A late, dull autumn night was closing in upon the river Saone. The
stream, like a sullied looking-glass in a gloomy place, reflected the
clouds heavily; and the low banks leaned over here and there, as if they
were half curious, and half afraid, to see their darkening pictures in
the water. The flat expanse of country about Chalons lay a long heavy
streak, occasionally made a little ragged by a row of poplar trees
against the wrathful sunset. On the banks of the river Saone it was wet,
depressing, solitary; and the night deepened fast.
One man slowly moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in
the landscape. Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. With an old
sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of
some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden
out, his hair and beard untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his
shoulder, and the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along in
pain and difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him,
as if the wail of the wind and the shuddering of the grass were directed
against him, as if the low mysterious plashing of the water murmured at
him, as if the fitful autumn night were disturbed by him.
He glanced here, and he glanced there, sullenly but shrinkingly; and
sometimes stopped and turned about, and looked all round him. Then he
limped on again, toiling and muttering. 'To the devil with this plain that has no end!
To the devil with these
stones that cut like knives! To the devil with this dismal darkness,
wrapping itself about one with a chill! I hate you!'
And he would have visited his hatred upon it all with the scowl he threw
about him, if he could. He trudged a little further; and looking into
the distance before him, stopped again. 'I, hungry, thirsty, weary. You,
imbeciles, where the lights are yonder, eating and drinking, and warming
yourselves at fires! I wish I had the sacking of your town; I would
repay you, my children!' But the teeth he set at the town, and the hand he shook at the town,
brought the town no nearer; and the man was yet hungrier, and thirstier,
and wearier, when his feet were on its jagged pavement, and he stood
looking about him. There was the hotel with its gateway, and its savoury smell of cooking;
there was the cafe with its bright windows, and its rattling of
dominoes; there was the dyer's with its strips of red cloth on the
doorposts; there was the silversmith's with its earrings, and its
offerings for altars; there was the tobacco dealer's with its lively
group of soldier customers coming out pipe in mouth; there were the bad
odours of the town, and the rain and the refuse in the kennels, and
the faint lamps slung across the road, and the huge Diligence, and its
mountain of luggage, and its six grey horses with their tails tied up,
getting under weigh at the coach office. But no small cabaret for a
straitened traveller being within sight, he had to seek one round the
dark corner, where the cabbage leaves lay thickest, trodden about the
public cistern at which women had not yet left off drawing water. There,
in the back street he found one, the Break of Day. The curtained windows
clouded the Break of Day, but it seemed light and warm, and it announced
in legible inscriptions with appropriate pictorial embellishment
of billiard cue and ball, that at the Break of Day one could play
billiards; that there one could find meat, drink, and lodgings, whether
one came on horseback, or came on foot; and that it kept good wines,
liqueurs, and brandy.