India 2001 books

At last we found it appropriately enough in the Rue du Consulat
d'Angleterre. A gorgeous old butler resembling a wolf ushered us from
the blank walled street into a beautiful square garden filled with
flowering shrubs and creepers. Not to be outdone by the colours of the
flowers, the butler was clad in a red waistcoat, embroidered with gold,
a green cloth coat, blue baggy trousers, and a red fez with a tassel
nearly a yard long, while a connoisseur's mouth would have watered at
the sight of his antique silver watch-chain with its exquisitely worked
hanging blobs.
The interior of the house gave an impression of vast roominess. Wide
stairs, a huge upper landing like a reception-room, a panelled
drawing-room large enough to lose one's self in, ornamented by primitive
frescoes on the walls above the panels.
The English consul was an old Albanian gentleman with delightful
manners. For a long time he had been suffering from an illness which had
started from a wound in the head, received during the siege of Scutari.


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