“I am willing to listen, but what will the result be?”
“Nothing.”
“That is satisfactory. Sit down in this arm-chair, and should I go to sleep, do not stop, I pray you, as that would awake me.”
After taking a pinch of snuff from my box, Breloque, nothing loath, commenced thus:—
“You are fully aware, sir, that notwithstanding the affection which attaches me to your person, I have never submitted to the slavery that would have been distasteful to both. I have my leisure hours, when I think of many things; just as you have yours, when you think of nothing. Oh, I have many ways of passing my time. Have you ever been out fishing with the line?”
“Yes,” I replied; “that is to say, I often used to go in a costume expressly suited to fishing, and sit from sunrise to sunset on the borders of a stream. I had a superb rod mounted with silver, like an Oriental weapon, but without its danger. Alas! I have passed many sweet hours, and made many bad verses, but I never caught a single fish.”
“Angling, sir, appeals to the imagination in your case, and has nothing to do with the happiness of the true angler. Few persons are so framed as to appreciate the charms of which you speak. Your mind, filled with dreamy, vague hope, follows the soft motion of the transparent water, marks and profits by the events of the insect world that clouds its clear face. To the fisher of poetic mind the capture of one of the silver dwellers in the stream can only bring regret, remorse.”
I made a sign of assent.
“Yet,” he continued, “few persons regard the sport in this light.”