“Why?” I indignantly inquired. “Will your love of paradox tempt you to defend the cursed, corrupted race?”
“I think,” replied Breloque, leaning on the table with an air of arrogance most ludicrous to behold, “that bad reputations, as well as { 127} good ones, are sometimes usurped, and that the species in question, or at least one example with whom I became acquainted, is the victim of an error of this sort.”
“So then,” I said, “you are speaking from personal experience?”
“Quite so, sir; and were it not that I fear wasting your precious moments, I would try and convince you of your error.”
“I am willing to listen, but what will the result be?”
“That is satisfactory. Sit down in this arm-chair, and should I go to sleep, do not stop, I pray you, as that would awake me.”
After taking a pinch of snuff from my box, Breloque, nothing loath, commenced thus:—
“You are fully aware, sir, that notwithstanding the affection which attaches me to your person, I have never submitted to the slavery that would have been distasteful to both. I have my leisure hours, when I think of many things; just as you have yours, when you think of nothing. Oh, I have many ways of passing my time. Have you ever been out fishing with the line?”
“Yes,” I replied; “that is to say, I often used to go in a costume expressly suited to fishing, and sit from sunrise to sunset on the borders of a stream. I had a superb rod mounted with silver, like an Oriental weapon, but without its danger. Alas! I have passed { 128} many sweet hours, and made many bad verses, but I never caught a single fish.”
“Angling, sir, appeals to the imagination in your case, and has nothing to do with the happiness of the true angler. Few persons are so framed as to appreciate the charms of which you speak. Your mind, filled with dreamy, vague hope, follows the soft motion of the transparent water, marks and profits by the events of the insect world that clouds its clear face. To the fisher of poetic mind the capture of one of the silver dwellers in the stream can only bring regret, remorse.”
“Yet,” he continued, “few persons regard the sport in this light.”
Breloque, unaccustomed to find one entering so fully into his views, felt flattered.