Julien was thoughtful. Madame Christophor in a moment continued.
"You know, my friend," she said, tapping the ash from her cigarette into her saucer, "your misfortune came just in time to save you from becoming what in English you call a great, a colossal prig."
His eyebrows went up. Suddenly he smiled.
"Perhaps," he admitted. "To be a successful politician one must of necessity be a prig."
"Not in the least," she reminded him swiftly. "There is the Prince von
Falkenberg."
"The maker of toys," he murmured.
"The maker, alas! of toys which the world were better without," she replied. "But never mind that. For the sake of your ambitions you were content, were you not, to marry a young woman with whom you had not the slightest sympathy, in order that she might receive your guests, might add the lustre of her name to the expansion of her husband's genius?"
"Madame," he said, "we live a very short time. We live only one life. Only certain things are possible to us. The man who tries to crowd everything into that life fails. He is a dilettante. He may find pleasure but he reaches no end. He strikes no long sustained note. In the eyes of those who come after him, he is a failure."
"This," she murmured, "is interesting. Please go on."
"The man who means to succeed," he continued, "to succeed in any one position, must sacrifice everything else—temperament, if necessary character—for that one thing. When I left college, the study of politics was almost chosen for me. It became a part of my life. As my interest developed, it is true that my outlook upon life was narrowed. I was content to forget, perhaps, that I was a man, I strove fervently and desperately to develop into the perfect political machine. From that point of view, nobody in England would have made me a better wife than Lady Anne Clonarty."