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The Highest Bidder

"The act of love is of no importance, since it can be performed indefinitely."

All eyes were turned upon the perpetrator of this absurdiy.

The conversation of André Marcueil’s guests at the Château de Lurance that evening had come round to the subject of love as being, by common consent, the most appropriate, seeing that there were ladies present, and as being also the subject most likely, even in that September of 1920, to avoid tedious discussion about the Dreyfus Afair.

Among those present were the celebrated American chemist William Elson, a widower, with his daughter Ellen; the millionaire engineer, electrical expert, and manufacturer of automobiles and aircrat, Arthur Gough, with his wife; General Sider; Senator de Saint-Jurieu with his baroness, Pusice-Euprépie de Saint-Jurieu; Cardinal Romuald; the actress Henriexe Cyne, and Doctor Bathybius.

These diverse and notable 0gures could easily have reinvigorated the commonplace, pushing it efortlessly toward paradox, merely by each expressing his own original thoughts, but their good manners soon reduced the remarks of these celebrated wits to the polished insignifi-cance of sociey conversation.

And so this unexpected statement had much the same effect as that, which even to this day has been insufficiently analyzed, of a stone cast into a rog pond; momentary turmoil, followed by universal interest.

It might very likely have produced a diferent result: smiles, but by mischance it had been uxered by the host.

André Marcueil’s face, like his aphorism, let a sort of gap in the assembly; not, however, by its singulariy, but — if it is possible to couple the two words — by its characteristic insigni0cance. It was as pale as his starched shirt ronts, and would almost have merged into the woodwork, pale in the electric light, had it not been for the inky ringe of his collar-fashion beard, and for his longish hair which he had curled, probably to conceal incipient baldness. His eyes were most likely black, but were certainly weak, for he concealed them behind the tinted lenses of gold-rimmed pince-nez. Marcueil was thiry years old, and of medium height, though by adopting a pronounced stoop he seemed to take pleasure in making himself seem even shorter than he was. His wrists were thin, and so hairy as to resemble exactly his rail, black-silk-encased ankles. His wrists and ankles alike gave rise to the supposition that he must be remarkably weak in his entire person, to judge at least by what one could see of it. He spoke slowly and in a deep voice, as though anxious to spare his breath. Had he owned a hunting permit his description would no doubt have read: chin: round; face: oval; nose: average; mouth: average; height: average… In fact Marcueil embodied so absolutely the average man that his very ordinariness became extraordinary.