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The struggle had sapped my last strength, however; and with the first whiff of the gutters, the first rush of barefooted gamins under my horse's hoofs, the first babel of street cries the first breath, in a word, of Paris there came a new temptation; to go for one last night to Zaton's, to see the tables again and the faces of surprise, to be for an hour or two the old Berault.
The fury of the gaming-house and the riot of Zaton's seemed far away. The triumphs of the fencing-room even they grew cheap and tawdry. I thought of existence as one outside it, I balanced this against that, and wondered whether, after all, the red soutane were so much better than the homely jerkin, or the fame of a day than ease and safety.
"On the contrary, I have paid three months' rent in advance and a month's board at Zaton's; I have added two suits to my wardrobe, and I have lost fifty crowns on the dice." "You promise well!" I said. He shrugged his shoulders quite in the fashionable manner. "Always courage!" he said; and he went on, smiling.
So I thought of Zaton's closed to me, of Pombal's insult, of the sneers and slights I had long kept at the sword's point; and, pressing him suddenly in a heat of affected anger, I thrust strongly over his guard, which had grown feeble, and ran him through the chest.
Alas! that too would intrude itself, and more frequently as the evening waned; so that as I marked this or that thing by the road, which I could recall passing on my journey south with thoughts so different, with plans that now seemed so very, very old, I asked myself grimly if this were really I; if this were Gil de Berault, known at Zaton's, PREMIER JOUEUR, or some Don Quichotte from Castille, tilting at windmills and taking barbers' bowls for gold.
On the whole, I thought that he would prefer that things should take this course; and assuming the issue, I began to wonder whether it would be necessary in that event that Madame should know the truth. I had a kind of vision of a reformed Berault, dead to play and purging himself at a distance from Zaton's; winning, perhaps, a name in the Italian war, and finally but, pshaw! I was a fool.
'One two And I went on. But, ah, I was wrathful! That I, Gil de Berault, should be outwitted, and led by the nose like a ringed bull, by this Gascon lout! That I, whom all Paris knew and feared if it did not love the terror of Zaton's, should come to my end in this dismal waste of snow and rock, done to death by some pitiful smuggler or thief! It must not be.
Zaton's eating-house stands scarcely a hundred paces from St Jacques la Boucherie, and half the company went thither with us. The evening was wet, the light in the streets was waning, the streets themselves were dirty and slippery.
Presently he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze, and then for a couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It seemed years since I had seen Zaton's or thrown the dice. The old life, the old employments should I ever go back to them? seemed dim and distant. Would Cocheforet, the forest and the mountain, the grey Chateau and its mistresses, seem one day as dim?
I could think of nothing more, and I stood and stood and watched the man set out the table and spread the cloth. 'For how many, Monsieur? he asked in a scared tone. 'For five, I answered; and I could not help smiling at myself. For what would Zaton's say could it see Berault turned housewife? There was a white glazed cup, an old-fashioned piece of the second Henry's time, standing on a shelf.
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