"
"That," said I, "is an horrible infliction which only my
cultivated sense of altruism enables me to tolerate."
"Her name ought to be Margarita."
"Why?" I asked.
"_Ante porcos_," said he.
Certainly Pasquale has a pretty wit and I admire it as I admire
most of his brilliant qualities, but I fail to see the aptness of
this last gibe. At the club this afternoon I picked up an
entertaining French novel called _En felons des Perles_. On the
illustrated cover was a row of undraped damsels sitting in
oyster-shells, and the text of the book went to show how it was
the hero's ambition to make a rosary of these pearls. Now I am a
dull pig. Why? Because I do not add Carlotta to my rosary. I
never heard such a monstrous thing in my life. To begin with, I
have no rosary.
I wish I had not read that French novel. I wish I had not gone
downstairs to hunt for its seventeenth century ancestor. I wish
I had given Pasquale dinner at the club.
It is all the fault of Antoinette. Why can't she cook in a
middle-class, unedifying way? All this comes from having in the
house a woman whose soul is in the stew-pot.
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