He was neither old nor white-haired. He was, as well as I, in my childish way could judge, about thirty-five years of age, pale, slight, dark-eyed, delicate-looking. His chains did not rattle as he walked, for the simple reason that, being a prisoner on parole, he suffered no kind of restraint, but was as free as myself of the Château and grounds. He wore his hair long, tied behind with a narrow black ribbon, and very slightly powdered; and he dressed always in deep mourning—black, all black, from head to foot, even to his shoe-buckles. He was a Frenchman, and he went by the name of Monsieur Maurice.
I cannot tell how I knew that this was only his Christian name; but so it was, and I knew him by no other, neither did my father. I have, indeed, evidence among our private papers to show that neither by those in authority at Berlin, nor by the prisoner himself, was he at any time informed either of the family name of Monsieur Maurice, or of the nature of the offence, whether military or political, for which that gentleman was consigned to his keeping at Brühl.
“Of one thing at least I am certain,” said my father, holding out his pipe for me to fill it. “He is a soldier.”
It was just after dinner, the second day following our prisoner's arrival, and I was sitting on my father's knee before the fire, as was our pleasant custom of an afternoon.
“I see it in his eye,” my father went on to say. “I see it in his walk. I see it in the way he arranges his papers on the table. Everything in order. Everything put away into the smallest possible compass. All this bespeaketh the camp.”
“I don't believe he is a soldier, for all that,” said I, thoughtfully. “He is too gentle.”
“The bravest soldiers, my little Gretchen, are ofttimes the gentlest,” replied my father. “The great French hero, Bayard, and the great English hero, Sir Philip Sidney, about whom thou wert reading 'tother day, were both as tender and gentle as women.”
“But he neither smokes, nor swears, nor talks loud,” said I, persisting in my opinion.
My father smiled, and pinched my ear.
“Nay, little one,” said he, “Monsieur Maurice is not like thy father—a rough German Dragoon risen from the ranks. He is a gentleman, and a Frenchman; and he hath all the polish of what the Frenchman calls the vieille école. And there again he puzzles me with his court-manners and his powdered hair! He's no Bonapartist, I'll be sworn—yet if he be o' the King's side, what doth he here, with the usurper at Saint Helena, and Louis the Eighteenth come to his own again?”