When you hear him crowing
Then's the time for owing.
Till that day--Pay.
While I was still wondering at this epitome of the French people, and
was attempting to combine the French military tradition with the
French temper in the affairs of economics; while I was also delighting
in the memory of the solid coin that I carried in a little leathern
bag in my pocket, the hard-working, God-fearing, and honest woman that
governs the little house and the three great daughters, within a yard
of the frontier, and on the top of this huge hill, had brought back
all her troops into line and had the time to attend to me. This she
did with the utmost politeness, though cold by race, and through her
politeness ran a sense of what Teutons called Duty, which would once
have repelled me; but I have wandered over a great part of the world,
and I know it now to be a distorted kind of virtue.
She was of a very different sort from that good tribe of the Moselle
valley beyond the hill; yet she also was Catholic-- (she had a little
tree set up before her door for the Corpus Christi: see what religion
is, that makes people of utterly different races understand each
other; for when I saw that tree I knew precisely where I stood. So
once all we Europeans understood each other, but now we are divided by
the worst malignancies of nations and classes, and a man does not so
much love his own nation as hate his neighbours, and even the twilight
of chivalry is mixed up with a detestable patronage of the poor. But
as I was saying--) she also was a Catholic, and I knew myself to be
with friends. She was moreover not exactly of- what shall I say? the
words Celtic and Latin mean nothing-- not of those who delight in a
delicate manner; and her good heart prompted her to say, very loudly--
'What do you want?'
'I want a bed,' I said, and I pulled out a silver coin. 'I must lie
down at once.'