It still lay below them as they sat at lunch on the terrace of the hotel, and talked, by tacit consent, of indifferent things; and presently he had bought her an iron-tipped cane and they were setting forth through the little town.
La Turbie is one of those old, old villages built ages ago along this coast high in the mountain fastnesses for safety from the Barbary corsairs and the miscellaneous pirates who roamed up and down the Mediterranean, raiding and sacking and seeking what they might devour. It was captured by the Romans two thousand years ago, and is overshadowed by the ruins of a great stone tower which Augustus set up to commemorate the victory. Its narrow streets and dingy rubble houses have come unchanged through the ages, and are still inhabited by the descendants of the old tribes the Romans conquered, following the same trades in the same way, and living the same lives.
Except that now they must dodge the motor cars which flash ceaselessly through the town along the Grande Corniche. Strangest contrast of the ages, the silken, jewelled femme du monde who glances out carelessly at the rough-clad, red-faced girl pushing a barrow of manure to the fields. And what thought stirs the girl’s brain as she gazes after the vanishing car?
“Perhaps no thought at all,” said the countess, when Selden put this question to her. “Do not make the mistake of endowing the peasantry with your own mentality, as so many reformers do.”
“I don’t. And I’m not a reformer,” he protested. “Just the same, I suppose they have some feelings.”
“Their feelings are centred in their stomachs. Give them a full stomach and they are happy.”
“You talk like Baron Lappo.”
“Do I? Well, the baron is a very clever man, and he understands the peasantry. Nine-tenths of the people of his country are peasants. Americans cannot understand them because America has no peasants. And so you credit them with noble aspirations—patriotism, liberty!—whereas all they really seek is enough to eat.”
“I suppose,” said Selden, “that you are referring to those articles of mine which annoyed the baron.”
“Yes, I am. I think them altogether mistaken. I admire your optimism, but it carries you too far.”