However, it was too late to retreat, and in a moment we were
standing in the street. It would not have surprised me if he had
celebrated his freedom by some noisy extravagance there; but he
refrained, and contented himself--while Maignan locked the
postern behind us--with cocking his hat and lugging forward his
sword, and assuming an air of whimsical recklessness, as if an
adventure were to be instantly expected.
But the moon had not yet risen, the night was dark, and for some
time we met with nothing more diverting than a stumble over a
dead dog, a word with a forward wench, or a narrow escape from
one of those liquid douches that render the streets perilous for
common folk and do not spare the greatest. Naturally, I began to
tire, and wished myself with all my heart back at the Arsenal;
but Henry, whose spirits a spice of danger never failed to raise,
found a hundred things to be merry over, and some of which he
made a great tale of afterwards. He would go on; and presently,
in the Rue de ]a Pourpointerie, which we entered as the clocks
struck the hour before midnight, his persistence was rewarded.
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