But she did not seem to notice that he stumbled. Her 6eyes were intent on the green water, which the oars transmuted into eddying crystals. He would go on, she knew, and lay more exposed the place where she meant to strike. She had coquetted with him, old play fellow that he was, for just a little during the voyage, as with others too, for that matter. But she had tired of it, as she had also of the chagrin of wives and sweethearts on board, or as she had of Hugo’s “Napoleon le Petit,” which she read purely out of contrariness to the censorship laid on the exiled poet. Michel Ney, however, and this she noted carefully, now kept close within his soldier’s shell. He had that unofficial duty to think on, which was enough and over.
“––as well as,” he finished desperately, “as a duty to an authority over us both. If you would believe that, mademoiselle?”
Then she struck. A word sufficed. “Oh, Monsieur the Sergeant!” she exclaimed. Her tone was deprecating, but she lingered wickedly on the title. The young Frenchman looked down on his natty uniform. No other cut or cloth in the whole imperial army of France was more dashing than the sky-blue of a Chasseur d’Afrique, but none of that filled Michel’s eyes. For him there were only the worsted stripes. He colored and winced.
“Forgive me,” she said meekly, “I should have said, ‘Monsieur the Duke.’”
The Chasseur flushed like a boy. “Why will you harp on what a grandfather made me?” he blurted out. “And what’s a duke––?”
“And a prince?–the Prince of Moskowa!” She courtesied from her slender waist.
“Alas for my blunders,” she sighed, “for it was more delicate after all to call you sergeant. In that I congratulate you yourself, Michel, and never a grandfather.”
Ney frowned unhappily. “The first prince of Moskowa 7was once a sergeant,” he murmured, “and why shouldn’t I, in this new country––”
“Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,” she sang, and smiled on him.
His eyes flashed, and because of the voice his heart quickened. He had heard of “this new country.” It was “a gold mine in a bed of roses,” but with a thorn, to say nothing of a bayonet, for every bud, and like many another young Frenchman he hoped to win renown in the romantic Mexican Empire, sprung like Minerva from the brain of his own emperor. And now here was a girl humming the war song of his fathers and of his race, and flaunting his warrior’s ambition in it.