Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
"Unless you're there the place won't be itself to me." We all laughed Struboff not in appreciation, but with a nervous desire to make himself agreeable and I rose from my seat. It was three o'clock in the morning. Struboff yawned mightily as he drank a final glass and patted his stomach. I think that we were all happier than when we sat down. "And after the occasion, whither?" I asked them.
"In offering to present us to madame at an hour possibly somewhat late," he said, "our dear M. Struboff shows his wonted amiability. We should be failing in gratitude if we did not thank him most sincerely." "I didn't ask you to come," growled Struboff. Wetter looked at him with an air of grieved surprise, but said nothing at all.
"She never favoured you before me." He caught the ambiguity of my words, and laughed again. Struboff turned toward me with a stare. "You also knew my wife?" he asked. "I had the honour," said I. "In Forstadt." "In Forstadt! Do you know the king?" "Not so well as I could wish," I answered. "About as well as I know Wetter here." "That's admirably well!" cried Wetter. "Well enough not to trust me."
Wetter waved a hand to him and laughed. Laugh, laugh, Wetter! It is your only gospel and therefore must be pardoned its inevitable defects. Laugh even at poor Struboff whose stomach is so gross, whose feelings so fine, who may not give his wife a piece of bread, and would ask no greater joy than to kiss her feet.
The pace became smarter still; not only was Struboff breathless with being dragged along, but I was breathless with dragging him. I insisted on a cab. Wetter yielded, planted Struboff and me side by side, and took the little seat facing us himself. Here he sat, smiling maliciously, as the poor impresario mopped his forehead and fetched up deep gasps of breath.
Here I set him down between Varvilliers and myself; Wetter and Coralie, deep in low-voiced conversation, paid no heed to him. He began to eat and drink eagerly and with appetite. "You perceive, Struboff," said I persuasively, "that while we have stomachs and none, my friend, can deny that you have one the world is not empty of delight.
It crossed my mind that I might possibly break my bargain with Elsa. But the peril was remote. "My God, it's maddening to be treated like a beast. Am I repulsive, am I loathsome?" "What a question, my dear M. Struboff!" "And I live with her. It is for all day and every day." "Come, come, be reasonable. We're not lovesick boys."
He turned to me with a ridiculous look of protest, as though asking for my support. I laughed; the mad nonsense was so welcome to me. We stopped before a tall house in the Rue Washington; Wetter bundled us out with immense haste. There were lights in the second-floor windows. "Madame expects us!" he cried with a rapturous clasping of his hands. "Come, come, dear Struboff!
Again I asked myself whether my sympathy were not more justly due to Struboff Struboff, who sat now smoking a big cigar and wobbling his head solemnly in answer to the emphatic taps of Wetter's forefinger on his waistcoat. But the prejudice of beauty fought hard on Coralie's side. I always find it difficult to be just to a person of markedly unpleasant appearance.
To supper! No, let Struboff play. Struboff, you want to play. Play on." Struboff nodded again and played on. His notes, now plaintive, now triumphant, were the accompaniment to our meal, filling the pauses, enriching, as it seemed, the talk. But Coralie was deep in foie gras, and paid no heed to them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking