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Updated: May 9, 2025
We were, after making all allowances for superficial differences we were both careers, Struboff and I. I need none to point out to me my blunder; none to say that I was really fortunate and cried for the moon. It is admitted. I was offered a charming friendship; it was not enough. I could give a tender friendship; I knew that it was not enough.
For Elsa was young, fresh, aspiring to happiness as a plant rears its head to the air. And our wedding was but a fortnight off. "Am I repulsive, am I loathsome?" "What a question, my dear M. Struboff!" I had that snatch of talk in my head when I fell asleep. The next day but one found me back at Forstadt. They had begun to decorate the streets.
Struboff glared at him; Coralie smiled slightly. An inkling of Wetter's chosen part came into my mind. He had elected to make Struboff uncomfortable; he did not choose that the fat man should enjoy his victory in peace. My emotions chimed in with his resolve, but reason suggested that the ethical merits were more on Struboff's side.
Struboff shrugged his fat shoulders in helpless bad temper. Wetter set a hot pace, and Struboff soon began to pant. "I can't walk. Call a cab!" he gasped. "Cab? No, no. We can't sit still. Conscience, my dear Struboff! Post equitem you know. There's nothing like walking for sinners like us. Bring him along, Baron, bring him along!" "Perhaps M. Struboff doesn't desire our company," I suggested.
The fat man looked from one to the other of us in an obtuse suspicion of our hilarity. "The king admired my wife's talents," said he. "We intend to visit Forstadt next year." "Do you?" said I, and Wetter's peal broke out again. "The king will find my wife's talent much increased by training," pursued Struboff. "Damn your wife's talent!" said Wetter, quite suddenly.
He turned to them and indicated me with a gesture. "He's a good fellow, our Augustin." "Yes, a good fellow," said Varvilliers. "A very good fellow," muttered Struboff, who was more than a little gone in liquor. "A good fellow," said Coralie. Then she stepped up to me, put her hands on my shoulders, and kissed me on both cheeks. "A good fellow, our little Augustin," said she.
I was chastened now; I should not be in so bad a case as Struboff; there would be no question of a fresh slice of bread. But I tried to harden myself against her, declaring that, desiring the prize, she must pay the price, and deserved no pity on the score of a bargain that she herself had ratified.
"You're more capricious than fortune, more arbitrary than fate, madame," said I. "Moreover, you have again forgotten to provide for M. Struboff." She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "No," she said meditatively. "I don't like that after all. It might do for M. de Varvilliers, but the Countess is too old, and Wetter there would cut my throat.
For my part, I felt that it was monstrously bad taste in him to come and be miserable here and now in Forstadt. But he overshot his mark. "Good God, my dear Struboff!" I cried in extreme annoyance, "think how little it matters, how little any of us care, even, if you like, how little you ought to care yourself! You've tumbled down on the gravel; very well!
You and I may have our grazes Varvilliers, have you a graze on the knee by chance? but consider, I pray you, the case of the man who has no dinner." "It would be very bad to have no dinner," said Struboff, in full-mouthed meditation. "Besides that," said I lightly I grew better tempered every moment "what are these fine-spun miseries with which we afflict ourselves?
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