“The weaker side—” He paused abruptly, then added: “But it was not that.” Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared, his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, “I had to find something to do just then—it was necessary.” He stared into his glass; and it was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.
“Yes,” he replied gravely, “nearly twenty years altogether; I was one of Garibaldi's Mille in '60.”
“Surely you are not Italian?”
He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “I was in Genoa at that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man! One could not help it.” He spoke quite simply. “You might say it was like seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I went, just as you would have gone, if you'd been there. I was not long with them—our war began; I had to go back home.” He said this as if there had been but one war since the world began. “In '60,” he mused, “till '65. Just think of it! The poor country. Why, in my State, South Carolina—I was through it all—nobody could be spared there—we were one to three.”
“I suppose you have a love of fighting?”
“H'm!” he said, as if considering the idea for the first time. “Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes—because I was obliged; one must try to be a gentleman. But won't you have some more?”
I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase, one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little white moustaches, and murmuring, “Take care, my dear sir, there's a step there at the corner.”
“To be a gentleman!” I repeated in the street, causing an old French lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best feeling.