A little
amusement, as he said, is necessary for health. Mimes and flute-players,
in fact. Only unlike the magnates of ancient Rome, he had no affairs
of the city to call him away from these moderate delights. He had no
affairs at all. Probably he had never had any grave affairs to attend
to in his life. It was a kindly existence, with its joys and sorrows
regulated by the course of Nature--marriages, births, deaths--ruled by
the prescribed usages of good society and protected by the State.
He was a widower; but in the months of July and August he ventured to
cross the Alps for six weeks on a visit to his married daughter. He
told me her name. It was that of a very aristocratic family. She had
a castle--in Bohemia, I think. This is as near as I ever came to
ascertaining his nationality. His own name, strangely enough, he never
mentioned. Perhaps he thought I had seen it on the published list. Truth
to say, I never looked. At any rate, he was a good European--he spoke
four languages to my certain knowledge--and a man of fortune.
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