His voice stuck in his throat. I thought I saw a shudder of fear pass over him.
"To her ... to Antinea," he murmured.
I sat down again.
[!-- Chapter 13 --]XIII
THE HETMAN OF JITOMIR'S STORY
Count Casimir had reached that stage where drunkenness takes on a kind of gravity, of regretfulness.
He thought a little, then began his story. I regret that I cannot reproduce more perfectly its archaic flavor.
"When the grapes begin to color in Antinea's garden, I shall be sixty-eight. It is very sad, my dear boy, to have sowed all your wild oats. It isn't true that life is always beginning over again. How bitter, to have known the Tuileries in 1860, and to have reached the point where I am now!
"