When she was gone, Cartaret went again to the window that looked on the concierge’s garden. The robins were still singing:
“Seize hold of love! It is a rose—a white rose. Take it—take it—take it now!”
CHAPTER VIII
CHIEFLY CONCERNING STRAWBERRIES
Theft in its simplicity—however sharp and rude, yet if frankly done, and bravely—does not corrupt men’s souls; and they can, in a foolish, but quite vital and faithful way, keep the feast of the Virgin Mary in the midst of it.—Ruskin: Fors Clavigera.
It was quite true that he had resolved to be careful of the money that old Fourget had paid him for the pot-boiler. He still meant to be careful of it. But he was to be a guest at déjeuner next morning, and a man must not breakfast with a Princess and wear a costume that is really shockingly shabby. Cartaret therefore set about devising some means of bettering his wardrobe.
His impulse was to buy a new suit of clothes, as Seraphin had done when he sold his picture. Seraphin, however, had received a good deal more money than Cartaret, and Cartaret was really in earnest about his economies: when he had spent half the afternoon in the shops, and found that most of the ready-made suits there exposed for sale would cost him the bulk of his new capital, he decided to sponge his present suit, sew on a few buttons and then sleep with it under his mattress by way of pressing it. A new necktie was, nevertheless, imperative: he had been absent-mindedly wiping his brushes on the old, and it would not do to smell more of turpentine than the exigencies of his suit made necessary; the scent of turpentine is not appetizing.
If you have never been in love, you may suppose that the selection of so small a thing as a necktie is trivial; otherwise, you will know that there are occasions when it is no light matter, and you will then understand why Cartaret found it positively portentous. The first score of neckties that he looked at were impossible; so were the second. In the third he found one that would perhaps just do, and this he had laid aside for him while he went on to another shop. He went to several other shops. Whereas he had at first found too few possibilities, he was now embarrassed by too many. There was a flowing marine-blue affair with white fleur-de-lys that he thought would do well for Seraphin and that he considered for a moment on his own account. He went back to the first shop and so through the lot again. In the end, his American fear of anything bright conquered, and he bought a gray “four-in-hand” that might have been made in Philadelphia.
On his return he went to the window to see how his strawberries were doing. He remembered the anecdote about the good cleric, who said that doubtless God could have made a better berry, but that doubtless God never did. Cartaret wondered if it would be an impertinence to offer his strawberries to the Lady of the Rose.
They were gone.