Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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To keep peace Robledo betook himself at ten o’clock one evening to the house of Mme. Titonius on the Avenue Kléber, having fortified himself beforehand by dining with some South American friends at one of the Boulevard restaurants.

Two servants, hired for the occasion, were helping the guests out of their overcoats. The mixture of various social groups that Elena had foreseen was noticeable even in the anteroom. Side by side with guests of distinguished appearance, accustomed to the life of the drawing-room, he noticed youths with leonine locks, whose formal evening dress was revealed only when they slid out of threadbare coats with tattered linings. He caught the contemptuous expression of the servants as they collected these coats, as well as certain fur wraps grown bald in spots, from ladies who, on emerging from these coverings, displayed the most extravagant of head dresses.

An old fellow whose whiskers, of a dirty white, and whose wide slouch hat made him look like the popular conception of a poet, threw off his summer overcoat and the woolen mufflers wound about him. Taking his pipe out of his mouth, he struck it on the heel of his shoe, and put it in his overcoat pocket.