He thanked me fervently, in a strange kind of German, a patois I had never heard before, and kissed my hand three or four times over in his gratitude; indeed, so absorbed was he for the time in his desire to thank me, that I had to recall him to the more pressing reason of his presence, and warn him that but a few minutes more of the hour remained free.
‘Speak up,’ cried the clerk, as the old man muttered something in a low and very indistinct voice; ‘speak up, and remember, my friend, that we do not profess to give information further back than the times of “Louis Quatorze.”’
This allusion to the years of the old man was loudly applauded by his colleagues, who drew nigh to stare at the cause of it.
‘Sacrebleu! he is talking Hebrew,’ said another, ‘and asking for a friend who fell at Ramoth-Gilead.’
‘He is speaking German,’ said I peremptorily, ‘and asking for a relative whom he believes to have embarked with the expedition to Egypt.’
‘Are you a sworn interpreter, young man?’ asked an older and more consequential-looking personage.
I was about to return a hasty reply to this impertinence, but I thought of the old man, and the few seconds that still remained for his inquiry, and I smothered my anger, and was silent.
‘What rank did he hold?’ inquired one of the clerks, who had listened with rather more patience to the old man. I translated the question for the peasant, who, in reply, confessed that he could not tell. The youth was his only son, and had left home many years before, and never written. A neighbour, however, who had travelled in foreign parts, had brought tidings that he had gone with the expedition to Egypt, and was already high in the French army.
‘You are not quite certain that he did not command the army of Egypt?’ said one of the clerks, in mockery of the old man’s story.
‘It is not unlikely,’ said the peasant gravely; ‘he was a brave and a bold youth, and could have lifted two such as you with one hand, and hurled you out of that window.’