In fact, when M. Perrelet came next morning he exclaimed at his assistant's bandaging. "You might have been lashing something to a mast!" he observed, and asked why his patient had not complained. But Aymar said gravely, "I should not dare to question anything M. de Courtomer did to me. He is too commanding." And he gave the confused Laurent a look oddly compounded of sadness, mischief, and affection.
(3)
Another week passed. Laurent received a letter from his mother, containing sympathetic messages to L'Oiseleur, and the information that the Aunts considered Laurent honoured as sharing his captivity, both of which announcements L'Oiseleur had received very stiffly. And for the rest of the day he had looked . . . Laurent had seen that look before, but he had never put a name to it . . . he had looked haunted.
That night, after Laurent was in bed, his fellow-captive suddenly asked, "What was M. Perrelet saying to you this morning about Napoleon's despatching troops to the west?"
"That something like twenty-five battalions of the line are being sent against Brittany and Vendée, besides cavalry and what not. It is flattering . . . if only one were free!"
"If you were—yes!"
"But I was only an aide-de-camp," faltered Laurent.
"The more lucky you! You had no men to throw away!"
He was tormenting himself about those miserable "Eperviers" of his, then—those scoundrels who did not deserve it! It was not easy for Laurent to realize that L'Oiseleur's lost legion consisted of two parts—the victims of the disaster at the bridge, and those who had subsequently made their leader a victim, too—and he tended to confound them both in one burning horror and hatred.
"Eveno, for instance," went on the sad voice in the darkness, "Eveno, who used to follow me like a dog—you remember, perhaps, my speaking of him in England—I do not know whether he is killed or a prisoner; he is just missing, like so many others . . ."