"He's a good fellow, our Augustin."
"Yes, a good fellow," said Varvilliers.
"A very good fellow," muttered Struboff, who was more than a little gone in liquor.
"A good fellow," said Coralie. Then she stepped up to me, put her hands on my shoulders, and kissed me on both cheeks. "A good fellow, our little Augustin," said she.
There was nothing much in this; casual phrases of goodwill, spoken at a moment of conviviality, the outcome of genuine but perhaps not very deep feeling, except for that trifle of the kisses almost an ordinary accompaniment or conclusion of an evening's entertainment. I was a good fellow; the light praise had been lightly won. Yet even now as I write, looking back over the years, I can not, when I accuse myself of mawkishness, be altogether convinced by the self-denunciation. For what it was worth, the thing came home to me; for a moment it overleaped the barriers that were round me, the differences that made a hedge between me and them; for a moment they had forgotten that I was not merely their good comrade. I would not have people forget often what I am; but now and then it is pleasant to be no more than what I myself am. And the two there, Wetter and Varvilliers, were the nearest to friends that I have known. One went back to his country, the other the deuce knew where. I should be alone.
Alone I made my way back from Wetter's house, alone and on foot. I had a fancy to walk thus through the decorated streets; alone to pause an instant before the Countess' door, recollecting many things; alone to tell myself that the stocking must be kept over the graze, and that the asking of sympathy was the betrayal of my soul's confidence to me; alone to be weak, alone to be strong; alone to determine to do my work with my own life, alone to hope that I must not render too wretched the life of another. I had good from that walk of mine. For you see, when a man is alone, above all, I think, when he is alone in the truce of night, one day's fight done and the new morning's battle not yet joined, he can pause and stand and think. He can be still; then his worst and his best steal out, like mice from their holes (the cat of convention is asleep), and play their gambols and antics before his eyes: he knows them and himself, and reaches forth to know the world and his work in it, his life and the end of it, the difference, if any, that he has made by spending so much pains on living.
It was four o'clock when a sleepy night-porter let me in. My servants had orders never to wait beyond two, and in my rooms all was dark and quiet. But when I lit a candle from the little lamp by the door, I saw somebody lying on the sofa in my dressing-room, a woman's figure stretched in the luxury of quiet sleep. Victoria this must be and none else. I was glad to see her there and to catch her drowsy smile as her eyes opened under the glare of my candle.
"What in the world are you doing here, my dear?" said I, setting down the candle and putting my hands in my pockets.
She sat up, whisking her skirts round with one hand and rubbing her eyes with the other.
"I came to tell you about Krak—Krak's come. But you weren't here. So I lay down, and I suppose I went to sleep."