mange de tout sur la terre.'"
"What, monsieur, you don't understand?"
"No, I don't."
"It is very plain it seems to me, but soldiers are so unfeeling."
"But think a moment, Mother Barbançon; here is a girl who, in her despair at poor Jacques's absence, sets about eating everything on the face of the earth."
"Of course, monsieur, any child could understand that."
"But I do not, I must confess."
"What! you can't understand that this unfortunate young girl is so heart-broken, after her lover's departure, that she is ready to eat anything and everything – even poison, poor thing! Her life is of so little value to her, – she is so wretched that she doesn't even know what she is doing, and so eats everything that happens to be within reach – and yet, her misery doesn't move you in the least."
The veteran listened attentively to this explanation, which did not seem to him so entirely devoid of reason, now, after all.
"Yes, yes, I understand," he responded, nodding his head; "but it is like all love songs – extremely far-fetched."
"'Poor Jacques' far-fetched? The idea!" cried Madame Barbançon, indignantly.
"'Every one to his taste,' as you remarked a moment ago," answered the veteran. "I like our old sea songs very much better. A man knows what he is singing about when he sings them."
And in a voice as powerful as it was discordant, the old captain began to sing:
"Pour aller à Lorient pêcher des sardines,
Pour aller à Lorient pêcher des harengs – "
"Monsieur!" exclaimed Madame Barbançon, interrupting her employer, with a highly incensed and prudish air, for she knew the end of the ditty, "you forget there are ladies present."
"Is that so?" demanded the veteran, straining his neck to see outside of the arbour.
"There is no need to make such an effort as that, it seems to me," remarked the housekeeper, with great dignity. "You can see me easy enough, I should think."
"That is true, Mother Barbançon. I always forget that you belong to the other sex, but for all that I like my song much better than I do yours. It was a great favourite on the Armide, the frigate on which I shipped when I was only fourteen, and afterwards we sang it many a time on dry land when I was in the Marine Corps. Oh, those were happy days! I was young then."
"Yes, and then Bû-û-onaparte" – it is absolutely necessary to spell and accent the word in this way, to give the reader any idea of the disdainful and sneering manner in which Mother Barbançon uttered the name of the great man who had been the cause of her brave soldier boy's death – "Bû-û-onaparte was your leader."
"Yes, the Emperor, that 'Corsican ogre,' the Emperor you revile so, wasn't far off, I admit."
"Yes, monsieur, your Emperor was an ogre, and worse than an ogre."
"What! worse than an ogre?"
"Yes, yes, laugh as much as you like, but he was. Do you know, monsieur, that when that Corsican ogre had the Pope in his power at Fontainebleau, do you know how grossly he insulted our Holy Father, your beast of a Bû-û-onaparte?"
"No, Mother Barbançon, I never heard of it, upon my word of honour."
"It is of no use for you to deny it; I heard it from a young man in the guards – "
"Who must be a pretty old customer by this time, but let us hear the story."
"Ah, well, monsieur, your Bû-û-onaparte was mean enough, in his longing to humiliate the Pope, to harness him to the little King of Rome's carriage, then get into it and make the poor Holy Father drag him across the park at Fontainebleau, in order that he might go in this fashion to announce his divorce to the Empress Josephine – that poor, dear, good woman!"
"What, Mother Barbançon," exclaimed the old sailor, almost choking with laughter, "that scoundrel of an Emperor made the Pope drag him across the park in the King of Rome's carriage to tell the Empress Josephine of his divorce?"
"Yes, monsieur, in order to torment her on account of her religion, just as he forced her to eat a big ham every Good Friday in the presence of Roustan, that dreadful mameluke of his, who used to boast of being a Mussulman and talk about his harem before the priests, just to insult the clergy, until they blushed with shame. There is nothing to laugh at in all this, monsieur. At one time, everybody knew and talked about it, even – "
But, unfortunately, the housekeeper was unable to continue her tirade. Her recriminations were just then interrupted by a vigorous peal of the bell, and she hurried off to open the door.
A few words of explanation are necessary before the introduction of a new character, Olivier Raymond, Commander Bernard's nephew.
The veteran's sister had married a copyist in the Interior Department, and after several years of wedded life the clerk died, leaving a widow and one son, then about eight years of age; after which several friends of the deceased interested themselves in the fatherless boy's behalf, and secured him a scholarship in a fairly good school.
The widow, left entirely without means, and having no right to a pension, endeavoured to support herself by her needle, but after a few years of pinched and laborious existence she left her son an orphan. His uncle Bernard, his sole relative, was then a lieutenant in command of a schooner attached to one of our naval stations in the Southern Pacific. Upon his return to France, the captain found that his nephew's last year in college was nearing an end. Olivier, though his college course had been marked by no particularly brilliant triumphs, had at least thoroughly profited by his gratuitous education, but unfortunately, this education being, as is often the case, far from practical, his future on leaving college was by no means assured.
After having reflected long and seriously upon his nephew's precarious position, and being unable to give him any pecuniary assistance by reason of the smallness of his own pay, Commander Bernard said to Olivier:
"My poor boy, there is but one thing for you to do. You are strong, brave, and intelligent. You have received an education which renders you superior to most of the poor young men who enlist in the army. The conscription is almost sure to catch you next year. Get ahead of it. Enlist. In that case, you will at least be able to select the branch of the service you will enter. There is fighting in Africa, and in five or six years you are likely to be made an officer. This will give you some chance of a career. Still, if the idea of a military life is distasteful to you, my dear boy, we will try to think of something else. We can get along on my pay, as a retired officer, until something else offers. Now think the matter over."
Olivier was not long in making up his mind. Three months afterward he enlisted, on condition that he should be assigned to the African Chasseurs. A year later he was a quartermaster's sergeant; one year afterward a quartermaster. Attacked with one of those stubborn fevers, which a return to a European climate alone can cure, Olivier, unfortunately, was obliged to leave Africa just as he had every reason to expect an officer's epaulettes. After his recovery he was assigned to a regiment of hussars, and, after eighteen months' service in that, he had recently come to spend a six months' furlough in Paris, with his uncle.
The old sailor's flat consisted of a tiny kitchen, into which Madame Barbançon's room opened, of a sort of hall-way, which served as a dining-room, and another considerably larger room, in which the commander and his nephew slept. Olivier, knowing how little his uncle had to live on, would not consent to remain idle. He wrote a remarkably good hand, and this, together with the knowledge of accounts acquired while acting as quartermaster, enabled him to secure several sets of books to keep among the petty merchants in the neighbourhood; so, instead of being a burden upon the veteran, the young officer, with Madame Barbançon's connivance, secretly added his mite to the forty-eight francs' pay the commander received each month, besides treating his uncle now and then to agreeable surprises, which both delighted and annoyed the worthy man, knowing, as he did, the assiduous labour Olivier imposed upon himself to earn this money.
Accustomed from childhood