he contracted to pay the price he is paying.
Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Well
informed in all things, the devil must have known that my friend would
gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very
shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devil
seems to me.
Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that
day at the Vingtieme. Only once, however, have I seen him at close
quarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking one
afternoon along the rue d'Antin, and I saw him advancing from the
opposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane and
altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At
thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in
this brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself
up to my full height. But--well, one is so used to nodding and smiling
in the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost
independent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and
great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the devil,
that I nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and
hotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmost
haughtiness.
To be cut, deliberately cut, by HIM! I was, I still am, furious at
having had that happen to me.
[Transcriber's Note: I have closed contractions in the text; e.g.,
"does n't" has become "doesn't" etc.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Enoch Soames, by Max Beerbohm
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENOCH SOAMES ***
***** This file should be named 760.txt or 760.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/7/6/760/
Produced by Judith Boss.
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered
|