At Arles Rivière posted his letter in a box on the platform of the station, and asked of a porter when the next train would take him back to Nîmes. Standing close by as he asked this question was a lean, wiry, crafty-looking peasant of the Camargue—a hard-bit youth toughened by his work on the soil. The most prominent feature of the face was the nose smashed out of shape. Rivière did not know that it was he himself who had left that life-mark on the young man only a few days before—he had almost forgotten the incident—but the latter recognized Rivière at once and went white with anger under the tanned skin.
Whilst he would have taken a blow from the knife as "all in the game," a smash from a bare fist that made a permanent disfigurement was completely outside his code of sportsmanship. He resented it with the white-hot passion of the Midi.
The meeting was pure chance. Crau, the young Provençal, was on the station to take train back to his home village in the marshes. Now he made a sudden resolution, and going to the booking-office, asked for a ticket for Nîmes. He had relations in that town—small tradespeople—and he would pay a visit to them for a few days.
"Our game is not yet finished, Mr Englishman," he muttered to himself. "No, not yet finished!"
When the train reached Nîmes, Rivière alighted from a first-class compartment, quite unconscious of being followed by the young Provençal from a third-class compartment. Outside the station, in the broad Avenue de la Gare that leads to the heart of the town, Rivière hailed a cab and gave the address, Villa Clémentine.
Crau was near enough to overhear.
"Villa Clémentine," he repeated to himself, and again "Villa Clémentine," to fit it securely in his memory. Then his lips worked with passionate revenge as he thought: "You have spoilt my looks, Mr Englishman; and now, sangredieu, to spoil yours!"
Before going to his relations, he went first to a chemist's.