"_Et quelque fois on va au marché et on achette des enfants_," he added fantastically, "_et alors, que voulez-vous?_" After that the deluge, he seemed to imply.
"_Je gagne 40 francs_," he said, "_avec le logement_."
"_Et mon Dieu non: si c'etait par semaine!_" He raised his eyes to heaven as if he had a vision of beatitude. "_Non, par mois._"
That and a few tips given him by his clients was all he had to live upon.
But that did not trouble him, in itself. His fear was of losing his health and not being able to work. But he put away black thoughts, and turned his mind to the good that he possessed. After all, he had his health and his livelihood, so where was the profit of thinking of a possible time when he might lose both? Would that help him? He had suffered when he was young and full of ambition; _mon Dieu_, he had always desired something he did not possess, and if after great efforts he acquired what he wanted, always the desire ceased and there was some new thing that made him restless.
"_A quoi bon se tourmenter toujours de cette façon?_"
And so he came to see that all his happiness, if ever he was to enjoy any, was stored in his own consciousness, and that nothing from without would avail him, though it were riches and honours without end.
"_Néomoins_," he added, with a naïve little gesture, "_néomoins_, if chance _were_ to make him the possessor of a little fortune, he would buy a little house--_toute petite_, with a garden; he would have one servant whom he would treat very well, and he would have a little trap and horse which he would drive himself. And then he would envy no man!"
"_Ah ça ne me fait pas de mal!_" he said with a shrug, "_ç'a m'amuse_." "I am not unhappy in knowing it can never come. _Voilà la différence!_"
Poor Tartarin! And yet in truth was he to be pitied or envied? He must have seemed somewhat strange to his comrades. They would get excited and troubled over all sorts of trivial things, and they would offend one another and flare up into quarrels. Not so Tartarin. He would quietly evade points of difference, laugh off some threatening dispute, make peace between hot-headed combatants. Such things seemed to him needless, foolish. "_A quoi bon?_" as he asked. "_Ça ne vaut pas la peine, mon Dieu!_"