God be praised! it was only seven
o'clock by the dial on Our Saviour's; I had three hours yet before the
door would be locked. What a fright I had been in!
Well, there was not a stone left unturned. I had done all I could. To
think that I really could not succeed once in a whole day! If I told it no
one could believe it; if I were to write it down they would say I had
invented it. Not in a single place! Well, well, there is no help for it.
Before all, don't go and get pathetic again. Bah! how disgusting! I can
assure you, it makes me have a loathing for you. If all hope is over, why
there is an end of it. Couldn't I, for that matter, steal a handful of
oats in the stable? A streak of light--a ray--yet I knew the stable was
shut.
I took my ease, and crept home at a slow snail's pace. I felt thirsty,
luckily for the first time through the whole day, and I went and sought
about for a place where I could get a drink. I was a long distance away
from the bazaar, and I would not ask at a private house. Perhaps, though,
I could wait till I got home; it would take a quarter of an hour. It was
not at all so certain that I could keep down a draught of water, either;
my stomach no longer suffered in any way--I even felt nausea at the
spittle I swallowed. But the buttons! I had not tried the buttons at all
yet. There I stood, stock-still, and commenced to smile. Maybe there was a
remedy, in spite of all! I wasn't totally doomed.
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