I was looking at my old commandant; he was walking in great strides, with energy still maintained, while his mule was exhausted, and even my horse was beginning to hang his head. This worthy man from time to time took on his shako to wipe his bald forehead and his few grey hairs, or his thick eyebrows, or his white moustache, from which the rain was dripping. He did not worry about the effect which his narrative might have had on me. He had not made himself out either better or worse than he was. He had not stooped to show himself to advantage. He was not thinking of himself, and, after a quarter of an hour, he began, in the same manner, a very much longer story about a campaign of Marshal Massena’s, where he had formed his company into a square against some cavalry or other. I did not listen to him, although he grew warm in demonstrating to me the superiority of the foot-soldier over the mounted man.
Night fell, we were not going fast. The mud was becoming thicker and deeper. Nothing on the road and nothing at the end. We stopped at the foot of a dead tree, the only tree in our path. He first attended to his mule, as I did to my horse. Then he looked into the cart, as a mother does into her child’s cradle. I heard him saying: “Come, my girl, spread this coat over your feet, and try to sleep.—Come, that’s right! She hasn’t got a drop of rain on her.—Oh! confound it! she has broken my watch that I left round her neck!—Oh! my poor silver watch!—There, it’s no matter; try to sleep, child. The fine weather will come soon.—It’s strange! she is always feverish; mad people are like that. Look, here’s some chocolate for you, child.”
He propped the cart against the tree, and we sat down under the wheels, sheltered from the incessant shower, sharing a loaf he had and one I had: a poor supper.
“I am sorry we have nothing but this,” he said; “but it’s better than horseflesh cooked under the ashes with gunpowder on top, by way of salt, as we used to eat it in Russia. As for the poor little woman, I am bound to give her the best I have. You see that I always keep her by herself. She cannot bear to be near a man since the affair of the letter. I am old, and she seems to believe that I am her father; in spite of that, she would strangle me if I tried merely to kiss her on the forehead. Education always leaves them something, it seems, for I have never seen her forget to hide herself like a nun.—That’s strange, eh?”
As he was talking of her like this, we heard her sigh and say: “Take away the lead! take away the lead!” I got up, he made me sit down again.
“Sit still, sit still,” he said to me, “it is nothing. She has always said that, because she always thinks she can feel a bullet in her head. That doesn’t prevent her doing whatever she is told, and that with great amiability.”
I was silent and listened to him sadly. I began to calculate that from 1797 to 1815, which we had reached, eighteen years had passed thus for this man.—For a long time I stayed beside him in silence, trying to account to myself for such a character and such a fate. Then, for no apparent reason, I gave him a very enthusiastic handshake. He was astonished at it.
“You are a noble man!” I said to him. He answered:
“Eh! why that? Is it because of that poor woman?... You know well, my lad, that it was a duty. I have long learnt to sacrifice self.”
And he talked to me about Massena again.