"Quite. But I will play cards with you if you like," concluded the young man.
"No," returned the other. "It would be of no use. You would win, and if you happened to win much, I should be in a diabolical scrape. But I wish you would fall in love. You should see how I would handle the green shadows under your eyes."
"It is rather short notice."
"The shorter the better. I used to think that the only real happiness in life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting out."
"And have you changed your mind?"
"I? No. My mind has changed me. It is astonishing how a man may love his wife under favourable circumstances."
Anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette. Reubens would have sipped a few drops of Rhenish from a Venetian glass. Teniers would have lit a clay pipe. Dürer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of Nüremberg beer, and Greuse or Mignard would have resorted to their snuff-boxes. We do not know what Michelangelo or Perugino did under the circumstances, but it is tolerably evident that the man of the nineteenth century cannot think without talking and cannot talk without cigarettes. Therefore Anastase began to smoke and Orsino, being young and imitative, followed his example.
"You have been an exceptionally fortunate man," remarked the latter, who was not old enough to be anything but cynical in his views of life.
"Do you think so? Yes—I have been fortunate. But I do not like to think that my happiness has been so very exceptional. The world is a good place, full of happy people. It must be—otherwise purgatory and hell would be useless institutions."
"You do not suppose all people to be good as well as happy then," said Orsino with a laugh.