Reasons of State Read Online Free Page B

Nymph
by Gervex.
    “Now the sleeve,” says the tailor. And here I am in front of Luc-Olivier Merson’s
Wolf of Gubbio
, in which the wild beast is tamed by Poverello’s ineffable preaching, has become holy and good, and is playing with some mischievous children who are pulling its ears. A quarter turn more and it’s Dumont’s
Cardinals at Supper
(and what expressions of enjoyment they all have, and how lifelike! You can even see the veins on the forehead of that one on the left!), next to which is
The Little Chimney-Sweep
by Chocarne-Moreau and Béraud’s
Fashionable Reception
, where the red background marvellously sets off the pale low-necked dresses of the women amongst black tailcoats, green palms, and glittering glass.
    And now, almost facing the light, my eyes rest on the
View of Nueva Córdoba
, a work by one of our own painters, obviously influenced by some Toledan landscape by Ignacio Zuloaga—the same orange-yellows, the houses similarly terraced, with the Puente del Mapuche transformed into the Puente de Alcántara. And now I am facing the window, and the tailor is telling me about some of his clients whose names add to his professional prestige—just as happens in England when a biscuit or jam manufacturer labels his goods “By appointment to His Majesty.” Thus he informed me that Gabriele D’Annunzio, who was extravagant and grand in his ideas but always absent-minded and slow about paying, ordered twelve fancy waistcoats and other garments to the details of which I hardly listened, because the mere name of Gabriele D’Annunzio immediately called up to my mind that mysterious paved and aristocratic courtyard, hidden behind the façade of a wretched-looking house in the Rue Geoffroy L’Asnier, where, at the end of a passage smelling of leek soup, there appeared like some incredible opera set the pavilion with its classical façade, masks, and grilles, in which I had more than once had the honour to dine alone with the great poet. That luxurious yet secret hiding place had its own legends and mythology; it was said that when Gabriele was alone he was served by beautiful waitresses with fantastic names, and while his numerous creditors were kept at bay by a concierge hardened in such duties, inside that mansion filled with alabasters and ancient marbles, mediaeval parchments and chasubles, amongst steaming censers, the fresh voices of a choir of child acolytes, alternating antiphonally with plainsong, could be heard through curtains concealing thenaked bodies of women, a lot of women—and some of them great, famous, and aristocratic—who were submitting to the mood of the Archangel of the Annunciation. (“I don’t know what they see in him,” Peralta used to say: “he’s ugly, bald and squat.” “Go and see,” I said, reflecting that, for the great man in question, it was probably a good deal more interesting than frequenting the de Chabanais brothel, however haunted that might be by the shade of Edward VII.)
    And at this very moment in came Peralta himself, carrying a pile of books on top of which was a yellow copy of
L’enfant de volupté
—the French version of
Il piacere
—wherein my secretary had certainly not found, to his disappointment, the ribaldries promised by the title.
    “They were in my room, half read.” And he puts them down on the library table, while the tailor carries off his materials, after stripping me of expensive coatings, shapeless evening dress, and trousers badly cut in the fork.
    “Give me a drink.” Doctor Peralta opens my little boule writing desk and takes out a bottle of Santa Inés rum, with its label of gothic letters on a canefield.
    “This is a life saver.”
    “Especially after last night.”
    “You seemed to have taken a shine to nuns.”
    “And you to negresses.”
    “You know, my friend, I’m an incendiary.”
    “All of us from
over there
are incendiaries,” I said, laughing, but just then Ofelia, hearing I was awake, began playing