LAURETTE, OR, THE RED SEAL COUNT ALFRED DE VIGNY

I OF THE MEETING WHICH BEFELL ME ONE DAY ON THE HIGH ROAD

The high road through Artois and Flanders is long and dreary. It stretches in a straight line, without trees, without ditches, through flat fields that are always full of yellow mud. In the month of March, 1815, I travelled along this road, and a meeting befell me which I have never forgotten since.

I was alone, on horseback, I was wearing a handsome white cloak, a red uniform, a black helmet, pistols and a big sabre; it had been raining in torrents for the last four days and nights of my journey, and I remember that I was singing “Joconde” at the top of my voice. I was so young!—The King’s household, in 1814, had been filled up with children and grandsires; the Emperor seemed to have taken all the men and killed them.

My comrades were in front, on the road, in the train of King Louis XVII.; I saw their white clocks and red uniforms, right away on the northern horizon; Bonaparte’s lancers, who were watching and following our retreat step by step, from time to time showed the tricolour pennons of their lances on the opposite sky-line. A lost shoe had delayed my horse; he was young and strong, and I urged him on, so that I might rejoin my squadron; he set off at a rapid trot. I put my hand to my belt,—it was well enough furnished with gold pieces; I heard the iron scabbard of my sabre ringing against the stirrup, and I felt very proud and perfectly happy.

It was still raining, and I was still singing. However, I soon grew silent, tired of hearing no one but myself, and I no longer heard anything but the rain and the hoofs of my horse, which was floundering in the ruts. The road was unpaved; I was sinking, and was obliged to go at a walk. My top-boots were covered, outside, with a thick crust of mud as yellow as ochre; inside they were filling with rain. I looked at my brand-new gold epaulettes, my joy and comfort; they were roughened by the wet, which distressed me.

My horse lowered his head; I did the same: I began to think, and to wonder, for the first time, where I was going. I knew absolutely nothing about it; but that did not trouble me long: I was certain that, my squadron being there, there was my duty also. Feeling at my heart a deep, unchangeable calm, I gave thanks for it to the indescribable sense of Duty, and I tried to explain it to myself. Seeing at close quarters how unaccustomed fatigues were gaily borne by heads so fair, or so white, how a secure future was so cavalierly risked by so many prosperous men of the world, and taking my share in that miraculous satisfaction which is imparted to every man by the conviction that he cannot evade any debt of Honour, I concluded that an easier and more common thing than people imagine, is Self-sacrifice.

I wondered whether Self-sacrifice was not a feeling innate in us; what was this need of obeying, and resigning our will into another’s hands, as if it were a heavy and wearisome load; whence came the secret happiness at being rid of this burden, and why human pride had never rebelled against it. I saw clearly how this mysterious instinct bound peoples together, everywhere, into powerful unions, but nowhere did I see, so entire and so formidable as in Armies, this renunciation of individual actions, words, wishes and almost of thoughts. I saw resistance possible and usual everywhere, the citizen, in all places, practising a discerning and intelligent obedience which examines into matters, and may be suspended. I saw how even the wife’s tender submission ends as soon as she is bidden to do wrong, and how the law defends her; but military obedience, passive and active at one and the same time, receiving the order and carrying it out, striking, with eyes shut, like the ancient Destiny! I traced the possible consequences of the soldier’s Self-sacrifice, irretrievable, unconditional, and sometimes leading to terrible duties.

Thus I thought as I journeyed on at my horse’s pleasure, looking at the time by my watch, and seeing the road still stretching out in a straight line, without a tree or a house, and cutting the plain as far as eye could see, like a broad yellow stripe on a grey canvas. Sometimes the watery stripe blended with the watery earth around it, and, when a rather less pallid light illuminated this desolate stretch of country, I saw myself in the midst of a muddy sea, following a current of slime and plaster.

As I carefully examined this yellow stripe of road, I noticed on it, about a quarter of a league off, a little black moving speck. This gave me pleasure,—it was somebody. I saw that this black speck was going like myself in the direction of Lille, and that it was travelling in a zigzag, a sign of a laborious journey. I accelerated my pace and gained on this object, which lengthened somewhat and grew larger beneath my gaze. I resumed a trot on firmer ground, and thought I made out a kind of small black vehicle. I was hungry, I hoped that it was a canteen-woman’s cart, and, regarding my poor horse as a boat, I rowed it with all my might to reach that fortunate isle, in that sea wherein at times it sank up to the middle.

A hundred paces off, I was able to distinguish clearly a little white wooden cart, covered with three hoops and with black oilcloth. It looked like a little cradle set on two wheels. The wheels were sunk in the mud up to the axle-trees; a little mule which drew them was laboriously led by a man on foot who held the bridle. I drew near and viewed him with attention.

He was a man of about fifty, with a white moustache, tall and strong, with back bent like those old infantry officers who have carried the knapsack. He wore their uniform, and you caught a glimpse of a major’s epaulette under a short blue cloak, much worn. His face was rugged, but kind, as so many are in the army. He looked at me sideways under his thick black eyebrows, and briskly drew from his cart a gun, which he cocked, at the same time crossing to the other side of his mule, of which he made a rampart. Having seen his white cockade, I contented myself with showing the sleeve of my red uniform, and he replaced his gun in the cart, saying:

“Ah! that makes a difference, I took you for one of those fellows who are chasing us. Will you have a drink?”

“With pleasure,” I said, approaching him, “I have drunk nothing for twenty-four hours.”

He had hanging from his neck a cocoa-nut, very finely carved, contrived as a flask, with a silver neck, and he seemed rather proud of it. He passed it to me, and I drank a little poor white wine from it with great enjoyment; I returned the cocoa-nut to him.

