Achmed Abdullah

“ He mentioned casually that a man who marries for money is a sacred type with the morals of an eel and the sympathetic character of an angleworm—an especially fat and ungainly angleworm! He opined that such a man’s heart was a scenic depravity and that his soul was made of brown, squidgy, malevolent mud. He compared such a man to a pig-tailed rat, to a cross between a hyena and a hippopotamus, and also to a cursed cooking-stove—but the headwaiter remained as adamant as his starched shirt front. He, too, had common sense; and so he left Monsieur Lebel, a victim to groping, bitter reflection. ”

“ There he specialized in the edible variety of the genus Snail—an animal best served with cream sauce, chopped parsley and a dreamy spring whiff of garlic; an animal not as vivacious as the mussel which is dragged up from the slimy black river bed of the Seine, nor as elusive as the lark which is slain in the forests of Fontainebleau; thus an article of commerce more sane, less risky, and the financial standby of the widowed Monsieur Lebel and of his only child, Julienne. ”

“ The jewels were upstairs in the garret, in the late Madame’s trunk. Here was at least a beginning. He would surely be able to sell them for two or three hundred francs, a sum of money sufficient to give Julienne a trousseau of the finest. The headwaiter would see—he would admire—he would wonder—he would say to himself that a man who could spend so much money on a trousseau had doubtless a tidy fortune saved up somewhere, and since he seemed too stingy to give a fair share of it to his daughter as dowry there was always hope for the future. ”