“Mahon will shoot him, to a certainty,” muttered one of the captains.
“I’d not blame him,” joined another; “that horse saved his life at Quiberon, when he fell in with a patrol; and look at him now!”
The major made a sign for me to retire, and I turned and set out toward Nancy, with the feelings of a convict on the way to his fate.
If I did not feel that these brief records of an humble career were “upon honor,” and that the only useful lesson a life so unimportant can teach is, the conflict between opposing influences, I might possibly be disposed to blink the avowal, that, as I rode along toward Nancy, a very great doubt occurred to me as to whether I ought not to desert! It is a very ignoble expression; but it must out. There were not in the French service any of those ignominious punishments which, once undergone, a man is dishonored forever, and no more admissible to rank with men of character than if convicted of actual crime; but there were marks of degradation, almost as severe, then in vogue, and which men dreaded with a fear nearly as acute—such, for instance, as being ordered for service at the Bagne de Brest, in Toulon—the arduous duty of guarding the galley slaves, and which was scarcely a degree above the condition of the condemned themselves. Than such a fate as this, I would willingly have preferred death. It was, then, this thought that suggested desertion; but I soon rejected the unworthy temptation, and held on my way toward Nancy.
Aleppo, if at first wearied by the severe burst, soon rallied, while he showed no traces of his fiery temper, and exhibited few of fatigue; and as I walked along at his side, washing his mouth and nostrils at each fountain I passed, and slackening his saddle-girths, to give him freedom, long before we arrived at the suburbs he had regained all his looks, and much of his spirit.
At last we entered Nancy about nightfall, and, with a failing heart, I found myself at the gate of the Ducal palace. The sentries suffered me to pass unmolested, and entering, I took my way through the court-yard, toward the small gate of the garden, which, as I had left it, was unlatched.
It was strange enough, the nearer I drew toward the eventful moment of my fate, the more resolute and composed my heart became. It is possible, thought I, that in a fit of passion he will send a ball through me, as the officer said. Be it so—the matter is the sooner ended. If, however, he will condescend to listen to my explanation, I may be able to assert my innocence, at least so far as intention went. With this comforting conclusion, I descended at the stable door. Two dragoons in undress were smoking, as they lay at full length upon a bench, and speedily arose as I came up.
“Tell the colonel he’s come, Jacques,” said one, in a loud voice, and the other retired; while the speaker, turning toward me, took the bridle from my hand, and led the animal in, without vouchsafing a word to me.
“An active beast that,” said I, affecting the easiest and coolest indifference. The soldier gave me a look of undisguised amazement, and I continued,
“He has had a bad hand on him, I should say—some one too flurried and too fidgety to give confidence to a hot-tempered horse.”