"Well?" I said.
"The cognac is out."
"Is it?" I said. It was not a great calamity, but it did seem to add something to the sum of our discomforts.
"Have a little hot water?" said my friend.
"Don't," I returned.
"But what shall we do? You are pretty poor company to-night. There is the Closerie des Lilas, and Mabille, and the Café des Drôles."
I would none of them. I sat with my head in my hands, staring into the embers of the fading fire. I was crying a man's tears, thinking of the home fireside at evening, three thousand miles away. And if you think a man cannot cry without the shedding of material tears, life has taught you little of physiology; for this is the chief difference between man and woman.
At last Pierce rose up and said French and English profanities, and thought it no colder out of doors than within; therefore I put on my overcoat and a fez cap—such as we wore in those days—and followed him down-stairs, across the courtyard, and under its gray escutcheon and armorial bearings, and so into the outer air. A band of noisy students was passing out of the narrow Rue des Grands Augustins, singing. How often I have heard it, and how it rings in my head after these many long years!
Par derrier' chez ma tante
I'ya-t-un bois joli;
Le rossignol y chante
Et le jour et la nuit.
Gai lon la, gai le rosier
Du joli mois de mai.
Across the way two little maids in caps were filling their tins from the steaming heap of fried potatoes in the tiny shop of my old acquaintance Madame Beaumain.