ENVOI
A few days later the Comte de Rochefort was breakfasting with his
friend, de Chartres, when, the conversation taking a turn, Rochefort,
in reply to some remark of his companion, laughed.
“That reminds me,” said he, “I am going to leave Paris.”
“You are going to leave Paris? And for how long?”
“Oh, an indefinite time.”
“And who gave you that bright idea?”
“M. de Duras.”
“M. de Duras advised you to leave Paris?”
“Oh, no, he only gave me the idea that it would be a good thing not to
become like M. de Duras. I saw myself in a flash as I would be twenty
years hence, old M. de Rochefort with a painted face, living socially
on the tolerance of his friends and mentally on the latest rumour and
the cast-off wit of others. Besides, I was always fond of a country
life; besides—I have had my fling in Paris, I have spent I don’t
know how many thousand francs in four years, and if I go on I will be
impoverished, and I can stand many things, Chartres, but I could never
stand being your poor man.
“I do not mind living on a crust of bread in the least, but I object
very strongly to living with the knowledge that I cannot have venison
if I want it. I have come from a queer stock, we have always gone the
pace, but we have all of us had a grain of commonsense somewhere in our
natures to check us in time.
“People say I am mad simply because they only see me spending my money
in Paris; they do not know in the least that I have a reputation for
commonsense on my estates as solid as an oak-tree. My people in the
country know me and they respect me, because I know them and will not
let myself be cheated. People say I am mad—silly fools—have they
never considered the fact that I have always steered clear of politics?”
“Oh, oh!” said Chartres; “good heavens, what are you saying?”
“That was an accident, an uncharted rock that I struck. I have always
steered clear of politics, otherwise I might be like Camus, of whose
fate I have just told you—and mind, never, never breathe a word of
that even to your pillow—or poor Camille Fontrailles. Well, to return
to our subject. I am leaving Paris for another reason, which I will
tell to you who are my best friend. I am in love, and the girl whom I
am going to make my wife could not live in Paris.”
“And why not?”
“Because she is a girl of the people; because she has a heart of gold
and a soul as pure as the soul of a child, and a power of love simple
and indestructible as the love of a dog; because she is a woman who can
be faithful in friendliness as a man, because she is a child who will
be a child till she dies. All that would be extremely absurd in Paris.
But down there in the country, Madame la Comtesse de Rochefort will
grow and live in the clear air that nourishes the flowers; she will be
respected by people who know the value of worth, and when Monsieur de
Rochefort is an old man, he will perhaps see in his grandchildren the
strength of a new race and not the vices of our rotten aristocracy.”
“Rochefort,” said Chartres, “I do not know whether this is madness or
commonsense, I only know that you are talking in a way that surprises
me as much as though I were to hear my poodle Pistache talking
philosophy.”
“Precisely, yet Pistache has more philosophy in his composition than
half the philosophers. You despise him because he is a poodle and
plays antics, just as you despise me because I am a man who has played
the fool. Yet Madame de Chartres does not look on Pistache as a bag
of tricks covered with fur, for she believes—so she told me—that
Pistache has a soul, and the woman whom I am going to marry does not
look on me as a fool, simply because she loves me.
“Believe me, Chartres, the only people who really understand dogs and
men—are women.”
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Presentation, by Henry De Vere Stacpoole