When Joseph spoke to
him he did not answer. Then they took him by the arm, and he fell over
in a seizure which, asserted the practical head waiter, was caused by
indigestion.
II
ACROSS THE STYX
It was raining on the Left Bank. The chill of a November afternoon cut
its way through the doors of the Cafe La Source in the Boul' Mich' and
made shiver the groups of young medical students who were reading or
playing dominos. Ambroise Nettier, older, thinner, paler, waited
carefully on his patrons. He had been in the hospital with brain fever,
and after he was cured, one of the students secured him a position at
this cafe in the Quartier. He had been afraid to go back to the Cafe
Riche; Joseph had harshly discharged him on that terrible night; alone,
without a home, without a penny, his savings gone, his life insurance
hypothecated,--it had been intended for the benefit of his parents,--his
clothes, his very trunk gone, and plunged in debt to his fellow-waiters,
his brain had succumbed to the shock. But Ambroise was young and strong;
when he left the hospital he was relieved to find that he no longer saw
scarlet.
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