“Is Spain your country?” asked Ferdinand.
“I fight for fortune—always for fortune, I tell you,” said Tiretta, with an obstinate smile.
The little boy touched his sword again.
“With this, monsieur? Has it killed many people?”
The Gonzalès laughed loudly.
“It has killed one person,” said Tiretta, “whose blood, mademoiselle your sister will likely tell you, has dishonoured it for ever.”
“Whose?” said the child eagerly. “Tell me, monsieur.”
Tiretta drew out the blade—an elastic strip of steel, long toughened by use—and ran his finger along it.
“It belonged,” he said, “to an old friend of mine. I thought him one of the noblest of men; but since, like myself, he was a mere soldier of fortune, that may be nothing but my prejudice. He had fought successfully in a number of causes; but in the cause of self-interest he failed. He had many and grave faults—a persistent craze for gambling; an arrogant temper; a furious hatred of the people. To hear him fulminate, one would have thought he ranked them with the grass—ready, on the least provocation, to mow them down by the acre. But he played straight, while others robbed him; out of his lean purse he pensioned a dishonest rogue grown crippled in his service; his temper never impaired his perfect honour. And, as to his hatred of the people—why here, after all, was the moral of it. He met his death rescuing a drunken old woman, horrible, hideous, debased, from the hands of a party of miscreants. But she was a woman, you understand. That was in Castille; and there I stood by his bedside, and received this weapon from his hands as a last bequest. I have tried to honour it since, but never to such honour as when, in piercing that scoundrel heart, it was used by him nobly to falsify the asserted principles of a lifetime. At least, so, being another soldier of fortune, I regard its distinction.”
He slipped the blade back into its scabbard, while the children, only half understanding him, regarded the act in silent curiosity.