He had good prospects, some little money laid by,
and the affection of two excellent friends. He offered to pay for all
the drinks after dinner, which was only proper on his part.
They drank more wine; they drank liqueurs, cognac, beer, then more
liqueurs and more cognac. Two strangers sitting at the next table looked
at him, he said, with so much friendliness, that he invited them to join
the party.
He had never drunk so much in his life. His elation was extreme, and so
pleasurable that whenever it flagged he hastened to order more drinks.
"It seemed to me," he said, in his quiet tone and looking on the ground
in the gloomy shed full of shadows, "that I was on the point of just
attaining a great and wonderful felicity. Another drink, I felt, would
do it. The others were holding out well with me, glass for glass."
But an extraordinary thing happened. At something the strangers said his
elation fell. Gloomy ideas--des idees noires--rushed into his head. All
the world outside the cafe; appeared to him as a dismal evil place where
a multitude of poor wretches had to work and slave to the sole end
that a few individuals should ride in carriages and live riotously in
palaces.
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