“We all have our sorrows, Anastasius. Did I not lose my beautiful horse Sultan?”
The professor sprang to his full height of four feet and dashed away his tears with a noble gesture of his black-gloved hand.
Base slave that he was to think of his own petty bereavement in the face of her eternal affliction. He turned to me and bade me mark her serene nobility. It was a model and an example for him to follow. He, too, would be brave and present a smiling face to evil fortune.
“Behold! I smile, carissima!” he cried dramatically.
We beheld—and saw his features (smudged with tearstains and the dye from the black gloves which he obviously wore out of respect for the deceased Santa Bianca) contorted into a grimace of hideous imbecility.
“Monsieur,” said he, assuming his natural expression which was one of pensive melancholy, “let us change the conversation. You are a great statesman. Will you kindly let me know your opinion on the foreign policy of Germany?”
Whereupon he sat down again upon his stool and regarded me with earnest attention.
“Germany,” said I, with the solemnity of a Sir Oracle in the smoking-room of one of the political clubs, “has dreams of an empire beyond her frontiers, and with a view to converting the dream into a reality, is turning out battleships nineteen to the dozen.”
The Professor nodded his head sagaciously, and looked up at Lola.
“Very profound,” said he, “very profound. I shall remember it. I am a Greek, Monsieur, and the Greeks, as you know, are a nation of diplomatists.”