'Isn't that curious?' asked Miss Ericson, who evidently took much pleasure in the conversation of the white gentleman. The Dictator assented. It was very curious.
'Yet I am fond of travel, too, in my way,' Mr. Sarrasin went on, delighted to have found an appreciative audience. 'I read about it largely. I read all the old books of travel, and all the new ones, too, for the matter of that. I have quite a little library of voyages, travels, and explorations in my little home. I should like you to see it some time if you should so far honour me.'
The Dictator declared that he should be delighted. Mr. Sarrasin, much encouraged, went on again.
'There is nothing I like better than to sit by my fire of a winter's evening, or in my garden of a summer afternoon, and read of the adventures of great travellers. It makes me feel as if I had travelled myself.'
'And Mr. Sarrasin tells me what he has read, and makes me, too, feel travelled,' said Miss Ericson.
'Perhaps you get all the pleasure in that way with none of the fatigue,' the Dictator suggested.
Mr. Sarrasin nodded. 'Very likely we do. I think it was à Kempis who protested against the vanity of wandering. But I fear it was not à Kempis's reasons that deterred me; but an invincible laziness and unconquerable desire to be doing nothing.'
'Travelling is generally uncomfortable,' the Dictator admitted. He was beginning to feel an interest in his curious, whimsical interlocutor.
'Yes,' Mr. Sarrasin went on dreamily. 'But there are times when I regret the absence of experience. I have tramped in fancy through tropical forests with Stanley or Cameron, dwelt in the desert with Burton, battled in Nicaragua with Walker, but all only as it were in dreams.'
'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' the Dictator observed sententiously.