Her coterie, almost wholly composed of old gentlemen attracted by the
beauty of the countess, and in love with her though without hope, smiled
to hear her talking so weightily about science. Men who were prominent
in politics admired her frankly. How many things that woman knew! Many
that they did not know themselves. The others, well-known physicians,
professors, lawyers, who had not studied anything for years, approved
complacently. For a woman it was not at all bad. And she, lifting her
glasses to her eyes from time to time to relish the doctor's beauty,
talked with a pedantic slowness about protoplasms, and the reproduction
of the cells, the cannibalisms of the phagocytes, catarine, anthropoid
and pithecoid apes, discoplacentary mammals and the Pithecanthropos,
treating the mysteries of life with friendly confidence, repeating
strange scientific words, as if they were the names of society folks,
who had dined with her the evening before.
The handsome Doctor Monteverde, according to her, was head and shoulders
above all the scholars of universal reputation.
Their books made her tired, she could not make anything out of them, in
spite of the fact that the doctor admired them greatly. To make up for
this, she had read Monteverde's book over and over, and she recommended
this wonderful work to her lady friends, who in matters of reading never
went beyond the novels in popular magazines.
"He is a scholar," said the countess one afternoon while talking alone
with Renovales.
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