Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/150

 VI

In Pursuit of a Whisper

Nightly he went adventuring with Ettarre: and they saw the cities and manners of many men, to an extent undreamed-of by Ithaca's mundivigant king; and among them even those three persons who had most potently influenced human life.

For once, in an elongated room with buff-colored walls—having scarlet hangings over its windows, and seeming larger than it was in reality, because of its many mirrors—they foregathered with Napoleon, on the evening of his coronation: the emperor of half-Europe was fretting over an awkward hitch in the day's ceremony, caused by his sisters' attempt to avoid carrying the Empress Josephine's train; and he was grumbling because the old French families continued to ignore him, as a parvenu. In a neglected orchard, sunsteeped and made drowsy by the murmur of bees, they talked with Shakespeare; the playwright, his