It was still more unpleasant, and as futile, to dwell on them.

A day of reckoning would come, and, if La Tribe were right, the cause would rally, bristling with pikes and snorting with war-horses, and the blood spilled in this wicked city would cry aloud for vengeance.

But the hour was not yet.

He had lost his mistress, and for that atonement must be exacted.
But in the present another mistress awaited him, and as a man could only die once, and might die at any minute, so he could only live once, and in the present.

Then _vogue la galere_! As he roused himself from this brief reverie and fell to wondering how long he was to be left to himself, a rosebud tossed by an unseen hand struck him on the breast and dropped to his knees.