All he had in the world were the wind-torn oaks and the sea-washed rocks of a bleak and lonely Breton village, and a few hundred thousand francs' worth of pictures, porcelains, arms, and bibelots, which had accumulated in his rooms on the Boulevard Haussmann, bought at the Drouot in the forenoons after successful play at night. Only two things in him were unlike the men whose associate he was: he was as temperate as an Arab, seldom even touching wine; and he was a keen mountaineer and athlete, once off the asphalte of the Boulevards. For the rest, popular though he was in the society he frequented, no living man could boast of any real intimacy with him. He had a thousand acquaintances, but he accepted no friend. Under the grace and suavity of a very courtly manner he wore the armour of a great reserve.
'At heart you have the taciturnity and the sauvagerie of the Armorican beneath all your polished suavity,' said a woman of his world to him once; and he did not contradict her.
Men did not quarrel with him for it: he was a fine swordsman and a dead shot: and women were allured all the more surely to him because they felt that they never really entered his life or took any strong hold on it.
Such as he was he lay now half-awake on the great bed under its amber canopy, and gazed dreamily at the colossal figures of the storied tapestry, where the Tuscan idlers of the Decamerone wore the sombre hues and the stiff and stately garb of Flemish fashion of the sixteenth century.
'I wonder why I tried so hard to live last night! I am not in love with life,' he thought to himself, as he slowly remembered all that had happened, and recalled the face of the lady who had leaned down to him from over the stone parapet in the play of the torchlight and lightnings. And yet life seemed good and worth having as he recalled that boiling dusky swirl of water which had so nearly swallowed him up in its anger.
He was young enough to enjoy; he was blessed with a fine constitution and admirable health, which even his own excesses had not impaired; he had no close ties to the world, but he had a frequent enjoyment of it, which made it welcome to him. The recovery of existence always enhances its savour; and as he lay dreamily recalling the sharp peril he had run, he was simply and honestly glad to be amongst living men.
He remained still when the physician had left and looked around him; in the wide hearth a fire of oak logs was burning; rain was beating against the painted panes of the oriel casements; there was old oak, old silver, old ivory in the furniture of the chamber, and the tapestries were sombre and gorgeous. It was a room of the sixteenth century; but the wine was in jugs of Bacarat glass, and a box of Turkish cigarettes stood beside them, with the Paris and Vienna newspapers. Everything had been thought of that could contribute to his comfort: he wondered if the doctor had thought of all this, or if it was due to the lady. 'It is a magnificent hospice,' he said to himself with a smile, and then he angrily remembered his rifle, his good English rifle, that was now sunk for ever with his little boat in the waters of the Szalrassee. 'Why did she offer me that outrage?' he said to himself: it went hard with him to lie under her roof, to touch her wine and bread. Yet he was aching in every limb, the bed was easy and spacious, the warmth and the silence and the aromatic scent of the burning pine-cones were alluring him to rest; he dropped off to sleep again, the same calm sleep of fatigue that had changed into repose, and nothing woke him till the forenoon was passed.
'Good heavens! how I am trespassing on this woman's hospitality!' he thought as he did awake, angry with himself for having been lulled into this oblivion; and he began to rise at once, though he felt his limbs stiff and his head for the moment light.
'Cannot I get a carriage for S. Johann? My servant is waiting for me there,' he said to the youth attending on him, when his bath was over.
The lad smiled with amusement.