“To the health of the King!” he said as he drank; “he made me an officer of the Legion of Honour, it is only fair that I should follow him to the frontier. Indeed, as I have only my epaulette to live by, I shall afterwards resume command of my battalion, it is my duty.”

So speaking, as if to himself, he started his little mule once more, saying that we had no time to lose; and, as I was of his opinion, I set off again along with him. I looked at him continually without questioning him, never having cared for the indiscreet chatter so common amongst us.

We went on without speaking for about a quarter of a league. As he stopped then to give a rest to his little mule, which it pained me to see, I stopped too and tried to squeeze from my riding-boots the water which filled them, as if they were two wells in which my legs had been soaked.

“Your boots are beginning to stick to your feet,” he said.

“I have not had them off for four nights,” I told him.

“Pooh! in a week you won’t notice it,” he rejoined in his hoarse voice; “it is something to be alone, you know, in times like those we live in. Do you know what I have in there?”

“No,” I said.

“A woman.”

I said “Oh!” without too much surprise, and marched on calmly, at a walking pace. He followed me.

“That wretched wheelbarrow didn’t cost me much,” he went on, “nor the mule either; but it is all I need, though this road is a devil of a pull.”

I offered him my horse to mount when he felt tired; and as I only talked to him gravely and simply of his turn-out, for which he feared mockery, he suddenly put himself at his ease, and, coming near my stirrup, slapped me on the knee, saying:

“Well, you’re a good lad, though you are in the Reds.”

From his bitter tone, in thus designating the four Red Companies, I gathered what malignant prejudices had been aroused in the army by the luxury and the commissions of these corps of officers.

“However,” he added, “I shall not accept your offer, seeing that I cannot ride, and that that’s not my business.”

“But, major, superior officers like yourself have to do so.”

“Pooh! once a year at the inspection, and then on a hired horse. I have always been a sailor, and since then a foot-soldier; I don’t understand horsemanship.”

He walked twenty paces, looking at me sideways from time to time, as if expecting a question: and as no word was forthcoming he continued:

“You aren’t inquisitive, upon my word! What I said just now should have surprised you.”

“I am seldom surprised,” said I.

“Oh! but if I told you how I left off being a sailor, we should see.”

“Well,” I replied, “why don’t you try? it will warm you, and make me forget that the rain is soaking into my back and only stopping at my heels.”

The good major solemnly prepared to speak, with all the pleasure of a child. He adjusted his oilcloth-covered shako on his head, and jerked his shoulder in a way that no one who has not served in the infantry can picture, in the way that a foot-soldier does to lift his knapsack and lighten its weight for a moment; it is a soldier’s custom, which, in an officer, becomes a bad habit. After this convulsive gesture, he again drank a little wine from his cocoa-nut, gave the little mule an encouraging kick in the stomach, and began.

II THE STORY OF THE RED SEAL

You must know first of all, my lad, that I was born at Brest; I began as a soldier’s son, earning my half-rations and half-pay from the time I was nine years old, my father being a private in the Guards. But, as I loved the sea, one fine night, while I was on leave at Brest, I hid in the bottom of the hold of a merchant vessel leaving for the Indies; they only discovered me in mid-ocean, and the captain preferred making me a cabin-boy to throwing me overboard. When the Revolution came, I had made some progress, and in my turn had become captain of a neat enough little merchant vessel, having scoured the sea for fifteen years. When the ex-royal navy, a fine old navy too, by Jove! suddenly found itself without officers, they took some captains from the merchant navy. I had had some skirmishes with buccaneers of which I may tell you later; they put me in command of a brig of war named the “Marat.”

On the 28th of Fructidor, 1797, I received orders to set sail for Cayenne. I had to take there sixty soldiers and a man sentenced to transportation, who was left over from the hundred and ninety-three whom the frigate “Decade” had taken on board some days before. I was ordered to treat this individual with consideration, and in the Directory’s first letter was enclosed a second, sealed with three red seals, in the midst of which was one very large. I was forbidden to open this letter before reaching the first degree of north latitude, between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of longitude, that is to say, when just about to cross the line.

This big letter had a quite peculiar appearance. It was long, and so tightly shut that I could read nothing between the corners or through the envelope. I am not superstitious, but that letter frightened me. I put it in my room under the glass of a wretched little English clock which was nailed over my bed. That bed was a real sailor’s bed, you know what they are like. But what am I talking about? You are sixteen at the very most, you can’t have seen one.

A queen’s room cannot be arranged as neatly as a sailor’s, I say it without any wish to boast. Everything has its own little place and its own little nail. Nothing can move about. The vessel may roll as it pleases, without displacing anything. The furniture is made to suit the shape of the ship and of your own little room. My bed was a chest. When it was open, I slept in it; when it was shut, it was my sofa, and I smoked my pipe on it. Sometimes it was my table; then we sat on two little casks which were in the room. My floor was waxed and scrubbed like mahogany, and shone like a jewel: a real mirror! Oh! it was a pretty little room! And my brig certainly had its value as well. We often enjoyed ourselves famously there, and the voyage began pleasantly enough that time, had it not been.... But we must not anticipate.

We had a good north-north-west wind, and I was engaged in putting the letter under the glass of my clock, when my “convict” entered my room; he was holding the hand of a pretty young thing of about seventeen. He told me that he was nineteen; a handsome fellow, though rather pale, and too fair-skinned for a man. He was a man all the same; and a man who conducted himself, when occasion arose, better than many old ones would have done, as you will see. He held his little wife by the arm; she was as fresh and gay as a child. They looked like two turtle-doves. To me it was a pleasant sight. I said to them:

“Well, children! you have come to pay the old captain a visit: it is charming of you. I am taking you rather a long way; but so much the better, we shall have time to get to know one another. I am sorry to receive the lady without my coat; but I was going to nail this great rascal of a letter up there. Perhaps you would give me a hand?”

