"Stevenson, Robert Louis - New Arabian Nights" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Robert Louis)

tenement which I still occupy and a fortune of three hundred pounds
a year. I suppose they also handed on to me a hare-brain humour,
which it has been my chief delight to indulge. I received a good
education. I can play the violin nearly well enough to earn money
in the orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite. The same remark
applies to the flute and the French horn. I learned enough of
whist to lose about a hundred a year at that scientific game. My
acquaintance with French was sufficient to enable me to squander
money in Paris with almost the same facility as in London. In
short, I am a person full of manly accomplishments. I have had
every sort of adventure, including a duel about nothing. Only two
months ago I met a young lady exactly suited to my taste in mind
and body; I found my heart melt; I saw that I had come upon my fate
at last, and was in the way to fall in love. But when I came to
reckon up what remained to me of my capital, I found it amounted to
something less than four hundred pounds! I ask you fairly - can a
man who respects himself fall in love on four hundred pounds? I
concluded, certainly not; left the presence of my charmer, and
slightly accelerating my usual rate of expenditure, came this
morning to my last eighty pounds. This I divided into two equal
parts; forty I reserved for a particular purpose; the remaining
forty I was to dissipate before the night. I have passed a very
entertaining day, and played many farces besides that of the cream
tarts which procured me the advantage of your acquaintance; for I
was determined, as I told you, to bring a foolish career to a still
more foolish conclusion; and when you saw me throw my purse into
the street, the forty pounds were at an end. Now you know me as
well as I know myself: a fool, but consistent in his folly; and,
as I will ask you to believe, neither a whimperer nor a coward."

From the whole tone of the young man's statement it was plain that
he harboured very bitter and contemptuous thoughts about himself.
His auditors were led to imagine that his love affair was nearer
his heart than he admitted, and that he had a design on his own
life. The farce of the cream tarts began to have very much the air
of a tragedy in disguise.

"Why, is this not odd," broke out Geraldine, giving a look to
Prince Florizel, "that we three fellows should have met by the
merest accident in so large a wilderness as London, and should be
so nearly in the same condition?"

"How?" cried the young man. "Are you, too, ruined? Is this supper
a folly like my cream tarts? Has the devil brought three of his
own together for a last carouse?"

"The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly
thing," returned Prince Florizel; "and I am so much touched by this
coincidence, that, although we are not entirely in the same case, I
am going to put an end to the disparity. Let your heroic treatment