"Monsieur is very wise."
I turned my head, and saw Monsieur José's tall figure standing out against the sky.
"Monsieur is very wise," he repeated. "I, too, have lived in towns, but I love best the country, else I should not be here. Monsieur is young to have attained to so much wisdom."
I laughed. "Isn't it a matter of taste rather than a matter of wisdom?" I remarked.
He shrugged his shoulders, and leaned forward on the long gun which he was carrying.
"With monsieur's permission," he said, "I will tell him a short story. It is my own."
"Delighted," I murmured, lighting a fresh cigarette, and my father gravely bowed his head.
"I was born and brought up in the country," Monsieur José commenced, "in a small village, about fifty miles south of Paris. When I was sixteen years old my father and mother both died, and I was left alone in the world, in possession of a small farm. I had to work hard, but I loved the place, and I was able to make a good living. I was happy enough, too, until Marie Marteuil came to live in our village, and I fell in love with her. I trust monsieur will never know what it is to be in love with a heartless coquette! It was my lot, and a miserable lot it was! One day she would single me out from all the rest and talk to me only, and at another she would scarcely speak to me at all. It was Paris which had done it. Before she went up there to stay with an aunt for a while, she was as quiet, and simple, and sweet as ever a maiden could be, but when she returned she was, as I say, a confirmed coquette. I bore patiently with all her vagaries, and put up with all her saucy speeches, for more than a year. Then, when I asked her to marry me, she laughed in my face. What, marry a little country farmer! Not she. She would marry no one, she said, who did not live in Paris, or who could not take her there. If I could do that she would have me.
"Well, I sold the farm on which I was born, every field of which I loved, and with a light heart went up to Paris. They call Paris a gay city! I found it a cruel one! I had no idea how to set about making a living there, and gradually my little stock of money dwindled away until it was nearly all gone. But I would succeed, I swore, for was not Marie waiting for me? At last, in despair, I turned blacksmith; I worked night and day until my cheeks lost their colour, and I began to stoop. But I got on very well, and at last I got a forge for myself and took a little house and furnished it. Then I went down to my old home, happy and exultant, to fetch Marie. I went to her house and saw her, but when I would have embraced her she drew back as though she had forgotten me. I was pained, but I thought that she was playing with me, and I commenced to tell her my story, and all that I had done, and how I had worked for her sake, and about the house I had furnished. And when I had told her everything, what do you think she did? She burst out laughing in my face. 'The idea of her marrying a blacksmith!' she exclaimed, tossing her pretty little head. 'It was ridiculous.' Besides, she had changed her mind about living in Paris. I had better get some one else to go and live with me in the house I had furnished; and when I commenced to plead to her, she shut the door in my face. Next week she was married to the man to whom I had sold my farm. Does monsieur wonder that I, too, detest the cities, and love best the country?"
I looked up at him sympathisingly, for though he had told his story lightly, there was a deep vein of sadness underlying his assumed manner, and his dark eyes had a sorrowful look.