I am invited out this
evening."
At other times, when the instructor was luxuriating in bodily comfort,
with a book in one hand near the roaring stove, seeing through the
windows the gray and rainy afternoon, his disciple would suddenly appear
saying, "Quick, get out! . . . There's a woman coming!"
And Argensola, like a dog who gets up and shakes himself, would
disappear to continue his reading in some miserable little coffee house
in the neighborhood.
In his official capacity, this widely gifted man often descended from
the peaks of intellectuality to the vulgarities of everyday life. He
was the steward of the lord of the manor, the intermediary between the
pocketbook and those who appeared bill in hand. "Money!" he would say
laconically at the end of the month, and Desnoyers would break out into
complaints and curses. Where on earth was he to get it, he would like to
know. His father was as regular as a machine, and would never allow the
slightest advance upon the following month. He had to submit to a rule
of misery. Three thousand francs a month!--what could any decent person
do with that? . . . He was even trying to cut THAT down, to tighten the
band, interfering in the running of his house, so that Dona Luisa could
not make presents to her son. In vain he had appealed to the various
usurers of Paris, telling them of his property beyond the ocean.
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