The name of the engine that drew us was
Mozart, and Ernest liked this too.
We reached Paris by six, and had just time to get across the town and
take a morning express train to Marseilles, but before noon my young
friend was tired out and had resigned himself to a series of sleeps which
were seldom intermitted for more than an hour or so together. He fought
against this for a time, but in the end consoled himself by saying it was
so nice to have so much pleasure that he could afford to throw a lot of
it away. Having found a theory on which to justify himself, he slept in
peace.
At Marseilles we rested, and there the excitement of the change proved,
as I had half feared it would, too much for my godson's still enfeebled
state. For a few days he was really ill, but after this he righted. For
my own part I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life,
provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is
better. I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much
I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and
with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the
far-off kitchen as the scullion rinsed them and put them by; to watch the
soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went
behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in
the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horses' collars and
the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not
only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-
eater.
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