Word: marpurgo
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...riots of Feb. 6, 1934, swarms a crowd of fantastic figures in a kind of Lutetian Lupercalia. Outlines of the story are mundane enough. Elvira, pretty and discontented, has left her stodgy British husband to join her lover, Oliver, in Paris. On the train from Calais she meets Marpurgo, a cultured lace-buyer, an opaque fellow who grows more sinister with acquaintance. He describes himself as "a virtuoso in decadence, disintegration, mental necrosis. . . ." His hearers are usually mystified, end by mistrusting him admiringly or asking him for a match. In Paris, Marpurgo attaches himself to the lovers and encourages their...
Elvira's husband goes to Paris, to do the decent British thing, muddles the situation more. Conferences coagulate. Marpurgo flits from group to group, breathing out night thoughts and miasmal metaphysics. When his boss fires him because of his artistic expense accounts, thinks of hiring Oliver in his stead, Marpurgo's scheming grows more satanic. With a gloomy consciousness that he has done all he can, Elvira's husband tires of her vacillations, takes himself back to England. Elvira settles herself to lie on the bed she has made, then suddenly realizes that Oliver is an inconstant...
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