"Ma foi, my colonel; he escaped well; we were going to shoot him when the skirmish commenced. He is now upon the mountain, where I can vouch he gave us some famous help."
"He is here," said Brocard, "and in a sad condition. Here are his men bringing him upon their muskets."
When he reached us, Polidoro raised his head, not without great pain, and lifting his still bantering glance to the face of San-Polo, who stood grave and motionless, he cried with an attempt at his old gayety:
"Hit, colonel, hit! I am sorry, my colonel, that you can no longer break or even put me under arrest."
"I will have chance enough to do both yet," replied San-Polo, with an affected roughness which betrayed his anxiety to encourage the wounded soldier.
"O colonel! my account is closed this time," returned Polidoro. "Six bullets through the body, and two of them at least through my lungs. 'Tis enough for one, mon colonel."
Then some long-banished remembrances seemed to return, and a sad smile played over his features.
"Sancta Maria, mater Dei." he continued, in a tone still tinged with a sort of sorrowful gayety, "ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."
San-Polo threw himself from his horse, and pressed a flask of brandy to the lips of the wounded lieutenant, holding him up in his arms for a moment to help him to swallow a few drops.
"How kind you are to me!" murmured the dying man, in a scarcely audible voice; "you seem to think that, in spite of my follies, I was not so bad an officer after all. Keep, I pray you, my colonel, my sword in remembrance of me; only unfasten the sword-knot and give it to Bourdelaine. Ah! I wish you would give Zanetto fifteen francs for—the drum—I broke."