an hour and a half, sometimes longer, to rest the horses. It was before the days of five-o'clock tea. A tray was brought in with sweet wine (Malaga or Vin de Chypre) and cakes (ladies'-fingers) which evidently had figured often before on similar occasions. Conversation languished sometimes, though Mme. A. was wonderful, talking so easily about everything. In the smaller places, when people rarely went to Paris, it ran always in the same grooves the woods, the hunting (very good in the Villers-Cotterets forest), the schoolmaster (so difficult to get proper books for the children to read), the curé, and all local gossip, and as much about the iniquities of the republic as could be said before the wife of a republican senator. Wherever we went, even to the largest châteaux, where the family went to Paris for the season, the talk was almost entirely confined to France and French interests. Books, politics, music, people, nothing existed apparently au-del
Henrietta was furious; she was shivering with cold, her eyes smarting with the smoke, and not at all interested in M.B.'s political career, or Madame's servants, and said she would have been thankful to have even a glass of vin de Chypre. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that we had arrived during the "lessive"; that is always a most important function in France. Every one looks busy and energetic.
In these circumstances I was obliged to consider it a good thing that Halevy's latest opera was at last a success. Schlesinger came to us radiant with joy at the success of La Reine de Chypre, and promised me eternal bliss for the piano score and various other arrangements I had made of this newest rage in the sphere of opera.
The Isle of Pantelleria is apparently just on the line, which, continued eastward, probably follows the north coast of Cyprus, parallel to the strike of the strata and of the central axis of that island. See "Carte Géologique de l'île de Chypre, par MM. Albert Gaudry et Amedée Damour" .
The breath of the bazaar, fetor of offal, stench of raw leather, and all the creeping perfumes of Barbary, attar of roses, chypre and amber and musk, clogged his senses like the drug of some abominable seduction. He was weary, weary, weary. And in a strange, troubling way he was at rest. "Mektoub! It is written! It is written in the book of the destiny of man!"
But the 'gay Paree' stuff that was specially manufactured to catch the superfluous francs of the pornographic tourist and isn't really in the least French, bored me, almost at once. And that night, going slowly to the hotel, sickened by painted women, chypre and raw champagne I turned a mental somersault and built up a picture of what I hoped I should find in life.
The elder woman attacked the waiter almost bodily, and in hard, guttural French commanded him to move the table closer to the dancing floor an operation causing considerable annoyance to the surrounding guests. For a moment the Spaniard pressed her hulk so close to Esther that the latter was nearly choked with the fumes of her chypre. Then suddenly there was a shriek of delight.
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