“Then he is a poor idiot. However, it’s nothing to me. Our uncle is a stupid fool.”
“You discovered that in such a little while?”
“Yes. Fanatical, vain, fatuous, pleased with himself.... He is of no use to me.”
“Ah, so you thought he would be of some use to you?”
“Why not?”
Her brother’s arbitrary manner of taking things irritated and at the same time amused Laura.
She believed that he made it a rule to persist in always doing the contrary to other people.
Laura and her friends of both sexes used to run across one another in museums, out walking in the popular promenades, and at the races. Cæsar didn’t go to museums, because he said he had no artistic feeling; races didn’t interest him either; and when it came to walking, he preferred to wander at random in the streets.
As his memory was not full of historical facts, he experienced no great esthetic or archeological thrills, and no sympathy whatsoever with the various herds of tourists that went about examining old stones.
At night, in the salon, he used to give burlesque descriptions, in his laconic French, of street scenes: the Italian soldiers with cock-feathers drooping from a sort of bowler hat, the porters of the Embassies and great houses, with their cocked hats, their blue great-coats, and the staff with a silver knob in their hands.