They really were good little things. The little husband took the hammer, and the little wife the nails, and they passed them to me as I asked for them; and she said to me: “Right! left! captain!” laughing because the pitching of the ship made my clock toss about. I can still hear her even now with her little voice: “Left! right! captain!” She was laughing at me.—” Ah!” I said, “you little mischief! I will make your husband scold you, I will!” Then she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. They really were charming, and that was the way we became acquainted. We were good friends at once.

It was a good crossing too. I always had weather that might have been made for me. As I had never had any but black faces on my ship, I made my two little lovers come to my table every day. It cheered me up. When we had eaten the biscuits and fish, the little wife and her husband kept on looking at each other as if they had never seen each other before. Then I would begin to laugh with all my heart and make fun of them. They laughed too with me. You would have laughed to see us like three lunatics, not knowing what was the matter with us. It was really pleasant to see them loving each other like that! They were happy everywhere; they liked all that was given to them. Yet they were allowanced like all the rest of us; I only added a little Swedish brandy when they dined with me, just a small glass, to keep up my rank. They slept in a hammock, in which the ship rolled them about like those two pears I have there in my wet handkerchief. They were brisk and contented. I was like you, I asked no questions. What need was there for me, a ferryman, to know their name and business? I was carrying them from the other side of the sea, as I would have carried two birds of paradise.

At the end of a month, I had got to look on them as my children. All day long, when I called them, they would come to sit with me. The young man wrote at my table, that is to say on my bed; and, when I wished, he helped me to take my “reckoning.” He soon knew how to do it as well as I; I was sometimes quite amazed at it. The young wife would sit on a little cask and begin to sew.

One day that they were settled like this I said to them:

“Do you know, my little friends, that we make a family picture, as we are now? I don’t want to question you, but probably you haven’t more money than you need, and you are pretty delicate, both of you, to dig and use the pick as the convicts at Cayenne do. It is a wretched country, I can tell you that with all my heart; but I, who am an old wizened tar dried up by the sun, I should live there like a lord. If you had, as it seems to me (without wishing to question you) that you do have, a little liking for me, I should be willing enough to leave my old brig, which is now no better than an old tub, and I would settle there with you, if you like. I have no family but a dog, which is a grief to me; you would be a little company for me. I would help you in many things; and I have got together a good stock of goods honestly enough smuggled, on which we should live, and which I should leave you when I came to turn up my toes, as they say in polite society.”

They sat staring at one another quite amazed, looking as if they thought I was not speaking the truth; and the little woman ran, as she always did, and threw her arms round the other’s neck, and sat on his knees, quite red in the face, and crying. He hugged her tightly, and I saw tears in his eyes as well; he held out his hand to me, and turned paler than usual. She whispered to him, and her long fair locks fell over his shoulder; her hair had come untwisted like a rope suddenly uncoiled, for she was as lively as a fish: that hair, if only you could have seen it! it was like gold. As they kept on whispering, the young man kissing her brow from time to time, and she weeping, I grew impatient:

“Well, would that suit you?” I said to them at last.

“But ... but, captain, you are very kind,” said the husband, “but the fact is ... you could not live with convicts, and....” He looked down.

“I don’t know,” I said, “what you have done to get transported, but you’ll tell me that some day, or not at all, if you’d prefer. You don’t look to me as if your consciences were very heavy, and I’m quite sure that I’ve done many worse things than you in my life, so there, you poor innocents. Of course while you are in my custody, I shall not release you, you mustn’t expect it; I would sooner cut off your heads like two pigeons’. But, the epaulette once laid aside, I no longer know either admiral or anything else.”

“The fact is,” he answered, sadly shaking his dark head, dark, although powdered a little, as was still the fashion at that time, “the fact is I think it would be dangerous for you, captain, to seem to know us. We laugh because we are young; we look happy because we love each other; but I have some bad moments when I think of the future, and cannot tell what will happen to my poor Laura.”

Again he pressed his young wife’s head to his bosom:

“That was really what I was bound to say to the captain; would not you have said the same thing, child?”

I took my pipe and got up, because I was beginning to feel my eyes rather moist, and that doesn’t suit me.

“Come! come!” I said, “things will clear themselves up later on. If the lady objects to tobacco, her withdrawal would oblige.”

She got up, her face all flaming and wet with tears, like a child that has been scolded.

“Anyhow,” she said to me, looking at my clock, “you are forgetting, you people; what about the letter!”

I felt something which affected me powerfully. I seemed to have a pain in my hair when she said that to me.

“Good Heavens! I had quite forgotten about it,” I said. “Ah! upon my word, this is a pretty business! If we had passed the first degree of north latitude, there would be nothing more for me to do but to throw myself into the water.—Just to make me happy, the child reminds me of that villainous letter!”

I looked quickly at my chart, and, when I saw that we had a week at least still to go, my head was relieved, but my heart, without my knowing why, was not.

“The fact is that the Directory doesn’t treat the question of obedience as a joke!” I said. “Come, I am posted up this time again. The time went past so quickly that I had quite forgotten that.”

Well, sir, we all three remained with our noses in the air looking at the letter, as if it was going to speak to us. What struck me a good deal was, that the sun, which slipped in through the skylight, was lighting up the glass of the clock, and showed up the big red seal, and the other little ones, like the features of a face in the midst of the fire.

“Wouldn’t you say that its eyes were jumping out of its head?” I said to amuse them.

“Oh! my friend,” said the young wife, “it looks like spots of blood.”

