He was young; many would have guessed him at thirty years of age, but they would have been wrong, for he was some years under it. Although he had for a long period fought in the ranks of the Republican army, yet all were in ignorance of his former life. The only one to whom he seemed ever to open his heart was Sergeant Thaddeus, who had joined the regiment with him, and would at times speak vaguely of sad events in his early life. It was known that D’Auverney had undergone great misfortunes in America, that he had been married in St. Domingo, and that his wife and all his family had perished in those terrible massacres which had marked the Republican invasion of that magnificent colony. At the time of which we write, misfortunes of this kind were so general, that any one could sympathize with, and feel pity for, such sufferers.
D’Auverney, therefore, was pitied less for his misfortunes than for the manner in which they had been brought about.
Beneath his icy mask of indifference the traces of the incurably wounded spirit could be at times perceived.
When he went into action his calmness returned, and in the fight he behaved as if he sought for the rank of general; whilst after victory he was as gentle and unassuming as if the position of a private soldier would have satisfied his ambition. His comrades, seeing him thus despise honour and promotion, could not understand what it was that lighted up his countenance with a ray of hope when the action commenced, and they did not for a moment divine that the prize D’Auverney was striving to gain was simply—Death.
The Representatives of the People, in one of their missions to the army, had appointed him a Chief of Brigade on the field of battle; but he had declined the honour upon learning that it would remove him from his old comrade Sergeant Thaddeus.
Some days afterwards, having returned from a dangerous expedition safe and sound, contrary to the general expectation and his own hopes, he was heard to regret the rank that he had refused.
“For,” said he, “since the enemy’s guns always spare me, perhaps the guillotine, which ever strikes down those it has raised, would in time have claimed me.”
Such was the character of the man upon whom the conversation turned as soon as he had left the tent.
“I would wager,” cried Lieutenant Henri, wiping a splash of mud off his boot which the dog had left as he passed him, “I would wager that the captain would not exchange the broken paw of his dog for the ten baskets of Madeira that we caught a glimpse of in the general’s waggon.”
“Bah!” cried Paschal, the aide-de-camp, “that would be a bad bargain: the baskets are empty by now, and thirty empty bottles would be a poor price for a dog’s paw—why, you might make a good bell-handle out of it.”