THE COMING OF DOLTAIRE At last I was roused by Gabord's voice. He sat down, and drew the leaves of faded corn between his fingers. "'Tis a poor life, this in a cage, after all--eh, dickey-bird? If a soldier can't stand in the field fighting, if a man can't rub shoulders with man, and pitch a tent of his own somewhere, why not go travelling with the Beast--aho? To have all the life sucked out like these--eh? To see the flesh melt and the hair go white, the eye to be one hour bright like a fire in a kiln, and the next like mother on working vinegar--that's not living at all--no." The speech had evidently cost him much thinking, and when he ended, his cheeks puffed out and a soundless laugh seemed to gather, but it burst in a sort of sigh. I would have taken his hand that moment, if I had not remembered when once he drew back from such demonstrations. I did not speak, but nodded assent, and took to drawing the leaves of corn between my fingers as he was doing. After a moment, cocking his head at me as might a surly schoolmaster in a pause of leniency, he added, "As quiet, as quiet, and never did he fly at door of cage, nor peck at jailer--aho!" I looked at him a minute seriously, and then, feeling in my coat, handed to him the knife which I had secreted, with the words, "Enough for pecking with, eh?" He looked at me so strangely, as he weighed the knife up and down in his hand, that I could not at first guess his thought; but presently I understood it, and I almost could have told what he would say. He opened the knife, felt the blade, measured it along his fingers, and then said, with a little bursting of the lips, "Poom! But what would ma'm'selle have thought if Gabord was found dead with a hole in his neck--behind? Eh?" He had struck the very note that had sung in me when the temptation came; but he was gay at once again, and I said to him, "What is the hour fixed?" "Seven o'clock," he answered, "and I will bring your breakfast first." "Good-night, then," said I. "Coffee and a little tobacco will be enough." When he was gone, I lay down on my bag of straw, which, never having been renewed, was now only full of worn chaff, and, gathering myself in my cloak, was soon in a dreamless sleep.