"How do you know all this?" asked I, in amazement.
"Now for your name; tell me your name," cried he, grasping my hand in both of his—"and I charge you by all you care for here or hereafter, no deception with me. It is not a head that has been tried like mine can bear a cheat."
"I have no object in deceiving you; nor am I ashamed to say who I am," replied I. "My name is Tiernay—Maurice Tiernay."
The word was but out, when the poor fellow threw himself forward, and grasping my hands, fell upon and kissed them.
"So, then," cried he, passionately, "I am not friendless—I am not utterly deserted in life—you are yet left to me, my dear boy."
This burst of feeling convinced me that he was deranged; and I was speculating in my mind how best to make my escape from him, when he pushed back the long and tangled hair from his face, and staring wildly at me, said, "You know me now—don't you? Oh, look again, Maurice, and do not let me think that I am forgotten by all the world."
"Good heavens!" cried I; "it is Colonel Mahon!"
"Ay, 'Le Beau Mahon,'" said he, with a burst of wild laughter; "Le Beau Mahon, as they used to call me long ago. Is this a reverse of fortune, I ask you?" and he held out the ragged remnants of his miserable clothes. "I have not worn shoes for nigh a month. I have tasted food but once in the last thirty hours! I, that have led French soldiers to the charge full fifty times, up to the very batteries of the enemy, am reduced to hide and skulk from place to place like a felon, trembling at the clank of a gendarme's boot, as never the thunder of an enemy's squadron made me. Think of the persecution that has brought me to this, and made me a beggar and a coward together!"
A gush of tears burst from him at these words, and he sobbed for several minutes like a child.
Whatever might have been the original source of his misfortunes, I had very little doubt that now his mind had been shaken by their influence, and that calamity had deranged him. The flighty uncertainty of his manner, the incoherent rapidity with which he passed from one topic to another, increased with his excitement, and he passed alternately from the wildest expressions of delight at our meeting, to the most heart-rending descriptions of his own sufferings. By great patience and some ingenuity, I learned that he had taken refuge in the wood of Belleville, where the kindness of an old soldier of his own brigade—now a Garde de Chasse—had saved him from starvation. Jacques Caillon was continually alluded to in his narrative. It was Jacques sheltered him when he came first to Belleville. Jacques had afforded him a refuge in the different huts of the forest, supplying him with food—acts not alone of benevolence, but of daring courage, as Mahon continually asserted. If it were but known, "they'd give him a peleton and eight paces." The theme of Jacques's heroism was so engrossing, that he could not turn from it; every little incident of his kindness, every stratagem of his inventive good-nature, he dwelt upon with eager delight, and seemed half to forget his own sorrows in recounting the services of his benefactor. I saw that it would be fruitless to ask for any account of his past calamity, or by what series of mischances he had fallen so low. I saw—I will own with some chagrin—that, with the mere selfishness of misfortune, he could not speak of any thing save what bore upon his own daily life, and totally forgot me and all about me.