He said this with a simple, heartfelt sincerity which moved the Frenchman to lean from his chair and give him a silent handshake of appreciation. The American forgot to add this to his total for the day, going on earnestly with his story: "And so, I keep my eyes open all the time for little good turns I can do. I don't mean charity ... honestly, I think that does about as much harm as good, though of course we have to go through the motions in a time like this. I mean business good turns, such as I'd like to have anybody do me, look at my concern with a fresh eye and tell me how I could make it better, or else tell me where I could find a bigger market. You understand? Like that. Now I've been doing business with a big chemical factory out in the country near Paris. The nearest place to it, for me, is Versailles ... maybe you happen to know Versailles?"
The Frenchman nodded gravely. Yes, he had a married sister living in Versailles. "Well, there's a little drug-store out there, one of these peaceful, sleepy-looking, home-and-mother French drug-stores, with a big cat dozing in the window, and somebody in a white apron putting up pills behind the counter, and so far as anybody from my part of the world can see, not enough business doing from one week's end to another, to buy a postage-stamp."
The Frenchman laughed. "Oh, it's a very good business in France being a pharmacien."
"That's what everybody tells me, and that's what gets me. One of the things that gets me! In our country when there is any business being done you hear the wheels going 'round.' I can't get used to this smooth European way of doing it and not letting on. Well, my main interest in life being the toilet preparations business I hardly ever go by one without stopping in. You never know when you're going to run onto something worthwhile. Well, out there in Versailles, I certainly did. I ran onto a genius. Yes, sir, that's not too much to say; a genius! Any man who can make a cold cream like that ..."
He interrupted himself to ask: "You don't happen to be up on cold cream? No? It's a pity, because you can't appreciate what that man is doing. By George, I never saw anything like it, and I've dealt in cold creams for thirty years! It's got anything in America beaten a mile! The two great faults of cold cream, you see, are being greasy and being crumbly. This isn't either. And it keeps! He showed me some he'd had for four years in a pot, with just a flat earthenware lid laid on top, and you wouldn't believe it, Monsieur Portier, but it hadn't changed an atom, not an atom! And the fineness of it! The least little pinch between your fingers, and it just sinks right into your pores before your eyes! It's like cream, thick, rich cream off a three-days-set pan of milk, and yet it don't run! And the perfume! Monsieur Portier, I give you my word for it, and I know what I'm talking about, the perfume that little old druggist out in his dinky little old shop has got into his cold cream is the only refined cold cream perfume I ever smelled! It makes all the others smell like a third-rate actress. It's got a ... it's got a ..." He hesitated, searching for exactly the right word and brought it out with enthusiasm, "it's got a clean smell, if you get me, like a nice girl after a bath! I've got daughters of my own," he added in whimsical justification of his metaphor.
The Frenchman had been watching him with appreciative eyes. "Mr. Hale, I see that, like so many of your countrymen, you are a real artist in your line, and you have the artist's flavor."
The American was disconcerted by this characterization. "Who? Me? I know a good thing when I see it, that's all, and that's business, that's not art."
The Frenchman smiled with the amused, respectful sympathy which men of his race so often feel for their American contemporaries. "Well, and what did you do when you discovered this miraculous cold cream?"
Mr. Hale laughed, a young, vigorous laugh which made his gray hair seem a paradox. "Well, you've guessed it. I threw a fit, first of all. I was taken off my feet, and I wouldn't be surprised if I acted like a cat over catnip. So I decided I'd better go away and cool off before I did anything rash. I bought a couple of pots and went back to the hotel to sleep on it. That's something I always try to do, Monsieur Portier, before I let myself in for a big proposition; and I meant this to be big, all right. I wanted to see if that cold cream seemed as good after twenty-four hours as it did at first. Well, it did, and then some! So I got the Swede porter at my hotel, who can talk some English, to go back with me. And I started in to ask the old fellow all about it. Right there I struck a difference. After the way I'd gone on, an American, when I went back the next day, would have been wondering what I was trying to take away from him; but my old friend was just as pleased as a mother is when you tell her she's got a pretty baby. In fact he reminded me of that, the way he talked. So glad to tell me all about it. I got the impression before he got through that it was a member of the family. I don't mean, of course, that he told me how he made it. I wouldn't have let him if he'd started to. But he told me everything else. To begin with, he told me that his folks have been pharmacists right there for more than a hundred years! A hundred years in that little shop in that little street in that little town! I tell you, Monsieur Portier, I never can get used to the way your people stay put."
The Frenchman looked grave. "Perhaps too much so, Mr. Hale."