The baron saw him in this doleful attitude, and coming up behind him, held one hand sentimentally upon his heart and the other stretched out, in frantic adjuration to the moon.
“Ma Photini, prépare ta toilette,” he sang.
Rudolph faced him angrily, barely able to restrain the strong exclamation that rushed to his lips.
“No, I have just made better, that is, more appropriate verses. Mademoiselle Natzelhuber is notorious for not greatly caring for dress. Then it is clearly an offence to mention it.”
Rudolph muttered the German equivalent for “bosh,” and walked away.
Has any philosopher deigned to discover the reason why, when a party of young folks start upon a boisterous expedition, and laugh until the woods resound with their mirth, the return to the domestic hearth is generally so silent and so depressed? They are bound to sigh, and look at the stars, or at themselves, in a forlorn and disappointed way, and wonder where and why all their wild enjoyment has vanished.
Rudolph rode in front with Mademoiselle Veritassi, and remembered not the existence of his companion, as his profound and troubled gaze rested solemnly upon the dark landscape. The wavy hilltops stood far out from the horizon, and the sky, instead of looking like a blue shield against them, shot away like a sea of infinite mist. The night air blew chilly round Athens, and the Viscount cheerfully suggested the visit of those intemperate blasts that howl down from the encircling hills with frantic force, and prove more than anything the exceeding greatness of that mass of broken pillars and temples upon the Acropolis that have resisted their destructive strength all these centuries.
But the next day, though cold, was not thought unfit for travelling, and, at an early hour, Rudolph was carried out of Athens to hear his uncle spout and quote upon the plain of Marathon, where the anemones were getting ready for their spring display. Pray, what did Rudolph care about Miltiades? Had he not an intended brother-in-law of the name worth ten such generals? Indeed, he hazarded the opinion that the old one was greatly overrated, upon which his diplomatic uncle smiled, as the wise smile upon the foolish—the smile of tolerant and good-humoured superiority.