My father smiled sadly. "A certain amount of philosophy is necessary to appreciate solitude," he said. "You are too young to have imbibed it. You would be longing to be back in the world again before long." I shook my head. "Not I. There is nothing in England to compare with this. As for London, the little time I spent there seems like a bad dream. To live in a great city seems to me the greatest mistake a man can make. All the town people I met were artificial in their manners, and in their nature too, I believe. The struggle for existence seems to stunt them, and to check their development." "Yet contact with one another sharpens their wits and energy," my father remarked. "I doubt whether it improves them morally," I answered. "But perhaps I am prejudiced. I hate towns, and I love the country." "Monsieur is very wise." I turned my head, and saw Monsieur José's tall figure standing out against the sky. "Monsieur is very wise," he repeated. "I, too, have lived in towns, but I love best the country, else I should not be here. Monsieur is young to have attained to so much wisdom." I laughed. "Isn't it a matter of taste rather than a matter of wisdom?" I remarked. He shrugged his shoulders, and leaned forward on the long gun which he was carrying. "With monsieur's permission," he said, "I will tell him a short story. It is my own." "Delighted," I murmured, lighting a fresh cigarette, and my father gravely bowed his head. "I was born and brought up in the country," Monsieur José commenced, "in a small village, about fifty miles south of Paris. When I was sixteen years old my father and mother both died, and I was left alone in the world, in possession of a small farm. I had to work hard, but I loved the place, and I was able to make a good living. I was happy enough, too, until Marie Marteuil came to live in our village, and I fell in love with her. I trust monsieur will never know what it is to be in love with a heartless coquette! It was my lot, and a miserable lot it was! One day she would single me out from all the rest and talk to me only, and at another she would scarcely speak to me at all. It was Paris which had done it. Before she went up there to stay with an aunt for a while, she was as quiet, and simple, and sweet as ever a maiden could be, but when she returned she was, as I say, a confirmed coquette. I bore patiently with all her vagaries, and put up with all her saucy speeches, for more than a year. Then, when I asked her to marry me, she laughed in my face. What, marry a little country farmer! Not she. She would marry no one, she said, who did not live in Paris, or who could not take her there. If I could do that she would have me.