"Didn't he make you laugh?" continues Puller, still in the character of a stern cross-examiner.
"Laugh!" almost shrieks the Countess, extending her hands so suddenly that I have only time to throw myself back to avoid a sharp tap on the head from her fan. "Heavens! not a bit! not the least bit in the world! He made me sad! I saw the people in the stalls laughing, and I said,"—here she appeals with both hands to the majority of sensible people at large—still at large—"'Am I stupid? am I dull? Do I not understand?'"
"O Mother!" expostulates her daughter, in her most languid manner, "he was funny!"
"Funny!" ejaculates the Countess, tossing her head.
"I'd rather see Arthur Roberts than Salvini," says Puller, waggishly, but with conviction.
"I think I would, for choice," says Miss Casanova, meditatively, but seeing the Countess's horrified expression of countenance, she takes care to add more languidly than ever, as if taking the smallest part in an argument were really too exhausting, "but then, you know, I really don't understand tragedy, and I love a laugh."
"Prefers Arthur Roberts to Salvini!" exclaims the Countess, and throws up her hands and eyes to the ceiling as if imploring Heaven not to visit on her the awful heresy of her child.
Here I interpose. Salvini, I say, is a great Artiste, no doubt of it, a marvellous Tragedian; and Arthur Roberts is not, in the true dramatic sense of the word, a genuine Comedian; but he is, in another sense a true Comedian, though of the Music-Hall school.
"What a school!" murmurs the Countess, and with a pained expression of countenance as though she were suffering agonies.
The Metterbruns see the difference. Madame remembers a fat comic man in Berlin, at some garden, who used to wear a big hat and carry a large pipe, and make her laugh very much when she was a girl. Certainly, in his way, he was an artist. Is this Arthur Roberts anything like Max Splütterwessel? At this point, as we have finished coffee, and the Countess finds the room hot, I propose adjourning the debate to the Restaurant in the garden, as we are too late for the band at the Casino Samie.