Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction; Short stories
There is a saying of Neapolitan patriotism, intended for the information
of foreigners, I presume: “See Naples and then die.” Vedi Napoli e poi
mori. It is a saying of excessive vanity, and everything excessive was
abhorrent to the nice moderation of the poor Count. Yet, as I was seeing
him off at the railway station, I thought he was behaving with singular
fidelity to its conceited spirit. Vedi Napoli! . . . He had seen it! He
had seen it with startling thoroughness—and now he was going to his
grave. He was going to it by the train de luxe of the International
Sleeping Car Company, via Trieste and Vienna. As the four long, sombre
coaches pulled out of the station I raised my hat with the solemn feeling
of paying the last tribute of respect to a funeral cortege. Il Conde’s
profile, much aged already, glided away from me in stony immobility,
behind the lighted pane of glass—Vedi Napoli e poi mori!
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End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Set of Six, by Joseph Conrad
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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