![]() I certainly had seen that head somewhere. “Whom does one see at Tortoni's now? “Always the same crowd, except those who died.” I looked at him attentively, haunted by a vague recollection. He asked me questions that showed he knew all about these things, mentioned names, all the familiar names in vaudeville known on the sidewalks. But no country satisfies one when they are far from the one they love.” “You regret France?” “I regret Paris.” “Why do you not go back?” “Oh, I will return there.” And gradually we began to talk of French society, of the boulevards, and things Parisian. He smiled, as he replied carelessly: “Yes, this country is beautiful. I began to talk about this rich, distant, unknown land. Then he left me saying: “We will dine as soon as you are ready to come downstairs.” We took dinner, sitting opposite each other, on a terrace facing the sea. He held out his hand and said, smiling: “Come in, monsieur, consider yourself at home.” He led me into a room, and put a man servant at my disposal with the perfect ease and familiar graciousness of a man-of-the-world. Having greeted him, I asked if he would give me shelter for the night. As I approached, a man wearing a long beard appeared in the doorway. It was a large square house, quite plain, and overlooked the sea. It was situated as described, at the end of a promontory in the midst of a grove of orange trees. The sun was setting as I reached his house. Rising at daybreak, he would remain in the fields till evening, superintending everything without ceasing, tormented by one fixed idea, the insatiable desire for money, which nothing can quiet, nothing satisfy. Then as he went on from month to month, year to year, enlarging his boundaries, cultivating incessantly the strong virgin soil, he accumulated a fortune by his indefatigable labor. He had worked, this man, with passionate energy, with fury. He had come there one morning ten years before, and had bought land which he planted with vines and sowed with grain. I had been told, that evening, that I should meet with hospitality at the house of a Frenchman who lived in an orange grove at the end of a promontory. It was very warm, a soft warmth permeated with the odor of the rich, damp, fertile soil. Flowers were growing quite close to the waves, those light, gentle, lulling waves. We had been walking since the morning along the coast, with the blue sea bathed in sunlight on one side of us, and the shore covered with crops on the other. It was a long, long way from here on a fertile and burning shore. AS MOSCAS DE DEUS: I can tell you neither the name of the country, nor the name of the man.
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