“Why, it is you, Thaddeus; and how the deuce have you been able—eh? Poor dog, poor Rask, I thought that you were in the English camp. Where did you find him, sergeant?”
“Thanks be to heaven, captain, you see me as happy as your little nephew used to be when you let him off his Latin lesson.”
“But tell me, where did you find him?”
“I did not find him, captain; I went to look for him.”
Captain d’Auverney rose, and offered his hand to the sergeant, but the latter still kept his in the bosom of his coat.
“Well, you see, it was—at least, captain, since poor Rask was lost, I noticed that you were like a man beside himself; so when I saw that he did not come to me in the evening, according to his custom, for his share of my ration bread—which made old Thaddeus weep like a child, I, who before that had only wept twice in my life, the first time when—yes, the day when——” and the sergeant cast a sad look upon his captain. “Well, the second was when that scamp Balthazar, the corporal of the 7th half brigade, persuaded me to peel a bunch of onions.”
“It seems to me, Thaddeus,” cried Henri, with a laugh, “that you avoid telling us what was the first occasion upon which you shed tears.”
“It was doubtless, old comrade,” said the captain kindly, as he patted Rask’s head, “when you answered the roll-call as Tour d’Auvergne, the first grenadier of France.”
“No, no, captain; if Sergeant Thaddeus wept, it was when he gave the order to fire on Bug-Jargal, otherwise called Pierrot.”
A cloud gathered on the countenance of D’Auverney, then he again endeavoured to clasp the sergeant’s hand; but in spite of the honour that was attempted to be conferred on him, the old man still kept his hand hidden under his coat.