“Pooh! pooh!” said her husband, taking her arm, “you are wrong, Laura; it looks like a circular to announce a wedding. Come and rest, come along; why does the letter trouble you?”

They ran away as if a ghost had followed them, and went up on deck. I remained alone with the big letter, and I remember that as I smoked my pipe I kept looking at it, as if its red eyes held mine fast, sucking them in as a serpent’s eyes do. Its great pale face, its third seal, bigger than the eyes, wide open, gaping like the jaws of a wolf ... all that put me in a bad temper; I took my coat and hung it on the clock, so as not to see any more either the time or the brute of a letter.

I went to finish my pipe on deck. I stayed there till nightfall.

We were then off the Cape Verde Islands. The “Marat” was shooting along, sailing before the wind, at ten knots, without inconveniencing herself. The night was the finest I have seen in my life near the tropic. The moon was rising above the horizon, as large as a sun; the sea cut it in half, and turned quite white like a sheet of snow covered with little diamonds. I looked at this as I smoked, sitting on my seat. The officer of the watch and the sailors said nothing, and like me watched the shadow of the brig on the water. I was pleased at hearing nothing. I like silence and order. I had forbidden any noise and any fire. I caught a glimpse, however, of a little red line almost under my feet. I should have flown into a rage at once; but, as it was coming from my little “convicts,” I wanted to make sure of what they were doing before I got angry. I had only the trouble of stooping down, and I could see, through the big skylight, into the little room: and I looked.

The young wife was on her knees, saying her prayers. There was a little lamp that threw its light on her. She was in her nightgown; I could see from above her bare shoulders, her little bare feet, and her long fair hair, all dishevelled. I thought of drawing back, but I said to myself: “Pooh! an old soldier, what does he matter?” And I continued watching.

Her husband was sitting on a little trunk, his head on his hands, watching her as she prayed. She raised her head upwards, as if to heaven, and I saw her big blue eyes wet like those of a Magdalene. While she prayed, he took the ends of her long tresses and kissed them noiselessly. When she had finished, she made the sign of the cross, smiling as if she were entering paradise. I saw that he made the sign of the cross like her, but as if he were ashamed of it. In fact, for a man it is odd.

She stood up, kissed him, and stretched herself out the first in her hammock, into which he lifted her without a word, as you put a child into a swing. The heat was stifling; she felt herself pleasantly lulled by the motion of the ship, and seemed already to be falling asleep. Her little white feet were crossed and raised to a level with her head, and her whole body wrapped in her long white nightgown. She was a dear, she was!

“My love,” she said, half asleep, “are you not sleepy? Do you know it’s very late?”

He still remained with his brow on his hands, not answering. This troubled her a little, the good little soul, and she put her pretty head out of the hammock, like a bird’s out of its nest, and looked at him with parted lips, not daring to speak again.

At last he said to her:

“Ah! my dear Laura, as we draw nearer to America, I cannot help growing sadder. I don’t know why, but it seems to me that the happiest time of our life will have been that of the voyage.”

“I think so too,” she said; “I should like never to get there.”

He looked at her, clasping his hands with a rapture which you cannot imagine.

“And yet, my angel, you always weep as you pray to God,” he said; “that grieves me very much, for I know well of what people you are thinking, and I believe that you regret what you have done.”

“I, regret it!” she said, looking very hurt; “I, regret having followed you, my beloved! Do you think that, because I have belonged to you such a little while, I love you the less? Is one not a woman, does not one know one’s duty, at seventeen? Did not my mother and sisters say that it was my duty to follow you to Guiana? Did they not say that in that I was doing nothing surprising? I am only surprised that it should have touched you, my love; it is all natural. And now I don’t know how you can think that I regret anything, when I am with you to help you to live, or to die with you if you die!”

She said all that in a voice so soft that you would have thought it was music. I was quite touched by it, and said:

“You’re a good little woman, you are!”

The young man began to sigh and tap the floor with his foot, as he kissed a pretty hand and bare arm that she held out to him.

“Oh! Laurette, my Laurette!” he said, “when I think that, if we had delayed our marriage for four days, I should have been arrested alone and should have departed alone, I cannot forgive myself.”

Then the little beauty stretched out of the hammock her pretty white arms, bare to the shoulders, and stroked his brow, his hair, and his eyes, taking his head as if she would carry it away and hide it in her bosom. She smiled like a child, and said to him a lot of little womanly things, the like of which I had never heard before. She closed his mouth with her fingers so that only she could speak. She said, playfully taking her long hair like a handkerchief to wipe his eyes:

“Tell me, is it not much better to have with you a woman who loves you, my beloved? I am quite pleased, myself, to go to Cayenne; I shall see savages and cocoa-palms like Paul and Virginia’s, shan’t I? We shall each plant our own. We shall see which will be the better gardener. We’ll make a little hut for us two. I will work all day and all night, if you like. I am strong; see, look at my arms;—see, I could almost lift you. Don’t laugh at me; I can embroider very well, besides; and is there not a town somewhere thereabouts where they need embroiderers? I will give lessons in drawing and music if they want them too; and, if they can read there, you will write.”

I remember that the poor fellow was in such despair that he gave a great cry when she said that.

“Write!”—he exclaimed,—” write!”

And he grasped the wrist of his right hand with his left.

“Oh! write! why did I ever learn to write? Write! why it’s a madman’s trade!...—I believed in their liberty of the press!—Where did I get my brains! Eh! and for what? to print five or six poor commonplace ideas, only read by those who like them, thrown in the fire by those who hate them, of no use but to cause us to be persecuted! It doesn’t matter for me; but you, lovely angel, become a woman scarcely four days ago! Explain to me, I beg of you, how it was I allowed you to be so good as to follow me here? Do you know at all where you are, poor little one? And do you know where you are going? Soon, child, you will be sixteen hundred leagues from your mother and sisters ... and for me! all that for me!”

