They couldn't possibly want to stay very long; this was not
the town--the colony--for desperate characters. He shrank from action.
He dreaded any kind of disturbance--"fracas" he called it--in his hotel.
Such things were not good for business. Of course, sometimes one had to
have a "fracas;" but it had been a comparatively trifling task to seize
the frail Zangiacomo--whose bones were no larger than a chicken's--round
the ribs, lift him up bodily, dash him to the ground, and fall on
him. It had been easy. The wretched, hook-nosed creature lay without
movement, buried under its purple beard.
Suddenly, remembering the occasion of that "fracas," Schomberg groaned
with the pain as of a hot coal under his breastbone, and gave himself up
to desolation. Ah, if he only had that girl with him he would have been
masterful and resolute and fearless--fight twenty desperadoes--care
for nobody on earth! Whereas the possession of Mrs. Schomberg was no
incitement to a display of manly virtues. Instead of caring for no one,
he felt that he cared for nothing. Life was a hollow sham; he wasn't
going to risk a shot through his lungs or his liver in order to preserve
its integrity. It had no savour--damn it!
In his state of moral decomposition, Schomberg, master as he was of the
art of hotel-keeping, and careful of giving no occasion for criticism
to the powers regulating that branch of human activity, let things take
their course; though he saw very well where that course was tending.
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