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 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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