Ronald Firbank

“ Yousef’s lips had seldom conveyed to hers the spell of Ursula’s; and once indeed lately, when he had kissed her, there had been an unsavoury aroma of tobacco and charcuterie, which, to deal with, had required both tact and courage.... Ah dear Hood! What harmony life had held within. Unscrupulous and deceiving men might lurk around its doors (they often did) coveting the chaste, but Old Jane, the porteress, would open to no man beyond the merest crack. And how right they were the nuns in their mistrust of man! Sister Ursula one day had declared, in uplifted mood, that “marriage was obscene.” ”

“ Countess Medusa Rappa cocked her sunshade; “Whose boat is that,” she asked, “with the azure oars?”
“It looks nothing but a pea-pod!” the Countess of Tolga declared.
“It belongs to a darling, with delicious lips and eyes like brown chestnuts,” Mademoiselle de Lambèse informed.
“Ah!... Ah!... Ah!... Ah!...” her colleagues crooned.
“A sailor?”
The Queen’s maid nodded: “There’s a partner, though,” she added, “A blue-eyed, gashed-cheeked angel....”
Mademoiselle de Nazianzi looked away.
“I love the lake with the white wandering ships,” she sentimentally stated, descrying in the distance the prince. ”

“ The mellay of vehicles had considerably increased, and the Duchess paused a moment to consider which she should borrow, when recollecting she wished to question one of the royal gardeners on a little matter of mixing manure, she decided to return through the castle grounds instead. Taking a path that descended between rhododendrons and grim old cannons towards the town, she was comparing the capriciousness of certain bulbs to that of certain people, when she heard her name called from behind, and glancing round perceived the charming silhouette of the Countess of Tolga. ”

“ In the simoon that scatters the silver sand, in the words of the nomads, in the fairy mornings beneath the palms, society with its foolish cliché ... the duchess smiled.
“But for that poisonous woman, I should have, gone last year,” she told herself, interrupted in her cogitations by the appearance of her maid.
“The train your Grace we shall miss it....”
“Nonsense!” the duchess answered following, leaving the flowers alone again to their subtle exhalations.
“I’m glad I’m in a Basket!”
“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”
“Life’s bound to be uncertain when you haven’t got your roots!” ”

“ The plangent cry of a peacock, rose disquietingly from the garden.
“I’m nothing but nerves, doctor,” her Dreaminess lamented, fidgeting with the crucifix that dangled at her neck upon a chain. Ultra feminine, she disliked that another—even in extremis—should absorb all the limelight.
“A change of scene, ma’am, would be probably beneficial,” Dr Cuncliffe Babcock replied, eyeing askance the Countess of Tolga who unobtrusively entered:
“The couturiers attend your pleasure, ma’am,” in impassive undertones she said: “to fit your mourning.” ”

“ Lady 37 Something replied, caressing a parure of false jewels, intended, indeed, to deceive no one, “to be a Queen of a sun-steeped country like yours.”
Queen Thleeanouhee fetched a sigh.
“Dateland—my dear, it’s a scorch!” she averred.
“I conclude, ma’am, it’s what we should call ‘conservatory’ scenery?” Lady Something murmured.
“It is the land of the jessamine-flower, the little amorous jessamine-flower,” the Queen gently cooed with a sidelong smiling glance, “that twines itself sometimes to the right-hand, at others to the left, just according to its caprices!” ”

“ Already the blue revolving lights of the Café Cleopatra were growing paler with the dawn, and the moon had veered a little towards the Convent of the Flaming-Hood. 49 Ah ... how often as a lay boarder there had she gazed up towards the palace wondering half-shrinkingly what life “in the world” was like; for there had been a period indeed, when the impulse to take the veil had been strong with her—more, perhaps, to be near one of the nuns whom she had idolised than from any more immediate vocation. ”

“ Court life is not uplifting,” the Countess said again, contemplating her muff of self-made lace, with a half-vexed forehead. What that muff contained was a constant problem for conjecture; but it was believed by more than one of the maids-in-waiting to harbour “goody” books and martyrs’ bones.
“By generous deeds and Brotherly love,” Father Nostradamus exclaimed, “we should endeavour to rise above it!” 140
With the deftness of a virtuoso, the Countess seized, and crushed with her muff, a pale-winged passing gnat. ”

“ A desire for air and solitude, led her towards the Recreation ground. After the hot refectory, sauntering in the silken shade of the old astounding cedars, was delightful quite. In the deserted alleys, the golden blossoms of the censia-trees, 217 unable to resist the sun, littered in perfumed piles the ground, overcoming her before long with a sensation akin to vertige. Anxious to find her friend, Laura turned towards her cell.
She found Sister Ursula leaning on her window-ledge all crouched up—like a Duchess on “a First Night.”
“My dear, my dear, the crowds!” ”

“ A little fishing boat with coral sails. A lake all grey and green. Beatitude intense. Consummate calm. It was nice to be at the Summer-Palace after all.
“The way the air will catch your cheek and make a rose of it,” the Countess of Tolga breathed. And as none of the company heeded her: “How sweetly the air takes one’s cheek,” she sighed again. ”

“ They lived, with an ancient water-wheel, beneath a cupola of sun-glazed tiles, sheltered, partially, from the lake by a hedge of towering red geraniums, and the Count seldom wearied of watching these strangely gorgeous creatures as they sailed out and in through the sanguine-hued flowers. A few, with their heads sunk back beneath their wings, had retired for the night already; nevertheless, the Count paused to shake a finger at one somnolent bird, in disfavour for pecking Peter: “Jealous, doubtless of the lad’s grace,” he mused, fumbling with the key of the Observatory door. ”

