THE CONVERSATION OF PATRIOTS.
The world that found its way to the mayor's table at this early period
of the summer season was largely composed of the class that travels
chiefly to amuse others. The commercial gentlemen in France, however,
have the outward bearing of those who travel to amuse themselves. The
selling of other people's goods--it is surely as good an excuse as any
other for seeing the world! Such an occupation offers an orator, one
gifted in conversational talents--talents it would be a pity to see
buried in the domestic napkin--a fine arena for display.
The French commercial traveller is indeed a genus apart; he makes a
fetish of his trade; he preaches his propaganda. The fat and the lean,
the tall and the little, the well or meanly dressed representatives of
the great French houses who sat down to dine, as our neighbors or
_vis-à-vis_, night after night, were, on the whole, a great credit to
their country. Their manners might have been mistaken for those of a
higher rank; their gifts as talkers were of such an order as to make
listening the better part of discretion.
Dining is always a serious act in France. At this inn the sauces of the
_chef_, with their reputation behind them, and the proof of their real
excellence before one, the dinner-hour was elevated to the importance
of a ceremony. How the petty merchants and the commercial gentlemen
ate, at first in silence, as if respecting the appeal imposed by a
great hunger, and then warming into talk as the acid cider was passed
again and again! What crunching of the sturdy, dark-colored bread
between the great knuckles! What huge helps of the famous sauces! What
insatiable appetites! What nice appreciation of the right touch of the
tricksy garlic! What nodding of heads, clinking of glasses, and warmth
of friendship established over the wine-cups! At dessert everyone
talked at once. On one occasion the subject of Gambetta's death was
touched on; all the table, as one man, broke out into an effervescence
of political babble.
"What a loss! What a death-blow to France was his death!" exclaimed a
heavy young man in a pink cravat.
"If Gambetta had lived, Alsace and Lorraine would be ours now, without
the firing of a gun!" added an elderly merchant at the foot of the
table.
"Ah--h! without the firing of a gun they will come to us yet. I tell
you, without the firing of a gun--unless we insist on a battle,"
explosively rejoined a fiery-hued little man sitting next to Monsieur
Paul; "but you will see--we shall insist. There is between us and
Germany an inextinguishable hate--and we must kill, kill, right and
left!"
"_Allons--allons!_" protested the table, in chorus.
"Yes, yes, a general massacre, that is what we want; that is what we
must have. Men, women, and children--all must fall. I am a married
man--but not a woman or a child shall escape--when the time comes,"
continued the fiery-eyed man, getting more and more ferocious as he
warmed with the thought of his revenge.
"What a monster!" broke in Madame Le Mois, her deep base notes
unruffled by the spectacle of her bloodthirsty neighbor's violence;
"you--to bayonet a woman with a child in her arms!"
"I would--I would--"
"Then you would be more cruel than they were. They treated our women
with respect."
There was a murmur of assenting applause, at this sentiment of justice,
from the table. But the fiery-eyed man was not to be put down.
"Oh, yes, they were generous enough in '71, but I should remember their
insults of 1815!"
"_Ancienne histoire--çà_" said the mère, dismissing the subject, with a
humorous wink at the table.
"As you see," was Monsieur Paul's comment on the conversation, as we
were taking our after-dinner stroll in the garden--"as you see, that
sort of person is the bad element in our country--the dangerous
element--unreasoning, revengeful, and ignorant. It is such men as he
who still uphold hatreds and keep the flame alive. It is better to have
no talent at all for politics--to be harmless like me, for instance,
whose worst vice is to buy up old laces and carvings."
"And roses--"
"Yes--that is another of my vices--to perpetuate the old varieties.
They call me along our coast the millionnaire--of roses! Will you have
a 'Marie Louise,' mademoiselle?"
The garden was as complete in its old time aspect as the rest of the
inn belongings. Only the older, rarer varieties of flowers and rose
stalks had been chosen to bloom within the beautifully arranged
inclosure. _Citronnelle_, purple irises, fringed asters, sage,
lavender, _rose-pêche_, bachelor's-button, _the d'Horace_, and the
wonderful electric fraxinelle, these and many other shrubs and plants
of the older centuries were massed here with the taste of one difficult
to please in horticultural arrangements. Our after-dinner walks became
an event in our day. At that hour the press of the day's work was over,
and Madame Mère or Monsieur Paul were always ready to join us for a
stroll.
"For myself, I do not like large gardens," Monsieur Paul remarked,
during one of these after-dinner saunters. "The monks, in the old days,
knew just the right size a garden should be--small and sheltered, with
walls--like a strong arm about a pretty woman--to protect the shrubs
and flowers. One should enter the garden, also, by a gate which must
click as it closes--the click tickles the imagination--it is the sound
henceforth connected with silence, with perfumes and seclusion. How far
away we seem now, do we not?--from the bustle of the inn
court-yard--and yet I could throw a stone into it."
The only saunterers besides ourselves were the flamingo, who,
cautiously, timorously picked his way--as if he were conscious he was
only a bunch of feathers hoisted on stilts; the white parrot, who was
wabbling across the lawn to a favorite perch in the leaves of a
tropical palm; and the peacock, whose train had been spread with a due
regard to effect across a bed of purple irises, with a view to
annihilating the brilliancy of their rival hues.
The bit of sky framed by these four garden walls always seemed more
delicate in tone than that which covered the open court-yard. The birds
in the bushes had moments of melodious outbursts they did not,
apparently, indulge in along the high-road. And what with the fading
lights, the stars pricking their way among the palms, the scents of
flowers, and the talk of a poet, it is little wonder that this twilight
hour in the old garden was certain to be the most lyrical of the
twenty-four.