Scirocco glances at him peculiarly with a half smile, behind which the words "Clever dog" may be read.
That evening Eugene writes in the diary in which, instead of sentimental impressions, he notes down all freshly-acquired worldly wisdom:
"Never ask society, except concerning things which you already know."
XIV.
Klette was invited after all, or rather invited herself. At the fair in Marienbad she met Mimi Dey, and upon the latter remarking carelessly: "How are you, Caroline; when are we to see you in Iwanow?" assured her generously, "I am at your service as soon as you send the horses for me. I have been intending to spend a few days with you."
And she stays a few days; the first of these, the eventful Wednesday, has already dawned, is in fact nearly over.
Klette and the Countess are chatting in the drawing-room. The three gentlemen are firing at sparrows in the park, quite a bloodless occupation, which the sparrows seem to consider a good joke, and they laugh at the shooting with their ironical black eyes. They flutter about like will-o'-the-wisps. In vain does Pistasch, who seems particularly bent upon this sport, approach softly the trees where they crouch--krrm--and they are gone.
For probably the tenth time Pistasch has cried, "The infamous sparrows are cleverer than I," has at last fixed his eye upon a comfortable old grandfather sparrow, who sleepily philosophizes on the thick branch of a nut-tree, but before he has aimed he hears from the open windows of the drawing-room loud laughter, the gay ripple of the Countess, and the deep, rough ha! ha! ha! of Klette.
"How amused the ladies seem to be," he says, turning to his companions, forgetting the sparrow patriarch.
"I do not understand how any one can laugh at that Cantharis," grumbles Scirocco.