So as they overtook the walking man Bumpus called out to him.
“Hey! there, don’t you want to get in, and ride to the city with us?” he asked.
Thad brought the car to a standstill, for the soldier had stopped upon hearing a voice hail him. They saw that he was a youngish sort of man wearing a short beard. He had his right arm bound up with bandages, showing that the busy workers at some field hospital must have taken care of him, after which he was to go to a base hospital for further attention and recovery.
“But I do not go to Paris just yet, young Messieurs,” he told them in good English too, for many Frenchmen speak the language, as they come in frequent intercourse with the people across the Channel. “My home it is in a village outside the city. First I must show myself to my wife and family, that they may know I am yet alive. Then, too, I have something else that they should see.”
With that he turned more fully toward them, and Thad saw to his great surprise that the private was actually wearing a glittering emblem. It was really the Cross of the Legion of Honor, only bestowed, like the English Victoria Cross, upon some man who has shown extraordinary valor in battle, performed some wonderful feat of bravery, in fact.
To see it on the breast of a humble wounded private trudging wearily along a dusty road near Paris naturally gave the boys a thrill. They looked upon the man now as an exalted hero, for he surely must have done something wonderful; and yet if that were so how did it come that he still occupied such a humble rank?
His eyes were glittering with happiness. He touched that emblem proudly, and with almost reverence.
“Ah! young Messieurs,” they heard him say, “it was mon colonel himself who tore this splendid medal off his own coat and pinned it there. ‘It shall stay,’ he told me, plain Jaques Leforge and but a private, ‘it shall stay until I see your own fastened there.’ And that too on the field of battle, with men dying all around us. That was a most proud moment for me, let me assure you. And as I walk along all this way to my home I am telling myself that my Janet and the little ones they too will be glad, for never again can any one point a finger at Jaques Leforge and say he is a coward, and that his blood is water.”
“What! did they say that of you, then?” asked Thad, deeply interested in what he was hearing, for it seemed as though they were on the point of learning how a miracle had been wrought in the nature of this man.
“It is too true, M’sieu,” the other replied, sadly. “All my life I have been told that I had no spirit, that I would never stand the test when it came to war; that the heart of a timid man dwelt under my uniform. So I too had come to believe it, even I, Jaques Leforge, who should have known better. I often told myself I was meant for only a poltroon, a coward; and when the war came I went to my place in my regiment believing that I should die of fright when the guns rang in my ears, and the shells, burst all around me. Ah! that was a strange delusion, M’sieu, a most strange deceit.”