Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the
air; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness in
days that brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. The
constant stirring of the sap of life, the fertilizing influences of
mind on mind, after which he had sought so eagerly in Paris, were
beginning to fade from his memory, and he was in a fair way of
becoming a fossil with these fossils, and ending his days among them,
content, like the companions of Ulysses, in his gross envelope.
One evening Gaston de Nueil was seated between a dowager and one of
the vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled drawing-room,
floored with large white tiles. The family portraits which adorned the
walls looked down upon four card-tables, and some sixteen persons
gathered about them, chattering over their whist. Gaston, thinking of
nothing, digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which the
provincial looks forward all through the day, found himself justifying
the customs of the country.
He began to understand why these good folk continued to play with
yesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth,
and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others.
He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even
tenor of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodical
monotony, in their ignorance of the refinements of luxury.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25