Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French I).djvu/95

94 and with something like the minuteness of an hallucination, my cousin leaving his own house and taking the same road that I had taken. His left leg dragged a little. The fur collar of his overcoat was pulled up; his right hand held his sword-cane,—a straight cane which only needed to be thrown forward with a slight but quick motion to send out a sharp steel blade about five inches long. I heard him whistle the favorite tune of that year, 'I am the major.' He turned the angle of the cathedral and went up the steps of the club. There my vision was blurred. I had never seen a card-room except on the cover of a book—"

"Place des Petits-Arbres on the stall of Père Duchier?" I said.

"Exactly," he replied. "Don't you remember that frightful engraving? It represented a mound of bank-bills and louis lying on a table, and a number of persons struggling in a frantic sort of way for them, and then, in a corner, a young man in the act of putting a pistol to his head. I was unable to put the vision of that engraving out of my mind. It is with children as it is with lovers: whatever is conceived of as possible is instantly accepted as a reality. I turned and re-turned in my bed, a prey to such anxiety that I finally sat up, lighted a candle, and looked at my watch. I had been lying there only one hour. I pondered. 'That must not happen,'