The Abbe kept us to dinner, made us taste of his oldest wines, and a
special liqueur of his own distilling; told us how he had built the
monastery with no money, and when we exclaimed with wonder, reproved us
gently:
"All great things are built with faith, and not with money; why wonder
that this little building stands firmly on that everlasting
foundation?"
When we came out of the monastery it was already night, and the
moonlight was throwing fantastic leafy shadows on the path, as we walked
down through the avenue of forest to the sea shore.
"You remember those words of Vergil, Frank--_per amica silentia
lunae_--they always seem to me indescribably beautiful; the most magic
line about the moon ever written, except Browning's in the poem in which
he mentioned Keats--'him even.' I love that 'amica silentia.' What a
beautiful nature the man had who could feel 'the _friendly_ silences of
the moon.'"
When we got down the hill he declared himself tired.
"Tired after a mile?" I asked.
"Tired to death, worn out," he said, laughing at his own laziness.
"Shall we get a boat and row across the bay?"
"How splendid! of course, let's do it," and we went down to the landing
stage. I had never seen the water so calm; half the bay was veiled by
the mountain, and opaque like unpolished steel; a little further out,
the water was a purple shield, emblazoned with shimmering silver. We
called a fisherman and explained what we wanted. When we got into the
boat, to my astonishment, Oscar began calling the fisher boy by his
name; evidently he knew him quite well. When we landed I went up from
the boat to the hotel, leaving Oscar and the boy together....
A fortnight taught me a good deal about Oscar at this time; he was
intensely indolent: quite content to kill time by the hour talking to
the fisher lads, or he would take a little carriage and drive to Cannes
and amuse himself at some wayside cafe.
He never cared to walk and I walked for miles daily, so that we spent
only one or at most two afternoons a week together, meeting so seldom
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