There it was—in thinking of him one always expected, one always came back to, the bizarre, the incongruous and ridiculous. It was the overpowering instinct for the dramatic, the theatrical, in him, without any taste to guide or to limit it. That was what made it impossible to take him, or his emotions and attitudes, seriously; Waldo’s “all that” seemed just the applicable description. I walked away wondering just what particular line his bamboozlement of Signor Alessandro Panizzi might be taking. Moreover, that he could find leisure in his thoughts to posture to somebody else—besides Lucinda and myself—was reassuring. It made his hints of the night before seem even more unreal and fantastic.
That same last word was the only one appropriate to describe what I found happening to my unfortunate _salon_, when I got back early in the evening. Half a dozen men, under the superintendence of Louis and the fat old _portière_ who lived in a sort of cupboard on the ground floor, opening off the hall, were engaged in transforming it into what they obviously considered to be a scene of splendor. The old _portière_ was rubbing his plump hands in delight; at last Don Arsenio was launching out, spending his money handsomely, doing justice to Palazzo Valdez; the rich English nobleman (this was Godfrey Frost—probably after Arsenio’s own description) would undoubtedly be much impressed. Very possibly—but possibly not quite as old Amedeo expected! The table groaned—or at all events I groaned for it—under silver plate and silver candlesticks. The latter were also stuck galore in sconces on the walls. Table and walls were festooned with chains of white flowers; the like bedecked the one handsome thing that really belonged to the room—the antique chandelier in the middle of the ceiling; I had never put lights in it, but they were there now. And the banquet was to be on a scale commensurate with these trappings. “Prodigious! Considering the times, absolutely prodigious!” Amedeo assured me; he, for his part, could not conceive how Don Arsenio and Signor Louis had contrived to obtain the materials for such a feast. Signor Louis smiled mysteriously; tricks of the trade were insinuated.
It seemed to me that Arsenio had gone stark mad. What were we in for this evening?