There were not many names on the roll, and the call was quickly finished. And now the infantry drummers raised their sticks high in the air, there was a sharp click, a crash, and the square echoed.
“March!” cried the officer; and, drummers ahead, the long single rank shuffled into fours, and the column started, enveloped in a throng of women and children.
“Good-bye!” sobbed the women. “We will pray!”
“Good-bye! Pray!”
The crowd pressed on into the dusk. Far up the darkening road the white coiffes of the women glimmered; the drum-roll softened to a distant humming.
The children, who did not understand, had gathered around a hunchback, the exempt cripple of the roll-call.
“Ho! Fois!” I heard him say to the crowd of wondering little ones, “if I were not exempt I’d teach these Prussians to dance the farandole to my biniou! Oui, dame! And perhaps I’ll do it yet, spite of the 275 crooked back I was not born with—as everybody knows! Oui, dame! Everybody knows I was born as straight as the next man!”
The children gaped, listening to the distant drumming, now almost inaudible.
The cripple rose, lighted a lantern, and walked slowly out toward the cliffs, carrying himself with that uncanny dignity peculiar to hunchbacks. And as he walked he sang, in his thin, sharp voice, the air of “The Three Captains”:
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“J’ai eu dans son cœur la plac’ la plus belle, La plac’ la plus belle. J’ai passé trois ans, trois ans avec elle, Trois ans avec elle. J’ai eu trois enfants qui sont capitaines, Qui sont capitaines. L’un est à Bordeaux, l’autre à la Rochelle, L’autre à la Rochelle. Le troisième ici, caressent les belles, Caressent les belles.” |