A silence ensued, tempered with a low whispering. The stanzas rolled in thundering tones over the heads of the guests with a harsh rumbling of r’s.
Vincent, from another corner of the room, nodded at Eline archly. The count began to shout louder and louder.
“Magnificent! don’t you think so?” asked the little old lady with the red plumes, who had once more come back to Eline.
Eline nodded approvingly, but here and there a cough was heard, and despairing faces were to be seen all over the room. The whispering, too, grew a little louder.
“Patience and resignation,” Eline said to St. Clare with a smile.
He smiled in return, and she no longer found the immense poem so unbearably boring now that he stood by her side. When the count’s last stanza had died away a sort of electric movement began to be manifest among the erstwhile motionless groups. They laughed and they talked and they pushed one another. Some ladies were expressing their thanks to the count with a great show of rapture.
“Could we not devise some protection against his next attack?” asked St. Clare laughing.
“We shall be freer in the conservatory,” said Eline.
With some trouble they threaded their way to the little conservatory. There were only two little groups—two old gentlemen seated at the table covered with empty wine-glasses, and a little woman in active conversation with a young man. There prevailed a soft balsamic odour which permeated as with a breath from the tropics the palms and the Vanilla plants and the orchids that were crowded together in rich profusion. Outside a snowstorm was showering around its flakes of downy white. They had scarcely sat down before they heard some chords struck on the piano in the adjoining room. The actor, a bass, was about to sing a duet with the fair-haired jeweller’s wife. St. Clare and Eline could see them standing by the piano, their figures reflected in the mirrors of the conservatory, while one of the misunderstood composers was to accompany them. [[276]]
“I had no idea that she sang,” Eline exclaimed in surprise. “La bonne surprise! it’s really getting amusing, but don’t stop talking.”