“I was, two days ago, chasseur à cheval, a sous-lieutenant, in the regiment of my father, the General St. Croix.”
“The name is familiar to me,” I replied, “and I am sincerely happy to be in a position to serve the son of so distinguished an officer.”
“The son of so distinguished an officer is most deeply obliged, but wishes with all his heart and soul he had never sought glory under such very excellent auspices. You look surprised, mon cher; but let me tell you, my military ardor is considerably abated in the last three days. Hunger, thirst, imprisonment, and this”—lifting his wounded limb as he spoke—“are sharp lessons in so short a campaign, and for one too, whose life hitherto had much more of ease than adventure to boast of. Shall I tell you how I became a soldier?”
“By all means; give me your glass first; and now, with a fresh log to the fire, I’m your man.”
“But stay; before I begin, look to this.”
The blood was flowing rapidly from his wound, which with some difficulty I succeeded in stanching. He drank off his wine hastily, held out his glass to be refilled, and then began his story.
“You have never seen the Emperor?”
“Never.”
“Sacrebleu! What a man he is! I’d rather stand under the fire of your grenadiers, than meet his eye. When in a passion, he does not say much, it is true; but what he does, comes with a kind of hissing, rushing sound, while the very fire seems to kindle in his look. I have him before me this instant, and though you will confess that my present condition has nothing very pleasing in it, I should be sorry indeed to change it for the last time I stood in his presence.
“Two months ago I sported the gay light-blue and silver of a page to the Emperor, and certainly, what with balls, bonbons, flirtation, gossip, and champagne suppers, led a very gay, reckless, and indolent life of it. Somehow,—I may tell you more accurately at another period, if we ever meet,—I got myself into disgrace, and as a punishment, was ordered to absent myself from the Tuileries, and retire for some weeks to Fontainebleau. Siberia to a Russian would scarcely be a heavier infliction than was this banishment to me. There was no court, no levee, no military parade, no ball, no opera. A small household of the Emperor’s chosen servants quietly kept house there. The gloomy walls re-echoed to no music; the dark alleys of the dreary garden seemed the very impersonation of solitude and decay. Nothing broke the dull monotony of the tiresome day, except when occasionally, near sunset, the clash of the guard would be heard turning out, and the clank of presenting arms, followed by the roll of a heavy carriage into the gloomy courtyard. One lamp, shining like a star, in a small chamber on the second floor, would remain till near four, sometimes five o’clock in the morning. The same sounds of the guard and the same dull roll of the carriage would break the stillness of the early morning; and the Emperor—for it was he—would be on his road back to Paris.