“Bah!” Helstern was saying: “This fire and fury, what is it? A mask to hide a desperate uneasiness. Poor France! There she is like some overfat ewe; there is the Prussian Wolf waiting; but look! between them the paw of the Lion.”[A]
He represented the fat ewe with the sugar bowl, the Wolf with the cream jug, and laid his big hand in between.
“Poor France!” broke in the girls; Rougette was more brilliantly pretty than ever, and her eyes flashed with indignation. Even the gentle Anastasia was roused to mild resentment.
“Yes,” went on Helstern, “you’re a great race, but you’re too old. You’ve got to go as they all went, Greece, Rome, Italy, Spain. England will follow, then Germany, last of all Russia.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” broke in Lorrimer noisily, “don’t let him get on the subject of International Destinies. What does it matter to us? To-day’s the only time worth considering. Let’s think of our own destinies: mine as the coming Gérôme, Helstern’s as the coming Rodin, and Madden’s as the coming Sylvanus Cobb.”
But I did not heed him. Drowsy content had possession of me. “Seven pounds,” I was thinking; “that means the sinews of war for another month. Oh, if I could only get some kind of an idea for that novel! What is Lorrimer babbling about now?”
“Marriage,” he was saying; “I don’t believe in marriage. The first year people are married they are happy, the second contented, the third resigned. There should be a new deal every three years. Why, if a general dispensation of divorce were to be granted, half of the married couples would break away so quick it would make your head swim.”
“Oh, Monsieur, you are shocking,” said Anastasia.
“What shocks to-day is a commonplace to-morrow. There will come a time when the custom that condemns a couple to bore one another for life will be considered a barbaric one. Why penalise people eternally for the aberration of a season? Three year marriages would give life back its colour, its passion, its romance. People so soon grow physically indifferent to each other. Flavoured with domesticity kisses lose their rapture.”
“You have the sentiments épouventable,” said Anastasia. “Wait till you have marry.”