At least he had had some weeks of life before
him, and freedom and the open air, and hope and uncertainty;
while I came back under doom, and in the pall of smoke that hung
over the huddle of innumerable roofs saw a gloomy shadowing of my
own fate.
For make no mistake. A man in middle life does not strip himself
of the worldly habit with which experience has clothed him, does
not run counter to all the hard saws and instances by which he
has governed his course so long, without shiverings and doubts
and horrible misgivings, and struggles of heart. At least a
dozen times between the Loire and Paris I asked myself what
honour was, and what good it could do me when I lay rotting and
forgotten; if I were not a fool following a Jack o' Lanthorn; and
whether, of all the men in the world, the relentless man to whom
I was returning would not be the first to gibe at my folly?
However, shame kept me straight; shame and the memory of
Mademoiselle's looks and words. I dared not be false to her
again; I could not, after speaking so loftily, fall so low, And
therefore--though not without many a secret struggle and quaking
--I came, on the last evening but one of November, to the Orleans
gate, and rode slowly and sadly through the streets by the
Luxembourg on my way to the Pont au Change.
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