Chapter X

THE BLACK VEIL


Speaking the language fluently, and with unlimited money, there was
nothing to prevent my enjoying all that was enjoyable in the French
capital. You may easily suppose how two days were passed. At the end of
that time, and at about the same hour, Monsieur Droqville called again.

Courtly, good-natured, gay, as usual, he told me that the masquerade
ball was fixed for the next Wednesday, and that he had applied for a
card for me.

How awfully unlucky. I was so afraid I should not be able to go.

He stared at me for a moment with a suspicious and menacing look, which
I did not understand, in silence, and then inquired rather sharply. And
will Monsieur Beckett be good enough to say why not?

I was a little surprised, but answered the simple truth: I had made an
engagement for that evening with two or three English friends, and did
not see how I could.

"Just so! You English, wherever you are, always look out for your
English boors, your beer and _'bifstek'_; and when you come here,
instead of trying to learn something of the people you visit, and
pretend to study, you are guzzling and swearing, and smoking with one
another, and no wiser or more polished at the end of your travels than
if you had been all the time carousing in a booth at Greenwich."