Camille knew to whom he was writing, and a jealous pang passed through him.
What he wrote ran thus,—
“A bastion is to be attacked at five. I command. Colonel Dujardin proposed we should draw lots, and I lost. The service is honorable, but the result may, I fear, give you some pain. My dear wife, it is our fate. I was not to have time to make you know, and perhaps love me. God bless you.”
In writing these simple words, Raynal’s hard face worked, and his mustache quivered, and once he had to clear his eye with his hand to form the letters. He, the man of iron.
He who stood there, leaning on his scabbard and watching the writer, saw this, and it stirred all that was great and good in that grand though passionate heart of his.
“Poor Raynal!” thought he, “you were never like that before on going into action. He is loath to die. Ay, and it is a coward’s trick to let him die. I shall have her, but shall I have her esteem? What will the army say? What will my conscience say? Oh! I feel already it will gnaw my heart to death; the ghost of that brave fellow—once my dear friend, my rival now, by no fault of his—will rise between her and me, and reproach me with my bloody inheritance. The heart never deceives; I feel it now whispering in my ear: ‘Skulking captain, white-livered soldier, that stand behind a parapet while a better man does your work! you assassinate the husband, but the rival conquers you.’ There, he puts his hand to his eyes. What shall I do?”
“Colonel,” said a low voice, and at the same time a hand was laid on his shoulder.
It was General Raimbaut. The general looked pale and distressed.
“Come apart, colonel, for Heaven’s sake! One word, while he is writing. Ah! that was an unlucky idea of yours.”
“Of mine, general?”