This is the point Jozef has reached in the story. Several of his audience have already dropped asleep; but the reader does not notice it—he is too much absorbed in his narrative,—and continues, in his “first-rate” manner, which—heard at a distance—reminds one of nothing so much as of the soft but continuous murmur of a babbling brook—commas and other stops being, in this method, so entirely left in the background, or else occurring in such remarkable places, that a reporter would have been forced to reproduce his text somewhat as follows:—
“Krimhelia looked the Count straight in the face.
“Look at me Count said she do you see this glittering dagger as sure as the moon, hangs yonder in heaven and illuminates my pale features so surely will I thrust this, dagger into the heart of the Bandit, with the Grey Beard first and before I throw myself as your consort into your arms but why so pale Count and why do you tremble so?”
Now Jozef is interrupted by the master-tailor, a thin, little man, of whom it is commonly said on board that he knows a thing or two more than most people.
“Now, I know,” says he, in his piping voice.
“What d’ye know?” asks the boatswain, who has little or no opinion of the master-tailor.
“As how the gentleman—the Count, I mean—and the other,—the Bandit with the Grey Beard,—that both of them are one and the same man.”
“Well, you calico-spoiler—you know that, do you? Well—I know that too, and all of us know it right enough; but you needn’t take another man’s share in the reading for all that. Go ahead, boy!”
The master-tailor is looked at with contempt from various quarters, and Jozef pursues his reading with a chapter describing how Count Matatskai comes home in a bad temper.
“The Count threw himself down on a couch adorned with costly velvet, relieve me of my riding-boots—thus he spoke to the grey-headed old servant Gabario who, brought him a silver goblet with sparkling wine saying, that this was his favourite wine from the great vineyard south of the castle but, the Count made a gesture of refusal with his left hand and said me liketh no wine Gabario avaunt and saddle—my horse!”
This was the end of the chapter, and Jozef took breath.
“It’s a capital thing,” said the boatswain, “when a man can have the things for the ordering in that way. What comes next, Jozef?”
