“Never mind. They seek it—they will get it. Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin. The bon Dieu is on our side, just as He is on mine in this battle here. Vlan!”
The dice rattled out of the box and they showed the number that declared him the winner. A great shout arose. The honest burgesses cried miracle. Voyons, it was a sign from heaven to France. “In hoc signo vinces!” cried a professor at the Ecole Normale, and the sober company had another round of bocks to celebrate the augury.
Martin and Bigourdin walked home through the narrow, silent streets and over the bridges. There was a high wind sharpened by a breath of autumn which ruffled the dim surface of the water; and overhead a rack of cloud scudded athwart the stars. A light or two far up the gloomy scaur shewed the Hôtel des Grottes. Bigourdin waved his hand in the darkness.
“It is beautiful, all this.”
Martin assented and buttoned up his overcoat.
“It is beautiful to me,” said Bigourdin, “because it is my own country. I was born and bred here and my forefathers before me. It is part of me like my legs and my arms. I don’t say that I am beautiful myself,” he added, with a laugh, his French wit seeing whither logic would lead him. “But you understand.”
“Yes,” said Martin. “I can understand in a way. But I have no little corner of a country that I can call my own. I’m not the son of any soil.”
“Périgord is very fruitful and motherly. She will adopt you,” laughed Bigourdin.
“But I am English of the English,” replied Martin. “Périgord would only adopt a Frenchman.”
“I have heard it said and I believe it to be true,” said Bigourdin, “that every English artist has two countries, his own and France. And it is the artist who expresses the national feeling and not the university professors and philosophers; and all true men have in them something of the artistic, something which responds to the artistic appeal—I don’t know if I make myself clear, Monsieur Martin—but you must confess that all the outside inspiration you get in England in your art and your literature is Latin. I say ‘outside,’ for naturally you draw from your own noble wells; but for nearly a generation the fin esprit anglais, in all its delicacy and all its subtlety and all its humanity is in every way sympathetic with the fin esprit français. Is not that true?”