"It is growing warm," said the commandant. "Hospitality cannot be lightly practised here."
"Nor anywhere," said the lawyer, who had resumed his cards; "because it is a virtue, and the virtues are out of vogue. The only really successful life, as the world looks upon success now, is an absolutely selfish life. It is the day of specialists, of men with one idea, one object, and the successful man is the one who permits nothing to come between him and his object. Wife, children, honor, friendship, ease, all must give place to the grand pursuit; be it the gathering of wealth, the discovery of a disease germ, the culture of orchids, or the breeding of a honey-bee that works night and day. Human life is too short to permit a man to do more than one thing well, and money is becoming so common that its possessors require the best of everything."
"Old friend," said the commandant, "you are a many-sided man, and yet you are one of the best lawyers in France."
"You have said it," exclaimed the lawyer; "one of the best, not the best. The one thing I have earnestly striven for I have not attained."
"What is that?" asked the commandant. "Do you wish to be Minister of
Justice?"
"No," said the lawyer; "but I should like to be known as the best player of Napoleon solitaire."
A sabre-hilt rapped on the door.
"Enter," cried the commandant.
The door opened, and there entered first the sharp cries of the mob, and then the corporal, Abdullah, a woman clothed all in white, the oukil, and, last of all, Mirza. The moment she was within the room she dominated it. The other occupants were blotted out by comparison. She entered, debonair, smiling, and, as she crossed the threshold, she flung up her hand in a military salute.
"Hail, my masters," she cried in Arabic. "Would you believe it? but just now I was nearly robbed, before your windows, of merchandise that cost me thirty ounces."