Читать книгу The Amazing City онлайн
44 страница из 62
And now night-time, and a lamp burning on a table in the garden of the Villa des Roses, and around the table, covered with coffee cups, the Durands and the Duponts and the Duvals. Happily they lie back in their chairs. Now and again the peevish, spiteful hum of the mosquito. Odd green insects dash themselves against the glass of the lamp.
“The air of the country, there is nothing like it; it is exquisite, sublime,” says M. Durand rapturously. “Breathe it in, my friends, breathe it in, with all your might.”
“Durand is right,” assents M. Dupont. “Let us not speak; let us only breathe.”
“Are we ready?” inquires M. Duval.
And the three M. D.’s and the three Madame D.’s, lying back in their chairs, breathe and breathe.
2. Pension de Famille. The Beautiful Mademoiselle Marie, who loved Gambetta
ssss1
As a consequence of the death, in her ninety-third year, of Mademoiselle Marie Rosalie Losset, many a successful French barrister, politician and littérateur is recalling the early, struggling days of the past. He sees the Rue des Poitevins, a narrow little street in the heart of the Latin Quarter. He remembers the board over one of its doorways: “Pension Laveur. Cuisine Bourgeoise. Prix modérés.” He can almost smell the strong evening odour of cabbage and onion soup that assailed him in the dim entrance hall when he returned to the boarding-house exhausted, perhaps depressed from his lectures at the Sorbonne, his studies in the medicine schools, his first visits to the Law Courts.