“Good!” thought Aristide. “When I leave them she can teach him to look at things and revive his soul. Truly I deserve a halo.”
As Mr. Ducksmith appeared to be entirely unperceptive of his wife’s spiritual expansion, Aristide grew bolder in his apostolate. He complimented Mrs. Ducksmith to his face. He presented her daily with flowers. He scarcely waited for the heavy man’s back to be turned to make love to her. If she did not believe that she was the most beautiful, the most ravishing, the most delicate-souled woman in the world, it was through no fault of Aristide. Mr. Ducksmith went his pompous, unseeing way. At every stopping-place stacks of English daily papers awaited him. Sometimes, while Aristide was showing them the sights of a town—to which, by the way, he insisted on being conducted—he would extract a newspaper from his pocket and read with dull and dogged stupidity. Once Aristide caught him reading the advertisements for cooks and housemaids. In these circumstances Mrs. Ducksmith spiritually expanded at an alarming rate; and, correspondingly, dwindled the progress of Mr. Ducksmith’s sock.
They arrived at Perigueux, in Perigord, land of truffles, one morning, in time for lunch. Towards the end of the meal the maître d’hôtel helped them to great slabs of pâté de foie gras, made in the house—most of the hotel-keepers in Perigord make pâté de foie gras, both for home consumption and for exportation—and waited expectant of their appreciation. He was not disappointed. Mr. Ducksmith, after a hesitating glance at the first mouthful, swallowed it, greedily devoured his slab, and, after pointing to his empty plate, said, solemnly:—
“Plou.”
Like Oliver, he asked for more.
“Tiens!” thought Aristide, astounded. “Is he, too, developing a soul?”
But, alas! there were no signs of it when they went their dreary round of the town in the usual ramshackle open cab. The cathedral of Saint-Front, extolled by Aristide and restored by Abadie—a terrible fellow who has capped with tops of pepper-castors every pre-Gothic building in France—gave him no thrill; nor did the picturesque, tumble-down ancient buildings on the banks of the Dordogne, nor the delicate Renaissance façades in the cool, narrow Rue du Lys.
“We will now go back to the hotel,” said Mr. Ducksmith.
“But have we seen it all?” asked his wife.
“By no means,” said Aristide.