THE ARRIVAL OF A LADY OF QUALITY
low! An awful, frightful story. I say, Herbert, if you’ve got any more horrors keep ’em for another night. I move we have a rest. Drag out that spinet, Brierley, and give us some music.”
“No, please don’t!” cried the marquise. “Tell us another. I wish this one of Monsieur Herbert’s was in print, so that I could read it over and over. Think how banal is our fiction; how we are forever digging in the same dry ground, turning up the same trivialities—affairs of the heart, domestic difficulties—thin, tawdry romances of olden times, all the characters masquerading in modern thought—all false and stupid. Oh! how sick I am of it all! But this epic of Monsieur Herbert means the clash of races, the meeting of two civilizations, the world turning back, as it were, to measure swords with that from which it sprung. And think, too, how rare it is to meet a man who in his own life has lived them both—the savage and the civilized. So please, Monsieur Herbert, tell us another—something about the savage himself. You know so many things and you are so human.”
“He doesn’t open his lips, madame, until I get some fresh air!” cried Louis. “Throw
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