Chapter 11 - Page 2

the refuse in the kennels, and the faint lamps slung across the
road, and the huge Diligence, and its mountain of luggage, and its
six grey horses with their tails tied up, getting under weigh at
the coach office. But no small cabaret for a straitened traveller
being within sight, he had to seek one round the dark corner, where
the cabbage leaves lay thickest, trodden about the public cistern
at which women had not yet left off drawing water. There, in the
back street he found one, the Break of Day. The curtained windows
clouded the Break of Day, but it seemed light and warm, and it
announced in legible inscriptions with appropriate pictorial
embellishment of billiard cue and ball, that at the Break of Day
one could play billiards; that there one could find meat, drink,
and lodgings, whether one came on horseback, or came on foot; and
that it kept good wines, liqueurs, and brandy. The man turned the
handle of the Break of Day door, and limped in.

He touched his discoloured slouched hat, as he came in at the door,
to a few men who occupied the room. Two were playing dominoes at
one of the little tables; three or four were seated round the
stove, conversing as they smoked; the billiard-table in the centre
was left alone for the time; the landlady of the Daybreak sat
behind her little counter among her cloudy bottles of syrups,
baskets of cakes, and leaden drainage for glasses, working at her
needle.

Making his way to an empty little table in a corner of the room
behind the stove, he put down his knapsack and his cloak upon the
ground. As he raised his head from stooping to do so, he found the
landlady beside him.

'One can lodge here to-night, madame?'

'Perfectly!' said the landlady in a high, sing-song, cheery voice.

'Good. One can dine--sup--what you please to call it?'

'Ah, perfectly!' cried the landlady as before.
'Dispatch then, madame, if you please. Something to eat, as
quickly as you can; and some wine at once. I am exhausted.'

'It is very bad weather, monsieur,' said the landlady.

'Cursed weather.'

'And a very long road.'

'A cursed road.'

His hoarse voice failed him, and he rested his head upon his hands
until a bottle of wine was brought from the counter. Having filled
and emptied his little tumbler twice, and having broken off an end
from the great loaf that was set before him with his cloth and
napkin, soup-plate, salt, pepper, and oil, he rested his back
against the corner of the wall, made a couch of the bench on which
he sat, and began to chew crust, until such time as his repast
should be ready.
There had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the
stove, and that temporary inattention to and