One evening Pauline had sat up knitting in Lazare's room till nearly midnight, while her cousin, whose pen had dropped idly from his fingers, slowly told her about what he intended to write in the future—dramas peopled with colossal characters. The whole house was asleep. Véronique had gone to bed long ago, and the deep stillness of the night, through which only broke the familiar wail of the high tide, gradually permeated them with tenderness. Lazare, unbosoming himself, confessed that his life hitherto had been a failure; if literature also failed him, he had made up his mind to retire to some secluded spot and live the life of a recluse.
'Do you know,' he added with a smile, 'I often think that we ought to have emigrated after my mother's death?'
'Emigrated! Why?'
'Yes; have taken ourselves very far away—to Oceania, for instance, to one of those islands where life is so sweet and pleasant.'
'But your father? Should we have taken him with us?'
'Oh! it's only a fancy, a dream, that I'm talking of. One may indulge in pleasant dreams, you know, when the actual truth is not very cheerful.'
He had risen from the table and had sat down upon one of the arms of Pauline's chair. She let her knitting drop, that she might laugh at ease over the ceaseless flow of the young man's imagination.
'Are you mad, my poor fellow?' she asked. 'What should we have done out there?'
'We should have lived! Do you remember that book of travels that we read together a dozen years ago? There is a perfect paradise out there. There is no winter, the sky is always blue, and life is passed beneath the sun and the stars. We should have had a cabin and have lived upon delicious fruits, with nothing to do and never a trouble to vex us.'
'Ah! then we should soon have become a pair of savages, with rings through our noses and feathers on our heads!'