“He was Captain Vauvenarde, the husband of Madame Brandt.”
CHAPTER XIII
You could have knocked me down with a feather. It is a trite metaphor, I know; but it is none the less excellent. I repeat, therefore, unblushingly—you could have knocked me down with a feather. I gasped. The little man wiped his eyes. He was the tearfullest adult I have ever met, and I once knew an Italian prima donna with a temperament.
“Captain Vauvenarde? The man with the shoebrush hair and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck? Are you sure?”
The dwarf nodded. “I set out from England to find him. I swore to the carissima signora that I would do so. I have done it,” he added, with a faint return of his self-confidence.
“Well, I'm damned!” said I, in my native tongue.
I don't often use strong language; but the occasion warranted it. I was flabbergasted, bewildered, out-raged, humiliated, delighted, incredulous, and generally turned topsy-turvy. In conversation one has no time for so minute an analysis of one's feelings. I therefore summed them up in the only word. Captain Vauvenarde! The wild goose of my absurd chase! Found by this Flibbertigibbet of a fellow, while I, Simon de Gex, erstwhile M.P., was fooling about War Offices and regiments! It was grotesque. It was monstrous. It ought not to have been allowed. And yet it saved me a vast amount of trouble.
“I'm damned!” said I.
Anastasius had just enough English to understand. I suppose, such is mortal unregeneracy, that it is the most widely understood word in the universe.