CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CONVERSATION OF PATRIOTS.
The world that found its way to the mayor's table at this early period of the summer season was largely composed of the class that travels chiefly to amuse others. The commercial gentlemen in France, however, have the outward bearing of those who travel to amuse themselves. The selling of other people's goods—it is surely as good an excuse as any other for seeing the world! Such an occupation offers an orator, one gifted in conversational talents—talents it would be a pity to see buried in the domestic napkin—a fine arena for display.
The French commercial traveller is indeed a genus apart; he makes a fetish of his trade; he preaches his propaganda. The fat and the lean, the tall and the little, the well or meanly dressed representatives of the great French houses who sat down to dine, as our neighbors or vis-à-vis, night after night, were, on the whole, a great credit to their country. Their manners might have been mistaken for those of a higher rank; their gifts as talkers were of such an order as to make listening the better part of discretion.
Dining is always a serious act in France. At this inn the sauces of the chef, with their reputation behind them, and the proof of their real excellence before one, the dinner-hour was elevated to the importance of a ceremony. How the petty merchants and the commercial gentlemen ate, at first in silence, as if respecting the appeal imposed by a great hunger, and then warming into talk as the acid cider was passed again and again! What crunching of the sturdy, dark-colored bread between the great knuckles! What huge helps of the famous sauces! What insatiable appetites! What nice appreciation of the right touch of the tricksy garlic! What nodding of heads, clinking of glasses, and warmth of friendship established over the wine-cups! At dessert everyone talked at once. On one occasion the subject of Gambetta's death was touched on; all the table, as one man, broke out into an effervescence of political babble.
"What a loss! What a death-blow to France was his death!" exclaimed a heavy young man in a pink cravat.
"If Gambetta had lived, Alsace and Lorraine would be ours now, without the firing of a gun!" added an elderly merchant at the foot of the table.
"Ah—h! without the firing of a gun they will come to us yet. I tell you, without the firing of a gun—unless we insist on a battle," explosively rejoined a fiery-hued little man sitting next to Monsieur Paul; "but you will see—we shall insist. There is between us and Germany an inextinguishable hate—and we must kill, kill, right and left!"
"Allons—allons!" protested the table, in chorus.
"Yes, yes, a general massacre, that is what we want; that is what we must have. Men, women, and children—all must fall. I am a married man—but not a woman or a child shall escape—when the time comes," continued the fiery-eyed man, getting more and more ferocious as he warmed with the thought of his revenge.
"What a monster!" broke in Madame Le Mois, her deep base notes unruffled by the spectacle of her bloodthirsty neighbor's violence; "you—to bayonet a woman with a child in her arms!"
"I would—I would—"
"Then you would be more cruel than they were. They treated our women with respect."
There was a murmur of assenting applause, at this sentiment of justice, from the table. But the fiery-eyed man was not to be put down.
"Oh, yes, they were generous enough in '71, but I should remember their insults of 1815!"
"Ancienne histoire—çà" said the mère, dismissing the subject, with a humorous wink at the table.
"As you see," was Monsieur Paul's comment on the conversation, as we were taking our after-dinner stroll in the garden—"as you see, that sort of person is the bad element in our country—the dangerous element—unreasoning, revengeful, and ignorant. It is such men as he who still uphold hatreds and keep the flame alive. It is better to have no talent at all for politics—to be harmless like me, for instance, whose worst vice is to buy up old laces and carvings."
"And roses—"
"Yes—that is another of my vices—to perpetuate the old varieties. They call me along our coast the millionnaire—of roses! Will you have a 'Marie Louise,' mademoiselle?"
The garden was as complete in its old time aspect as the rest of the inn belongings. Only the older, rarer varieties of flowers and rose stalks had been chosen to bloom within the beautifully arranged inclosure. Citronnelle, purple irises, fringed asters, sage, lavender, rose-pêche, bachelor's-button, the d'Horace, and the wonderful electric fraxinelle, these and many other shrubs and plants of the older centuries were massed here with the taste of one difficult to please in horticultural arrangements. Our after-dinner walks became an event in our day. At that hour the press of the day's work was over, and Madame Mère or Monsieur Paul were always ready to join us for a stroll.
"For myself, I do not like large gardens," Monsieur Paul remarked, during one of these after-dinner saunters. "The monks, in the old days, knew just the right size a garden should be—small and sheltered, with walls—like a strong arm about a pretty woman—to protect the shrubs and flowers. One should enter the garden, also, by a gate which must click as it closes—the click tickles the imagination—it is the sound henceforth connected with silence, with perfumes and seclusion. How far away we seem now, do we not?—from the bustle of the inn court-yard—and yet I could throw a stone into it."
The only saunterers besides ourselves were the flamingo, who, cautiously, timorously picked his way—as if he were conscious he was only a bunch of feathers hoisted on stilts; the white parrot, who was wabbling across the lawn to a favorite perch in the leaves of a tropical palm; and the peacock, whose train had been spread with a due regard to effect across a bed of purple irises, with a view to annihilating the brilliancy of their rival hues.
The bit of sky framed by these four garden walls always seemed more delicate in tone than that which covered the open court-yard. The birds in the bushes had moments of melodious outbursts they did not, apparently, indulge in along the high-road. And what with the fading lights, the stars pricking their way among the palms, the scents of flowers, and the talk of a poet, it is little wonder that this twilight hour in the old garden was certain to be the most lyrical of the twenty-four.