Ernest Hemingway

ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES
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CHAPTER XXXVI

IT was a sharp, cold bright day, and they stood outside the window of the jeweler’s shop and studied the two small negro heads and torsos that were carved in ebony and adorned with studded jewels. One was as good as the other, the Colonel thought.

“Which do you like the best, Daughter?”

“I think the one on the right. Don’t you think he has the nicer face?”

“They both have nice faces. But I think I would rather have him attend you if it was the old days.”

“Good. We’ll take him. Let’s go in and see them. I must ask the price.”

“I will go in.”

“No, let me ask the price. They will charge me less than they would charge you. After all you are a rich American.”

“Et toi, Rimbaud?”

“You’d make an awfully funny Verlaine,” the girl told him. “We’ll be some other famous characters.”

“Go on in, Majesty, and we’ll buy the god damn jewel.”

“You wouldn’t make a very good Louis Sixteenth either.”

“I’d get up in that tumbril with you and still be able to spit.”

“Let’s forget all the tumbrils and everyone’s sorrows, and buy the small object and then we can walk to Cipri­ani’s and be famous people.”

Inside the shop they looked at the two heads and she asked the price, and then, there was some very rapid talk and the price was much lower. But still it was more money than the Colonel had.

“I’ll go to Cipriani’s and get some money.”

“No,” the girl said. Then to the clerk, “Put it in a box and send it to Cipriani’s and say the Colonel said to pay for it and hold it for him.”

“Please,” the clerk said. “Exactly as you say.”

They went out into the street and the sunlight and the unremitting wind.

“By the way,” the Colonel said. “Your stones are in the safe at the Gritti in your name.”

“Your stones.”

“No,” he told her, not rough, but to make her under­stand truly. “There are some things that a person cannot do. You know about that. You cannot marry me and I understand that, although I do not approve it.”

“Very well,” the girl said. “I understand. But (...)

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