As the train pulled out from the station—it was at Tarascon that they had joined me—he drew forth from his pocket a black little wooden pipe and a tobacco-bag. This was my opportunity. I also drew forth a pipe and a tobacco-bag. Would Monsieur accept some of my tobacco? I asked. I had brought it, I added, from America; it was tobacco of the Havana.
“Monsieur then is an American. That is interesting. And his tobacco is from the Havana, that is more interesting still. My cousin’s son has been for many years in America. His name is Marius Guiraud; he lives in San Francisco; possibly Monsieur and he have met?”
Monsieur regretted that he had not had this pleasure, and explained that his home was in New York—three times as far from San Francisco as Marseilles was from Paris.
“Name of a name! Is it possible? How vast this America must be! And they tell me—” Here he struck a wax match and paused to light his pipe. He drew a dozen whiffs in silence, while on his face was the thoughtful look of one whose taste in tobacco was critical and whose love for it was strong.
“Thunder of guns, but it is good!” he exclaimed, as he took the pipe from his mouth and passed it lightly back and forth beneath his nose. “Had we smoked tobacco like this in the Crimea we should have whipped those rascal Russians in a single week. Ah, that we often were without tobacco was the hardest part of all. I have smoked coffee grounds and bay, Monsieur, and have been thankful to get them—I myself, who well know what is good and what is not good in a pipe! This tobacco—it is divine!”
“Monsieur served in the Crimea?”
“This is the proof of it,” he said, a little grimly, touching the scar on his forehead.
“And this,” his wife added, touching the bit of red ribbon in his button-hole. “He was the bravest man in all that war, Monsieur, this old husband of mine. His cross was given him by—”
“Tchut, little one! What does Monsieur care how I got my cross? It was not much that I did. Any man would have done the same.”
“But the others did not do the same. They ran away and left thee to do it alone. Did not his Majesty tell thee—”