“There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence.”
As the dame turned away, Marco couldn’t help [Image]
The feast
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slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it:
“These suffice; leave the rest.”
So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn’t have played the hand better myself.
From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped “Oh’s” and “Ah’s,” and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery — mdash; new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper’s son emerged from space and said he had come to collect.
“That’s all right,” I said, indifferently. “What is the amount? give us the items.”
Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco’s: *2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 *8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 *3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700 *2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 *3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 ———————————————————————— Page 306
*1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 *3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 *1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 *1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 *1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 *1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 *2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000 *2 men’s suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800 *1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown and underwear 1,600 *8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 *Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000 *1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 *8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000 *2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.
“Is that all?” I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.
“All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like you, I will sepa — mdash; ”
“It is of no consequence,” I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; “give me the grand total, please.”
The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:
“Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!”
The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of: