‘Bah!’ said he, interrupting, ‘what of that? Where shouldst thou have had thy baptism of blood, boy? Art a child—nothing more.’
‘I shared my quarters last night with one, not older, Tronchon, and he was an officer, and had seen many a battlefield.’
‘I know that, too,’ said the veteran, with an expression of impatience—‘and that General Bonaparte will give every boy his epaulettes before an old and tried soldier.’
‘It was not Bonaparte. It was——’
‘I care not who promoted the lad; the system is just the same with them all. It is no longer, “Where have you served?—what have you seen?” but, “Can you read glibly?—can you write faster than speak?—have you learned to take towns upon paper, and attack a breastwork with a rule and a pair of compasses?” This is what they called “le génie” “le génie”—ha! ha! ha!’ cried he, laughing heartily; ‘that’s the name old women used to give the devil when I was a boy.’
It was with the greatest difficulty I could get him back from these disagreeable reminiscences to the object of my visit, and, even then, I could hardly persuade him that I was serious in asking the loan of a beard. The prayer of my petition being once understood, he discussed the project gravely enough; but to my surprise he was far more struck by the absurd figure he should cut with his diminished mane, than I with my mock moustache.
‘There’s not a child in Nancy won’t laugh at me—they’ll cry, “There goes old Tronchon—he’s like Kléber’s charger, which the German cut the tail off, to make a shako plume!”’
‘I assured him that he might as well pretend to miss one tree in the forest of Fontainebleau—that after furnishing a squadron like myself, his would be still the first beard in the Republic; and at last he yielded, and gave in.
Never did a little damsel of the nursery array her doll with more delighted looks, and gaze upon her handiwork with more self-satisfaction, than did old Tronchon survey me, as, with the aid of a little gum, he decorated my lip with a stiff line of his iron-red beard.
‘Diantre!’ cried he, in ecstasy, ‘if thou ben’t something like a man after all. Who would have thought it would have made such a change? Thou might pass for one that saw real smoke and real fire, any day, lad. Ay! thou hast another look in thine eye, and another way to carry thy head, now! Trust me, thou’lt look a different fellow on the left of the squadron.’