"Bravo, Messiou!" said the general, when the last notes rang out. "I like it better already than I did the first time. I'm sure I'll get used to it in the end."
"I shan't," said Colonel Parker. "I shall always prefer 'God Save the King.'"
"Yes," replied the doctor; "but your children will hum 'Pelléas,' and your grandchildren will say, 'Do you know that old tune that used to be the rage in grandfather's time?' What you never can get used to, colonel, is finding yourself in the presence of a somewhat more complex work of art than the childish productions to which you are accustomed. Nature is not simple; she takes the theme of a fox-trot and makes a funeral march out of it; and it is just these incongruities that are the essence of all poetry. I appeal to you for an opinion, Aurelle, as a citizen of the country which has produced Debussy and Mallarmé."
"Have you ever heard the excellent saying of Renoir, the old French painter: 'Don't ask me,' he said, 'whether painting
ought to be subjective or objective; I confess I don't care a rap.'"
"Ah, Messiou," sighed the general, "the confounded fellow was quite right too!"
CHAPTER X
PRIVATE BROMMIT'S CONVERSION
"Paris vaut bien une messe."—Henri IV.
Aurelle was wakened every morning by Colonel Parker's orderly, a tough, thick-set, astute old soldier, who expounded the unwritten laws of the army for the benefit of the young Frenchman as he dexterously folded his clothes.
"You know, sir," he said, "'as 'ow the British Tommy 'as to go to church in peace-time every blessed Sunday. When the time for p'rade comes along, the orficer on dooty gives the order to fall in accordin' to religions, an' the Church of England men, an' the Presbyterians