When I awoke in the black morning hours I knew 383 that I should go. All the roaming instinct in me was roused. I, a nomad, had stayed too long in one stale place; I must be moving on. A feverish longing seized me; inertia became unbearable; the restless sea called me louder and louder, thundering on the breakwater; the gulls, wheeling above the arsenal at dawn, screamed a challenge.
Leave of absence, and permission to travel pending acceptance of my resignation, I asked for and obtained before the stable trumpets awoke my comrade from his heavy slumber by the barrack stove.
I made my packet—not much—a few threadbare garments folded around her letters, one to mark each miserable day that had passed since I spurred my horse out of Trécourt on the track of the wickedest man I ever knew.
Speed awoke with the trumpets, and stared at me where I knelt before the stove in my civilian clothes, strapping up my little packet.
“Oh,” he said, briefly, “I knew you were going.”
“So did I,” I replied. “Will you ride to Trécourt with me? I have two weeks’ permission for you.”
He had no clothing but the uniform he wore, and no baggage except a razor, a shirt, a tooth-brush, and a bundle of letters, all written on Madame de Vassart’s crested paper, but not signed by her.
We bolted our breakfast of soup and black bread, and bawled for our horses, almost crazed with impatience, now that the moment had come at last.
“Good-bye!” shouted the shivering dragoon officers, wistfully, as we wheeled our horses and spurred, clattering, towards the black gates. “Good-bye and good luck! We drink to those you love, comrades!”
“And they shall drink to you! Good-bye! Good-bye!” we cried, till the salt sea-wind tore the words from our teeth and bowed our heads as we galloped 384 through the suburbs and out into the icy high-road, where, above us, the telegraph-wires sang their whirring dirge, and the wind in the gorse whistled, and the distant forest sounded and resounded with the gale’s wailing.