"Yes, indeed; I am proud to say that I was; and I have been in almost every battle that has been fought since. Now, I am resting."
Robineau took his eyes from his vanilla ice for an instant, to look at the speaker. He saw a man of fifty, whose frank and intelligent face bore more than one scar; his buttonhole was decorated with several orders, and Robineau said to himself:
"This gentleman has well earned his decorations—that is sure!"
"To be sure," rejoined the old soldier’s companion a moment later, "De Marcey is not old; he entered the service early in life, as you did; but so many things have happened since that it always seems as if centuries had passed over our heads."
"For my part, when I think of my campaigns, it seems as if it had all happened no longer ago than yesterday, for I fancy that I am still in the field!"
"He is like me," thought Robineau, "when I think of my first fancy. And yet it was ten years ago. She was a figurante at the Porte-Saint-Martin, and on the day of our first rendezvous we dined at the Vendanges de Bourgogne, Faubourg du Temple. It wasn’t a fashionable restaurant then as it is to-day, and there was no canal to cross to get there; but they served delicious sheep’s-trotters. It seems to me that I am there still. I was eighteen years old then. Ah me! one grows old without perceiving it!"
And Robineau heaved a sigh—which did not prevent his finishing his ice.
"When I say, Dolmont, that De Marcey seems changed to me, I refer to his temperament rather than to his physical aspect. If you had known him long ago—he was always in high spirits and a jovial companion; he used to laugh and joke with us. He was fond of the ladies—oh! he was a great lady’s man. But he was jealous of his mistresses, very jealous! I recall that on various occasions that tendency led him into quarrels; and indeed it was on account of it, I believe, that they married him at twenty-three to a young lady for whom he cared very little. His parents maintained that, with his jealous disposition, if he married for love he would be unhappy. And in fact his marriage began very auspiciously. I knew De Marcey’s first wife; she was a very attractive woman, and I believe that she would have made her husband very happy; unfortunately she died, a year after giving birth to a son. I learned that De Marcey married again after six years; but I was not in Paris then, and De Marcey had left the army. I never knew his second wife."
"He didn’t marry the second time in Paris, but somewhere in the neighborhood of Bordeaux. It seems that his wife’s family had an estate there, and the marriage took place on that property. Indeed, I think that he did not return to Paris with his wife until long after his second marriage."
"And what sort of person was his second wife?"