Young, de Noitre looked elegant: a black silk cloak, top hat, yellow gloves. His manners were fine but he never took off his headdress, letting know that he merely dropped in. Damn. We wanted him for long, because seeing him we remembered the Film and Money Story and we wanted more details about it.
"Didn't the two film-makers reproach you?" I asked.
He said, "However vexed, they could not openly advertise their own inhumanity. And my conscience was unclouded."
Well said. I turned to all, "I happened to see a man shooting at himself and then dying. It was not so expressive, you know. He simply shot and simply fell down like a sack of potatoes."
"Imitation is more verisimilar than reality," de Noitre said.
"Life imitates art," I said.
He said, "And the Boost is too young to understand much."
Intrigued by his remarks, manner of speaking and self-control, I said, "…I remember one de Noitre whose story I happened to hear from his grandnephew Étienne de la Roche; it's interesting. A man of convivial and amorous habits, a scrapper and scapegrace, he could be called Man of a Thousand of Women, but his end was unhappy. One day, in society, at a ball, a young officer, he permitted himself one trick. The tip of his sheathed sword touched, caught and then lifted the hem of a young lady's skirt as he and she were standing back to each other, at a distance of his long sword. The young lady's hoop-skirt went up, higher and higher to the ceiling as his hand pressed the sword hilt lower and lower, as though by chance. The honour of the young lady, someone's great grandmother today, was touched, awfully, and it should be revenged. The naughty young officer was challenged to a duel. At the duel, he hit his enemy's heart with the same sword that was guilty in hurting the young lady's honour. The punishment of the time was severe. Thus, someone's skirt and someone's heart influenced upon the fate of de Noitre: the rest of his life he lived in his estates, as a hermit, in the middle of nowhere, lonely and quiet. The family chronicle kept the memory of him infamous."
"Actually," Valerian de Noitre said, listening to my provocative tale, "I am one of the last representatives of the ancient French noble family. We came to the Russian Empire being invited by Catherine the Great. After a lapse from grace because of the famous Duel of the Four, we were exiled to province. In Nyomanland, we live from the beginning of 19th century. Nice to talk with you, Mr Graf, but I came on business." He paused, and then he said, "To pass the word from Mr Aboleo to you sir. He invites you to visit a soiree at the mansion in Red Abbey Road. Tomorrow, after dark."
"Soiree? It sounds nice." My face played impassiveness, unsuccessfully.
"Just so, a soiree, no more. But Mr Aboleo expects you want to come without fail, in the light of the latest events."
"He is well-informed, isn't he, sir? The latest events at the Lesyinesmagi Manor is the news too recent to be known in the city, eh?"
"Are you aware of the new, fast means of communication, sir?"
"Meaning telegraph, telephone, and so on?"
"Just so. So forth and so on."
"As well as his spies, here, nearby, eh?"
"Anyway, Mr Aboleo wants you to come."
"But I am not sure. Tell him I have to think."
After our night visitor left, Celadon, our nice doggy, got out of the sofa in the drawing-room.
We, Clem and I were about to go out take the air. Hippolite, the very special, nice-looking boy who liked to bury himself in the countryside, away from the city, approached and looked at my face. His pet cat Lionheart was nowhere nearby. Looking down on the boy, seeing his blue eyes, I gently stroked his auburn hair that remained unshorn, because his mother had no time to care about it. I said to the boy, "Lots of rogues in the world. And your mother is not one of them. She will be back home, soon."
Hippolite sighed and said meekly, "Scarcely, as Lionheart said."
Elegiac mood. We all seemed to be feeling melancholy. It was the special season, when they in the kitchen preserved fruits and berries. The air smelled of fruit jam, by day. When you want to console a child in a state like Hippolite's, send the child to the kitchen to take more jam. So, I did it to Hippolite.
Outside, Clem said to me, "I have to go to church. As soon as possible."
"And I am about to accept Aboleo's invitation," I said. At our feet, Celadon snarled, looking either cautious or timid. I said to Clem, "Look there… Your mother. Over there… the silhouette!"
"No, it's the other lady in black."
"Alone, on the road, by night? She is so fast. Strange. However, let's go home. I want to see all the Yule lanterns of the household."
Unable to do anything else to improve the situation at home, I was about to take a look at the evil ceramic bottle that supposedly cast a pall over the life of the household and my cousins.