She hid her head for a moment in the hammock; and I from above saw that she was crying; but he below did not see her face; and, when she withdrew it from the sheet, it was with a smile to make him cheerful.

“It’s true, we’re not rich just now,” she said, and burst out laughing; “see, look at my purse, I have no more than one single louis left. What have you?”

He began to laugh too like a child:

“On my word, I had a crown left, but I gave it to the little boy who carried your box.”

“Oh, pooh! what does that matter”! she said snapping her little white fingers like castanets; “one is never gayer than when one has nothing; and haven’t I in reserve the two diamond rings that my mother gave me? those are good anywhere, and for anything, aren’t they? When you wish, we will sell them. Besides, I think that the dear good captain hasn’t told us all his kind intentions towards us, and that he knows quite well what is in the letter. It is surely a recommendation for us to the governor of Cayenne.”

“Perhaps,” he said; “who knows?”

“Isn’t it?” his little wife went on; “you are so good, that I’m sure that the government has exiled you for a little time, but isn’t angry with you.”

She had said that so well! calling me the dear good captain, that I was quite moved and softened by it; and I even rejoiced in my heart, that she had perhaps guessed rightly about the sealed letter. They began again to kiss one another; I stamped sharply on the deck to make them stop.

I shouted to them:

“Hi! come now, my little friends! the order has been given that all lights on this vessel are to be put out. Blow out your light, if you please.”

They blew out the lamp, and I heard them laugh and chatter in whispers in the dark like school-children. I began again to walk up and down alone on my deck, smoking my pipe. All the stars of the tropics were at their posts, as big as little moons. I looked at them, and breathed in air which felt fresh and pleasant.

I said to myself that the good little things had certainly guessed the truth, and I was quite cheered up by this. It was indeed to be wagered that one of the five Directors had changed his mind and recommended them to me; I didn’t very well explain to myself why, for there are affairs of state that I for my part have never understood; but, in short, I believed it, and, without knowing why, I was satisfied.

I went down to my room, and went to look at the letter under my old uniform coat. It had a different face: it seemed to me to laugh, and its seals looked rose-coloured. I no longer doubted its good nature, and made it a little signal of friendship.

In spite of that, I put my coat back on the top of it; it worried me. We never thought of looking at it at all for some days, and we were cheerful; but, when we approached the first degree of latitude, we began to stop talking.

One fine morning, I woke rather surprised at feeling no motion in the ship. To tell the truth, I always sleep with one eye open, as they say, and, as I missed the rolling, I opened them both. We had fallen on a dead calm, and it was below the first degree of north latitude, at the 27th of longitude. I put my nose above deck: the sea was as smooth as a bowl of oil; all the spread sails were fallen, clinging to the masts like empty balloons. I said at once: “Come, I shall have time to read you!” looking sideways in the direction of the letter. I waited till evening, at sunset. However, it had to be done: I opened the clock, and hastily pulled out the sealed order.—Well, my dear fellow, I held it in my hands for a quarter of an hour, without being able to read it. At last I said to myself: “This is too much!” and I broke the three seals with my thumb; and, as for the big red seal, I ground it into dust.

After I had read I rubbed my eyes, thinking I had made a mistake.

I re-read the whole letter; I re-read it again; I began once more taking the last line and going back to the first. I didn’t believe it. My legs were shaking under me a little, I sat down; I had a sort of quivering on the skin of my face; I rubbed my cheeks a little with rum, I put some in the hollow of my hands, I pitied myself for being so foolish; but it only lasted a moment; I went up to get some air.

Laurette was so pretty that day, that I didn’t wish to go near her: she had a little white frock, quite plain, her arms bare to the neck, and her long hair loose as she always wore it. She was amusing herself with dipping her other dress into the sea at the end of a string, and laughed as she tried to catch the sea-wrack, a plant that looks like bunches of grapes, and floats on the water in the tropics.

“Do come and see the grapes! come quickly!” she was crying; and her lover leaned on her and bent down, and did not look at the water, for he was looking at her very tenderly.

I signed to the young man to come and speak to me on the quarter-deck. She turned round. I don’t know what I looked like, but she let her string fall; she seized him violently by the arm, and said:

“Oh! don’t go, he is quite pale.”

That might well be; there was something to be pale about. Nevertheless he came to me on the quarter-deck; she looked at us, leaning against the mainmast. For a long time we walked up and down without saying anything. I was smoking a cigar which seemed to me bitter, and I spat it into the water. His eye followed me; I took his arm; I was choking, truly, on my word of honour! I was choking.

“Let us see!” I said to him at last, “tell me now, my little friend, tell me a little of your history. What the devil have you done to those dogs of lawyers who are there like five bits of a king? It seems that they are mightily angry with you! It’s strange!”

He shrugged his shoulders, inclining his head (with such a gentle look, poor fellow!), and said:

“On my soul! captain, nothing much, after all: three verses of a ballad on the Directory, that’s all.”

“Impossible!!” I said.

“On my soul, yes! The verses weren’t even very good. I was arrested on the 15th of Fructidor and taken to La Force, tried on the 16th, and condemned to death at first, then to transportation as a favour.”

“Strange!” I said. “The Directors are very touchy fellows: for that letter you know of orders me to shoot you.”

He did not answer, and smiled, keeping his countenance pretty well for a young man of nineteen. He only looked at his wife, and wiped his brow, from which drops of sweat were falling. I had as much at least on my face, and drops of another kind in my eyes.

