[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE SOLITARY.
We must now return to the French painter that we have left buried, so to say, at the bottom of a cavern, philosophically making up his mind to this voluntary seclusion, which, however, circumstances rendered indispensable, and vigorously attacking the provisions placed before him.
Obliged to remain alone during a considerable time, and not knowing how to employ himself, the young man prolonged his meal as much as possible; and then—when, despite all his efforts, he felt the natural impossibility of taking another mouthful—he lit a cigar, and began to smoke with the beatific resignation of a Mahometan, or a drinker of hatckich. After this cigar he smoked another, then another, and then another, followed immediately by a fourth; so that midnight came almost without his perceiving it, and he laid himself upon his hammock without being wearied.
However, Emile had too nervous an organisation to content himself long with this kind of life. It was with a sigh of regret that he closed his eyes and slept; for he could not foresee the termination of his imprisonment, and the prospect of remaining several days thus alone frightened him.
How long had he remained plunged in sleep, he could not tell. Suddenly he jumped up, sat up in his hammock, with his forehead pale, and his features contracted, casting around him a look of fright.
In the midst of his sleep—while he was cradled in those sweet dreams that tobacco sometimes procures for those who abuse it when they are not accustomed to smoke it to excess—he suddenly thought he heard cries, and the trampling of horses, mingled with deadened sounds. For some time these sounds were mingled and incorporated with the events of his dream.
But soon these cries and trampling acquired such an intensity—appeared so near the young man—that they suddenly awakened him from his sleep.
At first he took no account of what he heard, believing that it was but a sound existing only in his imagination—the last echo, in fact, of his interrupted dream.