“The Marquis de Parabole,” she answered. “That is his wife, next to you.” Sally would have said more, perhaps, but the nuncio was claiming her attention.
Already I had noticed my neighbor, a little, redheaded woman, who, in face and manner, suggested a bird—yet, perhaps, a bird of prey. In any event, a bird that, with beak and talons, knows how to defend its own. In the word or two that I had already exchanged with her I knew by her accent that she could not be French, or, for that matter, Anglo-Saxon.
Presently our earlier conversation was resumed. At some remark of mine she smiled. I have never forgotten that smile. It disclosed a front tooth filled with a diamond.
The effect was startling and at the same time evocative. I recalled that the arrangement was affectioned in certain sections of South America, and it occurred to me that the lady might be a Brazilian—a supposition which subsequent developments confirmed. Yet that which at the time intrigued me most was her relationship to the young musketeer. I could have sworn that she would never see forty again, and that he was yet to see twenty-nine. It seemed to me that I must have misunderstood Sally. But a look, which, in a pause of our talk, she shot across the table, undeceived me. It was double-barreled and aimed point-blank at the musketeer and the vision. There was hatred in it. Had I not already likened the lady to a bird I should add that there was venom in it, too. Could a look kill, there would have been murder then and there. A moment and it had gone. Her beady eyes shifted to mine.
A filet of reindeer was being served. From beyond came the rich voice of Monsieur de Malakoff. He appeared to be philosophizing on the degree of decomposition that renders game most savorous. Meanwhile, in the constant replenishment of blond wines, conversation and the tone of it heightened. The young musketeer was still talking inaudibly with that vision, but otherwise the table was united. Topics were tossed like balls. Jests flared as pinwheels do. Wit, or at least a passable imitation of it, became common property, until, in a ripple of laughter created by a suggestion only a trifle more scabreux than the last, Sally arose, and from the gayety of the room we passed into others yet gayer.
It was not for the sake of gayety that I was then in Paris. On the contrary, I was at work on a history of the young empresses of old Rome. For such labors there is nothing more serviceable than the Bibliothèque Nationale. Hence the sojourn.
The morning succeeding the dinner I went as usual to the Library. The documents that I there obtained held certain stupefactions; but my surprise at what I read was exceeded by my surprise at what I saw. At a table beyond was the young musketeer. Fancy a panther in a conservatory! Yet there he sat, fronted by a pile of MSS., and as lost in them as presently I became in the Subura. When I emerged from that Whitechapel of the past, he saw me and smiled in recognition.
A few days later at the Café Anglais, where, because of its proximity to the Library, I was in the habit of lunching, we met again, and in meeting, joined tables. For a while conversation drifted impersonally, but presently the moi popped out.
“May I, without indiscretion,” I asked, “inquire the nature of your distractions at the Bibliothèque?”
“Alchemy,” he answered. “But,” he added, with a smile in which there was amusement at my manifest surprise, “let me ask what are your distractions there.”
“Nothing half so fascinating,” I replied. “I am merely a writer.”
“In that case,” he retorted, “you are an alchemist, too. A wad of paper and an ounce of ink you transform into bank notes. The transmutation of metals is a process only a trifle more elaborate. Others have practiced it successfully, and what has been done may be repeated.”
“No doubt,” I answered; “but the age of miracles has gone.”
“Has it?” he asked, with an air of great innocence. “That, really, I did not know. I fancied that it had come. I believe that could the people who lived in what you call the age of miracles return they would be far more astonished at contemporary wonders than we are at those of the past. Tenez, monsieur. Just across the river is the Église de Ste. Chose. Its construction must have cost a lot, yet it was built by a poor devil of a bookseller who emerged from grinding poverty into abnormal wealth—relatively speaking, that is, for in his time even the richest were none too well off. For that matter, they are none too well off now. It is in wealth alone that the world has not progressed. Kings today have to count the pennies. Budgets are out at elbows. France, the most opulent country in Europe, is obliged to consider penuriously the cost of an ironclad. In early times there was nothing of this. The kings that were built at will cities of enchanted dwellings, shimmering avenues, and walls so wide that they were race courses. The treasures that Alexander looted provided him with coin to the value of fifteen billion francs, a sum tolerably large, and yet paltry beside the four hundred and twenty-five billion that is estimated to have been the value of the treasure heaped on the pile of Assurbanipal.
“Whence did wealth in such proportions come? Through what wizardry were the fairylands that existed then created? Obviously, there was a secret, and that secret has been lost. At the beginning of the present era the total amount of money in circulation was a hundred times inferior to that which in earlier
