"Somebody in the fortress?"
"Oui, m'sieu. Un soldat. M'sieu will perhaps refrain from putting many questions. It is a friend from my boyhood. He was taken in the conscription, and no kind messieurs were at hand to help to buy him off. And his poor mother became imbecile. La pauvre femme! See what might have come to my mother also, but for the goodness of ces messieurs."
"She became imbecile because he had to go to the war?"
"Oui, m'sieu. What wonder? For see—it was not a common parting. Hundreds, thousands, go thus in the armies of the Emperor, and never return. They vanish from their homes, and no more is heard of them. Here or there, far-away, they have died and have been buried—hélas!—and that is the end."
"A soldier's end!" the boy said proudly.
"Oui, m'sieu, sans doute. But not all men have a taste for soldiering. I myself, for one—"
"You didn't want to fight?"
"I had no wish to leave my home, m'sieu. Of late, it is true, I have had thoughts of entering the army, after all. Le petit Caporal is no such bad leader for a man to follow, when he has not ties to bind him down."
"But your mother—what would she say?"
"M'sieu, I should not be leaving my mother. It is she who has left me. Le bon Dieu has called her away to another place."