Alpha Book

"No," returned the other. "It would be of no use. You would win, and if
you happened to win much, I should be in a diabolical scrape. But I wish
you would fall in love. You should see how I would handle the green
shadows under your eyes."
"It is rather short notice."
"The shorter the better. I used to think that the only real happiness in
life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting
out."
"And have you changed your mind?"
"I? No. My mind has changed me. It is astonishing how a man may love his
wife under favourable circumstances."
Anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette. Reubens would have
sipped a few drops of Rhenish from a Venetian glass. Teniers would have
lit a clay pipe. Duerer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of Nueremberg
beer, and Greuse or Mignard would have resorted to their snuff-boxes. We
do not know what Michelangelo or Perugino did under the circumstances,
but it is tolerably evident that the man of the nineteenth century
cannot think without talking and cannot talk without cigarettes.


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