Authors -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Indeed, it was a lively party that journeyed to Düsseldorf that
afternoon in that gorgeously gilded compartment, though three out of
the six were in deep mourning; the only person not quite happy being
Lady Jane, who, in addition to her trouble about her eyes (which was
really nothing to speak of), began to fidget herself miserably about
Barty Josselin; for that wretched young detrimental was evidently
beginning to ingratiate himself with the divine Julia as no young
man had ever been known to do before, keeping her in fits of
laughter, and also laughing at everything she said herself.
Alas for Lady Jane! it was to escape the attentions of a far less
dangerous detrimental, and a far less ineligible one, that she had
brought her daughter with her all the way to Riffrath--"from
Charybdis to Scylla," as we used to say at Brossard's, putting the
cart before the horse, _more Latino_!
I ought also to mention that a young Captain Graham-Reece was a
patient of Dr. Hasenclever's just then--and Captain Graham-Reece was
heir to the octogenarian Earl of Ironsides, who was one of the four
wealthiest peers in the United Kingdom, and had no direct
descendants.
When they reached Düsseldorf they all went to the Breidenbacher
Hotel, where rooms had been retained for them, all but Barty, who,
as became his humbler means, chose the cheaper hotel Domhardt, which
overlooks the market-place adorned by the statue of the Elector that
Heine has made so famous.
He took a long evening walk through the vernal Hof Gardens and by
the Rhine, and thought of the beauty and splendor of the divine
Julia; and sighed, and remembered that he was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere,
_pictor ignotus_, with only one eye he could see with, and possessed
of a fortune which invested in the 3 per cents would bring him in
just £6 a year--and made up his mind he would stick to his painting
and keep as much away from her divinity as possible.
"O Martia, Martia!" he said, aloud, as he suddenly felt the north at
the right of him, "I hope that you are some loving female soul, and
that you know my weakness--namely, that one woman in every ten
thousand has a face that drives me mad; and that I can see just as
well with one eye as with two, in spite of my _punctum coecum_! and
that when that face is all but on a level with mine, good Lord! then
am I lost indeed! I am but a poor penniless devil, without a name;
oh, keep me from that ten-thousandth face, and cover my retreat!"
Next morning Lady Jane and Julia and the Admiral left for
Riffrath--and Barty and his aunt and cousin went in search of
lodgings; sweet it was, and bright and sunny, as they strolled down
the broad Allée Strasse; a regiment of Uhlans came along on
horseback, splendid fellows, the band playing the "Lorelei."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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