Page:Tales of Today.djvu/57

Rh the breakfast, but since they have been at the trouble of taking down the foils, the masks and the gloves, they decide that they will not stop at a single bout. They fence for an hour. When they quit they are blown and as weak as two cats.

"We must heat some water so that I can shave."

"Yes, and you have let the fire go out."

"It is easily lighted again. But we have no water."

"What! is the cistern empty already?"

"Yes; I forgot to close the faucet last night."

"The kitchen must be afloat?"

"It is but too true. I am glad that I noticed it before going downstairs."

They breakfast; they put some water on the fire. While it is warming Eugène resumes work on his picture, Arthur takes his pipe and sprawls supine upon the divan.

"Just see, Eugène," says he, "the time that I have wasted to-day; I ought to be far on my way by this. This dawdling is decidedly a bad business; no one would believe the injury that the habit has caused me. Well did the philosopher say: 'Do that which you would wish to have done rather than that which you wish to do.

"That is all the more true in your case," said Eugène, taking a pipe and seating himself beside his chum, "that what you would wish to do, of all things in the world, would be to do nothing."

"It is true that I look with scorn upon that uneasy restlessness which makes certain persons exert themselves merely for the sake of exertion; do something that is better than repose, or else keep yourself quiet."