About seven o'clock, when the room was full of smoke, and the balls were rolling on the billiard tables, suddenly a young man, a soldier, entered, looking round in all directions.
It was the deserter.
He saw us at last, and approached us with his foraging cap in his hand. Burguet looked up and recognized him; I saw him turn red; the deserter, on the contrary, was very pale; he tried to speak, but could not say a word.
"Ah! my friend!" said Burguet, "here you are, safe!"
"Yes, sir," replied the conscript, "and I have come to thank you for myself, for my father, and for my mother!"
"Ah!" said Burguet, coughing, "it is all right! it is all right!"
He looked tenderly at the young man, and asked him softly, "You are glad to live?"
"Oh! yes, sir," replied the conscript, "very glad."
"Yes," said Burguet, in a low voice, looking at the clock; "it would have been all over now! Poor child!"
And suddenly beginning to use the thou he said, "Thou hast had nothing with which to drink my health, and I have not another sou. Moses, give him a hundred sous."