There are poor men who can
wear a coat as a red Indian will ride a mustang which a white man has left
for dead, beyond the period predetermined by the nature of tailoring as
the natural term of existence allotted to earthly garments. We look upon a
centenarian as a miracle of longevity, and he is careful to tell us his
age if he have not lost the power of speech; but if the coats of poor men
could speak, how much more marvellous in our eyes would their powers of
life appear! A stranger would have taken the Count for a half-pay officer
of good birth in straitened circumstances. The expression of his face at
the time in question was grave and thoughtful, as though he were thinking
of matters weightier to his happiness, if not more necessary to his
material welfare than his work. He saw his fingers moving, he watched each
honey-coloured bundle of cut leaf as it was rolled in the parchment
tongue, and with unswerving regularity he made the motions required to
slip the tobacco into the shell. But, while seeing all that he did, and
seeing consciously, he looked as though he saw also through the familiar
materials shaped under his fingers, into a dim distance full of a larger
life and wider interests.
The five occupants of the workshop had been working in silence for nearly
half an hour. The two girls on the one side and the two men on the other
kept their eyes bent down upon their fingers, while Johann Schmidt, the
Cossack, plied his guillotine-like knife in the corner.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25