Since the First Consul advised it, I decided on the moment, and an hour later, saddle-bags packed, my man Cæsar holding his own horse and Fatima at the door, I was ready to start, only awaiting the Consul's commission. An officer rode up and handed me a packet.
"From General Bonaparte, sir," he said; and as I opened my saddle-bags to put the packet away for safe keeping, my eye caught the directions on the wrapper.
"To be delivered to the Comtesse de Baloit, Faubourg St. Germain."
The sight of the inscription gave me only pleasure, and I was tempted to think that the Consul had devised this commission especially to give me an opportunity of seeing the comtesse. It seemed to me an evidence of wonderful delicacy of feeling and thoughtfulness for others on the part of the great general, and I could not sufficiently admire him or be grateful to him. There was no question but that his commission would be faithfully executed the very first possible moment after my arrival in Paris.
It was early morning, the dew still on the hedges and the lark still singing his matins, as we entered the city with a stream of market-carts bringing in fresh fruits and vegetables and flowers for the early morning markets. Only working-people were in the streets: men going to their day's labor, blanchisseuses with their clothes in bundles on their heads, cooks and maids of all work with their baskets on their arms going to the market for the day's supply of food for the family.
Crossing the Place de la Bastille, a man on horseback rode up beside us and gave us good day. He had evidently come in with the country folk and was himself without doubt a small market-gardener, for the loam of the garden was on his rough cowhide boots and his blue smock was such as a countryman wears. I thought at first there was something strangely familiar in his face, and then I remembered I had seen him the evening before at the little country inn, twenty miles out from the city, where we had spent the night. He, like us, must have started at early dawn to reach the city by seven o'clock, very like for the same reason—to take advantage of the cool of the day; and like us also, he must have had a very good horse to make that distance in that time. I glanced at his horse as the thought occurred to me, and saw that it was indeed a good horse. Coal-black, except for a white star on his forehead and one white stocking, he was powerfully built, and yet with such an easy stretch of limb as promised speed as well as endurance. I thought it a little strange that a country farmer should own a horse of such points and breeding as this one showed itself to be, and perhaps my thought appeared in my face, for the countryman answered it.
"'Tis a fine horse, Monsieur, is it not?" he said.
I noticed that he spoke with a very slight lisp, but that otherwise both his language and his intonations were better than I could have expected.
"Yes," I said. "Did you breed him yourself?"
"Not exactly," he answered, "but he was bred on an estate belonging to the Comtesse de Baloit, where I work, and I have helped to train him."