“That was an accident, an uncharted rock that I struck. I have always steered clear of politics, otherwise I might be like Camus, of whose fate I have just told you—and mind, never, never breathe a word of that even to your pillow—or poor Camille Fontrailles. Well, to return to our subject. I am leaving Paris for another reason, which I will tell to you who are my best friend. I am in love, and the girl whom I am going to make my wife could not live in Paris.”
“And why not?”
“Because she is a girl of the people; because she has a heart of gold and a soul as pure as the soul of a child, and a power of love simple and indestructible as the love of a dog; because she is a woman who can be faithful in friendliness as a man, because she is a child who will be a child till she dies. All that would be extremely absurd in Paris. But down there in the country, Madame la Comtesse de Rochefort will grow and live in the clear air that nourishes the flowers; she will be respected by people who know the value of worth, and when Monsieur de Rochefort is an old man, he will perhaps see in his grandchildren the strength of a new race and not the vices of our rotten aristocracy.”
“Rochefort,” said Chartres, “I do not know whether this is madness or commonsense, I only know that you are talking in a way that surprises me as much as though I were to hear my poodle Pistache talking philosophy.”
“Precisely, yet Pistache has more philosophy in his composition than half the philosophers. You despise him because he is a poodle and plays antics, just as you despise me because I am a man who has played the fool. Yet Madame de Chartres does not look on Pistache as a bag of tricks covered with fur, for she believes—so she told me—that Pistache has a soul, and the woman whom I am going to marry does not look on me as a fool, simply because she loves me.
“Believe me, Chartres, the only people who really understand dogs and men—are women.”
Footnote:
[A] Hairdressers alone amongst tradesmen were permitted to wear swords.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes: