CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PENSION DE LA RUE MI-CARÊME.
When I returned to the garden, I found that the Père Arsène was seized by an access of that dreadful malady, whose intervals of comparative release are but periods of dread or despondence. The tertian of Egypt, so fatal among the French troops, now numbered him among its victims, and he looked worn and exhausted, like one after weeks of illness.
My first care was to present myself to the official whose business it was to inspect the passports, and by explaining the condition of my poor friend, to entreat permission to delay my journey,—at least until he should be somewhat recovered. The gruff old sergeant, however, deliberately examined my passport, and as rigidly decided that I could not remain. The words of the minister were clear and definite,—“Day by day, without halt, to the nearest frontier of France,” was the direction; and with this I must comply. In vain I assured him that no personal convenience, no wish of my own, urged the request, but the duty of humanity towards a fellow-traveller, and one who had strong claims on every soldier of the Empire.
“Leave him to me, Monsieur,” was the only reply I could obtain; and the utmost favor he would grant was the permission to take leave of my poor friend before I started.
Amid all the sufferings of his malady, I found the good priest dwelling in his mind on the scene with the vivandière,—which, perhaps, from the impressionable character of a sick man's temperament, had entirely filled his thoughts; and thus he wandered from the subject of his sorrows to hers, with scarcely a transition between them.
When I mentioned the necessity of our parting, he seemed to feel it more on my account than his own.
“I wished to have reached Paris with you,” he repeated over and over. “It was not impossible I could have arranged your return home. But you must go down to Sèvres,—the priest there, whoever he may be, will know of me; tell him everything without reserve. I am too ill to write, but if I get better soon—Well, well; that poor girl is an orphan too; and Alphonse was an orphan. With what misery have we struggled in France since this man has ruled our destinies! how have the crimes of a people brought their retribution to every heart and every home!—none too low, none too humble, to feel them. Leave this land; no blessing can rest upon it now. Poor thing! how worthy of a better lot she is! If this same officer should know,—it is not impossible. But, why do I say this? No, no; you'll never meet him now.”
He continued to mutter thus some broken and disjointed sentences, half-aloud, for some minutes, apparently unconscious of my presence.