“Just!” cried the Frenchman, halting abruptly and darting at me a glance of fire, “just! no more, Sir! no more! I was at Blenheim and at Ramilies!”
As the old warrior said the last words, his voice faltered; and though I could not help inly smiling at the confusion of ideas by which wars were just or unjust, according as they were fortunate or not, yet I respected his feelings enough to turn away my face and remain silent.
“Yes,” renewed my comrade, colouring with evident shame and drawing his cocked hat over his brows, “yes, I received my last wound at Ramilies. Then my eyes were opened to the horrors of war; then I saw and cursed the evils of ambition; then I resolved to retire from the armies of a king who had lost forever his name, his glory, and his country.”
Was there ever a better type of the French nation than this old soldier? As long as fortune smiles on them, it is “Marchons au diable!” and “Vive la gloire!” Directly they get beaten, it is “Ma pauvre patrie!” and “Les calamites affreuses de la guerre!”
“However,” said I, “the old King is drawing near the end of his days, and is said to express his repentance at the evils his ambition has occasioned.”
The old soldier shoved back his hat, and offered me his snuff-box. I judged by this that he was a little mollified.
“Ah!” he renewed, after a pause, “ah! times are sadly changed since the year 1667; when the young King—he was young then—took the field in Flanders, under the great Turenne. Sacristie! What a hero he looked upon his white war-horse! I would have gone—ay, and the meanest and backwardest soldier in the camp would have gone—into the very mouth of the cannon for a look from that magnificent countenance, or a word from that mouth which knew so well what words were! Sir, there was in the war of ‘72, when we were at peace with Great Britain, an English gentleman, then in the army, afterwards a marshal of France: I remember, as if it were yesterday, how gallantly he behaved. The King sent to compliment him after some signal proof of courage and conduct, and asked what reward he would have. ‘Sire,’ answered the Englishman, ‘give me the white plume you wore this day.’ From that moment the Englishman’s fortune was made.”
“The flattery went further than the valour!” said I, smiling, as I recognized in the anecdote the first great step which my father had made in the ascent of fortune.
“Sacristie!” cried the Frenchman, “it was no flattery then. We so idolized the King that mere truth would have seemed disloyalty; and we no more thought that praise, however extravagant, was adulation, when directed to him, than we should have thought there was adulation in the praise we would have given to our first mistress. But it is all changed now! Who now cares for the old priest-ridden monarch?”
And upon this the veteran, having conquered the momentary enthusiasm which the remembrance of the King’s earlier glories had excited, transferred all his genius of description to the opposite side of the question, and declaimed, with great energy, upon the royal vices and errors, which were so charming in prosperity, and were now so detestable in adversity.