In one corner, on a pedestal, there glittered a Buddha, the legs crossed and a smile of indolent apathy on its imbecile features. Behind it was a giant crucifix with arms outstretched like the wings of woe.
Maida wandered from bookcase to bookcase, examining the contents with incurious eye. The titles were strange to her and new. In one division were the works of Archilaus, Albert le Grand, Raymond Lulle, Armand de Villenova, Nostradamus, and Paracelsus, the masters of occult science. Another was given up to Spanish literature. There were the poems of Berceo, the romancero of the church; the codex of Alphonso X, the Justinian of medieval Spain; El Tesoro, a work on alchemy by the same royal hand and the Conquista d’ultramar. There was the Libro de consejos, by Sanchez IV; and Beccerro, the armorial of the nobility, by his son, Alphonso XI. Therewith was a collection of verse of the troubadours, the songs of Aimeric de Bellinsi, Foulque de Lunel, Carbonel, Nat de Tours, and Riquier, the last of the knight-errants. Then came the poems of Juan de Mena, the Dante of Castille; the Rabelaisian relaxations of the Archbishop of Hita; the cancionero of Ausias March, that of Baena, of Stuñiga, and that of Ixar.
Another bookcase was filled with the French poets, from Villon to Soulary. The editions were delicious, a pleasure to hold, and many of them bore the imprint of Lemerre. Among them was the Fleurs du Mal, an unexpurgated copy, and by it were the poems of Baudelaire’s decadent descendants, Paul Verlaine and Mallarmé.
There were other bookcases, and of these there was one of which the door was locked. In it were Justine and Juliette, by the Marquis de Sade; the works of Piron; the works of Beroalde de Verville; a copy of Mercius; a copy of Thérèse Philosophe; the De Arcanis Amoris; Mirabeau’s Rideau levé; Gamaini, by Alfred de Musset and George Sand; Boccaccio; the Heptameron; Paphian Days; Crébillon’s Sopha; the Erotika Biblion; the Satyricon of Petronius; an illustrated catalogue of the Naples Museum; Voltaire’s Pucelle; a work or two of Diderot’s; Maizeroy’s Deux Amies; the Clouds; the Curée; everything, in fact, from Aristophanes to Zola.
The collection was meaningless to Maida, and she turned aside and went out on the verandah. Below, on the gravel walk, was a cat with a tail like a banner, and a neck furred like a ruff. Maida crumpled a bit of paper and threw it down. The cat jumped at it at once, toyed with it for a moment, and then, sliding backwards with a crab-like movement, its back arched, and its ears drawn down, it caught a glimpse of Maida’s unfamiliar figure, and fled to the bushes with a shriek of feigned terror. A servant passed, and ignorant of Maida’s presence, apostrophized the retreating feline as a loafer and a liar.
A moment later Mr. Incoul and the marquis reappeared.
“I have been admiring your Angora,” Maida said, “but I fear I startled it.”
The marquis rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. “It is a wonderful animal,” he answered, “but it is not an Angora, it is a Tibetian cat, and though it does not talk, at least it converses. It is so odd in its ways that I called it Mistigris, as one might a familiar spirit, but my children prefer Ti-Mi; they think it more Tibetian, I fancy.” He coughed slightly and looking at the points of his fingers, he added, “I will leave it with you of course.”
And then Maida understood that the matter was settled and that the house was hers.
VII
What May Be Seen from a Palco
The installation was accomplished without difficulty. The marquis migrated to other shores and it took Maida but a short time to discover the pleasures of being luxuriously housed. The apartment which she selected for herself was composed of four rooms; there was a sitting-room in an angle with windows overlooking the sea and others that gave on a quiet street which skirted one wing of the villa. Next to it was a bedroom also overlooking the street, while back of that, on the garden side, was a bath and a dressing-room. A wide hall that was like a haunt of echoes separated these rooms from those of her husband.
Through the street, which was too steep to be much of a thoroughfare, there came each morning the clinging strain of a pastoral melody, and a pipe-playing goatherd would pass leading his black, long-haired flock to the doors of those who bought the milk. When he had gone the silence was stirred by another sound, a call that
