“If you will permit a stranger, sir,” said I, “I will be but too proud and too happy to render you any assistance in my power. I am on the staff of General d'Auvergne, and—”
“A French officer, sir,” interrupted he; “quite enough. I ask for no other guerdon of your honor. Sit down here, then, and—But first try if you can discover a pocket-book in my sabretache; I hope it has not been lost.”
“Here it is, General,” said a soldier, coming forward with it; “I found it on the ground beside you.”
“Well, then, I will ask you to write down from my dictation a few lines, which, should this affair,”—he faltered slightly here,—“this affair prove unfortunate, you will undertake to convey, by some means or other, to the address I shall give you in Paris. It is not a will, I assure you,” continued he with a faint smile. “I have no wealth to leave; but I know his Majesty too well to fear anything on that score. But my children, I wish to give some few directions—” Here he stopped for several minutes, and then, in a calm voice, added, “Whenever you are ready.”
It was with a suffering spirit and a faltering hand I wrote down, from his dictation, some short sentences addressed to each member of his family. Of these it is not my intention to speak, save in one instance, where St. Hilaire himself evinced a wish that his sentiments should not be a matter of secrecy.
“I desire,” said he, in a firm tone of voice, as he turned round and addressed the soldiers on either side of him,—“I desire that my son, now at the Polytechnique, should serve the Emperor better than, and as faithfully as, his father has done, if his Majesty will graciously permit him to do so, in the grenadier battalion, which I have long commanded; it will be the greatest favor I can ask of him.” A low murmur of grief, no longer repressible, ran through the little group around the litter. “The grenadiers of the Sixth,” continued he, proudly, while for an instant his pale features flushed up, “will not love him the less for the name he bears. Come, come, men! do not give way thus; what will my kind young friend here say of us, when he joins the hussar brigade? This is not their ordinary mood, believe me,” said he, addressing me. “The Russian Guard would give a very different account of them; they are stouter fellows at the pas dé charge than around the litter of a wounded comrade.”
While he was yet speaking, Louis returned, followed by two officers, one of whom, notwithstanding his efforts at concealment, I recognized to be Marshal Murat.
“We must remove him, if it be possible,” said the surgeon, in a whisper. “And yet the slightest motion is to be dreaded.”
“May I speak to him?” said Murat, in a low voice.
“Yes, that you may,” replied Louis, who now pushed his way forward and approached the litter.