It was evening in a crowded barrack-room in Paris. Recruits, not yet clad in uniform, but wearing the blouses or the coarse fustian jackets they had brought from their native villages, chatted, drank, quarrelled, or dozed upon the benches or about the floor. One noisy fellow was singing the Marseillaise at the top of his voice, another was defying any man in France to beat him at single-stick, but by far the greater number seemed dispirited and utterly weary.
A young lad had seated himself at the table, beneath one of the lamps which, at long distances, lit up the darkness of the great bare room. Writing materials were before him, and he had begun a letter, but paused, as if unable to proceed, and shaded his face with his hand. Presently the tears dropped slowly down between his fingers, blistering the paper; then once more he seized the pen, and wrote eagerly and rapidly:—
“Dearest mother, forgive me. I could not—no, I could not expose you and Clémence to the terrible sufferings inflicted upon the families of the refractory, even if, for myself, I was strong enough to encounter the horrors of a convict prison. There was no way but the way I took. M. le Curé answered for me to the maire, and concealed me in his house until marching orders came. As we started in the gray dawn of a winter’s morning, I hoped to pass unnoticed; but so many villagers were there to bid farewell to their friends, that I know you must have heard all. Mother, Clémence, pray for me; and oh, mother, forgive me if you can! It is not for Napoleon I am going to fight, but for France.”
“Conscript, do you want that letter put into the post to-night?” asked a short, thick-set, red-haired man with a corporal’s badge on his sleeve; “because, if you do, I am going out, and I am a very obliging fellow.”
Henri looked up quickly. He might perhaps have doubted the corporal’s word, but five or six other letters which he held in his hand seemed to corroborate his statement; besides, he knew that for him there would be no leave to go out that night.
“Then I shall be very much obliged to you, corporal,” he said.
“Quick with you then. Sign your name and give it to me. I cannot wait all night. You may make my compliments to your sweetheart while you are about it, however.”
Henri hastily folded and sealed his letter, and put it in the corporal’s outstretched hand.
“Peste, man!” said the other impatiently; “where is the postage?”
Henri took out half a franc. “That is it, I think,” he said, without noticing the signs one of his comrades was making to attract his attention. The corporal flung the coin upon the table, and caught it again, as if to try whether it was genuine, muttered a curse, and went his way.