I went on:

“It appears that those citizens didn’t want to do for you on land, they thought that here it wouldn’t be noticed so much. But it’s very distressing for me; for it’s no use your being a good fellow, I cannot get out of it; the sentence of death is there in due form, and the warrant for execution signed, paraphed, and sealed; nothing is wanting.”

He bowed to me very politely, reddening.

“I ask nothing, captain,” he said in a voice as gentle as ever; “I should be very sorry to make you fail in your duty. I should only like to speak a little to Laura, and to beg you to protect her in the event of her surviving me, which I don’t think likely.”

“Oh! as for that, it’s all right, my lad,” I said to him; “if you have no objection, I will take her to her family on my return to France, and will only leave her when she no longer wishes to see me. But, in my opinion, you can flatter yourself that she won’t recover from that blow; poor little woman!”

He took both my hands, and pressed them, saying to me:

“My good captain, you are suffering more than I from what remains for you to do, I know very well; but what can we do? I can count on you to keep for her the little that belongs to me, to protect her, to see that she receives whatever her old mother may leave her, can I not? to defend her life, her honour, can I not? and also to see that her health is always cared for.—Stay,” he added in a lower tone, “I must tell you that she is very delicate; often her chest is so much affected that she faints several times in a day; she must always be well wrapped up. In fact you will take the place of her father, her mother, and myself as much as possible, is that not so? If she could keep the rings that her mother gave her, I should be very glad. But, if it is needful to sell them for her, it must certainly be done. My poor Laurette! see how beautiful she is!”

As things were beginning to get too affecting, I was worried, and began to frown; I had spoken to him cheerfully to prevent myself growing weak; but I was no longer anxious about that: “Come, enough!” I said to him, “honest folk understand each other well enough. Go and speak to her, and let us make haste.”

I pressed his hand in a friendly way, and, as he did not let mine go and kept looking at me in a peculiar manner: “Let me see!” I added, “if I have any advice to give you, it is not to speak to her of this. We will arrange the matter without her expecting it, or you either, so be at ease; that’s my affair!”

“Ah! that makes a difference,” he said, “I didn’t know ... that will be better certainly. Besides, the good-byes! the good-byes! they weaken one.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “don’t be a child, it’s better so. Don’t kiss her, my friend, don’t kiss her, if you can manage it, or you are lost.”

I gave him my hand again, and let him go. Oh! it was very hard for me, all that.

It seemed to me, upon my word, that he kept the secret well; for they walked up and down, arm in arm, for a quarter of an hour, and they came back to the ship’s side to get the string and the dress, which one of my cabin-boys had fished up.

Night fell suddenly. It was the moment I had decided to seize. But that moment has lasted for me up to this very day, and I shall drag it after me all my life like a chain and ball.

Here the old major was obliged to stop. I took care not to speak, for fear of diverting his thoughts; he continued, beating his breast:

That moment, I tell you, I cannot yet understand. I felt my rage mounting to my very hair, and, at the same time, something or other made me obey and urged me onward. I called the officers and said to one of them:

“Come, launch a boat ... since we are now executioners! You will put that woman in it, and will take her out into the ocean until you hear guns going off. Then you will return.” To obey a scrap of paper! for that was really all it was! There must have been something in the air that urged me on. I caught a glimpse in the distance of the young man ... oh! it was terrible to see! ... kneeling before his Laurette and kissing her knees and her feet. Do you not think I was very unhappy?

I called out like a madman! “Separate them ... we are all rascals! Separate them.... The poor Republic is a dead body! The Directors, the Directory, are its vermin! I shall leave the sea! I’m not afraid of all your lawyers; let them be told what I say, what does it matter to me?” Ah! much I cared for them, indeed! I should have liked to get hold of them, I should have had all five of them shot, the rascals! Oh! I would have done it; I cared as much for life as for the rain falling yonder, there.... Much I cared for it! ... a life like mine.... Ah! yes, indeed, a poor life ... truly!” ...

And the major’s voice died away little by little and became as uncertain as his words; and he walked on, biting his lips and frowning in a wild and fierce abstraction. He gave little convulsive movements, and struck his mule with his scabbard, as if he wanted to kill it. What astonished me, was to see the yellow skin of his face turn a dark red. He unfastened and violently tore open his coat at his chest, baring it to the wind and rain. Thus we continued our march in deep silence. I saw clearly that he would not speak any more of his own accord, and that I must bring myself to question him.

“I quite understand,” I said, as if he had finished his story, “that, after so cruel an experience, one conceives a horror for one’s calling.”

“Oh! calling; are you mad?” he said sharply, “it isn’t the calling! Never will the captain of a vessel be forced to turn executioner, unless when there come governments of murderers and thieves, who take advantage of a poor man’s habit of obeying blindly, obeying always, obeying like a wretched machine, in spite of his heart.”

At the same time he drew from his pocket a red handkerchief, into which he began to cry like a child. I stopped a minute as if to arrange my stirrup, and, staying behind the cart, I walked after it for some time, feeling that he would be humiliated if I saw too plainly his copious tears.

I had guessed rightly, for after about a quarter of an hour he also came behind his poor conveyance, and asked me if I had any razors in my portmanteau; to which I merely answered that, not yet having any beard, they were of no use to me. But he did not mind, it was so that he could speak of something else. I noticed with pleasure, however that he was coming back to his story, for he said to me suddenly:

“You’ve never seen any ships in your life, have you?”

“I have only seen them,” I said, “at the Panorama in Paris, and I have not much confidence in the naval knowledge I gathered there.”

“You don’t know, then, what the cat-head is?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said.

“It is a kind of terrace of beams projecting from the bows of the ship, and from which they throw the anchor into the sea. When a man is shot, he is generally placed there,” he added in a lower voice.

