Well informed in all things, the devil must have known that my
friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a
very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devil
seems to me.
Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that
day at the Vingtieme. Only once, however, have I seen him at
close quarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking
one afternoon along the rue d'Antin, and I saw him advancing from the
opposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane and
altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At
thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in
this brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up
to my full height. But--well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the
street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost
independent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great
presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the devil, that I
nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and hotter
because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmost
haughtiness.
To be cut, deliberately cut, by HIM! I was, I still am, furious
at having had that happen to me.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Enoch Soames, by Max Beerbohm
Note: I have closed contractions in the text; e.
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