One morning he went out for a walk beyond the town limits to excogitate
the final touches for some sentences that were to annihilate the infidel
Frenchman. Suddenly he fell prey to a disquiet that almost amounted
to physical distress. He turned over in his mind the life he had
been leading for the last three months. It had grown wearisomely
familiar--the morning walks into the country, the evenings spent in
gambling for petty stakes with the reputed Baron Perotti and the
latter's pock-marked mistress. He thought of the affection lavished upon
himself by his hostess, a woman ardent but no longer young. He thought
of how he had passed his time over the writings of Voltaire and over the
composition of an audacious rejoinder which until that moment had seemed
to him by no means inadequate. Yet now, in the dulcet atmosphere of a
morning in late summer, all these things appeared stupid and repulsive.
Muttering a curse without really knowing upon whose head he wished it
to alight, gripping the hilt of his sword, darting angry glances in all
directions as if invisible scornful eyes were watching him in the
surrounding solitude, he turned on his heel and retraced his steps
back to the town, determined to make arrangements that very hour for
immediate departure.
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