"I dropped my hands," he said, "but I never put them in my pockets. I
felt a pressure there--"
He put the tip of his finger on a spot close under his breastbone,
the very spot of the human body where a Japanese gentleman begins the
operations of the Harakiri, which is a form of suicide following
upon dishonour, upon an intolerable outrage to the delicacy of one's
feelings.
"I glance down," the Count continued in an awestruck voice, "and what do
I see? A knife! A long knife--"
"You don't mean to say," I exclaimed, amazed, "that you have been held
up like this in the Villa at half-past ten o'clock, within a stone's
throw of a thousand people!"
He nodded several times, staring at me with all his might.
"The clarionet," he declared, solemnly, "was finishing his solo, and I
assure you I could hear every note. Then the band crashed fortissimo,
and that creature rolled its eyes and gnashed its teeth hissing at me
with the greatest ferocity, 'Be silent! No noise or--'"
I could not get over my astonishment.
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