"Rantoul was the biggest man of us all. It's a funny tale. You're
discussing matrimony; here it is."
II
In the early nineties, when Quinny, Steingall, Herkimer, little Bennett,
who afterward roamed down into the Transvaal and fell in with the
Foreign Legion, Jacobus and Chatterton, the architects, were living
through that fine, rebellious state of overweening youth, Rantoul was
the undisputed leader, the arch-rebel, the master-demolisher of the
group.
Every afternoon at five his Gargantuan figure came thrashing through the
crowds of the boulevard, as an omnibus on its way scatters the fragile
fiacres. He arrived, radiating electricity, tirades on his tongue, to
his chair among the table-pounders of the Cafe des Lilacs, and his first
words were like the fanfare of trumpets. He had been christened, in the
felicitous language of the Quarter, Don Furioso Barebones Rantoul, and
for cause. He shared a garret with his chum, Britt Herkimer, in the Rue
de l'Ombre, a sort of manhole lit by the stars,--when there were any
stars, and he never failed to come springing up the six rickety flights
with a song on his lips.
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