An heroic resolve—I may claim that for it at least—though destined, like many another of my brightest and best, to an impotent conclusion. In the meanwhile I went so far as to propose to myself an actual tactical encouragement of the ridiculous stranger, with his appeal, whatever it might be, to the romantic in my young comrade’s breast. No harm could possibly come of so detached an interest, while I myself should appear to repudiate the least right of sole authority over her wishes and caprices. My one object should be to make her feel that, for all purposes save that of travel, we were independent of one another. Alas! de sot homme sot songe!
Fifine rejoined me in a moment, and we went down into the little square, gay with lights and vehicles.
“Mistral!” she said, seeing me turn her southwards. “Am I not to worship first at the great man’s shrine?”
“O, the statue!” I answered. “You have only seen its back, of course. For myself I am a little tired of the eternal cult. He is as great a nuisance in his place as the Dairyman’s daughter is in hers, or as Kingsley at Westward Ho, where the very engines carry his name about. Mistral did not create Provence, any more than Stevenson created childhood, as some of his fatuous adorers would have us believe. But, come.”
“All that is Greek to me,” said Fifine, as we sought the front of the statue. “But if it means England——”
“It does.”
“Do you ever wish for your own country again, Felix? You have been a great traveller, have you not?”
“Here and there—and I hope to be again.”
“But not yet?”
“Why not? Likely this pleasant little episode will give me a renewed taste for it, and I shall be off again as soon as returned.”