Monsieur de Valenbois enlightened him and went on, putting Giles’s best foot forward for him, since it was evident that he did not know how to put it forward for himself. “And then your extraordinary Joyce. Ireland is his soil, indubitably, and no alien pollen has visited him. What a talent! Solitary; morose; erudite. He will found a school here among nos jeunes. That is already evident. You have writers to be proud of. It is true we have our Proust to put beside them. You admire our Proust?”
“I’m sorry to say I don’t know him; or the morose Irishman either,” said Giles, with a genial grin for his own discomfiture.
“Monsieur Giles is a philosopher,” Alix now suddenly and surprisingly contributed. Though so withdrawn she had been listening, watching, and it was evident that she had a different conception of Giles’s best foot. “He is going to found a school, too. At Oxford.”
“I say! Draw it mild!” cried Giles, casting a glance of delighted amusement at his young friend.
“But is it not true, Giles, that the old philosopher, with the beard, thinks that you will found a school?” said Alix.
“I’m afraid he only hopes I’ll follow his,” said Giles.
“Philosophy is, indeed, a magnificent subject,” smiled monsieur de Valenbois, all gentle respect. “To follow a school adequately is often to find that one has founded a new one.—Does our Bergson interest you?”
Giles said that he did, very much, and found that Alix had succeeded in putting his best foot forward, for they now all talked about philosophy. Monsieur de Maubert, he gathered, was a disciple of Croce’s; monsieur de Valenbois had read William James and the Pragmatists; and madame Vervier had attended Bergson’s pre-war lectures at the Sorbonne. She found the élan vital in too much of a hurry.
“We gallop, we gallop,” she remarked;—“but if I may not see my goal, let me linger by the way.”
“As for me,” cried mademoiselle Fontaine, “give me le bon vieux Papa de bon Dieu of my childhood! With him, at all events, one knows what to expect and where one is.”