Moreover he was freely walking about in it.
He did this last, for an hour, to his heart's content, making
for the shady woody horizon and boring so deep into his impression
and his idleness that he might fairly have got through them again
and reached the maroon-coloured wall. It was a wonder, no doubt,
that the taste of idleness for him shouldn't need more time to
sweeten; but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had
been sweetening in truth ever since the retreat of the Pococks.
He walked and walked as if to show himself how little he had now to do;
he had nothing to do but turn off to some hillside where he might
stretch himself and hear the poplars rustle, and whence--in the
course of an afternoon so spent, an afternoon richly suffused too
with the sense of a book in his pocket--he should sufficiently
command the scene to be able to pick out just the right little
rustic inn for an experiment in respect to dinner. There was a
train back to Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself partaking, at the
close of the day, with the enhancements of a coarse white cloth and
a sanded door, of something fried and felicitous, washed down with
authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked, either stroll
back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the local
carriole and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally wouldn't
fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the genius
of response--who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him what
the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the whole
episode would incidentally do, of Maupassant.
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