"Would you dare—" began the other, in a menacing voice, adding some words in a lower tone.
"Excuse. I was in the wrong," said Anatole, suddenly humbled.
"You are right to avoid a quarrel," remarked Hyde, when they were seated at table. He had been quietly amused at his companion's easy surrender.
"I could have eaten him raw. But why should I? He is, perhaps, a father of a family—the support of a widowed mother: if I had destroyed him they might have come to want. No; let him go."
"All the same, he does not seem inclined to go. There he is, still lurking about the front of the shop."
"Truly? Where?" asked Anatole, in evident perturbation. "Bah! we will tire him of that. By the time we have finished a second bottle—"
"Or a third, if you will!" cried Hyde, cheerfully.
They had their breakfast—the most savoury dishes; ham and sour crout, tripe after the mode of Caen, rich ripe Roquefort cheese, and had disposed of three bottles of a rather rough but potent red wine, before Anatole would speak on any but the most common-place topics. The Crimea, the dreadful winter, the punishment administered to their common enemy, occupied him exclusively.
But with the fourth bottle he became more communicative.
"You owe a long candle to your saint for your luck to-day in meeting me," he said, with a slight hiccup.