“Olga?”
“See right here in the paper: Olga. Here.”
“Zeus and Olga? Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as —”
His friend shrugged. “Oh well. Other times, other mirrors.”
Eszterhazy felt he liked this, came closer.
“What chap was it who said, nature always holds up the same mirror, but sometimes she changes the reflections?”
The other sipped from his glass of bullblood wine while he considered. “Don’t know who said it. You’re sure somebody said it? Well, it’s either very profound or very silly.”
They sipped and talked as they moved on to the quaint buffet; this fellow the Doctor their host, was he carrying his Love of the People too far? ... head-cheese, sausage, now, really! — And then suddenly a hand was held up for silence. “Oh listen! You can hear the bell of the ten o’clock tram down the road, last one till five tomorrow morning, best hurry! Be hard to find a cab if we miss the tram.” Even in Bella, sophistication too had its pains and costs.
Down in the street. “Thank you, Doctor Eszterhazy! Oh it was indeed a pleasure, Doctor Eszterhazy! Good night! Good night! Engelbert! ’Night, Engli. . . !”
For some while he remained there, simply enjoying the mist around the lamplights; suddenly a commotion, there on the next corner was someone shouting and waving his hands and screaming for a fiacre. It was Signor Gian-Giacomo Pagliacci-Espresso. “The Central Station! At once! A fiacre-cab! Pronto!” Would one stop for him, no, one would not, very odd considering the local libel that fiacre drivers “would drive the Devil to mass for a ducat,” was this surprising? Considering that in one waving hand the wealthy wine-bottler held a stiletto and in the other a pistol, perhaps not.
Then, too, it was late.
On recognizing Eszterhazy, the man shouted, “Katinka Ivanovna, that slut, that buta, she has left me, she has eloped either with Baron Burgen- blitz or the Far-vestem Yankee poet Pard, I do not know which —”
To himself, Eszterhazy murmured, “Perhaps both;” but aloud he spoke so sympathetically he persuaded the man to replace the weaponry of vengeance and to come up to Eszterhazy’s chambers for a soothing drnk, instead. Sobbing softly into his astrakhan coat-lapels, he agreed.
And so, by and by, once again all was quiet in front of the hotel in the little square at the bottom of the Street of the Defeat of Bonaparte (commonly called Bonaparte Street).
And overhead shone the glittering stars.