Yet, though as bold a man as any enrolled in the French Service, he sat
alone here in the shadow of the column, thoughtful, motionless, lost in
silence.
In his left hand was a Galignani, six months old, and his eye rested on
a line in the obituary:
"On the 10th ult., at Royallieu, suddenly, the Right Hon. Denzil,
Viscount Royallieu; aged 90."
CHAPTER XVI.
CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE.
Vanitas vanitatum! The dust of death lies over the fallen altars of
Bubastis, where once all Egypt came down the flood of glowing Nile,
and Herodotus mused under the shadowy foliage, looking on the lake-like
rings of water. The Temple of the Sun, where the beauty of Asenath
beguiled the Israelite to forget his sale into bondage and banishment,
lies in shapeless hillocks, over which canter the mules of dragomen and
chatter the tongues of tourists. Where the Lutetian Palace of Julian
saluted their darling as Augustus, the sledge-hammer and the stucco of
the Haussmann fiat bear desolation in their wake. Levantine dice
are rattled where Hypatia's voice was heard. Bills of exchange are
trafficked in where Cleopatra wandered under the palm aisles of her rose
gardens. Drummers roll their caserne-calls where Drusus fell and Sulla
laid down dominion.
And here--in the land of Hannibal, in the conquest of Scipio, in the
Phoenicia whose loveliness used to flash in the burning, sea-mirrored
sun, while her fleets went eastward and westward for the honey of Athens
and the gold of Spain--here Cigarette danced the cancan!
A little hostelry of the barriere swung its sign of the As de Pique
where feathery palms once had waved above mosques of snowy gleam,
with marble domes and jeweled arabesques, and the hush of prayer under
columned aisles.
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