"Because twenty devils entered into me and played leapfrog over one another."
"I am very fond of that little tune. It is so gay," said Blanquette, as if she were introducing a fresh topic of conversation.
"I detest it," said my master.
The maître d'hôtel came up and asked that the chorus should be played again as an encore. I fetched Paragot's drink and having set it down beside him on the platform, went round with my tambourine. When I reached the table at which the four new comers were seated I found that they spoke English. They were a young man in a straw hat, a young girl, a forbidding looking man of forty with a beaky nose, and the loveliest lady I have ever seen in my life. She had the complexion of a sea-shell. Her eyes were the blue of glaciers, and they shone cold and steadfast; but her lips were kind. Her black hair under the large white tulle hat had the rare bluish tinge, looking as if cigarette smoke had been blown through it. Small and exquisitely made she sat the princess of my boyish dreams.
"I call it a ripping tune," cried the young girl.
"I hate it more than any other tune in the world," said the lovely lady with a shiver.
Her voice was like a peal of bells or running water or whatever silvery sounding things you will.
"It is very absurd to have such prejudices," said the beaky-nosed man of forty. He spoke like a Frenchman, and like a very disagreeable Frenchman. How dared he address my princess in that tone?
I extended my tambourine.
"Qu'est-ce que vous désirez?" asked the straw-hatted young man in an accent as Britannic as the main deck of the Bellerophon.