The old fellow of the mufflers, whom the Countess hailed as “cher maître,” was trying vainly to make the servant understand that he wished him to deposit some of the pièce de resistance, or at least some of the fruit on the empty plate he was frantically extending. But the servant looked at him with a shocked expression, as though he were requesting something scarcely decent, and finally, after handing him a cake and a sandwich, turned his back upon him.
Robledo, standing near the table, found himself close to the hired “pieces” that the servants were so conscientiously defending. The Countess had dropped his arm for the moment to reply to congratulations on her remarkable reading. Relieved at being left to his own devices for a few minutes, he examined the table critically, and while the butler and his acolytes were attending to the needs of the crowd, he picked up a plate and knife and tranquilly carved a piece out of the most majestic of the pasties. He even had time to take one of the ruddy pears from the showy mounds of fruit, and cut it in two. But just as he was about to eat it, the mistress of the house, free for a moment from her admirers, turned an amorous glance in his direction, only to see a breach in the pastry edifice, and a handsome piece of fruit, ruthlessly sliced, on the barbarian’s plate....
A great change occurred in the sentiments of the poetess. At first she looked shocked, as though witnessing an act which transgressed all consecrated usages. Then came indignation, and finally rage.... It was she who would have to pay for this stupid destruction.... And she had believed for a moment that she had found—in this savage—a hero-soul worthy of her own!
Abruptly leaving her “Patagonian Bear,” she sought out the pianist who, circling round and round the table, was pleading with one servant after another for sandwiches and a little more wine....
“Give me your arm, friend Beethoven!” With a dramatic gesture she continued.
“One of these days I shall write a libretto for this young man, and then there’ll be a little less talk about Wagner!”
She took him along with her to the drawing room, now deserted, and made him sit down at the piano, while in clarion tones she declaimed to an accompaniment of arpeggios. But nothing could tempt her guests from the dining-room. They remained clustered round the table, maintaining however, the group distinctions which all Mme. Titonius’ efforts at Bohemian camaraderie were powerless to break down.
Robledo caught a glimpse through the crowd of the Marquis de Torre Bianca and his wife, who had just come in, having spent the earlier part of the evening at another party. He noticed that Elena was talking mechanically, murmuring phrases that had no meaning, as though she were thinking of something else. Convinced that his chatter annoyed her, he went off in search of Federico, from whom he obtained little attention for the reason that the Marquis was very busy describing to someone he had just met the important undertakings that his friend Fontenoy was engaged in, in various parts of the globe.
Bored, and not yet quite clear as to the reason for his hostess’s sudden desertion, he sank into a large armchair, and almost at the same instant heard someone talking behind him. Not the two women gossips this time, but a man and a woman, who, seated on a divan, were repeating the same things he had overhead before, as though no two guests in that house could do anything else but gossip about the Countess. He paid little attention to what they were saying until suddenly he heard the name Torre Bianca. The woman was saying,
“Did you ever see such jewels? Of course everyone knows that neither she nor her husband had to work hard to get them. Everyone knows that Fontenoy pays for all those little luxuries.”