Volume III Part 31 (1/2)
”'Vive la France!' And I felt really ht it a pretty and gallant thing to say”
”It seemed to me as if we had just saved the whole of France, and had done so siet that little face, you ive les, I should propose to replace theirl, and that would be even better than playing the _Marseillaise_ By Jove! It would put so Madonna, by the colonel's side”
He was silent for a few moments, and then continued, with an air of conviction, and jerking his head:
”All the same, we are very fond of women, we Frenchmen!”
ONE EVENING
The stea the beautiful bay of Bougie, that was opened out before us The high hills were covered with forests, and in the distance the yellow sands forold, while the sun shed its fiery rays on the white houses of the town
The warreat, mysterious continent into which men of the Northern races but rarely penetrate, intoon the borders of that great, unknoorld, on the outskirts of that strange world of the ostrich, the caorilla, the lion and the tiger, and the negro I had seen the Arab galloping like the wind, and passing like a floating standard, and I had slept under those brown tents, thehabitation of those white birds of the desert, and I felt, as it were, intoxicated with light, with fancy, and with space
But now, after this final excursion, I should have to start, to return to France and to Paris, that city of useless chatter, of co, and I should bid adieu to all that I had got to like so much, which was so new to hly, and which I so retted to leave
A fleet of s into one rowed by a negro lad, I soon reached the quay near the old Saracen gate, whose gray ruins at the entrance of the Kabyle town, looked like an old escutcheon of nobility While I was standing by the side ofat anchor in the roads, and filled with admiration at that unique shore, and that seht, which were more beautiful than those of Ajaccio, or of Porto, in Corsica, a heavy hand was laid onbeard, dressed in white flannel, and wearing a straw hat, standing byat me with his blue eyes
”Are you not an old school-fellow of mine?” he said
”It is very possible What is your name?”
”Tremoulin”
”By Jove! You were in the sanized you i me, that in an outburst of friendly selfishness, I shook both the hands of my for him thus
For four years Tremoulin had been one of the best and most intiet as soon as we leave In those days he had been a tall, thin fellohose head seee, round head, and hung soht and sometimes to the left, onto his chest
Tremoulin was very clever, however, and had a , and had an instinctive intuition for all literary studies, and gained nearly all the prizes in our class
We were fully convinced at school, that he would turn out a celebrated man, a poet, no doubt, for he wrote verses, and was full of ingeniously sentimental ideas His father, who kept a chemist's shop near the _Pantheon_, was not supposed to be very well off, and I had lost sight of hiree, and now I naturally asked hi there
”I am a planter,” he replied
”Bah! You really plant?”
”And I have my harvest”
”What is it?”
”Grapes, fro a success?”