Had I a Hundred Mouths Read Online Free PDF Page A

Fuchsia for Horty loved this favorite color of hers. “You’re certainly not going to redecorate that Palazzo” (they said Palazzo the way she did, so that it sounded like “Plotso”), “you’re certainly not going to furnish it out of Solomon’s Everybody’s Store!” The Boys declared to Horty as soon as they heard of her plans to redo the Plotso da Filippo. “Nor,” said they, “are you going to make it look like a West Texas ranch house. We’re using Florentine silk and Venetian gold, with rosy Fuchsia appointments!”
    When Palazzo da Filippo was in shape, the Texas relatives poured in. The Palazzo was crawling with them, young and old. The Palazzo could have been a big Texas house. Black cooks and maids from East Texas mingled with Italian servants. The Venetians loved it. “Viva la Principessa di Texas!” they cried. Those Italianos!
    Here I must inform you something of which you were asking about, that on his very wedding night in a villa in Monaco (the beautiful Prince gambled on his wedding night) the beautiful Prince Renzi burst a blood vessel in his inner ear and succumbed (the newspapers’ word for it). He just plain died in his wedding bed is what it was. You were asking about how he died. Vicious talk had it that the only stain on the nuptial (newspapers’ word)—only stain on the nuptial sheets came from the Prince’s ear. Crude. The poor bride, who had been married before—a big textile man from Birmingham, Alabama—was stunned. Poor Horty. Tragedy dogged her, as you well can see. I myself have never experienced the death of a husband but I have experienced two divorces and let me tell you they are simular, they are like a death. They are no fun. My last divorce was particularly nasty. Thank God there was no issue, as the Wills said. Both my husbands were without issue. Issue indeed. That’s a joke for the last one, who issued it to Old Granddad instead of me—mind as well say it; and excuse the profanity—that one had little issue except through his mouth… when he threw up his Bourbon. Crude, I know. But that’s mainly the kind of issue he had. That ever happen to you? Let’s see where was I. Oh. Anyway, this left me in London, quite penniless; tell you why I was in London some other time. Don’t have time for that garden path now—it’s a memory lane I choose at the moment to take a detour from. But the thing of it is, this is how Horty Solomon got the Palazzo da Filippo, which is what you were asking me about: under the auspices of a sad circumstance—a broken blood vessel leading to death; but a tragedy leading to a new life for her. And for me, as you will soon hear the story (that you were asking about). Anyway, Horty went on with her plans for the Palazzo, now all hers.
    As I said somewhere—I can’t tell a story straight to save my life, my mind races off onto a hundred things that I remember and want to tell right then, don’t want to wait. That ever happen to you? Anyway , as I said somewhere, Texans flooded into the canals of Venice because of the Principessa: Venezia was half Texas some days—and loved it. And if you’ve ever heard a Texan speaking Italian, you won’t believe the sound of it. Big oilmen came to the Palazzo and Texas college football players—Horty had given them a stadium in Lampasas (they called her Cousin Horty)—Junior League ladies, student concert pianists (Horty was a patron of the Arts, as you will see more about), and once a Rock group—they had that Grand Canal jumping, and some seventeenth-century tiles fell , I can tell you. And maybe something from even earlier, a Fresco or two from the Middle Ages. And talented young people who wanted to paint or write came over to the Palazzo. See what Horty did? Some of them were offered rooms in the Palazzo, to write in or paint in, or practice a musical instrument in;