Free The Catalans: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Page B

a typewriter entered into it. That was what I was asking you at the beginning, now I come to think of it, but we strayed off on to all manner of subjects.”
    “Yes, she goes there every day. That has not changed at all, and she still types just as hard as ever, which is very strange. Do you not find it very strange, Alain?”
    “It sounds as though Xavier were either not very ardent or else a curiously businesslike lover. I should like to see her.”
    “You will have to wait until the evening, then, when she goes: you will see nothing from here. Nothing,” she added, with a note of vexation that made her nephew smile.
    “Is she handsome?”
    “You will have to judge that for yourself. Some people affect not to think so. I used to think that she was quite the prettiest girl I had ever seen in my life; but I think you have to feel kindly toward people to find them beautiful—at all events, since this has started I have thought her looks have gone down and down. But you will see her soon, no doubt. You go to Xavier’s on Tuesday, do you not?”
    “Yes, on Tuesday. I am not sure that I altogether look forward to it. But now,” he said, looking at the clock among the bronze mermaids, “I have to go and see Aunt Marinette and Uncle Joseph.”
    “My poor Alain, you have a dull evening ahead of you. Marinette will tell you all that I have just told you, whether you like it or not; and she will take much longer over it, with her profound reflections. However, you will conduct yourself very well, I am sure, and it will not last much longer than three hours, because they always go to bed at ten now. You will give them my love, won’t you?”
    “I will not forget.”

    THE HEAT OUTSIDE struck him like a soft wave; the heat of the air was all round him, and as he moved out of the shade the direct sun clapped him on the back. It warmed his thin body through to the bones, and with a sensuous pleasure in the heat he walked down the middle of the road, where the sun struck hottest. After so many tropical years his blood, or the mixture of lime juice and quinine that passed for blood, was as thin as a lizard’s, and here at Saint-Féliu even in the summer a little coldness lingered in his body, to be dispelled only by the straight blast of the sun itself. The sun agreed with him: he liked it—not, perhaps, the immoderate degree of sun that weighed on Prabang before the rains, but sun within reason. It certainly agreed with him, for whereas many of his colleagues had run mad, or had returned home early as confirmed invalids, he had lasted years and years with no more than malaria: others again had been equally lucky in escaping disease, but many of them were swollen with drink, horribly obese through no fault of their own, for the drinking was obligatory; but Alain had that kind of body that goes thin and yellow in the heat, and now, with his frail, attenuated hands, and his lean, hollow-cheeked face he had an ascetic, other-worldly air—a very well-bred monk by Zurbarán. This air belied him; for although he was by nature and inclination somewhat reserved, or withdrawn, he was by no means an ascetic; in his quiet and reflective manner he had a strong tendency toward jollity; and as he was the first to admit, in his republican way, he was not at all well bred. And he was not well bred, by arms or by the Almanach de Gotha, for all his people on both sides were peasant stock; but he looked very well, a small, straight, well-compounded figure, with a round, brown head and the short, beak-like nose of the mountain Catalans. It was a face that would wrinkle with distinction in his age.
    He went down to the Place; it was almost the first time since he had arrived that he had been alone, and even at the cost of being late at his Aunt Marinette’s house, he intended to make a private homecoming pilgrimage. From the Place he walked up the narrow arcades, a street where the houses stood almost touching overhead, and where the shops