“Baldi got on very well with Bielkowski. Of an evening, in our solitary tower, plunged in the silence of the park and the forest, we all four used to sit up till late into the night, playing game after game of cards; for though I was only a child—thirteen years old—Baldi, who hated dummy, had taught me how to play whist—and how to cheat.
“Juggler, conjurer, mountebank, acrobat, he began to frequent us just at the time when my imagination was emerging from the long fast to which it had been subjected by Heldenbruck. I was hungry for marvels—credulous—of a green and eager curiosity. Later on, Baldi explained his tricks to me, but no familiarity could abolish that first sensation of mystery when, the first evening, I saw him light his cigarette at his little finger-nail, and then, as he had been losing at cards, draw out of my ears and my nose as many roubles as he wanted—which absolutely terrified me, but greatly entertained the company, for he kept saying, still with the same perfect coolness: ‘Fortunately this boy here is an inexhaustible mine!’
“On the evenings when he was alone with my mother and me, he was for ever inventing some new game, some surprise, some absurd joke or other; he mimicked all our acquaintance, pulled faces, made himself unrecognisable, imitated all sorts of voices, the cries of animals, the sounds of instruments, produced extraordinary noises from Heaven knows where, sang to the accompaniment of the guzla, danced, pranced, walked on his hands, jumped over the tables and chairs, juggled with his bare feet like a Japanese, twirling the drawing-room screen or the small tea-table on the tip of his big toe; he juggled with his hands still better; at his bidding, a torn and crumpled piece of paper would burst forth into a swarm of white butterflies, which I would blow this way and that, and which the fluttering of his fan would keep hovering in the air. In his neighbourhood, objects lost their weight and reality—their presence even—or else took on some fresh, queer, unexpected significance, totally remote from all utility. ‘There are very few things it isn’t amusing to juggle with,’ he used to say. And with it all he was so funny that I used to grow faint with laughing, and my mother would cry out: ‘Stop, Baldi! Cadio will never be able to sleep.’ And, indeed, my nerves must have been pretty solid to hold out against such excitements.
“I benefited greatly by this teaching; at the end of a few months I could have given points to Baldi himself in more than one of his tricks, and even....”
“It is clear, my dear boy, that you were given a most careful education,” interrupted Julius at this moment.
Lafcadio burst out laughing at the novelist’s horrified countenance. “Oh! none of it sank very deep; don’t be alarmed. But it was high time Uncle Faby appeared on the scene, wasn’t it? It was he who became intimate with my mother when Bielkowski and Baldi were called away to other posts.”
“Faby? Was it his writing I saw on the first page of your pocket-book?”
“Yes. Fabian Taylor, Lord Gravensdale. He took my mother and me to a villa he had rented near Duino on the Adriatic, where my health and strength greatly improved. The coast at that place forms a rocky peninsula which was entirely occupied by the grounds of the villa. There I ran wild, spending the whole day long under the pines, among the rocks and creeks, or swimming or canoeing in the sea. The photograph you saw belongs to that time. I burnt that too.”
“It seems to me,” said Julius, “that you might have made yourself a little more respectable for the occasion.”
“That’s exactly what I couldn’t have done,” answered Lafcadio, laughing. “Faby, under pretence of wanting me to get bronzed, kept all my wardrobe under lock and key—even my linen....”