Page:Pierre.djvu/273

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HE CROSSES THE RUBICON
259

I inly feel, will these feet press. Oh God, what callest thou that which has thus made Pierre a vagabond?'

He walked slowly away, and passing the windows of Lucy, looked up, and saw the white curtains closely drawn, the white cottage profoundly still, and a white saddle-horse tied before the gate.

'I would enter, but again would her abhorrent wails repel; what more can I now say or do to her? I cannot explain. She knows all I purposed to disclose. Ay, but thou didst cruelly burst upon her with it; thy impetuousness, thy instantaneousness hath killed her, Pierre!—Nay, nay, nay!—Cruel tidings who can gently break? If to stab be inevitable; then instant be the dagger! Those curtains are close drawn upon her; so let me upon her sweet image draw the curtains of my soul. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, thou angel!—wake no more to Pierre, nor to thyself, my Lucy!'

Passing on now hurriedly and blindly, he jostled against some oppositely-going wayfarer. The man paused amazed; and looking up, Pierre recognised a domestic of the mansion. That instantaneousness which now impelled him in all his actions, again seized the ascendency in him. Ignoring the dismayed expression of the man at thus encountering his young master, Pierre commanded him to follow him. Going straight to the 'Black Swan,' the little village inn, he entered the first vacant room, and bidding the man be seated, sought the keeper of the house, and ordered pen and paper.

If fit opportunity offer in the hour of unusual affliction, minds of a certain temperament find a strange, hysterical relief, in a wild, perverse humorousness, the more alluring from its entire unsuitableness to the occasion; although they seldom manifest this trait toward those individuals more immediately involved in the cause or the effect of their suffering. The cool censoriousness of the mere