To this mood succeeded a sullen and bitter one. He was generous, but
vain, and his love had humiliated him so bitterly, he resolved to tear
it out of his heart. He absented himself from church; he met the young
ladies no more. He struggled fiercely with his passion; he went about
dogged, silent, and sighing. Presently he devoted his leisure hours
to shooting partridges instead of ladies. And he was right; partridges
cannot shoot back; whereas beautiful women, like Cupid, are all archers
more or less, and often with one arrow from eye or lip do more execution
than they have suffered from several discharges of our small shot.
In these excursions, Edouard was generally accompanied by a thick-set
rustic called Dard, who, I believe, purposes to reveal his own character
to you, and so save me that trouble.
One fine afternoon, about four o'clock, this pair burst remorselessly
through a fence, and landed in the road opposite Bigot's Auberge; a long
low house, with "ICI ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL," written all across it
in gigantic letters. Riviere was for moving homeward, but Dard halted
and complained dismally of "the soldier's gripes.
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