'Dull? Oh, people must be very stupid who are ever dull. There is always so much to do out among the fruit-trees or down by the beach. The days are always too short for me.'
'That is the charm of being fifteen. Are you always on this island? Do you never go to Nice?'
'I have never seen Nice. I did want to see the Carnival last year, but my grandfather would not hear of it. It was Raphael told me about it. It must have been very fine; but, of course, we have nothing to do with the mainland, that is only for the rich idle people. I hear they sleep all the day and buzz about all the night, like moths or like bats. What a strange life it must be!'
Loswa thought of the great gaslit glittering Salle des Jeux which was not more than a dozen leagues off this primitive orange-island.
'You are happier here, in the middle of your blue water, putting out your oil lamps as the moon rises,' he replied. 'Chateaubriand might have lived on Bonaventure. Who would have believed there was anything so solitary and so innocent as this within a few hours' sail of the Blanc paradise?'
'What is that?' said Damaris, who, although she could see afar off the palms and domes of Monte Carlo gleaming in the sun on the northward horizon every time she sailed that way, was as profoundly ignorant of the tripot and its works as if Bonaventure had been in the Pacific.
'I have heard,' she continued, 'that there are very strange things and people over there, that it is a feast-day every day with them, and all their life like a fair. My grandfather always says he would shoot them all down as they shot the hostages in the Commune, but I do not think that would be right. If they are silly, one should pity them.'
'They are silly indeed, and I fear your sweet pity would not avail to save them. The feast-day is a sorry affair at its close.'
'Oh, I know. I have seen Raphael come home drunk and beat Jacqueline (that is his wife) because she cried; and he is as good as gold when he is sober, and as gentle as a sheep when there is no drink.'
'In some way we all drink, we unfortunates,' said Loswa; then, seeing her look of surprise, he added, 'I did not speak literally, my dear; your Raphael's drink is a petit vin bleu, and ours is a costly thing we call Pleasure, but it comes to the same result; only, I suppose, Raphael has some five or six days in the week that he is good for work, and we cannot say as much as that. We are all the week round at the fair.'