LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Oh!” said Thibault, “I am not so particular to a letter as all that. To the health of my Lord Raoul!”

      As François put down his glass on the table, he uttered an exclamation; he had that moment caught sight of Champagne.

      They threw open the window and called to this third comer, and Champagne, with all the ready intuition of the well-bred servant, understood at once, and went upstairs. He was dressed, like François, in a long grey coat, and had brought a letter with him.

      “Well,” asked François, as he caught sight of the letter in his hand, “and is there to be a meeting to-night?”

      “Yes,” answered Champagne, with evident delight.

      “That’s all right,” said François cheerfully.

      Thibault was surprised at these expressions of apparent sympathy on the part of the servants with their master’s happiness.

      “Is it your master’s good luck that you are so pleased about?” he asked of François.

      “Oh, dear me no!” replied the latter, “but when my master is engaged, I am at liberty!”

      “And do you make use of your liberty?”

      “One may be a valet, and yet have one’s own share of good luck, and also know how to spend the time more or less profitably,” answered François, bridling as he spoke.

      “And you, Champagne?”

      “Oh, I,” replied the last comer, holding his wine up to the light, “yes, I too hope to make good use of it.”

      “Well, then, here’s to all your love affairs! since everybody seems to have one or more on hand,” said Thibault.

      “The same to yours!” replied the two other men in chorus.

      “As to myself,” said the shoe-maker, a look of hatred to his fellow creatures passing over his face, “I am the only person who loves nobody, and whom nobody loves.”

      His companion looked at him with a certain surprised curiosity.

      “Ah! ah!” said François, “is the report that is whispered abroad about you in the country-side a true tale then?”

      “Report about me?”

      “Yes, about you,” put in Champagne.

      “Oh, then they say the same thing about me at Mont-Gobert as they do at Vauparfond?”

      Champagne nodded his head.

      “Well, and what is it they do say?”

      “That you are a were-wolf,” said François.

      Thibault laughed aloud. “Tell me, now, have I a tail?” he said, “have I a wolf’s claws, have I a wolf’s snout?”

      “We only repeat what other people say,” rejoined Champagne, “we do not say that it is so.”

      “Well, anyhow, you must acknowledge,” said Thibault, “that were-wolves have excellent wine.”

      “By my faith, yes!” exclaimed both the valets.

      “To the health of the devil who provides it, gentlemen.”

      The two men who were holding their glasses in their hand, put both glasses down on the table.

      “What is that for?” asked Thibault.

      “You must find someone else to drink that health with you,” said François, “I won’t, that’s flat!”

      “Nor I,” added Champagne.

      “Well and good then! I will drink all three glasses myself,” and he immediately proceeded to do so.

      “Friend Thibault,” said the Baron’s valet, “it is time we separated.”

      “So soon?” said Thibault. “My master is awaiting me, and no doubt with some impatience ... the letter, Champagne?”

      “Here it is.”

      “Let us take farewell then of your friend Thibault, and be off to our business and our pleasures, and leave him to his pleasures and business.” And so saying, François winked at his friend, who responded with a similar sign of understanding between them.

      “We must not separate,” said Thibault, “without drinking a stirrup-cup together.”

      “But not in those glasses,” said François, pointing to the three from which Thibault had drunk to the enemy of mankind.

      “You are very particular, gentlemen; better call the sacristan and have them washed in holy water.”

      “Not quite that, but rather than refuse the polite invitation of a friend, we will call for the waiter, and have fresh glasses brought.”

      “These three, then,” said Thibault, who was beginning to feel the effects of the wine he had drunk, “are fit for nothing more than to be thrown out of window? To the devil with you!” he exclaimed as he took up one of them and sent it flying. As the glass went through the air it left a track of light behind it, which blazed and went out like a flash of lightning. Thibault took up the two remaining glasses and threw them in turn, and each time the same thing happened, but the third flash was followed by a loud peal of thunder.

      Thibault shut the window, and was thinking, as he turned to his seat again, how he should explain this strange occurrence to his companions; but his two companions had disappeared.

      “Cowards!” he muttered. Then he looked for a glass, but found none left.

      “Hum! that’s awkward,” he said. “I must drink out of the bottle, that’s all!”

      And suiting the action to the word, Thibault finished up his dinner by draining the bottle, which did not help to steady his brain, already somewhat shaky.

      At nine o’clock, Thibault called the innkeeper, paid his account, and departed.

      He was in an angry disposition of enmity against all the world; the thoughts from which he had hoped to escape possessed him more and more. Agnelette was being taken farther and farther from him as the time went by; everyone, wife or mistress, had someone to love them. This day which had been one of hatred and despair to him, had been one full of the promise of joy and happiness for everybody else; the lord of Vauparfond, the two wretched valets, François and Champagne, each of them had a bright star of hope to follow; while he, he alone, went stumbling along in the darkness. Decidedly there was a curse upon him. “But,” he went on thinking to himself, “if so, the pleasures of the damned belong to me, and I have a right to claim them.”

      As these thoughts went surging through his brain, as he walked along cursing aloud, shaking his fist at the sky, he was on the way to his hut and had nearly reached it, when he heard a horse coming up behind him at a gallop.

      “Ah!” said Thibault, “here comes the Lord of Vauparfond, hastening to the meeting with his love. I should laugh, my fine Sir Raoul, if my Lord of Mont-Gobert managed just to catch you! You would not get off quite so easily as if it were Maître Magloire; there would be swords out, and blows given and received!”

      Thus engaged in thinking what would happen if the Comte de Mont-Gobert were to surprise his rival, Thibault, who was walking in the road, evidently did not get out of the way quickly enough, for the horseman, seeing a peasant of some kind barring his passage, brought his whip down upon him in a violent blow, calling out at the same time: “Get out of the way, you beggar, if you don’t wish to be trampled under the horse’s feet!”

      Thibault, still half drunk, was conscious of a crowd of mingled sensations, of the lashing of the whip, the collision with the horse, and the rolling through cold water and mud, while the horseman passed on.

      He rose to his knees, furious with anger, and shaking his fist at the retreating figure:

      “Would

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