“Ah yes! That will interest you, he has an English name.” Then he said something that sounded like “He ran away” with the “r” and the “w” both misty. As I did not recognise it, he wrote it down for me—“Ivanhoe.”
“If you send him your teeth,” continued the corporal, “he will repair them and return them to you as good as new.”
“Some of them are getting loose,” I admitted, “but they wouldn’t come out so easily as you think, and how should I ever get them in again?—Oh, I see what you mean, he is a dentist in artificial teeth.”
“Of course. When I say he is not like me, I mean that he is a man of great learning, really well educated. He is very clever. You will see him at dinner. I must not keep you talking, you wish to sleep. There is the bed; why not lie down? If only we were in my own house at home—” and so on.
There was the bed, certainly, if I could conquer my bashfulness and make use of it. Filomena treated the proposal as quite natural, and put the guitar and the mandoline on the chest of drawers, though there would have been plenty
of room for them on the bed with me; she and the corporal prepared to leave the room, and I accepted their hospitality with excuses which I fancy I made with some realism because Peppino had kept me up talking half the night. They went away, I took off my boots, lay down on Filomena’s bed, and was asleep in a moment.
At about six o’clock the noise of the corporal opening the door woke me. He hoped he had not disturbed me, he had been in several times to fetch things and had tried to make no noise. I had known nothing about it. Ivanhoe had come and was very hungry. Then he showed me the cupboard containing the basin and water for me to wash, and told his fidanzata we were ready for the dinner which she had been cooking while I slept. He seemed to consider the room as his instead of hers—but then it was he who was paying the twenty francs a month. Still I had a sense as though there was something wrong.
I was introduced to Ivanhoe, and we sat down to Filomena’s dinner, which was like her embroidery and like her music—it was very well cooked, but the materials on which her skill had been expended were not worth cooking, they ought not to have been bought. The young lady was one of those artists who think more of treatment than of subject. The corporal, on the other hand, in the management of his matrimonial affairs, had chosen a good subject but was treating it in a way which my English prejudices made me think too free.
“I have not asked after your cold,” said the corporal to his brother. “I hope it is better.”
“It is quite well, thank you,” replied Ivanhoe. “I have cured it with a remedy that never fails.”