"Lovely? She was beauteous, she was sinfully fascinating. Eyes like raw
silk, arms of amber! Just one glance from her was as seductive as a kiss;
and when she called me, her voice darted like a wine-ray right into my
soul's phosphor. And why shouldn't she be so beautiful?" Did he imagine
she was a messenger or something in the fire brigade? She was simply a
Heaven's wonder, I could just inform him, a fairy tale.
"Yes, to be sure!" said he, not a little bewildered. His quiet bored me; I
was excited by the sound of my own voice and spoke in utter seriousness;
the stolen archives, treaties with some foreign power or other, no longer
occupied my thoughts; the little flat bundle of paper lay on the seat
between us, and I had no longer the smallest desire to examine it or see
what it contained. I was entirely absorbed in stories of my own which
floated in singular visions across my mental eye. The blood flew to my
head, and I roared with laughter.
At this moment the little man seemed about to go. He stretched himself,
and in order not to break off too abruptly, added: "He is said to own much
property, this Happolati?"
How dared this bleary-eyed, disgusting old man toss about the rare name I
had invented as if it were a common name stuck up over every huckster-shop
in the town? He never stumbled over a letter or forgot a syllable. The
name had bitten fast in his brain and struck root on the instant.
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