Six days after these events, Samuel Brohl, having passed through Namur and Liege without stopping at either place, arrived by rail at Aix-la-Chapelle.He went directly to the Hotel Royal, close to the railroad-station; he ordered a hearty dinner to be served him, which he washed down with foaming champagne.He had an excellent appetite; his soul kept holiday; his heart was expanded, inflated with joy, and his brain intoxicated.He had revenged himself; he had meted out justice to that insolent fellow, his rival.Mlle.Moriaz did not belong to Samuel Brohl, but she never would belong to Camille Langis.Near the Franco-Belgian frontier, on the verge of a forest, a man had been shot in the breast; Samuel Brohl had seen him fall; and some one had cried, "He is dead!" It is asserted that Aix-la-Chapelle is a very dull city, that the very dogs suffer so sadly from ennui that they piteously beg passers-by to kick them, with a view to having a little excitement.
Samuel never felt one moment's ennui during the evening that he spent in Charlemagne's city.He had constantly in mind a certain spot in a forest, and a man falling; and he experienced a thrill of delight.
After the champagne, he drank punch, an after that he slept like a dormouse; unfortunately, sleep dissipated his exhilaration, and when he awoke his gaiety had left him.He had the fatal custom of reflecting; his reflections saddened him; he was revenged, but what then? He thought for a long while of Mlle.Moriaz; he gazed with melancholy eye at his two hands, which had allowed her and good fortune to elude their grasp.
He recited in a low voice some German verses, signifying:
"I have resolved to bury my songs and my dreams; bring me a large coffin.Why is this coffin so heavy? Because in it with my dreams Ihave laid away my love and my sorrows."
When he had recited these verses Samuel felt sadder than before, and he cursed the poets."They did me great harm," he said, bitterly.
"Without them I had spent days interwoven with gold and silk.My future was secure: it was they who gave me a distaste for my position.
I believed in them; I was the dupe of their hollow declamation; they taught me thoughtless contempt, and they gave me the sickly ambition to play the silly part of a man of fine sentiments.I despised the mud.Where am I now?"He had formed the project of going to Holland and of embarking thence for America.What would he do in the United States? He did not know yet.He passed in review all the professions that at all suited him;they all required an outlay for first expenses.Thanks to God and to M.Guldenthal, whose loan was in the greatest danger, he was not destitute of all supplies.But a week previous he had held into the flames and burned twenty-five one-thousand-franc bills of the Bank of France.He felt some remorse for the act; he could not help thinking that a revenge that cost twenty-five thousand francs was an article of luxury of which poor devils should deprive themselves.In thinking over this adventure, it seemed to him that it was another than himself who had burned those bills, or at least that he had mechanically executed this /auto-da-fe/ through a sort of thoughtless impulse, like a puppet moved by an invisible string.Suddenly the phantom with whom he had had frequent conversations appeared, and there was a sneer on its lips.Samuel addressed it once more--this was to be the last time;he said:
