Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ Giles felt Alix's eyes upon them. He did not quite know what he was defending or against whom he was defending it; but it felt to him as if he were upholding England, and all he wanted Alix to gain from England, against all he feared for her in France.
“What we can make use of, what we can see and understand,” said André promptly. “It's because of our sobriety that we French are capable of living a life beautiful in itself; a self-justifying life. We know how to use life; we know how to shape it. ”

“ The people passing, intent on business, or sitting in front of the cafés, at ease in idleness, saw idleness and work as two quite different things, not to be confused; each yielding its own savour, its own satisfaction. The sense of savour, of satisfaction everywhere; of life as its own justification. The very smell, warm, golden, balmy, wafted towards him from the pâtissier's was such as no pastry-cook's shop in England could ever yield; a dank surmise of suet and strong tea would there hang about it and none of the cakes would give one the same confidence of tasting as good as they looked. ”

“ What a triumph over destiny!” was what André was saying—and it was on him that Giles kept his eyes. He felt that he must pull himself well together before looking at Alix.—“I never expect happy things to repeat themselves.”
“No more they do,” thought Giles. But he could play up. “Is it all the same as last year?”
“Exactly the same; but for the absence of Jules. Even your old friend madame Dumont survives and is eagerly awaiting your arrival.”
“Still there, is she?” said Giles. “I'm not surprised. Unhappy things, at all events, repeat themselves.” ”

“ We don't do things because of something else; we do them because we find them in themselves enjoyable.”
“Yes. It's true.” Giles was thinking of the French sunlight; of monsieur de Maubert's philosophy; of the pâtissier's. The difference went down to the very roots of things. “We are discontented and clumsy and romantic, compared to you; it's our very religion to be discontented, with ourselves and what we can see. We are rebels; that's what it comes to. Rebels are the people who refuse the seen for the unseen.” ”

“ Giles told her that he was.
“You find your friends again,” said madame Dumont, and there was a quaking note of hurry in the majesty of her tones. “You will, however, find them changed.—Ah, changes are sad; disastrous. She has had much to bear. It tells; it tells upon her. You find madame Vervier aged? Altered? Sadly altered?”
“I see no alteration at all,” said Giles grimly, his eye turning on madame Collet, who murmured a low word of protest to her mother. But madame Dumont was not to be curbed. She leaned from the chaise and laid her lean hand in its black silk mitt on Giles's arm. ”

“ Just that. You are a people who improvise as you go. To philosophize would have been, I should imagine, against the genius of your race.”
“Oh, we're not all of us, all the time, lurching along on mere instinct. We do, some of us,” said Giles, “stop, now and then, and reflect.”
“But lurching becomes you,” André at this put in. “You lurch, as a rule, in the right direction—for yourselves. Look at your Empire,” he smiled, taking a slice of baba, “all made up of lurches and success.”
“We planned to have India, you will remember,” Alix, at this, suddenly remarked. ”

“ Giles assured her, “because, you see, they are the furthest away from us. The beginning is an idea, and the end is an atom. You can't understand an atom, that is, until you understand an idea. If you'll come to Oxford and let me teach you, I'll land you safely in Bergson after three years.”
“No; I shall read no more philosophy,” said Alix. “I shall not go as far as ideas or atoms in either direction. I shall stay in between. All the nicest things are in between, I believe.”
“Bravo! Bravo!” André smiled round at her, and Giles could not interpret his smile. Alix did not reply. ”

“ You may, in one sense, beat us; but in another we have, I think, the advantage. You take in more, but you don't know what to make of it. To make all that can be made of the time and space at our disposal, that is our wisdom, mon cher Giles, and can there be a better one? ”

“ And, apart from large questions of national destiny, it is, I think, more comfortable to live among a people all of whom reflect, if only a little, and all of whom know where they want to get to. Our horizon is more restricted, but because we see the frame we can fit our picture into it. ”

“ You spoil one world in trying to reach the other.”
“Ah, these are themes too profound for my tea-table,” madame Vervier interposed, while Giles, meeting André's eye, felt, suddenly, something challenging, sword-like, beneath its blue smile. “We will not pass from history to metaphysics, if you please. Are you tired, Giles? Will you rest? ”

“ The very workman, sitting at midday in his café, makes a ritual of his meal of sheep's trotters and sour red wine. The frotteur enjoys the polish he puts on the parquet, and the bonne enjoys her bed-making and dusting. ”