"Thanks! You're a good old boy, and a true one. There were five hundred thousand of us, of the same, same sort, in 1812; there are but two left; say, rather, one and a half."
About ten o'clock in the evening, M. Rollon, M. du Marnet and Fougas accompanied the Marshal to the cars. Fougas embraced his comrade and promised him to be of good cheer. After the train left, the three colonels went back to town on foot. In passing M. Rollon's house, Fougas said to his successor:
"You're not very hospitable to-night; you don't even offer us a pony of that good Andaye brandy!"
"I thought you were not in drinking trim," said M. Rollon. "You didn't take anything in your coffee or afterwards. But come up!"
"My thirst has come back with a vengeance."
"That's a good symptom."
He drank in a melancholy fashion, and scarcely wet his lips in his glass. He stopped a little while before the flag, took hold of the staff, spread out the silk, counted the holes that cannon balls and bullets had made in it, and could not repress his tears. "Positively," said he, "the brandy has taken me in the throat; I'm not a man to-night. Good evening, gentlemen."
"Hold on! We'll go back with you."
"Oh, my hotel is only a step."
"It's all the same. But what's your idea in staying at a hotel when you have two houses in town at your service?"