The Polyglots Read Online Free PDF

Aunt Teresa, to uphold her personal prestige among her friends from Belgium, gave it to be understood that both her brothers had been rich as mischief. ‘If you went to Petersburg,’ she said to Berthe, ‘and askedfor the works of Diavolo, why, any cabman would take you to my brother Connie’s place at once.’
    ‘
Tiens
!’ said Berthe, with a very conscious look of reverence for the prestige of Connie coming on her face.
    ‘And now we’ve lost everything!’ she sighed, ‘in the revolution!’
    ‘
Courage! Courage!
’ said Uncle Emmanuel.
    My aunt was very proud of the achievements of her clan, and exaggerated a little when talking to strangers. Mme Vanderphant at this point intervened to say that an uncle on their mother’s side also had big works in the vicinity of Brussels, and incidentally, a lovely house in the capital. But Aunt Teresa dismissed her lightly. That was nothing, she implied. Mme Vanderphant should have seen Connie’s house in Petersburg! As if talking to me, but really to impress the audience, in a deep contralto voice she said:
    ‘Your father’s house in Petersburg. Ah, that was a palace! And now, alas, all gone, all gone.’
    ‘
Courage! Courage!
’ said Uncle Emmanuel.
    While Aunt Teresa talked of the glorious past, the Vanderphants, with their own thoughts far away, assumed a polite interest: Mme Vanderphant feigned to attend, with an unconvincing smile of humility on her face. Berthe, half-closing her eyes, listened to what I said and exchanged frequent glances with Aunt Teresa—little nods of intimate reminiscence, of warm approval and understanding. She could not have shared these memories, but in this assumption lay the secret of a personality too kind and sensitive even to think of chilling us with any attitude to our memories less intimate than our own.
    ‘Sylvia! Don’t blink!’ said Aunt Teresa sternly.
    Sylvia made an inhuman effort—and blinked in the doing.
    ‘Of course, your father is independent of us,’ said Aunt Teresa, ‘and we can’t expect him to be sending us any remittances. But your Uncle Lucy has been our trustee ever since our father died, and is obliged to see that we receive our dividends as they are due to us.’
    ‘And has he managed well?’
    ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘I must confess that he has been very generous. Very, very generous. Only lately——’
    ‘Lately——?’
    ‘Lately he hasn’t been sending us any dividends.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘It’s very strange,’ she said.
    ‘Of course, his business is paralysed by what is going on in Krasnoyarsk.’
    ‘Quite. But we can’t be living on nothing. And in Japan where everything is so dear! Sylvia’s convent alone eats up half of my money! It’s over two months overdue. It’s very strange,’ she said. ‘We’ve waited, waited …’
    ‘All things come to him who waits,’ said Uncle Emmanuel.
    ‘Emmanuel,’ said my aunt, ‘you will go tomorrow morning to the General Post Office, and enquire if our telegram has been received by Lucy.’
    ‘Very well, my angel.’
    Aunt Teresa’s way of speaking to her husband reminded me of regimental orders: ‘B Company will parade——. 3rd Battalion will embark——.’ It was neither hectoring nor flustered; it quietly assumed the thing done (in the future), it just did not consider the possibility of non-compliance.
    ‘
Emmanuel, tu iras——Emmanuel, tu feras——
’
    ‘
Oui, mon ange
.’ And he went. And he did.
    When Aunt Teresa went up to her bedroom to lie down before dinner, Uncle Emmanuel told us that he would be able to procure the autograph of a famous French marshal for anyone who chose to contribute twenty thousand francs to the French Red Cross; and my uncle took the opportunity to ask us if we knew of any possible buyers or, perhaps, of an auction or a war charity where such a bait would prove attractive. ‘Zey askèd me to do it,’ he was telling Major Beastly, with propitiatory gestures, ‘and I takèd it; I