The Complete Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Эдгар Аллан По

      The Bargain Lost (1831)

       Table of Contents

      “The heathen philosopher, when he had a mind to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open.” — As You Like It.

      At Venice, in the year —, in the street —, lived Pedro Garcia, a metaphysician. — With regard to date and residence, circumstances of a private and sacred nature forbid me to be more explicit. In all mental qualifications our hero was gigantic. Moreover, in bodily circumference, he had no cause of complaint; but, in right ascension, four feet five was the philosopher’s ne plus ultra.

      Now Pedro was descended from a noble Florentine family; yet it was with little concern that, in certain boilings of the pot revolutionary, (during which, saith Machiavelli, the scum always comes uppermost) he beheld his large estates silently slipping through his fingers. Indeed, from his earliest youth, had Pedro Garcia been addicted to the most desperate abstrusities. He had studied at Padua, at Milan, at Gottingen. It is he — but let this go no farther — it is he to whom Kant is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. I have MSS. in my possession sufficient to establish what I say.

      The doctrines of our friend were not very generally understood, although by no means difficult of comprehension. He was not, it is true, a Platonist — nor strictly an Aristotelian — nor did he, with Leibnitz, reconcile things irreconcileable. He was, emphatically, a Pedronist. He was Ionic and Italic. He reasoned a priori and a posteriori. His ideas were innate, or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizond, he believed in Bossarion. Of his other propensities little is recorded. It is said that he preferred Catullus to Homer, and Sauterne to Medoc.

      Yet even this comprehensive philosophy proved an insufficient protection against the shafts of calumny and malice. At Venice wicked men were not wanting to hint that the doctrines of certain people evinced neither the purity of the Academy nor the depth of the Lyceum.

      The great bell of St. Mark’s had already sounded midnight, yet our hero was not in bed. He sat, alone, in the little chamber, his study, redeemed from the filth and bustle of the day. I hold minute attention to trifles unworthy the dignity of serious narrative; otherwise I might here, following the example of the novelist, dilate upon the subject of habiliment, and other mere matters of the outward man. I might say that the hair of our patrician was worn short, combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted with a violet-coloured, conical cap with tassels — that his green fustian jerkin was not after the fashion of those worn by the nobility of Venice at that day — that the sleeves were more deeply slashed than the reigning costume permitted — that the slashes were faced — not, as usual in that barbarous period, with parti-coloured silk, but with the beautiful red leather of Morocco — that his stiletto was a specimen piece of workmanship from the factory of Pan Ispan, of Damascus, attaghan-maker to the Effendi — that his slippers were of a bright purple, curiously filagreed, and might have been made in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the fact that Baptista, the Spanish cobler on the Rialto, opined to the contrary — that his breeches were of the white, satin-like cloth called ‘celeste’ — that his sky-blue cloak, or wrapper, resembling, in form, the anomaly, ycleped, a morning-gown, floated, like a mist, upon his shoulders, richly bestudded with crimson and yellow patches — and that his tout ensemble gave rise to the remarkable words of Benevenuta, the improvisatrice, to wit: — “That the paroquet, upon a certain cathedral, resembled nothing so much as Pedro, the metaphysician.” All this and more — had I been a novelist — might I have detailed. But, thanks to St. Urfino, whatever I am, that am I not. Therefore upon all these subjects I say ‘mum.’

      The chamber in which sat our hero was of singular beauty. The floor was covered with a mat (for it was the summer season) of the most brilliant and glossy pale yellow, formed from the rare and valuable reeds of Siam. All around from the ceiling fell tapestry-hangings of the richest crimson velvet.

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