CHAPTER XXIV
A VOLUNTEER
Beaudésir, by the wretched light of two tallow-candles, looked paler, thinner, more dejected, than even that pale, thin, anxious recruit who had joined the Grey Musketeers with so formidable a character as a master of defence some months before. No wonder. He was an enthusiast at heart, and an enthusiast can seldom withstand the pressure of continuous adversity. A temporary gleam of sunshine, indeed, warms him up to the highest pitch of energy, daring, and intellectual resource; nay, he will battle nobly against the fiercest storm so long as the winds blow, the thunder peals overhead, and less exalted spirits fly cowering to the nearest shelter; but it is in a bitter, bleak, protracted frost that he droops and fades away. Give him excitement, even the excitement of pain, and he becomes a hero. Put him to mere drudgery, though it be the honest drudgery of duty, and he almost ceases to be a man.
There is, nevertheless, something essentially elastic in the French character, which even in such a disposition as Beaudésir’s preserved him from giving way to utter despair. Though he might well be excused for repining, when thus compelled to gain his bread by teaching the landlord’s children to dance at a low pot-house, yet this young man’s natural temperament enabled him to take interest even in so unworthy an occupation, and he was jealous enough of their progress to resent that rude interruption he experienced from the parlour with a flash of the old spirit cherished in the King’s Musketeers.
Still he looked pale and wan, nor was it till George had forced on him a beaker of steaming punch that his eye recovered its brightness and the blood mantled once more in his clear sallow cheek.
“And you escaped them?” said the Captain, reverting to the fatal night of their affray in the Montmirail gardens. “Escaped them without a scratch! Well, it was ten to one against you, and I cursed the Duke with all my heart as I galloped on towards the coast when I thought of your predicament. Guard-room, court-martial, confession, and a firing party was the best I could wish you; for on the reverse of the card I pictured a lettre de cachet, and imprisonment for life in Vincennes or the Bastile! But how did you get away? and above all, how did you elude the search afterwards?”
Eugène wet his lips with the hot punch, which he seemed to relish less than his more robust comrade, and looked distrustfully about him while he replied—
“I had little difficulty in extricating myself from the gardens, my Captain, for when I had disposed of Bras-de-Fer, there was no real swordsman left. The Musketeers fight well, no doubt; but they are yet far from true perfection in the art, and their practice is more like our fishermen’s cudgel-play than scientific fencing. I wounded two of them slightly, made a spring at the wall, and was in the street at the moment you entered the Prince-Marshal’s carriage. My difficulty then was, where to conceal myself. I do not know Paris thoroughly, to begin with, and I confess I shuddered at the idea of skulking for weeks in some squalid haunt of vice and misery. I think I had rather have been taken and shot down at once.”
“You would not have been safe even in dens like those,” interrupted the other. “Our Débonnaire is not so refined in his orgies but that I believe every garret in the Faubourgs is frequented by himself and his roués. Bah! when we drew pay from Louis le Grand at least we served a gentleman. The Jesuits would have been your best chance. Why did you not take refuge with them?”