"Madame, may I have the privilege of showing you the moon of Touraine?"
She laid down her knitting. "Bartholomew, will you come out?"
He looked at her over his glasses and shook his head.
"What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen."
So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.
"Wouldn't you like," said he, "to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?"
Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful "Yes."
"I can tell you of many odd things," said Aristide. "I can tell you how flowers sing and what colour there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun. _Chère madame_," he went on, after a pause, touching her little plump hand, "you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn't that so?"
A tear fell. Our rascal saw the glistening drop with peculiar satisfaction. Poor Mrs. Ducksmith! It was a child's game. _Enfin_, what woman could resist him? He had, however, one transitory qualm of conscience, for, with all his vagaries, Aristide was a kindly and honest man. Was it right to disturb those placid depths? Was it right to fill this woman with romantic aspirations that could never be gratified? He himself had not the slightest intention of playing Lothario and of wrecking the peace of the Ducksmith household. The realization of the saint-like purity of his aims reassured him. When he wanted to make love to a woman, _pour tout de bon_, it would not be to Mrs. Ducksmith.
"Bah!" said he to himself. "I am doing a noble and disinterested act. I am restoring sight to the blind. I am giving life to one in a state of suspended animation. _Tron de l'Air!_ I am playing the part of a soul-reviver! And, _parbleu!_ it isn't Jean or Jacques that can do that. It takes an Aristide Pujol!"
So, having persuaded himself, in his Southern way, that he was executing an almost divine mission, he continued, with a zest now sharpened by an approving conscience, to revive Mrs. Ducksmith's soul.