“London!” cried the Count, with scorn. “I would as soon live at the bottom of the sea. Indeed, I believe it would be healthier there. London, that crushed-up mass of houses inhabited by pale-faced people—I wonder they can exist. Oh, I saw and heard a good deal of London when I was there. Your people in the East End never leave those narrow streets from one year to the other. They know nothing of sunrise or sunset, for they only see those marvels through a smoky veil. They cannot tell a bird by its song—they know nothing of animals or their habits. Of the wonderful life of Nature which is born and lives and dies in the woods, in the seas, in the mountains, they are ignorant. They are born blind, they live blind, they die blind, and call such blindness life.”
“But what about the people in the West End?” asked Mrs. Dengelton, with the air of making a crushing remark.
“They are scarcely better,” retorted Caliphronas promptly; “they sit half the night in theatres breathing hot air, they go to balls where there is such a crowd of people that no one can dance, they walk for an hour in the Park and call it exercise, they poison themselves at the clubs with cigarettes, and in the boudoirs with tea—and all this feverish, unreal life is called ‘the season.’ When they go abroad it is to Monte Carlo and those sorts of places, where they lead the same life on a smaller scale. No, the West End is no better than the East End!”
“But you forget,” said Crispin, more from a desire to contradict the Count than because he disagreed with him, “plenty of people go mountaineering, game-shooting, yachting, exploring.”
“I know all that, my dear friend, but the number of people who do those things is very small. I am talking of the great mass of the English people, and as far as I can see, whether they are rich or poor, the life they lead is in both cases equally opposed to health and enjoyment.”
“Here endeth the first reading,” said Maurice, rising from the table, his example being followed by all his guests. “Caliphronas, you are quite eloquent on the subject.”
“Yes! I am not usually so eloquent,” replied the Count, going out on to the terrace, “but on all sides I hear from your people complaints of being ill. Well, the remedy is in their own hands. Why don’t they use it?”
“My good sir,” remarked Crispin, who had lighted a cigarette, “you cannot overturn the whole complex civilization of the West in that manner. Man can no more go back to the simplicity of the existence you eulogize, than you could settle down to a fashionable life in London and enjoy it.”
“Well, you at least can be cured easily,” said the Count, with emphasis, for, as they were now beyond earshot of the rest of the party, he could talk freely; “you all your life have lived the life of a natural man, but now you smoke that horrible tobacco, drink all kinds of wines, eat all kinds of dishes, and will soon become as artificial as those people around you.”
“Perhaps I will come back to the primeval existence you praise.”