“Ah! I understand, because from there he falls into the sea.”

He did not answer, and began to describe all the kinds of boat that a brig can carry, and their place in the vessel; and then, without any order in his ideas, he continued his story with that affected air of carelessness which always results from long service, because a man must show his inferiors his contempt of danger, contempt of men, contempt of life, contempt of death, and contempt of himself; and all this nearly always hides, under a hard exterior, a profound sensibility.—The hardness of the man of war is like an iron mask over a noble face, like a stone dungeon that shuts in a royal prisoner.

“These craft hold six men,” he went on. “They jumped in and took Laura with them, before she had time to cry out or speak. Oh! that’s a thing for which no honest man can console himself when he is the cause of it. It is no use saying so, such a thing cannot be forgotten!... Ah! what weather it is!—What devil urged me to talk about this! When I’m telling it, I never can stop, it has to be finished. It’s a story that intoxicates me like Jurançon wine.—Ah! what weather it is!—My cloak is wet through!

“I was still telling you, I think, about that little Laurette!—Poor woman!—What clumsy people there are in the world! The officer was so stupid as to take the boat ahead of the brig. After that, it is true to say that one cannot foresee everything. I was counting on the night to hide the deed, and didn’t think of the light from twelve guns being fired at once. And, on my life! from the boat she saw her husband fall into the sea, shot dead.

“If there is a God up yonder, he knows how that happened that I’m going to tell you; I don’t know, but it was seen and heard as I see and hear you. At the instant when they fired, she put her hand to her head as if a bullet had struck her brow, and sat still in the boat without fainting, without crying out, without speaking, and came back to the brig when and how they wished. I went to her and talked to her for a long time as well as I could. She seemed to be listening to me and looked me in the face, rubbing her brow. She did not understand, and her brow was red and her face quite pale. She was trembling in every limb as if she was afraid of everybody. That has remained with her. She is still the same, poor little thing! an idiot, or as it were imbecile, or mad, whatever you please. Never has any one got a word out of her, except when she asks for some one to take away what is in her head.

“From that time I became as sad as she, and I felt something within me saying to me: ‛Stay with her to the end of your life, and take care of her’; I have done it. When I returned to France, I asked to be transferred with my rank into the land-troops, having taken a hatred of the sea, because into it I had spilled innocent blood. I sought out Laura’s family. Her mother was dead. Her sisters, to whom I took her mad, didn’t want her, and offered to send her to Charenton. I turned my back on them, and I kept her with me.

“Ah! merciful heavens! if you want to see her, comrade, it rests with you.” “Can it be she inside?” I asked. “Certainly! here! wait. Whoa! mule....”

III HOW I CONTINUED MY JOURNEY

And he stopped his poor mule, which seemed delighted that I had asked the question. At the same time he lifted the oilcloth from his little cart, as if to arrange the straw which almost filled it, and I saw something very sad. I saw two blue eyes, extraordinarily large, admirably shaped, starting from a head pale, thin and long, and overflowing with quite straight fair hair. I saw nothing, in truth, but those two eyes, for the rest was dead. Her brow was red; her hollow white cheeks were bluish at the cheek-bones; she was cowering in the midst of the straw, so much so that you scarcely saw projecting from it her knees, on which she was playing dominoes all by herself. She looked at us for a minute, trembled a long time, smiled at me a little, and went on playing. It seemed to me that she was labouring to perceive how her right hand would beat her left. “You see, she has been playing that game for a month,” the major said to me; “to-morrow, perhaps it will be another game that will last a long time. It’s strange, eh?”

At the same time he began to replace on his shako the oilcloth, which the rain had slightly disarranged.

“Poor Laurette!” I said, “you have lost, and for ever, truly!”

I brought my horse near the cart, and held out my hand to her; she gave me hers mechanically, smiling with great sweetness. I noticed with surprise that she wore on her long fingers two diamond rings; I thought that here were her mother’s rings still, and wondered how poverty had left them there. I would not have remarked as much to the old commandant for all the world; but, as he followed me with his eyes, and saw mine fixed on Laura’s fingers, he said to me with a certain air of pride:

“They are pretty big diamonds, aren’t they? They might fetch a price on occasion, but I did not want her to part from them, poor child. When they are touched, she cries, she is never without them. Otherwise, she never complains, and she can sew now and then. I have kept my word to her poor little husband, and, in truth, I don’t regret it. I have never left her, and I have said everywhere that she is my mad daughter. People have respected that. In the army everything gets arranged better than they would think at Paris, eh!—She has been through all the Emperor’s wars with me, and I have always got her through safe and sound. I have always kept her comfortable. With straw and a little carriage, it’s never impossible. Her dress was pretty well cared for, and I, being a major, with good pay, my Legion of Honour pension, and the monthly napoleon, whose value was double, formerly, I was quite able to keep things going, and she did not embarrass me. On the contrary, the officers of the 7th Light Horse would sometimes laugh at her child’s play.”

Then he went near, and tapped her on the shoulder, as he would have done to his little mule.

“Well, my girl! come now, say something to the lieutenant there: come, just a nod.”

She went on with her dominoes.

“Oh!” he said, “she is a little shy to-day, because it is raining. Yet she never catches cold. These mad people are never ill, it’s convenient in that way. At the Beresina and all through the retreat from Moscow, she went bareheaded.—There, my girl, go on playing, come, don’t worry about us; there, do as you please, Laurette.”

She took the hand that he rested on her shoulder, a great black and wrinkled hand; she lifted it timidly to her lips and kissed it like a poor slave. My heart was wrung by that kiss, and I turned my horse back violently.

“Shall we continue our march, commandant?” I said; “it will be night before we reach Béthune.”

