O.W. If they are still in their feathers, let them fly again! A flight of ortolans across Paris: how romantic, how unexplainable!
H.A. Oh, no! Let’s wait for them, please! I want to taste one: I never have.
O.W. So young, and already so eager for disappointment! Why give up imagination? “Ortolan,” the word, is far more beautiful than when it is made flesh. If you were wise you would learn life only by inexperience. That is what makes it always unexpected and delightful. Never to realize—that is the true ideal.
L.H. Still, one goes on liking plovers’ eggs after eating them: at least, I do.
O.W. Ah, yes; an egg is always an adventure: it may be different. But you are right; there are a few things—like the Nocturnes of Chopin—which can repeat themselves without repetition. The genius of the artist preserves them from being ever quite realized. But it has to be done carelessly.
(There is a pause, while L.H., with due enquiry of each, orders the aperitifs.)
R.R. Oscar, why did you choose the “Vieille Rose”?
O.W. Will you believe me, Robbie, when I say—to match my complexion? I have never before seen it by daylight. Is it not a perfect parable of life, that such depravity by gaslight should become charming? Will our host allow us to have white wine as a corrective? An additional red might be dangerous.
(And with the colour-scheme of the approaching meal made safe, he continues to charm the ears of himself and of his listeners.)
I chose it also for another and a less selfish reason. It is here I once met a woman who was as charming as she was unfortunate, or as she would have been, but for the grace that was in her. To say that she was entirely without beauty is to put it mildly; but she accepted that gift of a blind God with so candid a benevolence, and cultivated it with so delicate an art, that it became a quality of distinction, almost of charm. She was the belle amie of a friend of mine, whose pity she had changed to love. He brought me here to meet her, telling me of the rare reputation she had acquired in this city of beautiful misalliances, as being a woman of whom nobody could possibly say that she was merely plain. And here, upon this spot, in the first few moments of our meeting, she challenged me, in the most charming manner possible, for that which a woman so rarely seeks to know—the truth about herself. “Tell me, Monsieur,” she said—but no: it can only be told in French: “Dites moi, Monsieur, si je ne suis pas la femme la plus laide à Paris?” And for once in my life I was able to please a woman merely by telling her the truth; and I replied, “Mais, Madame, dans tout le monde!”