Meantime, if my courage was still undiminished, I was
none the nearer to a meal. At no great distance my
cabman's eating-house stood, at the tail of a muddy
cab-rank, on the shores of a wide thoroughfare of mud,
offering (to fancy) a face of ambiguous invitation. I
might be received, I might once more fill my belly
there; on the other hand, it was perhaps this day the
bolt was destined to fall, and I might be expelled
instead, with vulgar hubbub. It was policy to make the
attempt, and I knew it was policy; but I had already,
in the course of that one morning, endured too many
affronts, and I felt I could rather starve than face
another. I had courage and to spare for the future,
none left for that day, courage for the main campaign,
but not a spark of it for that preliminary skirmish of
the cabman's restaurant. I continued accordingly to
sit upon my bench, not far from the ashes of Napoleon,
now drowsy, now light-headed, now in complete mental
obstruction, or only conscious of an animal pleasure in
quiescence; and now thinking, planning, and remembering
with unexampled clearness, telling myself tales of
sudden wealth, and gustfully ordering and greedily
consuming imaginary meals, in the course of which I
must have dropped asleep.
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