“Be quiet, you little plagues,” said María impatiently to the birds and she tried to hear what was going on. Presently the curtain over the door was hastily jerked open and revealed the pointed horns of the marquis’ moustache and his face, in which solemnity was now tempered by affability as though nature had intended it as a living symbol of the eternal and supreme duplicity of the human species.
“Well, you know,” he said in a bitter-sweet tone between grave and gay. “I am a hypocrite, and tact is my profession.... Your amiable wife has told me so in so many words.... A humbug, a hypocrite—yes, that is what she calls me....” And he kissed his daughter. “Do you know I really think Leon is a little weak in his mind,” he went on. “It is a pity, for he is such a clever fellow.... Oh! those dreadful birds will not let one speak.”
“Be quiet you little torments,” said María.
What a wonderful interest they take in the affairs and disputes of their masters; between the sentences of the conversation their shrill notes try to drown the differences of humanity in a flood of rapture.
The party sat talking for some time longer, but the birds prevented their being overheard, and the reader must have patience till the birds have ceased singing.
CHAPTER XI.
LEOPOLDO.
One morning when Leon Roch was sitting at work in his study he was suddenly interrupted; raising his eyes and looking in the large mirror that hung over the chimney opposite to him, he saw a lean, tall figure surmounted by a death’s-head, on which the grave seemed to have spared little but the skin; eyes that looked starting from their sockets, like those of a delirious creature; a long, thin neck, all red and scarred; a nose, also purple, finely-cut, though its extreme sharpness gave it the aspect of a beak and lent the face a bird-like expression; a meagre crop of yellow hairs that straggled round the cheeks and chin, forming a narrow line that irresistibly recalled the band tied round the face of a dead man; a low forehead, on which his hat had stamped a livid line, like a streak of blood; a flat head with the red hair parted into two elegant wings; a face in short which seemed the transfiguration or parody of a handsome countenance, the caricature of the family type; and at the same time he saw a man with his hands in his pockets, feet like a woman’s of which the toes were scarcely visible below the loose trousers that covered them, and a body devoid of roundness, of modelling or of grace, like a lay figure made to wear a coat. His dress was a morning suit, striped from head to foot, with an elegantly-knotted cravat; a stick that he held in one hand stuck out on a level with his pocket-hole, and a gorgeous flower blazed in his breast like the blood-stained handle of an assassin’s knife. As he caught sight of this personage Leon exclaimed with frank good-nature: