"What an exemplary, bashful young fellow you are! Evidently you are not used to teach young ladies such delicate lessons. Come! come! Don't blush. Try your hand at lawn tennis."
And I went with him and played.
VI.
MR. PARASITE.
I have never given way to paroxysms of temper; not exactly because I was naturally cool and collected, but because my profession had taught me presence of mind and self-control. Violent wrath, violent terror, and violent love could not attack me.
Countess Flamma's singular disclosure had made a twofold impression. My first feeling was a painful regret that my most intimate friend, in whom I had placed infinite trust and confidence, was a faithless deceiver; and my second emotion was that of a burning curiosity as to why that girl, a close relative of my cozening friend, had betrayed him to me—a stranger. What reason had the one to hurt me, and what was the motive of the other in warning me? For, as I refused to believe in evil spirits, I also refused to believe in protecting angels.
"My dear friend, take care!" said Siegfried, throwing the ball at me. The ball I did not catch, but the "dear" epithet I picked up; for it struck me that the same phrase was often attached to my name as well as to that of other less intimate acquaintances, and sometimes with a special, humorous playfulness. Now I caught it. Of course I was their "dear" friend, for did not I sit there and do nothing, and let them waste their money on my election?
In Hungarian society, and I think in most other societies as well, there is a certain person whom we call "Potya ur"—"Mr. Parasite." He feeds at every board, sleeps in other men's rooms, is served by other men's servants, uses other men's horses and carriages, and smokes other men's cigars. When playing cards, he has invariably left his money at home; so when he is a loser it does not matter, for he is not accustomed to pay his losses; but, when a winner, he complacently pockets his gains. He never pays for the flowers he sends to his hostess, never pays anything or anybody; yet he is well lodged, well fed, well clad, and in excellent spirits, for he needs them. His wit is his only resource, his sole capital.
Such a Mr. Parasite, I thought, was I to these men, and I determined that I would be so no longer. Surely I, who was formerly a physician in Vienna, had no right to accept a nomination for Parliament in Hungary—at other men's expense. They were right, and I had been an ass and a coxcomb. When Siegfried told me that the party had decided not to take a penny of me, but to secure my election out of party funds, I should have remembered Chinese etiquette. If two Chinamen meet on the street, Tsang will invariably invite Tsing home to dinner, and Tsing will invariably refuse. Tsang will use all possible persuasion, and finally fairly drag the invited one to his house, although the man protests and struggles as much as possible. And well he knows why; because if he should give way to the pressing invitation and go with Tsang, the moment he entered the house his host would call him a rude, unmannered peasant; for he must remember well that it becomes the one to courteously invite, and the other to respectfully refuse. This is the law of civilisation in China; and I had forgotten that law the second time.