“Did you hear what he called the lanterns for the Fête?” she asked.
“No.”
“A lot of ‘bloody bladders’!”
“What, what a dearest,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi sighed beneath her breath. And all along the almost countless corridors as far as her bedroom door, she repeated again and again: “What, what a dearest!”
II
Beneath a wide golden ceiling people were dancing. A capricious concert waltz, drowsy, intricate, caressing, reached fitfully the supper-room, where a few privileged guests were already assembled to meet King Jotifa and Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates.
It was one of the regulations of the Court, that those commanded to the King’s board, should assemble some few minutes earlier than the Sovereigns themselves, and the guests at present were mostly leaning stiffly upon their chair-backs, staring vacuously at the olives and salted almonds upon the table-cloth before them. Several of the ladies indeed had taken the liberty to seat themselves, and were beguiling the time by studying the menu or disarranging the smilax, while one dame went as far as to take, and even to nibble, a salted almond. A conversation of a non-private kind (carried on between the thin, authoritative legs of a Court Chamberlain) by Countess Medusa Rappa and the English Ambassadress, was being listened to by some with mingled signs of interest.
“Ah! How clever Shakespere!” the Countess was saying: “How gorgeous! How glowing! I once knew a speech from ‘Julia Sees Her!...’ perhaps his greatest œuvre of all. Yes! ‘Julia Sees Her’ is what I like best of that great, great master.”
The English Ambassadress plied her fan.
“Friends, Comrades, Countrymen,” she murmured, “I used to know it myself!”