And with that I seized my crooked clasp-knife, cut the slice of bread in two, minced the bacon into little bits, and sprinkled it with salt and pepper.
Nor was that all. I rubbed both sides of the toasted bacon with a knob of garlic. It was a sort of Oriental language of flowers. I meant to remind her that her ideal of a man was one who did not rinse his mouth after eating garlic.
Thus we were alone on the summit of the Pagan Altar, crouching together beside a fire of burning embers, and dividing a piece of toast and a slice of bacon—I and the former mistress of my heart.
That "former" was not so very long ago. It was scarcely three years since the golden thrushes mingled their songs with our chats. The idyllic contemplation of the matter, however, was considerably disturbed by the concrete circumstance that, during these three years, a third masterpiece of creation had found in my former paragon the rib that had been subtracted from him while he slept. Her first venture was a fashionable fop, her second an Antinous of the wilderness, her third was now a stage Othello.
And our feelings were still further subdued by the disagreeable tension occasioned by the approach towards us of two armed men, who kept on popping up before us in the clearings of the forest, now here, now there, but continually drawing nearer to the Pagan Altar. There could not now be a doubt that they were making towards us.
"It would be as well if I set to work and sketched something in my album while they are approaching," said I, "in case they inquire what I am doing here."
With that, I sat down on the steep rocky ledge, placed my sketch-book on my knee, and designed the contours of my picture on a grand scale.
The lady sat down close beside me, and observed how I looked now on the hills and now on my paper—but never into her fine eyes.
We did not exchange a word with each other, not a single word.
At last, however, I grew impatient of the silence, and without looking up from my sketch, I said to her: "I really thought that by this time you and Peter Gyuricza had filled the whole world full of butter and cheese."