“Dumas? ‘The Three Musketeers’?” His wrinkled face lighted. “I know them. Another book I liked the Germans loaned me when they were here. It was by an Englishman—B-u-l-w-e-a-r—‘The Last Days of Pompeii’—a very interesting book.”
“Tell me,” he went on a little later, “some one has said that you have no twilight in North America. Is it true?”
It seeming in his mind to be a reflection upon our country, I tried my best to dissipate this impression by citing the great size of the United States, and its varying climatic conditions. But I could not truthfully say that we had the lingering orange sunsets and afterglows of pink and mauve and applegreen which I knew were in his mind, and with which I too became familiar on the plain of Picardy.
The last time I saw M. Touret was on a white and wintry morning when I had risen even earlier than the Villagers or M. the chaplain, to attend the Village mass. In a golden-brown corduroy which might have been the twin of M. Augustin’s, I spied M. Touret on the path ahead of me, homeward bound after the service. I ran to catch up.
“Good morning, Monsieur, and how are you?”
“O, doucement, doucement,” he answered. “And you?”
“The books, did you like them?” I inquired, for his Christmas present had consisted of three.
“O, well enough; but one was not true. It was called ‘Contes de la Lune.’ I did not read it. Another (this in reference to Tourguenieff) was by a Russian; and you know well, in France we do not love Russia, now. A Russian indeed! The third,—well Jules Verne is always interesting. Ça ira.”
Somewhat discouraged, I recalled what Mme. Clara had told me once in an effort to soften the old man’s brusqueness. “He is old; he is full of crotchets, you understand.” But Madame herself appeared to me to be quite as old, though I had the wit not to compliment her politeness thus maladroitly. Perhaps it was because of this honesty, entirely unaffected, that of all the households in my village, I enjoyed most hers and M. Touret’s. There one found a freeborn fellowship, which, like the mellow twilight, belongs to Picardy. It is a timbre resonant in the older generation; that generation which endured the invasion of 1870, as well as the invasion of 1914. It is a survival of many wars, of many hardships, a spirit akin to that fortitude which has made our own country,—a common language that we, who came from the ends of the earth, could understand.