"Yes, Mademoiselle; he died in my arms. I have had the honour of calling myself his friend for above a year."
At that word Madame Drucour looked up and said:
"Ah, let me hear of Monsieur Wolfe! I had hoped to see him again myself. Such a hero, such a sweet and courteous gentleman! Frenchwoman though I be, I could have welcomed him as the victor of Quebec!"
All listened with deep attention as Julian related in considerable detail the story of the last hours of Wolfe, and Madame Drucour wiped her eyes many times during the recital.
"Ah! if he had but lived to see the city of his hopes, I would myself have been his nurse, and would have brought him back to health and strength.
"You smile, sir; but yet I have seen much of sickness. You will hear that the doctors themselves give me the credit for saving many lives."
"I can believe it, Madame; indeed I have seen something of that skill with mine own eyes. But, alas! I fear that the case of our friend was beyond human skill. I think that, had he had the choice, he would have chosen to die as he did in the hour of victory. To wear out a life of suffering in uncongenial inactivity would have been sorely irksome to his unquenchable spirit; and yet, after the hardships through which he had passed, I misdoubt me if he could ever have taken the field again. He would have endured the peril and pain of another long voyage only to die upon shipboard, or at his home if he lived to reach it. The hand of death was surely upon him."
"And to die in the hour of a glorious victory is surely a fitting close to a hero's life," said Corinne softly to Julian, when the tide of talk had recommenced to flow in other quarters. "But tell me, does he leave behind many to mourn him? Has he parents living, or sisters and brothers, or one nearer and dearer still? Has he a wife in England?"
"Not a wife, Mademoiselle, but one who was to have been his wife had he lived to return, and a mother who loves him as the apple of the eye. I shall have a sad task before me when I return to tell them of him whom they have loved and lost."
"Are you then going back to England?" asked Corinne; "are you not born in these lands of the West?"