Puisque le mauvais temps vous condamne à la chambre,
Puisque vous méprisez désormais les romans,
Puisque pour mon bonheur vous n'avez pas d'amant,
Et puisque ce mois d'août s'obstine impunément
A jouer les décembre.
Je griffonne pour vous ces vers sans queue ni tête,
Sans rime, ou peu s'en faut, en tout cas sans raison,
Que j'intitulerai dans mes oeuvres complètes:
"Discours pour une amie qui garde la maison
Par un jour de tempête."
Je ne sais là-dessus si nous sentons de même,
Mais quand je suis ainsi rêveur et paresseux,
Quand il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut dans——
"Aurelle," said the doctor, "this time you are writing verses; deny it if you can. You are taken red-handed."
"M-ph!" grunted the colonel scornfully, but with indulgence.
"I own to it, doctor, but what then? Is it contrary to King's Regulations?"
"No," said the doctor, "but I'm surprised. I have always been convinced that the French cannot be a nation of poets. Poetry is rhymed foolishness. Now you are not a fool, and you have no sense of rhythm."
"You do not know our poets," said Aurelle, annoyed. "Have you read Musset, Hugo, Baudelaire?"
"I know Hugo," said the colonel. "When I commanded the troops in Guernsey I was shown his house. I also tried to read his book, 'The Toilers of the Sea,' but it was too boring."
The arrival of Major Parker, pushing in front of him two boyish-looking captains, put an end to this conference.
"Here are young Gibbons and Warburton. You must give them a cup of tea before sending them back to their companies. I found them sitting on the side of the Zillebeke Road, no doubt waiting for a taxi. These London people will expect anything."
Gibbons was returning from leave, and Warburton, a dark Welshman very like a Frenchman, who had been wounded two months before in Artois, was rejoining the Lennox after sick leave.