"Why not?" asked Paragot.
"Because," said the lawyer, "the law of France mercifully concedes to men of my profession the right of gaining a livelihood."
"I see that you are a real lawyer," said Paragot, pleased by the irony, "and it is an amiable Providence that has guided my steps to your cabinet."
But Paragot was married, and the little appartement in the Rue des Saladiers passed into alien hands, and the newly wedded pair settled down on the farm, long before all the legal formalities of purchase were accomplished. It takes my breath away, even now, to think of the hurry of those days. He decided human destinies in the fraction of a second.
"My son," said he, "when I have paid for this farm, I shall have very little indeed of the capital, on the interest of which we have been living. I am now a married man, with the responsibilities of a wife and a future family. I have put £200 to your credit at the Crédit Lyonnais and that is all your fortune. If art can't support you, when you have spent it, you will have to come to La Haye (the farm) and feed pigs. You'll be richer if you paint them; the piggier they are, and the heavier the gold watch chains across their bellies, the richer you will be; but you'll be happier if you feed them. Crede experturo."
I went to bed that night swearing a great oath that I would neither paint pigs nor feed pigs, but that I would prove myself worthy of the generosity of my master and benefactor. I felt then that his goodness was great; but how great it was I only realised in after years when I came to learn his financial position. Bearing in mind the relativity of things, I know that few fathers have sent their sons out into the world with so princely a capital.
Fortune smiled on me; why, I don't know; perhaps because I was small and sandy haired and harmless, and did not worry her. I sold two or three pictures, I obtained regular employment on an illustrated journal, and raised my price for contributions to Le Fou Rire. Bread and butter were assured. There was never prouder youth than I, when one August morning I started from Paris for Chartres, with fifty superfluous pounds in my pocket which I determined to restore to Paragot.
The old Paragot of the high roads, hairy and bronzed, and wearing a great straw hat with wide brim turned down, met me at the little local station. He forgot that he was half British and almost hugged me. At last I had come—it was my third visit—at last I had torn myself away from that sacré Paris and its flesh-pots and its paint-pots and its artificialities.
"Nothing is real in Paris, whether it be the smile on the painted lady's lips or the dream of the young poet. Here, in the midst of God's fields, there is no pretending, no shamming, no lying, none of your confounded idealism. All is solid, mon gars. Solid like that," and he thumped his chest to illustrate the argument.
"Bucéphale, too?" I queried with a laugh, as we fetched up beside the most ancient horse in the Department, drooping between the shafts of a springless cart. Needless to say, Bucéphale had been rechristened in his extreme old age.