The File on H. Read Online Free PDF

forth.
    That is what he liked to say on the matter of eyes, but as soon as ears were the issue, he changed his tone completely. Ah, ears, gentlemen, are a quite different matter! The ear never rests, for people always want to talk and to whisper; what is said and especially what is muttered is always, as you all know, much more dangerous to the state than what can be seen. At least, in our country, he would add. And if the governor was among a group of very close or very reliable friends, he would indulge in recalling his one and only real failure in intelligence matters. A failure due., of course, to the “eye”: in letters from a provincial Don Juan to a Tirana tart called Lulu (the correspondence was naturally checked because of the king’s open flirtation with the aforementioned tart), he had read the words
organization
and
secret
(“I swear it, those really were the words that I thought I deciphered, hidden like two hares in a thicket made of allusions to Lulu’s belly, to her delta, to her thighs!”), whereas what was actually written was
orgasm
and
secretions!
 Good God, he still blushed as red as a beet whenever that misadventure came to mind.…
    Mr. Rrok’s conversation with the guests was still in progress, and the governor took a few moments to pick up the thread,
    â€œVerily, there is a true and real connection, good sir,"the fair one was saying, “but it grows late, and there is not time to give the reason tonight.”
    â€œSome other time, without fail,” the other one said, in an odd kind of lilt. “Weary we be, for our voyage was long…."
    â€œBut of course,” the governor said to himself. “It’s time you worked out your cover stories! You didn’t even bother to do it in advance. Ah, my unhappy province, to be so despised by mere spies!”
    Someone suggested a hand of bridge, but the foreigners shook their heads. They repeated their litany about the tiredness caused by such a long journey; but the biggest surprise of all was that they did not know how to play! That was just too much!
    Once the idea of bridge had been abandoned, the ladies took charge of the conversation. By far the most talkative among them was the postmaster’s wife, beneath the half-patronizing, half ironical gaze of Mrs. Rrok, the soap manufacturer’s spouse.
    â€œI am deeply shocked to see how our own dear friends can hardly wait to meet the foreigners, so as to put on airs and graces and lead the young men on,” Mrs. Rrok whispered to Daisy, who turned away abruptly toward the fireplace, so as to hide her blushes. After busying herself for a moment at the hearth, she could turn back to Mrs. Rrok and show entirely justified bright-red cheeks. “I find this thirst for adventure quite revolting!”
    Daisy smiled absentmindedly. She realized that Mrs. Rrok was irritated at not being able to show off her knowledge of Italian, but that at least allowed the magistrate’s indolent wife to feel smugly satisfied. It was she who asked the visitors
    â€œWill you be settling in at the Globe Hotel?”
    â€œNay, ma’am,” they replied together, almost as one.
    The magistrate smiled sourly.
    â€œSo where else do you expect to stay? The Globe is the only decent hotel in our town,”
    â€œNary in town,” said Bill “We shall go hence.”
    â€œWhat?” Daisy cried out, as if something had burst inside her heart. She had avoided looking into the eyes of her guests, as one puts off one of life’s enhancements until later, but now she turned a wild stare straight at the man who had chilled her heart by uttering such an ice-cold sentence. Daisy’s glance was at once heated, reproachful, and enticing, a combination that ought to have led the man to change his mind, but the foreigner only repeated his merciless words.
    The governor had moved away from his guests momentarily, but now he came back to lend an ear to