“Not,” he would admit, “but that I love to see thee in a decent habit, and so constant plucking at thy hose, for I have been young myself, and had some right foppish follies, too. But now, my good man Dandiprat, my petit-maître, I am old—oh, so old!—and know so much of wisdom, and have seen such a confusion of matters, that I count comfort the greatest of blessings. The devil fly away with buttons and laces! say I, that have been parish priest of Dixmunde—and happily have not killed a man nor harmed a flea, though like enough to get killed myself.”
The weather was genial, yet he sat constantly hugging the fire, and I at the window, which happily gave a prospect of the yard between our building and that of Galbanon. I would be looking out there, and perhaps pining for freedom, while he went prating on upon the scurviest philosophy surely ever man gave air to.
“Behold, my scrivener, how little man wants for happiness! My constant fear in Dixmunde was that I would become so useless for all but eating and sleeping, when I was old, that no one would guarantee me either; poverty took that place at my table the skull took among the Romans—the thought on't kept me in a perpetual apprehension. Nom de chien! and this was what I feared—this, a hard lodging, coarse viands, and sour wine! What was the fellow's name?—Demetrius, upon the taking of Megara, asked Monsieur Un-tel the Philosopher what he had lost. 'Nothing at all,' said he, 'for I have all that I could call my own about me,' and yet 'twas no more than the skin he stood in. A cell in Bicêtre would have been paradise to such a gallant fellow. Oh, Paul, I fear thou may'st be ungrateful—I would be looking out there, and perhaps pining for freedom,” he went prating on, “to this good Buhot, who has given us such a fine lodging, and saved us the care of providing for ourselves.”
“'Tis all very well, father,” I said, leaning on the sill of the window, and looking at a gang of prisoners being removed from one part of Galbanon to another—“'tis all very well, but I mind a priest that thought jaunting round the country in a chariot the pinnacle of bliss. And that was no further gone than a fortnight ago.”
“Bah!” said he, and stretched his fat fingers to the fire; “he that cannot live happily anywhere will live happily nowhere at all. What avails travel, if Care waits like a hostler to unyoke the horses at every stage? I tell thee, my boy, I never know what a fine fellow is Father Hamilton till I have him by himself at a fireside; 'tis by firesides all the wisest notions come to one.”
“I wish there came a better dinner than to-day's,” said I, for we had agreed an hour ago that smoked soup was not very palatable.
“La! la! la! there goes Sir Gourmet!” cried his reverence. “Have I infected this poor Scot that ate naught but oats ere he saw France, with mine own fever for fine feeding from which, praise le bon Dieu! I have recovered? 'Tis a brutal entertainment, and unworthy of man, to place his felicity in the service of his senses. I maintain that even smoked soup is pleasant enough on the palate of a man with an easy conscience, and a mind purged of vulgar cares.”