Скорбь сатаны / The sorrows of Satan. Уровень 4

“My dear Prince Rimanez, I mean to spend my money on my own pleasure, and I daresay I shall find plenty of ways to do it.”

“With your fortune, you could make hundreds of miserable people happy;” he suggested.

“Thanks, I would rather be happy myself first,” I answered gaily. “I daresay I seem to you selfish. You are philanthropic I know; I am not.”

He still regarded me steadily.

“You might help your fellow-workers in literature…”

I interrupted him with a decided gesture.

“That I will never do, my friend! My fellow-workers in literature have kicked me down at every opportunity.

It is my turn at kicking now, and I will show them as little mercy, as little help, as little sympathy as they have shown me!”

“Revenge is sweet!” he said. “Well, in what, at present does your idea of enjoying your heritage consist?”

“In publishing my book,” I answered.

“Tempest,” he said, looking at me through half-closed eyes and a cloud of smoke, “man gives no clue to his intent – more malignant than the lion, more treacherous than the snake, more greedy than the wolf, he takes his fellow-man’s hand in pretended friendship, and with a smiling face he hides a false and selfish heart!”

His eyes glowed with a fiery ardour.

I stared at him in mute amazement. There was something terrifying in his attitude. He caught my wondering glance,

“I think I was born to be an actor,” he said carelessly.

“I think,” I answered him, smiling a little, “you are a creature of impulse.

”

“How wise of you!” he exclaimed. “Good Geoffrey Tempest, how very wise of you! But you are wrong. If I told you that I am a dangerous companion, that I like evil things better than good, that I am not a safe guide for any man, what would you think?”

“I’d think you were whimsically fond of underestimating your own qualities,” I said. “But I’d like you anyway.”

At these words, he looked at me:

“Tempest, you follow the fashion of the prettiest women.

They always like the greatest scoundrels!”

“But you are not a scoundrel,” I rejoined.

“No, I’m not a scoundrel, but there’s a devil in me.”

“All the better![13 - All the better! – Тем лучше!]” I said, stretching myself out in my chair with lazy comfort – “I hope there’s something of him in me too.”

“Do you believe in him?” asked Rimanez smiling.