Aidez moi svp je comprend rien

The Lotus Eater by Somerset Maugham. The story takes place on the island of Capri and is about
a man called Thomas Wilson who has ‘boldly taken the course of life into his own hands’. At the
beginning, we don’t know in what way he has done this. The writer describes his first impressions
of Wilson.
Though his teeth were not very good his smile was attractive. It was gentle and kindly. He
was dressed in a blue cotton shirt and a pair of grey trousers, much creased and none too
clean, of a thin canvas, and on his feet he wore a pair of very old espadrilles. The get-up was
picturesque, and very suitable to the place and the weather, but it did not go at all with his
face. It was a lined, long face, deeply sunburned, thin-lipped, with small grey eyes rather
close together and tight, neat features. The grey hair was carefully brushed. It was not a plain
face, indeed in his youth, Wilson might have been good-looking. He wore the blue shirt, open
at the neck, and the grey canvas trousers, not as though they belonged to him, but as though,
shipwrecked in his pyjamas, he had been fitted out with odd garments by compassionate
strangers. Notwithstanding this careless attire he looked like the manager of a branch office
in an insurance company, who should by rights be wearing a black coat with pepper-and-salt
trousers, a white collar and an unobjectionable tie. […]
We climbed the mountain, admired the spacious view and got back to the inn as night was
falling, hot, hungry and thirsty. We had ordered our dinner beforehand. The food was good,
for Antonio was an excellent cook, and the wine came from his own vineyard. It was so light
that you felt you could drink it like water and we finished the first bottle with our macaroni.
By the time we had finished the second we felt that there was nothing much wrong with life.
We sat in a little garden under a great vine laden with grapes. The air was exquisitely soft.
The night was still and we were alone. The maid brought us Bel Paese cheese and a plate of
figs. I ordered coffee and strega, which is the best liqueur they make in Italy. Wilson would
not have a cigar, but lit his pipe. ‘We’ve got plenty of time before we need start,’ he said, ‘the
moon won’t be over the hill for another hour.’
‘Moon or no moon,’ I said briskly, ‘of course we’ve got plenty of time. That’s one of the delights
of Capri, that there’s never any hurry.’
‘Leisure,’ he said. ‘If people only knew! It’s the most priceless thing a man can have and
they’re such fools they don’t even know it’s something to aim at. Work? They work for work’s
sake. They haven’t got the brains to realise that the only object of work is to obtain leisure.’
Wine has the effect on some people of making them indulge in general reflections. These
remarks were true, but no one could have claimed that they were original. I did not say
anything, but struck a match to light my cigar.
‘It was full moon the first time I came to Capri,’ he went on reflectively. ‘It might be the same
moon as tonight.’
‘It was, you know,’ I smiled.
He grinned. The only light in the garden was what came from an oil lamp that hung over our
heads. It had been scanty to eat by, but it was good now for confidences.
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