“It is a beautiful one, too, this rose, very beautiful.”
A little more and he would have told me whether it was a La France, a Maréchal Niel, or some other species of rose.
As he had used the word “beautiful” I asked him what seemed to him the most beautiful thing in the world.
“The most beautiful thing alive is woman.”
I then asked him who the person was in whose company I had found him. His voice took on a tender tone as he said:
“It is my wife, my dear wife.”
After that I looked with more attention at the self-effacing and almost dumb soul who accompanied the blind musician. Confused, embarrassed, she had lowered her eyes, which she kept obstinately fixed upon an apron, of a faded blue, on which the patches appeared to be more extensive than the original material.
She was unattractive, poor thing, and at least twenty years older than her companion.
Quietly, without concerning myself with the beseeching looks the poor woman cast at me from under wrinkled and reddened eyebrows, I asked the blind musician:
“She satisfies you, does she?”