He accepted the invitation. He thrust his fatigue cap into his pocket, took off his topcoat, threw it on the back of a chair, which he drew up to the fire, beside mine, and at a gesture from me he sat down.
"Hmmm," I thought. "This is a new proposition."
The other soldiers never sit down even when invited. They prefer to keep on their feet.
Ever since I began to see so much of the army, I have asked myself more than once, "Where are the fils de famille"? They can't all be officers, or all in the heavy artillery, or all in the cavalry. But I had never seen one, to know him, in the infantry. This man was in every way a new experience, even among the noncommissioned officers I had seen. He was more at his ease. He stayed nearly two hours. We talked politics, art, literature, even religion--he was a good Catholic-- just as one talks at a tea-party when one finds a man who is cultivated, and can talk, and he was evidently cultivated, and he talked awfully well.
He examined the library, borrowed a volume of Flaubert, and finally, after he had asked me all sorts of questions--where I came from; how I happened to be here; and even to "explain Mr. Wilson," I responded by asking him what he did in civil life.
He was leaning against the high mantel, saying a wood fire was delicious. He smiled down on me and replied: "Nothing."
"Enfin!" I said to myself. "Here he is--the 'fils de famille' for whom I have been looking." So I smiled back and asked him, in that case, if it were not too indiscreet--what he did to kill time?
"Well," he said, "I have a very pretty, altogether charming wife, and I have three little children. I live part of the time in Paris, and part of the time at Cannes, and I manage to keep busy."
It seemed becoming for me to say "Beg pardon and thank you," and he bowed and smiled an "il n'y a pas de quoi," thanked me for a pleasant afternoon--an "unusual kind of pleasure," he added, "for a soldier in these times," and went away.
It was only when I saw him going that it occurred to me that I ought to have offered him tea--but you know the worth of "esprit d'escalier."
Naturally I was curious about him, so the next time I saw the Canadian I asked him who he was. "Oh," he replied, "he is a nice chap; he is a noble, a vicomte--a millionaire."