'"Certainly," I answered. "And I have every intention of remaining one."
'"In that case I am afraid I must withdraw my offer.
For this position it is essential that you should be married."
'It is too long a story to tell you, but the gist of it was that owing to the scandal my predecessor, a bachelor, had caused by having native girls to live in the Residency and the consequent complaints of the white people, planters and the wives of functionaries, it had been decided that the next Governor must be a model of respectability.
I expostulated.
I argued.
I recapitulated my services to the country and the services my cousin could render at the next elections.
Nothing would serve.
The minister was adamant.
'"But what can I do?" I cried with dismay.
'"You can marry," said the minister.
'"Mais voyons, monsieur le ministre, I do not know any women.
I am not a lady's man and I am forty-nine.
How do you expect me to find a wife?"
'"Nothing is more simple.
Put an advertisement in the paper."
'I was confounded. I did not know what to say.
'"Well, think it over," said the minister. "If you can find a wife in a month you can go, but no wife no job.
That is my last word." He smiled a little, to him the situation was not without humour. "And if you think of advertising I recommend the Figaro."
'I walked away from the ministry with death in my heart.
I knew the place to which they desired to appoint me and I knew it would suit me very well to live there; the climate was tolerable and the Residency was spacious and comfortable.
The notion of being a Governor was far from displeasing me and, having nothing much but my pension as a naval officer, the salary was not to be despised.
Suddenly I made up my mind.
I walked to the offices of the Figaro, composed an advertisement, and handed it in for insertion.
But I can tell you, when I walked up the Champs Elysees afterwards my heart was beating much more furiously than it had ever done when my ship was stripped for action.'
The Governor leaned forward and put his hand impressively on my knee.
'Mon cher monsieur, you will never believe it, but I had four thousand three hundred and seventy-two replies.
It was an avalanche.
I had expected half-a-dozen; I had to take a cab to take the letters to my hotel.
My room was swamped with them.
There were four thousand three hundred and seventy-two women who were willing to share my solitude and be a Governor's lady.
It was staggering.
They were of all ages from seventeen to seventy.
There were maidens of irreproachable ancestry and the highest culture, there were unmarried ladies who had made a little slip at one period of their career and now desired to regularize their situation; there were widows whose husbands had died in the most harrowing circumstances; and there were widows whose children would be a solace to my old age.
They were blonde and dark, tall and short, fat and thin; some could speak five languages and others could play the piano.
Some offered me love and some craved for it; some could only give me solid friendship but mingled with esteem; some had a fortune and others golden prospects.
I was overwhelmed.
I was bewildered.
At last I lost my temper, for I am a passionate man, and I got up and I stamped on all those letters and all those photographs and I cried: I will marry none of them.
It was hopeless, I had less than a month now and I could not see over four thousand aspirants to my hand in that time.
I felt that if I did not see them all, I should be tortured for the rest of my life by the thought that I had missed the one woman the fates had destined to make me happy.
I gave it up as a bad job.
'I went out of my room hideous with all those photographs and littered papers and to drive care away went on to the boulevard and sat down at the Cafe de la Paix.
After a time I saw a friend passing and he nodded to me and smiled.
I tried to smile but my heart was sore.
I realized that I must spend the years that remained to me in a cheap pension at Toulon or Brest as an officier de marine en retraite.
Zut! My friend stopped and coming up to me sat down.
'"What is making you look so glum, mon cher?" he asked me. "You who are the gayest of mortals."
'I was glad to have someone in whom I could confide my troubles and told him the whole story.
He laughed consumedly.