Often, if the
name of some actress were mentioned in conversation, I would hear my
father say, with a smile, to my mother: "One of your uncle's friends," and
I would think of the weary novitiate through which, perhaps for years on
end, a grown man, even a man of real importance, might have to pass,
waiting on the doorstep of some such lady, while she refused to answer his
letters and made her hall-porter drive him away; and imagine that my uncle
was able to dispense a little jackanapes like myself from all these
sufferings by introducing me in his own home to the actress,
unapproachable by all the world, but for him an intimate friend.
And so--on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been
altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than
once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my
uncle--one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I
took advantage of the fact that my parents had had luncheon earlier than
usual; I slipped out and, instead of going to read the playbills on their
column, for which purpose I was allowed to go out unaccompanied, I ran all
the way to his house.
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