A cough interrupted him, and a bloody froth appeared upon his lips. His features were pinched with pain; he gasped; his eyes grew glassy, and, after a few slight convulsions, all that remained of Polidoro fell back in the colonel's arms.
San-Polo took the lieutenant's sword, pulled the knot off, and hastily handed it to me; then springing into the saddle he rode off at full gallop, without speaking a word or even turning his head.
"Quick, Brocard! Mount and accompany the colonel," I said. "You know how dangerous those guerillas are even in a rout. I shall not need you until we return to Mora."
III.
"And now that I have ended," said the general after a pause, "let us talk, if you please, about the rain and the weather. It is strange," he continued, pressing his hand to his brow, "how all these memories return, at the time when, thank God, our days of joy and trouble are nearly past."
"Yours?" the government clerk hastened to reply. "You are good for twenty years yet."
There are some honest people who always speak thus to old men.
"Good! very good!" growled the general, bending over the table to pour out another wine-glass of cognac. "In twenty years I will be no more thought of than if I had never lived. To the devil with wars and those who make them."
While his daughter and son-in-law were lifting their voices in protest against such an idea, I discreetly took up the lamp, and approached the frame to examine it more closely.