I met a mermaid swimming in the sea.
And the taste of seaweed lingers in my mouth.
He suddenly realized with a pang of regret that this evening no one was waiting for him anywhere. He thought of Madame Magnac in Paris. The pleasant life he led seemed to him from this distance to be full of privations. He pictured his existence as having been terribly hard hitherto; a womanless childhood and an orphaned youth; he began to pity himself. He hoped that happier days were in store for him. He decided to make more friends; he managed his life extremely well and had always kept away from big dinner parties, definite office hours, servant troubles, professional conversationalists, marriage, scenes with mistresses and all other things that might prey upon his liberty, the luxury tax of snobbishness, the money troubles of his friends, children, the disdain of the haughty, the envy of his inferiors, in fact everything that spoils our daily life. But all this was negative and unsatisfying.
Night began to fall, accompanied by music coming from no one knew where; a shutter banged against a wall, rattling like a skeleton; the ancient clocks beat out one by one the dangerous weapons of the iron hours.
Above the village street the mountain still thrust up its dusky hump, bearing, without flinching, the weight of the older quarters of the town, placed so high that the topmost windows touched the lowest stars.
[XI]
A WAITER came through the blue-distempered glass doors of the restaurant and familiarly handed Lewis a visiting card between his fingers (the summer service of the hotel).
Banque Apostolatos
Trieste.
Someone was asking to see him. He was just about to say that he was not in when he changed his mind.
It was she.