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And presently, Miss Brandt, wearying no doubt of perdrix, perdrix, toujours perdrix, that is to say of Charles's sprightly chatter, of which she doubtless got more than enough at home, essayed conversation with the silent one at her other side, and, one may suppose, found it more to her taste, or more of a novelty, than the Pixley outflow.
On the regulation plot of grass stood a basin of Roman cement, containing goldfish and a stream of water the size of that which comes from a syringe, which occasionally made microscopic rainbows at which the guests marvelled. The feeding of this irrigator was the constant preoccupation of Monsieur Perdrix, who would sometimes get up at five o'clock in the morning in order to fill the tank.
"I am not surprised at it," answered Vincent; "but Rousseau is not the less a genius for all that: there is no story to bear out the style, and he himself is right when he says 'ce livre convient a tres peu de lecteurs. One letter would delight every one four volumes of them are a surfeit it is the toujours perdrix.
"We I " began Salvani, stammering. "My dear impresario," interrupted La Luciola, laughing, "let us make short work of it. I will tell you why I came, and, in the meantime, you can collect your thoughts. Well, then, I am growing tired at La Scala; Donizetti, Bellini, and whatever other names your great composers bear, are very good fellows, but, you know, toujours perdrix."
"Both bride-elect and bridegroom-to-be attended High Mass at the Catholic Church on Sunday, when the Rev. Father Wix, in apprising parishioners of the near approach of Lent, caused an irresistible smile to ripple over the faces of his hearers. Toujours perdrix may sate in the long-run, but perpetually to faire maigre is attended with even greater discomfort.
This only goes to show that the principles of morality are by no means settled and that " M. Perdrix, visibly embarrassed, stopped him: "M. Rade, you are sapping the very foundations of society. One must always have principles.
At the door of the lodge the brigadier again addressed me with the same eighteenth-century smile: would I be pleased to walk into his 'apartement'? We went into this 'apartement. Everything in it was exceedingly filthy and poor, so filthy and so poor that the brigadier, noticing, probably, by the expression of my face, the impression it made on me, observed, shrugging his shoulders, and half closing his eyelids: 'Ce n'est pas ... oeil de perdrix. ... What precisely he meant by this remained a mystery to me.... When I addressed him in French, I got no reply from him in that language.
Upon recollection, in my favourite "Sorrows of Werter," the heroine is represented cutting bread and butter for a group of children: I admire this simplicity in Goethe; 'tis one of the secrets by which he touches the heart. Simplicity is delightful by way of variety, but always simplicity is worse than toujours perdrix.
As soon as they had seated themselves, Monsieur Perdrix thanked his "collaborators" in a neat little speech, promising them his protection, the more valuable as his power grew, and he ended with a stirring peroration in which he thanked and glorified a government so liberal and just that it knows how to seek out the worthy from among the humble.
And then the stone lions of Roman days, couched forlornly at street corners, in courtyards and at fountains, in every stage of decrepitude, with broken jaws and noses, missing legs and tails! Venosa is a veritable infirmary for mutilated antiques of this species. Now the lion is doubtless a nobly decorative beast, but toujours perdrix! Why not a few griffons or other ornaments?
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