“Higher!” Sorel's eyes open. He guesses again, and recklessly: “ Dix dollars par semaine; you know—ten dol-lar ever-y week.”
Try again,—again,—again! He guesses,—madly now, as one risks his gold at Baden: twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen.
Yes, eighteen dollars a week, and more—a thousand dollars every year.
Sorel wipes his brow. A thousand dollars in one year! It is like a temptation of the devil.
Sorel ventures another inquiry. The chef of the customhouse, esteeming the old sol'iers so highly, is an old sol'ier himself,—is it not so? He has fought for his country? Doubtless he has lost an arm. And Sorel instinctively lets his right arm hang limp, as if the sleeve were empty.
No; the chef was an editor and a statesman in the time of the war. He had greatly desired to go to fight, but his duties did not permit it. Still, he loves the old soldier.
Another advance in the conversation, this time by Mr. Fox.
The government, it seems, has now awakened, with deep distress, to the fact that one class of her soldiers she has hitherto forgotten. The government—that is, the chef of the customhouse—had this very morning said to Mr. Fox that this class of old soldiers must be brought forward, for trust and for honor. “We must choose, for this vacant place,” the chef had said,—here Mr. Fox brings his face forward in close proximity to Sorel's astonished countenance,—“we must have, not only an old soldier, but— a Frenchman! ”
“Ah!”
“Such a soldier lives here,” says Mr. Fox; “is it not true? So brave, so honest, so modest, so faithful! Ready to die for his country; worthy of trust and worthy of reward!”