"Have I been in Duras?" she went on with a burst of laughter. "You are joking. Imagine Neptune's granddaughter in the first-class compartment of a local train!"
She pointed to an enormous white rock which towered above the palm trees of the garden.
"That is my horizon," she said gravely.
She picked up one of several books which lay scattered about her on the lion's skin.
"The time table of the Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest," she said. "Admirable reading for one who never budges! Here it is half-past five in the afternoon. A train, a local, arrived three minutes ago at Surgères in the Charente-Inférieure. It will start on in six minutes. In two hours it will reach La Rochelle. How strange it seems to think of such things here. So far away! So much commotion there! Here, nothing changes."
"You speak French well," I said.
She gave a little nervous laugh.
"I have to. And German, too, and Italian, and English and Spanish. My way of living has made me a great polygot. But I prefer French, even to Tuareg and Arabian. It seems as if I had always known it. And I am not saying that to please you."
There was a pause. I thought of her grandmother, of whom Plutarch said: "There were few races with which she needed an interpreter. Cleopatra spoke their own language to the Ethiopians, to the Troglodytes, the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Medes and the Persians."
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