greed and cunning on their faces. Then they would catch his eye, nudge one another, and bow and smile at him with fawning graciousness, and he would return to his food savagely, not knowing whether to curse or howl with laughter.
During the whole course of the meal, the Countess sat opposite him, watching like a hawk every move he made, her old eyes gleaming cunningly and a strange, fixed smile, which he had come to recognize as being at once crafty and naïve, shrewd with guile and yet pathetically inquiring, hovering faintly upon her sharp and meagre face.
All the time while he was eating, the old woman kept up her strange, fragmentary monologue—a semi-coherent discourse which mirrored forth the very image of her soul and seemed to be addressed to herself as much as to any listener. With a ravenous attentiveness she watched him devour his food, exhorted him to waste none of it, and to sop up the sauce as well, demanded of the old waiter second helpings of the delicious roast beef, accompanying her command with a glittering account of the prosperity that would accrue to him and the hotel as a result of this solicitude; plied the boy with questions concerning his friends, his work, his future prospects, and his travels—in short, pried, probed, wormed and insinuated her way into every corner of his history, and appointed herself guide and censor of his life and conduct from this moment on.
“How long have you been over here, my boy?”—she said in her low but vibrant monotone, which had that curious, dead resonance, an almost bodiless energy that seems to come from indestructible vitality of mind or spirit when the vitality of flesh has been exhausted. It was an energy at once as bitterly tenacious as man’s clutch on life, yet marked all the time by the brooding fatality of people who have lived too long and seen all things go—“How long have you been in Europe?… And where were you first?… England, yes…. And after England…. Paris? Where did you stay there?… How much did they charge you for your room?… Twelve francs…. Yes, but you could do better, my boy…. You could do much better…. You should find a place for eight francs a day…. All the Americans spend too much money,” she said sadly. “They come over here and waste their money…. I have seen so many Americans get stranded here…. During the war I had to help so many out…. Tell me, my boy,” she leaned over and clutched his arm with her claw-like hand, “you are not going to get stranded
