The Green Face by Gustav Meyrink Read Free Book Online Page B

dancing the cakewalk and singing:

    he was astonished to find that the audience had disappeared
without his noticing and the room was almost empty.
    Even his fourladies had silently vanished, leaving, as a token,
a pink visiting card propped up against his wine-glass. It bore
a picture of two turtle-doves billing and cooing and the address:
    MADAME GRISEL HUSSY
open all night
Waterloo Plein No. 21
15 charming ladies
Private entrance
    So they were, after all!
    “Would sir wish to purchase a continuation ticket?” asked the
waiter in a soft voice as he deftly replaced the yellow tablecloth
with one of white linen, placed a vase of tulips in the middle and
laid the silver.
    A huge ventilator began to whirr, sucking out the plebeian air.
Liveried servants sprayed perfume, a tongue of red carpet
unrolled from the door to the stage, leather armchairs were
wheeled in.
    A crowd of ladies in elegant evening gowns and men in white
tie and tails poured in; it was the same cosmopolitan would-be
cream of society that Hauberrisser had seen rushing into the
circus tent.
    In a few minutes every last seat was taken.
    The soft jingle of lorgnon chains, muted laughter, the rustle
of silk skirts, the scent of ladies’ gloves and hyacinths, cascades
of pearls and clusters of diamonds, the fizz of champagne, the dry clink of ice-cubes in the silver buckets, the furious yapping
of a lap-dog, white shoulders with a discreet touch of powder,
foaming lace, the sweet, spicy smell of Russian cigarettes -the
room he had first entered was unrecognisable.

    Once more the seats at Hauberrisser’s table were taken by
four ladies - one older with a gold lorgnette and three younger
ones, each more beautiful than the other. They were Russians
with slim, nervous hands, blond hair and dark eyes, which did
not avoid the stares of the men around, yet seemed not to see
them.
    A young Englishman, whose faultless evening dress clearly
said Savile Row, came and stood for a while at the table,
exchanging a few friendly words with them. His delicate,
aristocratic features bore a look of immense weariness; the left
sleeve of his coat was empty up to the shoulder and hung down
limply, making the tall, frail figure appear even slimmer, his
monocle seemed to have become part of the bony socket
beneath his eyebrow.
    All around were people such as the eternal petty bourgeois of
all lands eyes with the instinctive hatred of the bandy-legged
mongrel for a thoroughbred, beings that will ever remain a
mystery to the masses, arousing both contempt and envy, creatures that can wade through blood without batting an eyelid and
yet swoon at the screech of a fork across a plate, who will pull
out a revolver at the slightest suggestion of a sneer yet calmly
smile when caught cheating at cards, for whom vices, the very
thought of which makes the ordinary citizen shudder, are commonplace and who would rather go thirsty for days than drink
out of a glass another has used, who accept God as a matter of
course and yet shut themselves off from Him because they find
Him boring, who are considered hollow by people who crudely
assume that what, in the course of generations, has become the
essence of such creatures, is mere veneer and outward show;
they are neither hollow nor the opposite, they are beings who
have lost their souls and have therefore become the incarnation
of evil for the multitude which will never possess a soul, they
are aristocrats who would rather die than crawl to anyone, who,
with unerring instinct, spot the plebeian within their fellow-man and place him lower than the animals and yet fall down before
him if he happens to be sitting on the throne, they are lords of
the earth who can become helpless as a child at the slightest
frown on the face of destiny, instruments of the Devil and at the
same time his plaything.

    An invisible band had just finished playing the Wedding
March from Lohengrin.
    A bell jangled