"Peste! so you name an avaricious monk, who wanted fifty thousand francs all to himself."
"Your chaplain."
"Yes—so don't bury him near me, I say."
"Why, chevalier?"
"He might trouble me in the night, for he has been a worse fellow in life than I, and is not likely to sleep so sound in that dark hole as poor Jules de Coeurdefer; so now with your permission, I shall end this scene myself. Once more, soldats, appretez-vous armes!"
The muskets were levelled at him, and steadily he looked at the twenty iron tubes before him.
"Joue!" he added rapidly, "FEU!"
The report of twenty muskets rang sharply on the still morning air, and pierced by eleven bullets the chevalier fell dead.
His body, shattered and covered by the blood that spouted from his wounds, was lowered, while warm, into the grave by the pioneers of the 51st; but before they covered it up, an officer stepped forward and took the cloak from his own shoulders to wrap up his miserable remains.
He who performed this last act of kindness to the earthly tenement of the wild and reckless spirit that had fled, was Allan Robertson of "Ours," the soi-disant Mousquetaire Gris.