The shore, with its brown rocks, was bathed by the motionless Mediterranean.  The hot summer sun stretched like a fiery cloth over the mountains, over the long expanses of sand, and over the motionless, apparently solid blue sea.  The train went on through the tunnels, along the slopes, above the water, on straight, wall-like viaducts, and a soft, vague, saltish smell, a smell of drying seaweed, mingled at times with the strong, heavy perfume of the flowers.

But Paul neither saw, looked at, nor smelled anything, for our fellow traveller engrossed all his attention.

When we reached Cannes, as he wished to speak to me he signed to me to get out, and as soon as I did so, he took me by the arm.

“Do you know, she is really charming.  Just look at her eyes; and I never saw anything like her hair.”

“Don’t excite yourself,” I replied, “or else address her, if you have any intentions that way.  She does not look unapproachable; I fancy, although she appear to be a little bit grumpy.”

“Why don’t you speak to her?” he said.

“I don’t know what to say, for I am always terribly stupid at first; I can never make advances to a woman in the street.  I follow them, go round and round them, and quite close to them, but never know what to say at first.  I only once tried to enter into conversation with a woman in that way.  As I clearly saw that she was waiting for me to make overtures, and as I felt bound to say something, I stammered out, ’I hope you are quite well, madame?’ She laughed in my face, and I made my escape.”

I promised Paul to do all I could to bring about a conversation, and when we had taken our places again, I politely asked our neighbor: 

“Have you any objection to the smell of tobacco, madame?”

She merely replied, “Non capisco.”

So she was an Italian!  I felt an absurd inclination to laugh.  As Paul did not understand a word of that language, I was obliged to act as his interpreter, so I said in Italian: 

“I asked you, madame, whether you had any objection to tobacco smoke?”

With an angry look she replied, “Che mi fa!”

She had neither turned her head nor looked at me, and I really did not know whether to take this “What do I care” for an authorization, a refusal, a real sign of indifference, or for a mere “Let me alone.”

“Madame,” I replied, “if you mind the smell of tobacco in the least—­”

She again said, “Mica,” in a tone which seemed to mean, “I wish to goodness you would leave me alone!” It was, however, a kind of permission, so I said to Paul: 

“You may smoke.”

He looked at me in that curious sort of way that people have when they try to understand others who are talking in a strange language before them, and asked me: 

“What did you say to her?”

“I asked whether we might smoke, and she said we might do whatever we liked.”