Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-12-22
Copyright .1soi.
CHAPTER XIII.


 It was late evening on the last day but one of November, when I rode into Paris through the Orleans gate. The wind was in the northeast, and great cloud of vapor hung in the eye of an angry sunset. The air seemed to be full of wood smoke, the kennels reeked, my gorge rose at the city's smell; and with all my heart I en- vied the man who had gone out of it by the same gate nearly two months before, with his face to the south and the prospect of riding day after day across heath and moor and pasture. At least he had had some weeks of life before him, and freedom, and the open air, and hope and uncertainty, while came back under doom; and in the pail of smoke that hung over the huddle of innumerable roofs, saw 6 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 expe- rience has clothed him, does not run counter to all the cynical 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 honor was; and what good 1t would do me when I lay rotting and forgotten; if I was not 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 mademoi- selIe's looks and words. I dared not be false to her again; could not, af- ter speaking so loftily, fall so low. And therefore-though not without many a secret struggle and quaking- I came, on this 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.
 The struggle had sapped my last strength, however; and with the first whiff of the gutters, the first rush of barefooted gamins under my horses hoofs, the first babel of street cries, the first breath, in 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 sur prise; to be, for an hour or two. the old Berault. That could be no breach of honor; for in any case I could not reach the cardinal before to-mor- TOW. And 1t could do no harm. It could make no change in anything. It would not have been a thing worth struggling about-only had In my inmost heart suspicious that the stout est resolutions might lose their force in that atmosphere: that even such a taIfsman as the memory of a wom- ans looks and words might lose It's virtue there.
 still I think I should have sue cumbed in the end if T had not re- ceived at the corner Of the Luxem- bourg a shock which sobered me effect ually. As I passed the gate coach followed by two outriders swept out of the palace courtyard; it was going at a great pace and refined my jsded horse on one side to give 1t room. As ft vhirled by me one of the leather curtains Tapped back and 1 saw for a second, by the waning light-the near CT wheels were no more than two feet from my boot-a face inside
 A face. and no more. that only for . secondl But it frozs me. IL vas Richelieu's the cardinals: but not as I had been won't to see 1t, keen. cold acute. with intellect and indomitable will h every feature This face was distorted with rage and impstience; with the fever of haste and the fear of death The eyes burned under the rsls brow. the mustsehe bristlsd. the teeth shoEed through the beard. | .could fsncy the man crying Faster, Faster and EnawirE his nails ia the fnpsfIencs Of pzssion. and I shrank nsck as fl had been struck The nszt nrnszt tks ssllrrlzz oatrid<rs 1xp;ssk<< ns. sks ccsch wss A hurtrsa