Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/62

We ordered many Pernods and we drank them every one.
And sternly he would stare and stare until my hand would shake,
And grimly he would glare and glare until my heart would quake.
And I would say: “Alphonso, lad, I must expostulate;
Why keep alive for twenty years the furnace of your hate?
Perhaps his wedded life was hell; and you, at least, are free…”
“That’s where you’ve got it wrong,” he snarled; “the fool she took was me.”
My rival sneaked, threw up the sponge, betrayed himself a churl:
“’Twas he who got the happiness, I only got—the girl.”
With that he looked so devil-like he made me creep and shrink,
And there was nothing else to do but buy another drink.

Now yonder like a blot of ink he sits across the way,
Upon the smiling terrace of the Café de la Paix;
That little wizened Spanish man, his face is ghastly white,
His eyes are staring, staring like a tiger’s in the night.
I know within his evil heart the fires of hate are fanned,