His evenings were his own; and he pored over a ragged
translation of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. The figure of that dark
avenger stood forth in his mind for whatever he had heard or
divined in childhood of the strange and terrible. At night he built
up on the parlour table an image of the wonderfulisland cave out of
transfers and paper flowers and coloured tissue paper and strips of
the silver and golden paper in which chocolate is wrapped. When he
had broken up this scenery, weary ofits tinsel, there would come to
his mind the bright picture of Marseille, of sunny trellises, and
of Mercedes.
Outside Blackrock, on the road that led to the mountains, stood a
small whitewashed house in the garden of which grew many
rosebushes: and in this house, he told himself, another Mercedes
lived. Both on the outward and on the homeward joumey he measured
distance by this landmark: and in his imagination he lived through
a long train of adventures, marvellous as those in the book itself,
towards the close of which there appeared an image of himself,
grown older and sadder, standing in a moonlit garden with Mercedes
who had so many years before slighted his love, and with a sa ly
proud gesture of refusal, saying:
——Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.