tipity-tap. "Show me your sketches," I asked.
"No," he said scathingly. "No! You are not interested in sketches. Nor should I have been, had you been more generous. You had the luck in Cagnes."
The prospect of a trout dinner at Villeneuve-Loubet took us rapidly down the hill. We soon passed out of the fifteenth century into the twentieth. Modern Cagnes, with its clang of tramway gong, toot of locomotive whistle, honk-honk of motor horn, café terraces crowded with Sunday afternooners, broad sidewalks and electric lights was another world. But it was our world—and Mademoiselle Simone's. That is why coming back into it from the hill of Cagnes was really like a cold shower. For a sense of refreshment followed immediately the shock—and stayed with us.
The hill of Cagnes we could rave about enthusiastically because we did not have to go back there and live there. It will be "a precious memory," as tourists say, precisely because it is a memory. The bird in a cage is less of a prisoner than we city folk of the modern world. For when you open the cage door, the bird will fly away and not come back. We may fly away—but we do come back, and the sooner the better. We love our prisons. We are happy (or think we are, which is the same thing) in our chains. And in the brief time that we are a-wing, do we really love unusual sights and novel things? In exploring, is not our greatest joy and delight in finding something familiar, something we have already known, something we are used to? An appreciative lover and frequenter of grand opera once said to me, "'The Barber of Seville' is my favorite, because I know I am going to have the treat of 'The Suwanee River' or 'Annie Laurie' when I go to it." There is an honest confession, such as we must all make if we are to do our souls good.
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