Search -
Novels and Tales: Contarini Fleming. The rise of Iskander.
Novels and Tales Contarini Fleming The rise of Iskander Author:Benjamin Disraeli Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: r vivacity which could enliven the passages of ordinary conversation, I began to feel a little more at my ease. Dinner was announced. The table was round. ... more »I sat between the under secretary and the lady to whom I had been introduced. The scene was a novel one, and I was astonished at observing a magnificent repast, which all seemed to pique themselves upon tasting as little as possible. They evidently assemble here, then, I thought, for the sake of conversation; yet how many are silent, and what is said might be omitted. But I was then ignorant of the purposes for which human beings are brought together. My female companion, who was a little wearied by a great general, who, although a hero and a strategist, was soon beaten and bewildered in a campaign of repartee, turned round to amuse herself with her other supporter. Her terrific child was again introduced. I had drunk a glass or two of wine, and altogether had, in a great degree, recovered my self-possession. I could support her tattle no longer. I assured the astonished mother that I had never even heard of her son ; that, if really at college, he must be in a different part of the establishment, and that I had never met him ; that I did not even know the name; that the college was a very bad college indeed, that nobody learnt anything there, that I abhorred it, and hoped that 1 should never return ; and then I asked her to do mo the honour of taking wine. CHAPTER XXIII. The day after the party, I went with the Baroness to see the great pictures of Winter in the Royal Academy of Arts. Both of them seemed to be magnificent; but one, which was a national subject, and depicted the emancipating exploits of one of the heroic monarchs, was the mostpopular. I did not feel so much interested with this. I did not sympathise ...« less