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.'
Then I added, 'Can you make omelettes?'
Now it is a curious thing, and one I will not dwell on -
LECTOR. You do nothing but dwell.
AUCTOR. It is the essence of lonely travel; and if you have come to
this book for literature you have come to the wrong booth and counter.
As I was saying: it is a curious thing that some people (or races)
jump from one subject to another naturally, as some animals (I mean
the noble deer) go by bounds. While there are other races (or
individuals - heaven forgive me, I am no ethnologist) who think you a
criminal or a lunatic unless you carefully plod along from step to
step like a hippopotamus out of water. When, therefore, I asked this
family-drilling, house-managing, mountain-living woman whether she
could make omelettes, she shook her head at me slowly, keeping her
eyes fixed on mine, and said in what was the corpse of French with a
German ghost in it, 'The bed is a franc.'
'Motherkin,' I answered, 'what I mean is that I would sleep until I
wake, for I have come a prodigious distance and have last slept in the
woods. But when I wake I shall need food, for which,' I added, pulling
out yet another coin, 'I will pay whatever your charge may be; for a
more delightful house I have rarely met with. I know most people do
not sleep before sunset, but I am particularly tired and broken.'
She showed me my bed then much more kindly, and when I woke, which was
long after dusk, she gave me in the living room of the hut eggs beaten
up with ham, and I ate brown bread and said grace.
Then (my wine was not yet finished, but it is an abominable thing to
drink your own wine in another person's house) I asked whether I could
have something to drink.
