“What 's this? An officer of hussars here!”
The exclamation brought an officer to the spot, who, holding a lantern to my face, said quickly,—“How is this, sir? how came you here?”
“Here is my sword, sir,” said I, drawing it from the scabbard; “I place myself under arrest. In another place, and to other judges, I must explain my conduct.”
“Parbleu! Jacques,” said the officer, addressing another who sat, while his wounds were being bound up, on a chair near, “this affair is worse than we thought of. Here 's one of the huitième in the thick of it.”
“I hope, sir,” said I, addressing the young man, whose arm was bleeding profusely from a sabre wound,—“I hope, sir, your wound may not be of consequence.”
He looked up suddenly, and while a smile of the most insulting sarcasm curled his bloodless lip, answered,—
“I thank you, sir, for your sympathy; but you must forgive me, if one of these days I cannot bandy consolations with you.”
“You are right, Lieutenant,” said a dragoon, who lay bleeding from a dreadful cut in the forehead; “I'd not exchange places with him myself this minute for all his epaulettes.”
With an overwhelming sense of my own degraded position, when to such taunts as these I dared not reply, I stood mute and confounded.
Meantime the soldiers were engaged in collecting together the scattered weapons, fastening the wrists of the prisoners with cords, and ransacking the house for such proofs of the conspiracy as might criminate others at a distance. By the time these operations were concluded, the day began to break, and I could distinguish in the courtyard several large covered carts or charrettes destined to convey the prisoners. One of these was given up entirely to the chief, who, although only slightly wounded, would never assist himself in the least, but lay a heavy, inert mass, suffering the others to lift him and place him in the cart. Such as were too badly wounded to be moved were placed in a room in the château, a guard being left over them.