We dined at the Trocadero. Carlotta loves the band and the buzz
of Babel and the heavy scents and the clatter and the tumult and
the glare of light; otherwise I should have chosen a discreeter
hostelry where the footfalls of the waiting-men were noiseless
and the walls in quiet shadow, where there was nothing but
the mellow talk of friends to distract the mind from the
consideration of exquisite flavours. But in these palaces of
clashing splendour, the stunned brain fails to receive
impressions from the glossopharyngeal nerve, and one eats
unthinkingly like a dog. But this matters little to Carlotta.
Perhaps when I was nineteen it mattered little to me. And
to-night, also, it mattered little, for my mind was preoccupied
and a dinner with Lucullus would have been savourless.
If the Psalmist cried, "What is man that Thou art mindful of
him?" what cry had he at the back of his head to utter concerning
woman? Did he leave her to be implicitly dealt with by Charles
Darwin in his "Theory of Sexual Selection"? Or did he in the
good old oriental way regard her as unimportant in the eyes of
the Deity? If the latter, he was a purblind prophet and missed
the very fount of human tears.
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