Upon that frontier contraband is called “The Fraud”; it holds an honourable place as a career.
“The Fraud,” he continued, “has gone long ago; it has burst. It is no longer to be pursued. There is not even any duty upon apples.... But there is a duty upon pears. Had I a son I would not put him into The Fraud.... Sometimes there is just a chance here and there.... One can pick up an occasion. But take it all in all (and here he wagged his head solemnly) there is nothing in it any more.”
I said that I had no experience of contraband professionally, but that I knew a very honest man who lived by it in the country of Andorra, and that according to my morals a man had a perfect right to run the risk and take his chance, for there was no contract between him and the power he was trying to get round. This announcement pleased the old gentleman, but it did not grip his mind. He was of your practical sort. He was almost a Pragmatist. Abstractions wearied him. He put no faith in the reality of ideas. I think he was a Nominalist like Abelard: and whatever excuse you may make for him, Abelard was a Nominalist right enough, for it was the intellectual thing to be at the time, though St. Bernard utterly confuted him in arguments of enormous length and incalculable boredom.
The old man, then, I say, would have nothing to do with first principles, and he reasserted his position that, in the concrete, in the existent world, The Fraud no longer paid.
This said for the sixth or seventh time, he drank some brandy to put heart into him and climbed up into his little cart, I by his side. He hit the white horse with a stick, making at the same time an extraordinary shrill noise with his mouth, like a siren, and the horse began to slop and sludge very dolefully towards Bavai.
“This horse,” said Mr. The Duke, “is a wonderfully good horse. He goes like the wind. He is of Arab extraction, and comes from Africa.”
With these words he gave the horse another huge blow with his stick, and once more emitted his piercing cry. The horse went neither faster nor slower than before, and seemed very indifferent to the whole performance.
“He is from Africa,” said Mr. The Duke again, meditatively. “Do you know Africa?”
Africa with the French populace means Algiers. I answered that I knew it, and that in particular I knew the road southward from Constantine. At this he looked very pleased, and said:
“I was a soldier in Africa. I deserted seven times.”