"Pardi! what more would we want? We have enough to eat and clothes to wear, and a good house to live in; ain’t that enough?"
"My friend," said Edouard to Alfred, "this is man in his primitive state, without ambition, without desires; nature has given him none but pure and simple tastes, he has no vision of happiness outside of the place where he was born, and his desires never pass the summits of the mountains that surround his dwelling place. I maintain that this is such a man as Diogenes wished to find, but sought in vain among a people addicted to all sorts of pleasures, over-refined in its tastes and enslaved by its passions."
"If this is Diogenes’s man," said Robineau, tilting his bench, "he’s a clean, gentlemanlike person!"
"What is there in that kettle? Your supper, I presume?" said Alfred.
"Yes, monsieur, the soup."
"Well, my friends, we will eat it with you. We had our supper at Ayda; but no matter, we will sup again, eh, Edouard?"
"Yes, to be sure; we will keep our hosts company. And then there is an indefinable attraction about such a meal in my eyes."
"They’re not easily disgusted!" thought Robineau.
The soup being ready, the huge kettle was placed in the centre of the company; as the table was too small for the whole party to sit around it, the mountaineers considered it the simplest way to sit on the ground. Alfred and Edouard did the same, and Robineau alone remained on his bench.
"What, messieurs," he said to his friends, "you mean to sit on the floor?"