"Find means, croix Dieu!" muttered he piteously. "Kneel closer to me. I depend on your honour, Monsieur Stuart. Diane—Diane—"
"What of her? Say—say, ere it be too late!"
But there was no reply. What the Frenchman would have said, expired on his lips, and he fell back speechless on the hard knapsack which formed his pillow.
He never spoke again; but in a few minutes died, and without a struggle.
CHAPTER XIV.
DE MESMAI.
"Ah, me! how mournful, wan, and slow,
With arms reversed, the soldiers come;
Dirge-sounding trumpets full of woe,
And, sad to hear, the muffled drum!"
John Mayne.
The death-bed scene of poor D'Estouville, although it made on the witnesses of it a deep impression for the time, was easily passed over when the feelings are blunted and deadened by the continual excitement of campaigning. They had scarcely left the chapel or hospital, before the shade of sorrow which their faces had worn disappeared. Macdonald went away on some duty; Stuart's thoughts reverted to his arrest, and the disagreeable predicament in which he was placed; while De Mesmai began to talk in his usual light and careless style. He placed his scarlet forage-cap very much on one side, tightened his sash, arranging the tassels gracefully, and stuck his glass in his eye to ogle and scrutinize the females who passed.
"Poor Victor!" said he; "a merrier comrade or more gallant soldier than he was, there is not in the imperial service. Many a glorious evening we have had in Paris, flirting with the jolies grisettes of the Rue des Trois Maries,—fighting with the gendarmerie, and amusing ourselves by frolicking with messieurs the good-natured bourgeois,—some dozen of whom we have ducked in the Seine. These days are all passed away, and poor Victor is gone to his long home. War leads to death or glory, and his fate to-day maybe ours to-morrow; so, then, what is the utility of being cast down? Vive la joie! let us live and be merry while we can. Praised be our stars! here is a wine-house, where we can spend the evening in a jovial style, and scare away from our hearts the gloom cast upon them by the death of D'Estouville. Diable! mon ami; for what do you stare so at that old ruinous mansion?"
"'Tis the house of the Villa Franca family. I received great kindness from them, when I came to Merida for the first time."