th the innate contempt of a
well-born man.

He turned towards the Madeleine, following the flux of the crowd which
flowed along overcome by the heat. The chief cafes, filled with
customers, were overflowing on to the pavement, and displayed their
drinking public under the dazzling glare of their lit-up facias. In
front of them, on little tables, square or round, were glasses holding
fluids of every shade, red, yellow, green, brown, and inside the
decanters glittered the large transparent cylinders of ice, serving to
cool the bright, clear water. Duroy had slackened his pace, a longing to
drink parched his throat.

A hot thirst, a summer evening's thirst assailed him, and he fancied the
delightful sensation of cool drinks flowing across his palate. But if he
only drank two bocks of beer in the evening, farewell to the slender
supper of the morrow, and he was only too well acquainted with the hours
of short commons at the end of the month.

He said to himself: "I must hold out till ten o'clock, and then I'll
have my bock at the American cafe. Confound it, how thirsty I am
though." And he scanned the men seated at the tables drinking, all the
people who could quench their thirst as much as they pleased. He went
on, passing in front of the cafes with a sprightly swaggering air, and
guessing at a glance from their dress and bearing how much money each
customer ought to have about him. Wrath against these men quietly
sitting there rose up within him. If their pockets were rummaged, gold,
silver, and coppers would be found in them. On an average each one must
have at least two louis. There were certainly a hundred to a cafe, a
hundred times two louis is four thousand francs. He murmured "the
swine," as he walked gracefully past them. If he could have had hold of
one of them at a nice dark corner he would have twisted his neck without
scruple, as he used to do the country-folk's fowls on field-days.

And he recalled his two years in Africa and the way in which he used to
pillage the Arabs when stationed at little out-posts in the south. A
bright and cruel smile flitted across his lips at the recollection of an
escapade which had cost the lives of three men of the Ouled-Alane
tribe, and had furnished him and his comrades with a score of fowls, a
couple of sheep, some gold, and food for laughter for six months.

The culprits had never been found, and, what is more, they had hardly
been looked for, the Arab being looked upo