I nodded in order to signify my elementary acquaintance with the French tongue.
“The most delicate little flower you can conceive,” he continued. “Tiens, she was a slender lily—so white, and her hair the flash of gold on it—and she had eyes—des yeux de pervenche, as we say in French. What is pervenche in English—that little pale-blue flower?”
“Periwinkle,” said I.
“Periwinkle eyes! My God, what a language! Ah, no! She had des yeux de pervenche.... She was diaphane, diaphanous ... impalpable as cigarette-smoke ... a little nose like nothing at all, with nostrils like infinitesimal sea-shells. Anyone could have made a mouthful of her.... Ah! Cré nom d’un chien! Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank.... I’ve never told you about Fleurette. It was this way.”
And the story he narrated I will do my best to set down.
The good M. Bocardon, of the Hôtel de la Curatterie at Nîmes, whose grateful devotion to Aristide has already been recorded, had a brother in Paris who managed the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse (strange conjuncture), a flourishing third-rate hostelry in the neighbourhood of the Halles Centrales. Thither flocked sturdy Britons in knickerbockers, stockings, and cloth caps, Teutons with tin botanizing boxes (for lunch transportation), and American school-marms realizing at last the dream of their modest and laborious lives. Accommodation was cheap, manners were easy, and knowledge of the gay city less than rudimentary.
To M. Bocardon of Paris Aristide, one August morning, brought glowing letters of introduction from M. and Mme. Bocardon of Nîmes. M. Bocardon of Paris welcomed Aristide as a Provençal and a brother. He brought out from a cupboard in his private bureau an hospitable bottle of old Armagnac, and discoursed with Aristide on the seductions of the South. It was there that he longed to retire—to a dainty little hotel of his own with a smart clientèle. The clientèle of the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse was not to his taste. He spoke slightingly of his guests.
“There are people who know how to travel,” said he, “and people who don’t. These lost muttons here don’t, and they make hotel-keeping a nightmare instead of a joy. A hundred times a day have I to tell them the way to Notre Dame. Pouah!” said he, gulping down his disgust and the rest of his Armagnac, “it is back-breaking.”
“Tu sais, mon vieux,” cried Aristide—he had the most lightning way of establishing an intimacy—“I have an idea. These lost sheep need a shepherd.”