(The only dinner I could recall which was not a tenpenny one, except the
old dinners of my childhood, was that famous dinner at Cray, where I had
discovered that the Duchess of Towers was Mimsey Seraskier, and I did
not eat much of _that_.)
Then a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and a glass of curacoa; and after,
to reach our private box we had but to cross the room and lift
a curtain.
And there before us was the theatre or opera-house brilliantly lighted,
and the instruments tuning up, and the splendid company pouring in:
crowned heads, famous beauties, world-renowned warriors and statesmen,
Garibaldi, Gortschakoff, Cavour, Bismarck, and Moltke, now so famous,
and who not? Mary would point them out to me. And in the next box Dr.
Seraskier and his tall daughter, who seemed friends with all that
brilliant crowd.
Now it was St. Petersburg, now Berlin, now Vienna, Paris, Naples, Milan,
London--every great city in turn. But our box was always the same, and
always the best in the house, and I the one person privileged to smoke
my cigar in the face of all that royalty, fashion, and splendor.
Then, after the overture, up went the curtain. If it was a play, and the
play was in German or Russian or Italian, I had but to touch Mary's
little finger to understand it all--a true but incomprehensible thing.
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