Once, at a village
called Lausanne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a
drake who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing
and disappear. The wild swan in question was now an
apothecary in Brazil. He had flown by way of Bordeaux, and
first landed in America, bare-headed and bare-footed, and
with a single halfpenny in his pocket. And now he was an
apothecary! Such a wonderful thing is an adventurous life!
I thought he might as well have stayed at home; but you
never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what
he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a
third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned
in public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an
apothecary in Brazil. As for his old father, he could
conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour. 'I had always
bread for him,' he said; 'he ran away to annoy me. He
loved to annoy me. He had no gratitude.' But at heart he
was swelling with pride over his travelled offspring, and
he produced a letter out of his pocket, where, as he said,
it was rotting, a mere lump of paper rags, and waved it
gloriously in the air. 'This comes from America,' he
cried, 'six thousand leagues away!' And the wine-shop
audience looked upon it with a certain thrill.
*
The fame of other lands had reached them; the name of the
eternal city rang in their ears; they were not colonists,
but pilgrims; they travelled towards wine and gold and
sunshine, but their hearts were set on something higher.
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