“If he didn’t, mother, another would; and what’s the good of throwing away their money?”
“No matter—it’s a coward’s work to go and shave one’s country’s enemies. Do you think he’d have shaved any of the blues’ officers in La Vendée twenty years ago, for all the money they could have offered him? He’d have done it with a sword, if he had done it at all. Well, I suppose it’s all right! I suppose he’s only fit to use a razor now.”
“But you always say those were horrid days in La Vendée; that you had nothing to eat, and no bed to sleep in, nor shoes to your feet; and that you and father couldn’t get married for ever so long, because of the wars?”
“So they were horrid days. I don’t think any one will live to see the like again. But still, one don’t like to see a man, who once had a little spirit, become jacky to every one who has a dirty chin to be scraped. Oh, Annot, if you’d seen the men there were in La Vendée, in those days; if you’d seen the great Cathelineau, you would have seen a man.”
After having read this conversation, no one will be surprised to hear that on the board over the shop window, the following words, in yellow letters, were decently conspicuous:
JACQUES CHAPEAU,
PERRUQUIER.
Madame Chapeau was now disturbed in her unreasonable grumbling by a knock at the closed door, and on her opening it, an officer in undress uniform, about fifty years of age, politely greeted her, and asked her if that was not the house of M. Jacques Chapeau. From his language, the visitor might at first have been taken for a Frenchman; his dress, however, plainly told that he belonged to the English army.
“Yes, Monsieur, this is the humble shop of Chapeau, perruquier,” said our old friend, the elder Annot, who, in spite of her feelings of hostility to the English, was somewhat mollified by the politeness and handsome figure of her visitor: she then informed him that Chapeau was not at home; that she expected him in immediately; and that his assistant, who was, in some respects, almost as talented as his master, was below, and would wait upon Monsieur immediately; and she rang a little bell, which was quickly responded to by some one ascending from a lower region.
The visitor informed Madame Chapeau that he had not called at present as a customer, but that he had taken the liberty to intrude himself upon her for the purpose of learning some facts of which, he was informed, her husband could speak with more accuracy than any other person in Paris.
“It is respecting the battles of La Vendée,” said he, “that I wish to speak to him. I believe that he saw more of them than any person now alive.”