“Dis plutôt, pauvre Rudolph!” said Ehrenstein, ruefully.
“Eh, je le dis, mon cher, de bon cœur,” said Agiropoulos, with a reassuring nod and an enigmatic smile, as he turned on his heel, and stopped to discuss Ehrenstein’s lamentable susceptibility with his next acquaintance.
Can this really be our fastidious Rudolph, who has held the above indelicate dialogue with a man he hitherto professed to despise? Has he grown in a few months both cynical and hardened? But the cynicism was only surface deep. This search for an anchor to his affections and the discovery he had made that his emotions and his judgment were unreliable, his heart as unstable as water, wrecked all self-esteem, and left him in a battered condition of mind. He felt as if he had been morally whipped by scorpions, and every nerve within him was bruised.
First Photini, then Andromache, dear, sweet Andromache! how his heart bled for her! that he should be so unworthy of her! And She? the other She! the final, unattainable She, whose looks ran fire through his veins and held him in humble unexacting servitude?
He came out to walk and meditate. Could he have chosen a more favourable road for meditation than the wide avenue of pepper-trees, that leads by a gentle upward slope to the cactus-bordered hill, upon which the glorious Parthenon rests? Of the nature of his reflections, as he strolled along that famous route, I cannot say much. I imagine they were hazy, like the inarticulate speech of an infant. He wanted something, but for the life of him he could not have put that something into shape or definite speech. Like Hercules, his way was barred by two female forms—only one of whom, however, offered him a direct invitation. And Photini?
And thus these two met, and falling into accidental conversation, which resulted in an exchange of cards, Rudolph learnt that this was Herr Reineke, the distinguished Greek scholar, whose card his aunt had found awaiting her on her return from a drive that morning. Anything was better to Rudolph than that meditation in pursuit of which he had come out expressly, so he warmly pressed Reineke to come back to the Embassy with him. Reineke took a fancy to the frank and high-bred lad, and gladly consented to do so.
On their way he learnt some very original and curious views upon the Ancient Greeks, and his national vanity was flattered by hearing this discontented youth describe the Modern Greeks as worse than the Jews, and express his entire sympathy with the Turks—a thorough gentlemanly race in his opinion. Gustav assented, but claimed an exception for one or two of the modern Greeks, and at this point they reached the Embassy.
The young man found everybody out, so Rudolph carried off Reineke to a little salon only used in private life. Here the baroness wrote her letters, and here Inarime had sat that morning with a book and a pencil in her hand. Rudolph ordered coffee and cigars, and selected for himself Inarime’s seat. He took up her book, and remembered enough of his Greek to know that it was a volume of the Sicilian Idyllists. He recognised the names Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, but the rest was a blank to him. In turning over the leaves, a sheet of paper dropped out, and this contained writing. He examined it carefully, and was struck with its exquisite caligraphy.
“Can you read Greek—modern?” he asked of Gustav, who was looking idly out of the window.
“Yes,” he answered, turning his face round.