The commandant carefully scraped off with the end of his sword the yellow mud that covered his boots; then he got up on the footboard of the cart, and pulled over Laura’s head the cloth hood of a little cloak she was wearing. He took off his black silk scarf and put it round his adopted daughter’s neck; after which he gave the mule a kick, jerked his shoulder, and said: “Off you go, you’re a poor lot!” and we set off again.

The rain was still falling dismally; the grey sky and the grey earth stretched out endlessly; a kind of wan light, a pale wet sun, was sinking behind great mills that were not turning. We relapsed into profound silence.

I was looking at my old commandant; he was walking in great strides, with energy still maintained, while his mule was exhausted, and even my horse was beginning to hang his head. This worthy man from time to time took on his shako to wipe his bald forehead and his few grey hairs, or his thick eyebrows, or his white moustache, from which the rain was dripping. He did not worry about the effect which his narrative might have had on me. He had not made himself out either better or worse than he was. He had not stooped to show himself to advantage. He was not thinking of himself, and, after a quarter of an hour, he began, in the same manner, a very much longer story about a campaign of Marshal Massena’s, where he had formed his company into a square against some cavalry or other. I did not listen to him, although he grew warm in demonstrating to me the superiority of the foot-soldier over the mounted man.

Night fell, we were not going fast. The mud was becoming thicker and deeper. Nothing on the road and nothing at the end. We stopped at the foot of a dead tree, the only tree in our path. He first attended to his mule, as I did to my horse. Then he looked into the cart, as a mother does into her child’s cradle. I heard him saying: “Come, my girl, spread this coat over your feet, and try to sleep.—Come, that’s right! She hasn’t got a drop of rain on her.—Oh! confound it! she has broken my watch that I left round her neck!—Oh! my poor silver watch!—There, it’s no matter; try to sleep, child. The fine weather will come soon.—It’s strange! she is always feverish; mad people are like that. Look, here’s some chocolate for you, child.”

He propped the cart against the tree, and we sat down under the wheels, sheltered from the incessant shower, sharing a loaf he had and one I had: a poor supper.

“I am sorry we have nothing but this,” he said; “but it’s better than horseflesh cooked under the ashes with gunpowder on top, by way of salt, as we used to eat it in Russia. As for the poor little woman, I am bound to give her the best I have. You see that I always keep her by herself. She cannot bear to be near a man since the affair of the letter. I am old, and she seems to believe that I am her father; in spite of that, she would strangle me if I tried merely to kiss her on the forehead. Education always leaves them something, it seems, for I have never seen her forget to hide herself like a nun.—That’s strange, eh?”

As he was talking of her like this, we heard her sigh and say: “Take away the lead! take away the lead!” I got up, he made me sit down again.

“Sit still, sit still,” he said to me, “it is nothing. She has always said that, because she always thinks she can feel a bullet in her head. That doesn’t prevent her doing whatever she is told, and that with great amiability.”

I was silent and listened to him sadly. I began to calculate that from 1797 to 1815, which we had reached, eighteen years had passed thus for this man.—For a long time I stayed beside him in silence, trying to account to myself for such a character and such a fate. Then, for no apparent reason, I gave him a very enthusiastic handshake. He was astonished at it.

“You are a noble man!” I said to him. He answered:

“Eh! why that? Is it because of that poor woman?... You know well, my lad, that it was a duty. I have long learnt to sacrifice self.”

And he talked to me about Massena again.

The next day, at dawn, we reached Béthune, an ugly little fortified town, where you would say that the ramparts, contracting their circle, had squeezed the houses one on top of another. Everything there was in confusion; there had just been an alarm. The inhabitants were beginning to draw in the white flags from the windows; and to sew the tricolours together in their houses. The drums were beating the call to arms; the trumpets were sounding “to horse,” by order of the Duke of Berry. The long Picardy carts were carrying the Swiss Hundred and their baggage; the cannon of the Body-guard hastening to the ramparts, the princes’ carriages, the squadrons of the Red Companies falling in, were blocking up the town. The sight of the Royal Dragoons and the Musketeers made me forget my old travelling companion. I joined my company, and in the crowd I lost the little cart and its poor occupants. To my great regret, it was for ever that I lost them.

It was the first time in my life that I read the inmost depths of a real soldier’s heart. This meeting revealed to me a kind of human nature unknown to me, and which the country knows little and does not treat well; I placed it thenceforward very high in my esteem. I have often since then sought around me some man like that one, capable of that complete and unheeding self-sacrifice. Now, during the fourteen years that I have lived in the army, it is in it alone, and above all in the poor and despised ranks of the infantry, that I have met these men of antique mould, carrying the sentiment of duty to its final consequences, feeling neither remorse for having obeyed nor shame for being poor, simple in customs and in speech, proud of their country’s glory and heedless of their own, gladly shutting themselves up in their obscurity, and sharing with the unfortunate the black bread which they pay for with their blood.

I was long ignorant of what had become of this poor major, especially as he had not told me his name and I had not asked it. One day, however, at the coffee-house, in 1825, I think, an old infantry captain of the line to whom I described him, whilst waiting for parade, said to me:

“Oh! by heaven, my dear fellow, I knew him, poor devil! He was a fine man; he was ‛put down’ by a bullet at Waterloo. He had, indeed, left with the baggage a kind of mad girl whom we took to the hospital at Amiens, as we were on our way to join the army of the Loire, and who died there, raving, three days later.”

“I can well believe it,” I said to him; “she had lost her foster-father!”

“Oh pooh! father! what is that you say?” he rejoined in a tone which he meant to be sly and suggestive.

“I say that the call to arms is being sounded,” I replied, going out. And I too exercised self-restraint.