‘But you must not remain for ever here,’ he said to his nephew. ‘They will give you some foolish name which will run down the boulevards like magic; they will say you are in love with your wife, or that you are educating her; we all know what comes of that latter attempt.’
‘I stay at Amyôt,’ answered Othmar, ‘because I like it, because we both like it.’
‘My dear Otho, since you have pleased yourself persistently all your life, it is improbable that you will cease to do so at an age when most men are only just able to begin. Amyôt is an historic place, very old, admirably adapted for a museum; but since it is to your taste, well and good; only none will comprehend that you stay here filant le parfait amour for two months. If you continue to do so, Paris will believe that your wife has a club-foot or a crooked spine.’
‘You think she must show the one in a cotillon, or the other in something très collant?’ said Othmar.
‘Are you afraid of that?’ said the Baron, who knew by what means to attain his own ends.
‘I am not in the least afraid,’ replied Othmar, with impatience. ‘But I confess Amyôt, with the cuckoo crying in its oak woods, seems a fitter atmosphere for her than the endiablement of Paris.’
‘You could return to the cuckoo. I am not acquainted with his habits, but I should presume he is a stay-at-home, countryfied person.’
‘You do not understand the spring-time,’ said Othmar, with a smile.
‘It has always seemed to me the most uncomfortable period of the year,’ confessed the Baron. ‘It is an indefinite and transitory period, such as are seldom agreeable, except to poets, who are naturally unstable themselves.’
‘I suppose you were never young?’ said Othmar, doubtfully.