Monsieur Jonquelle by Melville Davisson Post Read Free Book Online Page B

some confusion returned to her apartment.
    I went down in no very genial mood. Here was the golden door in the wall gone shut before I could get my foot in. I held myself now somewhat lighter in esteem. I must have bungled pretty badly. It would be my doddering, idiotic pleasantries! Whence is it that a man, ordinarily sane, has a seizure of these driveling witticisms upon the moment that the gods give him?
    This woman was accustomed to a formal courtesy. And here was a big, simpering barbarian who would be genial, and would seize upon the advantage of an error to strike up a galloping acquaintance. It was no vain institution—these continental manners; and we have them not. And therefore we must be misunderstood, our best motives wrongly interpreted, and ourselves catalogued in a class of
bourgeois
.
    I went down to the Promenade des Anglais andsat there on a bench in the sun. The world went by on that great stone way paving the arc of the sea. Workmen in blue blouses were setting up standards along the streets, and cunning electrical devices, and building seats in tiers. Crowds of people moved like swarms of butterflies. An old, huge Italian came upon me with a basket of wire masks. He knew a little English and was proud to display it with his wares.
    The meester would go into the carnival this night, perhaps, with friends, in a carriage? They would have a bag of—I never could get the word—but I found out later that he meant the little clay balls that are thrown like handfuls of shot, in place of confetti, and must be kept off with a mask. And he displayed his wares—pink; blue; every color. The meester would need several perhaps? He would not be alone in his carriage!
    I told him with some asperity of language that I had no carriage for this night—nor any friend; and that he would oblige me by going to the devil! But he was a rogue of perennial good humor. He leered at me across his basket. The meester would not go to bed this night because his spirits were cast down! This was the gala night. Nice would be wonderland this night! The gnomes, the elfin people, and all the grotesque creatures of the fairy world would possess the city! Men traveled from the ends of the earth for this nightonly. And would the meester go to sleep, then, like a lout before the fire? Let him secure a mask for two francs and forget the tables if chance were the offender—or his mistress if she had cut him. There would be fortune another day, and Nice on this night would be full of women; in fact, there was no supply of anything in France so plentiful.
    I got up from the bench and left him; but he followed me to say that he would keep his eye upon me and that I should purchase from him, not one mask, but two, or he was no honest tradesman from Bordighera and the son of a poet!
    I went into a shop on the Rue de Félix Fauvre and got an English book. But I could not have read the Memoirs of the Abbess of Odo. I presently gave it into the hand of a young woman who sold me a
ravissant
cigar, manufactured in Algeria—quite true, as I discovered, and from the frayed cables in the harbor there! I went then to the Crédit Lyonnais and tried to deposit a draft; but to all my tenders I received the same polite assurance in my native tongue: “Et es not sufficient.” I did not care, for I had money in my pocket; but the universe was out of joint. I took a
fiacre
to my hotel and sat once more on the terrace among the orange trees.
    Evening was descending, the air was motionless, and the colors of the world were stolen out of Paradise. And yet, with it all, I sat before itsome distance down in the Inferno because a certain balcony was empty. The thing was incomparably absurd—to be thus dispossessed by a fancy! But then it is the fancies in this life that have power to dispossess us! If one goes upon an adventure in enchanted countries, shall he be unmindful of the damsel he meets there? It is not so written in the