XXXVIII
On leaving Henri Mauperin's, M. de Villacourt had suddenly recollected that he had no friends, no one at all whom he could ask to serve as seconds. This had not occurred to him before. He remembered two or three names which had been mixed up in his father's family history, and he went along the streets trying to find the houses where he had been taken when he had come to Paris in his boyhood. He rang at several doors, but either the people were no longer living there or they were not at home to him.
At night he returned to his lodging-house. He had never before felt so absolutely alone in the world. When he was taking the key of his bed-room, the landlady asked him if he would not have a glass of beer and, opening a door in a passage, showed him into a café which took up the ground-floor of the house.
Some swords were hanging from the hat-pegs, with cocked hats over them. At the far end, through the tobacco smoke, he could see men dressed in military uniform moving about round a billiard-table. A sickly looking boy with a white apron on was running to and fro, scared and bewildered, giving the Army Monitor and the other papers a bath, each time that he put a glass or cup on the table.
Near the counter, a drum-major was playing at backgammon with the landlord of the café in his shirt-sleeves. On every side voices could be heard calling out and answering each other, with the rolling accent peculiar to soldiers.
"To-morrow I'm on duty at the theatre."
"I take my week."
"Gaberiau is beadle at Saint-Sulpice."
"He was proposed and was to be examined."
"Who's on service at the Bourdon ball?"