“ Fond of a compliment, when not too frankly racy,7 and knowing how susceptible the exile was to clothes, the Countess had arrayed herself in a winter gown of kingfisher-tinted silk turning to turquoise, and stencilled in purple at the arms and neck with a crisp Greek-key design; while a voluminous violet veil, depending behind her to a point, half-concealed a tricorne turquoise toque from which arose a shaded lilac aigrette branching several ways.
“I shall probably die with heat, and of course it’s most unsuitable; but poor old man, he likes to recall the Capital!” ”

“ In the corridor, being a general holiday, all was yet quite still. A sound, as of gentle snoring, came indeed from behind more than one closed door, and the new pensionnaire was preparing to beat a retreat, when she perceived, in the cloister, the dumpish form of Old Jane.
Seated in the sun by the convent well, the Porteress was sharing a scrap of breakfast with the birds.
“You’re soonish for Mass, love,” she broke out, her large archaic features surcharged with smiles. ”

“ Above a sky so blue, so clear, so luminous seemed to cry out: “Nothing matters! Why worry? Be sanguine! Amuse yourself! Nothing matters!”
Traversing the gardens, her mind preoccupied by Madame Wetme’s note, the Duchess branched off into a busy thoroughfare, leading towards the Opera, in whose vicinity lay the city’s principal shops. To learn of anything to one’s advantage was, of course, always welcome, but there were various other claims upon her besides that afternoon, which she was unable, or loath to ignore—the palace, a thé dansant or two, and then her favourite rink ... ”

“ Never mind. Everything’s so beautiful,” the young girl inconsequently exclaimed: “Look at that Thistle! and that Bee! O, you darling!”
“Ah, how one’s face unbends in gardens!” the Countess of Tolga said, regarding the scene before her, with a faraway pensive glance.
Along the lake’s shore, sheltered from the winds by a ring of wooded hills, shewed many a proud retreat, mirroring its marble terraces to the waveless waters of the lake. ”

“ Through the bare, blindless windows, framing a sky so bluely luminous, came the swelling clamour of the assembling crowds, tinging the languid air as with some sultry fever. From the Chausée, music of an extraordinary intention—heated music, crude music, played with passionate élan to perfect time, conjured up, with vivid, heartrending prosaicness, the seething Boulevards beyond the high old creeper-covered walls.
“I forget now, Mother, which of the Queens it is that will wear a velvet train of a beautiful orchid shade: But one of them will!” ”

“ It is disgraceful they have not got one already, poor creatures,” the Archduchess crooned accepting the proffered glass.
“Yes, yes, dear,” the Queen exclaimed rising and crossing to the window.
The bitter odour of the oleander flowers outside oppressed the breathless air and filled the room as with a faint funereal music. So still a day. Tending the drooping sun-saturated flowers, a gardener with long ivory arms alone seemed animate.
“Pull up your skirt, Marquise! Pull it up.... It’s dragging, a little, in the water.” ”

“ Then, finding the shingle too hard through her thin gown to remain seated long, she got up, and ran a mournful race with Teddywegs along the shore.
Not far along the lake was the “village,” with the Hôtel d’Angleterre et du Lac, its stucco, belettered-walls professing: “Garages, Afternoon Tea, Modern Comfort!” Flitting by this, and the unpretentious pier (where long, blonde fishing-nets lay drying in the sun) , it was a relief to reach the remoter plage beyond. ”

“ In the street she usually walked with her hands clasped behind her back, huddled up like a statesman: “Des choses abominables!... Des choses hors nature!” she was saying, in tones of evident relish, as the duchess passed. 74
Meanwhile Madame Wetme was seated anxiously by the samovar in her drawing-room. To receive the duchess, she had assumed a mashlak à la mode, whitened her face and rouged her ears, and set a small, but costly aigrette at an insinuating angle in the edifice of her hair. ”

“ Madame Wetme read, ”was a gathering more brilliant than that which I witnessed last night! I stood in a corner of the Great ball room and literally gasped at the wealth of jewels.... Beauty and bravery abounded but no one, I thought, looked better than our most-gracious Queen, etc.... Among the supper-guests I saw their Excellencies Prince and Princess Paul de Pismiche,—the Princess impressed me as being just a trifle pale: she is by no means strong, and unhappily our nefarious climate does not agree with everybody! ”

“ Her Majesty Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates had just arrived, but seemed loath to leave the stairs, while her hostess, whom she addressed affectionately as her dear gazelle, remained upon them— “Let us go away by and by, my dear gazelle,” she exclaimed with a primitive smile, “and remove our corsets and talk.”
“Unhappily Pisuerga is not the East, ma’am!” Lady Something replied. 108
“Never mind, my dear; we will introduce this innovation....”
But the arrival of the Archduchess Elizabeth spared the Ambassadress from what might too easily have become an “incident.” ”

“ Tell Mother, darling?” the Queen exclaimed.
“They’re merely dreadful,” his Weariness, who had been to the railway-station to welcome the Royal travellers, murmured in a voice extinct with boredom.
“They’re in European dress, dear?” his mother questioned.
“The King had on a frock coat and a cap....” 15
“And she?”
“A tartan-skirt, and checked wool-stockings.”
“She has great individuality, so I hear, marm,” the Countess ventured.
“Individuality be ——! No one can doubt she’s a terrible woman.”
The Queen gently groaned.
“I see life to-day,” she declared, “in the colour of mould.” ”