He shook his head, and said nothing.
"Is there no mention of my restoration to the service?"
"None, sir."
"Then, what is to become of me—to what end am I liberated?" cried I, passionately.
"Paris is a great city, there is a wide world beyond it, and a man so young as you are must have few resources, or he will carve out a good career for himself."
"Say, rather, he must have few resentments, sir," cried I, bitterly, "or he will easily hit upon a bad one;" and with this, I packed up the few articles I possessed, and prepared to depart.
I remember it well; it was between two and three o'clock of the afternoon, on a bright day in spring, that I stood on the Quai Voltaire, a very small packet of clothes in a bundle in one hand, and a cane in the other, something short of three louis in my purse, and as much depression in my heart as ever settled down in that of a youth not full nineteen. Liberty is a glorious thing, and mine had been periled often enough, to give me a hearty appreciation of its blessing; but at that moment, as I stood friendless and companionless in a great thoroughfare of a great city, I almost wished myself back again within the dreary walls of the Temple, for somehow it felt like home! It is true one must have had a lonely lot in life before he could surround the cell of a prison with such attributes as these! Perhaps I have more of the cat-like affection for a particular spot than most men; but I do find that I attach myself to the walls with a tenacity that strengthens as I grow older, and like my brother parasite, the ivy, my grasp becomes more rigid the longer I cling.
If I know of few merely sensual gratifications higher than a lounge through Paris, at the flood-tide of its population, watching the varied hues and complexions of its strange inhabitants, displaying, as they do in feature, air, and gesture, so much more of character and purpose than other people, so also do I feel that there is something indescribably miserable in being alone, unknown, and unnoticed in that vast throng, destitute of means for the present, and devoid of hope for the future.
Some were bent on business, some on pleasure; some were evidently bent on killing time till the hour of more agreeable occupation should arrive; some were loitering along, gazing at the prints in shop-windows, or half-listlessly stopping to read at book-stalls. There was not only every condition of mankind, from wealth to mendicancy, but every frame of mind from enjoyment to utter "ennui," and yet I thought I could not hit upon any one individual who looked as forlorn and cast away as myself; however, there were many who passed me that day who would gladly have changed fortune with me, but it would have been difficult to persuade me of the fact, in the mood I then was.
At the time I speak of, there was a species of cheap ordinary held in the open air on the quay, where people of the humblest condition used to dine; I need scarcely describe the fare; the reader may conceive what it was, which, wine included, cost only four sous; a rude table without a cloth; some wooden platters, and an iron rail to which the knives and forks were chained, formed the "equipage," the cookery bearing a due relation to the elegance of these "accessories." As for the company, if not polite, it was certainly picturesque; consisting of laborers of the lowest class, the sweepers of crossings, hackney-cab men out of employ, that poorest of the poor who try to earn a livelihood by dragging the Seine for lost articles, and finally, the motley race of idlers who vacillate between beggary and ballad singing, with now and then a dash at highway robbery for a "distraction;" a class, be it said without paradox, which in Paris includes a considerable number of tolerably honest folk.