“You felt somebody seize your feet, you were drawn gently over your horse’s tail, and were left sitting on the ground.”
“Why is it,” wondered Fabrizio, “that they keep going over things which we all know perfectly well!” He had not yet learned that this is the method whereby the humbler folk in France think a matter out.
“How much money have you?” inquired the cantinière of him. Fabrizio answered unhesitatingly; he was sure of this woman’s noble-heartedness—that is the finest side of the French character.
“I may have about thirty napoleons in gold, and eight or ten five-franc pieces, altogether.”
“In that case your course is clear,” cried the cantinière. “Get yourself out of this routed army, turn off to one side, take the first tolerable road you can find on the right, ride steadily forward, away from the army always. Buy yourself civilian clothes at the first opportunity. When you are eight or ten leagues off, and you see no more soldiers about you, take post-horses, get to some good town, and rest there for a week, and eat good beefsteaks. Never tell any one that you have been with the army; the gendarmes would take you up at once as a deserter, and, nice fellow as you are, my boy, you are not sharp enough yet to take in the gendarmes. Once you have civilian clothes upon your back, tear your route papers into little bits, and take back your real name. Say you’re Vasi—and where should he say he comes from?” she added, appealing to the corporal.
“From Cambray, on the Scheldt—it’s a good old town, very small, do you hear? with a cathedral—and Fénelon.”
“That’s it,” said the cantinière, “and never let out that you’ve been in the battle, never breathe a word about B⸺ nor the gendarme who sold you the papers. When you want to get back to Paris, go first of all to Versailles, and get into the city from that side, just dawdling along on your feet as if you were out for a walk. Sew your money into your trousers, and when you have to pay for anything, mind you only show just the money you need for that. What worries me is that you’ll be made a fool of, and you’ll be stripped of everything you have. And what is to become of you without money, seeing you don’t even know how to behave?”
The good woman talked on and on, the corporal backing her opinions by nodding his head, for she gave him no chance of getting in a word. Suddenly the crowd upon the high-road quickened its pace, and then, like a flash, it crossed the little ditch on the left-hand side and fled at full speed.
“The Cossacks, the Cossacks!” rang out on every side.
“Take back your horse,” cried the cantinière.