"And your father? Did you spend your furlough with him?"
"Yes, lieutenant. In fact, I meant to come to see you, to tell you that his business has picked up. He expects to pay a little of his debt next month."
"Write him that there's no hurry, my good Teilhard," replied Landri affectionately, motioning to the dragoon to move on. He saw a captain in undress uniform approaching—no other than Despois, the husband of Madame Olier's friend.
"So you were talking with your miraculous work?" said Despois laughingly to his subordinate. "Why, yes—why, yes—it's a genuine miracle. To have made a good soldier out of a blockhead like that animal. Don't blame any one but yourself if I entrust the desperate cases to you. I have taken advantage of your absence to turn over Baudoin to you. He still rides badly. I commend him to your very particular attention."
"I will attend to him at once," said Landri. "I'll take him alone before my drill." And when the captain had passed on, he said to the quartermaster, who was waiting at the door of the riding-school with several men and horses: "Saddle Panther for me, and call Baudoin."
Ten minutes later the mare he had asked for arrived, all saddled, with a simple snaffle in her mouth which she was already champing nervously, and led by the head by a youth of unkempt aspect with very black eyes glowing like coals in a grayish face. Simply from the way in which he wore his képi on one side, one divined in him the insolent vagabond; and from the brusque movement with which he put his hand to it to salute the officer, the smouldering revolt, the mere brute all ready to sing or think the obscene quatrain which we must never weary of citing to the smug optimists who refuse to recognize the ferocities hidden beneath the humanitarian mirage of socialism—those forerunners of a Terror which will be worse than the other, being better organized, and more degraded, being the work of a more degenerate race:—
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales,
À faire de nous des héros,
Ils saurent bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux.[4]
The beautiful beast led by that creature with the face of an Apache of the faubourgs presented a striking contrast to him by virtue of the dainty grace of her whole frame. She had the elevated tail, the short and supple loins, the long shoulder, legs like a stag's, and a small head. She had been in the regiment five days. The dealer, to improve her appearance for purposes of sale, had clipped her. The hair on her legs and that which showed under the flaps of the saddle was of a brown-bay color; the rest of her body, recently clipped, seemed to be iron-gray. As soon as she entered the riding-school she began to paw the ground impatiently.
"Well, mount her, Baudoin," said the officer; "let's see if she'll behave any better than she did the first day. I kept her for a good rider; and I know that you're one."
Baudoin, apparently insensible to this compliment, mounted Panther, who started off at the restrained trot of a beast who does not abdicate her free will. It was evident that she obeyed neither the pressure of the heel nor that of the rein. In this way she made the circuit of the ring four times, turning her head from side to side, making little attempts to escape when she came near the closed door—a ravishingly beautiful object in that vast empty space where she seemed to wander almost at will.