'The honour of my friend is my own/ he declared
many times, 'for I, Ravous, love my dear friend . . ,
ah, how much I love him^... my very dear friend
... I would die for my friend/ He was fast growing
maudlin. And presently, he supporting his friend,
they danced, upsetting two chairs in the process.
But some of the fishers — although less aggressive
than the men who sailed the seas in the tartanes —
some of the fishers were also less forgiving, and from
that night on they transferred their custom to the
cafe further along the port, the cafe that belonged to
Mere Melanie's rival.
§2
It was only natural that Anatole Kahn should
desire to become acquainted with Beauvais; had he
not recognized the man's greatness and in consequence
bought that picture of the harbour for next to nothing
when its painter was starving? Yes, assuredly, for
Anatole Kahn possessed the Jew's fine appreciation
of art despite those iniquitous plate-glass windows —
he sold in order to grow rich and buy, what he sold
being very different indeed from what, should he
prosper, he would care to purchase. Then again,
this Beauvais, this now wealthy fellow with his genius,
his sudden fame, his admirers, was a valuable asset
to the town of Saint Loup and thus to Anatole Kahn's
ambitions; nay more, to his dreams, for, strange
though it may seem, there were moments when Kahn
became a dreamer. And if he dreamed cheaply and
hideously, if he dreamed of a town outraged and dis-
figured, if his dreams like his shop were directly
opposed to the spirit that clung to a small oil painting
which could now be sold for a large sum of money —
enough money to acquire*'quite a nice bit of land —
it must not be forgotten that the mind of man is a
mass of distressingly strange contradictions.
258