Read "The History of a Fall" by Rudyard Kipling online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
_Mere English will not do justice to the event. Let us attempt it / according to the custom of the French. Thus and so following: _
Listen to a history of the most painful -- and of the most true. / You others, the Governors, the Lieutenant-Governors, and the / Commissionaires of the Oriental Indias.[8]
It is you, foolishly outside of the truth in prey to illusions so blind / that I of them remain so stupefied -- it is to you that I address myself!
Know you Sir Cyril Wollobie, K. C. S. I., C. M. G., and all the other little / things?
He was of the Sacred Order of Yourself -- a man responsible / enormously -- charged of the conservation of millions.
Of people. That is understood. The Indian Government conserves not its / rupees.
He was the well-loved of kings. I have seen the Viceroy -- which is the / Lorr-Maire -- embrace him of both arms.
That was in Simla. All things are possible in Simla.
Even embraces.
His wife! Mon Dieu, his wife!
The aheuried imagination prostrates itself at the remembrance of the / splendours Orientals of the Lady Cyril -- the very respectable the Lady / Wollobie.
That was in Simla. All things are possible in Simla. Even wives. In / those days I was -- what you call -- a Schnobb. I am now a much larger / Schnobb. _Voila_ the only difference. Thus it is true that travel / expands the mind.
But let us return to our Wollobies.
I admired that man there with the both hands. I crawled before the / Lady Wollobie -- platonically. The man the most brave would be only / platonic towards that lady. And I was also afraid. Subsequently I / went to a dance. The wine equalled not the splendour of the Wollobies. / Nor the food. But there was upon the floor an open space -- large and / park-like. It protected the dignity Wollobi-callisme. It was guarded by / Aides-de-Camp. With blue silk in their coat-tails -- turned up. With pink / eyes and white moustaches to ravish. Also turned up.
To me addressed himself an Aide-de-Camp.
That was in Simla. To-day I do not speak to Aides-de-Camp.
I confine myself exclusively to the cab-drivaire. He does not know so / much bad language, but he can drive better.
I approached, under the protection of the Aide-de-Camp, the luminosity / of Sir Wollobie.
The world entire regarded.
The band stopped. The lights burned blue. A domestic dropped a plate.