Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad


I didn't say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel was the Don
Rafael of Rita's own story. What had I to do with Spanish
grandees? And for that matter what had she, the woman of all time,
to do with all the villainous or splendid disguises human dust
takes upon itself? All this was in the past, and I was acutely
aware that for me there was no present, no future, nothing but a
hollow pain, a vain passion of such magnitude that being locked up
within my breast it gave me an illusion of lonely greatness with my
miserable head uplifted amongst the stars. But when I made up my
mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call on the
banker's wife, almost the first thing she said to me was that the
Marquis de Villarel was "amongst us." She said it joyously. If in
her husband's room at the bank legitimism was a mere unpopulated
principle, in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons. "Il
m'a cause beaucoup de vous," she said as if there had been a joke
in it of which I ought to be proud. I slunk away from her. I
couldn't believe that the grandee had talked to her about me. I
had never felt myself part of the great Royalist enterprise. I
confess that I was so indifferent to everything, so profoundly
demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I hadn't
the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my
volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in
order to tell them with a little gesture, "Look! Over there--in
that corner. That's the notorious Monsieur George." At last she
herself drove me out by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going
into ecstasies over "ce cher Monsieur Mills" and that magnificent
Lord X; and ultimately, with a perfectly odious snap in the eyes
and drop in the voice, dragging in the name of Madame de Lastaola
and asking me whether I was really so much in the confidence of
that astonishing person. "Vous devez bien regretter son depart
pour Paris," she cooed, looking with affected bashfulness at her
fan. . . . How I got out of the room I really don't know. There
was also a staircase. I did not fall down it head first--that much
I am certain of; and I also remember that I wandered for a long
time about the seashore and went home very late, by the way of the
Prado, giving in passing a fearful glance at the Villa. It showed
not a gleam of light through the thin foliage of its trees.

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