Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/111

Rh flavour, that would have kept me eating and drinking all night long; only the first glass of wine and the first banana made me feel so happy and so pleased with myself that I started singing a sea-song.

"Now, sir, I should tell you that I never sing, ray voice being so cracked that I frighten myself if ever I attempt the most trifling air. Well, that night, sir, I seemed to sing like a nightingale without any effort, and I found it so delightful to listen to my own voice that I felt my feet itching to be cutting double shuffles and hornpipes, and I felt myself rising involuntarily from the floor, as if instead of drinking a glass of Muscat wine I had imbibed a barrel of inflammable gas. In a word, the temptation grew so strong that I soon began to dance, beating time with a knife on the bottom of my plate, which rang out like a drum. 1 could see myself in a mirror, and I felt proud of my performance. The more I looked at myself, the more pleased I grew, till by dint of singing, my voice gave out, by dint of dancing, my legs failed me, by dint of staring at myself, I could see nothing but pink and blue flames. Worn out with delight, I went and lay down on a great sofa, feeling the happiest man on earth.

"I do not know how long I slept, but I woke with a delicious feeling of coolness at the soles of my feet. I stretched out my arms and felt my wife beside me; I thought it was to her I owed the sense of blissful comfort I experienced,—and upon my word! . . . I showed myself duly grateful.

"I heard a long-drawn sigh.

"I tell you, sir, the sound of that sigh so vividly recalled the one I had heard once before at Negombo, the first night of my marriage with the beautiful NahiNava-Nahina, that I shuddered from head to foot.

"'Halloa!' I cried.

"'Well, I am only sighing,' she said.

"I tell you, sir, in an instant I turned as cold as ice, my teeth chattered, and between them I faltered, 'The Buchold, the Buchold.'

"'Why, certainly, the Buchold, who has come to tell you, my dear little husband, that you are father of a second son, as pretty as Cupid, who will be six months old to-morrow, and whom I have called Thomas in memory of the day when I came to stop your marriage with the fair Nahi-Nava-Nahina. He was held at the baptismal font by the highly respectable j^Ionsieur Van Brock, engineer of the dykes, who has promised me to be a second father to the dear child.'

"'No doubt,' I said, 'my dear wife, this is good news, I grant you that; but, as I had already waited five or six months to hear it, I could very well have waited just five or six days longer.'

"'Yes, I quite understand,' said Buchold: 'in that case I should with the not the have disturbed your marriage lovely Donna Inez.'

"'Quite right, if I must tell you the truth.'

"'Ungrateful wretch!'

"'Ungrateful! Why?'

"'Yes, ungrateful, when I have made such haste to prevent your being shamefully deceived.'

"'How? Shamefully deceived?'

"'Yes, indeed, shamefully deceived! Did not your wife ask you for a quarter of an hour to prepare for bed?'

"'Yes, she did.'

"'During that interval did you not drink a glass of Muscat wine of San Lucar and eat a banana?'

"'Why, yes, I seem to remember the fact.'

"'And from that moment onwards what do you remember?'

"'Nothing.'

"'Well, my sweet friend, that wine was mixed with troa juice, that banana was sprinkled with troa powder.'

"'Death and damnation!

"'So that, while you were sleeping like a drunkard and snoring like a Kaffir . . .'

"'Well! '

"'Your chaste bride . . .'

"'Well, my chaste bride . . .*

"'A very pious young lady who once a week used to confess to a handsome Cordelier Friar, while she was at her Convent . . .'

"'Well, well, my chaste bride . . . '

"'Well, would you like to see she was doing during that interval.'

"'Was she confessing by any chance?' I cried.

"'Precisely; look there.' And so saying she led me to a crack in the partition wall, through which I could see what was happening in the bedroom.

"What I beheld, sir, was so humiliating what