“Oh, that’s me,” cried Carlotta, clapping her hands. “He does not read in big books any longer. Oh, I was so frightened when I first came.” (I must say she hid her terrors pretty effectually.) “He was so wise, and always reading and writing, and I thought he was fifty. And now he is not wise at all, and he said two, three days ago I had made him twenty-five.”
“If you go on at the rate you have begun, my dear,” Judith remarked in her most charming manner, “in another year you will have brought him down to long clothes and a feeding-bottle.”
Carlotta thought this very funny and laughed joyously. I laughed too, out of courtesy, at Judith’s bitter sarcasm, and turned the conversation, but Pasquale was not to be baulked of his toast.
“Here’s to our dear friend Faust; may he grow younger and younger every day.”
We clinked glasses. Judith sighed when the performance was concluded.
“That is one of the many advantages of being a man. If you do sell your soul to the devil you can see that you get proper payment. A woman is paid in promissory notes, which are dishonoured when they fall due.”
I contested the proposition. The irony of this peculiarly painful revel lay in the air of gaiety it seemed necessary to maintain. A miserable business is civilisation!
“Did you ever hear of a woman getting youth out of such a bargain?” she retorted with some vehemence.
“As women systematically underpay cabmen,” said I, “so do they try to underpay the devil; and he is one too many for them.”
“I am afraid,” said Pasquale, “that the old days of shrewd bargains are over. There is a glut in the soul-market and they only fetch the price of old bones.”