“Can you, then, deem Napoleon's glory such?”
“Of course, to me it is. How am I a sharer in his triumphs, save as the charger that marches in the cavalcade? You don't perceive that I, as the descendant of an old Loyalist family, would have fared far better with the Bourbons, from reasons of blood and kindred; and a hundred times better with the Jacobins, from very recklessness.”
“How then came it—”
“I will spare you the question. I liked neither emigration nor the guillotine, and preferred the slow suffering of ennui to the quick death of the scaffold. There has been but one career in France for many a day past. I adopted it as much from necessity as choice; I followed it more from habit than either.”
“But you cannot be insensible to the greatness of your country, nor her success in arms.”
“Nor am I; but these things are a small ingredient in patriotism. You, the stranger, share with us all our triumphs in the field. But the inherent features of a nation,—the distinctive traits of which every son of the soil feels proud,—where are they now? What is France to me more than to you? One half my kindred are exiled; of those who remain, many regard me as a renegade. Their properties confiscated, themselves suspected, what tie binds them to this country? You are not more an alien here than I am.”
“And yet, Duchesne, you shed your blood freely for this same cause you condemn. You charged the Pratzen, some days ago, with four squadrons, against a whole column of Russian cavalry.”
“Ay, and would again to-morrow, boy. Had you been a gambler, I need n't have told you that it is the game, not the stake, that interests the real gamester. But come, do not fancy I want to make you a convert to these tiresome theories of mine. What say you to the pretty Mademoiselle Pauline? Did you admire her much?”
“She is unquestionably very handsome; but, if I must confess it, her manner towards me was too ungracious to make me loud in her praise.”
“I like that, I vow,” said Duchesne; “that saucy air has an indescribable charm for me. I don't know if it is not the very thing which pleases me most about her. She has been spoiled by flattery and admiration; for her beauty and her fortune are prizes in the great wheel. And that she is aware of the fact is nothing wonderful, considering that she hears it repeated every evening of her life, by every-rank in the service, from a marshal of France down to—a captain in the chasseurs à cheval,” said he, laughing.