'The praise you bestow on our country, my friend,' said Lord Westhaven, 'is worth at least this piece de six francs, and the beauty de cette jolie enfant,[10] added he, turning towards the little paisanne, 'is interesting enough to induce me to enquire whether such a gift may not serve to purchase quelques petites amplettes a la ville.'[11] He presented the young woman with another crown.
The old Frenchman seemed ready to thank his Lordship with his tears.
Without solicitation or ceremony, seeing that the gentlemen were disposed to listen to him, he began to relate his 'short and simple' story.
Lady Westhaven and the Chevalier now arrived: but she sat down by Emmeline, and desired the old man to continue whatever he was saying.
'He has been praising our country,' said Lord Westhaven, 'and in return I am willing to hear the history of himself, which he seems very desirous of relating.'
'I was in the army,' said he, 'as we all are; till being taken with a pleurisy at Calais, and rendered long incapable of duty, I got my discharge, and hired myself as a travelling valet to a Milor Anglais. With him (he was the best master in the world) I lived six years. I went with him to England when he came to his estate, and five years afterwards came back with him to France. He met with a misfortune in losing une dame tres amiable, and never was quite well afterwards. To drive away trouble, pour se dissiper, he went among a set of his own countrymen, and I believe le chagrin, and living too freely, gave him a terrible fever. Une fievre ardente lui saisit a Milan, ses compagnons apparemment n'aimoit gueres les malades;[12] for nobody came near him except a young surgeon who arrived there by accident, and hearing that an Englishman of fashion lay ill, charitably visited him. But it was too late: he had already been eleven days under the hands of an Italian physician, and when the English gentleman saw him he said he had only a few hours to live.
'He sat by him, however. But my poor master was senseless; 'till about an hour before he died he recovered his recollection.
'He ordered me to bring him two little boxes, which he always carried with him, and charged me to go to England with his body, and deliver those boxes to a person he named. He bade me give one of his watches, which was a very rich one, to his brother, and told me to keep the other in memory of my master.
'Then he spoke to the stranger—"Sir," said he, "since you have the humanity to interest yourself for a person unknown to you, have the goodness to see that my servant is suffered to execute what I have directed, and put your seal on my effects. The money I have about me, my cloaths, and my common watch, I have given him. He knows what farther I would have done; I told him on the second day of my illness. Baptist—you remember——"